She didn’t care. She was running north in low visibility conditions, maneuvering to avoid surface traffic she encountered, a one-woman bridge watch. Chief Tobin kept the engines running, and on the GCCS display, she saw they would encounter the guided-missile destroyer USS Koelsch sometime after dawn.
Death surrounded her. Williams and the Quartermasters had moved the dead bodies — including the body of Captain Thompson — onto the bridge wings. It was all they could do at the moment. Word came up from below: Isabel’s roommate and fellow ensign, Abby, was dead with the others in Combat. To her right, she noticed a faint horizon had begun to form. At the same moment, she heard footsteps on the ladder behind her.
“Ma’am,” Seaman Williams said as he entered the bridge. “Here’s a can of Coke for you. I washed it in hot water from the galley. Chief Tobin and the guys in engineering drank one — they’re okay.”
Isabel whispered thanks and took the can. Yesterday morning she would have refused anything not labeled diet, but now it didn’t seem to matter — and she was starving. She popped open and guzzled half of it, feeling a rivulet of cold fluid run down her neck.
The bridge GCCS display showed Koelsch some 50 miles north of them and on a rendezvous course. She hoped it had medical personnel aboard. On the horizon she saw a cluster of lights — a merchant ship — and determined the ship’s aspect by the two masthead lights and one green running light. Her baseline nautical knowledge, learned from midshipman days, told her it would be a right-to-right passing, and she turned five degrees left to increase the lateral separation. The strange and annoying ship next to them would have to adjust. As the eastern sky turned gray, she could now see the ship was military and painted white. Soon she could make out COAST GUARD with what looked like Chinese symbols on the hull. She had been correct; the vessel was Chinese.
As the merchant passed down her starboard side, she saw twinkling aircraft lights ahead, low on the horizon and growing larger. More Chinese? Alone again on the bridge, she had no one to ask, no one, as Conrad had said, to turn to in an hour of danger. At the age of 23, Ensign Isabel Manning was the de facto Commanding Officer of USS Cape Esperance.
The helicopter continued toward her and passed down the cruiser’s starboard side. Isabel recognized the familiar shape of a U.S. Navy MH-60 Romeo as the aircraft slowed and turned toward Cape Esperance as if it were going to land. A spotlight from the Chinese ship next to them shone on the helicopter as it approached, an action Isabel determined to be hostile as it likely distracted the pilots as they attempted a twilight landing on the cruiser’s swaying deck. She watched the Romeo from the starboard bridge wing, standing next to two dead seamen laid out on the deck. She yelled up to one of the sailors on the signal bridge.
“Petty Officer Sitts, shine a spotlight on the bridge of that Chinese ship next to us. Hold it on their bridge until I tell you to stop.” Frickin’ bastards, she thought to herself.
The Quartermaster acknowledged the order, and within seconds a beam of white light blazed into the bridge of the Chinese cutter, a signal for all that Cape Esperance still had fight in her.
The helicopter approached and landed on the cruiser’s tiny deck. Minutes later, she heard more footsteps coming up the ladder into the bridge. Two figures clad in chem/bio gear emerged, and in the low light she saw lieutenant bars on the USS Koelsch ball cap of one of the men. “Captain Thompson?” he called out.
“He’s dead sir,” Isabel answered. “I’m Ensign Manning, and I have the conn.”
The lieutenant walked over. “I’m Lieutenant Wilkes, Chief Engineer aboard USS Koelsch. You doing okay?”
Isabel trembled as the words formed in her mouth. “Yes, sir. Do you have a doctor with you?”
“We have our Corpsman, two Gas Turbine techs, and an Operations Specialist. We’re going to help you… I’ll take the conn, if that’s okay with you, Captain. I relieve you, ma’am.”
Isabel’s lip quivered as hours of pent-up emotions and stress cascaded out of her. “I stand relieved,” she croaked as she raised her hand to salute and stepped toward the aft bulkhead. Dazed after her long ordeal, she needed to decompress and needed not to be in charge. She needed sleep. Her eyes stared ahead through the bridge windows toward the bow, to a point 1,000 yards ahead of the ship, to nothing.
Lieutenant Wilkes observed Isabel as she stood motionless on the bridge and stepped toward her. “Why don’t you go below?” he suggested in a quiet murmur. Isabel shook her head and whispered, “No, thank you, sir. I’m good. Just need to relax.” Isabel had no desire to go below, not now, and maybe not ever.
Ensign Isabel Manning stood against the bulkhead behind Captain Thompson’s empty bridge chair and, without making a sound, cried warm tears. During the next thirty minutes, as the eastern sky illuminated more of the pilothouse, the sun burned through the overcast and brought an end to the longest night of her life.
With the increased visibility of daylight and the added help from his shipmates, Daniels was able to accelerate Cape Esperance ahead. After an hour of steaming, he saw his ship Koelsch coming down from the north. Next to him, the Chinese cutter “escorted” the Americans the whole way. Wilkes held a steady course as Koelsch made a skillful rendezvous turn to match course and speed on the cruiser’s starboard side as her QMs hailed the Chinese ship with flashing light. Channel 16 crackled as Koelsch called the cutter on ship-to-ship… with no response. Container ship traffic ahead of them called for a small turn to the left, but the Chinese had moved in closer to crowd the Americans and prevent the maneuver.
Wilkes watched Koelsch train its forward five-inch gun mount left and at zero elevation — almost right at him! “Is he going to do what I think he’s going to do?” he said out loud, more to himself than to the others on the bridge. Without warning, the gun fired and a sharp crack rocked the bridge as a single round blurred past them and toward the cutter. It was so close Wilkes saw it in flight as it crossed from right-to-left below bridge level. Two seconds later a splash erupted 500 yards off the Chinese ship’s port bow — a warning to back off. In less than a minute, the cutter slowed and changed course away, a clear acknowledgment of the American signal and resolve.
On the cutter, the captain radioed his headquarters that the Americans had opened fire on them and they had to withdraw. Headquarters then reported to Beijing that the two hostile American warships had fired on the People’s cutter, an act of war.
Meanwhile, USS John Adams, with only half her crew and “buttoned-up” to defend from a chemical attack, continued to speed east and away from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. She managed to outrun any pursuing vessels but was overflown by helicopters and Y-8 patrol aircraft throughout the night. The carrier also passed numerous fishing boats and merchant ships, all of which had radios to report her movements. Jay Paganelli hadn’t slept, but he welcomed the dawn as he sat in his bridge chair that overlooked the flight deck. He still had eight hours to go to get past the first island chain south of Taiwan and into what he considered safer waters. From there, it was still two days steaming to Yokosuka, or three to Guam, if that’s where Seventh Fleet wanted him.