Arabian Storm (The Hunter Killer Series Book 5)

by George Wallace

  The captain quietly seethed as he settled in to do as commanded, even as the last of the battle group steamed out of range and the ocean around them grew quiet. So quiet as if to mock him and his crew. Perhaps the cup of tea would calm him enough to maintain some degree of composure. His men must never suspect that their commander was anything but calm. That was what a good commander did. What the American cowboy hero John Wayne did in those movies the captain had on DVD back in his home port. The ones he watched alone, over and over, all night, drinking baijiu until he could finally find peaceful sleep.

  Yon had just sipped the first warming taste of the tea when the loudspeaker blared in his ear. He almost dropped the cup.

  “Captain, Sonar. We hold a sonar contact, possibly a submerged submarine.”

  Still holding the teacup, Yon rushed to the sonar room, which was just forward of the control room on his type-31D submarine. As he arrived, he heard the sonar leader announce, “Contact is confirmed. A Kilo-class, probably Iranian. He is snorkeling. Estimate range fifteen kilometers.”

  Yon stepped back into the control room and ordered, “Man battle stations. Target is the Kilo. Make torpedoes ready.”

  He stepped back toward the fire control station as the crew scurried to take their battle stations. He felt more than heard the torpedo tube outer doors swing open. Within a few seconds his boat was ready for battle.

  Finally, he and his crew were about to ride their horses, guns blazing, into a shoot-out with the black-hat bad guys!

  There was no doubt this newly-detected submarine—one that belonged to the nation most likely responsible for the attack on his countrymen—was now shadowing the battlegroup. Or that it had evil intentions. It was a black-hatted threat. And he was there to eliminate it.

  Yon began the slow, careful process of maneuvering his boat into a firing position on the Kilo submarine.

  Ψ

  “Conn, Sonar. New contact Sierra Six-Two,” Toledo’s 21MC blared into Joe Glass’s ear. Startled, he almost dropped his ever-present cup of brutally black coffee. The skipper recognized Joe Drussel’s voice. “Bearing three-two-seven. Probable submerged contact. Snorkeling submarine just lit off.”

  Glass glanced over at the BQQ-10 display and saw the bright white trace that was just starting to appear on the short-time display. This guy sure was loud. A disgrace to the world of submarines!

  “Best classification, a Kilo-class. From the sound of the diesel, it’s the Yunes. Iranian. Best estimate, range two-two thousand yards. Speed six knots.”

  Glass nodded and idly took a sip of the joe as he thought. He did not taste the coffee at all. Everything he heard agreed with what he was seeing on the display. But something did not seem right.

  “Officer of the Deck,” he called over his shoulder. “Slow to standard. Come right to course north. Let’s slip in behind this guy and see if we can determine what in hell he’s up to.”

  “All ahead standard,” Pat Durand ordered. “Right five degrees rudder. Steady course north.”

  The big boat immediately slowed as it swung around to the new course. Bill Dooley, the diving officer, reported, “Steady course north, ahead standard.”

  Slowly Toledo maneuvered until she was directly behind the unsuspecting Yunes. Pat Durand steered the boat deftly while simultaneously solving the course, speed, and range target-motion-analysis problem—TMA, a compilation of complicated geometry—even as they closed to a tactically advantageous position deep in the Iranian submarine’s baffles, the vessel’s blind spot.

  Toledo’s computers churned away on the amazing amount of data being fed to them by the sonar sensors while the section tracking party worked out various possible solutions. Finally, the computers and the human beings agreed on what the Iranian submarine was doing.

  Durand turned to Joe Glass.

  “Captain, I have a good tracking solution on Sierra Six-Two. He is on course two-three-nine, speed six-point-two knots, range seven-six hundred yards.”

  Glass and his executive officer, Billy Ray Jones, both stared intently at the ECDIS display. The Yunes was operating about two hundred miles east of the Omani coast, paralleling the distant shoreline as it steamed to the southwest. All innocent enough in international waters. But there was one complicating factor.

