Island Warriors c-18

by Keith Douglass

  And what of his RIO? The pilot started to curse. Had the bullets killed the RIO, or had the MiG pilot intentionally shredded the chute and left the RIO to the living hell of plummeting the remaining 20,000 feet, knowing that any second he would hit the ocean, watching it come up to meet him, the waves growing larger and larger, until he smashed into it like a watermelon dropped from 50 stories onto concrete?

  The pilot prayed that his RIO was dead. Dead, or still conscious enough to rip off his oxygen mask and let the lack of oxygen render him unconscious.

  The pilot was just swearing vengeance when the MiG came back for him.

  USS United States

  TFCC

  1106 local (GMT +8)

  The Taiwanese officer was standing against the back bulkhead, a look of horror on his face. “What the hell happened out there?” the admiral demanded of the terrified officer. “What did you say to him?”

  “I… I explained your decisions and your position,” the major started, visions of his eventual execution flashing into his mind. He would die for this, of that he was certain.

  “Did you tell him to go active?” Coyote demanded. “And did you tell him to break off prosecution of that submarine?”

  “I… I…” the major stopped, aware that his silence gave his answer.

  Lab Rat stepped forward, his face a grim mask. “Yes. He did.” Coyote had never seen the intelligence officer so coldly furious. “My linguistic team monitored his transmissions.” He held out a sheet of paper. “Here is the transcript.”

  Marshall P’eng

  1115 local (GMT +8)

  “We got them! We got them!” the SAR helo pilot shouted, his voice exultant. “Both of them are breathing and conscious, although I think a pilot might have a broken leg. It looks bad, anyway. We’re headed to the carrier, Cricket. We’ll be back once we drop these guys off.”

  “Do not be too long,” the captain said grimly. “Indeed, I hope to finish this game before you can even return.” The captain switched to his own language and said, “Break, Grasshopper One — initial datum three miles west of your current location. Commence search pattern. I will run the path perpendicular, tail wet.”

  The helo pilot’s voice came back, distinctive in the whop-whop effect from the vibrations the small helicopter had on his voice. He evidently acknowledged the transmission, and a translator confirmed that, murmuring in the American officer’s ear so as not to disturb the captain.

  The captain then directed the second SH-60 to a point just north of that, and she spit out a pattern of sonobuoys as well.

  “Captain, sonar,” the translator said. “Initial contact, subsurface contact, classified as possible Chinese diesel submarine.” There was no change in the captain’s expression as he said, “Localize and destroy. Immediately.”

  Grasshopper One

  1108 local (GMT +8)

  The pilot stared down at the surface of the ocean. Somewhere below him, at approximately 300 feet, was the Chinese diesel submarine. “Cricket, this is Grasshopper One. I’m in firing position. I await your instructions.” He clicked the mike off, then turned to the copilot. “The three of us are all in firing position. It’s up to the captain.”

  The copilot sighed. “Our submarine, but he will probably give that kill to the Americans. Perhaps it will make up for what he tried earlier.”

  “Perhaps he will. Be ready.” The pilot glanced over and saw the copilot’s finger was poised above his weapons switch.

  A booming American voice came through on tactical, effectively ending the discussion. “Captain of Marshall P’eng, this is Admiral Grant. I would be pleased, sir, if your helicopter would eliminate that submarine from this world.”

  The pilot glanced over at the copilot, a rare smile stretching across his face. Almost immediately, they heard their captain’s response. “Acknowledged, Admiral. It will be our pleasure.” The captain’s voice switched to their own language, and said, “Do it now. Both weapons — let there be no need for a second engagement.”

  “Yes, Captain. Immediately.” Even as the pilot spoke, the copilot was toggling off both torpedoes.

  Jungwei

  1110 local (GMT +8)

  The hard, shimmering ping of the active sonar cut through the still compartment like a knife. The captain sucked in a hard breath, and his face turned pale. Every man on the ship knew it immediately — the most deadly foe of a submarine was a dipping helo. Two of them working together, or one working with a surface ship, was the most fearful adversary any of them ever faced.

  A second active sonar shimmered in the water, this one higher pitched and more insistent. The captain’s guts felt as though they were about to explode. An active sonobuoy, operating on a different bearing from the dipping sonar. With those two sources, the helos undoubtedly had them localized.

  “All forward flank, hard right rudder. Make your depth six hundred feet.” With that maneuver, he hoped to create a mass of air bubbles in the water that would distract the torpedoes that must surely be ready to launch. Six hundred feet was near the maximum of the ancient diesel’s capabilities, but there was no choice now. Even more dangerous, operating at that depth would make escaping the submarine, should they be hit, virtually impossible.

  In theory, at least, the submarine would create a second target in the water that would distract the torpedoes, giving the submarine a chance to disappear in the thermocline. Then, if the sonars were unable to relocate them, the submarine would creep away stealthily, putting distance between itself and the attackers, before resuming transit speed.

  In theory, at least. As a practical matter, both the dipping sonar and the sonobuoys were capable of being set at different depths, and both pilots would undoubtedly attempt that. Additionally, the depth of the Taiwanese frigate’s towed array could be varied, and it could be repositioned in deeper water, although it would take longer to settle down and generate stable bearings.

