For a long time there was nothing, and then just before midday the Viking picked up a new contact, and again it was a Kilo. It could have been the same one they heard at 0804, but it may very well have been a different one. The Chinese only own four Kilos, and privately Admiral Holt thought there were probably two of them out there. However, at 1200 (local), that was not quite the point. What mattered was that the Viking operator put the transmission only 56 miles off Big John’s port beam, and that was not good. Worse yet, it was continued, but not localized, by either of the SSNs.
In Admiral Holt’s opinion, this was becoming quite serious. There was, it seemed, at least one Chinese Kilo possibly as close as 50 miles from the carrier, and it seemed to be extremely elusive. Which was a shuddering thought for a U.S. admiral accustomed to controlling the ocean, on, above and below the surface for 200 miles in any direction wherever he roamed.
No admiral commanding a carrier battle group wants to go anywhere within 300 miles of a foreign, unfriendly, land-based air force, and he certainly wants no part of a marauding submarine. The Chinese ploy to have two Kilos on permanent patrol in the Taiwan Strait is based on the simple assumption that no U.S. admiral would steer a carrier down the Taiwan Strait if this were so. Neither would he.
And now, the steel-haired Daylan Holt, a Texan from Mesquite on the western edge of Dallas, was face-to-face with a brand-new kind of hardball international politics out on the northern edge of his own ops area. Of course he could sink the Kilo if he could catch it below the surface…IF he could find it.
But at that point, no one could find it, or even them, if there were two, despite having flooded the probability areas with radar, ESM and active and passive sonar from his submarines, aircraft and towed-array frigates. And it was beginning to look as though the JFK would have to continue northeast into the deep water at the southern end of the lonely Sakishima Islands, where Japan finally peters out into the Pacific. This is a very remote corner of the ocean, 300 miles southwest of the American base at Okinawa. The Sakishimas stand 120 miles west of Taiwan, 60 miles from the op area of Big John. Admiral Holt had an uneasy feeling he was being herded away from his objective by the demonic, near-silent Chinese submarines.
And the Chinese not only tracked the Americans all the way, at 1400 they activated E-1, some 80 miles north of the carrier, undetected by the outriding nuclear submarine. The Viking picked it up and signaled the flag. Admiral Holt briefly changed course, and as he did so, Guangjin activated D-2. Just a transient, seven-second transmission, which had the effect of pushing the carrier toward the waters south of the tiny island chain, to Ishigaki, where the water was deep, and which, by a grand design hatched in distant Zhanjiang, lay neatly in two outer squares of Lt. Commander Guangjin’s grid.
Admiral Holt was forced to turn north again, and he reasoned that the Kilo force, however many, was now to his left and right, but falling astern. If they wanted to get at his carrier, they’d have to transit northwest through the massive ASW barrier he’d set up. The decoy Kilo-buoys were indeed on either side of him, but the wily Zhang had stationed two real Kilos just 30 miles ahead of the CVBG. And he’d done it seven days ago.
And now they were almost stationary, transmitting nothing, preparing to launch a copybook attack on the U.S. carrier, identical to that of Commander Ben Adnam when he destroyed the Nimitz-Class carrier USS Thomas Jefferson in the Arabian Sea five years previously.
They had chased and pursued nothing. They had just waited, silently, for the prime moment to fire, when Lt. Commander Guangjin’s ingenious invention had done its work. Unlike Ben Adnam they had not needed to assess the wind and the carrier’s time of approach. The very occasional transmissions from the floating electronic buoys had “herded” Big John into the appointed place like so many sheepdogs.
The Chinese submarines were in there, in 600 feet of water, the Kilo-Class hulls 366 and 367, jet-black 3,000-ton diesel-electrics built in Russia’s Admiralty Yard at Saint Petersburg. They were each armed with 18 TEST 71/96 wire-guided passive-active torpedoes, homing at 40 knots to 15 kilometers. But the Chinese COs would fire their two torpedoes, with their 205kg nonnuclear warheads, from a lot closer than that.
But Admiral Zhang was not out to create world havoc and mass destruction. He just sought, quietly, to cripple the great U.S. warship, despite all the difficulties that would involve.
And at 2100 that Monday evening, his underwater commanders drew a bead on Big John.
Everything about the goddamned Chinese baffled Arnold Morgan. He had no idea why they would have wanted to infuriate the entire Western world, not to mention much of the Eastern world, by assisting the goddamned towelheads in mining the Strait of Hormuz.
Maybe just for money. Maybe they really thought they could make a huge financial killing by selling their oil from Khazakhstan at the massive world prices that would follow the blockade of the Gulf of Iran.
Maybe. But maybe not. It made some sense to the President’s National Security Adviser. But not enough. Well, the USA had slammed back hard, as China must have known they might. And no one had complained to anyone. Certainly the USA knew there was no point remonstrating with the Chinese over the minefield, because they would say nothing. Equally the Chinese had said nothing to anyone about the destruction of the oil refinery.
Admiral Morgan knew he was not going to receive any answers to anything. Which was why he had summarily requested the presence of the Chinese ambassador to Washington, the urbane Ling Guofeng. Arnold might not be getting any answers, but he was about to deliver one or two truths.
Kathy O’Brien politely ushered the ambassador into the main office at 0815. The two men knew each other, of course, but it was always a cool relationship. The Admiral had passed one or two withering broadsides across the bow of the Chinese ship of state in the past few years, and Ling Guofeng had frequently been obliged to keep his head well down.
In another life, they might actually have been friends. Both of them knew more about the world than was good for anyone. And both of them knew implicitly where their loyalties were. Arnold Morgan, a natural aggressor, was constantly issuing warnings, making threats and, occasionally, carrying them out. The veteran Ambassador Ling, in his role as China’s chief appeaser in Washington, was thus obliged to absorb a substantial amount of grief from the Admiral. But the diplomat from Shanghai knew how to roll with the punches.
“Good morning, Admiral,” he said, bowing. “What a very kind invitation. It’s been too long.”
Arnold Morgan raised his eyes heavenward…Too long! Never mind the blown-up tankers, never mind the minefield, the world oil crisis, Japan almost going bankrupt because of it. Never mind that the blasted refinery’s still spouting flames one hundred feet into the air…. Will someone ever save me from this Oriental bullshit?…“Too long,” he says. Jesus Christ.
“Ambassador, the pleasure is, as always, mine,” replied the Admiral. “Please sit down. I have ordered a pot of Lapsang Suchong, your favorite China tea, I believe — at least your favorite in this country.”
“Now that is very kind of you, and I hope it will smooth our way during our discussions.”