Red Shark

Zemin had stepped hard like the bull and flushed his quarry in less time than he had estimated. But he still had another quarry to flush. “Bearing and range to the ASDS?”

“Sir, two-five-zero, range five thousand two hundred yards. Target is lying to, off the beach.”

Zemin looked at the MAD display in the Kilo’s Fire-control console and saw a bright green cigar-shaped image of the ASDS. Its spinning prop looked like a shimmering disk, while its various titanium structures didn’t register at all on the MAD display.

The 688I, meanwhile, showed no inclination to sheer away or back down.

“The American is inserting his ship between us and the mini-sub,” Zemin announced to his first officer. “He’s warning us to stand clear. A provocation, especially in waters claimed by the People’s Republic of China. We’ll give him something to think about.”

The first officer nodded that he understood what Zemin intended to do, risky though it was.

“Maintain present speed and heading,” Zemin ordered. “Active sonar, shift to standby.”

“Comms, anything from Scott?”

“Had him, but the wave channel’s garbled.”

“Well, at least we know he’s alive. Probably have their hands full locking in. Keep trying. I want him to know we may have to go to street-fighter mode.”

“Aye, sir.”

Deacon rounded to Fire-control. “What’s that Kilo doing?”

“Captain, range is now forty-nine hundred yards. He’s still comin’.”

“The Chinaman’s broad on our port beam and wants to play T-bone,” Deacon said. “What do you think about that, Rus?”

“I think we should show him how to play chicken instead, see how much brass he’s got in his balls.”

“So do I. Helm.”

“Helm, aye.”

“Left full rudder, come to course three-two-zero and clear baffles. All ahead flank.”

The Reno heeled to port as she accelerated and snapped into a sharp left-hand turn that put her on a collision course with the Kilo.

“Fire-control, stand by to launch—”

“Conn, Sonar, single active ping from Sierra One!”

The sound pulse fired from the Kilo’s active sonar suite struck the Reno like a bullet, her sound-absorbing anechoic tile coating blunting some, but not all, of its energy. What was left over rebounded into the Kilo’s fire-control system, which Deacon knew must have lit up like a fireworks display. But by going active, Zemin had also revealed his own position, and now his boat was as vulnerable as the Reno was to a torpedo attack.

“Fucker painted us good, wants to make us think he’s going to shoot,” Deacon said. On that angry note he barked, “Stand by to launch a Thirty CM — on my mark.”

Deacon had selected an AN/SLQ-30, one of the Navy’s newest countermeasures. The six-inch-diameter fish could be programmed to follow either a preset course or to search for a target using sonar much like an Mk-48 ADCAP homing torpedo. The device had a small Otto engine capable of propelling it through the water at seventy-five knots into an enemy submarine’s hull. The collision between enemy sub and Navy countermeasure would send a very strong message: Haul out now or take a real torpedo up the nose.

“Match bearings on a single Thirty CM and shoot.”

After a sharp hiss of compressed air from the launcher and a slight lurch by the Reno, Kramer reported, “Thirty away.”

“That sounds like a fucking torpedo!” Jefferson bellowed. He looked around the mini-sub’s red-lit interior and saw frightened looks on every face but Scott’s.

“It’s not a torpedo,” Scott said. “Deacon fired a countermeasure.”

Jefferson and the SEALs instinctively ducked their heads as the little fish, the racket from its contra-rotating props reverberating through the ASDS’s hull, whizzed by less than a hundred yards away.

“Jesus Christ, could have fooled me,” Jefferson said. “What the hell’s Deacon trying to do?”

“Get that Chinese sub off our asses.”

“Will that thing do it?”

“You bet.”