The machine gun began squirting short bursts. The gunner knew his stuff. Through his binoculars Child could see sparks where bullets were hitting the boat and pieces flying off. On the fifth burst the boat exploded. As the fireball rose into the night sky, illuminating the area around the boat, the wreckage drifted to a stop. The fire quickly went out as the boat sank. The harbor was dark again.
Except on the ships berthed against the piers and quay. Searchlights came on, klaxons wailed, Oriental voices could be heard talking over PA systems. The crews were being called to action stations.
Joe Child wondered how much more time Howie Peavy needed. He wondered how quickly the berthed ships could be gotten to sea. He wondered how many more patrol boats were sitting at a pier, ready to cast off. He wondered if he should alert the admirals in charge of the task forces.
He decided to alert them with a message on his com unit. Typing it would keep him busy doing something productive.
USS Utah slid in behind the Chinese hunter-killer sub at about four miles distance. If the Chinese boat was towing a sonar array, Roscoe Hanna didn’t want to hit it. Once safely behind the Chinaman, Hanna accelerated a bit to match his speed. A submarine’s stern was its dead zone, the sounds behind it hidden by the turning screws and disturbed water of its passing. The boat they were trailing would undoubtedly turn sooner or later to clear his stern, his “baffles,” but probably not for a while.
“Any other boats around?”
“No, sir.” None had been reported, but Hanna thought it never hurt to ask a direct question and make everyone look again.
Hanna checked the plot. The two subs seemed to be heading for the Hornet task group, which was only forty miles away. At ten knots, they would be there in four hours if they held this course. Of course, Hornet was moving, too. For whatever it was worth, they were already in Hornet’s vicinity.
“How are the sound conditions?” Hanna asked his sonar guru.
“Not good. Too shallow.”
The sound conditions would be equally bad for the Chinese boat, Hanna thought.
The clock on the bulkhead was ticking off the minutes. Captain Hanna sat on a stool where he could see the automated plot and waited.
As the SEALs got their demolition charges attached, they went back in pairs for the last ones, until all eight fifty-pound charges were attached under the keel. Then the two superfluous pairs of divers swam back to the Sealion, which had returned to the net after the passage of the harbor patrol boat.
It was very difficult working in the blackness under the ship, with only ten feet of water between the bottom and the keel, with visibility about a foot. Howie Peavy and his mate, Petty Officer Second Class Macon George, installed the fuses in each charge, attached the timer to the ship, and ensured the clock was working. Peavy was ready to set the timer when George grabbed his arm and motioned that his rebreather was going bad. Together the two men swam upward toward the surface.
They came up right against the hull of the ship. Lights dangling from the catwalk forty feet above lit the surface and dazzled the divers, whose eyes had not adjusted. Still, it was doubtful if anyone on the catwalk was looking straight down at the waterline.
“We can’t stay here,” Peavy told George. “You stay here, and I’ll go back and set the timer. Then we’ll share the mouthpiece and swim back together.”
A thumbs-up.
Peavy turned and flippered down … just in time to feel the whap of a bullet hitting the water near him. Very near.
He grabbed Macon George’s feet and dragged him under. George was using his hands to help get under the surface, so the two went down together.
Peavy took a deep breath, passed the mouthpiece to George, who put it in his mouth, spit the water out around the edge, exhaled, took a deep breath and passed it back.
The two men swam back down to the keel — and had to hunt for the damned charges. They had drifted too much toward the stern, Peavy realized, and turned George and swam back along the keel.
Taking turns breathing, they set the timer for thirty minutes. Then Peavy checked his compass, and they swam away underwater in the direction of the Sealion.
The cold water was getting to both men. They were very tired, lethargic.
They couldn’t quit. They swam on, holding hands, trading the mouthpiece, checking the compass every few strokes in that dark, cold, wet universe.
Although they didn’t know it, the Chinese sailors at the machine guns on the catwalks had opened fire on the surface of the water. They had no target, just sprayed bullets back and forth.
Petty Officer First Class Jack Brumlik was settled in with the Barrett sniper rifle on the mole. He was lying prone. He turned the rifle and aimed at the muzzle flashes. Touched off one of those .50 caliber rounds.
The muzzle flashes stopped. He waited for the starlight scope to adjust, saw the gunner looking wildly about and put the crosshairs on him. Squeezed ever so gently and felt the rifle smack him in the shoulder. When he recovered from the recoil and looked again, the man was not visible.
“The other one,” his spotter said. “Shoot him, too.”
Jack Brumlik aimed and touched off his weapon. A first-shot hit.
“Let’s move,” the spotter said urgently. “They’ll be shootin’ back.”
Brumlik scrambled up and grabbed the rifle, and they ran fifty yards along the mole, closer to the Sealion and the machine gun on a tripod.
When Howie Peavy and Macon George got to the net and surfaced, they found the Sealion was fifty feet or so to the north. Holding on to the net, they worked their way along it, then climbed it to the deck.
The hatch was open. Peavy shoved George in, then shouted down, “Count off.”
Five men answered. Peavy made six. Plus the coxswain. Peavy took off his rebreather and mask, dropped them through the hatch, then climbed down and dogged the hatch behind him.
“Let’s get the hell outta here,” he roared at the coxswain, and then counted heads again. Yep, he had everyone.
He went forward and climbed up beside the coxswain. “Message the ship. Give them the code. Mission complete, exiting the area.”
“Yes, sir.”
Peavy smacked the coxswain on the shoulder, then went aft to check on his men.
Aboard Hornet and United States, the admirals ordered the ready sorties to launch. The Sealions might need air cover on the trip back to Hornet.
Aboard the Sealion that was clearing Qingdao Bay, Howie Peavy looked at his watch. Seven minutes to go.
Meanwhile Captain Joe Child was supervising the reloading of the Zodiacs, then the transfer of the weapons to his ride, the Sealion with coxswain Peter Ciliberti at the helm.
It took a while. Child was about ready to go down the ladder and dog the hatch behind him when the charges under Liaoning went off with a thud. He could feel it through the water first, then the air. Not too loud.
He stood mesmerized, watching the carrier tied to the quay through his binoculars. Her lights were still lit. Some water had been squirted aloft, and he could see the cloud of it illuminated by the decklights. Then it dissipated.
Nothing happened. The lights stayed lit.
Child didn’t know what to expect. Obviously she wouldn’t go down like a torpedoed freighter in an old Victory at Sea movie. But shouldn’t she be doing something?
Maybe they got the charges in the wrong place. Maybe they didn’t use enough explosive. Maybe—
Then he realized the middle of the ship was lower, the bow and stern higher. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the middle settled and the bow and stern seemed to rise.