He intended to slow at the edge of danger — unless torpedoes forced a desperate evasion. Mainland submarines could reach across the minefield, and he would be blind to the subsurface menaces save for input from a solitary friendly submarine.
He glared at the screen, praying for the Hai Ming to provide him adequate warning.
Via data link, the Hai Ming answered his silent plea and begat his waking nightmare.
Startling him, an inverted red triangle appeared to the northeast. Blood coursed through him, turning fear into action. A second torpedo appeared, and he expected more.
He studied the red lines that predicted the future locations of moving bodies, shifted his weight over the pitching deck, and spoke into his boom microphone.
“Incoming torpedoes to the northeast,” he said. “Crafts One through Three maintain prescribed course and speed. Crafts Four through Nine are at risk. Turn starboard and circle back to the end of the column. Ten and higher maintain course and speed.”
Four more torpedoes appeared, completing a six-torpedo salvo from a hidden mainland submarine.
Is that your full volley? Lei thought. When will the Hai Ming expose you to my wrath?
The deck rumbled through his bones during an otherwise silent sprint.
Where are you? he thought.
His eyes burned, and he blinked moisture into them.
Where are you!
An inverted red triangle appeared on the far side of the minefield.
Thank you, Hai Ming. My turn!
He switched his circuit to his executive officer below in the combat information center.
“Hostile submarine!”
“I see it, sir. Designating submarine as Sierra One. Targeting with Tube One.”
The kill zone for the predicted salvo of nuclear warheads appeared on Lei’s screen, centering on the hostile submarine but tickling the Hai Ming.
“Set warheads three and four to half yield,” he said. “They are threats to the Hai Ming.”
“Setting warheads three and four to half yield, sir.”
The arcs of destruction surrounding two of the missile’s eight warheads shrank, retracting the kill zone.
“Prepare to launch Tube One at Sierra One,” Lei said.
“Tube One is warmed and ready, sir.”
“Shooting Tube One,” Lei said.
He flipped a plastic guard and depressed a button.
A swooshing roar bellowed behind him and reverberated throughout the bridge. Through the side window, a rocket plume sliced the darkness, climbed, and veered north.
He lowered his gaze to see his missile, but new red threats, torpedoes from the southeast, burned onto the console. With crafts four through nine reversing course, a dozen of his ships steamed into the new weapons’ paths.
Another salvo from the north appeared, and Lei recognized a triangulated attack. He had expected a surgical strike, but the mainland had revealed its shotgun approach. Amid the chaos, he changed his plan and ordered a tactical retreat.
“Crafts four through fifteen,” he said, “return to the harbor, flank speed! Race for cover behind the breakwaters! Crafts one through three, continue through the minefield.”
The red character representing the submarine behind the second salvo materialized on his screen.
“Craft three,” he said, “designate the submarine to the south as Sierra Two. Engage Sierra Two with one missile.”
Time stopped for Lei during an eerie quasi-silence where nothing seemed to be happening. He noticed his pulse throbbing through his neck as rocket exhaust lit the night off his starboard beam.
Nuclear weapons in flight, he returned his attention to his overhead tactical view. The screen showed his ship entering the keep-out zone, and he slowed to five knots. As the decelerating deck tipped him forward, he kept his gaze on the monitor.
A blue icon representing the first warhead in ballistic free fall separated from his ship’s missile and etched an X in the display. The flying weapon dived and turned to draw its entrapping octagon around its target. Numbers beside the diving missile ticked downward with altitude.
The executive officer’s voice in his headset confirmed the first warhead’s release.
“Tube One, first warhead deployed.”
A counter on his screen reeled off seconds as the warhead descended. Lei trusted that the missile would release the next seven warheads at lower altitudes so that the points of the inescapable death octagon would detonate at similar times as they reached the preset depth of five hundred feet.
Since the seafloor dropped east of Suao, Lei choose five hundred feet to concentrate the jolting blows and oscillating fireballs upon the submarines while delivering minimal energy to his surfaced crafts. But unavoidable shock waves would ride up the underwater mountain that shouldered Taiwan, and they would hit his small ship.
Preparing for waterborne punches, he optimized his bearing for his ship and the two that flanked him through the minefield.
“Crafts one through three,” he said, “turn to course zero-three-zero.”
He also needed to protect the ships against incoming airborne shock waves and the contamination that the southerly winds would soon carry.
“All ships,” he said, “rig for shock waves and contamination.”
His craft rolled through the turn, and an explosion startled him. He raced to his port window and saw an arcing rainfall of moonlit glistening silver.
Water whipped white by expanding gases cut the blackness and marked the point where a mine had severed Craft Two. The vessel’s sinking silhouetted halves twisted in opposing directions.
As Lei internalized the loss of his comrades, a steel shutter rolled closed outside the window, protecting the bridge from airborne shock and radioactive contaminants. Absent moonlight, the bridge became ghastly red.
Another explosion, distant, thundered. He slid back to his console for understanding, and the dizzying array of crisscrossing lines held no conclusions.
But his executive officer clarified the truth.
“Sir, Ten just reported. Fifteen took a torpedo. Fifteen is lost. They couldn’t evade.”
I ordered Fifteen to continue on this mission, hindered in speed with one diesel offline, Lei thought. I doomed them.
A glance below his chin revealed that his ship’s missile had released all its warheads prior to tumbling into the sea. As the counter tracking the sinking of enriched plutonium reached ten seconds to estimated detonation, he allowed himself a final view of the world prior to entering the tactical nuclear age.
He depressed a button, and his screen showed the view from an infrared camera pointing aft.
The green hue near the harbor showed wakes hitting wakes, suggesting that the bulk of his squadron had evaded torpedoes behind the jetties. Unable to see evidence of the ill-fated Craft Fifteen, he nudged a joystick on his console in search of survivors from Craft Two, less than half a mile behind him, but the sea had swallowed the mine’s victim.
He shifted his view to a forward camera with savage hopes of watching his underwater nuclear attack. The sea appeared calm, but as the seconds reached zero, he sat in a shock-mounted chair, grasped its handrails, and braced for nuclear fury.
CHAPTER 22
His knuckles white on his chair’s arms, Lei saw the first warhead lift the sea’s surface in the greenish hue of his monitor. The watery protrusion of the sub-kiloton blast impressed him with it smallness, but the shock wave caught him off guard.