by Robert Gandt
Han could scarcely believe the insolence in Zhang’s voice. How could a low-ranking general officer in the PLA air force presume to speak with his commanding general in such a tone?
He knew the answer. Because Zhang was untouchable.
Han’s initial reaction upon hearing about the shoot down of the American E-2C was to order Zhang’s immediate arrest and removal from command. But that was before his meeting with the President. To Han’s astonishment, President Xiang Chien-li was ecstatic about Zhang’s exploit. Zhang, he declared, was a modern Chinese military hero. Han himself was to be congratulated for having the brilliance to assign a warrior like Zhang to today’s mission.
Han had nodded his agreement and accepted the President’s congratulations for having ordered such a brilliant operation. He left the President’s office both shocked and somewhat pleased. Zhang’s insubordinate actions had brought them both an unexpected bounty.
He would have to go through the motions of chastising Zhang, of course. Untouchable or not, Zhang was still an officer under Han’s command.
“You will submit a full report of this disastrous action today,” Han said into the speaker phone. “Including the reasons for your unauthorized engagement of the U.S. E-2C.”
He thought he heard a derisive snort from Zhang’s end of the line. “Of course, General Han. Whatever you say.”
<>
USS Ronald Reagan
Ratta-tatta-tatta-tatta.
Maxwell had the rhythm going. He was working the gloves like a musical instrument, rotating his fists with each stroke. Ratta-tatta-tatta-tatta.
It was mindless exercise, but demanding of concentration. Like formation flying, he thought. The trick was to not focus on the task, but to let it happen on a subliminal level.
He’d been at for ten minutes, the sweat flowing, enjoying the smooth beat of the speed bag, not thinking about stealth jets or Swallow Reef or the fuzzy rationale for going to war in the Spratly Islands.
“That’s not the way to do it.”
The voice came from behind him. He missed the bag with the next flick of his fist. It took a couple of beats before he could resume the rhythm.
“You probably think that sounds cool, that beat you’ve got, but trust me, you’re doing it all wrong.”
He gave the bag one last whap. He turned to face Dana Boudroux. She was wearing a blue warm up suit and a white head band. The warm up suit was damp with sweat. Beads of perspiration stood out on her cheeks.
“Doing what wrong?”
“Hitting the bag. You’re playing with it like it was a percussion instrument, making that drum beat sound. You shouldn’t turn your wrists over so much.”
“Pardon the sexist comment, but I’ve never met a woman who knew shit about boxing.”
“You’ve never met a woman like me.”
Thank God, he thought. “How do you happen to know so much about training on a speed bag?”
“My boy friend in college was an Olympic boxer. I was his trainer. Trust me, I know boxing.”
“Is there anything in the world you don’t know more about than I do?”
“No, but don’t take it personally. You’re just not as smart as I am.”
He turned back to the speed bag. “Guess I’ll have to work on not feeling inadequate.”
He was just getting the rhythm again when she said, “Don’t you want to know why I came here?”
“I already know.” He kept his fists moving. “To tell me how to punch this bag.”
“Not just that. I wanted to tell you that I know how to shoot down the Dong-jin.”
He took three more hits on the bag. He turned to look at her again.
“You’re serious, right?”
“I’m always serious.”
<>
USS Daytona Beach
“Message from OPNAV, Skipper.”
Commander Al Sprague looked up from his station in the control room. “OPNAV? Holy shit.”
“Yes, sir,” said the signalman. “That’s what I said when it came in.”
OPNAV was the office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Almost never did CNO send a direct communication to the skipper of a submarine. Not unless it was something too urgent to go through the usual channels. Or unless it was very bad news.
It was both, Sprague realized as he read the message.
USS Daytona Beach SSN 776 will discontinue tracking of Yuanzheng 67 and proceed to 08 38.24 N, 111 55.96 E to intercept PRC vessels Hoi Wan and Hoi Lin, presently en route to PRC base Northeast Cay. After confirmation of vessels’ identity, you will sink each by most expeditious means. Imperative that Daytona Beach remain undetected.
