Garcia leaned back and looked at the huge screens mounted on the bulkheads in front of him. He lifted the coffee and sipped the acidic aged mixture. Whoever brought it to him knew to put only the powdered stuff in it, no sugar. The blue light hid the grayness of the day-old liquid within his cup. He set it back in the holder. Wonder the stuff hadn’t chewed a hole in his stomach.
He focused on the console to the right. Computer icons moved across the screen. Each represented either a Chinese submarine or the eight helicopters out to fight them. The center of the screen was Sea Base. The amphibious carrier USS Boxer steamed off the port quarter of Sea Base. Around the two of them, the three destroyers USS Gearing, USS Perry, and USS Stripling bored through the ocean waves, weaving between the higher-valued units of Sea Base and Boxer in an attempt to be in position to take out another torpedo attack.
He moved his attention to the middle screen as the operator zoomed out. This was the Air Intercept Controller watching the unfolding scenario of the Rivet Joint as it fled possible hostile aircraft. A round icon northwest of the action identified the Royal Navy aircraft carrier Elizabeth and its battle group. The British were entering the Taiwan Strait, nearly four hundred miles from Sea Base, which loitered northeast of the northernmost tip of Taiwan.
The red handset rang. That would be Admiral Holman on the Boxer.
The nearby sailor picked up the telephone and handed it to Garcia. Stapler, standing in front of the ASW console, glanced at Garcia, but turned away when he saw the handset handed to the Captain.
“Yes, Admiral.”
“Hank, how are you doing?”
Garcia took a deep breath and explained the situations as he saw them to Holman. Every so often the three-star Commander U.S. Seventh Fleet would add his opinion and insight. They talked for several minutes and during the talk, it dawned on Garcia that unlike the fight in the Sea of Japan, Holman was speaking to him as an equal. It was in the tenor, tone, and words. It was something human nature allowed you to recognize, but left you unable to describe.
Finally, Garcia heard Holman take a deep breath. “Hank, your helicopters are reaching the estimated positions of the four submarines. What are your plans? Do you intend to launch your weapons when you reach best position?”
Garcia opened his mouth to speak, then shut it. Until this minute, he had not decided what he was going to do. He pushed the talk button. “I still have weapons tight, Admiral.”
“You can never go wrong keeping weapons tight until you’re ready to launch.”
Garcia nodded. “Yes, sir. Admiral, my orders are not to fight unless attacked. We’ve been attacked, but the torpedoes were launched so far away they ran out of fuel before they even reached us.”
“If they had reached us, they could have done an awful lot of damage, Hank.”
“Yes, sir. My thoughts are to keep weapons tight and revert back to my initial orders, Admiral,” he said, waiting for Holman to revert back to the mentoring voice from the Sea of Japan.
A couple of seconds passed.
“I think that is a wise choice, Hank. So far, we haven’t exchanged a real blow against each other. Once we do, the gloves are off. So, if you don’t intend to launch immediately, what do you intend to do?”
Garcia looked at the large black numbered Navy clock on the bulkhead to his right. He knew what he was going to do. An epiphany of events unrolled in his mind as he saw the various logic trails of results roll out as clear as the Rockies on a bright summer day. He pushed the talk button and shared his plan with the admiral. When Garcia handed the handset back to the first class, he was smiling.
“He's smiling again.”
“We’re probably under attack again.”
“Could be that coffee you brought him.”
“It was fresh.”
“Hot it was, fresh it ain’t.”
“You told me to.”
The first class sighed. “Next time we make a fresh pot.”
“Come on, Seaman Gentron,” Bernardo urged. “You going to tell us or not how you know they weren’t real torpedoes?” Gentron nodded toward Bernardo. “If they had been real torpedoes, those contacts would not have remained on our passive sonar. They would have run.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if they are some sort of stealth torpedo waiting for us to relax a little before they restart and hit us?”
“You could be right, Petty Officer Bernardo.”
“Oh, now we start getting proper military etiquette.”
“Pope, give the boy a chance to answer,” MacPherson snapped.
“Okay,” Bernardo said with a show of arrogance. “Go ahead, Gentron.”
“If they are stealth torpedoes, which I don’t think they are, then the Chinese would not have to hang around to see what our reaction is. They could leave the area confident in the knowledge that sometime in the future the torpedoes will restart and do their job. They’d be safely away somewhere out of range of our antisubmarine forces.”
“They didn’t leave. They’re still here.”
Gentron nodded. “If they are decoys meant to warn us away…”
“No one fires decoys.”
“Of course they do, Pope,” MacPherson said. “We fire decoys all the time to lure torpedoes or ships away from our own submarines.”
“I don’t think that’s what Gentron meant,” Agazzi said. “Go ahead, Seaman Gentron.”
“If they had been torpedoes, they would have done a little intelligence-gathering on our reaction and then depart the area. That’s another alternative to why they haven’t disappeared yet. Most likely, they’re a warning. Kind of like someone aiming a gun at you and shooting blanks. Still scares you, but doesn’t kill you. Now, what if they take that gun after they’ve scared you, warning you off, and replace the blanks with real bullets? The first salvo was a warning to us. The next salvo will be real torpedoes,” Gentron finished as his voice trailed off as if where his thoughts took him scared him. “Then, they’d disappear from sonar.”
For nearly a minute, no one spoke in the ASW operations center as Gentron’s words soaked into their thoughts.
“Naw, what do you know?” Bernardo asked, motioning Gentron away. “You’re just a seaman.”
“A seaman who was able to tell us that we had a North Korean submarine trying to sink us,” MacPherson said. “I didn’t see any of us coming up with that answer.”
Agazzi nodded. “Thanks, Seaman Gentron. Let’s see what happens.” He turned to Keyland. “How about you? Does Seaman Gentron’s hypothesis sound good?”
Keyland nodded. “It makes sense to me. If they are intent on sinking us, then I think they would have already fired a second round. If you had eight more torpedoes inbound, it would draw our attention to them and away from the first salvo. Worst case is that Pope is right and the first eight were some sort of stealth torpedo. With our attention drawn to the new inbounds, if the other eight suddenly reactivated, then we’d have a hell of a story to tell our grandchildren.”
“I think the first eight were duds, maybe exercise torpedoes,” Gentron said softly. “I don’t think the first eight were some sort of stealth torpedoes.”
“You mean the survivors would have a hell of story to tell their grandchildren. I don’t think we’d be in that number,” MacPherson replied to Keyland’s comment.
The exchange reminded everyone they were in the lowest level of the USNS Algol holding up a metal canopy called Sea Base that would crush everything beneath it once it started falling.
MacPherson pushed his earpiece against his head. “Roger, we’re ready here,” he spoke into his mouthpiece. He turned to Agazzi. “Senior Chief, Mort says the UUV firing cradle is locked in place — finished its cycle. We can launch the third UUV anytime.”