Stapler opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it, nodded, and in a quiet voice said, “Aye, aye, sir.” The taciturn Tactical Action Officer turned away and walked to the bank of consoles in front of the Captain’s chair. Garcia watched and listened as Stapler relayed his orders to the Skipper of the Gearing. After a couple of minutes, Garcia reached around and lifted his cup. The coffee seemed to taste much better.
“It's in a racetrack, Senior Chief. Estimate distance to the contact as ten thousand yards: five miles. What now?” MacPherson asked.
Agazzi moved along the consoles until he stood between MacPherson and Gentron. “We wait. Keep every UUV in a racetrack between the submarines and Sea Base. Don’t take them any closer.”
“Kind of hard for me to do, Senior Chief,” Gentron said. “I’ve lost contact with all my contacts until Bernardo restores contact.”
“Wow! Another poet in ASW,” Bernardo sniped. “Anyone got one of those airline barf bags?”
MacPherson leaned over to Gentron’s console. “Here,” he said, punching in the “main menu” icon. Then, for the next couple of minutes, he instructed Gentron in how to use preprogrammed patterns for the UUVs such as racetrack, figure-eight, weaving course, and others.
Agazzi listened. He knew you could preprogram the UUVs to do certain functions on their own to reduce the piloting complexities for the operator. It was nice to know MacPher-son knew how to do it.
Franklin hit the flare dispenser and dived toward the surface of the water. He flipped the Raptor into a left-hand turn. Watching the approaching water and his controls, out of his peripheral vision he saw the contrail of a missile about a mile behind chasing his tail.
“I have a missile—” he started to broadcast.
“I’m coming!”
What the hell can you do, Pickles? Franklin thought. The fight against a missile locked onto you was yours alone. He deployed chaff, even as he knew the EW system showed no active lock-on. He increased his turn ratio, jerked the stick, and felt the Gs push him into his seat as the F-22A shot upward. Either the missile would have gone into the drink by now, or he still had a problem.
“Blackman, Pickles; keep ascending. The missile is closing. Increase speed.”
He glanced at his fuel. He was going to be running on fumes again if he managed to evade the missile. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter.
“Flares… more flares!” Johnson said.
He hit the dispenser. Flares filled the space behind him and the attacking missile. The missile shot through several of the flares, bending its course slightly, but without the aircraft maneuvering away from the aligned flares, the missile shot through the decoys and immediately relocked onto the heat of the engines.
“It still there?” he asked.
“It’s still coming. I’m nearly there,” Johnson broadcast.
“Stay away. Nothing you can do.”
“I saw this once in a training film.”
“A training film!” Franklin asked incredulously. “A training film?”
His Raptor vibrated, growing to a rough shaking for a few seconds before stopping. He glanced over his shoulder and then to his right. Johnson’s F-22A shot across his path, between him and the missile. Behind her, the missile left Franklin and took off after her.
“Pickles! What the hell have you done? The missile is locked on—” He never finished. As he turned the aircraft to the right to follow Johnson, the missile exploded several feet from the tail of her aircraft.
The Raptor started spinning in the air — over and over — the tail and nose exchanging positions as the aircraft started downward toward the water.
“Eject, eject, eject,” Franklin kept repeating, his throat constricting. She killed herself, he thought.
Then the cockpit exploded outward as Johnson ejected. The aircraft was still turning, and Franklin thought he saw the tail hit the seat as it rocketed upward. He put the aircraft into an orbit around where Johnson ejected.
A moment later, the parachute opened, but he saw no movement from the figure strapped to the seat.
“Raptor down,” Franklin broadcast on the tactical circuit. “Major Johnson’s Raptor was hit by a missile. She has ejected. Parachute has deployed.” He looked at his GPS, then broadcast the exact location.
“Roger, Raptor Leader. A Canadian destroyer is in the area and en route to recover.”
“She was Raptor Leader,” Franklin objected.
“Roger; understand, Wingman.”
The Han submarine slowed as its momentum decreased, the water passing through the propeller leaving a minor, hardly detectable wake behind the light gray boat as it drifted toward all stop. The Skipper glanced at the weapons officer, whose eyes were locked on him. The man’s thin piano-player fingers rested on the top two buttons. The XO stood beside the weapons officer staring at the Skipper. Both were waiting for the one word that would allow them to launch torpedoes. Neither knew he wanted to say that word. What submarine captain didn’t want to sink something on the surface? But he was a professional Navy officer. He kept coming back to his orders to avoid direct confrontation with the Americans. One word from him and those fingers would launch a full salvo of torpedoes and some would hit this thing they called Sea Base. And he so wanted to say that word.
The XO spoke up, bringing the Skipper’s attention to the sonar operator, who said the torpedo appeared to be circling ten thousand yards to their southeast. He smiled. Five miles was not much maneuvering room. A circling torpedo was a searching torpedo, a torpedo that had lost its target. The next action would be for the Americans to launch other torpedoes. With them losing him, they would ping again.
He assumed the helicopters were still above searching for him. After reflection, he decided if they pinged a third time, he would launch the torpedoes and then sprint for the open ocean. Thinking ahead, he believed the Americans would believe he would head for the shelter of the mainland, so he would seek the vastness of the Pacific in which to disappear. But only if they pinged again.
He dropped his hand from the leather strap he had been holding onto. The Skipper of the Han submarine stepped over to the officer of the deck and ordered him to increase speed to eight knots, one knot at a time, and to make sure the speed did not create any undue cavitations. The course kept the propeller away from the direction of the circling torpedo, so he maintained it, slowly increasing distance between Sea Base and the Han. Twenty minutes later, he let the weapons officer take his fingers off the red buttons and ordered the safety guards across the switches lowered.
When they were fifty nautical miles from Sea Base and the passive noise of the circling torpedo had long faded, he closed the torpedo tube doors. Taking a longer route than planned, hours later the Han-class submarine was heading back toward station in the Taiwan Strait.
SIXTEEN
Garcia set the handset back in the cradle and stood there for a minute wondering about what he had just been told. No explanation. He had heard stories of such things about other admirals. It had just never happened to him where an admiral ordered him to do something without some sort of explanation. Nothing illegal, just do something and ask no questions. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stapler staring at him. He let out a sigh.
Stapler was a problem he would address later; then again, sometimes problems went away without any intervention. Stapler had proven himself adept at running Combat, getting weapons systems on line and ready, and in the myriad of other things a Navy officer must know to fight the ship. But Stapler would have attacked the submarines regardless of what the orders had been, which were to avoid open conflict with the Chinese. It is hard for some officers in the confusion and emotion of battle to remember the strategic picture and bend the tactical moment to it.