“Nikki, a female Lieutenant.”
“Yes, programming them the way she wants it is fine, and we can link the two together, so we get a bigger bang.”
“You ok with that Innes?”
“Yes sir, he’s showed me the sled and briefed me on how it works. We have similar way’s of working too, so it should be Ok.”
Pike smiled. “Let’s give them a kick in the bollocks. When you’re done get some sleep, in the morning get the detail soaked up and get Weaps to programme the Stonefish. We’ll go in after dark tomorrow night.”
INNES SAT ON A LONG Spearfish torpedo in the torpedo room up in the bow. The Weapons officer had an inspection cover open on a Stonefish mine, he held a handheld electrical device connected to it. “There we go, that’s both done now. It’ll do what you want now. I’ve also connected the firing mechanism so two is slaved to one. Big explosion when it senses its quarry.” The Stonefish looked like a short torpedo but with a flattened front end.
“So, let me get this right Sir, Lieutenant Kaminski was adamant about this. It will ignore an SSN or any other boat but explode if it detects an SSBN?”
“That’s right boyo.”
“So, we get these things up near the doors and they do the rest?”
“Yep, two 660lb warheads of Aluminised PBX, that’s like two Spearfish going off. Those two would sink the Battleship Bismarck.” Weaps turned to Marr.
“Have you told him about the USS 2? You are going into Yulin, they’ll have a couple on patrol.”
Marr shook his head. “Not yet. Let’s go back to the Galley, get a brew. Then I’ll tell you.”
The two of them sat with two coffees. “Ok, this USS 2 is an Underwater Security System for detecting Frogmen.” He made quote marks in the air. “They copied it from the Israelis. There’s a base station and one or more mobile underwater drones, they can locate divers infiltrating a harbour. They’re not armed or weren’t. They sold some to the Iranians, we first encountered them when we did an Infil at Bandar Abbas naval base.”
“So, it’s out there hunting for divers. Not good man.”
“If you’re detected it releases a small buoy with a transmitter on it, telling them that you’re there and where you are. They used to trail a wire to a floating buoy, but passing ships…well you can imagine. We tried jamming the signal, all sorts of fancy electronic stuff. No luck.
Then one lad from down Suffolk way, an old stable lad, said.
“It’s like a racehorse, it’ll run like shit and do wonders but if it can’t see, it’s fucked.”
So we did what he suggested and put a plastic sack over it, tied it off. The bastard can’t move as its props suck water in and eject it. It can release a buoy, but it can’t reach the surface as the buoy needs to be free of the drone before a lanyard inflates it.
It’s totally fucked, all for the cost of a sack. The trick is getting the sack on before it gets to release its buoy.”
Innes frowned. “And how do you do that, you don’t know where it is?” Marr grinned.
“The racehorse lad had another idea. You’ll see.”
A RED DIFFUSE LOW LIGHT filled the control room. Commander Pike checked his monitor yet again.
“Forward two, easy now.” He raised the scope for a ninety-degree sweep and pressed go. The scope raised above the surface did a sweep and retracted.
The image and rangefinder marks told him they were just 150 yards from the outer entrance to Yalong Bay.
“Ok down vent forward one.”
“Contact sir.” Fill forward one 20 %.”
“Level sir.”
“Weaps, deploy Stonefish tubes five and six.”
“Aye sir. Flooding tubes five and six. Opening outer doors. Tube five out, tube six out. Stonefish out and ready, three hours until active.”
“Right Marr, Innes. Out there and do your stuff.”
The two divers clad in their rebreathers let the water fill the chamber, above was a dim red light. The sail compartment was now full, Marr opened the hatch and swam out into the sea. Innes followed into the blackness. Helmet lights were switched on. Marr swam off around the sail and Innes followed. Marr unfastened three latches and revealed the sled. The two men pulled it free and Marr switched it on. The two divers took it forward, found the two mines and with much effort and running cables through lugs they attached the two mines to the underside of the sled. Marr gave him the OK checked his compass and pointed to 290 degrees. Innes nodded, and they set off both led on top of the sled. Their depth was around forty feet. They were now in the enemy’s main nuclear submarine base, on their way to cause mayhem. After fifteen minutes Marr turned his helmet light off and angled the sled upward towards the surface. They quietly surfaced, a few lights were visible ahead, off to the left a large building was flooded with light. Marr took a compass bearing and they descended again. The sled swam stealthily further into the harbour, another fifteen minutes and it was time for another peek and compass bearing. This time on descending Marr settled the sled on the silty bottom of the bay.
He unclipped two sacks from under the sled and passed one to Innes, he made a motion like covering something. Innes knew what was going on and he unfurled his sack, it was holed to allow him to pull it through the water. Then Marr placed a vertical tube with a weighted base on the seabed around five yards away, it was connected to the sled by a rubber tube around a half inch diameter. The SBS diver returned to the sled, reached under and opened a valve. Air from a cylinder bubbled out of the vertical tube streaming what looked like rubber or plastic strips, looking like long undulating flapping thin leaves. Innes grunted as he realised this was a decoy to lure the USS 2 drone. He lay flat to the seabed and waited with his sack.
Come on little fish, come on. The drone would be alerted by the noise and move in to locate its prey. Soon a buoy would be broadcasting “here they are” signals on the surface. If it did that he knew there’d be a launch sent out, dropping hand grenades all over us. He waited five minutes. It started quietly and got louder he heard a noise, a whirring, it was impossible to sense the direction due to the high speed of sound underwater, but it was approaching. He looked all around. There, there it was just three yards away, it would pass a couple of yards away. Innes opened his sack waited until it had just gone by and lunged. He roughly pulled the sack over it, Marr pulled the lanyard shut. The drone ran its motors to no avail, you could see the sack being sucked into the fan duct. The drone was going nowhere, any released buoy would be trapped. Innes had to laugh at it struggling behind his mouthpiece.
They set off towards their destination again, leaving the drone occasionally whirring its motors in frustration. After a few minutes Innes looked up a steep slope, this must be the cliff he figured. Marr turned the sled left and soon they were over a black chasm. Marr pushed the control column forward and they headed down into it. At 140 feet they reached the bottom. Marr pointed to the north and made an up and down flat shape with his hands, followed by an opening door. Innes nodded and started to unfasten a Stonefish. Finally, it was free then they slung under it two lifting bags, fore and aft. Marr started inflating the forward bag from his 7-litre bailout cylinder, Innes did the same with the rear bag. The two of them swam towards the steel door where they set down the mine at the left-hand side of the doors, removed the bags and returned to the sled. The other Stonefish was placed at the right-hand side. The two of them shook hands and returned to the sled and made their way back to the harbour entrance. Twenty minutes later, Innes heard a small boat approach, he paid it little heed it would be a regular harbour patrol. Then came a dull loud thud, he felt it as much as heard it. Another followed, they were getting closer. Innes’s mind raced, it must be a standard patrol. if somehow, they’d realised the drone had been disabled, how did they know the divers were in this area? More grenades exploded getting ever closer and now very loud and a chest thumping shock wave. Marr pressed on towards the entrance. Innes knew they could be right in the boats path, the grenades felt right next to him. He shook Marr and pointed to the South west and stabbed his finger repeatedly.