Attack Of The Seawolf

by Michael Dimercurio

  It was separated from the reactor compartment by a thick-shielded steel bulkhead with only one door in the middle level. So even though he came from the forward escape trunk, he was now in the furthest aft portion of this part of the sub. The port end of the room led to the fan room, the starboard to the radio room. A forward door led to control. A ladder way dropped to the lower decks.

  Morris stepped away from the trunk to allow the other men of the second platoon to follow him, while he crouched down, his weapon seeking guards who could come from the radio room door, the fan room, or forward. For a moment he thought back to Norfolk Naval Air Station, where Admiral Donchez had given him the full picture of the Go Hai Bay operation and assured him that he and his men could liberate the Tamp a.

  Now he wasn’t so sure. Something inevitably went wrong with every operation—nothing was ever all right. What was it this time? The screw up with the cruise missiles? Something else waiting to mess them up? Now that his men’s footsteps were coming from the escape trunk the time for worrying was over.

  As the last man entered, Morris gave the order to go. The second platoon assignments paired platoon leader Lieutenant “Pig” Wilson with platoon chief “Python” Harris. They would act as a two-man team and head for the torpedo room on the forward end of the lower level. A misdirected bullet or ricochet could detonate a torpedo’s self-oxidizing fuel or explode a warhead, and if that was to be the flaw in the operation it would be a fatal one for everybody aboard.

  “Cowpie” Clites and “Droopy” Games were also to go to the lower level and take the aft end including the auxiliary machinery room, then cover Pig and Python.

  “Mad Dog” Martin and “Red Meat” Reynolds would take the critical middle level, critical because the bulk of the guards were expected there, as were the hostages, since the middle level contained the crew spaces. That left Morris paired with “Bony” Robbins to take the upper level, including the radio room, navigation space, the control room, sonar and the captain’s and XO’s staterooms. The assault would have to be surgical, to avoid damaging equipment. Only a few physical systems could take a bullet and survive. A bullet hole in a sonar equipment

  cabinet would mean they would be deaf on the way out. A bullet hole in a periscope optics module would make them blind.

  After checking the radio room and the fan room, Jack Morris and Bony Robbins advanced to the door to the control room. Morris peered in through a small round red-glassed window, and seeing no one, kicked the door open.

  At that moment the Chinese guards in the control room opened up, all ten AK-47s bursting into violent life at once, the blast of the Chinese bullets shattering the door and cutting it to ribbons.

  Chief Baron von Brandt raised his head after the helicopter rotor noises subsided. The fly over had been a reconnaissance, at least on the first pass. As the choppers flew back to the east a half-mile away, von Brandt sighted his sniper scope on the man who seemed to be in command of the P.L.A troops on the pier. No head shots. Baron thought, only hearts. He put the commander’s upper left chest in the crosshairs, exhaled slowly and steadily and slowly squeezed the trigger, hoping to make the shot a surprise even to himself, to keep him from jerking the rifle. The unit barely recoiled as it sent the heavy grain HydraShok bullet toward the commander at thirty-eight hundred feet per second.

  The bullet spun out of the barrel, dropping slightly as gravity dragged it down toward the pier and the water of the slip. After a total flight time of twenty eight milliseconds, the bullet penetrated the fabric of the man’s tunic two inches from the central seam. The fabric vaporized as the round contacted it, its kinetic energy at the tip the equivalent of an acetylene torch.

  The skin below the fabric yielded next, then the thin layer of fatty tissue before the muscle that lined the chest. The bullet entered a cavity between two ribs and proceeded on through the lung, blowing apart several airways, then on to the outer layer of the man’s heart, where it severed two coronary arteries before entering and destroying the right ventricle.

  The damage from the bullet by this time would have been enough to kill the P.L.A commander, but the HydraShok round was specially designed to resonate within the cavity of the man’s abdomen, setting up a shock wave in his chest area, the pulsations causing what ballistics scientists called hydraulic shock. The effect of the shock wave was the immediate traumatization of the entire abdominal cavity, shutting down every organ, shorting out every nerve, cracking several ribs and vertebrae, bursting veins and arteries. The effect of the nerve-shorting trauma was an instantaneous overload of the brain stem receiving the electrical impulses from the spinal cord.

