“I know that. Get going.”
Wilkes-Charles left. Donchez listened to the announcements on the Circuit One ordering flight ops, watched the deck fill with planes as the elevators lifted the jets onto the deck, watched as pilots manned the planes and taxied over to the catapults. The ship turned into the wind at full speed, the steam from the catapults wafting over the ship, half-obscuring the men working on the aircraft. And quickly, the first F-14 Tomcat supersonic fighter was positioned on the number-one catapult. Ready for liftoff.
USS SEAWOLF
“Conn, Sonar, the helicopters have all flown over. All chopper contacts now bear east. I don’t think we were detected.”
“That anechoic coating does a good job against active sonar,” Pacino said, but Keebes’s face remained grim.
“Conn, Sonar, we now have multiple high-frequency transmissions from a helicopter HS-12 dipping sonar, bearing zero nine eight. We think they’ve locked onto Friendly One.”
“They’ve got the Tampa, Skipper,” Keebes said.
“Range to the Tampa?”
“Ten thousand yards.”
“Mr. Turner,” Pacino said, “take her up to seven nine feet. Lookaround number-two scope.”
Officer of the Deck Turner brought the ship shallow to a keel depth of seventy-nine feet, then reported the depth to Pacino. Pacino rotated the hydraulic control ring for the periscope and waited for it to come out of the well. When it arrived he snapped down the grips and pressed his eye to the cool rubber of the eyepiece. Outside, the sky was dark, the sea choppy, the rain beating against the lens. The remaining light was steadily vanishing.
“Chief of the Watch, rig control for black,” Pacino ordered. The lights were turned out, which made clearer the view out the scope.
To the east he could make out the dark shape of the Chinese carrier in the distance, much of its hull obscured by the curvature of the earth, only its superstructure visible. He turned the scope to the southeast, looking for incoming destroyers, saw nothing. He did a quick surface search and found nothing close, then tried an air search, nearly impossible in the rainy dark.
But at the bearing to Friendly One, the Tampa, he thought he could see the flashing beacons of helicopters.
“Mark 80 status?” Pacino asked.
“Armed and ready, sir.”
“Launching now, one, two, three, four—” Pacino counted to nine, waited, still looking out the periscope toward the position of the Tampa, not concerned about being detected since he had just informed the entire Chinese fleet of his presence with the missiles, and besides, detection fit his tactical plan. The missiles in the sail silently floated out of the water and flew into the sky, heading for the helicopters gathered around the position of the Tampa.
Several missile trails appeared at the top of Pacino’s periscope view, the nine Mark 80 SLAAMs en route to the helicopters flying over the Tampa. One, then two, then a half-dozen fireballs bloomed in the dark at the bearing to Friendly One. Pacino lowered the periscope and fished in his coverall pocket for his eyepatch. As he strapped it on, he called for the Chief of the Watch to rig the room for red. The fluorescent red lights in the overhead flashed on.
“Attention in the firecontrol team,” Pacino announced. “The Chinese now know we’re here and I’m expecting company any minute. Once the choppers and jets pin us down we won’t have an opportunity to launch the Ow-sow, so even though the carrier is still eight miles to the east and the Tampa is still four miles from international waters I’m going to put up the Ow-sow now. With luck the carrier will be distracted enough so Tampa can slip through and make it over the finish line. That is it, guys. Weps, status of the Ow-sow?”
“Dry loaded in tube one, sir. Power is up, gyro is up, self-checks are go, solution is input to Target thirteen, and read back is sat.”
Feyley turned to look at Pacino.
“We’re ready to launch. Captain.”
“Flood, equalize, and open the outer door, Weps. Firing point procedures, tube one, ASW standoff weapon, Target Thirteen, the carrier.”
“Ship ready,” Turner said.
“Solution ready.” Keebes.
“Tube is flooding now, sir.” Feyley.
Pacino waited, cursing the time. The helicopters would be up on him any minute.
“Conn, Sonar, we have incoming helicopters, from the bearing to Friendly One.”
“Sonar, how many?”
“Hell, Captain, ten, fifteen — so many onscreen it’s hard to say.”
