Combat

by Stephen Coonts

  “No.”

  “Well, I can think of at least a hundred things that could go wrong. But considering the alternatives we’ll do whatever it takes to get you down to her in one piece.”

  “In secret,” McGarvey said. “As few people outside this room as possible are to know that we’ve gone overboard.”

  “I’ll arrange that,” Townsend said, and he shook his head. “I think you’re nuts.”

  McGarvey nodded. “You’re probably right, Captain.”

  1920 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  Lying just off the floor of the ocean one thousand feet beneath the surface, the PRC Han-class nuclear submarine Hekou was leaking at the seams, the air was going stale, and the radiation levels inside the hull continued to rise, the last fact of which was being withheld from the crew. Her home base was at East Sea Fleet Headquarters in Ningbo, and she had been among the first to sail when the trouble begin. By luck she had been lying on the bottom eight days ago hiding from the American ASW aircraft above while the engineers were frantically correcting a steering problem when sonar picked up the George Washington passing almost directly overhead. When the steering problem had been fixed, and the aircraft carrier was well past, the Hekou’s skipper sent up a communications buoy to get instructions. He was told to stay where he was, maintain complete silence, and wait for the moment to strike.

  The message unfortunately was not clear on when that moment might be. In the meantime Captain Yuan Heishui was having problems keeping his boat alive, and there was the American submarine five hundred meters off its starboard bow, also hovering just off the bottom mush.

  Twenty-four hours ago sonar had detected the American Seawolf-class submarine approaching their position very deep and very slowly. The approach had been so slow and so stealthy that the Americans had been on top of them before they knew what was happening. Even before Heishui could order his torpedo tubes loaded and prepared to fire, the Seawolf went quiet and settled silently in place, apparently completely unaware that they were not alone.

  Since that time Captain Heishui had ordered all nonessential machinery and movements aboard his boat to stop.

  He picked the growler phone from its bracket, careful not to scrape metal against metal. “Engineering, conn,” he said softly.

  Their chief engineer, Lieutenant He Daping, answered immediately. “Shi de,” yes. He sounded harried and in the background the captain could hear the sounds of running water.

  “This is the captain. How is it going back there?”

  “Without the pumps we’re eventually going to take on so much water that we won’t have the power to rise to the surface.”

  “We must not run the pumps. How long do we have?”

  “Six hours, Captain, maybe less,” Daping answered. Captain Heishui knew the man well and respected him. He came from a very good family, and his service record was totally clean, an accomplishment in itself.

  “Seal off the engineering spaces, then introduce some high-pressure air in there. That should slow the leaks.”

  “I was just about to do that,” Daping said. If they could not get out of the fix they were in now and get moving soon, sealing the aft section of the boat would doom the crewmen back there. If the flooding got too bad, there would be no way of opening the hatches.

  “I’ll do what I can,” the captain promised. “But we might have to fight. Ho yùngi,” good luck.

  “Yes, you too, Captain.”

  “Conn, sonar.”

  Heishui glanced up at the mission clock, then switched circuits. “This is the captain. Is Sierra Seven back early?” They had designated the American Aircraft carrier as Sierra Seven and had timed her movements. She was on a zigzag course that brought her back to the same point approximately every twelve hours. It was 1120 GMT, the standard time kept aboard all submarines, which put it at 1920 on the surface. If it was the George Washington, he was slightly early.

  “She’s fifteen thousand yards out, Captain, but it’s Sierra Eighteen,” Chief Sonarman, Ensign Shi Zenzhong, reported excitedly. “He’s moving. He’s on the way up, very slowly, on an intercept bearing with Seven.” Sierra Eighteen was the American submarine, and the captain could not imagine what he was up to.

  “Have they sent up a slot buoy?”

  “No, sir. And they’re running silent. No one on the surface will hear them.” Zenzhong’s voice was cracking, and the captain considered pulling him off duty immediately. But the man was the best.

  “Have we been detected?”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” the sonarman replied. The captain’s calm demeanor was helping him and everyone in the control room.

  “Stand by,” the captain said. He motioned his XO, Lieutenant Commander Kang Lagao, over. “Get down to sonar and give Ensign Zenzhong some help. Sierra Eighteen is on the way up.”

  “Maybe they’re rendezvousing with the George Washington,” Lagao suggested. He was the oldest man aboard the submarine, even older at forty-six than the captain. And he was wise even beyond his years. Exactly the steady hand they all need. The American command structure could take a lesson.

  “That’s what I think, but something is strange about it,” Heishui said. “See what’s happening and then start a TMA.”

  Lagao was startled. “You’re not going to shoot, are you?” A TMA, or Target Motion Analysis, was a targeting procedure used to guide torpedoes in which the enemy vessel’s speed and position were continually tracked and plotted against the relative speed and position of the tracking boat.

  “Not yet. But I want to be prepared. There’s no telling what they’re up to, or when we might have to shoot.”

  “Very well.”

