by David Poyer
But a commander had to stay above vengeance. Think coldly. Act rationally. The allies’ sole ABM-capable unit in the Western Pacific didn’t belong dawdling behind the barrier, trying to track down a single sub. He leaned in the doorway. “Air?”
“Captain.” Aside from the one he was speaking to, everyone in the pilothouse was carefully not looking his way.
“Hot-refuel Red Hawk, then vector him back to the sinking site. SAR as many as they can. OOD, come to final course for our sector, as soon as you have it plotted.”
They’d laid out the screen sectors in three ranks, or zones. The Yellow Zone stretched from the Chinese coast out two hundred nautical miles to the Okinawa Trench. Orange, for initial detection and tracking, stretched back from there fifty more miles.
Red, sixty miles deep, was the kill zone. Any submerged contact caught there would be prosecuted until destroyed.
Fortunately, he knew these waters. Had operated here during exercises. And, of course, the Navy maintained hydrographic and meteorological records on every navigable body of water on the globe. The main thermocline in the Orange and Red zones hovered at a hundred meters, if there was no mixing due to storms. Running the numbers, Rit Carpenter had come up with an average active detection range of twenty miles for a Song-class boat running quiet, as compared to a passive detection range of less than five.
That made Dan’s choice easy, especially since Savo would have her radars blasting out full power for the ABM mission. All the units in the barrier would be pinging active, except for Pittsburgh, of course.
If anyone wanted to take him on, they’d have his address.
Carpenter had also predicted that the abyss to the north would provide enough depth excess that the deep isothermal layer would bend sound upward into a convergence zone. Playing off that, Dan had begun by placing his most capable antisub unit, Kurama, at the focus of the CZ, thirty miles back from the intersection of Orange and Red. To the left of that, facing the strait, Chokai. To her left in turn, Mitscher. Curtis Wilbur he placed deep in the Red Zone, a goalie, primed to pivot and sprint at short notice toward anyone penetrating the first line of defense. And finally, anchoring the chain off Miyako Jima, Savo Island.
Looking at the geometry for missile defense of Taipei, Dr. Noblos had advised them to displace Savo back thirty miles, to get a better intercept angle. Dan had agreed. He’d adjust the other stations, too, once they got the sonar conditions sussed out, but Seventh Fleet had signed off on their initial disposition.
He just hoped no more Red units had slipped through. And that soon, very soon, they could start getting JTIDS data from the AWACS.
A rattle on the ladder, and the blond shield of the exec’s head bobbed into view. Dark stains underlined her eyes, and her coveralls were stained at the elbows with what looked like fuel oil … or, more disturbingly, dried blood. She was speaking into her Hydra, but clicked it off as she reached the wing. Calm blue eyes locked onto his. “Captain.”
“XO. What’ve we got?”
“CIC called me about recovering the survivors.”
“202 will hot refuel and go back. Most of them made it to the boats. We’ll lily-pad them to Okinawa, to get them home.”
“That’s good. The crew’s kind of … shaken. They don’t understand why we appeared to turn tail and run. I know that probably isn’t what actually happened, but—”
“We’re needed elsewhere. At least it’ll convince them the war’s gone hot.” More rough-edged than he’d meant, but he didn’t soften it. Her eyes widened, then dropped to the gratings. He went on, “How much fuel did we get, before the breakaway? And how many Block 4s? Did we get all the missiles?”
“As you directed, they came over first,” she said. “Making total aboard, eleven. We also got four Block 3s and two ASROCs.” The Block 3s were the older, antiaircraft version of the missile. ASROCs were antisubmarine rounds, encapsulated torpedoes mounted on a rocket motor. “Fuel … I didn’t get a final number yet, but CHENG said close to ninety percent.”
“Okay, good. Get me a hard percentage soon as you can. Or have Bart give me a call. We’ll need to watch consumption, now we don’t have logistic support. Make sure the loadout board in CIC gets updated. Remind Chief Quincoches how badly we need those rounds spun up, tested, and ready to fire. Also, schedule a live-fire exercise this afternoon. Five-inch and Phalanx.”
Staurulakis was hitting keys on her BlackBerry, getting it down. Good.
He had the feeling that, in the next few days, they were all going to be tested.