“Tube one ready. Captain,” Feyley said.
“Shoot,” Pacino ordered.
“Fire!”
The tube fired, the noise violent and loud in the room.
CHAPTER 30
MONDAY, 13 MAY
1143 GREENWICH MEAN TIME
BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT
USS TAMPA
1943 BEIJING TIME
The noise of the explosions was loud, even through two inches of HY-80 high-yield steel hull plating.
Vaughn counted, finally coming up with eight explosions.
He looked over at Lennox.
“Those choppers, they’re gone. Maybe we’ve got our air support from outside the bay.”
Lennox shook his head.
“That was just a few SLAAMs from the Seawolf, the sub-to-air missiles, like they used against the choppers when we were aground on the sandbar.”
“How do you know?”
“Look at the traces on the screen. The choppers still up are all headed west to a single bearing. It has to be the launch position of the Seawolf.”
“So now Seawolf’s in trouble.”
“Looks like it, but her skipper’s a good one.”
“Who is her skipper?” a weak voice asked from the forward control room.
Vaughn stared. There in the doorway to the forward passageway was Captain Sean Murphy, bandaged and in a sling, his throat wrapped in a bloody gauze bandage, his shoulder in so many bandages he looked like a mummy. His eyes appeared to drift, as if he were about to fall asleep on his feet. In fact, as Vaughn hurried over to him, he began to sink to the floor, and passed out. Vaughn was able to keep the captain from hitting the deck, but Murphy was clearly out cold.
“I should take him back to his stateroom,” Vaughn said.
“No, leave him here or he’ll just try to get up and get in here when he comes to. Bartholomay, grab the captain’s mattress and pillow and set him up on the deck by the door to sonar.”
Black Bart hurried forward, returning with the mattress.
He and Vaughn lifted Murphy onto the makeshift bed and covered him with a blanket. He was shivering, his skin pale. As Vaughn looked down at him. Murphy lifted his eyelids, squinting through the slits.
“Who?”
“What Skipper? You should try to rest, sir—”
“Who is … Seawolfs … captain?”
“Pacino, sir,” Lennox said.
“Michael Pacino. He said he knows you.”
Murphy half-smiled, some color returning to his face, just before he lost consciousness again, this time his breathing slow and steady.
Vaughn stood. “At least he’s alive.”
“Not for long. As soon as they’re done with Seawolf they’ll be coming after us.”
“Look,” Vaughn said, pointing to the waterfall sonar display. “What the hell is that?”
A broad, incredibly loud sound blanked out the waterfall display for a few seconds, the noise narrowing to a streak that moved rapidly through the bearings, ending up on the bearing to the Chinese aircraft carrier.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to see.”
Lennox didn’t need to raise the scope to see what happened next. The sound of the explosion from the carrier was enough.
BOHAI HAIXIA STRAIT
When the ASW standoff missile floated to the surface, its central processor waited for the feel of air on the unit’s skin. The momentum of the tube launch quickly brought it to the choppy surface, and its accelerome
ter told it that its upward progress had momentarily stopped as it lost the buoyant force of the water. A broach sensor dried out and sent its signal to the central processor, the signal the unit waited for.
The rocket motor’s solid fuel lit with the energy of a barely controlled explosion, thrusting the missile from the sea into the air. Unlike a Javelin cruise missile, whose rockets merely did a pop up to give the jet sustainer engine a chance to spin up, the ASW standoff weapon was altogether rocket powered. Although its range was significantly less than a Javelin, it did not carry a jet engine or a large fuel tank or a set of control wing lets or an elaborate navigation system, all of which took up volume and weight. Instead, it had a lightweight processor, a simple tailfin positioner, a small radar transponder for final target confirmation, a relatively small rocket motor and a large charge of explosives. Its warhead was three times the size of the Javelin’s, the explosive power more than three times the punch because of its state-of-the-art shaped charge. The Ow-sow’s nose cone was pointed, designed for supersonic flight, allowing it to cover enormous stretches of ocean in mere seconds, and making it more difficult to shoot down in mid-flight than a subsonic Javelin.
