Fischer’s eyes widened a bit. “Tricky,” he muttered. “I’ll see what I can do, sir.”
“Are we far enough away right now to avoid detection?”
Fischer studied his display. “Definitely.”
“You’re calling the shots, Mel. When you think we’re getting too close, let us know and we’ll shut it down.”
“I see what you’re getting at, sir,” Fischer said straightening up. “But I’m going to be real conservative.”
“Good.” Paradise called the order to the deck officer to start south, dead slow, then headed aft to get the captain.
The MSDF Lockheed/Kawasaki P-3C sub-hunter/killer, tail number 3311, arrived on station at 1422 local, the skies partly cloudy, the wind gusting to thirty knots, the seas five hundred feet below them running to ten feet.
“On station now, kan-cho,” the navigation officer radioed the pilot.
“Okay,” Lieutenant Hitoshi Kuroda acknowledged. On the flight out from the naval air station at Komatsujima on Honshu’s west coast, they had passed a half-dozen MSDF warships. Their orders were to rendezvous with the submarine Natsushio and help hunt for Chinese submarines.
He eased back on the throttles, and when the aircraft began to slow down, added ten degrees of flaps so that they were mushing along in a circular pattern just shy of 150 knots.
“Comms, release the dipping buoy.”
“Hai, kan-cho,” the communications officer responded crisply. Everyone aboard was hyper. “Buoy is deployed.”
They were in the silent mode. The Japanese submarine had turned to port once again, presenting the ZOR-one’s sensors at a right angle to the Seawolf’s path. Captain Harding watched the sonar display over Fischer’s shoulder, the extremely thin line on the waterfall showing the slowly changing aspect.
Fischer held up a hand. “Wait,” he said, his head cocked as he strained to listen to something in his headphones. He made a grease pencil mark on a minuscule spike on the display, then looked up at the captain. “That’s a dipping buoy, Skipper.”
“An Orion?”
“Be my guess they’re out here looking for those Chinese submarines, and the Orion driver just told the submarine that he was here.”
“Do we have an ID on the sub?”
“We’re still too far, sir, but the next pass should do it. I almost had him the last time.”
“Conn sonar, I have a target designated Sierra three, at eight thousand meters, bearing two-eight-five, heading toward us.”
“This is the captain. Can you identify the target?”
“Hai, kan-cho. She’s Han-four, from Qingdao. The computer agrees.”
“Have they detected us?”
“No, sir.”
“Are there any other targets?”
“Iie, kan-cho.” No, the sonar operator assured him.
“Reel in the ZOR-one, we’ll start a TMA,” Captain Tomita said. He went to the plotting table where his deck officer Lieutenant Hiroshi Kubuzono had already begun the paper plot of the Target Motion Analysis from which shooting solutions could be developed. Sonar information would now be fed automatically into the BSY-1 combat system’s computers.
Kubuzono looked up. “His track will take him directly to the Hayshio, kan-cho,” he said. “But he’s at least twenty-four hours early. And where is the second Chinese submarine?”
“Neither of them are here yet. This is a third boat, one that no one expected.”
“Except for you, kan-cho,” the young lieutenant said with sudden pride.
Tomita walked back to the command consoles above the periscopes. “Sound battle stations, torpedo,” he told his XO Lieutenant Uesugi. “This is not a drill.”
“Hai, kan-cho.”
“Load tubes one and two, and stand by to flood on my orders.” Tomita pulled down the growler phone as the battle stations announcement was broadcast over the boat’s PA system. “Communications, this is the captain. Send a SLOT buoy up, zero delay to transmit, and inform thirty-three-eleven of the approximate position of our target. This is a live exercise.”
“Hai, kan-cho.”
The SLOT was a communications buoy that would radio the information to the circling Orion in a burst transmission, not easily detectable by anyone else. He was asking the Orion to help with the battle. Although the nuclear-powered Han class Chinese submarines were thirty years old, they’d been recently refitted with advanced electronic suites, and they carried a lethal sting. Tomita wanted to be a live victor, not a dead fool. He would take all the help he could get.
The pilot, Lieutenant Kuroda, increased power, retracted the flaps and hauled the big four-engine turboprop ASW airplane in a tight turn to the southwest, directly toward the position of the Chinese submarine that the Natsushio had radioed them.
Three minutes later an excited ELINT officer, Ensign Kuminori Godai, was on the aircraft intercom. “I’m recording a positive MAD contact, designated Mike one.” MAD was the Magnetic Anomaly Detector, which could pick up interferences in the Earth’s magnetic field caused by the ferrous mass of a submerged submarine as long as it was moving and wasn’t much deeper than one thousand feet. “She’s at three hundred feet and slowly rising.”
“Is there any indication that she’s detected Natsushio?”
“Iie, kan-cho.”
“Weapons, this is the pilot. Prep two Mark fifties, and stand by to launch on my order.”
“Hai, kan-cho.”
“Do you have any idea what’s going on, Hitoshi?” his co-pilot Takaji Murayama asked.
“Looks like we’re going to war with China,” Kuroda quipped nervously, half wondering if he wasn’t witnessing the beginning of just that. “But we’ll give Natsushio the first shot.”
“Skipper, that’s definitely a Han class Chicom submarine, bearing three-one-zero, nineteen thousand meters,” Seaman Fischer said. “Target designated Sierra ten.” The printer spit out a one-liner. “The Japanese sub is the Natsushio, home port Maizuru, Improved Harushio class,” he said.
Harding turned back to tell Paradise to start a track on the Chinese submarine, when Fischer practically jumped out of his skin.
“Holy shit! Skipper, the Natsushio just flooded two forward tubes.”
“What’s the Chinese submarine doing?”
“Same course and speed as before,” Fischer said. “But they must’ve heard the flooding.”
Harding went back to the conn, plotted the position, course and speed of the Chinese submarine and then extended its track. “The crazy bastard is going to shoot,” Harding said.
Paradise came over. “Sir?”
Harding looked up. “The Chinese are heading right for the downed MSDF submarine, and the Japanese sub driver is going to stop him.”
Paradise looked at the chart. “What’re we going to do about it?”
“Nothing, Rod,” Harding said frustrated. “Not a damn thing except watch.”
“Sonar, conn. This is the captain. Give me one ping to verify the bearing and range to target.”
“Hai, kan-cho,” Seaman Mizutami said. He was impressed.
The problem was that Tomita could see both sides of the issue with equal clarity. The North Koreans had every right to defend their home waters using any means at their disposal, including allies. On the other hand, the Sea of Japan was in reality so small that Japan had a legitimate reason to control what happened here. Especially anything that threatened the safety of the home islands. And a North Korea with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Tokyo or anywhere in Japan was a genuine threat.