So engrossed was the Captain with his department chiefs reports into the their subordinates abilities and how these could be improved upon even more, that it took a call from the control room to bring him back to the here and now.
It was fifteen minutes before the ordered time of attack when he entered the control room and he noticed straightaway that there were several off watch personnel present.
“Gent’s.” he said in a low voice.
“This is the control room of one of Her Majesty’s warships, not the terraces of a football stadium and as we are now going to quietly assume action stations you need to be elsewhere, clear?”
He first checked the time, ten minutes to go, and then the plot, which showed the Chinese boomer still half encircled by themselves and the three US submarines. His Number One had the watch and all was as it should be.
“Captain, sir?” he turned in the direction of the voice, towards the sonar department where one of the operators was sat with a slight frown.
“Yes, what is it?”
The operator had apparently heard something because he did not immediately reply, he was still facing his captain but his eyes were focussed elsewhere. After a moment the blank expression disappeared and the young man spoke about what had occurred, and why that concerned him.
“Sir, mechanical noises roughly on a bearing of Two Nine Nine.” The captain knew without looking back at the plot that the USS Santa Fe, the designated shooter for the imminent attack lay in that direction, but the operator was not finished. “They are very faint but…but a little louder than I would expec…….” Some further faint noise interrupted him momentarily but he had no difficulty in identifying it.
“Bow doors opening, sir”
There was still six minutes to go, and the captain was about to query what he had just been told but a look of alarm appeared on the sonar operator’s face and was then voiced in his report.
“TorpedoTorpedoTorpedo….two…three, now four torpedoes in the water astern of the Santa Fe, captain!”
Another operator spoke up.
“Santa Fe launching noisemakers and increasing speed sir………the boomers heard it, she’s spooling up too, captain!”
Of course she damn well heard it, the captain though bitterly, they’d have to be under sedation to miss it.
“Captain?” his First Lieutenant had an expression on his face that clearly read ‘What the fuck just happened?’
“It’s the mysteriously absent Chuntian, Number One, she is missing no longer.”
If the captain had to theorise then it would be that she had been off station on some mission of importance and on her way back she must have rumbled the NATO vessels, flooded her tubes out of earshot and then crept back in to make her attack. There was no way that she could know what the flotilla of western submarines had intended on doing in just a few scant minutes, but as a spoiling attack the Chinese captain couldn’t have chosen a better moment even if he’d planned it.
The sonar operators were feeding information to the control room, tracking the torpedoes and the other vessels, “Captain, the first two torpedoes are closing rapidly on the Santa Fe and the other two have acquired the USS Columbia.”
“The first weapons have begun rapid pinging and are accelerating for the Santa Fe…two more weapons launched captain, these have just turned to the north, they’re steering for the Tucson sir, they knew where she was too.”
The Chuntian had to have made her approach from the northwest, the captain mused to himself, because she must surely have heard Hood from any other direction. Columbia had been between the British and Chinese attack submarines, masking them from one another.
Tucson turned away from the approaching weapons and her blade count rose considerably whilst closer to home the Santa Fe released another noisemaker and began a radical turn to starboard but only one of the Chinese torpedoes went for it. The other ignored the newly activated counter measure and although it was travelling too fast to match the US submarines turn it did not matter. The weapons proximity fuse triggered at twelve feet from the vessels stern casing, plates buckled inwards and the seams between them parted, flooding the submarines engine compartment in just seven seconds. Her captain ordered crash surface but before air could be pumped into the ballast tanks the second weapon having swept through the bubble cloud and reacquired, struck the base of the sail and exploded.
Hood’s captain looked at the control room clock and noted bitterly that the second hand was only just sweeping around in its first full circle since his sonar department had alerted him. Just sixty-one seconds ago the one hundred forty strong crew of Santa Fe had been alive and as blissfully oblivious to their peril as everyone else on the western vessels.
The board told him that Columbia was between themselves and the Chuntian, so the Hood could not fire without the risk of hitting the American Los Angeles class vessel unless one of two things happened, they manoeuvred into a position where a shot would not endanger the friendly vessel, or…
The second option occurred even as the captain was thinking it.
“Control Room, sonar…explosion on the Columbia’s bearing…sound of bulkheads buckling and general breaking up noises.”
The captain felt a void open in the pit of his stomach. Another vessel and her crew gone, just like that!
“Sonar…what is the Xia doing? I want you to keep on her because if you lose her we are up the proverbial without a paddle, clear?”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Weapons…do you have a solution on the Xia?”
His weapons officer had been working on a firing solution on the newly arrived PLAN attack submarine and the captain’s question took him unawares. The captain read that on his face. “As soon as you have a solution on Chuntian launch two Spearfish at five second intervals. That should keep those Chinese on their toes and buy the Tucson a little breathing space but cut the wires once number two is away.” He explained.
“Our friends are on their own for the time being but that boomer cannot be allowed to slip away…we may have a slim advantage in that neither PLAN vessel is apparently aware we are here, that of course will change once we launch though.”
“Captain, sonar…aspect change on Xia, sir?”
The weapons officer got busy and the captain turned his attention back to the sonar department, looking at his watch as he did so, barely a minute had passed since the Chuntian had appeared so the only surprising thing about the Xia’s reaction was that it hadn’t happened several vital seconds before.
“Go, sonar?”
“Xia still increasing turns, now at twelve knots and rising…vessel coming around to starboard…now heading zero seven seven, sir.”
The Chinese ballistic missile submarine was turning across the Hood’s bow, a clear confirmation that the Boomer was unaware of them but then the hull rang as the Xia’s sonar went active, sending out several pounding beats of sound to check who else was in the neighbourhood.