U.S.S. Seawolf

by Patrick Robinson

  The signal to leave had arrived direct from SUBPAC shortly before lunch: “CO USS Seawolf: Proceed immediately to Yellow Sea as authorized in orders of 170900JUN06. Observation only. Do not, repeat not, be detected.”

  Junior Petty Officer Jason Colson, Judd Crocker’s writer, had already transferred a full copy of the orders into the captain’s private ledger, and now he, in company with the CO; the XO; Lt. Shawn Pearson, the Navigation Officer; Cy Rothstein; and Rich Thompson were the only personnel privy to the hair-raising nature of their mission. It was not classified as “Black,” because that involved attack, possibly combat. But this was equally secret, equally highly classified, equally dangerous.

  Down in the engineering area, outside the reactor room, Lt. Commander Schulz and Tony Fontana were busy, but still in the dark about the mission. Lt. Kyle Frank, the young sonar officer from New Hampshire, had not yet been briefed. Petty Officer Andy Cannizaro still thought they were going to Taiwan, but Master Chief Brad Stockton had been at it too long to make second guesses. He was seeing the CO later that morning, when he knew he would be informed.

  For one o’clock in the morning, the jetty was relatively crowded. The departure of a nuclear submarine is always something of an event in any major naval base, and Pearl was no exception. Many of the engineers and even some of their wives had come down to watch Seawolf go. The squadron commander was there, the duty officer, and the line handlers. There was no reason for tension, but there always was a tautness in the atmosphere as deep inside the ship the men finalized their entries in the next-of-kin list, which detailed every member of the ship’s company and whom the Navy should contact should the submarine fail to return. Nicole Crocker’s name, and the address of the house on Point Loma, was right at the top of that list. There was little information about Lt. Commander Clarke, certainly nothing about his blood relatives.

  At 0115, Captain Crocker came on the bridge, high above the dock. He was accompanied by the officer of the deck, Lt. Andy Warren, and the navigator, Pearson. All three men wore just summer shirts in the heat. The order to “Attend Bells” was issued at 0125, and a frisson of anticipation quivered through the ship. After all the months of preparation, those two words meant one thing: We’re going, right now.

  Linus Clarke ordered all lines cast off, and Andy Warren leaned into the intercom. “All back one third.” Deep inside the ship, the massive turbines began to roll. The giant propeller, churning in reverse, caused a soft wash to roll up over the stern as Seawolf came off the jetty, moving quietly backward in the wide Pearl Harbor seaway. Fifteen seconds later she was stopped in the water, and then Judd Crocker called out, “Ahead one third.” And his 9,000-ton nuclear boat moved forward over the opening few yards of her 4,600-mile journey to the forbidden waters of the Yellow Sea.

  The spectators beneath the dock lights waved as Seawolf stood down the moonlit seascape, running fair down the main southerly channel.

  “All ahead standard,” called Lieutenant Warren, and everyone felt the sonorous increase in speed. A glance behind showed a white wake developing behind the stern.

  “Course one-seven-five,” advised Shawn Pearson.

  And Seawolf slid into her surface rhythm, the flat water cascading up over her bow and parting at the great upward curve of the sail, to form the two strange vortexes of swirling water on either side, behind the bridge, a condition common to all big underwater nuclear boats.

  “We should hold this southerly course for three more miles after we fetch the harbor light, sir,” said the navigator. “Then we turn to the west, course two-seven-zero, for several thousand miles.”

  Judd Crocker smiled in the dark and said quietly, “Thank you, Shawn.” Adding, “Around twenty-five miles on the surface?”

  “Yessir. We got one hundred and twenty feet right after the light on Barbers Point off to starboard. But twenty miles after that it goes real deep. In this flat sea, I thought we may as well stay on the surface.”

  “You might find it’s not so flat after Barbers Point, Lieutenant.”

  “I suppose so, sir. But I’m not trying to interfere. I’m basically here to protect the innocent.”

