Attack of the Seawolf

For a moment Lennox forgot the radio. The painful truth was that the operation was almost surely blown, and it was his fault.

Aircraft Commander Yen Chitzu looked through the plastic bubble of the Hind’s upper cockpit at the scene below. The reason for the Hind’s call-up from Hangu was immediately apparent. Pulling out of the P.L.A slip was a large black submarine, the one that had been captured spying on the Chinese coastline. The destroyers that had been its guards were smoldering and sinking into the water of the pier’s slip, the water around them in flames as the kerosene and diesel oil burned.

An armored P.L.A force on the pier was firing tank guns and artillery into the water, the rounds missing the sub as it entered the bay channel still going backward.

* * *

Two kilometers to the southeast a Jianghu-class frigate was reversing course to turn and come back to attack the escaping submarine. To the south, two poorly armed Dauphin helicopters were coming in on a futile strafing run. Yen activated his radio and ordered the Dauphins out of his airspace, then called the second Hind in his formation to follow him in.

Next he radioed the captain of the Jianghu frigate and told him to hold his fire while the Hinds lined up. He brought the aircraft around a wide circle, crossing over the deck of the frigate and approaching the submarine, slowing to a hover.

Now he spoke into his intercom to the weapons officer, Leader Ni Chihfu, ordering him to arm the Spiral missiles and the UB-32 rockets and to commence firing, then sat back to watch the fireworks.

* * *

On the Tampa’s bridge the VHF radio sputtered:

“REACTOR SCRAM! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED UP THERE?”

Lennox spat into the radio.

“We ran aground.” We, hell, he thought, I ran us aground.

“What happened to the reactor?”

“WAIT ONE, THEY’RE CHECKING.”

The Hind helicopters hovered barely a halfshiplength in front of the sail at twenty feet. Lennox, still standing with his head exposed out the starboard clamshell opening, stared at the missiles slung on missile rails on booms extending from the flanks of the choppers. He could even see the laser sights on the helmets of the chopper pilots in the nose cone cockpits as they aimed the missiles. Further ahead in the channel, south of the supertanker-pier, he could see the Jianghu frigate driving up closer, its 100-mm gun up forward moving, the barrel lining up on his position.

Lennox’s VHP radio squawked:

“CAUSE OF THE SCRAM WAS SHOCK OPENING THE SCRAM BREAKERS. WE’LL HAVE POWER IN ABOUT TWO MINUTES. THE ENGINEER WANTS TO KNOW HOW BAD THE GROUNDING IS. CAN YOU GET US OUT OF THIS?”

The frigate had come to a stop a ship length in front of them. The helicopters hovered, at most one hundred feet away. Lennox continued to stare at the choppers’ and frigate’s guns and missiles, the world tilted in a twenty-five-degree slope. Forget answering the radio, he thought. He ducked down into the cockpit and waited for the missiles and gun projectiles to hit, wondering how it would feel to die.

CHAPTER 23 SUNDAY, 12 MAY 1910 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

GO HAD BAY, XLNGANG HARBOR

USS SEAWOLF

0310 BEIJING TIME

The periscope lens finally broke the surface and cleared, revealing the scene Pacino had most worried about. The Jianghu frigate was dead in the water just a few hundred yards in front of the bow of the Tampa. Two huge helicopters hovered just in front of the sail of the motionless submarine. But the worst of it wasn’t the frigate or the choppers, it was the appearance of the Tampa. The sail was canted over in a twenty-or twenty-five-degree angle, leaning hard to port, and there was no bow-wave, no disturbance of the water at all from her stern — she must have hit an underwater obstacle. She must have run aground on the way out and was now a cripple in the channel while the P.L.A Navy was getting ready to deliver the coup de grace.

“Conn, Sonar, no propulsion noises from Friendly One. Looks like—” Pacino interrupted and shouted over the noise of his headset:

“Belay the report. Sonar. Off’sa’deck, arm the SLAAM 80 missiles. Weps, report status of tube loaded Javelins.”

“SLAAM 80 missiles armed. Captain,” Tim Turner said from the Mark 80 Submarine-Launched Antiair Missile console, the control unit mounted on the port railing of the conn, the console no bigger than a lunch pail.

“All missile doors indicate open.”

Pacino lifted the protective cover over a red button on his left periscope grip.

“SLAAM 80, SLAAM 80,” he said as he hit the key. He punched it two more times, chanting the launch notice twice more. There was no telltale sound of the missiles leaving the ship — for a moment Pacino wondered if the missiles had actually been launched, then … “Four Mark 80s away, sir,” Turner reported from the SLAAM control box.

“Javelins tube-loaded in tubes five and six. Captain,” Feyley said.

“Both are spun up and ready in all respects.”

“Open outer doors, tubes five and six,” Pacino commanded.