  “Skipper, looks like he’s chasing the Chinese battlegroup down toward Djibouti,” Jones quietly offered, the southern lilt in his voice intensifying in direct proportion to the stress of the situation. “I reckon he’s gotta be up to no good.”

  Glass nodded in agreement. The captain turned toward Pat Durand, who was standing by the periscopes. “Officer of the Deck, come to periscope depth. It’s high time we told the boss that we have a new friend on the playground and that he is obviously not here to play nice. And ventilate the ship while we’re up.”

  Durand brought the submarine up to periscope depth. The traffic was quickly sent and receipt confirmed. The message back to CTF 54 was bound to cause some wide eyes and scurrying about. Reporting contact on an Iranian submarine at sea—one that was almost a thousand miles from the home waters where they typically stayed, and one that no one knew was out and about but that was chasing a Chinese battle group—would certainly light some fires under a few seats. Glass figured that as long as he could hold contact on the Yunes and still stay at periscope depth, he might as well wait for the boss to get back with him, asking the inevitable questions. The Iranian sub was noisy and slow enough they could easily catch up with and keep an eye on the bastard.

  Glass could not wait to watch the show. From a safe distance.

  Ψ

  Captain Yon Hun Glo finally maneuvered his slow but very quiet boat into firing position on the Iranian submarine. The AIP propulsion system allowed him to stay submerged and very stealthy for long periods, but on the downside, he could not move quickly without expending valuable battery capacity. Such a drawback really did not matter so much in this case. The Iranian Kilo either had to use his diesel and snorkel or use up his own precious battery power. Neither one allowed him to move fast for very long. Or suddenly become very quiet. And Yon had the distinct dual advantage of possessing the more modern, capable submarine and of having the element of surprise on his side. It merely required a bit more time to stalk his prey. But now was his opportunity.

  Yon took a last look at the tactical picture. He was deep in the Kilo’s baffles and almost ten thousand meters away. There was zero chance of the Iranian hearing the torpedoes when they were launched. Or even detecting them as they homed in until it was far too late to avoid the sophisticated underwater bloodhounds.

  “Shoot tubes one and two!” Yon ordered forcefully. Even angrily.

  The two YU-9 torpedoes raced out of their tubes on command, quickly coming up to speed and running toward their unsuspecting target. Their electric-drive propulsion systems sent them through the sea at better than fifty knots.

  It would only take them a few minutes to abruptly conclude once and for all this threat to the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China.

  Ψ

  “Launch transients, bearing one-one-two!” Joe Drussel’s voice was up several octaves as he screamed the alarm over the 21MC. “Hold...two weapons...on that bearing!”

  Glass looked at the BQQ-10. The report did not make any sense. Not based on anything they were seeing. The bearing was almost one-eighty from where the Yunes was tracking. But there they were. The twin, burning-white traces on the display.

  Where the hell did they come from? And, far more urgently, how the hell was he going to escape them?

  “Ahead flank! Make your depth eight hundred feet! Left full rudder! Snap shot tube two!” Pat Durand spat out the orders, one after the other, machinegun-like.

  They were precisely the correct actions to follow for a normal torpedo evasion. If such a thing could ever be termed “normal.” Exactly the maneuvers taught in all the attack trainers. But were they enough to save his boat now?

  At the moment, Joe Glass
did not think so.

  “Incoming torpedoes, bearing one-one-two!” Master Chief Zillich’s voice had now replaced Joe Drussel’s on the 21MC. Up and down the length of the Toledo, crewmen at battle stations now were aware of just how dire their situation was. As they had been trained to do, they did exactly what they were supposed to. But many of them were simultaneously mumbling a prayer.

  “All stop!" Glass ordered. A short pause, then, “Maintain periscope depth. Back two-thirds until you have zero speed.” He quickly followed that order with, “Chief of the Watch, launch two countermeasures. Then launch an EMATT.”

  The countermeasure devices spun out of the launcher, putting up a curtain of noise as they tumbled away. A couple of seconds later the EMATT—Expendable Mobile Anti-Submarine Training Target—whooshed away from the boat.