  When Lagao was gone, Heishui picked up the growler phone. “Forward torpedo room, this is the captain.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want all six tubes loaded, but not flooded, with 65-Es.” Heishui glanced over at his weapons control officer and chief of boat, whose jobs he was doing. They were studiously watching their panels. The captain did not want to bring any shame to them, but he wanted to make absolutely sure that no mistakes were made. Their lives depended on it. “I want this done with no noise. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll send the presets momentarily, but if there is any noise whatsoever, whoever was responsible will be court-martialed and shot as a traitor—if we survive to make it home. Do you understand that as well?”

  “Yes, sir. Very well.”

  “Carry on,” Heishui said. He replaced the phone, confused about many things though not about why he was here. Taiwan needed to come home, as Hong Kong had, or else be punished as a naughty child.

  1930 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  Hearing anything with precision from beneath the sharp thermocline was difficult except for a ship the size of the George Washington. Named for her class, the Seawolf was the state of the art in nuclear-powered attack submarines. No other navy in the world had a boat that could match her stealth, her nuclear and conventional weapons, her speed, and her electronics. Especially not her BQQ-8 passive sonar suite, which, according to the sonarmen who used it, could hear a gnat’s fart at fifty thousand yards. Her mission had been to patrol an area well north of the Seventh and Third Fleets in case the PRC tried an end run on them. The long ELF message they had received forty-eight hours ago irritated the Seawolf’s captain because it put his boat at risk without an explanation why. He was ordered to rendezvous with the George Washington without allowing the carrier or any other ship to detect her. And less than an hour from now he was to pick up two passengers. The only reason he hadn’t “missed” the damn fool message was the last line: McGarvey Sends.

  “Skipper, we’re at seven hundred twenty feet,” the Chief of Boat Lieutenant Karl Trela reported.

  “Okay, hold us here,” Commander Thomas Harding told him. The bottom edge of the thermocline where the water got sharply colder was just twenty feet above the top of their sail. They were at the edge of the safety
zone where they were all but invisible to surface sonars. He picked up the phone. “Sonar, conn.”

  “Sonar, aye.”

  “Where’s the George?”

  “Four thousand yards and closing, skipper. He’s on his predicted course and speed.”

  “What else is up there, Mel?” Commander Harding asked in a calm voice. The trademark of his boat was a relaxed vigilance. A few of the crewmen called him Captain Serenity, though not to his face.

  “There’s some action southeast. I think it might be the Marvin Shields. And there’re faint noises southwest, maybe thirty thousand yards. My guess would be the Arleigh Burke, but I’m not real sure, sir.” The Shields was a Knox-class frigate, and the Burke was a guided-missile destroyer. Both were a part of the George Washington’s battle group.

  “Any subsurface contacts?”

  “Negative, sir.”

  “Very well. Keep your ears open. I want to know as soon as the George has passed us and gets ten thousand yards out. We’ll be heading up.”

  “Aye, aye, skipper.”

  Commander Harding got his coffee and leaned nonchalantly against the periscope platform rail, a man without a care in the world. Whoever McGarvey was sending down in secret would be bringing the explanation with them. And it better be damned good, he thought, or there will be hell to pay. But then he’d had dealings with the man before. And McGarvey was, if nothing else, a man of consummate cojones. The mission would be, at the very least, an interesting one.

  1940 Local George Washington

  Nobody said a thing on the way across the hangar deck. Their Marine escort, Sergeant Carlos Ablanedo, stopped them for a moment behind an A-6E Intruder, its wings in the up position, its nose cover open exposing the electronics inside. There was some activity forward, but it was far enough away, and the cavernous deck was lit only with dim red battle lights so there was no chance that they would be spotted.

  Word had been sent down to the various section chiefs to make themselves and their crews scarce from about midships aft between 1930 and 2000 hours. It was done in such a way that no questions were asked. A personal favor for the old man.

  The military services were not usually particularly friendly toward the CIA; too many mistakes had been made in the past, not the least of which was the Bay of Pigs fiasco. But McGarvey had to admit that this time they were treating him with kid gloves. They were looking for a solution that would require no shooting, and they were willing to go along with just about anything to get it.

  The night was pitch-black, the sky overcast, so that there was no line to mark the horizon. The seas were fairly flat, so the huge wake trailing behind the massive warship was not as confused and dangerous as it could have been. Nonetheless, Hanrahan warned him that once they hit the water they were to swim at right angles from the ship to put as much distance between themselves and the tremendous suction of the gigantic propellers as possible. To help them the captain would order a sharp turn to port at 1950, which would take the stern away from them.

  There was no rail on the open elevator bay, and it was a long way down to the water, maybe thirty or forty feet, McGarvey estimated. He and Hanrahan were dressed in black wet suits with hoods, small scuba tanks attached to their chests, buoyancy control vests and swim fins strapped to their backs. Hanrahan also carried a GPS/Inertial Navigator about the size of a paperback book. On the surface it established its location from satellites. Underwater it “remembered” its last satellite fix, and then kept track of every movement: up, down, left, and right, along with the speed to continuously update its position. It was a new toy that the SEALs had been given just two months ago. In trials it had worked like a charm. But this would be its first real-world test. McGarvey carried a bag with his things.

  They flipped a pair of lines over the side, attached their hooks to the six-inch lip at the edge of the deck, then threaded the lines through their rappelling carabiners.