  As life was being extinguished, the bullet, now wobbling and misshapen, passed out of the body, flew out over the north end of the pier and splashed into the water of the slip. As it sank, steam boiled from it for just an instant, its surface temperature elevated from the friction of the flight. On the pier the P.L.A commander’s face froze as he collapsed onto the oily concrete.

  He never knew what had hit him.

  By the time the P.L.A commander’s knees had begun to buckle, von Brandt had drawn a bead on the vice commander and fired, then targeted the lieutenants on the pier. As their officers died, the troops hit the concrete.

  The only problem now, von Brandt thought, was that there was no antidote to the tanks. They hadn’t planned on using LAW rockets on this OP—who could expect tanks on a warship raid? Now it looked like they were going to pay for that mistake. On the pier, two of the tanks rotated their turrets, their guns aiming at the Tampa’s sail. Von Brandt ducked back into the cockpit, not sure how to break the news to Lennox that they had only seconds until the tank fired.

  The sound of the helicopter rotors rose into a crescendo as the two Dauphin choppers returned, swooping in from the northeast, their flanks bristling with large-bore guns. The bullets from their guns blasted across the top of the sail, sparks flying from the impact of the heavy bullets against the high-tensile steel.

  Once the helicopters flew by, one of the tanks on the pier opened up, the sound from its gun echoing across the calm water of the slip, a whoosh marking the flight of its projectile as the round flew overhead and dropped down into the water, the first explosion rocking the submarine.

  Von Brandt shouted into his lip mike: “Stinky? If you’re up talk to me. We’ve got trouble up here—”

  “BARON, THIS IS STINKY. WE’VE GOT PROPULSION—GIVE

  US AN ENGINE ORDER.”

  “Go,” von Brandt yelled at Lennox.

  “Get us the hell out of here!”

  Lennox lifted his head up over the starboard aft lip of the sail, looking for the position of the Jianghu fast frigate, which was nowhere in sight. Only the gentle waves in the slip testified to its rapid departure. Off in the smoke-filled distance to the south, toward the supertanker pier, Lennox thought he saw the superstructure of the frigate. It would be going after the Seawolf, he thought.

  As Lennox began to speak the second round was fired from a tank on the pier, this shot grazing the forward lip of the sail, its explosive force dissipating over the grave of the neighboring Luda but the force still enough to smash Lennox and von Brandt into the deck.

  “All back full,” Lennox shouted.

  “ROGER, ALL BACK FULL,” his earpiece replied.

  Lennox waited, hoping the ship would move, the agonizing seconds ticking off as the first tank adjusted the aim of its gun at the sail, the third shot guaranteed not to miss. Lennox thought he could hear helicopter rotors again, but the sound no longer bothered him-the ship was moving, it was really moving. The pier and the burned-out hulls of the destroyers were fading forward of them, the open water of the bay approaching from aft. For a moment he couldn’t tell whether the shout of exultation he heard was his or Baron von Brandt’s.

  The tank on the pier, now almost a ship length away, fired and missed, its aim now off, the Tampa’s motion confusing the turret operator. Lennox popped his head up to watch the end of t
he pier sail by, the wake of the ship’s motion white and glowing from phosphorescence in the water of the slip, the warm salty breeze over the sail dissipating the smells of the gunfire.

  The sail neared the end of the pier, the tanks and troops now far away.

  “Right full rudder. I say again, right full rudder.”

  The helicopters zoomed in low for another pass, their bullets strafing the sail. Lennox ducked as the bullets whizzed by, amazed that again he’d survived a strafing run. For the first time in years he felt totally alive. Coming this close to death enhanced the sense of life. There was something about the approach to death, especially the evasion of it, that was unique.

  Lennox waved his fist in the air at the troops on the pier and at the receding silhouettes of the choppers.

