"That's a goddamn Kilo that just surfaced! One of theirs! I think they just put a torpedo into one of their own submarines!"
There was no mistaking that squat silhouette now, not when he'd stared down at an identical sub's conning tower in the North Pacific just a few years before.
"Then that means… " Zhu said.
"It means our sub is still out there and probably raising a hell of a row. Break out the signal gear, boys. Go!"
They might just be able to get out of this….
"Captain!" Toynbee was breathless with excitement, leaning out of the sonar shack to pass the word. "We have Blue Dragon!"
"Jesus!" Garrett hurried to the sonar shack.
"Where? How far?"
Juarez was standing over the WLR-9 Acoustic Intercept Receiver, a console at the far end of the sonar shack behind the BSY-2 consoles that picked up incoming sonar signals from other ships or enemy weapons, warning Seawolf when she was under active sonar observation. "Approximately five miles, sir," Juarez told him. "Bearing two-nine-five. They're using a hand-held transponder and Morse."
"What message?"
"Just their call sign, Blue Dragon, and a coded request for extraction, with wounded. They appear to be at sea in a small boat, approximately two hundred tons. We're tracking it now with the Busy-Two. Designated Sierra One-eight-eight."
"Shit." Wounded personnel meant that they wouldn't be able to swim down to the Seawolf while she remained safely submerged. And if the 'Wolf dared to surface, she'd be picked up by every shipping and coastal radar on this part of the China coast.
And there was worse. It was at least another two hours and more until sunset, and every Chinese ship in the region, including those stalking submarines, were going to pick up that Morse sonar transmission and home in on the source at flank speed. It was going to be extremely crowded around those SEALs very soon.
"Maneuvering!" he called. "Come to new heading, bearing on sonar contact with Sierra One-eight-eight. Make revolutions for forty-two knots."
They were abandoning all pretense of stealth now. Seawolf was now in a deadly, flat-out race, with the SEALs at the finish line…
… and with survival as the prize.
22
"We still don't know that one of our subs is out there," Knowles said. "And this damned thing could alert every PLA destroyer and submarine within ten miles that we're here."
He was referring to the banger, the small sonar transponder that dangled now over the side of the patrol boat on the end of a twelve-foot cable. For the past ten minutes Knowles had been crouched next to the case that held the battery and the signaling key, dutifully tapping out the coded contact message in Morse. The pulses of sound bearing that message were spreading throughout the surrounding waters. If an American sub were in the neighborhood, she would hear it.
But so, too, would those ASW ships on the horizon, just eight or ten miles away.
Morton stood next to him, watching the ships on the horizon through his binoculars. "We'll give it another five minutes," he decided. "Then we'll wait an hour and try again." He looked at the sky. The sun was just setting behind the mountains to the west, and twilight was shadowing the ocean. There was still plenty of light, however. "We may have to wait for full darkness before the sub drivers'll come in close enough for a pickup."
"If they come in. If they're willing to surface to take on our wounded."
"Yeah, Wheel," Chief Bohanski said from the railing nearby, using the SEALs' slang term for the skipper of a platoon. "Suppose they decide not to come? I mean, figure the economics…a half-billion-dollar submarine, or sixteen SEALs and some Taiwan commandos? Kind of a no-brainer, ain't it?"
"It's the Seawolf operating in this area, isn't it?" Jammer Logan said with a grin. "That's three billion dollars or so."
"I thought she was in Hong Kong."
"I imagine she put to sea," Bohanski said, "when the current unpleasantness began."
"Let's hope so," Morton said. "Because if someone doesn't come get us — and I don't care if it's Seawolf or a garbage scow — it's a long hike back to Taiwan."
Morton continued to study the entrance to the narrows between Liehyu and Kinmen. The PRC ships there appeared to be in complete confusion. He couldn't be sure, but he thought that several surface vessels were taking the crew off the Kilo-class sub that had just surfaced.
"Man, that has to hurt," Logan said, using his own binoculars at Morton's side. "Shooting yourself in the foot that way."
"The PLA doesn't have the experience we do of surface ASW forces working close together with submarine assets. And there's nothing like a little invasion to make things real confused."
"It looks like goddamn goat-fuck over there. That's a technical term, you know."
"Roger that."
"Hey, Skipper?"
"Hmm."
"The chief has a good point. Why would they risk an asset like a nuclear sub in a place like this? They ought to send in a couple of Mark Vs, or some SDVs."
"Mark Vs, or just about any other surface special warfare asset we have, are going to be vulnerable to PLA surface ships… or aircraft, for that matter. And SDVs have a limited range, and they still couldn't get the wounded out." He lowered the binoculars and shook his head. "No, a sub is our best hope. It can pop up, take us all on board in a few minutes, and be underwater again before the Chinese know we're here."
But he wondered. It would still be best to wait for nightfall, of course, but he was just now considering the possibility that there were Chinese submarines out there as well as American. If that Kilo boat was the only one in the area, great. She wasn't going anywhere, except possibly to the bottom. But one Kilo suggested the possibility that there were other Kilos as well, or some of the older Chinese boats, Romeos and Whiskeys. And any of them could be creeping up close at this very moment, homing on the sonar pulses Knowles was tapping into the sea.
Chances were, though, that the Chinese subs were scattered far afield, setting up a blockade of the Strait of Formosa or positioning themselves to intercept the U.S. Seventh Fleet when it arrived. He was more concerned about that destroyer off to the east than he was about more Chinese subs. Even so…
He'd read an account of an operation during the closing years of the Vietnam War, in 1972. An American Air Force officer had been shot down several miles behind enemy lines, at the beginning of a major North Vietnamese invasion, the "Easter Offensive," as it was called.
As it happened, that officer, a lieutenant colonel named Hambleton, had possessed highly classified information pertaining to U.S. ballistic missile strategy. It was imperative to get him out, because if the NVA got him, they would be sure to turn him over to Soviet advisers, and the secret data he possessed would be compromised.
Repeated efforts to reach Hambleton had failed, however. Helicopters had been shot down, and the crew of an OV-10 Bronco spotter plane was forced to eject behind enemy lines as well. In all, something like nine men had died trying to rescue one, and the command authority in charge of the rescue operation had all but written the officer off. After almost two weeks on the ground without food or fresh water, Hambleton was all but dead anyway.