The gears began to moan as the main rotor overhead began to spin slowly, taking some five seconds to complete its first revolution of the seventeen-meter diameter four-bladed rotor.
It took almost a minute for the main rotor to accelerate to full idling speed, and while Yen waited he plugged in his radio headset and adjusted the UHF to the frequency designated for this mission. Immediately he heard a man speaking his call sign on the radio.
Yen listened for a moment and acknowledged, transmitting that he was now taking off.
He lifted the collective lever on his left side, checking the tachometer to ensure that the automatic throttle was compensating for the drag of the increased rotor pitch. As the aircraft lifted off the pad he pushed on his right anti-torque pedal. The heavy assault helicopter lifted slowly off the asphalt of the pad, lights marking the boundary of the pad rotating to the left as the chopper slowly turned to the right. For a moment Yen paused, waiting for the second Hind helicopter to start its main rotor and lift off. When the nose of Yen’s Hind pointed south, he stopped the rotation with his left anti-torque pedal while easing the collective. The helicopter hovered above the pad at two meters, and Yen frowned, aware he was burning fuel while waiting for the second Hind. Finally the other chopper was ready. Yen raised the collective and pushed forward on the cyclic stick between his knees. The helicopter took off from the pad and accelerated forward, suddenly getting a burst of lift as it passed through transition velocity, the rotors now in air undisturbed by the rotor-wash blasting off the ground.
The Hind accelerated to one hundred and fifty clicks, the Hangu base fading away, the terrain of the land coming in rapidly from ahead. Within a few minutes the water of the bay flashed below the fuselage, and a few moments after that, the piers of the P.L.A complex at Xingang came into view.
Yen smiled as his target became visible.
* * *
The ship began to respond to the rudder, the bay beginning to turn beneath Lennox. His mind momentarily fogged by Baron’s death, it took him a moment to realize that the ship was in fact turning in the wrong direction, the stern headed south toward the supertanker pier instead of north. Lennox had intended to have the stern come around to the north, where he would have put the rudder amidships and gone ahead flank, just like pulling a car out of a driveway and. heading off to work. But goddamn if the screw wasn’t walking the stern in the opposite direction as the rudder and so pulling his tail in the wrong direction. No wonder they always used tugs to get out of the slip.
Lennox realized hundreds of lives depended on his next decision. The stern was now pointing almost southeast, too late to reverse the direction of the turn.
He would either have to continue in a semicircle going backward until his bow was pointed east or go forward with the bow pointing north and do a one-hundred eighty-degree turn to the south. The first option could cause the stern to ram into the supertanker-pier. The second would cost him extra time.
Whatever, he couldn’t continue to be at the mercy of the goddamned rudder and screw. He had to get the ship to be predictable again. As he watched the bay turn around him in the wrong direction, he felt a pain in his chest and wondered if he was having a heart attack. No … it had to be the anxiety from the screwed-up maneuver. Good thing Murphy was below, Lennox thought. At least the captain couldn’t see this amateurish ship handling.
“All ahead full,” Lennox barked.
“ROGER, ALL AHEAD FULL.”
The screw aft of the rudder, a moment before pumping water forward, slowed, stopped and began rotating in the opposite direction, now pumping water aft, thrusting the ship forward. The water above the scimitar blades of the spiral screw boiled and churned in angry phosphorescence. Lennox felt the deck tremble, the hull not accustomed to the force-reversal. The ship slowed to a stop and then began to accelerate as it surged forward. Around them the water was a bubbling foam from the power of the main engines, the P.L.A pier drifting by amidships. The only problem was that they were now going north, not south.
Lennox raised his head above the scarred steel of the top of the sail to look aft, making sure the rudder was turned to the right instead of left. A wrong rudder direction could send them crashing into the P.L.A piers, which would be the end of the rescue attempt.