  Even with those disadvantages, the situation was absolutely critical. Escaping a dipping sonar was no mean feat, and the captain had done it only a couple times in the simulator.

  A third active sonobuoy joined into the cacophony. The submarine’s hull was bombarded with acoustic energy, each sonar refining the submarine’s location further until it was practically a pinpoint in the ocean.

  The deck heeled underneath them as the submarine made its hard turn. Any could tell without looking at the sonar display that they were generating massive amounts of acoustic energy on their own. “Decoys, noise makers,” he ordered, dumping the countermeasures into the water around his air bubble.

  The deck tilted down as she dove at her top speed for the bottom of the ocean. The old hull creaked and groaned around them, and just for one fearful moment he wondered if that would be their fate rather than a torpedo. The noise around them was increasing, almost deafening them, and he could see the stark terror on everyone’s face.

  Suddenly, every noise stopped. The water around them was silent, punctuated only by the noise of their decoys and their own propeller. A young helmsman, on his first cruise aboard a submarine, let out a stifled yelp of joy. He turned to his captain, his eyes shining, relief on his face. The relief turned to puzzlement when no one else joined in. Stark fear crept back in.

  In those final moments, the captain did not have the heart to tell the young man that the reason the noise had stopped was to avoid distracting the torpedoes that were surely on their way into the water now.

  Staring at the young man’s face, the captain made an instant, irrevocable decision. “Emergency blow — emergency blow!”

  The officer of the deck hit the valve that would immediately blast compressed air into every ballast tank. The captain felt the momentum change immediately, as the deck seemed to rise up under him. They lost the depth they’d just gained in seconds and rocketed up toward the surface of the water.

  He could hear them now, the hard, grinding whine of the small torpedo propellers as they bore in on his boat. At least if th
ey were hit now, perhaps they would have enough momentum to reach the surface and give the crew a chance to survive. And at that moment, that was all the captain cared about — not politics, not Taiwan, not the court-martial or certain disgrace and instant execution that would await him if he returned home. All he cared about was that his crew would have a chance to live.

  The first torpedo encountered the noise makers and the mass of air bubbles simultaneously, and its tiny electronic brain froze in a moment of indecision. It ran nose-first into one of the noise makers, fatally jarring a critical component. It continued on, executing a wide turn to the right, until it ran out of fuel.

  The second torpedo was luckier. It entered the water well to the north of the noise makers and cavitation and began its search circle. Almost immediately, it acquired the enticing sounds of the submarine heading away from it. It changed course, locked on, and bore in steadily.

  Another round of noise makers failed to distract it. It simply brushed passed them, driving unwaveringly toward the delectable sounds of the submarine’s machinery.

  As the submarine heard it approaching, bearing constant and range decreasing, her captain tried one last series of desperate measures. He threw the submarine into another tight turn — tight at least by submarine standards — hoping desperately to generate another knuckle in the water. But as he did so, the torpedo adjusted its course, and impacted the submarine just aft of the control room.

  The immediate force of the explosion buckled the old hull and frigid seawater came pouring in. The submarine was at two hundred feet, still rising, and it took several moments for the incoming rush of water to overcome her negative buoyancy.

  The water blasted through the compartment with the force of a sledgehammer, pulverizing three crewman against the bullhead. The watertight door between the passageway and a control room buckled almost immediately. The first few streams of water were ice pick-hard as they hammered into the control room, finding their targets in the electronics panel and immediately shorting out electrical power. The submarine plunged into blackness for a moment, and then battery-operated emergency red lights came on. In a way, it would have been better if they had not.

  The captain shouted out orders, urging the crew toward the emergency egress hatch, but panic and confusion ruled. Most knew what to do for emergency escape, and they grabbed emergency escape breathing devices and tried to wade through the increasingly deep water to the escape trunk. Three made it up the ladder into the tower safely, but the rising flow of water caught the rest of them.

  Ten seconds after the hatch buckled, it gave way completely. Seawater flooded through, a solid tidal wave immediately capturing those few who were still struggling for the ladder. The three men inside the escape hatch had time to pull it shut, gazing down on the stricken faces below them as they were swept away, and dog it shut. They donned their breathing devices, listening to the awful screaming beneath them. They could feel the submarine already starting to settle lower in the water, heading back down for the depths. They opened the valves full, to flood the compartment as quickly as possible.

  The minutes ticked over, and each one knew despair. Finally, the trunk was flooded sufficiently to equalize the pressure and allow them to leave the dying submarine. By that time, the bottom of the hull was approaching four hundred feet in depth.

  The three left, and the buoyancy of their breathing devices pulled them toward the surface. As they ascended, they exhaled continuously, trying desperately to keep the change in pressure from rupturing their lungs. The other denizens of the sea happening by stared at them in mild astonishment, then turned to follow them up.