Sprague shook his head when he read the last sentence. Remain undetected? What utter bullshit. It was obvious that the CNO—or whoever the non-submariner staff puke was who drafted the message—had no clue why they called this branch of the Navy the silent service.
He glanced again at the tactical display on his console. The Kilo was moving at nineteen knots, still unaware that he was being shadowed. Or else he was faking it, which Sprague doubted. This guy showed every sign of being a cocky sonofabitch, full of himself after sinking a defenseless ship full of civilians.
Sprague’s mood darkened. Now it’s my turn, except that I get to hose two of them.
Well, they started it, he reminded himself. The bastards had been taking out both Vietnamese and American assets, killing people like flies. Payback time.
But he hated breaking contact with the Kilo sub. It meant the Chinese sub had gotten a reprieve. If ever someone needed a torpedo up his ass, it was the skipper of Yuanzheng 67.
Sprague toggled the view in his tactical display to the wide-area chart. At a rough glance he estimated the position of the two Chinese ships to be no farther than a hundred miles from Daytona Beach, headed for the northwestern sector of the Spratlys. In fact, it even looked as if Yuanzheng 67 might be headed in the same general direction.
This was going to be interesting.
<>
USS Ronald Reagan
“It’s all there on the tape,” said Dana Boudroux.
They were in the tiny lab that had been set up for her in the ship’s SCIF—Special Compartmentalized Intelligence Facility—located deep below decks in the ship’s Surface Plot spaces. She was still wearing the blue jump suit. Maxwell had pulled his gray sweats over the workout trunks.
Leaning over her shoulder, looking into the LCD monitor, he inhaled a mixture of perfume and perspiration. Her hair was wet at the back of her neck.
“See? There it is.” She was playing the HUD tape from Maxwell’s last mission in the Black Star. On the digital read out were the images from each of the four multi-function displays. “There’s the IR trace you picked up on the Dong-jin, that little wavy red mark. And now it’s gone again. What does that mean to you?”
“It means we couldn’t nail him. Not visually, not with radar, and obviously not with an IR scan.”
“You’re missing the point. What it means it that the Dong-jin is not emission-free. Not a hundred percent, maybe not ninety-five percent. There’s enough heat source leak that your primary onboard sensor was picking it up.”
“But not enough to get a lock with the AIM-9 missiles.”
“But one of the missiles did track the Dong-jin, even if it was very briefly.”
Maxwell watched the slo-mo replay of the HUD tape. He felt again the frustration of seeing the squiggly trace of the Dong-jin blur in and out of view. Now you see it, now you don’t.
“Okay,” he said, “that’s nice to know. What good does it do if the sensors won’t lock on it long enough to provide a targeting solution? Or if the missile seeker head acquires a target, then loses it?”
She shook her head. “Now I know why they call you Brick. Are you sure you graduated from a real engineering school?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t major in game-playing like you did. Why don’t you just tell me what you’re trying to tell me?”
He thought for a second. “A swift kick in the crotch.”
“Figuratively, maybe. There’s a more vulnerable place on the Dong-jin.”
Maxwell nodded. “The source of heat emission.”
“Brilliant, Commander. Keep this up and you could win a sixth grade science prize.”
He almost laughed. Beneath the woman’s sarcasm there might actually be a sense of humor. “Okay, that’s really cool. Now you’re going to tell me you know how to track the Dong-jin’s heat leak.”
“We already know how to do that. It’s just a question of getting the sensor heads to keep tracking after they’ve picked up the trace.” She turned to a long plastic-sheeted table on which an array of electronic components was laid out. “Look at this. This is the Black Star’s primary onboard IR sensor. This is the one that picked up the Dong-jin’s initial heat trace. I’ve been working on it, making some adjustments. I also added two silicon phototransistors, which ought to expand its sensitivity envelope by about thirty percent.”
“Okay, but what about the AIM-9 air-to-air missile? Even if the onboard sensor tracks the Dong-jin, the missile still has to lock on.”
