Seven pairs of eyes stared at him, with expressions ranging from fury to terror.
"Tell them we're leaving them now, Sergeant. I'll leave this knife so they can free themselves."
The plastic binders on their wrists could not be broken or untied. They had to be cut. It would take one of the prisoners a few minutes, at least, to free himself and the others.
And by then the SEALs and their allies would be gone.
Shangxiao Hsing Ling Ma had been hovering over the sonar officers for some minutes now, as if to wring every scrap of information out of them by the sheer emotional force of his presence. They'd easily picked up the sounds of the enemy submarine minutes ago, as it sprinted at forty knots, stopped, sprinted again, stopped… as though searching for something.
Headquarters had reported the presence of enemy commandos ashore in Fujian Province. Hsing assumed the American submarine Seawolf must be attempting to pick them up.
The American captain was clever. He'd torpedoed the hapless Tiger Leaping, then raced for the sound of her broken hull. Red Star and Monsoon had followed… apparently assuming that the American had continued north through the Xiamen-Liehyu passage.
With a radio mast above water, he'd picked up the news minutes later. A helicopter at the north end of the channel had spotted Jijie Feng—the Kilo-class Monsoon—close by the fleet bombarding Kinmen. Someone had panicked — heads would roll for that! — and loosed an ASW torpedo. The Monsoon had been hit and badly damaged. She'd surfaced at once, and the crew was being taken off save for the damage control parties on board, but she was out of the hunt for now.
The American sub had surfaced, apparently to make its rendezvous.
The range was extreme — over twenty-five kilometers — but it was worth a shot.
"Fire number one!" he ordered. "Fire number two!"
It would at least frighten the Americans, and they might even get lucky.
"Bridge! Sonar! Torpedoes in the water, Set-53! I have two, repeat two contacts, bearing one-five-five, originating Master Four-five, range thirty-two thousand yards, speed forty-five knots."
Set-53 was a standard 650mm torpedo, with a range of fifty-four nautical miles at a speed of thirty knots, or twenty-two miles at forty-five knots. Thirty-two thousand yards was a hair under sixteen nautical miles.
At that range and forty-five knots, it would take over twenty minutes for the torpedoes to arrive. Seawolf had time.
But not much.
"Bridge, Radar!"
"Go ahead, Radar."
"One of the surface ships is getting under way, sir. Designate Romeo One-six. Bearing zero-nine-four, range thirty-seven thousand. Intercept course at twenty-five knots."
"Bridge, Sonar. We confirm that. Redesignate Romeo One-six as Master Four-six."
The Luda-class destroyer; a hulking, sharp-edged brute. He could see the mustache of her bow wake in the gathering gloom.
She had spotted the Seawolf and was thundering on, an all-out charge.
Correction. Seawolf didn't have much time at all….
23
"Bridge, Sonar."
"Sonar, Bridge." What other good news was there? Garrett wondered. "Go ahead."
"Two more torpedoes in the water. Set-53. Bearing zero-five-zero, range ten thousand! Intercept course at forty-five knots!"
"Acknowledged."
"It's Master Four-two, sir! Looks like he made it through the channel and is swinging around from the northeast!"
Two enemy subs and two sets of torpedoes, inbound toward the Seawolf. And a destroyer halfway between the two, inbound and loaded for bear.
It was really time to go. "Deck there! How much longer?"
"Another couple of minutes! We're bringing the last casualty across now!"
They'd rigged lines between the two vessels and were swaying a Stokes across the gap between them. Several SEALs and Chinese commandos were dragging two still shapes in dark green body bags across the trawler's aft deck as well.
"We don't have two minutes, COB! Speed it up!
Clear the deck!"
"Aye aye, sir!"
Garrett turned to Caswell, the young rating who'd accompanied him to the bridge as lookout. "Clear the bridge, son. Get below."
"Aye aye, sir!"
"Bridge, Radar!"
"Go ahead."
"Master four-six has increased to thirty knots. And… we have multiple air targets, now. Bearing two-zero-zero, incoming at three hundred knots."
Those last might be fast ASW helos or slow-moving jets — fighter bombers. This was getting damned bad, damned fast.
"Conn, Bridge! This is the captain."
"Bridge, Conn, aye." It was Tollini's voice.
"Stand by to pull the plug. When I give the word, go deep enough to polish her belly. Flank speed, dead ahead."
"Aye aye, sir!"
"Weapons Systems!"
"Weapons Systems, aye," Ward replied. "Match radar bearings and shoot, Tube Six, Master Four-six."
Tube Six's warshot was a harpoon missile, Garrett's best option right now for a surface target. It was a lot faster than a torpedo, which would give the oncoming Luda less time to try to evade it or shoot it down.
"Match radar bearings and shoot, Tube Six, Master Four-six, aye aye, sir." There was a pause. "Tube Six fired electrically, sir."
"Very well. Match sonar bearings and shoot, Tube Three, snapshot on Master Four-two!" The Kilo was much closer than the Akula, only five nautical miles off; the torpedoes she'd just loosed had a running time of just over six minutes.
That was a bit too close for comfort.
"Match sonar bearings and shoot, Tube Three, snapshot on Master Four-two, aye aye. Tube Three fired electrically. Sonar reports torpedo running straight, hot, and normal, sir."
Well off Seawolf's port bow, the water foamed and boiled suddenly. The harpoon canister, floating to the surface at a forty-five-degree angle, carried the missile out of the water, then jettisoned its nose cap and aft section. The harpoon's booster engine ignited, and the missile streaked from the water, angling toward the east.
Flight time to the destroyer was only two minutes. Following its track as it skimmed low across the waves, Garrett watched it near its target, watched fountains of water kicked high all around it as the destroyer opened up with every 25- and 57mm AA weapon that could bear.
Apparently, though, the Luda had nothing like the American CIWS, and the missile kept going. At the last moment it angled up, rising sharply, a pop-up maneuver to bring it down on the target's lightly armored upper deck from above.
The quarter-ton high explosive warhead detonated with a towering pillar of white smoke, stopping the Luda dead in her wake. Seconds later another explosion went off… and then a third.
"Bridge, Sonar! Explosion and secondaries, Master Four-six! We're getting breakup noises. Master Four-six is a dead-un, Skipper!"
"Got it, Sonar." Garrett could see the destroyer beginning to develop a heavy list and going down by the bow. Fires raged on the deck around the ship's forward twin 130mm gun mount and just below the bridge.