Attack of the Seawolf

“Eight fifty-three-centimeter tubes with the Type 53 with active or passive homing. RBU 6000 mortar launcher.”

Keebes clicked the control and a periscope photo of a huge aircraft carrier came up, taken from such a low angle that it seemed as if the sub taking the picture would have to have been run over moments after snapping the picture.

“Schrader. What is it?”

“Kiev-class CV, obtained from Russia last year, formerly the Novorossiysk, renamed the Shaoguan.”

“What’s she got?”

“Hell, XO, what hasn’t she got?”

And so it went, Keebes clicking periscope shots and firing questions at the officers. The sheer number of Chinese surface ships was staggering. And nearly all of them could hurt a submarine. Hurt? They could blow the Seawolf into scrap metal between breakfast and lunch.

Especially the Shaoguan, the massive aircraft carrier out of Lushun, bristling with radars, sonars, missiles, torpedoes, ASW rocket-launched depth charges and, worst of all, helicopters and VTOL jets, nearly all of them sporting dipping sonars and depth charges and torpedoes. That one ship could fill the Go Hai Bay with enough ordinance to wipe them out. Add on the new Luhu and Udaloy destroyers, with some first-rate Ludas, seasoned with nearly twenty frigates, all built for speed and for killing submarines. Toss in thirty or thirty-five torpedo fast-attack patrol boats, a few dozen coastal patrol vessels, three nuclear-powered attack subs and two ultra-quiet diesel-electric subs, and the Chinese Northern Fleet was a formidable force, indeed.

Seawolf had two major assets. She was quiet and she was invisible. But if that surface force got a sniff of her, she’d be just another shipwreck.

Pacino checked his watch. In less than twelve hours they would be on station at Point Hotel. It was time the officers and men got some sleep.

“Mr. Keebes, let’s wrap it up. Gentlemen, remember it’s one thing to look at a slide, another to get a half second look out of the real scope when the sucker’s bearing down on you with a zero angle-on-the-bow RBU. We’ll be manning battle stations at midnight so get out of here and get some rack.”

As the officers moved out, Pacino phoned the conn.

“Off’sa’deck, sir.” Ray Linden’s voice sounded calm.

“OOD, Captain. What’s our ETA at Point Hotel?”

“Sir, we’re showing about zero one ten.”

“Very well. Rig ship for ultra quiet And pass on to your relief that we’ll man battle stations at midnight.”

As Pacino put down the phone the Circuit One blared through the ship:

“RIG SHIP FOR ULTRA QUIET ALL PERSONNEL NOT ACTUALLY ON WATCH, LAY TO YOUR RACKS.”

Pacino made his way to the control room.

“Captain’s in control,” Linden announced as Pacino entered.

“Hello, Offsa’deck. Where does the ESGN have us?” He was asking about the inertial navigation system that kept their position updated between fixes from the NAV SAT

Linden leaned over the aft rail of the conn, over the chart table, and pointed with his finger to their estimated position. Pacino looked down at the chart.

They had come halfway across the bay. If they could proceed at flank. Point Hotel would be less than two hours away, but crawling like this would take them all day. Still, any faster in the shallow water of the bay might well raise a telltale wake and make excessive noise. Stealth was their only friend, surrounded as they were by the hostile P.L.A Chinese forces on all four points of the compass.

Pacino pulled out the next chart, the small-area large-scale chart of the piers at Xingang. The Seawolf would be able to sail the channel without detection, but the channel narrowed near the pier to a width of a mere four hundred yards, barely enough to turn a supertanker around with eight tugboats. Further from the pier, where less maneuvering would normally be required, the width shrank even further to one hundred yards. Which meant, Pacino realized, he would have to drive Seawolf in an underwater roadway barely a shiplength wide. It would take only one ship to go by to ruin the entire operation. Could he drive the Seawolf that accurately, and maintain stealth, in that narrow a channel? Could he avoid colliding with a tanker above or a silty bottom below? And once he neared the tanker pier, then what?

He pulled the chart lamp closer to the chart. The deep channel ended at the twin-tanker piers and did not extend further north to the P.L.A piers, where Tampa was tied up. It was perhaps two hundred yards from the northern boundary of the supertanker channel to the P.L.A pier, a long underwater swim for the SEALs. How would his visibility be from that position, would he even be able to see the Tampal Would the type-20 periscope be detected from the P.L.A side? Or worse, from the tanker pier? Someone standing on the tanker pier would be only a few hundred feet from the scope. Seawolf would be a sitting duck if the scope were discovered, and then Tampa would have some company.

Pacino folded the chart. Nobody said it would be easy.