Commander Wheaton considered that this had all the makings of a small war, and he opened up his encrypted line to the captain of Kaufman, the 4,000-ton Oliver Hazard Perry-class guided-missile frigate from the Ronald Reagan CVBG.
He too was seriously concerned at the sight of an onrushing Chinese destroyer, and understood Greenville’s quandary about diving in this shallow water, about 110 feet. But the immediate aim was that the submarine should get the hell out of the way.
In the conn below, Commander Wheaton’s only wish was to “get underwater, and leave the frigates to cover my ass.” He was unsure of the reliability of the charts, and he normally took a relatively cautious view of driving 7,000 tons of American steel straight into an unmarked sandbank. He had no need to remind himself of one simple equation: “Mass multiplied by velocity squared equals a whole lot of inertia. When it’s seven thousand tons times even ten knots, it’d knock us to pieces.” But this was no time for caution.
Commander Wheaton decided to vanish, even at a low speed. Every time he looked to the west, the Chinese destroyer grew ever closer.
And the CO of the USS Greenville was not the only anxious man. On the bridge of Xiangtan, Colonel Lee was in direct communication with Admiral Zu Jicai, and the Southern Commander was sufficiently concerned to order “caution, for the moment.”
He went to see Admiral Zhang again, and at the risk of irritating the all-powerful C-in-C even further, he said, simply, “Xiangtan is nine miles west of a surfaced American nuclear submarine. There are two American frigates close by. Do you continue to want Colonel Lee to open fire on her?”
“Immediately,” replied Zhang, not even glancing up from the papers he was reading.
Admiral Zu glanced around helplessly, and just said, “Sir, you are not only my immediate superior, you have been a friend for almost all of our lives. I implore you to think very carefully before you make me order this.”
“I’ve thought. Say no more, Jicai. Tell Colonel Lee to sink the American submarine, right here in Chinese national waters where she has no right to be. RIGHT NOW!”
And so the Southern Fleet Commander walked slowly back to his office and picked up the telephone again.
“Colonel Lee. My orders from the C-in-C are to sink the American submarine immediately.”
And the commanding officer of Xiangtan replied, in deep Cantonese dialect, “Aye, sir. But I should warn you, there is an entire United States Carrier Battle Group in very close proximity. We are looking at two of her guided missile frigates at this very moment. We shall be committing suicide.”
“Then you are ordered perhaps to die for your country.…Make no mistake, Colonel Lee…you are to take whatever extreme measures are necessary to put that American submarine on the floor of the South China Sea. Maximum honor to you and your crew.”
And so Colonel Lee walked back to his high chair in the ops room and ordered Xiangtan’s 157-millimeter Russian-built guns into action on Track 2301.
“Fire at will,” he said. “And God help us all.” And the first of a salvo of 10 shells screamed in toward the Greenville.
It was 0641 when the biggest gun on the Chinese destroyer opened fire. The first shell went right by.
“Over. Down four hundred. SHOOT!”
“Bracket. Up two hundred. SHOOT!”
Greenville was in the process of diving. The upper lid of the conning tower was half-shut when the third shell exploded with deafening impact right inside the sail.
Greenville shuddered, and above the casing seven more shells came whistling past, with that unmistakable WHOOOOSH — WHOOOSH — WHOOOSH of naval ordnance. The Americans were lucky to take only one hit, because there were three very near-misses.
Commander Wheaton knew nothing about them, but he did know that something extremely large and explosive had just gone off right above him. “Christ!” he thought. “That’s a goddamned shell. That bastard’s shooting at us. I just hope to God the pressure hull’s not breached.”
“Helm-Captain,” he said, steadily. “KEEP HER GOING DOWN.”
“Upper lid shut and clipped, sir.…”
“There’s a lot of noise coming from inside the sail.”
“Was that one bang or two?”
“I think only one…try the periscope?”
“Go ahead.…”
“Damn. It’s not moving, sir.…”
“How about the radio mast…”
“That’s not moving either. Nothing.”
“Upper lid’s fine, sir…we’re not shipping water.”
“Right. Shut the lower lid…and make your speed ten…steer one-eight-zero…”
“Sounder shows thirty feet below the keel…”
Commander Wheaton turned to his XO. “This is not absolutely perfect. We’re just about blind. The bow sonar is all we got left and there’s so much noise coming from the inside of the sail I doubt that’s gonna be much good to us. Fact is we can’t see, we can’t use radio, and we can’t hear much.”
By now Judd Crocker had made his way up to the conn, and found himself in the slightly awkward position of outranking the commanding officer. This meant that if he spoke at all, he must do so with extreme care, and great courtesy. Because, IF, as the top submarine commander in the U.S. Navy, Judd issued an order, it would mean, in the myriad of complicated laws of the Silent Service, that he had assumed command, relieving Tom Wheaton of his duties.
But Judd knew the CO personally, which made it easier, and he just said, “Well, Tom, at least we’re still breathing.”
“Actually, sir, at most we’re still breathing.”
“That shell wreck all the masts?”
“Looks like it. We’re blind below the surface, and I got no radio aerials — but thank God, we’re not leaking. The reactor’s fine and we have propulsion.”
“But if we want to have a look around, we have to go all the way to the surface?”
“Yessir. ’Fraid so.”
“Well, we better not do that, Tom, in case that fucking destroyer has another whack at us.”
“We sure hadn’t.”
“I guess if push came to shove, we could just go ahead and sink the bastard,” said Judd, whose proximity to the free-wheeling warriors of SPECWARCOM had plainly had a profound impact on his psyche.
Commander Wheaton smiled grimly and replied, “Well, sir, we have been fired upon, so it would be self-defense, if anyone questioned us.”
“Yes, it would. But there’s something damned odd about this. The frigates should have frightened the Chinks away. But they weren’t frightened, they blew our sail away without even thinking about it. Didn’t give a rat’s ass for the frigates.”
“Hmmmmm,” pondered Captain Crocker. “We stick our head out of the water, they’ll blow the bastard off.”
“Looks that way, sir. And we can’t fire at them. We’re still just in Chinese territorial waters, and they have a right to want us out. Anyway, you know how damned tricky it is to fire torpedoes in water this shallow. Goddamned things will probably go deep right out of the tube and then hit the bottom.
“Fact is, we gotta get back to the carrier. But the damned racket up in the sail is making our bow sonar next to useless. We need a guide dog. And the only one we got right now is Kaufman.”
Tom moved over to the underwater telephone and picked up the handset.
“Kaufman, this is Greenville. Execute Plan Kibbec Five. Read back. Over.”