* * *
THE exec passed “lunch on station,” which meant everyone stayed at his or her general-quarters station, and sent runners for sandwiches and coffee. Dan dithered over the need to establish the barrier and the fact that, now that their tanker was gone, he didn’t know where his group’s next drink was coming from. He compromised by not zigzagging. That upped the risk, should another sub lie doggo along their course, but he was used to the calculus. When you lessened one risk, you increased another. You could analyze it statistically, but an experienced skipper’s guesstimate usually came out close to an optimal solution anyway. Mitscher reported no contact with the sub that had torpedoed the tanker. Dan checked his watch, and reluctantly ordered her to discontinue the search and head for her sector.
He was leaning back in his chair, rubbing burning eyes, when the covered phone beeped. The OOD held it out. “Captain Youngblood, sir.”
CO of Pittsburgh. Dan grabbed it; like most submariners, Youngblood hated to poke his radio mast up, to expose his boat even to send traffic. This close to their coast, the Chinese could probably triangulate any transmission within seconds. “Lonnie. This is Dan. Go ahead. Over.”
“This is Polar Bear. On station.” They discussed detection ranges briefly, then Youngblood said, “Unless attacked myself, I plan to stay covert. Drop my sensor line, then hand tipoffs off to you. You skimmers can clobber the incomers once they hit your Red Zone. Over.”
“Concur, Lonnie. Reporting procedures?”
“One burst transmission on the ASW coordination frequency. I don’t want to have to repeat myself, so maintain a close watch. Over.”
“Got it. Stay deep and good hunting.”
“Same to you, Dan. Polar Bear, out.”
Dan handed the phone back to the OOD. “Log it. Tell Dave Branscombe what he said about contact reports.”
Next up beside his chair was Ollie Uskavitch. The weapons officer was about the biggest man aboard. The chief engineer, a Harry Potter fan, had been known to address him as “Hagrid.” But as he began to speak, Dan’s Hydra beeped. He nodded to Uskavitch and unholstered the radio. “Captain.”
“XO, sir. The NCIS agent is asking for a moment with you.”
“Um, can’t spare the time, Cheryl.”
“This is important, Captain.”
“I agree, but I really have to concentrate on operational issues right now. Take care of her. I’ll break out a couple minutes soon as I can.” He clicked off and glanced at the heavyset lieutenant. “What’cha got, Ollie? Can we get those missiles in the cells, like, yesterday?” He leaned to squint down on the forecastle. Gray-white weapons containers were ranged along the gunwales. The cell doors were open, and the loading crane, a complicated arrangement of beams and motors, was erected, with guys standing around it. But other than that, nothing much seemed to be happening.
Uskavitch blew out, looking harried. “Not gonna be that easy, Skipper. The one guy we sent to the training course rotated out before we left the States. I got the chief and first class reading the manual, and a guy with a grease gun getting everything unstuck.”
Dan felt like jumping down his throat, but restrained himself. “You should have anticipated this, Ollie. We knew we were gonna have to rearm at sea. That crane should have been overhauled and ready before we went in for the unrep.”
“Yessir.” The long face grew even longer. “But it isn’t that simple—”
It never is, Dan thought sourly. Us
kavitch explained that both the forward and aft magazines had built-in cranes. They were designed to let the ship load its own replacement rounds, without having to depend on pierside equipment. But since no ship had ever expended its loadout before, the cranes had been officially deactivated.
“Right, I get it,” Dan snapped. “And they dropped the parts from the supply system. I hope they saved a boatload of money.… But you’ve got the thing erected down there. So what’s the goddamned problem now?”
Uskavitch swallowed. “Well, sir … First, we got to lift the canister, then get it lined up just exactly fucking right to slide down into the cell. We can’t be rolling or pitching more than four degrees. If a round breaks loose, we don’t want a warhead rolling around on deck.”
Dan studied the horizon. “Seas aren’t that bad. We can select the best course to minimize the roll.”
Uskavitch swallowed again. Added, unwillingly, “Yeah, but see … even if we get it working, the main beam’s aluminum. And the new Block 4s are way overweight. The manual says they’re too heavy to reload at sea. At all. You got to load ’em pierside, with a heavy-lift.”
Perched on his command chair, Dan was at just the right height to get both hands around Uskavitch’s throat. Instead he dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “So you’re saying we can’t load them.”
