Normally, the approach of any warship — never mind a big Chinese destroyer — would have necessitated an immediate call to the captain to return to the control room. But Linus Clarke did not think he was personally having a good patrol. There had been three times when he had betrayed nerves of a kind no XO who hopes one day to have a command should ever display.
In his mind, he had only betrayed natural human reactions to extreme danger: the flooding of the torpedo room, deep beneath the surface; straying right into the path of incoming underwater missiles; being spotted by the big Chinese ICBM submarine. Linus knew that Captain Crocker was a top-class commanding officer, but he also knew their orders forbade them from getting detected. And so far they had been detected three times, once off Taiwan, obviously, once by the Xia, and again last night by shore radar. Judd might be tough, experienced and gifted, but he wasn’t Superman, and Linus thought it was about time he showed some of his own mettle, demonstrating that he too was capable of commanding an American nuclear boat on a highly classified mission.
He had a lot of CIA background now, and a lot of important contacts. He really wanted to take a look at this oncoming Chinese warship, and he ordered Seawolf’s team to reduce speed and slide up to periscope depth as the contact came within two miles. They might as well take a good look. If push came to shove, they could always go deep and outrun her, just as Judd had done to the much smaller Luda.
In the ops room of the Luhai destroyer there was a ripple of activity. One of the sonar operators, new to the screen that reflected the findings of the giant 1,000-yard-long American-designed towed array, thought he was getting something, but he could not tell what.
It was, however, a sufficient change in the levels for him to call out engine lines. And Colonel Lee, the very senior captain of the ship, instantly ordered a reduction in speed, as if silencing the water beyond the hull would make their contact more easy to identify. Xiangtan slowed almost to a halt while the Chinese technicians worked the computer keys, trying to tap into the new electronic system.
Meanwhile, now at periscope depth, Seawolf was 2,400 yards off the Luhai’s starboard beam. Clarke had his night-sight camera up and snapping, and he was visually able to see a large modification to the destroyer’s stern, an unusual housing, bigger than normal for foreign ships, though not entirely unusual in the U.S.
Linus’s mind raced. He knew what he was seeing. Everyone in the Silent Service knew that China had gotten its hands on that high-tech modern towed array, along with its processing computers. And right here was the evidence, a major Chinese warship with a big winch housing for a long towed array, the design and technology of which had been flagrantly stolen from the U.S.
“I’m going in closer,” he said. “Officer of the Deck, keep her straight and level, PD…I want to pass in across her stem and get some closeups of that housing. Might even catch a glimpse of the actual array in the water.”
“Steady, sir…” Andy Warren was issuing a veiled warning. “We don’t know how long that array is.”
“Don’t worry, Andy. I’m not going in closer than a mile. It won’t be that long, will it? And this is a destroyer…the array will be angled down in the water, not straight out behind like a submarine deploys.”
“Sir.” Master Chief Brad Stockton had arrived in the control room. “You want me to let the CO know we’re groping around the ass of a six-thousand-ton Chinese destroyer? It’s the kind of thing he takes a big interest in.”
“I don’t think there’s a need, Brad. Just taking a look. She’s not even transmitting on anything. I thought we’d cross her wake about a mile astern, get our pictures, then retreat a couple of miles and keep the ESM mast up, see if we can vacuum up a few details of her new radar and communications systems. Ex-USA, I believe.”
“Well, okay, sir. If you say so. But I do think the CO should know roughly what we’re up to. We’re awful close to a critical part of our mission. And remember, sir, we don’t know how long that towed array is, and we don’t know what angle they have it down in the water.”
“My judgment says we’re fine,” replied Linus. “And since they seem to have stolen everything from us short of the Washington Monument, we’ve got a lot of rights, and I’m about to exercise those rights. Turning in now…right standard rudder…steer course zero-nine-zero…make your speed eight…”
And USS Seawolf turned across the wake, sliding through the water astern of the destroyer, her periscope jutting out as she made the crossing.
Except she never got there. Almost, but not quite. Her giant propeller snagged on the tough towed array, 75 feet below the surface, wrapping the thick black rubberized tail hard around, twisting it into an impenetrable ball 15 feet across, and then winding it on and on, with the array trapped between the blades, until finally the shaft could fight it no more, and Seawolf’s entire propulsion mechanism came to a halt, the propeller jammed rigid.
No one knew it, but the very first tug on the array by the vast inertia of the submarine had yanked it clean off the stern of the Chinese destroyer. And now its weight was slowly dragging the submarine’s stern down.
There was no semblance of uproar, just a heavy slow-motion quiet at a strange angle. And it was, even to a sleeping submarine commander, tantamount to a shriek for help that would have pierced the deafness of Beethoven. In two and a half seconds flat, Captain Judd Crocker was wide awake, fighting his way out of his cabin door. Five seconds later he reached the conn.
“What’s going on, XO?” he snapped, seizing the periscope, which was still up and trained on the stern of the Xiangtan. There were only three seconds left before the periscope dipped below the surface, but for Judd Crocker that was plenty. Xiangtan’s stern was only 500 yards away, not the mile young Linus had believed.
“Depth ninety feet, sir…increasing. Speed zero. Bow up angle seven degrees. INCREASING,” reported the planesman, an edge entering his voice as the great submarine wallowed backward in the water.
“It may not be that bad, sir,” offered Linus. “Just temporary. I think we may have snagged something, sir.”
“SNAGGED!” exclaimed Judd. “We’re in the middle of the South China Sea. Or at least we were when I was last in the conn forty minutes ago. There’s nothing out here to snag. Barring a Chinese destroyer close aboard.”
“I went across her stern to get pictures,” said Linus Clarke. “I stood at least a mile off. But I still seem to have been too close.”
“Jesus, Linus! What d’you mean a mile, for Christ’s sake. It’s only five hundred yards. I’ve just looked. Oh, Jesus Christ! Linus, you had the fucking periscope in low power. It looked like a mile to you, but it was five hundred yards for real. And you just drove straight into his towed array.”
“LOW POWER, SIR. OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I can’t believe this. I’m extremely sorry…”
“So am I, Linus. So am I,” said the CO resignedly, hardly believing it himself. Judd had seen this once before when a student of his had made the same mistake. And now one twist the wrong way on the periscope handle had pushed the Chinese destroyer almost four times farther away to Linus’s eye than it actually was.
“Conn maneuvering…unable to answer bells. Main propulsion shaft jammed. Investigating…emergency propulsion is available.”