  Judd Crocker chuckled. He liked his young navigator, but on this ship he thought Shawn might be a bit short of customers to protect.

  Seawolf eventually went deep in the area Pearson had suggested, and within 15 miles she had 12,000 feet of water beneath her keel. The CO increased her speed to 30 knots and she ran smoothly 800 feet below the surface, aiming at the steep undersea mountains of the Marcus-Necker Ridge, and then on toward the sloping Mid-Pacific Mountains, which rise up to bisect the Tropic of Cancer.

  At this speed Seawolf would make 700 miles a day, which would put her at the gateway to the Yellow Sea in a little under a week. God knew how long it would take to locate her quarry.

  The crew were, almost to a man, unaware of their destination. On a mission such as this it was strictly a need-to-know situation. And Tony Fontana had come around to Brad Stockton’s way of thinking that this ship would turn southwest in the near future and run south of the old East Indies, avoiding the busy, shallow Strait of Malacca, and then run north up to the Arabian Gulf.

  But the general consensus was that they were headed to a point somewhere on the far eastern seaboard of the continent of Asia, either China or Russia. Taiwan was the favorite, because most of the men knew there was constant trouble out there. But no one had written off the 1,500-mile-long stretch of the Kamchatka Peninsula because of the big Russian naval base on the edge of those freezing, lonely waters. One thing they all knew: Seawolf was headed due west right now. No arguments there.

  But the mere fact that they had not been told their destination suggested that this was no ordinary mission. Seawolf was heading into very serious waters, of that there was no doubt.

  1930. Sunday, June 18.

  Home of Kathy O’Brien.

  Chevy Chase, Maryland.

  Admiral Arnold Morgan was lighting the barbecue grill. He was using one of those “chimneys” that require only lighted paper to start the charcoal burning. However, he had used four times more paper than was required, and he had used Match Light charcoal, which did not even require any paper. The result was a kind of controlled blaze upon which Dante himself might have roasted a few sausages.

  Inferno was the word, and the admiral gazed at it with some satisfaction. “Get some goddamned power in there, right?” he told Kathy’s Labrador. “Get a little real heat going. You wanna cook lamb, you need power, right?”

  Kathy, accustomed to Arnold’s unique view of how to light a barbecue, emerged from the house carrying a large platter on which was placed a large, marinated butterflied lamb, cut from an entire leg bone. She took one look at the fire and cast her eyes heavenward. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this is not a butterflied brontosaurus,” she said. “Just a regular leg of lamb, which requires nice hot gray coals, under the lid for about an hour. It does not require flames three feet high, nor will it taste any better for having been roasted in your personal version of Hiroshima.”

  “I’m getting there,” he muttered, grinning. “Just gotta let the heat subside a little.”

  “Oh, it should be just about perfect sometime on Tuesday evening. How about a drink while we wait?”

  The admiral took the heavy plate from her and placed it on a small red table next to the inferno-grill. Then he placed his arm around her shoulder and told her he loved her as he did every evening before dinner. Then he asked her to marry him, and she said no, and he headed for the fridge to retrieve a bottle of her favorite 1997 Meursault and poured two glasses.

  It was a ritual that amused them both, an affirmation that she would not become the third Mrs. Arnold Morgan until he retired from the White House, on the basis that she had no intention of sitting at home alone in Chevy Chase while he ran half the world.

  The sun was setting now, somewhere out behind the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. And they sat outside watching the dying flame
s—of the sun, not the grill—in the clear light blue of the evening sky.

  The cool, pale gold taste of the perfect dry wine from the slopes of Burgundy relaxed them both, and they discussed the possibility of taking a break together, perhaps to go back to Europe and visit their old friend Admiral Sir Iain MacLean in Scotland.

  But Kathy did not hold out much hope for that. “You’re very preoccupied this past couple of weeks,” she said. “Is it China?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “They’re a goddamned PITA.”