“That’s a tougher problem,” she said. “The AIM-9 seeker head doesn’t have multiple phototransistors like the primary sensor built into the airframe of the Black Star. But there is a way to crank up the sensitivity of the basic unit. The downside risk is that it will be inclined to track all sorts of spurious traces—sun spots, reflections, thermal anomalies in the atmosphere—and, of course, friendly aircraft. But if you launch at short range, it should work just fine.”
Maxwell stared at the pieces on the table. He couldn’t help but be impressed. “Sounds good. How do we know it works?”
“We don’t. Not until you’ve tested it tomorrow against a real Dong-jin. In the meantime, let’s celebrate by getting some coffee in the wardroom.”
<>
Maxwell led Dana into the dirty shirt wardroom. A dozen or so officers, some in flight suits, some in working khakis, were seated at the tables. They all looked up, then looked again, each man fixing his eyes on the tall, red-haired woman in the blue jump suit.
“How does it feel being the object of their fantasies?” asked Maxwell.
“Normal. I’m used to being the only woman in a room full of horny guys.”
Breakfast was finished, and a steward was putting out a tray of glazed doughnuts. They went to the big silver coffee urn. Maxwell poured coffee for them both.
“Sugar?” he asked.
“No sugar, no cream. And no doughnuts, thank you.”
He shrugged and helped himself to a doughnut. No surprise. Sugar and doughnuts were definitely not Dana Boudroux’s fare. Following her to the table, he saw that her hair was still damp at the back of her neck. Again he sensed the subtle fragrance of perspiration and perfume. He was stealing an appraising glance at the lithe figure when she turned and caught him.
“I, ah, was just noticing that you look good in jeans.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Commander.”
“Brick.”
She wasn’t wearing the tortoise shell glassed. For a long moment she regarded him with her large hazel eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Brick.”
Well, that was progress, he thought. The Ice Queen might not be thawed out, but she was melting a little.
Not until he was sitting did he notice the dark-featured man in BDUs at the adjoining table. Lieutenant Commander Wedge Flores was sitting alone, reading a magazine.
“Hey, Wedge, is that you? What brings you out to the Reagan?”
The SEAL officer glanced up, not changing expression. “Routine business.” He didn’t smile or offer to shake hands. “Nothing that airedales need to know about.”
Maxwell nodded. You had to give Flores credit for remaining in character, he thought. Still an asshole. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but you’re on an aircraft carrier. This is airedale country, pal.”
Something resembling a smile flashed across Flores’s face, then vanished. He went back to his magazine. “That’s your problem, not mine.”
Maxwell turned his attention to his coffee. Later, he reminded himself, he would give Wedge Flores a short lesson in the protocol of addressing senior officers.
Dana leaned close to him. “Isn’t that the man we met at the bar back in Nevada?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“He doesn’t seem to like you.”
“It’s just a façade. Wedge and I are bosom buddies.”
“I don’t think so. What did you do to annoy him?”
“Become an airedale. He can’t seem to get over it.”
“Are you sure he’s on the same team you are?”
Maxwell glanced over at Flores, who was studiously ignoring them. Good question, he thought. He’d begun to wonder the same thing.
<>
USS Daytona Beach
“Positive ID on the contacts,” announced the Radio officer. “SUBPAC confirms the Hoi Wan and Hoi Lin. The coordinates match our own displays.”
Commander Al Sprague nodded. Daytona Beach’s onboard BSY-1 combat system array had already determined the identity of the two contacts—Chinese freighters of the size and screw signature of Hoi Wan and Hoi Lin—but Sprague wanted proof positive. Getting a visual by periscope was not an option. Not with the screen of destroyers working the area. Another possible threat was their old friend Yuanzheng 67, still out there but no longer on Daytona Beach’s sonar.
The confirmation from SUBPAC, he presumed, was based on satellite surveillance and possibly even human intelligence. In any case, it removed any last nagging doubt he might have had before committing Daytona Beach to a torpedo attack.
