Piranha: Firing Point

“Gentlemen, one thing I’ve learned at sea is that the procedure manuals are written by people who have never been on the business end of a torpedo with the plant crashing around them, with the captain shouting for power, where a second’s delay can mean death. The meaning of being an officer in our navy is knowing more than those operation manuals, knowing how to play when you’re hurt, when the ship is going down and you need to keep shooting anyway. That’s really it, isn’t it, men? The ability to play hurt. That’s the only way we’ll ever win a war. And in fact, that’s the only way you can live your lives. Do that for me, guys. Learn to play hurt.”

— ADMIRAL KINNAIRD R. MCKEE, DIRECTOR NAVY NUCLEAR PROPULSION PROGRAM AND FORMER SUPERINTENDENT, U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY, ADDRESSING THE ATLANTIC FLEET SUBMARINE OFFICERS, NORFOLK, VIRGINIA, 1984

“I still have one torpedo and two main engines.”

— CAPTAIN MICHAEL PACINO, USS SEAWOLF, AT THE MOUTH OF THE GO HAI BAY, SURROUNDED BY CHINESE DESTROYERS AND AIRCRAFT

PROLOGUE

The last engine died as the plunging aircraft tilted into a steep dead-stick turn, the crosswind shaking the wings, the view ahead filled only with deep blue ocean. The waves grew alarmingly close, coming impossibly fast toward the windshield. A moment later the plane smashed violently into the water.

The pilot was hurled into his seat’s five-point harness, fighting the wheel and the rudder pedals, until the massive four-engine seaplane glided to a halt and began rolling in the gentle swells of the East China Sea. The pilot glanced one last time at the panel and nodded at the copilot. Shrugging off the harness, he moved aft through the flight-deck door and into the large aft cabin. Looking up at him were two dozen pair of eyes, some steely cold, some excited, a few bored, but none anxious.

The pilot turned to the starboard side of the cabin, where a crowded deck-to-overhead console was set against the bulkhead to the cockpit. A small, intense man sat in the console, the panels and keypads and trackballs encircling him. One of the panels graphically depicted the aircraft on the surface, a door opening in the underhull. a ball on a cable lowering into the sea, a set of numbers rolling up as the ball sank into the depths of the ocean. A panel next to the graphic display filled with dots swimming in a darker field, until the dots coalesced into a bright spot moving slowly across the screen.

“She’ll pass close in ten minutes. Commander Chu, five hundred meters east. She’s slow, at fifteen clicks.

That puts mount-up time now, deploy time in two minutes, with three minutes of contingency time. It’s tight, but we can do it.”

Commander Chu Hua-Feng stepped to the center of the cabin and looked at the men. Each of them was clad in unmarked black coveralls, their belts holding machine pistols, grenades, and daggers.

“Attention, fighters,” he said, his voice deep, projecting without effort. Thin but muscular, Chu stood one hundred eighty centimeters, taller in his rubber-soled boots, towering over the crew. He was in his mid-thirties, which was odd in the Red Chinese PLA Navy, where senior officers were inevitably gray-haired. He carried himself with the air of unquestioned authority, as if he had been the oldest brother, used to command since infancy. The unblinking eyes of the twenty-four men stared at him.

“We mount up in thirty seconds,” Chu continued.