The missile now climbed to its apogee, a mere thousand feet, then began a dive to its target. By the time its transponder found the large target some two thousand yards ahead the missile was traveling at Mach 2.4 and still accelerating. It approached the target, having been airborne less than thirty-five seconds, and hit the aircraft carrier amidships on the port side, crashing into the number-two turbine room before detonating.
The explosion from the warhead blew a sixty-foot wide hole in the flight deck, knocked four turbines off their foundations, killed one hundred and seventy-five men and put a fifteen-foot gash in the ship’s hull.
* * *
At an altitude of twelve hundred meters, the limit of visibility, pilot Chu HuaFeng was traveling east, intent on closing the submarine contact that had been pinpointed by the helicopters of first and second squadrons, when the white-flame trail burst out of the sea west of the submarine contact. As he watched, stunned, the rocket traveled in a graceful flat arc. He barely realized that he had jerked the aircraft’s stick in a violent motion, trying to keep the rocket in view as it descended back toward the sea, never having risen more than a few hundred meters. He had the odd momentary thought that the rocket was beautiful, that its perfectly shaped arc was sculpted by the wonders of Newtonian physics. But in another compartment of his mind he began to realize that the missile was headed east, toward its target, and that the target could only be the Shaoguan, his father’s flagship.
And as the missile descended and hit the carrier and exploded into a hundred-meter-wide mushroom cloud of flame and smoke and shrapnel, Chu HuaFeng felt an explosion in his mind, an explosion of anger, as well as a trembling so intense that the jet was picking up the vibrations in his stick hand and converting it to aileron and elevator motion. His aircraft began to shake so violently that Lo Yun asked over the intercom if they had been hit. Only then could Chu focus his energy on flying and away from the sight of his father’s burning ship.
He brought the aircraft around and headed for the foamy sea that marked where the missile had been launched from below. The enemy submarine was there, he thought, but it would not be there long.
“Extend the MAD probe, Lo,” Chu ordered. “And arm the depth charge.”
Two minutes later Chu’s Yak was over the sea from where the missile had come and he flew a tight circle around the spot, the magnetic anomaly detector picking out the position of the submarine contact.
“Depth charge armed and ready,” Lo reported. “We have contact on a submerged vessel on MAD. Contact is definite and shallow.”
Chu cut in the lift and idled the cruise engines. The aircraft hovered over the exact position of the submarine.
In a few seconds the people who had dared launch the destructive rocket at the Shaoguan would be dead. Only then could he fly back to what was left of his father’s ship.
USS TAMPA
“All ahead flank!” Lennox ordered as the sounds of a hull breaking up came through. The sonar screen showed the bright angry trace at bearing zero six seven, now northeast instead of due east as the ship made progress and got closer to the “finish line.” Now that the carrier was hit by whatever it was the Seawolf had fired, Lennox wanted to get beyond her and to international waters as soon as he could. He was no longer concerned with leaving a wake on the surface that would pinpoint their position. It was clear that the aircraft and surface ships were intent on attacking Seawolf. And since Tampa was useless in a fight, the only thing he could do was get the ship and her crew out of the bay and into the safety of international waters.
Still, even as the ship’s deck vibrated with power, he couldn’t help feeling guilty and frustrated at not being able to help. For a moment he wondered how he could live with himself if Tampa survived and Seawolf went to the bottom. Seawolf had seemed so invincible that he had always assumed it would be Tampa that would never make it. Abruptly he heard Murphy’s voice:
“XO,” Murphy’s voice rattled, “we can’t leave Seawolf. We’ve got to help.”
Lennox and Vaughn looked over at Murphy, who had been lifted from his mattress and was now sitting in front of Pos Two.
“Sir,” Vaughn said, “three of our tubes leak, not one of the torpedoes is whole and the firecontrol computer is blown to pieces. The torpedo room console is shattered. There’s nothing we can do to help—”
“The Javelins, we have to launch the Javelins.”
“Sir,” Vaughn said, looking at Lennox, “the computer is gone and we can’t target them manually. The Javelins are inert.”
