“What do you make of that, Brad?” asked the CO, handing over the periscope.
“I don’t know what they’re doing, but that’s not a diving cylinder he’s using…it’s metal welding gear…you know what I think? These guys are planning to weld a couple of big iron hooks on our bow so they can tow us into shore.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No…that’s what they’re doing.”
“Well, why don’t we drown ’em…just submerge again?” offered Shawn Pearson.
“Good call,” replied the CO. “Open main vents…Officer of the Deck, take her down.”
Seawolf’s ballast tanks flooded up again and she commenced her rolling motion, wallowing down into the sea rather than sliding into it with full propulsion. Judd kept the periscope up and watched the Chinese helicopter come in fast and low and take the men off. But he could not go on doing this indefinitely without running out of air. So he ordered the submarine back to the surface, back to the standoff, which in a world of bad options was probably his best.
He drafted an immediate signal to Pearl Harbor: “Seawolf surfaced in position 20.30N 113.35E. Immobilized by towed array around propeller. Chinese destroyer Xiangtan in company. Small-arms fire prevents work on propeller. For’ard gun mounting continues trained on my sail. Surface and air assistance required soonest.”
The satellite signal from SUBPAC was back in 15 minutes: “LRMP arrives 1200. CVBG arrives within air range 24 hours. Surface support 48 hours. Diplomatics in hand.”
“Well, that all sounds a bit slow. Six hours for a long-range maritime air patrol to get here, a day for a carrier group, two days for surface ships. I suppose we can just about stop the Chinks doing anything major to our bow for that long. But it’s not likely to be easy.”
Meanwhile, on the stern of the destroyer there was a lot of activity. And at a little after 0600, both Haitun helicopters got into the air, carrying between them a heavy steel hawser in a huge U-shape beneath them. Judd watched them lower it deep into the water right behind the stern of the submarine. Then they towed it forward of the propeller, then even farther forward, still deep-submerged below the ship, until it was right in front of the rudders and the after-planes.
Then the two Haituns went back to a height of around 100 feet, and slowly began to fly in a tight circle, almost overlapping each other, though staying well clear of each other’s blades. This had the effect of twisting the hawser into a steel knot around the narrow stern of the submarine. It could not slide forward because of the massive bulk of Seawolf’s hull. And it certainly could not slide aft, past the huge bottom rudder and twin after-planes.
The Luhai quickly began to reverse, and the two ends of the hawser were lowered onto the aft deck where the helicopters landed, and it seemed to Judd that about 10,00 °Chinamen took over. He guessed what was coming next, and he was right. The ends of the hawser were made fast on the deck. And at 0730 on the morning of July 5, 2006, in the South China Sea, USS Seawolf, the pride of the U.S. Navy’s Silent Service, began a long tow, backward, into captivity. For how long, no one knew; for what purpose, Judd Crocker had a very fair idea, particularly since there was now a Chinese escort of two aircraft overhead and a fast patrol boat close aboard on either side.
Cy Rothstein assessed that the Chinese would tow them into Canton and try to strip-search the entire ship, copying every one of Seawolf’s secrets, the sonar, the radar, the computers, the propulsion machinery, the nuclear reactor, the combat weapons, the cladding on the hull. Never had China been so lucky. Never had she had such a supreme opportunity to create an underwater fleet in the absolute image of that of the USA.
The only question left, in Cy Rothstein’s opinion, was the fate of the crew. Would they release them? Or would they subject the principal officers and crewmen to a searching interrogation, enlisting the help of the best submariners in the U.S. Navy to assist them in their quest to match the West in terms of modern sea power?
Cy did not, obviously, know the answer to that one. Nor did anyone else. But at this point Judd Crocker was forced to reconsider his scuttling options — i.e., getting the crew off and into the water with life jackets, then sinking the boat.
He realized the catastrophic potential of his boat falling into the hands of the Chinese. Now, only scuttling could prevent this, sinking her in international waters where the U.S. Navy could protect their secrets. But such a drastic course of action carried too high a price. The Chinese had opened fire on his men once, and for all Judd knew they would probably do it again. The cost of scuttling Seawolf might be killing the entire American crew.
Judd Crocker realized they were effectively prisoners of the Chinese, and that they might be subject to interrogation. However, he did hold out reasonable hopes that the diplomats might sort something out, and that some horse-trading on behalf of the U.S. government might gain their release. In the meantime, they could do nothing except wait for the next move from their new hosts.
And an uncomfortable wait it would be, already close to Chinese waters. Xiangtan was dragging them toward Canton at four knots, which meant a journey of 20 hours. And with no propulsion, they rolled back and forth all the way, despite the calm seas. All other power systems were working, so they had light and air-conditioning from the reactor. They also had plenty of food and water, and they had their communications, so the CO was able to keep SUBPAC up to speed with each development.
But there was little to report. They could either seal themselves in the mighty steel capsule of Seawolf, defy the Chinese to the end, and keep the hatches tightly battened down in the hope of release. Or they could surrender to the Chinese and feign outrage at being arrested in international waters during the perfectly peaceful conduct of their business.
Surrender or not, he ordered all evidence of the photographs, including the camera and the film-developing material, destroyed and then jettisoned out through the torpedo tubes. The passport of his XO was shredded and went with them.
Judd more or less rejected the possibility of a policy of sealed-in defiance, on the basis that the Chinese at some point would try to smash their way into the submarine, and that would entail a significant battle in which a lot of people would most certainly die, both Americans and Chinese.
One way or another, it was deeply frustrating to be sitting in one of the most powerful combat systems on earth, a nuclear boat with the capability of sinking not only Xiangtan but many of her seaborne colleagues, too. She carried the ADCAP Mk 48 torpedoes for just this sort of task, in case the U.S. went to war during one of her tours of duty.
She also carried the long-range Hughes Tomahawk land-attack missiles with nuclear warheads. One of these things could probably knock down Beijing, never mind Canton. Under pressure they could take out a sizeable chunk of southwest China.
And yet Captain Crocker was powerless, since he was not permitted to start World War III off his own bat.
Nor was he in any position to fight it out with the destroyer, because if Xiangtan was sunk, there were plenty more warships to replace her. And in the end Seawolf would surely go down fighting.
But the last signal from Pearl Harbor had forbidden him to open fire. SUBPAC was playing this one down for the moment, trying to reason with the Chinese Navy, expressing alarm that an American ship should have been apprehended in this way in international waters.
The Chinese were, predictably, stonewalling: “So very sorry about this unfortunate incident. Extremely upset that you should have your ship carrying big thermonuclear weapons of war crashing into our peaceful destroyer, which was testing new engines in the South China Sea.…We have merely answered a request from your Commanding Officer for assistance.…We mean no one harm.…We will help to get your submarine going soon, then we will talk. Very, very sorry.”