Seconds later the second missile fired, following the first on streaking contrails low across the hills and forest toward the southwest.
Were they opening fire again on Taiwan? Or was this something different?
Morton knew he had to get some answers from HQ, and fast, because until he did, he was fighting blindfold and with hands tied. And he had to find Tse and his commandos.
If he had just been dropped into the middle of World War III, he wanted the hell to know about it.
The wind was picking up, with the promise of a rain squall sweeping in from the northeast. The USS Jarrett plowed ahead through increasingly heavy swells, heading south just outside the twenty-mile international boundary.
The first warning of any threat came from her radar watch as one blip, then a second, appeared on her screens, angling in from the northwest. There was a critical moment's delay as the radar operator attempted to verify the sighting. No one wanted a repeat of the deadly accident that had taken place in the Persian Gulf, when a frigate much like the Jarrett had accidentally downed a civilian airliner, thinking it an oncoming missile.
There could be little doubt, however, once hard course plots were made. The incoming objects were skimming the waves, streaking directly toward the Jarrett on intercept courses at just under the speed of sound. Targeting profiles matched entries in the ship's target library: an improved Hai Ying land-launched solid-fuel-booster surface-to-surface missile, mounting a five hundred kilogram warhead, a range in excess of a hundred kilometers, and a speed of Mach 0.9, known in the NATO code lexicon as "Silkworm."
Operating this close to a potentially hostile shore, the Jarrett was already at full alert. General Quarters was sounded nonetheless, as Captain Bennings ordered the helm hard over. By presenting his stern to the oncoming missiles, he narrowed Jarrett's target area sharply and also gave a clear field of fire to the Mark 15 CIWS mount above the Jarrett's fantail helicopter deck.
The Close-In Weapons System, CIWS, known affectionately throughout the service as "C-whiz," was a Vulcan/Phalanx point-defense gun designed to destroy antiship missiles. The multibarrel M61A1 gun cycled at an incredible rate — hurling fifty 20mm depleted uranium rounds per second; the gun was served by two radars — one tracked the target and a second tracked the outgoing rounds. A computer compared radar data and constantly adjusted train and elevation automatically, to bring the two radar pictures together and deluge the target with a literal hail of destruction.
The maximum horizontal range was only about fourteen hundred meters — less than a mile; there was no second chance if the technology failed.
And the technology did not fail. The first silkworm missile was brought under direct fire at maximum rage. The CIWS above Jarrett's helipad swiveled, elevated, then sounded with its characteristic shrill, high-pitched whine, sending a stream of depleted uranium across the ocean swell astern. It fired… corrected…fired… corrected again, then loosed a final three-second burst dead on target. A dazzling flash half a mile astern marked the missile's death as the warhead detonated. Three seconds later the boom of the explosion reached the Jarrett across the open water.
Immediately, the CIWS barrel pivoted slightly and began firing again, using short bursts to walk the rounds into the second target. There was no explosion this time; the Silkworm broke apart under the barrage, chunks and pieces tumbling in smoke-trailing arcs into the water.
On board the Jarrett, cheers broke out, first in the combat center, then spreading throughout the ship. Captain Bennings barked an order over the ship's loudspeaker system, demanding quiet. The ship had just been fired upon, and they had to assume that they were now at war. More missiles might be fired at any moment.
Jarrett's sonar watch picked up the faint hum of the next attack minutes later… a spread of three torpedoes coming in from port. Bennings barked new orders, swinging Jarrett's knife-edged prow hard to port in an effort to turn into the torpedoes, to minimize the ship's target silhouette and perhaps to get inside the torpedoes' arming radius.
But it was already too late. Three wire-guided homing torpedoes fired from the PLA Navy submarine Hutiao, the "Leaping Tiger," went active, their onboard sonars pinging shrilly off the Jarrett's hull. Once active, their wires were cut, allowing them to swim free as they acquired their own solid tracking locks on the American frigate.
There was, unfortunately, no undersea equivalent of the CIWS. Moments later the first torpedo struck the Jarrett on her port bow, detonating with a savage explosion that ripped a fifteen-foot hole through her thin hull. The second torpedo missed or failed to detonate… but the third, running deep, passed directly under the stricken frigate's keel and exploded, nearly lifting the 2,700-ton vessel clear of the water and snapping her spine.
The Jarrett sank swiftly, most of her crew still at their battle stations as the frigate broke in half and the sea came crashing in. A pall of oily black smoke towered above the Strait of Formosa.
"You know," Garrett said thoughtfully, raising his binoculars to his eyes again, "I'm getting a really uneasy feeling about this. I think that destroyer to port is moving to cut us off."
Seawolf had made the turn around Hong Kong Island and was moving south now, picking up speed as she neared open water. There was less traffic in the water about them, and the shorelines to east and west were receding at last. For the past ten minutes, however, a Luda-class destroyer had been coming up on them fast from astern, passing them to port a good thousand yards off.
Now, though, the Luda's sharp prow had swung over and the lean, gray vessel was slicing through the water at twenty-eight knots, reaching past the Seawolf on a course that would put her squarely across the American sub's bow in another few minutes.
The Luda was a deadly looking craft, similar in design to one of the old Soviet Kotlins. Over 130 meters long, displacing 3,250 tons, she was long and sleek of hull, with a bridge house that appeared too large for her low hull, twin stacks widely separated by surface-to-surface missile tubes, and with armament of every description bristling on her deck from the twin 130mm turret mount on her bow to the conventional depth charge racks on her long, flat fantail. Her weaponry included 37mm and 25mm antiaircraft guns, ASW rocket tubes, depth-charge mortars… an arsenal geared to hunt down and kill submarines.
"I think you're right," Lawless said. Picking up the phone handset, he said, "Weps. This is the captain."
"Ward here, sir" crackled over the sail speaker.
"Give me the update on our loaded warshots."
"All tubes loaded, per your orders, Captain. Tubes One and Three are flooded. Outer hatches closed."
"Give me a track on target Romeo One-one-niner, and update."
"Aye aye, sir. Romeo One-one-niner now at relative bearing three-three-four, range nine-nine-oh, speed two-seven knots. We have solid tracking data on radar and sonar."
"Target Romeo One-one-niner, Tube One."
"Target Romeo One-one-niner, Tube One, aye, sir."