Attack of the Seawolf

The big four-engined jet, an ancient British-built Nim rod antisubmarine patrol craft, lifted off the runway and headed south toward the point the Dashentang radar station had detected a suspicious contact. It was undoubtedly a false contact, Yen thought, but he didn’t mind. Better to be flying than cooped up in the ready building, trying to sleep, waiting for word about the encroaching White Army.

It did not take long to maneuver the plane over the water east of Beitang and cruise over the supposed path of the radar contact. The sun was rising as Yen approached the point in the bay where the spy boat or submarine was suspected. Yen, as he was trained, flew east of the intercept point so that he would be up sun of the contact. As he approached the intercept point, still a mile away, he thought he saw something.

He flew toward it, keeping it down-sun, and now as the plane closed the contact he blinked hard, not quite believing.

It was a periscope. No doubt. Yen keyed the radio button on the control yoke and called the contact report back to Dashentang, then flew back around, alerting the crew to prepare the load he was about to drop into the sea.

USS TAMPA

“Conn, Sonar,” Murphy’s earphone crackled, “we’re getting aircraft engines, close contact.”

“Air search!” Murphy called to Officer of the Deck Tarkowski. Tarkowski flipped his left wrist down, scanning his view upward, rotating the scope rapidly.

“Goddamn,” Tarkowski said.

“Mark on top! Looks like a P-3. Dipping scope.”

Tarkowski snapped up the grips and rotated the hydraulic control ring, and the periscope dropped into the well, coming down slowly, slowly.

“Conn, Sonar, the aircraft is still close, high-bearing rate. It’s circling us.”

“Get us out of here, course east,” Murphy ordered.

“Ten knots.”

“Helm, all ahead two thirds,” Tarkowski called to the helmsman at the control panel.

“Left fifteen degrees rudder, steady course east.”

“Station the section tracking team, OOD, and restart the port turbine generator. Start up the port main engine and shift propulsion to both mains.”

“Aye, sir, station the section tracking team and restart the port engine room The OOD reached for a phone and began barking into it.

“Conn, Sonar,” Murphy’s headset intoned, “splashes in the water up our port side. Sonobuoys, sir … confirmed. Sonobuoys, bearing zero four zero.”

The aircraft was dropping buoys into the water, each one a listening device with a portable radio, listening for them to drive by and nailing their position.

Prelude to a possible torpedo attack. Murphy thought.

The standard way of dealing with a sonobuoy volley was to get away from it and change course and speed, to zig, so that the aircraft above couldn’t predict his next position. He figured if the next round of buoys found nothing the aircraft would have lost them.

“I have the conn,” Murphy said.

“All ahead standard.

OOD, plot the splash, mark range fifteen hundred yards.”

“Sonar, Conn, we have another volley of sonobuoys, this time to starboard. He’s trying to box us in.”

The eerie sound of sonar pulses came through the hull, louder than the background noises of the ventilation fans and the gyro. Sean Murphy’s stomach filled with bile as an ugly thought filled his head.

We’re caught.

CHAPTER 4 WEDNESDAY, 8 MAY 2155 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

GO HAD BAY EIGHT MILES EAST OF DAGU POINT USS TAMPA

0555 BEIJING TIME

Commander Sean Murphy stood on the periscope stand looking at the traces on the sonar-repeater monitor, covered now with the streaks of broadband noise from the aircraft above, the curling lines showing that the plane was orbiting the Tampa’s position, keeping up with it. They were deeper now, as deep as the forty fathom channel depth allowed, making the top of the sail over a hundred feet beneath the surface. Still, it felt to Murphy like he was trapped in a tiny bathtub.

Murphy glanced aft of the periscope stand to the navigation chart, which showed their past track. The pencil line leading to their present position was a serpentine path, the result of Murphy’s speed changes and rudder orders, his attempt to wiggle on the way out of the bay to make the aircraft’s firecontrol solution more difficult. But the zigzagging was costing them precious time. Murphy longed to order up maximum speed, all ahead flank, which would give them forty knots, if they could control the ship in the shallow water at that speed. But at flank the ship’s wake in the shallow flat-bottomed bay would be so violent that the rooster tail from it would give their position away. Even so, despite Murphy’s evasive maneuvers, the plane stayed with them, never seeming to run out of sonobuoys, whose odd wailing noise in the water sent shivers down Murphy’s spine. At least the bastard hadn’t let loose with a torpedo, he thought, as his headset clicked, prelude to another report from the chief sonarman.