  “Okay, Sarge, we were never here,” Hanrahan said.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll take care of your ropes, but you guys stay cool.”

  McGarvey looked over the side at the black water rushing by. “I don’t think we’re going to have much of a choice in about two minutes.”

  The sergeant grinned. “At least this ain’t the North Atlantic.”

  “Some guys have all the luck,” Hanrahan said.

  The carrier began its ponderous turn to port. They could actually feel the list, which McGarvey figured had to be at least five degrees, maybe more. The white wake curled away from them, and Hanrahan gave him the thumbs-up sign.

  They went over the side together, rappelling in long but cautious jumps down the ship’s flank, until they were just a few feet above water that moved as fast as a mountain stream.

  Hanrahan unclipped his line and held it away from his body. McGarvey did the same, and on a signal from the SEAL they pushed off, hitting the water almost as hard as if they had jumped off a garage roof and landed on their backs on a concrete driveway.

  McGarvey tumbled end over end and then he was swept deep beneath the surface. It seemed to go on for an eternity, until gradually the turbulence began to subside. When he surfaced, the ship was already ahead of him, and a ten-foot wall of water from the wake was curling around, heading right for him.

  He yanked his swim fins free, struggled to put them on, and headed directly away from where he figured he had gone into the water and at right angles to the wake.

  After five minutes he stopped and looked over his shoulder, involuntarily catching his breath. The ocean was empty. There was no sign that the George Washington had ever been there. No wake, no lights on the horizon, nothing. There were no other ships in sight, nor were there any aircraft lights in the sky. No sounds, no smells. He could not remember ever having such an overwhelming feeling of being alone. Facing a human enemy, one bent on killing you, was one thing. But facing the sea, which was a supremely indifferent enemy, was another matter altogether.

  He saw a flash of light out of the corner of his eye to the left. He turned toward it, raised the tiny strobe light attached to his left arm and fired a brief burst in return.

  A couple of minutes later Hanrahan materialized out of the darkness. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m wet,” McGarvey said. “How close are we to the rendezvous point?”

  “Just about on top of it.”

  They donned their masks and mouthpieces, and on Hanrahan’s lead they let the excess air out of their BC vests and started down at an angle toward the northeast. Almost immediately the massive hulk of the Seawolf’s sail appeared directly beneath them. The submarine had risen so that the top of her sail-mounted sensors were twenty feet beneath the surface.

  McGarvey followed Hanrahan down the trailing edge of the sail to the submarine’s deck, where the forward escape trunk hatch was open. The trunk was like a flooded coffin: the fleeting thought crossed McGarvey’s mind as Hanrahan reached up and pulled the hatch closed. This was definitely not a job for someone with claustrophobia.

  2015 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  Captain Heishui studied the chart, which showed the present positions of his submarine and the American boat, as well as the track of the George Washington and her battle group. He was trying to reconcile what he was seeing with his own two eyes and what his XO was telling him.

  “She’s on her way back down,” Lagao said. “There’s no doubt about it. It’s my guess that she rendezvoused with the American carrier long enough to exchange messages, perhaps more.”

  Heishui looked up. “More?”

  Lagao was a little uneasy, but he held it well. Heishui was an exacting captain. He did not suffer mistakes very well. “It’s possible that the Seawolf took on supplies or passengers. He didn’t surface, at least Zenzhong doesn’t think so. But we may have picked up machinery noises. Possibly the pump for an escape trunk.”

  “All that information from beneath the thermocline?”

  “There have been fluctuations in the temperature and
salinity. But it’s just a guess, Captain.”

  Heishui nodded. “I think that you may have something,” he conceded. “Let’s see what he does now.”

  “What if he tries to run?”

  “Then we will follow in his baffles so that he will not detect us.” Heishui studied the chart for a moment, trying to read something from it, some clue. “He can outrun us, of course, but not if he wants to remain stealthy.” He looked up again. “That in itself would tell us something.”

  “We will have to keep a very close ear on him,” Lagao warned.

  “I want a slot buoy prepared. If he does head away we’ll send up the buoy on a one-hour delay to inform Ningbo what we’re attempting to do. The delay will give us plenty of time to get clear.”

  “I’ll see to it now,” Lagao said.

  Heishui called sonar. “What is he doing?”

  “Still on his way down, Captain.”

  “I think he means to get under way as soon as he reaches the thermocline. Keep a close watch.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Prepare to get under way,” he told his Chief of Boat. “We’re done waiting.”

  2020 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  By the time McGarvey and Hanrahan changed clothes and were led down one deck and forward to the officers’ wardroom directly beneath the attack center, the Seawolf had already started down. The XO, Lieutenant Commander Rod Paradise, who had been waiting for them when they emerged from the escape trunk, shook his head and grinned. “It’s getting to be a habit, picking you up,” he told McGarvey. “This is one time I think the captain is finally going to be surprised.”

  On a mission last year the Seawolf had rescued him from the Japanese Space Center on the island of Tanegashima. While aboard he’d gotten to know the captain and some of the crew. He had developed a great deal of respect for them. It was one of the reasons he wanted this sub for the mission. Harding was unflappable.