“Damn!” Chan said. “Cease ventilating. Lower the induction mast.”
Chan flung the ring around the periscope and stepped back from the silvery metal slithering into its well.
“Increase speed to five knots,” he said. “Dive to thirty meters.”
Chan stepped to the chart and watched a mechanical plotter walk an incandescent crosshair toward a kelp bed. He noted the shallow water depth and recalculated.
“Make your depth twenty-seven meters,” he said.
The steel plates below his rubber soles leveled as the submarine settled meters from the seafloor.
“All stop,” he said.
“We’re entering the kelp bed, sir,” Gao said.
“Agreed. We should slow right within it. It’s fortunate that we made it to our home waters. The Koreans don’t even know it’s here.”
Chan looked to a speed indicator that told him the ship crawled below a knot through a tall undersea forest.
“Rig the ship for ultra-quiet. Walk the spaces to verify that every nonessential man is in bed and all equipment is off.”
Chan eroded time by walking behind the small team of seated technicians, staring over shoulders at sonar displays and tactical plotting data. Something gnawed at him that he couldn’t elucidate.
Gao returned to the control room, and Chan joined him at the central plotting table.
“No sonar activity from the destroyer, sir?”
“No,” Chan said. “None. Either they didn’t get a radar return from our masts, or they are changing their tactics.”
“They must have had a return at that signal strength.”
A cloud formed in Chan’s mind.
“Rig for depth charge,” he said. “They’ve deployed their helicopter.”
Gao darted away, and a sonar operator called out that he heard chopping blades whipping the water. A loud splash then preceded the acoustic ping of a dipping sonar. Horrified faces looked at Chan.
“Be calm,” he said. “The kelp will hide us.”
Chan held his breath and thought he heard the South Korean helicopter’s sonar with his naked ear. The sonic banging stopped, and Gao returned to his side.
“Helicopter,” Chan said.
“Should we run?”
“No,” Chan said. “We do exactly nothing.”
Animated, the sonar operator warned of louder rotor sounds and a second immersion of the dipping sonar. Enemy hydrophones pushed sound through steel and into Chan’s ears. Bodies tensed in his view.
“Trust the kelp,” he said.
The sonic emanations rang three times and ceased. Chan glanced at the sonar operator who stated that all signs of the helicopter had vanished.
“I think we made it, sir.”
“Keep awareness for that helicopter’s next search.”
“The current will push us from the kelp in approximately ten minutes,” Gao said.
“Then we wait ten minutes,” Chan said. “If we hear nothing, we evade to the south.”
“We must charge our battery before daylight, sir.”
“We will.”
Chan pressed his forearms against trace paper and watched the incandescent crosshair slide to the charted edge of kelp. Other than a shrimp bed and passing merchant shipping, the water was silent.
“Helm,” he said, “all ahead one third. Make turns for three knots.”
As an hour passed, Chan labored against his tight chest to breathe, but the waters carried no acoustic threats. Gao returned from the engineering spaces, his face ghastly in the red light.
“We must snorkel, sir. Cells will invert soon.”
“Agreed,” Chan said. “We must take our chances.”
Chan took the submarine shallow and viewed the night. The red and green running lights of merchant ships dotted the lanes to the east, and the electromagnetic sensor atop his periscope sniffed commercial radars.
“Raise the induction mast,” he said.
A hydraulic servo valve clicked, and rising steel rumbled in the tower above him. A sailor announced that the head valve had opened, and Chan ordered the diesels to life. The rhythmic clacking of their cylinders echoed, and Chan tasted the fresh sea air passing through the compartment en route to the hungry beasts.
“Raise the radio mast,” he said.
A third mast rose above Chan, multiplying his vulnerability to searching radar waves.
“Message traffic!” Gao said.
“Can you read it?”
“It’s encrypted, sir. I’ll have to download it to a jump drive for the laptop and run it through decryption.”
“Bring the laptop here,” Chan said.
Chan heard the rustling of a dispatched sailor. As he felt the man brush by him, another called out a warning of a naval search radar.
“Lower the radio mast!” Chan said. “Identify the radar system!”
“It’s ours, sir,” Gao said. “Probable Hainan-class submarine hunter patrol vessel. There are several stationed in Qingdao.”
Chan played hope against horror in his heart, wondering if his homeland helped or hunted him.
“Secure snorkeling,” he said. “Lower the induction mast.”
The diesel clacking quieted and the gentle reverberation of sliding metal rose and fell in the conning tower above. He kept his eye to the optics and scanned the horizon for the Chinese warship that he hoped recognized him as an ally.
“Tamir high-frequency sonar!” Gao said. “Why would the fleet search for us?”
“Note their signal-to-noise ratio and bearing.”
“Their bearing is toward the kelp bed,” Gao said. “The signal-to-noise ratio is appropriate for them searching at the range of the kelp bed. They’re hunting for us.”
“Be calm,” Chan said. “Lowering the periscope.”
He stepped back from the slithering cylinder and saw earnest faces.
“Any progress on the decryption?” he asked.
Gao bent over the shoulder of a man balancing a laptop on his knee. The sailor ran his finger over the screen, looked up, and smiled.
“The message from the fleet says that the South Koreans have left. The Hainan vessel is pretending to prosecute us with helicopter support and will employ depth charges at the kelp bed. The fleet will tell the Koreans we are destroyed. Our orders are to proceed undetected to the submarine base at Qingdao.”
Relief spread through the room as Chan pressed his palms on the tracing paper, exhaled, and slumped his head between his shoulders.
Blind to his fate, he ordered the submarine west with ambitions of earning praise for delivering the mighty gift of a North Korean submarine to his country.
CHAPTER 11
Chan cringed as the ocean roared the thunderous rage of depth charges. Overlapping bursts curled his shoulders and squeezed air through his clenched teeth.
The final echo subsided, and, in his deafness, the odor of dirt specs lodged in inaccessible recesses rose through the familiar scent of rotting flesh and betrayed the submarine’s age. Rubbing his ears, he looked across the plotting table.
“I pray that’s the end of it,” he said. “Pay attention for the sonar signaling frequency.”
He watched Gao’s lips move but heard a muffled drone. Barking, he repeated himself. Gao nodded and turned to a pair of sailors seated at sonar screens wearing earmuff headsets. His neck strained to vocalize audible words.
“We are listening,” he said. “At these near distances, the signal will be obvious on the screen.”
“Remind me of the frequency, Gao?”
Gao stiffened in defiance of the quiz.
“We are ordered to remain submerged and undetected with all masts and antennae unexposed until we hear the Hainan-class patrol vessel shift its Tamir sonar to its maximum thirty-kilohertz signal.”
“And then what?” Chan asked.