“Well, sir, Quincoches thinks he might have a work-around.”
“How’s he gonna work around that?”
“He wants to weld a reinforcement on the top arm. Like a flange.”
“There’s got to be a downside.”
“Well … we won’t be able to retract the crane once that flange is sticking up. It’s going to have to stay erect, in an open cell.”
“Exposed to the weather?” Dan asked, and Uskavitch nodded unhappily. “And if we take a heavy sea over the bow? We’re gonna flood that whole module. What else is in there?”
“Tomahawks.”
Dan gritted his teeth. Decision time. “How long’s it going to take to weld on this reinforcement?”
“They’re cutting metal now, down in the machine shop. Weld it on … we might get it done before dark.”
“Get it loaded, or get it rigged?”
“Get it rigged,” the weapons officer said, not meeting Dan’s gaze. “Then we have to load it, right. Sir.”
Dan kneaded his eye sockets again. “So we’re gonna steam around with all our lights on, on the forecastle, all night, lit up like a carnival? And have a hole in our foredeck, from then on?”
“Uh, yessir.”
“And if that weld snaps? While you’re loading a missile?”
“Then we’re really fucked, I guess,” Uskavitch offered helpfully. “Captain.”
Dan sighed, then craned over the bulwark again. Chief Quincoches was gesticulating heatedly, pointing up at the crane, while Chief McMottie, the lead engineer, shook his head, arms folded. He closed his eyes. “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. Load all the other rounds, the ASROC and the regular Standards first. Get them in the cells and off the decks. Then weld up the fucking crane and give it a shot.”
“One suggestion, sir.”
“What, Ollie?”
“We hump all the regular-weight rounds aft, and load them in with the aft crane. Meanwhile we’re welding on the forward one. We put all the new Block 4s up forward.”
“Yeah, that’ll speed it up. Good thinking. But you’re still on my pad for not bringing me this a lot earlier, Weps.”
“Aware of that, sir. Sorry.”
“Reports every hour.”
“Yessir,” Uskavitch said miserably, saluting as he turned away. For a big guy, he seemed to fade from the bridge very suddenly.
Leaving Dan stewing in his chair. Ice picks were digging into his shoulders, his lower back. From the broken vertebra he’d gotten in the USS Horn explosion. Even if they could get everything loaded, that would leave him with only eleven ABM-capable rounds. Facing over a thousand Chinese intermediate-range warheads across the strait.
Cover Taipei? With eleven rounds of barely tested missile, running Beta-version software?
It sounded more like a bad joke than a wartime mission.
* * *
DAN was in Combat, monitoring a recon H-6 that had taken station in the strait, and watching the welding on the forward crane through the forecastle camera, when the daily HF update came in. Like most Ticonderogas, Savo had good topside coverage. The cameras for the forward and aft missile decks were controlled via a joystick from the command desk. The 25mm gun cameras, port and starboard on the aft missile deck, could move independently of the guns. Finally, he could look through the port or starboard Sea Whiz sights, though to do that he had to take control away from the weapons consoles, and move the guns as well as the cameras.
He also had surveillance in the passageways outside the main magazines, and a couple other spots within the skin of the ship. The chief master-at-arms had reviewed the tapes after each of the sexual assaults, but they’d never showed anyone suspicious. As if whoever had first fondled, then masturbated on, and finally raped his victims had known exactly where the cameras were pointed.
A disturbing thought … He read through the update. Vietnamese and U.S. forces had completed the occupation of the outlying atolls. Chinese reaction, press reports said, had been muted. But there was no mention of Stuttgart’s loss, or indeed of any activities in his theater. Had the lid clamped down already?
“The Chinese don’t seem to want to venture out into the South China Sea,” Lieutenant Singhe murmured, beside him.
Dan blinked up at the displays. The H-6 was in a slow orbit. Like the AWACS bird that was patrolling a similar racetrack east of Taiwan. He didn’t have access to its data, since the satellite uplink was gone. Wenck was working on some kind of relay but wasn’t there yet. There was more air activity over Taiwan, in response, apparently, to the steady buildup across the strait. “Probably wise,” he told Singhe.
“Not to strike back?”