“No,” Murphy said. “Get one of the firecontrol techs. Get a signal simulator and” — Murphy coughed, a rattling hacking sputter— “open up the signal cable, input a signal to open the door and launch the weapon.”
“But there will be no target,” Lennox told him.
“Just launch them. The liftoffs will … confuse the Chinese.”
“Sir,” Lennox said, “we don’t have a missile tech, they’re all in shock, unconscious or dead. And we don’t have a signal simulator. And who knows where the cable connectors are? I’m very sorry. Captain, somewhere in Korea Bay there’s a carrier air group that’s supposed to take over now … Seawolf, with whatever help she can get from the air group, will have to get out of this without us. Our cards have been played.”
Murphy stared up at Lennox, then lowered his head, and for a moment Lennox thought he’d lost consciousness again. He hadn’t. He was trembling slightly, from anger and frustration, Lennox guessed.
“Eng, mark our ETA at the finish line,” Lennox ordered, the bite in his voice showing some of his own frustration.
Vaughn went to the chart table, glanced at the sonar display one last time, took out his dividers, checked the ESGN position a second time, then said to Lennox:
“The ETA is negative, XO. We’re here. We crossed the finish line two minutes ago. We’re now 1.1 nautical miles into international water. We made it!”
Lennox looked at the sonar display, his face still grim. The Tampa had indeed made it out of the bay.
But now there was no way Seawolf would.
KOREA BAY USS RONALD REAGAN
Commander Jim Collins taxied the F-14 to the number one catapult while latching his oxygen mask to his flight helmet, the word MUGSY printed in block letters above the visor of the helmet. Collins commanded VF-69, the Reagan’s F-14 squadron. He was on his last sea tour as a pilot, and hated the idea of leaving the flying fleet for nuclear power school, where he was assigned to learn how to command a nuclear aircraft carrier. The thought of spending a year with a bunch of green submarine-bound ensigns at nuke school was an unhappy one, as was the notion of spending two years as XO of a carrier before he could spend four years in command. He wasn’t a fool and realized he should take some satisfaction in having been chosen for higher command,
but he would still find it hard to give up flying supersonic fighters. It was what he did. Watching the action from the bridge of the carrier didn’t exactly compare to seeing it from the cockpit.
The thought of this operation being the last for him made the adrenaline flow. The cockpit was an extension of his body, the sky waited for him, as did the Chinese fleet. He would not need to wait much longer.
His body ached from the hours in the ready room preparing for the mission, the hours without sleep, waiting for the go order.
Finally, his F-14 was lined up on catapult one, the deck sailors attaching the catapult to the nose gear
Collins checked his instruments, the twin turbines purring aft, waiting to be kicked into full thrust. Collins tested his ailerons, rudder, and elevators, the last item on the checklist. He spoke into his intercom to his radar intercept officer. Lieutenant Commander John Forbes.
“Ready, Bugsy?”
“Ready, Mugsy.”
The radio handles had developed separately years before, but now somehow it seemed fitting that the squadron commander and his RIO would go by gangsters’ names. To some deck-bound types they were considered loose cannons.
Collins nodded to the deck officer below. Aft of the aircraft a large thrust-deflector shield rotated upward to protect the deck crew from the F-14’s jet exhaust.
The deck officer signaled with his wands, and Collins’s gloved left hand reached the throttle levers and pushed them forward to their stops, the jet turbines aft shrieking as they spooled up. Collins watched the instruments, then pulled the levers right past the de tents and forward again into the AFTERBURN position.
Far aft, the turbines’ nozzles opened and injected fuel into the jet exhaust, the hot gases igniting for the second time, adding even more thrust to the jet’s push.
Collins looked out his canopy to the Deck Officer and saluted. The Deck Officer, now crouched low on the deck, his forward leg bent, his aft leg ruler straight, quickly waved his wand forward in a big arc, the wand finally touching the deck, then coming up to point straight ahead down the deck into the wind. The catapult operator activated the cat, and Collins’s F-14 rocketed down the carrier’s deck under the three-g acceleration of the steam-driven catapult and the F-14’s own jets on full afterburners.
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