The image on the screen jumped out to a 50-kilometer radius. Red icons appeared with alphanumeric designators attached to them. “That would be the first carrier battle group. The Zhou Man is the carrier there in the middle. She has two eight-thousand-ton air defense cruisers, one on either side. They carry the HHQ-9 supersonic surface-to-air missile. Highly lethal. Then you can see a leadand-trail frigate, an underway replenishment ship, two oilers, and what’s called a logistics support ship, more like a special cargo ship.”
Captain Hiang stared at the icons and the little green dots that represented the ASIPs moving toward them. “Don’t they have subs with this battle group, Captain?” he asked.
“There’s one with each of the two groups. Their new eightthousand-ton nuclear attack sub, type 93, Keng-class. A copy of the Russian Victor Threes, but noisy as hell. We can hear it a day away. This one’s actually in trail of the carrier. We have a sub, the USS Greenville, on her.”
The green dots slowed and appeared to stop halfway to the Chinese ships. “Well, now they wait,” Witkovski said, hopping off his chair. “And we loop around to the side to get ready to recover them. You look concerned, Tony.”
The Singaporean captain had been studying the screen and the briefing materials that he had been given. He looked up from them. “Captain, your boat, the Carter, is exactly ten times the displacement of each of my four little Swedish boats at Changi. And almost three times as long. So it’s not for me to give you advice, sir.”
“Come on, size doesn’t matter, Tony. You know these waters better than us. You were a standout in the strategy-and-tactics program at Newport. I checked. And three of those little boats of yours are waiting to pick the Chinese up for a while for us when they start through the Malacca. So what’s bothering you?” Witkovski sounded sincere.
“Okay. If I were the Chinese admiral, I would have my sub out front sweeping, or under the Zhou Man, looking for you guys. Are you sure, Tom, the sub the Greenville is following isn’t the lead for the second battle group?” Captain Hiang asked.
“Very sure. Wanna know why?” Witkovski said, sidling up to Hiang’s chair. “ ’Cuz the USS Tucson is tailing the Chinese sub that is behind the second battle group. They got two subs and we have one of ours on each one. Makes sense for them to have their subs out back to see if anyone like us is following them. Too bad for them they can’t hear us over their own din.”
Hiang laughed. “I knew I should have kept quiet.”
Forty minutes later, the Carter was running at 5 knots 6 miles east of the Zhou Man. On the display screen the three green dots were circling their targets, the Zhou Man, the destroyer Fei Hung, and the logistics support ship Xiang.
“Two questions, Captain.” Tony Hiang broke the silence in the Special Operations Control Room.
“Shoot,” Witkovksi replied.
“One, if the ASIPs aren’t communicating, how do we know where they are and what they’re doing? And as you say, part deux”— Hiang chuckled at this bit of American humor that he had picked up—“why the logistic ship?”
“Okay, one is easy. We don’t know where they are or what they’re doing really. This display simulates what we think they should be doing about now, based on their programming and the data we have about where the Chinese ships are,” Witkovski admitted.
“Part deux is a little more sensitive. Seaman, close your ears. We won’t be surprised if we get radiation readings from the carrier. They may have a few tac nukes on board for the J-11s, their Flankers. We know they have air-to-surface and air-to-ship missiles for the J-11s. The destroyer carries some antiship and possibly some land attack cruise missiles in vertical tubes. I wouldn’t be bowled over if a few of them had nukes. And we just might know what kind of radiation signal we’re looking for on each of those ships, but I never said that. Now the logy, if we get a signal there, that’s what Washington wants to hear about ASAP.”
Hiang wondered why they were watching the screen so intently if it was only telling them what they had already programmed into it. He stood and stretched.
“Owweee! Fuck me!” the seaman yelled, pulling off his headset. “Sorry, sir, but acoustics just about blew out my eardrums, sir.”
Captain Tom Witkovksi grabbed the headset and held it up near his right ear. “Jesus, what is that?” He dropped the headset and pressed an intercom on the wall. “Exec, what is that on acoustics?”
From the Combat Information Center, the boat’s control room one deck up, the executive officer responded, “We’re processing it through the database, Captain. Here it is… the first sound was ‘Similar to a Kiloclass diving.’ Then the screeching…it just says ‘Presumed Collision.’”
“Shit,” Witkovski swore, driving his fist against the wall. “I’m going up to CIC. Tony, I need you with me.” The American captain was out the bulkhead and climbing the ladder to the Combat Information Center three rungs at a time. “You got towed array out?” he barked at the executive officer as he entered CIC.
“Aye, sir. The hydrophones back there are what picked it up,” the somewhat startled exec replied. The captain flicked a switch and threw the undersea sound on the dashboard speaker. It was an excruciating sound of screeching metal, like steel chalk on a metal blackboard, magnified tenfold.
Witkovski turned down the volume. “What’s the depth there?”
“Two hundred fifty meters, Captain,” a seaman in front of a control panel answered.
“What’s the maximum dive depth of a Kilo-class?” the captain shot back.
“It’s nominally three hundred meters,” Captain Hiang answered from behind Witkovski. “But the Chinese version, the 877EKM, has a classified rating of 375.”
Witkovski spun about. “What else do you know about them? Really, Tony, tell me.”
The short Singaporean officer walked closer to the American captain and almost whispered, “They have a range of six thousand miles. They have a new, special sound-dampening and antisonar coating. They have a low-wave bow sonar that’s hard to detect. And because they can operate on only battery power for a while, they are very, very quiet. Especially against the acoustic background of an aircraft carrier battle group.”
A strange sound came over the speaker. “Ebup, ebup…” The executive officer turned up the volume on the dashboard speaker and hit the analyzer button. “Don’t bother analyzing it. I know what it is,” Captain Witkovski said, shaking his head. “Shit!”
“Sir?” the exec asked.
“It’s the acoustic distress signal from ASIP-2. There’s a Chinese Kilo out there that we missed. It’s on top of the ASIP, driving it to the bottom. The ASIP has a crush depth rating of two hundred meters. It will break up in a few minutes.” Witkovski sighed. Then he turned to look at Captain Hiang. “It seems the Zhou Man did have a sub on point and it’s playing dirty.”
“Sir, we should butt-fuck that Kilo, sir, come up behind it and ping it,” the exec proposed. “They can’t know the ASIP is unmanned. They could be killing our guys.”
“Not today, Tim. No butt-fucking today. We have two other ASIPs out there to recover and download. That’s our mission. Now, let’s do it. Give me a course to ASIP-3. Full quiet on the boat.”