  “Incoming torpedoes, still bearing one-one-two. Zero bearing rate,” Zillich reported, surprisingly calm. The torpedoes were coming right at them. Moments 'til impact.

  “We’re going to sit right damn here at PD and make like a very large log,” Glass called out. “We’ll hope those torpedoes prefer the EMATT.”

  That, of course, was all they could do.

  Billy Ray Jones ran to the torpedo launch control panel. His fingers danced across the screen.

  “Weapon ready for...solution ready for...snap shot tube two on the bearing of the incoming weapons,” he called out, glancing over at Glass. They were prepared to shoot back should there be a chance to do so. But it might well be their last act on this earth if they did.

  “Picking up torpedo engine lines. Correlates to Chinese YU-9 electric-drive torpedoes. Both weapons now in active search.”

  Chief Zillich was scraping up every bit of information that he could. For the good it would do them if the Chinese torpedoes racing their way ultimately took them down.

  Even in their grim situation, Joe Glass was still trying to figure out what was amiss here. The scenario simply did not make sense. No way a Chinese sub—even their very best warship—would ever have been able to get the drop on them. And even if they, by some miracle, had done so, why would they ever shoot at an American sub? It was a certain route to World War III.

  “EMATT is running,” Pat Durand reported. The vessel they had launched was a miniature UUV designed to be used by surface ships as a submarine target for training purposes. But since it simulated a submarine so well and could be loaded with signals that sounded just like the Toledo, it made a very effective decoy in a situation like this. Or at least the crew hoped so. But even then, the EMATT could only play the part of a real submarine for ten minutes or so, until its battery ran down. But by then everything would be decided, one way or the other.

  “Incoming torpedoes, still bearing one-one-two!”

  Those damn fish were relentless!

  Glass looked again at the ECDIS display. The bearing lines from the torpedoes ran right through his ship. And then straight to the Yunes. That had to be the answer. The Chinese sub was not shooting at Toledo at all. He was shooting at the Iranian. Toledo’s bad luck that she just happened to be in the way.

  Didn’t really matter, though. They would be just as dead if one or both of those torpedoes hit them. Accident or not.

  Sweat dripped off Glass’s chin onto the glass top of the ECDIS. They had done all they could do. Maybe their luck would change and...

  “Incoming torpedoes, still bearing one-one-two! One weapon shifted to acquisition. Other still in search!”

  The news was getting worse. It looked every bit like one of those deadly bloodhounds had sniffed them out. There was no chance of running.

  “Launch two more evasion devices,” Glass ordered. “Wait ten seconds and then launch two more.” Maybe a wall of noise would hide them for long enough. And the devices would do them no good anyway if Toledo became a scrap heap—and eternal tomb—on the bottom of the sea.

  The two Chinese torpedoes were now close enough that Toledo’s crew could hear them through the hull, an angry freight train running right at them. They did not need a sonar to know death was imminent.

  And just like an approaching, speeding freight train, the rising pitch of the racket told them that the weapons were racing in their direction.

  Just when the roar reached a crescendo, as every man held his breath and gripped something solid, the pitch suddenly, miraculously, shifted down.

  Both weapons raced past the submarine. Close. Very, very close.

  They had missed them! Cheers went up throughout the boat.

  But Joe Glass knew they were not suddenly safe. These bloodhounds, with their technology stolen from the United States in the first place, were very smart. When their microprocessor brains realized they had run past their target, they would circle back, once again on the hunt.

  “Both weapons past CPA and opening.” Randy Zillich’s voice was marginally calmer. “One weapon still in search, bearing two-one-two. The other weapon has speeded up and is in attack mode, currently bears three-two-one.”

  Glass was again questioning what was going on out there when, suddenly, the boat was rocked by a tremendously violent explosion. The deck heaved beneath their feet. Lights flashed.

  The captain was thrown backward, his head striking the fathometer before he crashed to the deck.