The deck’s vibrations steadied out somewhat, but the power of the main engines at fifty percent reactor power and the full-rudder order still caused perceptible vibrations. As the ship came around to the south Lennox heard the sound of the Dauphin helicopters coming closer, preparing for another strafing run. He ducked down and reached for a clamshell on the port side of the cockpit — the clamshells were hinged panels that covered the top of the cockpit when rigged for dive, smoothing it out with the contour of the top of the sail. Without the clamshells the cockpit hole would cause a flow-induced resonance, like a breath of air over the mouth of a soda bottle. The clamshell was heavy, made of inch-thick HY-80 steel for breaking through polar ice. While Lennox struggled to raise the panel into the horizontal position he silently thanked the design engineers who had replaced the old fiberglass clamshells with hardened steel. Once the port shell was up, he raised the center forward-and-aft shells, which left him only a small cubbyhole to look out of on the starboard side.
As the choppers approached for their strafing run Lennox ducked into the clamshells on the port side.
The bullets impacted directly over his head, zinging off the heavy steel. Lennox poked his head out the starboard clamshell, ducked quickly back in as he saw the second chopper in its approach. This time he hugged the deck of the cockpit, the loud clanging of the bullets seeming closer, harder. When the noise died down he put his head out again and saw that the ship was now almost completely turned around, heading south into the deep channel. They should be out of there in no time … He was about to order the rudder amidships, thinking ahead to his next order to increase speed to flank, when he saw the buoys just ahead of him. Sure as hell he was no expert on Chinese coastal buoys, but it struck him that the only plausible reason he could think of to put a line of buoys this close to a deep channel was that there was a submerged obstruction or. God forbid, a sandbar.
“Right hard rudder!” he shouted into the VHF radio. Too late.
The Tampa hit the submerged sandbar at over twenty knots, slowing down to a complete stop in less than two seconds, plowing her bow deep into the sand.
Lennox was thrown into the forward bulkhead of the cockpit, smashing his cheek, breaking his nose. The deck was tilted absurdly to the port side, a twenty-or twenty-five-degree list. Lennox looked aft and saw that the foam was no longer boiling up around the screw. The deck no longer vibrated with the power of the main engines — they must have lost propulsion when they hit the sandbar, which meant he couldn’t use the engines to back the sub off the sand.
Lennox tried his radio, wondering if it broke when he hit the cockpit lip. He heard a new sound, the sound of the rotors of a big assault chopper approaching from the north. He looked up in time to see the flying bulk of the Hind helicopter circling around to approach the crippled submarine from the bow. As it drew up, it went into a hover, its rockets and guns hanging on struts protruding from the gunship’s flanks. Then a second Hind pulled into a hover behind it.
For a moment Lennox forgot the radio. The painful truth was that the operation was almost surely blown, and it was his fault.
Aircraft Commander Yen Chitzu looked through the plastic bubble of the Hind’s upper cockpit at the scene below. The reason for the Hind’s call-up from Hangu was immediately apparent. Pulling out of the P.L.A slip was a large black submarine, the one that had been captured spying on the Chinese coastline. The destroyers that had been its guards were smoldering and sinking into the water of the pier’s slip, the water around them in flames as the kerosene and diesel oil burned.
An armored P.L.A force on the pier was firing tank guns and artillery into the water, the rounds missing the sub as it entered the bay channel still going back
ward.
* * *
Two kilometers to the southeast a Jianghu-class frigate was reversing course to turn and come back to attack the escaping submarine. To the south, two poorly armed Dauphin helicopters were coming in on a futile strafing run. Yen activated his radio and ordered the Dauphins out of his airspace, then called the second Hind in his formation to follow him in.
Next he radioed the captain of the Jianghu frigate and told him to hold his fire while the Hinds lined up. He brought the aircraft around a wide circle, crossing over the deck of the frigate and approaching the submarine, slowing to a hover.
Now he spoke into his intercom to the weapons officer, Leader Ni Chihfu, ordering him to arm the Spiral missiles and the UB-32 rockets and to commence firing, then sat back to watch the fireworks.
* * *
On the Tampa’s bridge the VHF radio sputtered:
“REACTOR SCRAM! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED UP THERE?”
Lennox spat into the radio.
