The conning tower came toward them. They swam faster and caught it as it went by, moved upward to where they could find fittings and a rail to hold on to. When Murdock saw that Lam had caught a good hold, he sorted his memory for subs. Most had two diving planes, one set fixed on or near the sail structure and one on the bow. He hoped on the sail. He began looking around, feeling. There were six pipes or antennas sticking up from the top of the sail. None of those. Lower. He slid down the front of the sail, letting the forward motion pin him to the metal. Halfway down he found a wide wing-like device. Looked like a stabilizer on an airplane. He’d seen them on subs before. Did they move? Yes. Hinged, with an effect on the level movement of the sub.
At last he found where the movable hinging area was. He packed a stick of TNAZ on each side of the sail on the hinging area, then signaled to Lam. They swam down from the sail to the deck and let the ship move under them as they made their way to the stern. There should be another set of diving planes back there.
The turbulence at the back of the sub made it harder and there was little to hold on to. At last they found a handhold and looked over the sleek end of the vessel.
The submarine slowed. It glided through the water, moving slower and slower, until it nearly stopped. Murdock and Lam swam to the extreme end and checked where there might be exterior diving planes. They found what could be them. Nothing else looked possible. Both men pasted one-quarter-pound sticks of TNAZ explosive on the planes and inserted the detonators. They set them for fifteen minutes with hand signals, then swam for the sail and the other set of explosives.
The sub began to move again and the swim was harder. Lam beat Murdock there, and grabbed him when he almost slanted past the sail.
Murdock went down the front of the sail to the diving plane, pushed a timer/detonator into the TNAZ, and set it for ten minutes. Then the two SEALs swam hard for the surface only thirty feet above them. They hit the surface and Murdock bellowed.
“SEALs, get on dry land. Keep your head above water. Explosives planted. Go, go, go.” Far ahead he heard faint calls that they understood.
He and Lam began a fast crawl toward the point of land they could barely make out. They should have left the Hummer with parking lights on or a glow stick.
He heard some sounds in front of him, and decided it must be the rest of the platoon heading for shore.
The first explosion went off just as a small wave caught Murdock and propelled him toward the shore. The vibrations in the water made his legs tingle, and a shock wave hit him with a gentle nudge.
He stumbled ashore and found Lam and the other SEALs waiting for him.
“You found that fucker?” Bradford yelped.
“Did indeed. I heard one charge go off. Should be three more.”
As he spoke they heard a low rumble, then a second and a third.
“Four out of four, Skipper,” DeWitt said. “Did you get her in a vital spot?”
“Hope so. We worked the diving planes. Wasn’t time to get any of the rest of you on the shoot or we’d have lost the sucker. Holt, get out that SATCOM, let’s wake up some folks.”
Five minutes later the plan was set. CINCPAC had ordered the minesweeper out of the bay and two miles offshore. The more experienced sub-hunters from the Jefferson were called in to find the Chinese sub.
“If you damaged her diving planes, she won’t be able to surface or submerge any more than her ballast tanks will let her,” the spokesman at CINCPAC said. “Good work. The antisub guys should have easy pickings if the boat is still in the bay.”
The SEALs cleared their weapons of water, cleaned and oiled them as usual, and then some of the SEALs took off their wet cammies and let them dry. Murdock figured the nighttime temperature was near seventy degrees.
Ten minutes after the first call, two choppers came in from the north and east. They cruised the bay, then set up a picket fence of sonobuoys down the near end of the wide mouth of Kaneohe Bay. The other chopper laid out a line of sonobuoys at right angles to the first drop heading toward shore.
Holt had the SATCOM set for TAC Two, and they listened to the sub-hunters talking in their helicopters.
“So what can he do?” one voice asked. “He can only blow his tanks and surface so he can repair the diving planes. If that’s what his problem is.”
“Yeah, I’ll give that bastard another problem if we find him. I have no contacts on my line.”
