Attack of the Seawolf

Chen and Yang were both smashed into the starboard bulkhead of the bridge when the first torpedo exploded. The Javelin explosion blew a hole in the floor of the bridge, the glass windows still remaining after the torpedo hit. Yang and Chen were alive, even after the cruise missile hit, but the explosion of the Silex battery vaporized the bridge wing where they had collapsed. Their bodies would never be found.

After the SS-N-14 explosion there was nothing left of them bigger than what could be poured into a thimble.

At 1911 the second Mark 50 torpedo swam under the keel of the crippled Jinan, the hull proximity sensor firing the detonator train, the ton of high explosive blowing the water under the keel into a sphere of expanding gases. With the water suddenly gone beneath the keel, the ship’s weight supported only by the bow and stern, the ship collapsed, breaking like a bridge carrying too great a load. The hull snapped, the bow section rolling starboard and sinking immediately, the stern half rolling to port and vanishing by the screw, the grotesque twisted and burned metal of the ripped hull sticking straight up into the rainy air, then slowly settling.

At 1913 the only sign that a mighty Udaloy destroyer had been there was the oily slick from her fuel tanks and the foam and debris from her sinking.

At 1914 the USS Tampa transited east, passing within four hundred yards of the corpse of the Jinan. At 1917 Seawolf followed. By 1920 Beijing time the thirteen ships of the northern task force were destroyed and on the bottom of Bohai Bay.

Sixteen kilometers to the east, the aircraft carrier Shaoguan turned to the north, across the line of sight to the fiery explosions of what had been the northern task force, its sensors straining to detect the submarines that had caused the destruction. In the strategy room, the fleet commander stared at the radar screen, which was now empty except for the ships in the Miaodao Channel.

CHAPTER 29 MONDAY, 13 MAY 1130 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

GO HAD BAY, BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT

USS SEAWOLF

1930 BEIJING TIME

“What’s your range to the carrier?” Pacino asked Lieutenant Jeff Joseph on Pos Two.

“Sir, showing seventeen thousand yards, but the solution is sloppy.”

“Close enough. Weps, spin up the Ow-sow in tube one.”

Feyley acknowledged. Keebes looked up at Pacino.

“Captain, once we launch that thing, we’d better have some air cover or that’s the end,” Keebes said, and turned back to the firecontrol computer.

“We won’t launch until the last moment,” Pacino told him.

Morris looked over at Pacino from the chart table.

“This had better work, Pacino.”

Pacino just held his gaze. No way he could promise it would.

P.L.A NAVY AIRCRAFT CARRIER SHAOGUAN

1938 BEIJING TIME

Fleet Commander Chu Hsueh-Fan ignored Leader Tien Tse-Min as he looked at the radar repeater’s hooded screen while holding the handset of the radio-telephone to his ear. Other than the contours of the land to the north and south, the screen was empty in the Bohai Haixia Channel. The northern task force no longer existed. Chu left the radar hood and stared out the port bulkhead windows at the channel to the west, the flames slowly dying out on the horizon as the last of the ships of the northern task force sank. When he put his binoculars down, the look on his face was murderous rage.

“The northern fleet is gone. Sunk by torpedoes and cruise missiles from the submarines in the Bohai Haixia. While you sent our forces south and refused air cover to the north, we lost every ship and every man, men who trusted me and our Navy.”

“I disagree. Those torpedoes and missiles could have been launched from the mouth of the Bohai Haixia before the submarines went into the south passage.

If not for the blunders of your southwest task force we would have caught the subs by now—” Chu grabbed Tien’s tunic above the pocket, the button on the pocket flap falling to the deck.

“You damn fool, I’ve had enough. I relieve you of tactical command.

Maybe the Chairman will let me live if I can recapture or kill at least one submarine today. But we are both sure to die with you in command.”

Tien, not so much a fool as to challenge Chu now, said nothing. If they survived, he would take credit.

And Chu, it seemed, had been right … Chu found the microphone to the bridge and turned his back to Tien.

“Bridge, Strategy, move the ship to a position two kilometers west of the line marking international waters, max speed. Alert the Yak squadron to man their planes. As soon as we reach our new position launch the Yaks and sweep to the west for submarines.”

“FLEET COMMANDER, THE SHIP IS SPEEDING UP TO FORTY-FIVE CLICKS, HEADING NINETY-FIVE DEGREES. YAK SQUADRONS ARE MANNING PLANES.”

“Very well. Alert the Ship Commander to begin an active sonar search with all hull arrays, short range first, then medium as we come around back to the west.”