Cheyenne’s underway was uneventful, and the M-14s Mack had on the bridge stayed safely in their racks.
After submerging, Mack ordered the OOD to stream the floating wire. He also ordered the TB-23 towed array deployed far enough to ensure that the 960 feet of hydrophones were clear of their housing. After that, Cheyenne headed for the three hundred-fathom curve, which she would follow at the established six-knot SOA until she was due east of the Zhanjiang Naval Base. Then she would have nearly three hundred miles of westerly transit across the widest part of the continental shelf, all in less than one hundred fathoms of water.
The Chinese Alfa, Chung, was presumably in board of Cheyenne, where it belonged, more than 20,000 yards away according to its sector restrictions. And Los Angeles was outboard in the deeper water to the east, where she would remain until the turn to the west. Then Los Angeles would watch Cheyenne’s 180, as President Jiang had quipped earlier.
Mack’s biggest concern was the Mao. The TB-23 was their best bet for detecting it, and if they didn’t encounter the unknown submarine before they had to switch to the TB-16 towed array, they could be in trouble.
Cheyenne, Los Angeles, and Chung heard nothing but fishing fleet and other merchant traffic. All three captains were relying on their contingent to do what and when they were supposed to do.
A day and a half later, as Cheyenne was nearing the turning point, sonar reported several conformal-array submarine contacts to the northwest, two at high speed on converging bearings. Mack manned battle stations and launched one of several SSIXS buoys, with pre-arranged reports just in case something like this were to happen. That was the safest way to communicate events to Los Angeles—SSIXS to CTF 74 for turnaround to Los Angeles for copying on her floating wire.
By the time battle stations were manned, sonar had four sonar contacts to the northwest. Only one was Chung, as determined by the Alfa tonals. The other three were Akulas. Chung was also communicating by underwater telephone, which was being answered by only one Akula.
Without a Chinese linguist aboard — or a Russian one for that matter — Mack could only guess at what was being said, but he assumed that the Chung captain was trying to talk himself out of a bad situation. The Chinese captain’s answer came in the form of three torpedoes, one from each of the three Akulas, which were tracking on the bearing of the still-squawking Chung.
Mack shook his head. The Chung captain had not been inept. He had been ambushed by three of his fellow commanding officers, who were under the command of the still-at-large General Yu Quili, and he had done the best he could against them. His talking with the Akulas on the underwater telephone may have given his position away, but it also gave his Alfa submarine fire control system the ranges and bearings of the Chinese bullies.
He managed to launch two of his ET-80 torpedoes before Chung was hit by three 65cm torpedoes.
The Cheyenne control room and sonar room were in total silence as they witnessed the carnage. They had seen their share of enemy ships destroyed, but there was something about the spectacle of Chinese submariners killing themselves that made this especially poignant.
Five explosions and four submarines had been involved in the fray, and only one Akula survived it unscathed.
After the explosions, Mack turned to the south to head for the five hundred-fathom curve, where he could fully deploy the TB-23. He hoped that the rapid turnaround promised by the CTF 74 communicators had happened by now. The SSIXS buoy instructions were for moving haven changes to the south for both Cheyenne and Los Angeles.
Los Angeles had received the instructions and had executed the turn as directed, not knowing that she was heading toward the Mao. The Sino-Russian sub was laying in wait thirty degrees to the left of her track, expecting the attacking Akulas to cause Cheyenne to turn away to the south.
The Mao captain did not know that Los Angeles was in the area, so when the Mao gained sonar contact he assumed that it was Cheyenne and the notorious Captain Mackey. Within minutes, four Mao torpedoes were heading in a depth and azimuth spread at the target.
Los Angeles got off a snap shot. Then she launched countermeasures, turned away toward deep water, and increased speed to flank en route to one thousand feet.
The Mao captain had expected this. He had read the reports from the few surviving commanding officers who had tangled with Mack, and he felt he knew the American’s tactics. Even before Los Angeles launched countermeasures, the Mao captain was swinging his submarine to starboard. As soon as his ship was in position, he launched four more torpedoes, leading the U.S. SSN perfectly.
He had sprung his trap exactly as he’d hoped, and if the ship he had targeted had, indeed, been Cheyenne, Mack’s ship would have been destroyed. As it was, the Mao captain’s ambush became his own deathtrap.
Cheyenne’s sonars had picked up the first set of torpedo launches from the Mao. The noise from the second set finalized the range, bearing and course. Mack launched the two Mk 48s from tubes one and two, and followed them with the two from tubes three and four.
The Mao captain was too busy listening in the direction of his own torpedoes and the frantically racing Los Angeles to notice that four Mk 48 ADCAPs were inbound toward his position.
Cheyenne’s first two torpedoes acquired the Mao just as the first two Chinese torpedoes struck Los Angeles. The Mao never heard Mack’s weapons, as the remaining two Mk 48s acquired the hostile submarine at the same time Los Angeles was finally destroyed by the last four Mao torpedoes.
The sound of the explosions — two, followed by four, followed by two, and then by two more — was incredible, and more than the Cheyenne sonar men could withstand. They all took off their headsets, turned down the speaker volume, and watched their sonar consoles illuminate.
Mack kept all hands at battle stations and proceeded to take Cheyenne to test depth as a salute to their lost ship-mates aboard Los Angeles. Submariners at sea around the world had done this same thing as soon as they had been informed that Thresher and Scorpion were lost at sea with all hands aboard.
Mack didn’t have to say anything to the crew. They knew. The sound of the explosions through the hull told them at least one submarine had died out there. The down angle as Cheyenne headed for test depth told them who it had been.
Only President Jiang and his two bodyguards didn’t understand, and Mack was in no mood to tell them.
The ocean was now quiet, except for the occasional “hull popping” as Cheyenne slowly descended, heading south toward the safety of deep water. Only when she had leveled out at test depth did Captain Mackey pick up the 1MC. He’d always thought holding memorial services for a lost crewman was the hardest job he’d ever face, but conducting memorial services for an entire ship was much harder.