  Commander Joe Glass’s world suddenly went stone-cold black.

  Ψ

  There was a gray haze. An incessant buzzing. A throbbing pain that flashed back and forth around the back of his head.

  Then a voice. Someone was talking to him, asking him something. He tried to answer but his lips would not move.

  Doc Halliday, holding him down on the rack in his stateroom. Asking him if he could hear him.

  Glass tried to sit up, but Doc would not allow him. No need. Everything spun dizzyingly around him. He closed his eyes, trying to regain equilibrium.

  It was slowly dawning on Glass that his boat must still be intact. They were still alive. And that he was saddled with one big headache but still living, too. But were they still afloat? What was the damage to Toledo? Who was hurt?

  “Take it easy, Skipper. You took a pretty hard knock.”

  Someone else, Billy Ray Jones, chimed in.

  “That noggin of yours ain’t near as hard as the piping around here, Captain.”

  Glass groaned and relaxed.

  “I thought I might have died and gone to heaven until I opened my eyes and saw your ugly mug, XO. What the hell happened? How’s the boat?”

  “Best I can figure it, the one YU-9 went for the EMATT. We’d heard they have some kind of really nasty sodium hydride-enhanced warhead that blows up real good. I ’spect we were just a tad too close when the EMATT sacrificed itself for the cause. No real damage to Toledo. Just a lot of folks with bumps and bruises from getting tossed around like you did.”

  “The other boat? The Iranians?”

  “I don’t think the Yunes made out so well. We heard another explosion and then breaking-up noises a few minutes after the first one.”

  Glass could not help himself. He struggled up to a sitting position, then reached up and felt the bandage wrapped around his head. The left side felt especially tender.

  “Well, XO, looks like we stuck our hand into a beehive. Let’s tell the boss what happened and see if he has a suggestion on what he might want us to do.” Glass winced as he touched a spot just above his left ear. “But let’s keep an eye on the Chinese boat. Just in case he realizes we are here and wants to do away with any witnesses.”

  Ψ

  Captain Yon Hun Glo, a pronounced frown on his face, went through the data replay one more time. The attack had been successful. This latest threat to the battle group had been eliminated. But he was still trying to understand what had happened. Both of his new wire-guided YU-9 torpedoes had sent back data saying that they had positive contact on a submarine. No problem there. Then there had been a stream of constant contact information from each weapon, right up until they exploded, destroying bo
th the torpedoes and an enemy submarine.

  But there was one major issue. There had been more than five minutes of time and almost six kilometers of range difference between the two explosions. It was as if the two weapons had attacked separate targets.

  Yon played and replayed the audio tapes from the Wushiwu’s sonar system, trying to piece together these significant anomalies as he watched the computer replay. He could hear a wall of noise just as the first torpedo reported target acquisition. He immediately recognized the sounds of a torpedo countermeasure of some kind but launched far too close to be from the Kilo.

  And Yon was baffled that the torpedo run showed that it was less than halfway to the Iranian submarine when it acquired that particular target. His sonar system had not shown anything at that range.

  Yon sucked in a deep breath. There was only one possible explanation. An American submarine had somehow stumbled into the area between the Wushiwu and its intended target. With all the hostile activity in the area recently, it was not surprising that such a vessel might be there. A quick cross reference to his intelligence library confirmed his hunch. The noise was from an American ADC Mark 5 submarine acoustic countermeasure.

  There was no other possibility. Yon’s first weapon had killed an unlucky American. The second, as intended, had done the same to the Iranian.

  This end result presented Yon with a problem of mammoth proportions. He was ordered to attack any warship that posed a threat to the Wushiwu or his battle group. The Iranian clearly fit that criteria since the Iranians were most likely guilty of already attacking two Chinese ships. Killing him would create a minor furor to the outside world—assuming anyone ever deemed it necessary to announce that it had even happened—but any such outcry would soon disappear amid the world’s general loss of patience with the Iranians and their sponsorship of terrorism. Regardless, his PLAN masters would treat him as a hero.