by Ian Slater
At a thousand feet, only seconds after launch point and as another missile left Encino, the first Tomahawk’s solid-fuel booster fell away, its job done, the turbofan jet taking over, stubby wings extended. Its terrain control matching system helped to guide it, the missile flattening out at ninety feet above sea level en route to its target, virtually skimming the sea, the radar cross section no more than eleven square feet. Its approach was doubly protected by the Encino jamming the PLA radars. Traveling subsonically at plus or minus 500 mph, this small radar signature of the Tomahawk should be lost in the post-typhoon sea clutter, the missile and the eleven other Tomahawks following — a six-million-dollar “train” of explosives that Rorke’s crew, many ardent followers of the old Six Million Dollar Man, dubbed the “Six Million Dollar Slam”—scheduled to reach Penghu in approximately twenty-four minutes.
Admiral Crowley was bitterly disappointed upon hearing that Encino was given the job of “missiling” Penghu. Why hadn’t they given it to him? He’d played it smart, very smart, conducting the burial at night in blackout conditions so he’d be ready in the event any Bizarro/terrorist/kamikaze attack was launched at him in the morning when an enemy would assume the ship would slow for such a burial. Or didn’t Washington think McCain’s battle group was up to it because of the kamikaze hit?
The padre, a good friend of the battle group commander, tried to soften the blow. “God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform,” he reminded the admiral.
“Is that so?” Crowley retorted churlishly. “Where was he when that kamikaze holed my roof?”
The padre assured the admiral that the Almighty had a plan.
“Well, I’m damned if I can discern it, Padre,” Crowley said, his tone softening for the sake of friendship, if not because of religious belief.
The rain of cruise missiles on Penghu brought shock and awesome devastation, the huge billows of copper-red smoke rising, reeking of burning Avgas and atomized fish fertilizer from the once picturesque stony-bordered farms, the clouds of war obscuring the island clearly visible to satellite reconnaissance. The problem was, Typhoon Jane’s residual tail winds had “increased the CEP,” as the Pentagon put it.
“In English, please,” Eleanor Prenty demanded.
“Circular error probable, ma’am. It means the diameter centering on the target within which there is a fifty percent chance of hitting.”
“Error probable?” said Eleanor. “My God, you’re telling me that they didn’t hit Penghu?”
“No, our missiles did hit Penghu. No question about—”
“But not the runway and all the radars?”
“No, ma’am. I mean that’s right, you’re correct. We—”
“Give me a percentage, Commander. What percent did you hit? Eighty? Sixty?”
“ ’Bout forty to fifty.”
“What’s the Encino’s load-out?” she asked, knowing that sometimes the subs carried extra cruise missiles, housing them in the torpedo racks.
The Pentagon man didn’t know if the twelve Tomahawks were the Encino’s full load of cruise missiles or whether there were some in reserve.
“Well, find out,” she told him abruptly.
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Use my phone.”
It was very highly classified information, and the Pentagon messenger, albeit a commander, had to have written authority from the Chief of Naval Operations to be given one of America’s launch platform’s precise “load-out.”
Eleanor Prenty waited impatiently. If Encino didn’t have reserve Tomahawks, then someone else would have to be tasked to finish what Encino had begun and to pulverize the Penghu runway before the PLA could use it as a base from which clandestine attacks could be launched against Taiwan — even during an official cease-fire that the Secretary of State was hastily trying to broker between Beijing and Taipei, both Chinese capitals sticking firmly to their positions that the other one had reopened hostilities.
The commander from the Pentagon had the answer to Eleanor’s question twenty minutes later. SSN Encino’s multiple launch, as ordered by the President, had exhausted the submarine’s load-out supply of twelve Tomahawks.
The President didn’t hesitate. “Draw up orders,” he told the Chief of Naval Operations, “for McCain’s battle group to take out that runway.”
“How about vertical launch from the Aegis cruisers?” asked Eleanor. “McCain’s pretty badly—”
“No.” The President was adamant. “It’s important politically as well as for the Navy’s morale — which is the lowest I’ve ever seen — to have McCain do it. Have the carrier’s air wing launch the attack. Stand-off weapons. If we can take Makung out as their forward air base, we’ll have a lot more leverage to force Beijing to the table.”