“We ran aground.” We, hell, he thought, I ran us aground.
“What happened to the reactor?”
“WAIT ONE, THEY’RE CHECKING.”
The Hind helicopters hovered barely a halfshiplength in front of the sail at twenty feet. Lennox, still standing with his head exposed out the starboard clamshell opening, stared at the missiles slung on missile rails on booms extending from the flanks of the choppers. He could even see the laser sights on the helmets of the chopper pilots in the nose cone cockpits as they aimed the missiles. Further ahead in the channel, south of the supertanker-pier, he could see the Jianghu frigate driving up closer, its 100-mm gun up forward moving, the barrel lining up on his position.
Lennox’s VHP radio squawked:
“CAUSE OF THE SCRAM WAS SHOCK OPENING THE SCRAM BREAKERS. WE’LL HAVE POWER IN ABOUT TWO MINUTES. THE ENGINEER WANTS TO KNOW HOW BAD THE GROUNDING IS. CAN YOU GET US OUT OF THIS?”
The frigate had come to a stop a ship length in front of them. The helicopters hovered, at most one hundred feet away. Lennox continued to stare at the choppers’ and frigate’s guns and missiles, the world tilted in a twenty-five-degree slope. Forget answering the radio, he thought. He ducked down into the cockpit and waited for the missiles and gun projectiles to hit, wondering how it would feel to die.
CHAPTER 23
SUNDAY, 12 MAY
1910 GREENWICH MEAN TIME
GO HAD BAY, XLNGANG HARBOR
USS SEAWOLF
0310 BEIJING TIME
The periscope lens finally broke the surface and cleared, revealing the scene Pacino had most worried about. The Jianghu frigate was dead in the water just a few hundred yards in front of the bow of the Tampa. Two huge helicopters hovered just in front of the sail of the motionless submarine. But the worst of it wasn’t the frigate or the choppers, it was the appearance of the Tampa. The sail was canted over in a twenty-or twenty-five-degree angle, leaning hard to port, and there was no bow-wave, no disturbance of the water at all from her stern — she must have hit an underwater obstacle. She must have run aground on the way out and was now a cripple in the channel while the P.L.A Navy was getting ready to deliver the coup de grace.
“Conn, Sonar, no propulsion noises from Friendly One. Looks like—” Pacino interrupted and shouted over the noise of his headset:
“Belay the report. Sonar. Off’sa’deck, arm the SLAAM 80 missiles. Weps, report status of tube loaded Javelins.”
“SLAAM 80 missiles armed. Captain,” Tim Turner said from the Mark 80 Submarine-Launched Antiair Missile console, the control unit mounted on the port railing of the conn, the console no bigger than a lunch pail.
“All missile doors indicate open.”
Pacino lifted the protective cover over a red button on his left periscope grip.
“SLAAM 80, SLAAM 80,” he said as he hit the key. He punched it two more times, chanting the launch notice twice more. There was no telltale sound of the missiles leaving the ship — for a moment Pacino wondered if the missiles had actually been launched, then … “Four Mark 80s away, sir,” Turner reported from the SLAAM control box.
“Javelins tube-loaded in tubes five and six. Captain,” Feyley said.
“Both are spun up and ready in all respects.”
“Open outer doors, tubes five and six,” Pacino commanded.
“Firing point procedures. Javelin units five and six. Target Four, over-the-shoulder shots, five to go west, six to go east.”
“Ship ready,” Turner said.
“Weapons ready.” Feyley.
“Solution ready,” Keebes reported.
“Shoot five, shoot six,” Pacino ordered, hoping the Jianghu frigate would show up better on the cruise missile-seeker radars than the Tampa. Tubes five and six barked, slamming Pacino’s eardrums, sending two Javelin cruise missiles up to the surface to kill the frigate.
Pacino waited, hoping the Javelins would be able to tell a frigate from a submarine.
USS TAMPA
Commander Jack Morris ran the ten steps to the prone bleeding body of Captain Sean Murphy, glancing up once to see the Chinese officer’s feet leaving the hatchway above, the feet lit by the glow of the pier. Gently Morris pulled Murphy up into a sitting position and looked at him, trying to see if he was still alive.