  He even shouted: “You missed me, now you can kiss me.” He looked over at von Brandt, to share the moment, when he noticed that Baron wasn’t moving, and that a dark stain was spreading over his face. Lennox’s balloon was instantly deflated.

  CHAPTER 21

  SUNDAY, 12 MAY

  1905 GREENWICH MEAN TIME

  go had bay, XlNGANG harbor USS tampa 0305 beijing time

  Jack Morris looked over at Bony Robbins, both men’s faces pressed down on the cool tile of the deck aft of the control room. Gunfire from the control room had suddenly stopped. Every weapon had exhausted its clip of ammunition at the same time. Stupid, Morris thought, to shoot at shadows and use a whole clip at once. He gave Robbins a shrug as he reached for a stun grenade, pulled the arming pin with his index finger and rolled it into the control room. The stun grenade sounded, and soon after, the panicked coughing of a room full of Chinese guards.

  Morris grabbed a second grenade and tossed it in after the first one. As it went off he heard the sound of weapons clattering to the deck. He reached into his vest’s side pocket and pulled out swimming goggles and a spongy filter mask similar to a surgeon’s except that it had no straps and was moist—a wet filter. He slipped the mask under his balaclava hood and strapped on the goggles over his eyes. A glance at Bony confirmed that his teammate was similarly equipped. Morris gave the order to go in.

  He rose up slightly and ran into the room, cutting to the right. The place was completely filled with the smoke of the stun grenade, traces of it leaking through the gaskets of Morris’s goggles and making his eyes water. Actually the grenade was a simple smoke bomb surrounded by the stun solution, which was nothing but the juices of pepper, including jalap enos the pepper juices had the effect of causing mucous membranes to water and swell. An exploding stun grenade within twenty feet of a man’s face would literally shut his eyes with a painful watering, cause his nose to run and nearly close off his throat. The gunmen would be on the deck, grabbing their throats, gasping for breath, blinded. The grenade was far more effective than tear gas, though within some thirty minutes a victim would be normal. The major problem was keeping the mucous membranes of the attackers from suffering the same effects as the targets.

  Morris heard the spasms of men coughing as he ran forward along the attack center row of consoles. He could make out the shapes of the enemy on the deck, still suffering from the stun grenades. Morris aimed his machine gun, careful that his bullets would not hit equipment or ricochet into consoles. A scene like this would never play well in Hollywood, he thought—too cold-blooded. The movies would show the commandos roping the Chinese together as prisoners. Bullshit, he thought as he fired. This was real time, real life. A killing job. Them or us.

  The ten guards were dead. Morris ejected his clip and replaced it. He looked up at Robbins, who nodded back at him. They moved to the door on the forward bulkhead, on the centerline, which led to the captain’s and XO’s staterooms, the sonar display room and forward to the weapons-shipping hatch and the sonar equipment space. The two crouched on either side of the door. As Morris was about to kick the door open, a rumbling sound began, followed by a deep growl. The room’s smoke vanished in a blast of cool, clean air. The nukes back aft must have gotten the reactor restarted, he decided. He kicked the forward door open, and saw that down the passageway the captain’s stateroom door was opening. He aimed his weapon at the doorjamb, and as the Chinese

  officer came out of the door he prepared to fire—when he saw something that stopped him.

  “Hold it,” he whispered into his lip mike to Bony.

  The P.L.A officer was holding a hostage, one of the ship’s officers, and had an automatic pistol up against his hostage’s head. By the look on the hostage’s face he was in bad shape, perhaps unconscious.

  “I’m holding the ship’s captain,” the P.L.A officer said in an odd accent, the lilting sound of it partly Chinese, partly aristocratic British.

  “Withdraw or I will be forced to kill him.”

  “Go for it,” Morris said.

  “You realize you’ll never make it to—” And interrupted himself by opening fire.

  He had been through hundreds of training scenarios like this one, and had connected with the terrorist ninety-eight percent of the time. He would have been dead-on with this shot too, if the ship had not unexpectedly lurched just as he was firing. The good news was that the Tampa was obviously underway, accelerating backward away from the P.L.A pier, the mission to free the ship now into its second phase.