“Makung?” asked Eleanor.
“Penghu’s city. Where the runway is.”
“Oh,” said Eleanor. “Yes, of course. Mr. President, do you think Beijing’s got anything to do with this sub attacking us in the Northwest?”
The President had obviously thought a lot about it, as he had about the myriad fronts going on in the war, clandestine and overt, all over the world as the U.S. struggled to keep the upper hand. “I don’t think so, Eleanor. Nor do the Joint Chiefs. It seems more like a terrorist group to me. Trouble is, we Americans have — let’s face it — a lot of difficulty accepting the fact that a bunch of Muslims could develop a weapons platform so quiet, so able to pierce our defenses — like this midget sub the Navy’s hydrofoils are now finally closing in on.”
“Finally” seemed a bit rich to Eleanor. Admittedly, it had felt like months and months dealing with the Northwest attack, along with everything else, but crises always seemed longer at the time. In fact, it had been much shorter, and the Navy had done darned well to get the hydrofoils on their way, because the new craft had barely finished sea trials.
“Problem is,” the President said, “we think of Muslims, we think of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. Desert and oil.” The Chief Executive paused. “Had you ever imagined Arabs as submariners?”
“No. Well, I knew some Russian submariners who were Muslim, but no, not further than that.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
As Freeman and Aussie neared the bow of the sub, the snorkel pipe stopping then beginning to inch up again — its slow ascent no doubt an attempt to keep its rasping to a minimum — the two wondered if the sub’s sonar had picked up the noise of their paddling. The fogbound sea was considerably calmer now than when they had shot at the sub much earlier that day. Or was the sub’s scope sliding up for a visual check? But what was there to see in the fog, besides the Skate’s dying firelight?
Aussie glimpsed the Petrel, her stern’s hydraulic arm silhouetted against the oil slick’s fire. Having heard the rasping of the sub’s snorkel being raised, Frank Hall had no doubt decided to move the oceanographic vessel in quickly to pick up as many Skate survivors as possible.
Freeman, meanwhile, reached for the waterproof matches in his vest and flushed. It was his usual physiological reaction upon realizing he’d uncharacteristically forgotten a vital detail. This time it was the short fuse on each of the fist-sized LOSHOK packs he’d given Aussie, which would allow only two seconds. No way you could duct-tape, light the fuse, and get clear. There was no time to convey his concern to Aussie other than by speaking. And they were only ten feet from the sub’s starboard fairing, which Aussie would have to board to place the charge. “Cut the second pack’s fuse and tape it to the first,” the general whispered hoarsely. “That’ll give us more time.”
Four seconds, Aussie thought, to tape and run.
Their Zodiac bumped gently against the sub’s side.
A beam of light struck out from Petrel’s foredeck toward the Skate’s burning oil spill, looking quickly for survivors. Aussie and Freeman heard a dull thud, then saw a head appear above the sub’s stubby conning tower, followed by a quick order in a language neither Aussie nor the general understood. Then they heard anoth
er, more excited, voice, and saw a.50 caliber barrel poking up from the interior of the conning tower and sticking straight out in the direction of the Skate. The gunner appeared next, and then whoever was giving the orders, either the sub’s captain or the officer of the deck.
Good God, Freeman thought. The bastards were going to shoot the Coast Guard survivors as well as the men on the Petrel who were trying to rescue them.
A long, ragged flame spat into the fog from Freeman’s HK, the 9mm rounds chopping into the sub gunner’s head and into the officer’s right shoulder. But the officer managed to swing the.50 around and squeeze off a loud burst. A bullet struck Freeman in the chest, knocking him out of the Zodiac as Aussie, already on the sub’s fairing below the conning tower, plunged his K-bar into the officer. The officer grabbed at his throat in a vain effort to stop the pulsing jets of blood that showered Aussie’s face, then the officer’s body crumpled noisily, the wooden stock of the.50 falling back with a whack against the sub’s collar.