“None here either. Let’s move the box down the bay. He can maneuver left or right. My bet is he’s moving down-bay to the slightly deeper water.”
“In a hundred feet we could see him in the daylight, couldn’t we?”
“Probably. Dropping a new line southeast continuing my line.”
“I’ll box that in on the end. Think he’ll surface and try to get away in the night?”
“He can do maybe twelve knots surfaced. He’d do better to stay down and get about twenty-five.”
“Hey, contact on number two and three. He’s moving south. Range, four hundred yards. Dropping one Mark 46. It’s in the wet.”
“Home in on him, you motherfucker!”
“Yeah, go, go.”
The SEALs gathered around the radio.
“Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one. You missed, Cowboy.”
“It’s circled around and taking another reading on all that metal mass. It won’t miss. Oh, Lordy, look at that eruption of water and metal and Chinese body parts soaring into the air.”
“Home Base, this is Birdgame Two. I have a kill. I repeat, I have a kill on one Chinese submarine.”
“Very well, Birdgame Two. Stand by for continuing orders.”
“Survivors?” the other chopper pilot asked.
“At fifty or sixty feet there should be dozens. Sub like that should carry seventy-five men. If it’s one of their attack boats.”
“Birdgame Two, drop flares over any wreckage spotted and watch for survivors. Fifty Marines from the air base there are on the way to pick up and control any survivors. How is your juice?”
“In the seventy-five-percent range, Home Base.”
“Stand by.”
Murdock had Holt switch the SATCOM to the CINCPAC channel. He got contact on the second call.
“Murdock, just heard about the Chinese sub. We’re inserting the minesweeper again, but she tells me there will be junk and metal all over the place now, and that will make it a dozen times harder to find the device.”
“Commander Lawson on the sweeper was hunting for the right frequency on a transponder. Did he have any luck?”
“Didn’t mention it. He’ll be on station in a little over an hour. He’ll call you on this channel when he’s in position again.”
“Thanks, CINCPAC. Will contact him then. Out.”
Most of the SEALs went to sleep then, half in the Humvees, half out. The rescue operation went on most of the night with choppers showing lights and the Coast Guard and Marine boats picking Chinese sailors out of the bay. Last count Murdock heard was forty-five, some with serious injuries.
The Chief came back on-station and contacted Murdock on the SATCOM.
“Murdock, good work on that sub. Now, how do we find the damn bomb? I’m not at all optimistic about a quick find. We’ll have dozens of chunks of metal all over this end of the bay.”
“What about the right frequency for the transponder we think is on the bomb?”
“Not a lot of help. We have three that could work. We’ll try them when we get some of this junk out of the way. The survivor guys are just about ready to wrap up. They’ll be back with the daylight to pick bodies off the shore and out of the surf line.”
“The Chinese know by now that they lost the sub. They’ll be furious and might just shoot the bomb. The quicker we can find it the better.”
“You can send out a signal to that transponder?”
“We have the gear. You want to come on board with three of your divers so you’ll be ready if we get a contact?”
“Good i
dea. Can you send a boat?”
“If you don’t want to swim out.”
“Please send the damn boat.”
Murdock rousted out the best swimmers and divers he had. Ed DeWitt would be one, Mahanani and Lam the other two. They stepped into the boat from the Chief at a little after 0400, and were met at the minesweeper with dry cammies, jackets, hot coffee, and sandwiches.
Commander Lawson took them into a room filled with electronics. “We do a lot of work from here. We have seven frequencies we want to try out. So far the first two did not produce any return. We’re on number three now. We transmit for thirty seconds, and do that three times. If we hit it right, there should be an almost immediate response.”
Fifteen minutes later they were on the next-to-last frequency. The technician triggered the transmission and sat back as he had done more than twenty times before.
“We have a response, sir,” the chief said. “We have a continuous reply on that frequency. I can have direction for you in a few seconds.” He worked some instruments in front of him. “Sir, that’s at one hundred sixty degrees. You want sonar to give us a range?”
