Attack of the Seawolf

His body ached from the hours in the ready room preparing for the mission, the hours without sleep, waiting for the go order.

Finally, his F-14 was lined up on catapult one, the deck sailors attaching the catapult to the nose gear

Collins checked his instruments, the twin turbines purring aft, waiting to be kicked into full thrust. Collins tested his ailerons, rudder, and elevators, the last item on the checklist. He spoke into his intercom to his radar intercept officer. Lieutenant Commander John Forbes.

“Ready, Bugsy?”

“Ready, Mugsy.” The radio handles had developed separately years before, but now somehow it seemed fitting that the squadron commander and his RIO would go by gangsters’ names. To some deck-bound types they were considered loose cannons.

Collins nodded to the deck officer below. Aft of the aircraft a large thrust-deflector shield rotated upward to protect the deck crew from the F-14’s jet exhaust.

The deck officer signaled with his wands, and Collins’s gloved left hand reached the throttle levers and pushed them forward to their stops, the jet turbines aft shrieking as they spooled up. Collins watched the instruments, then pulled the levers right past the de tents and forward again into the AFTERBURN position.

Far aft, the turbines’ nozzles opened and injected fuel into the jet exhaust, the hot gases igniting for the second time, adding even more thrust to the jet’s push.

Collins looked out his canopy to the Deck Officer and saluted. The Deck Officer, now crouched low on the deck, his forward leg bent, his aft leg ruler straight, quickly waved his wand forward in a big arc, the wand finally touching the deck, then coming up to point straight ahead down the deck into the wind. The catapult operator activated the cat, and Collins’s F-14 rocketed down the carrier’s deck under the three-g acceleration of the steam-driven catapult and the F-14’s own jets on full afterburners.

Collins’s skin stretched aft, his body thrown into the seat as the big jet accelerated. The deck and the dark sea flew toward him as if he were falling through a blurred tunnel. At the end of the cat the jet was doing one hundred and fifty knots, enough to stay airborne, but barely. Collins felt the jolt as the catapult disconnected, freeing his nose wheel of the deck, and the ship faded astern as he retracted the landing gear, the jet surging forward as the gear pulled up out of the slipstream.

The jet continued accelerating as Collins pulled the stick back, and the sea and the carrier shrank behind as the fighter clawed its way skyward, the airspeed and altimeter needles winding up on the panel. Collins smiled at the sheer joy of flight, pulling the jet over into a tight turn, entering the pattern to wait while the other pilots in his squadron took off and joined him. As soon as they were aloft he would lead the way to their hold-point two nautical miles east of the line from Lushun to Penglai, the line of Chinese international waters.

With luck, once they were there, they would get the word to fly in and kick ass.

P.L.A NAVY AIRCRAFT CARRIER SHAOGUAN

The ship had taken on a fifteen-degree list to port and had begun to settle noticeably into the water. Fleet Commander Chu Hsueh-Fan continued to stare out the port bulkhead glass windows toward the west, hoping to catch sight of the fleet sinking the American submarine. The ship seemed quiet now, the engines long since dead, the fires continuing to rage but the firefighting given up by order of Ship Commander Sun Yang. The flooding was uncontrollable, the damage extending through four major compartments to port and amidships. The abandon-ship routine was almost complete. All the lifeboats and rafts were over, all the survivors floating in the boats watching the crippled vessel.

Somewhere far below an explosion rumbled through the bowels of the dead ship, the detonation sharp at first, then settling into a sustained roar. Chu shivered at the sound, the carrier’s death-rattle. The ship’s heel increased suddenly to twenty-five degrees, the deck becoming a steep ramp. Ship Commander Sun Yang broke into the room,

the door slamming against the bulkhead, the tilt of the ship keeping the door from latching open, as Yang stared at Chu.

“Fleet Commander, our helicopter is waiting. It can’t hold onto this deck much longer. The ship is about to capsize.”

Chu turned around, his face lit only by the dim battery-powered battle lantern. His face was deeply lined.

“You go. Transfer the flag. Get that submarine. I will stay here—” “Sir, you can’t do this. Tien is already waiting in the helicopter. This is Tien’s fault. If you go down with this ship his story will be the one they believe.”

“You tell the story. I let Tien botch this operation … I will join my men who suffered for it. Now go.”

Sun Yang was about to speak when the deck began to roll further to port, now a dangerous thirty-degree angle. He shook his head, turned and made his way up the steep deck to the door.