Aussie heard a commotion below. One more step up the side of the conning tower and he glimpsed the ruby-colored glow of the sub’s small control room, the body of the sub’s gunner slumped awkwardly, blocking the hatch. Seeing a bald head below the dead gunner, and arms desperately tugging at the gunner’s feet, trying to clear the hatch, Aussie fired a burst down the hatch well, the man’s head exploding. Then he lit the first fuse and dropped it, the reverberation of the LOSHOK’s explosion so severe that it momentarily stunned Aussie, though he was still outside the conning tower and unable to hear anything.
The charge, he realized, must have either bounced off the body-stoppered hatch or the open hatch cover itself. He’d have to heave himself up, drop down into the conning tower, and clear the body. But one glance into the smoke-choked hatch — the LOSHOK fumes rising up, stinging his eyes, throat, and nose, told him another burst was unnecessary. What had been the enemy’s decapitated body, or rather, what was now an indistinguishable bloody pile, had fallen down through the hatch onto the control room’s floor. He squeezed another burst off anyway, for insurance, dropped the second two-second charge down and slammed the hatch shut. This explosion was a muffled whoomp, no smoke emerging from the tightly sealed sub, except for a white puff rising from the snorkel.
“A new Pope!” he shouted, his outburst a mixture of adrenaline and anger, wondering if the general was still alive, and sure that no one in the midget sub had survived. An explosion like that, he knew, would create a dense and toxic mix even in a full-sized attack boat.
The pinhead of light automatically activated by the saltwater showed Aussie where the general, dead or alive, was drifting, about twenty or thirty feet off the sub’s starboard bow, not far from the Zodiac. Aussie slung his HK tightly to his back, discarded his boots, and dived in, swimming with all his strength to the Zodiac. He hauled himself aboard, pushed the outboard’s starter and, hungry for air, gasped as he steered the Zodiac toward Freeman, cutting the motor almost as soon as he’d started it.
“Fire a goddamn flare!” the general was shouting, his voice imperious. “Don’t you know anything?!”
In fact, Freeman’s bonhomie in the freezing water helped the general to tolerate the painful bruising that was spreading across his chest, the round from the sub’s.50 MG not a dead-on hit, but a powerful angled shot all the same, and one that had shredded all but the last two of the Kevlar’s sandwiched layers.
The Petrel saw the flare, as did the two closing hydrofoils, one of which approached the Zodiac with a suspicion underscored by an array of weaponry that was as impressive as it was late.
“Well, at least they can help Petrel pick up those poor bastards from Skate,” Aussie told Freeman, who was now hurting badly.
The general was not given to hyperbole regarding his enemies, but what occurred next he would describe as simply “astonishing.” From the mini Vesuvius that was the submarine’s conning tower, there emerged three ghostly figures in the flare lights, their clothing steaming with white smoke that clung to them like dry ice, their faces hidden by maniacal-looking goggles and the snouts of gas masks.
“Son of a bitch!” shouted Tiny, thunderstruck. “Pricks are still alive!” Two of them were manning the.50.
“Everyone inside,” shouted Hall from Petrel’s bridge, as Aussie and Freeman were being helped aboard. “Secure all hatches. Lights out!”
“Secure all hatches!!” repeated Frank. “And stay inside!” With that, he pushed Petrel’s Full Ahead button, shouting into the down pipe to the engine room, “Everything you’ve got, Chief!”
The crew, bodies involuntarily trembling with the thunderous reverberations, had never felt anything like it.
Frank snatched up the bridge’s microphone. “Stand by to ram!”
“Shit!” It was Cookie. In the blacked-out galley, it suddenly dawned on him what Hall intended. “The hydrofoils should—”
The bosun’s attempt to explain to young Cookie how hydrofoils were like jet boats on water — very fast in clear weather but too delicate for this — was cut short by a firecracker noise forward, the sound of Petrel’s already multipunctured bridge glass collapsing in a resounding crash. Now all firing from the hydrofoils ceased, the Petrel, at fifteen knots, having to cross their lines of fire.
The 110-foot-long sub and its conning tower were rendered momentarily visible with each burst of the.50, only one man remaining at the gun.