  “A what?”

  “A PITA.”

  “What’s that? You always have initials for everything…SUBLANT, SUBPAC, SPECWARCOM…what’s a PITA?”

  “Pain in the ass, stupid,” he said.

  Kathy’s laughter took her unawares, and she only just managed not to blow Meursault down her nose. When she recovered her poise, she said, “You are not only crude to the point of absurdity, but I feel like I’m in love with Mao Zedong. China this, China that…it’s about a million miles away. Who cares?”

  “My publishers, for a start. They’re just beginning to prepare The Thoughts of Chairman Arnold.”

  Kathy shook her head, smiling at the ex-submarine commander to whom she had lost her heart. She had loved him since the first time she ever saw him, three years earlier; ever since that first day he had come growling into the office as the President’s National Security Adviser and told her to “get Rankov on the line and tell him he was, is, and always will be a sonofabitch. A lying sonofabitch at that.”

  Stunned by the instruction, she had inquired lamely, “Who’s Rankov?”

  “Head of the Russian Navy. He’s in the Kremlin. Oughta be in a salt mine.”

  Amazed that the admiral still had not looked up from his papers, she had said, “But, sir, I can’t just call him in his office and call him a sonofabitch.”

  “A lying sonofabitch.”

  “Sorry, sir. I actually meant a lying sonofabitch.”

  Then Admiral Morgan had looked up, a faint smile on his craggy, hard face. “Oh, okay, if your goddamned nerve’s gone before I’ve been here ten minutes, I’m sure as hell gonna have to whip you into shape. How about a cup of coffee, but get the Kremlin on the line first, willya? Ask for Admiral Vitaly Rankov. I’ll talk to him.”

  Kathy had retired to order the Admiral’s coffee, and when she returned, she heard him yell, “RANKOV, you bastard, YOU ARE A LYING SONOFABITCH.”

  She did not, of course, hear the great roar of laughter from Arnold’s old friend and sparring partner in the Russian Navy, and she could only stand there in astonishment. Kathy O’Brien had worked in the White House for several years, but never had she encountered a man such as this. She’d worked for confident men before. But not this confident.

  The relationship between the twice-divorced admiral and the spectacularly beautiful private secretary had taken months to develop, mainly because it was beyond Arnold’s imagination that any woman this pretty, this smart, with her own private money, could possibly have any interest in him.

  In the end it was Kathy who made the running and invited him to dinner. Since that evening they had been inseparable, and everyone in the White House knew it, though no one ever mentioned it, mainly from fear of the admiral.

  The President himself was very aware of the romance, and equally aware that the future Mrs. Arnold Morgan would not marry him until he retired. He had asked her personally about it once, and she told him flatly, “His other two marriages failed because he happens to be wedded to the United States of America. His other two wives did not, I believe, understand how important he is. All they knew was that he was in the office and not at home. I’m different. I know why he’s in the office. But I’m not waiting at home for him. I’ll marry him when he retires.”

  Which was why they lived almost all the time at Kathy’s home in Chevy Chase, and found a way to have dinner together every night. And with every passing week, Kathy O’Brien loved him more, not so much for his power to terrorize global military leaders, but for his intellect, his knowledge, and always just below the surface, his humor.

  Kathy O’Brien understood that even in his snarling, sarcastic White House mode, Arnold Morgan was amusing himself mightily, toying with the opposition, dazzling even himself with his brilliant nastiness.

  Just then the phone rang, and Kathy, looking comfortable, said, “You better get it, darling. That’s your secure line.”

  The admiral strode to the phone, and the voice at the end was deep and strident.

  “Hey, Arnie. Joe. Real short. They’re on their way, cleared Pearl early this morning, their time.”

  “Thanks, Joe. I’m grateful. Wish ’em well from me if you get a chance.”

  “I’m afraid they’re gonna need all the good wishes we can get to ’em. That’s a dangerous spot they’re headed to.”