“Not in the Spratlys.” The geographical plot for GCCS resided in the ship’s computers. It was independent of satellites, unless you wanted real-time contact information. He typed, then spun the ball under his palm. Green land and blue sea jerked across the screen, updating in fits and starts, moving south, then west. Past the Philippines, out into the empty sea between Palawan and the coast of Vietnam. “See how far from their home airfields they are? Six, seven hundred miles. They don’t have that kind of reach. The next hop for the allies will probably be here.” He aimed a movable callout.
“The Paracels.” Singhe leaned closer. She didn’t smell of sandalwood now, but of sweat and too-long-worn cotton. But it was still inviting, to a guy who hadn’t been with his wife since Crete.
“Five hundred miles closer to the Chinese coast. After that, I’d guess, Woody Island. The airfield there can take fighters, and there’s a major radar installation and antiship missiles. Past that, Hainan, and the sub base they built into the mountain.”
Singhe brushed back dark glossy hair. When he stole a glance, her head was tilted back, eyes closed. “Then what? Hong Kong, or the Guangxi Autonomous Region? People think of China as this solid, homogeneous entity. But they have minorities, too. Ancient hatreds. Start an internal uprising, they’d be a lot easier to deal with.”
“Come on, Amy. You’re a student of Chinese politics, too?”
A smile curved full lips. “You’d be surprised, Captain.”
A bell interrupted the moment, and Dan twisted in his seat. Chief Zotcher yelled from behind the dark blue canvas that curtained the sonar area, “Chokai reports contact. Range, twenty-two miles. Bearing, zero zero five. Vectoring helo for MAD run.”
“Put it on the screen, Chief.” He hitched forward, frowning. Strange that Pittsburgh hadn’t picked it up. A premonitory foreboding prickled his shoulders. Chokai hadn’t reported a course, speed, or depth yet, but it had to be headed for the barrier. Once they had a helo over it, with dipping
sonar and magnetic-detection gear, they’d be able to identify class and nationality.
He tented his fingers, pondering. North Korean? The abortive attack on Pusan a few years before had reduced Pyongyang’s fleet considerably. And the Chinese, if they were smart, would hold their older units close inshore for a last-ditch defense. Their nukes were much noisier than their conventional boats. So this was probably either a Kilo or a Song.
He pulled up the order of battle on his screen and studied the specs again. Both were well armed and capable, but a Song would be especially dangerous. The first class actually designed and built in China, it was estimated to carry wake-homing torpedoes, antiship cruise missiles, and the Russian-licensed, high-speed rocket torpedo called the Shkval-K.
A chill ran up Dan’s back. He knew that weapon. If the Chinese could get close enough for a shot before they were detected, they could take out his blocking units. Turn the Sea of Japan, the East and South China Seas, into strategic havens, then expand control outward. Savo herself had interim anti-Shkval spoofing gear installed, but it was untested against the real thing.
“Keep clear of the torpedo danger area. Pass that to both Japanese units.” Singhe nodded. Dan hit the key on the 21MC, the “bitch box,” by his elbow. “Sonar, Combat … Rit, you there?”
“Here, Skipper. I know what you’re gonna say, and I’m on the net with the guy, okay?”
“What’s he got? Anything identifiable?”
“I’m not making a lot of sense out of his return. Might be screw noises.”
Dan double-clicked to sign off, and turned the dial on his own headset feed to catch the end of Singhe’s transmission. Should he vector Mitscher closer to Chokai’s sector? But it could be a feint, to draw them north, while a larger force intruded from the west. He and Singhe discussed this, and she agreed.
Time stretched on. The gray-blue sea-line tilted slowly in the camera’s view. The crane, a weird mechanical simulacrum of a human arm complete with elbow, rotated into position. Sparks cascaded as the welders went to work. Dan panned right and stepped up the magnification, but Mitscher was far over the curve of the horizon. Someone at the Aegis console put the output on audio, and the popcorn rattle of the outgoing pulses bounced off the overhead. He glanced over to see a familiar brown-haired head, a round face lit green by the screen. He rose, patrolled the consoles, chatting or patting a shoulder. Ending up behind Petty Officer Beth Terranova. But just then a lean form sidled through the doorway: Bill Noblos. The civilian scientist folded his arms as Dan bent over the petty officer. “Terror, how we doing?”