Frank was steering by the flashes of the.50. He wasn’t watching the sub through the fog-inhaling hole that had been Petrel’s bridge, but by lying on his back, guided by the image of the.50’s spitting flame in the mirror from Sandra’s compact. He held it up for several seconds at a time, and could alter his course with a tap on the “sensitouch” joystick.
“Hold on!” he shouted over the PA. But with the PA’s wiring, among other things, now severed in the hail of the sub’s machine-gun fire, no one heard him beyond the bridge.
The shock of the Petrel hitting the sub aft of the conning tower was so severe that it flung several crew members across the mess. The bosun’s cheek split against the bulkhead stiffener, and young Cookie literally tore the big electric motor off its mount as a flying avalanche of broken crockery and foodstuffs injured him and five other crewmen amid an outburst of profanities and alarm so loud Hall heard them coming up through the stairwell.
The Petrel’s bow was so high now, after smashing into the sub’s conning tower, that the broken plates and other debris began sliding back. But just as quickly, everything began to subside, Petrel’s forward half coming down as it slid off the sub’s deck. As Hall leaped up, running to the bridge’s starboard wing, he saw that the sub’s aft was severely creased — cracks appearing — heard the machine gunner and dropped to the deck. Aussie, racing along the Petrel’s port side, came out firing on its forward deck, not taking his finger off the trigger, killing the begoggled and black-snouted gunner before the terrorist could swing the.50 from Frank on the upper starboard side to him.
Then, in place of the unrelenting gunfire, there was relative calm. But not silence, as the oceanographic crew, though hesitant at first, now poured out on the stern to watch the death throes of the submarine. In Petrel’s deck lights, which were now back on, they could see water cascading into the deep, three-foot-wide gash aft of the sail, the sub’s nose rising in a strangely majestic way. The excited voices of the Petrel crew and the faint cheers of the hydrofoil crews ceased momentarily, for no matter how evil its man-driven intent, the boat itself now seemed possessed of a dignity in death. Its bow, so high in the air that it momentarily rose above the level of Petrel’s foredeck, sent several men racing back toward Petrel’s winches, frightened by the awe-filled ascent of the sub’s bow. For the first time, a flag was glimpsed on its forward staff, which could only have been placed there by one of the three gas-masked ghosts who’d emerged earlier from the LOSHOK’s toxified air.
Once the sub, slipping from view in a hissing steam of burst pipes and shattered machine
ry, slid out of view, the cheers on hold during her final moments erupted into the dank, dark air, a hydrofoil sapper unit already on their way to destroy the cave and its antechambers.
“We can now report,” began one of Marte Price’s colleagues in Atlanta, “that this unprecedented assault on America’s navy is finally over.” The announcer, a Hollywood face in his early thirties but with a marked British accent, turned to his coanchor. “And it’s fitting, Joanne, that it was the Navy’s hydrofoils that finished the job.”
“Bullshit!” came a chorus of outraged Petrel crewmen. Sandra, in temporary relief from the morphine shot the second mate had given her, shook her head slowly in disgust. It was Freeman’s team who’d done it, first slowing and then damaging it further, and finally Aussie Lewis disabling it so it couldn’t escape, enabling the Petrel to finish it off. The hydrofoils were late to the show.
“It’s fitting indeed, Ryan,” replied the fair-haired coanchor with the “to die for” looks. “I know all America and our allies in this ongoing war against terrorism will heave a great sigh of relief and extend their gratitude to the U.S. Navy.”
“Best in the world,” said the anchor, shuffling his papers with an air of efficiency and confidence de rigueur for those who wanted to get ahead — even if, as Freeman sourly observed, “they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
“Sure as hell don’t. It was you guys who did it,” commented Tiny. “I dunno — first reports are always cocked up.”
“Hydrofoil guys are taking the damn credit,” voiced Jimmy.
“No,” said Freeman. “Not their fault. It’s nighttime, no one can see a damn thing. Probably talked to a reporter on the radio phone. Static all over — hydrofoil guy says the sub’s sunk, rammed by Petrel. Reporter can’t hear it probably, thinks what he heard was ’petrol’—probably thinks the sub was afire and rammed. Line cuts out and all he’s heard is that the sub’s sunk. Every war I’ve been in — you’re right, son — first reports are always ’cocked up.’ “