  “I know it. But they’re in a hell of a ship…just so long as they don’t get caught in shallow water. Chinese pricks.”

  2

  2100. Monday, June 19.

  USS Seawolf.

  Judd Crocker was frowning. And when he frowned, he resembled the Pirate King. His looks were classic Black Irish, the dark Mediterranean coloring of the Spaniard, descended, as he was, from one of the hundreds of Spanish sailors who washed up on Ireland’s shores after the defeated Armada ran into a storm in 1588. You would not, however, have mistaken him for a matador. More likely the bull.

  He was an enormously powerful man. In Newport, you’d take him for a winch-grinder on a major racing yacht, in Canada you’d wonder why he wasn’t wearing a checkered shirt and swinging a double-bladed ax, and outside Madison Square Garden or Shea Stadium, someone would have offered him a contract.

  Judd was a major presence in a submarine. He seemed all business, but he was quick with his lopsided smile, and quicker with a droll, often teasing remark. Some might think him sardonic, but that would be an exaggeration. It was just that he was extremely thoughtful, and tended to be a couple of jumps ahead of the opposition.

  Right now, bent frowning over a big white, blue and yellow chart of the northern half of the Yellow Sea, he was trying to stay a couple of jumps ahead of the Chinese. But it was not proving easy. Sitting alone in his cabin, poring over the ocean depths of a distant sea in which he had never sailed, he was exercising his mind fully.

  And the air in the little room was filled with mumbled phrases like, “Damn, can’t go in there…too shallow…that’s not a sea, it’s a frigging mud flat…beats the hell out of me why they’d even want submarine bases up there…Christ, there’s nowhere within five hundred miles of the shipyards where you could even dive without hitting the bottom…beats the hell out of me…no one even knows whether he’ll run down the eastern shore or the western shore…least of all me.”

  The subject was China’s new Xia-class submarine, the Type 094, 6,500-ton, superimproved version of old Number 406, the Great White Elephant of the Chinese fleet, so named because she was essentially slow and tired (20 knots flat-out, running downhill); carried largely useless missiles that mostly failed to work; was as noisy as a freight train; and spent much of her life in dry dock. The 406 made the Americans and the Brits laugh at the mere thought of her, the joke being that she was so noisy it wasn’t worth her while going underwater anyway.

  But that was before Mr. Lee and his cohorts stole all the new technology, from California and New Mexico, before President Clinton held out the red carpet for China to learn anything she damn pleased, to the obvious fury of the Joint Chiefs, not to mention a whole generation of U.S. Navy admirals.

  Now, according to the Chinese, the new Xia was designed to be fast and silent, her ICBMs would work, and they would have a significantly longer range than the old ones. She also carried the very latest sonar. Would the U.S. really trade Taiwan for Los Angeles?

  More important, so far as Judd was concerned, the new Xia was ready to begin her trials. The American satellites had been watching her for months, nearing comple
tion up in the remote Huludao Yards, way up the Yellow Sea on the desolate eastern shore of Liaodong Bay. The Xia was the reason Seawolf had made the journey to Pearl Harbor in the first place. And last Saturday afternoon through its probing lens, the satellite had spotted the telltale infrared “paint,” the sign of heat inside the submarine. The Chinese had begun to take Xia’s reactor critical, which explained the Americans’ hurry, leaving in the middle of the night.

  So far only Captain Crocker was privy to all of the information, and every 12 hours he was ordering Seawolf to periscope depth, to suck a fast message off the satellite, telling him whether the Xia was still testing her systems moored alongside in Huludao or whether she was at last heading south, into deep waters.

  Right now, with Judd Crocker and his team 1,300 miles out from Pearl, the Xia was still at her jetty, and Judd fervently hoped she would stay there until he had covered 3,000 more miles to reach the eastern waters of the Yellow Sea, where he hoped to pick her up as she steamed south, probably on the surface. The rest was going to be truly hazardous.