  The bad news was that Jack Morris, inadvertently, had just hit the hostage.

  USS seawolf

  The sound of a faint rumbling noise could be heard through the hull of the control room. Pacino looked up at the sonar monitor sele>.i.ed to the hull array and noted the noise streaks on the screen.

  “Sonar, Captain,” he said into his boom microphone, “what’ya got?”

  “Conn, Sonar,” Chief Jeb drawled, “explosions bearing three four eight, bearing to P.L.A piers. Sounds like secondary detonations after the two main explosions.

  Tough to tell.”

  Pacino raised his voice to the watch standers in the room: “Lookaround

  number-two scope.” The Diving n iriicituci Lfiincrvunv

  Officer reported their depth at seventy-nine feet, speed zero knots.

  The periscope seemed to take a full minute to climb out of the well. Impatiently Pacino crouched, snapping the grips down as soon as the optic module came up at the deck level, putting his eye on the eyepiece before the unit rose to knee level.

  The view was black, the scope lens only breaking the oily water of the bay as the optic module thumped into the stops at the overhead. Pacino had moved the ship two thousand yards down the channel to the southeast of the supertanker-piers, then turning so his bow faced the action at Xingang, hoping to be positioned to get a better view of the P.L.A piers than he had had of the tanker-pier point. But when the lens cleared Pacino saw nothing but orange-and-white flames, the massive balls of fire sent up by the impact of the Javelin explosions. As he watched, a secondary explosion flared from the P.L.A piers, this fireball’s diameter a ship length wide, the glow from it making the scene seem lit by the sun at midday. Pacino could only hear one thought in his head: I sure hope that’s not your ship I see burning, Sean.

  “Down scope,” Pacino called reluctantly.

  Now that his window to the outside world was again shut, Pacino paced the periscope platform, frustrated.

  For the moment the operation was out of his hands.

  He had to trust that the SEALs could pull this off.

  But what about the Javelins? Had the SEALs realized what was happening in time? Or had the explosions fried them as they had the ships at the pier? And what if the missiles had ripped into the Tampa? What if the detonations had killed the SEALs in the water, or set off their contact charges while they were still diving beneath the hulls of the destroyers? And what if the Chinese were now sending warships to kill the Seawolf, now that her position was compromised from the Javelin launches? There was no way of knowing, short of more periscope exposure, which would imperil the crew of Seawolf.

  He itched to get the Seawol
f into action, a chance to do something to save his friend, something other than pace the conn in suspension—suddenly, his headset crackled.

  “Conn, Sonar, we have a diesel engine startup bearing three five two. Bearing correlates to the pier position of Target Four, Jianghu Type II fast frigate.

  Captain, we now have twin screw noises at high RPM.

  I’d guess Target Four is getting underway to come see us.”

  Pacino didn’t acknowledge Chief Jeb. At his last words Pacino had already called out look around number-two scope” and raised the periscope. As the lens broke the surface he saw the Jianghu frigate backing into the bay from the pier, the wake at her stern foaming up as she reversed her screws. The bow of the vessel turned toward him, the bow wave building up as the ship accelerated, the tall central mast waving flags lit by a spotlight, the wash of the light illuminating the exhaust smoke pouring out of her stack. Pacino called out to the control room watch standers without removing his eye from the scope.

  “I’ve got Target Four, Jianghu-class frigate, underway and making high-speed turns directly toward us.

  Standby for observation … Bearing mark. Range mark, two divisions in low power, angle-on-the-bow zero. Down scope.”

  “We have a firing solution, Captain,” Firecontrol coordinator Keebes reported from the firecontrol consoles of the attack center.

  “Recommend shooting.”

  “Very well. Attention in the firecontrol team. We’re going to shoot two torpedoes down the bearing to Target Four, give him something for breakfast. Weps, set Mark 50 torpedoes in tubes three and four to surface homing mode, shallow transit, medium-to-low active snake search, wake homing mode on reacquisition, anti-self homing disabled, anti-circular run disabled.

  Report status.”

  “Sir, tubes three and four are lined up. Mark 50s,” Feyley reported