“Steady on zero-eight-zero, sir.”
Colonel Lee hesitated for one split second, preparing to join his God. Then he snapped the death-or-glory command. “FIRE ONE.”
“Number one tube fired.”
“FIRE TWO.”
“Number two tube fired.”
Just two small clouds of smoke were all that betrayed Colonel Lee’s actions as the two torpedoes blasted out of the tubes, 50 yards over the water, and then dropped with a heavy splash below the surface, searching, searching, searching for the USS Greenville.
Kaufman spotted the smoke. The control room snapped out the information to the cruiser: “The Chinese destroyer has fired two torpedoes from his starboard side.”
Simultaneously they hit the underwater telephone to Greenville right underneath the keel, and the submarine’s ops room was, if anything, a split second ahead.
“We just picked ‘em up. Active homers…ping interval fifteen hundred meters…I’m going on to thirty knots…full pattern active and passive decoys launched.”
Judd Crocker, in Greenville’s conn with Tom Wheaton, said, “What’s that, Tommy? Thirty-five knots. They got five on us…range fifteen hundred…that’s a five-hundred-yard gain every three minutes…gonna take ‘em nine minutes to catch us…right?”
“Correct, sir. But we got those Emerson Mark Two decoys out there…Christ they’re good, light-years in front of those old Chinese torpedoes…have faith…we may not outrun ’em, but we’ll definitely outsmart ’em.”
Greenville surged forward in the water, pursued now by Colonel Lee’s comparatively primitive weapons, which were already being completely confused by the decoys. Every time the torpedo’s homing sonar pinged, the Emerson decoy pinged it right back, announcing to the iron Chinese brain, Here I am, a darned great American submarine…come right in and hit me…over here…way, way over here.”
And Greenville had four of them in the water, which quadrupled the confusion factor.
Over in Vella Gulf, Captain Freeburg had drawn a bead on Xiangtan a long time ago. And now he seized the moment. “Prepare to launch Harpoons One and Two…”
“Launchers One and Two ready.”
“FIRE ONE AND TWO.”
The roar of the aft launch from the two fire-belching missiles was deafening, and the crew members watched them shriek skywards, higher and higher, before turning down at 800 feet to complete their deadly business.
Captain Freeburg, still positioned directly off Xiangtan’s port beam, ordered both his five-inch guns, fore and aft, to sink the Chinese destroyer. And the shells arrived before the missiles, slamming into the superstructure of the ship, blasting havoc into the ops room, the bridge, the comms room and the helicopter flight deck.
Colonel Lee ordered retaliatory fire, but he was too late. Both Harpoon missiles crashed into the portside of the Xiangtan and exploded with shattering force. The massive K-E-R-R-R-R-B-A-A-M! literally blew the Chinese destroyer apart in a massive fireball, black smoke rising in a mushroom cloud 100 feet high into the rainy skies. The ship vanished, leaving only traces of its sudden death and an ever-increasing oil-slick, which spread thinly over the waters of the western Pacific.
Captain Freeburg and his team stood for a while, watching the smoke-cloaked aftermath of the gigantic destruction they had wrought. And there was not a man among them who was not conscious of some misgivings over the loss of hundreds of lives.
“1 guess they’da done it to us, sir?” said a lieutenant junior grade, a little sheepishly.
“Guess they would at that, Jack. Besides, they probably shoulda thought about all that before they decided to capture a crippled American submarine on the high seas, in international waters, against every kind of maritime law. Wasn’t real smart, right?”
“Nossir.”
Meanwhile, back on Greenville, Judd Crocker and Tom Wheaton watched the Emerson decoys do their work. The little computer screens showed the incoming torpedoes pass harmlessly by, one a hundred yards to port, the other even farther to starboard. Neither of them found a target, never even exploded.
Commander Wheaton accessed the UWT once more, heard the news, and announced he was coming to the surface to secure the damage to his sail, “because this sucker’s making a racket which is telling me she ain’t real happy.”
In the next 10 minutes, Admiral Barry detailed Reuben James to pick up any survivors, and set a rendezvous for the carrier to make the transfers from the submarine. After that they were heading directly to Pearl, where, for some reason, there was to be a Presidential welcome for the U.S. Navy SEALs and the rescued crew of the USS Seawolf.
13
President John Clarke was, for the first time in a six-year association with Admiral Arnold Morgan, profoundly irritated with the man. In fact, he was rapidly being drawn to the conclusion that the fire-eating admiral was growing too big for his boots.
Two hours previous he had issued a presidential memorandum outlining his plans to go to Hawaii early the next week to meet the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, which was bringing home his son. And almost by return of interoffice communication he had received a reply from Admiral Morgan that had only just stopped short of saying, “Don’t be a prick.”
The actual wording had been, “Not a terribly good idea, sir. In fact, if you stop to give it serious strategic thought, a very bad idea. I’ll be along momentarily to explain precisely why.”
The President was not used to being patronized. But more important, he knew that this was an argument he was certain to lose because Morgan did not write memorandums like that unless his logic was flawless. However, the President badly wanted to go to meet Linus, and he was damned if this bombastic admiral was going to stop him.
As he waited, in a dark and rather petulant mood, he was giving no thought whatsoever to the fact that Linus lived in the protection of the giant American carrier instead of a Chinese jail as the result of the determination, aggression and intelligence of one man: Arnold Morgan.
No, President Clarke had rather forgotten that. He thought only of the injustice of the situation, that he, the most powerful leader in the free world, was being warned against going to meet his own son, his only son, for God’s sake, by some kind of half-assed military red tape. And he was not having that. Nossir. Arnold Morgan could take his rulebook and insert it in the place where the sun does not shine. He, President Clarke, was going to meet his boy in Hawaii, and that was that.
The door was opened and the admiral was shown in, breezily remarking, “Hello, sir. Hey, you look kinda gloomy. What’s up?”
“Arnold, 1 thought your little note was insensitive in the extreme, given that you above all others understand how the capture and possible torture of my son affected me these last couple of weeks.”
“Note, sir? What do you mean?”
“Hawaii, Arnold. Going to Hawaii.”
“Oh that, sir. Right. Just forget all about that. You can do more or less anything you want, sir. But you can’t go to Hawaii.”
“Arnold. Might I ask why not? And who might take it upon themselves to stop me?”
“Sir, I’m just trying to stop you from committing suicide. Politically.”
“Then perhaps you had better explain yourself.”
“Sure. The main issue is USS Seawolf…as you know, we just lost it under highly mysterious, but not too sinister circumstances. Nuclear accident, after collision in the South China Sea, okay? Now, until this moment, the media have taken only a passing interest, because there has not been drastic loss of life, and accidents can happen. Also, they cannot find out much, because when they ask us, we say we’re still awaiting full report from velly solly Chinese pricks. And in Canton and Beijing they will be told nothing.