“Yes, Chief. That would be good.”
“Range is two hundred and eighty yards.”
Commander Lawson looked at Murdock. “Don’t just sit there, SEAL. Go get into your diving gear and let’s retrieve us a damn nuclear bomb.”
19
Kaneohe Bay
Oahu, Hawaii
It took the four SEALs only three minutes to slip into the SCUBA gear, test the masks and airflow, and work down the ladder into the warm Hawaiian bay. They all had their wrist compasses, and moved out on the l60-degree heading. When they agreed they had covered the 280 yards, they stopped on the surface and treaded water as they talked.
“We all go down and find the box, then Mahanani comes back up. By that time the ship should be overhead, and they’ll pass him a line or a cable and he’ll bring one or two or three down to us. We hook them on, latch them up good and strong, and knock three times on the cable to start the lift. Everyone on the same page?”
They nodded in the dark, then duck-dived and began swimming down the one hundred feet to where the bomb should be.
It had been some time since Murdock had used a standard SCUBA outfit, and the heavy tank on his back seemed out of place and strange. But as he neared the bottom he forgot about it and concentrated on finding the bomb.
The bomb was not there. The bottom showed up darkly sandy with a few scuttering fish, a rock or two, but no bomb. They moved straight ahead down the azimuth reading.
It loomed out of the dusky depths like a freight train gone wrong. It lay on one side, the same fake beer truck they had seen before. Inside would be the wooden box, with slats and holes and holding something dark and dangerous and deadly. They checked it out on all four sides. They gathered and nodded, gave the yes sign. It had to be the beer truck they had seen before.
If the Chinese had coordinated their attack better, surprise might have won for them. But the four Chinese frogmen came out of the gloom one at a time from the same direction, which meant finding the four SEALs there must have been a surprise for them as well as for the SEALs.
Murdock drew his KA-BAR fighting knife from the scabbard on his right leg, and charged the first knife-wielding Chinese. He saw the other SEALs pull out their knives and take up the hunt. The first Chinese may have been their best. He drove in, then darted the other way and made a wide swiping attack with his blade. It missed. That gave Murdock a chance to kick in hard and drive his knife at the Chinese man’s exposed right side while the frogman’s knife was high over his head.
Murdock felt the blade sink into flesh, but the victim twisted away. Not a killing thrust.
They parried, dove in, and then back. Murdock saw that it was a one-on-one fight times four. A SEAL could get hurt that way. He feinted one way, caught the Chinese frogman defending that way too far, and kicked hard through the water and sliced his heavy blade through the air hose right below the Chinese frogman’s face. Air gushed out. The eyes of the man through the face mask were wide and filled with panic. Then he began to stroke upward toward the surface. Murdock caught his legs and held him down. Bubbles exploded out of the Chinese frogman’s tank. His hands stabbed at Murdock’s arms around his legs. Slowly his struggles eased, then stopped. He was dead.
Murdock turned just as one of the Chinese swam away from his fight with Lam to attack Murdock’s unprotected back. Murdock swung his KA-BAR and saw blood from a slashed wrist stain the blue of the water. He followed up kicking the man in the stomach, then driving his blade into the man’s chest. Murdock yanked the blade out with an effort, and saw the Chinese man go limp and drift away with the gentle current.
Remembering his near-fatal mistake, Murdock spun around now quickly to check for any attacker near him. He saw Mahanani grab his challenger from behind and drive his KA-BAR deeply into the man’s chest, then let him go and watch him settle to the bottom.
Ed DeWitt swam toward the rest slowly. One hand held his air hose to his tank. A few bubbles seeped out around his hand.
He pointed upward and Murdock nodded. He pointed to Mahanani to go up, bring down the cables, and be sure that the JG made it to the top.
The two pushed off, working slowly toward the surface, hoping there wouldn’t be any air-bubble trouble.