Blood was coming out of Murphy’s neck but at least the flow was not from an artery. It oozed out, dark and dull. With a good field dressing and some antibiotics Murphy should make it. If he had been healthy before getting the wound, which did not look to be the case. Murphy had lost consciousness, his breathing unsteady, face pale, skin clammy.
The ship’s roll to starboard threatened to knock Morris into a bulkhead. He steadied himself on a rung of the ladder, felt drops of water splashing down on him from above. The hatch shouldn’t be open, he thought, laying Murphy back down on the deck while he stepped to the top of the ladder and looked out the forward hatch.
One look was enough. The pier was fading away in front of them, the tanks on the pier were getting ready to shoot. Morris reached up and shut the lower hatch, spinning its wheel to engage the dogs. No sense letting in Chinese commandos or shipping water into the boat once Lennox started going forward. Next he came back down the ladder and looked at Murphy. As soon as Tien had bolted up the ladder Morris had sent Bony Robbins aft to see to the security of the upper level. Morris knew he should have been joining Robbins in the control room, but Murphy’s helplessness He picked up Murphy and carried him to the captain’s stateroom. When he saw a dead body, on its back, knees bent, blocking the doorway, he carried the wounded captain to the next stateroom, almost stumbling as the deck rolled hard to port — Lennox had to be turning the ship to leave the harbor. He ducked into the executive officer’s stateroom, which was empty, put Murphy on the bed, wrapped a towel around his neck wound and covered him with a wool blanket. For a moment he looked down at the man who had commanded the submarine but who now was perhaps only moments from death. Well, Morris thought, there was nothing else he could do for the man.
He left and moved into the control room, nodded at Bony and joined in a search of the space. The smell of the stun juice was still pungent in the room, mixed with the smell of gunfire, the meaty smell of blood, and of the guards’ bodies as they died. He had begun checking the cubbyhole between the ship control panel and the ballast-control panel when the room seemed to turn upside down, tossing him into the console, smashing him in the head and dumping him onto the deck.
Somehow he got himself up, nearly overcome by dizziness, and soon realized it wasn’t dizziness that had tilted the world but something they had hit. The deck was quiet, no longer vibrating with the power of the reactor aft. Morris went for the hatch to the bridge tunnel. Bony Robbins right behind him. He rebelled against the thought that filled his mind but there was no sense denying it. Lennox had run the ship aground.
They were now sitting ducks.
* * *
At the top of Seawolf’s sail four small doors opened.
Be
low the doors were circular seals that kept the Mark 80 SLAAM missiles from being damaged by seawater. Below each seal a Mark 80 missile waited for the launch signal. The four signals arrived at the base terminal box one after another at half-second intervals. The first missile to receive the electronic signal to fire experienced a warm sensation at its base as the gas generator lit off — the gas generator was a small casing around a solid rocket motor, the nozzle of the rocket pointing downward into a reservoir of water. The rocket motor ignited and sent a stream of superheated gases toward the reservoir. The water in the reservoir immediately boiled, forming a highpressure bubble of steam. When the steam at the base of the Mark 80 missile reached a pressure higher than the external sea pressure, the seal above the missile ruptured and the missile was expelled from the sail by the highpressure steam bubble. It rose to the surface, never even getting wet from the seawater, the steam bubble that followed it surrounding it all the way to the surface.
As the missile rose out of the sail a tiny relay designed to measure acceleration registered two g’s, twice normal gravity. The missile then armed its rocket motor ignition circuits as it prepared to light off its own solid rocket fuel. The bubble of steam rose steadily toward the surface, taking less than two hundred milliseconds to go from the top of the sail to the waves above. When the missile reached the surface the momentum of its upward journey threw it clear of the water until all its eight feet were completely out of the water and rising. At ten feet the missile froze as its upward velocity gave in to the downward acceleration of gravity. At that point the zero-g relay closed, completing the rocket-motor ignition circuit.
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