The trick — discovery. Somewhere, within a thousand-mile radius, Wong expected the Malaysian Scorpène-class submarine Razak to be hiding from him. With a task force consisting of five surface combatant ships, a nuclear submarine, and a constant patrol of helicopters, he expected to find his target and have his vengeance.
A tactical display showed an overhead view of the group. The transport dock defined the center with his destroyer, the Chengdu, in proximity to provide protection. Two Jiangkai II-class frigates marked opposite corners of an outer square, and two anti-submarine warfare variants of Jiangdao-class corvettes set the other corners.
The nuclear-powered submarine, Shang, searched the forward waters. With speed rivaling that of a destroyer, the Chinese nuke operated ahead of the group. Wong trusted that its commander knew better than to stray within the task force’s perimeter and risk becoming confused with their Malaysian target.
Tapping a screen to expand the chart, he brought the South China Sea into view. Six hundred nautical miles separated him from the northernmost Spratly landmass — the Philippine-controlled Northeast Cay — and another one hundred and fifty miles separated him from the site of the submarine’s fatal attack near Cornwallis Reef.
Given the best sustained speed of a Scorpène-class submarine, he calculated that his Malaysian target could have passed the Northeast Cay if it sought aggression against its hunters, but the laws of physics kept it outside strike range of his task force. So he would delay his zigzag anti-submarine legs another three hundred miles.
Then he considered that his target could be running the other way, trying to achieve the safety of Sepanggar Bay. But his intelligence sources reported no sign of the Razak having returned to its home port.
Satellites caught no telltale signs of humps or wakes on the water’s surface, and their orbiting sensors lacked any heat signatures of a skulking Scorpène. A Harbin SH-5 maritime patrol aircraft had unloaded its inventory of sonobuoys between the attack point and the submarine’s home, but no audio peep of a submerged target materialized.
Although such technological search techniques included imperfections, human intelligence provided Wong’s definitive answer. Chinese spies on the Malaysian island of Borneo, paid and threatened to watch the comings and goings of the Razak, reported no sign of it. While its older sister submarine, the Rahman, remained in dry dock undergoing maintenance, the Razak had been seen leaving port two days ago, but it hadn’t returned.
And Wong knew the Razak had attacked his brother’s corvette. Forensic evidence of the damaged ship and the radar signature of the incoming missile revealed an Exocet as the culprit. The debris of the second missile, which Wong’s brother’s ship had managed to knock down with its point-defense systems, also suggested an Exocet. Aerial and satellite searches of the area revealed no launch platform, and the process of elimination identified it as a submarine.
The only submarine on the planet that carried Exocet missiles which had deployed with enough time to reach the attack point was the Razak, and it remained at sea, telling Wong that it intended to continue fighting. If it wanted a fight, he reflected, a fight it would get. Either that, or it had been wounded. In either case, Chinese firepower was alerted and seeking vengeance, sealing his adversary’s fate.
He felt edgy, but with half a day separating him from the earliest possible hostile encounter, he forced himself to block the hunt from his mind. An empty stomach reminded him of his pending dinner. He left the bridge, climbed tight flights of ladders until reaching his chambers, and ordered a simple meal of fish and rice.
With minimal tactical decisions to fill the night, he allowed himself an evening of rest.
After waking, he descended several decks to the exercise compartment and invested thirty minutes of treadmill time towards his health. He then returned to his quarters, showered, and donned a fresh uniform. Downing an apple as his breakfast on the run, he reached the bridge to greet the sun rising on the Chengdu’s port side, behind the task force’s epicenter, the Jinggang Shan.
The sun’s azimuth seemed too northerly for his tastes until he recalled that the task force followed a circuitous, shallow-water route towards the Spratly Islands. Confining the adversarial submarine to a two-hundred-meter seafloor robbed it of deep acoustic layers that could hide its sound and exposed it to the surface combatants’ active sonar systems. He judged the extra half day of travel worth avoiding the oceanic trenches that favored his enemy.
His executive officer, a tall and lean man with a gaunt face, caught his attention.
“Sir,” he said, “we are ten nautical miles from the edge of the Razak’s extreme possible range of an Exocet missile attack.”
“Send a recommendation to Captain Zhang to verify that our air defenses are optimized and to begin anti-submarine legs within the next thirty minutes.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
When the maneuvering order arrived, Wong fantasized about kicking his destroyer into high gear, leaving the task force, and hunting the submarine himself. He then reminded himself he needed every resource at his disposal — helicopters, a friendly submarine, and the other combatants.
“Commence anti-submarine legs,” he said.
The ship rolled through a turn, and the floating dock drifted past his aft bridge window. After a dozen minutes, a flanking corvette appeared as a blur on the horizon. Then, following a prescribed turning cadence designed to appear random to any submarine that might shoot intercepting torpedoes, he felt the ship roll through a turn in the opposite direction.
Hours of monotonous zigzagging passed, testing his patience. Although he expected a multi-day hunt, he wanted his vengeance. He wanted his glory. But as the horizon swallowed the setting fiery orb, he conceded the first full day of hunting to his hidden adversary.
As darkness filled his windows, he sank into his captain’s chair in the bridge’s corner. He noticed movement, and his executive officer’s boney visage appeared, ghastly in the red lighting.
“Sir,” the executive officer said. “There’s flash message traffic, your eyes only. Would you like a hard copy?”
Wong slid his buttocks aside and reached into his trouser pockets for his phone. He pulled it out and noticed he had left it silenced.
“No, I’ll read it here,” he said.
His subordinate nodded and marched away, and he read the note from fleet headquarters.
Beijing had authorized strikes against Malaysian military targets as retaliation for the unprovoked attack on the corvette Luzhou. Kuala Lumpur denied the attack and countered by offering support in a search for the true, unidentified assailant. Wong muttered to himself.
“Meaningless political misdirection.”
He slid his phone into his pocket, placed his shoes on the deck plates, and brushed by his executive officer.
“You have the bridge,” he said.
“Aye, sir. I have the bridge. Good night.”
Twenty hours later, Wong reached the bridge after dinner and received a report from his executive officer.
“Sir, the lead ships have visual contact on the Prince Consort Bank.”
A landmass near the Spratly’s southeastern extreme, the Vietnamese-held property was a watchtower perched on a submerged mound. Though remote and helpless, the tower let the Vietnamese see the task force as a warning to stay out of the way.