  Below them, the remaining crew members’ deaths were just as terrible, if far less graphic. The middle section of the submarine was immediately flooded and then the forward one-third. But the aft section retained, through some miracle of engineering, its watertight integrity. The submarine was bow down so hard that the forward bulkheads became the deck, and crippled and wounded men piled up there like rag dolls. Several were still able to move, and tried desperately to reach the aft egress trunk against the force of gravity, with no success. That did not keep them from trying, even as the submarine sank deeper into the water.

  In the meantime, the bank of batteries broke free and ruptured. One smashed into a sailor, crushing him instantly. The others came in contact with water, generating chlorine gas, killing the men before they could drown.

  The submarine headed for the bottom quickly now, and reached it three minutes later. Along the way, the remainder of the compartments flooded, forcing the deadly gas out into the sea.

  Above the crushed hull that held their shipmates, the three men in the water waited in silent horror as they stared at the circling fins.

  USS United States

  TFCC

  1200 local (GMT +8)

  “They… they shot them out of the air!” the pilot shouted, his voice stark with horror. “I had two chutes, then the MiG — damn them all, kill them all!”

  Coyote stared at the screen, horror on his face. Every aviator in the room could feel his blood turn to ice as well. To punch out, to take that risk, watch the aircraft that had been so much a part of you destroyed, looking frantically for your wingman, and praying he would survive the ejection and eventually be picked up… well, that was hard enough without facing the possibility of being strafed.

  In quiet moments, they had all had discussions, had made those quiet decisions about what they would do. Most, when they would speak at all about it, agreed that the preferred course of action would be to strip off one’s oxygen mask and pass out from hypoxia on the way down. But there was always the chance that at lower altitude the oxygen might revive you, and what would that be like, to wake to the sensation of falling?

  No, this action was completely indefensible. Coyote would make sure the Chinese paid for it, and paid dearly.

  “I want them destroyed,” he said evenly, his voice a deadly threat. “Destroyed completely.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Tomcat 155

  Monday, September 23

  1600 local (GMT +8)

  Just as they were approaching their fourth tanker rendezvous, a voice came over tactical. “Triple nickels, this is Big Eyes. Be advised that the tribal council meets tonight on CBS in minutes three. Do not acknowledge this transmission.” The jamming resumed as soon as the AWACS finished transmission.

  “Break it,” Tombstone ordered. Every trace of weariness was instantly swept out of his body.

  “Tribal council — air activity, on the ground. CBS is the airfield, and it started three minutes ago.”

  “No launches then, yet.”

  “No. That would be ‘You’re voted off the island.’ ”

  “Well, then, no time like the present.” Tombstone boosted the aircraft into afterburner and felt the G-forces push him back against the seat. “The tanker should be waiting for us. We’ll just make the rendezvous a bit earlier. If we need more gas, we’ll just ask for it.” The rendezvous point had been preplanned using a given speed of advance, but there was some leeway in the schedule to allow for headwinds, tailwinds, and other vagaries of flight.

  “Tombstone, that right engine — are you watching it?”

  “Yes. Still well within normal parameters.” Even as he spoke, Tombstone knew what Jason’s point was. The outlet temperature on the right engine had been increasing steadily over the last two hours. Not alarmingly, and not outside of normal operating range, but still increasing. The left temperature data showed no change.

  “Shouldn’t Big Eyes know about that?” Jason asked.

  “I thought about that. But there’s not much he can do about it, is there?” Tombstone said gently, counting on Jason’s experience and general levelheadedness to keep him from panic.

  “No, I guess not. If we have to, we can always bingo to Japan. They won’t refuse us landing rights.”

  At least right now, they won’t. But there’s no telling, not if we’re outb
ound from a bombing mission. But Tombstone did not voice the thought and instead agreed, “Yeah, and the United States is in the area as well.”

  “There’s the tanker.” Greene said. “One o’clock, low.”

  I remember when my eyes were that sharp. “Got him,” Tombstone said, when he finally saw the tiny speck in the air. He corrected his course slightly.

  Due to the jamming, the final refueling was conducted without radio communications. Tombstone had practiced the procedure many times before, and the tanker was obviously prepared for them.

  “Eight minutes,” Tombstone said. He concentrated his attention ahead of them for the island. If their inertia navigation system was operating correctly, it should be dead ahead.

  “They’ve got to know something is happening,” Jason said. “I mean, you don’t get your entire electromagnetic spectrum blanked out for nothing.”

  “They might know something, but they won’t be able to find us. Not unless they get real lucky and get a visual. And mind you, I’m not ruling that out — they’ve got to be worried about this operation going down.”

  “There it is,” Greene announced, peering around Tombstone’s ejection seat to look out of the windscreen. “I got it.”

  “Roger, I got the island.” Tombstone’s radar screen was still a massive static. “Commencing final. Let’s hope those ships haven’t moved.”

  He tipped the Tomcat over into a steep dive, and felt the acceleration shove him back into his seat. He tensed his muscles and grunted, performing the M1 maneuver designed to keep blood flowing to the brain during high G-force situations. He could hear Jason’s breathing over the ICS, and knew he was performing the same maneuver. His G-suit automatically inflated as it sensed the increase in G-forces, forcing blood of out of his legs and into his torso. The bands around his arms constricted as well, but any discomfort was quickly washed away by the adrenaline.