Sprague could sense the tension in his crew. None, including himself, had ever fired a shot in anger. The cumulative years of training invested in the officers and men of Daytona Beach were now about to pay off.
The Chinese freighters were still plowing southeastward toward their anchorage in the Spratlys. Daytona Beach’s passive sonar had picked up at least two escorts—Type 051 Luda Class destroyers. Old warships, but fast enough to be deadly at close range.
Fewer than twelve hours had elapsed since the Yuanzheng 67 had sent the Vietnamese freighter, Ha Long, to the bottom. Though the Chinese had surely prepared for retaliation from Vietnam, it was possible that they weren’t expecting a response from a U.S. submarine.
Possible, Sprague told himself, but he sure as hell wasn’t betting on it. He would play this one as if the entire PLA navy was waiting for him, teeth bared and ready to fight.
After locating the freighters, Sprague had let them pass, then slid Daytona Beach into the acoustic shadow of their wakes. A broadside shot would have been easier—but riskier. Launching from beneath the wake turbulence gave Sprague more time to make his escape. Shoot and scoot, the tactic was called.
“Right standard rudder, steer one-four-five, make your depth seventy-two feet.”
“Aye, coming to one-four-five. Depth seventy-two.”
“Stand by tubes one and two,” Sprague ordered. “I’ll hold this track for two minutes for the tracking solution.”
“Aye, Captain. Steady on one-four-five heading.”
The noisy activities—readying the tubes, sealing the breach doors—had already been accomplished. Not until the torpedoes were forcibly ejected by compressed air from the tubes at six times the force of gravity would any further acoustic alarm be sent. Soon enough, God willing, Daytona Beach would be racing for the safety of the deep.
The control room was quiet, the crewmen speaking in hushed voices, exchanging only the most essential dialogue. Every face wore a sober expression.
“Captain, Sonar. Tracks 1102 and 1302 bearing 009 and 011. Range 28,000 yards. We have a good solution.”
Sprague forced himself to take his time. Once launched, the Mk 48
ADCAPs—advanced capability—wire-guided torpedoes would do all the work. The two torpedoes were programmed to run at speeds that would put each on its target at the same time. The first Mk 48 would pass almost directly beneath the trailing freighter before detonating under the hull of the leading ship. A few years ago, such a trick would have been unthinkable. The Mk 48 ADCAP was the smartest undersea weapon ever deployed on a submarine.
Of course, torpedoes didn’t always perform as advertised, as Sprague well knew. In his own career he’d witnessed inexplicable failures of sophisticated weapons. He had also learned that when a meticulously planned operation turned to shit, you’d better have a back door.
His back door was the deep ocean. Shoot and scoot. If that didn’t work, he had four more Mk 48s ready to fire. Just in case.
“Match bearings,” said Sprague. He took a deep breath and said, “Shoot one. Shoot two.”
The weapons officer at the BSY-1 panel pressed the firing button. “Shoot one, shoot two.”
A rumble passed through the hull of the Daytona Beach as the wire-guided Mk 48 leaped from its tube.
“Tube one fired.”
Seconds later, another rumble. “Tube two fired.”
“Both weapons tracking under guidance.”
“Stand by to clear the launch area,” Sprague ordered. That was another bonus of the Mk 48, and it was a big one. Each torpedo had ten miles of guidance wire packed in its aft section, and another ten miles was stowed on a reel inside the submarine. The Daytona Beach could make its escape while the torpedoes were still receiving guidance via their wires. If the wire snapped, or if Sprague found it necessary to close the outer door, the torpedo could be switched to its own active homing.
“Weapon one, ten thousand yards.”
Sprague acknowledged with a nod.
“Weapon two, fourteen thousand yards.”
Sprague found himself holding his breath.
“Weapon one switching to active homing.”
A few seconds later, “Weapon two now active homing.”
The Mk 48s had acquired their respective targets, tracking with their own seeker heads. The guidance wires were no longer necessary. The torpedoes were on their own.