Murdock nodded. At only a hundred feet depth they shouldn’t have any problem going up rather fast. The two SEALs left on the bottom pushed on to the beer truck. It lay partly on its side. It had only half the weight here it would on deck. They found that with a lot of shoving they could rock it, and then they heaved, and it tilted over and bounced on its flat tires, sitting upright. It was in a position now so that they could attach cables and hooks to four places on the frame, two in front, two in back. Murdock edged into the truck cab and looked in back. Yes, the same wooden crate was there. The bomb was still on board.
There was no sign of the sling that had brought it here. It could have come undone and floated away as the truck went straight to the bottom.
They waited. It wasn’t long, but just staring at the device that could vaporize him and half of Oahu in a heartbeat left Murdock a little unsettled.
The damn lead blankets. He’d forgotten about them. Where were they? Yeah, on the point in the Humvee. Have to get them to the ship fast as soon as they got up. Or he could send Mahanani back up as soon as they got the cables down there and ask the captain to go get the blankets.
The Hawaiian came down then with a diver from the minesweeper. They each carried the end of two one-inch-thick cables. They were let out gently from on top so the men wouldn’t be crushed by the weight of the heavy steel wire.
Murdock swam to Lam, and all four worked with the heavy cables to attach them to the frame. Hooks worked on the front. In back they had to loop the cable around the frame and secure the hook on the cable. Lam nodded. Murdock knew he had to go topside and have the lead blankets brought out to the minesweeper to cloak the bomb on board so no Chinese radio signal could set off the bomb. No way he could tell anyone else down here to go get the blankets.
He worked upward slowly. Then when he realized there were no bad effects on his bloodstream, he hurried and surfaced twenty yards from the boat. A crewman helped him up the ladder.
Commander Lawson was there waiting.
“It’s the bomb, the same one you saw before?”
“Yes, and we need those two NEST lead blankets we have onshore. Can we get a boat and a crew to go get them so we have them here when the bomb hits your deck?”
“Oh, God, yes. I’d forgotten about that.” He yelled at a chief, who lowered a twenty-foot boat over the side and took a crew of four and powered for shore.
Murdock went over by the winch where the cables were attached, and watched. DeWitt was there as well, showing no ill effects from the close encounter below. Soon a clanking came from the cables.
“The signal, sir, from below,” said a
sailor who sat on the winch seat in front of the controls.
“Ease her up gently three feet and see how she holds,” Commander Lawson ordered.
It was done.
Twenty minutes later, the top of the beer truck broke the surface next to the minesweeper and the crew cheered. They hoisted it on the stern, and six men quickly opened the rear doors and covered the wooden crate with the two lead blankets from NEST.
“Better tell the admiral we have his bomb,” Murdock said. He slumped to the deck and let the tension and exhaustion drain out of him.
Commander Lawson came back a few minutes later and squatted beside Murdock.
“We’ll put you and your men off at the point. The admiral told us to get up speed and start moving straight north away from the islands. He’ll let me know when to stop. My guess is we’ll go out far enough to get a chopper to lift it off and move it somewhere else. Just where, I’m not certain. The admiral wants it off the islands as far as possible. He said if we try to deactivate it the way we do our own, there could be some break-to-make circuits inside that would set it off.”
“He could always fly it and a crew to Midway Island.”
“Or one of the far-out northwestern Hawaiian islands. The chain stretches almost to Midway. I guess it’s the end of the chain.”
“How does he get it there fast?” Murdock asked.
“His problem as soon as he lifts it off my ship.”
Ten minutes later, the SEALs had shucked out of the SCUBA gear and were back on the point of land at the top of Kaneohe Bay.
Senior Chief Dobler met them at the beach where the boat from the minesweeper had deposited them.
“We got the bomb, Senior Chief. Anything else cooking from Stroh or the admiral?”
“Nary a beep. Skipper, looks like time you had some quality sleep.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost 0500. Sack time.”
Murdock nodded, found some grass next to the Humvee, and slid down. He was sleeping before he could get his eyes closed.
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