It was 0500 GMT, which made it two in the afternoon local. Harding was finally getting to sleep after tossing and turning in his bunk for three hours when his growler phone buzzed angrily.
He turned on the light and grabbed the phone. “This is the captain.”
“Hate to bother you, but we’ve got a problem,” Paradise reported.
Harding sat up. He felt like hell, and he wanted to bite off his XO’s head. “What is it?”
“In the past two hours he’s cleared his baffles three times. He just did it again, and he’s slowed down. I think he knows we’re back here.”
“What’s our range?”
“Five thousand yards.”
“Okay, come to all stop and rig for silent running,” Harding said. “I’m on my way.” If the MSDF submarine they’d been following knew someone was behind them, rigging for silent running would either confuse the Japanese skipper or confirm that he was being followed by a submarine with hostile intent. Either way, the situation was one that Harding had wanted to avoid. But now that they were apparently in the middle of it, he wasn’t going to back off.
Forcing himself to slow down, he splashed some cold water on his face, combed his hair, put on a fresh shirt and stopped by the officers’ wardroom to get a cup of coffee before going forward to the control center. By the time he arrived he was his usual calm, collected self. It was good for the crew to see their captain unruffled.
Paradise was at the door to the sonar compartment. He came aft and joined Harding at one of the plotting tables. He looked worried and dragged out. None of the officers had been getting enough sleep since the Natsushio sank the Chinese submarine and Seawolf had been ordered to give chase.
“What’s the situation?” Harding demanded.
“We’re still clear aft, but something evidently spooked him into finding out if he had a tail.” Paradise made a mark on the chart east of Goto Island at the entrance to the East China Sea. “He made his first turn to starboard here. We figured he was heading for the Korean coast after all. But when he shut down his diesels and I figured out what he was really doing, it was too late.”
“He probably had us on the first pass,” Harding said.
Paradise nodded glumly. “My fault—”
“Don’t worry about it, Rod, I would have done the same thing,” Harding said, although he wouldn’t have. It was a major error that could mean the end of Paradise’s career as a submarine officer.
Paradise nodded his thanks, though he would beat himself up over his mistake for a long time. “Since then he’s made the same turn three more times.”
“He’s still holding the same course?”
“Definitely heading south. But each time he made his turn we managed to shut down ahead of him.”
Harding studied the chart. If the Natsushio was heading for Tokyo Bay after all, it would take two days to get there, so they still had a little time to figure out what was happening. But it made no sense to him. Why pull a submarine from these waters, especially that boat?
“Should we call this home?” Paradise asked.
Harding looked up and shook his head. “Not yet. I want to see how far he’s going to take this.”
“He killed the Chinese submarine without warning.”
“I know,” Harding said. “Let’s go to battle stations, torpedo. Load tubes one and two, but don’t flood them just yet.”
“Kan-cho, the submarine has disappeared,” Seaman Mizutami reported from sonar.
“He’s not disappeared. He knows we’ve detected him, and he’s gone silent,” Captain Tomita replied. “Were you quick enough to confirm his class?”
“No, sir. But what we do have indicates a strong possibility that he’s a Seawolf.”
Tomita glanced across the control room at his XO, Lieutenant Uesugi. “Keep a close watch now.” He released the comms button.
“Does the American know where we’re heading?” Uesugi asked.
“Not unless the Americans are intercepting and decrypting our communications,” Tomita said. That was not likely, but certainly a possibility which he knew he had to consider. And it was more than possible that the American submarine had witnessed the attack on the Chinese submarine. Flotilla Headquarters had informed him that the Seventh Fleet had entered the Sea of Japan from the north, which was one of the reasons that the Natsushio was ordered out of the area. Not the only reason, however.
“Turn one hundred eighty degrees to port,” he ordered. “We’ll clear our baffles from a new direction this time.”
Uesugi came over. “We are no match for them, kan-cho,” he said, respectfully lowering his voice.
“That is correct,” Tomita agreed. “Nevertheless I mean to deal with them here and now. Send up a slot buoy, and we’ll call for help.”
Admiral James Hamilton hunched over a chart in the busy Combat Information Center one level below the bridge. “What’s the situation, Dave?”
“Well, if Harding stayed on his projected track, it looks to me like they’re trying to box him in.” Captain Merkler spread several 50 X 50 cm satellite images on the plotting table. “They suddenly got real interested in a spot just west of Goto Island about an hour ago. The destroyer Myoko and frigates Noshiro and Yubetsu are already closing in, and a half-dozen other surface ships are within a couple of hours. Take that together with at least four Orion sub-hunters circling the same piece of ocean, and it looks to me like an all-out hunt for Seawolf.”
“Seven hundred miles,” Hamilton said. “It’d take us twenty-four hours to get down there. Way too long.”
“We can send aircraft. At least it would counter the threat the Orions are posing. And if we tell our pilots to kick the pig we could be in the middle of it in under thirty minutes.”
Hamilton looked at the chart and the photographs. “Okay, send a pair of Hornets. I want them down there as soon as possible, then I want them right down on the deck. Wave-top level.”
“They won’t be able to defend themselves effectively.”
“That’s the point, Dave.” Hamilton’s expression hardened. “God help the sonofabitch who takes advantage.”
Merkler looked at the satellite images. “What the hell are they up to?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out. I want the entire fleet moved south at best possible speed. In the meantime I want an ELF message sent to Harding. He needs to be warned that he’s heading into trouble.”
“If he doesn’t already know,” Merkler said, and he turned to issue the orders, leaving Hamilton to wonder exactly what the Japanese were up to this time. They weren’t simply defending against a possible nuclear threat from North Korea. Or were they?
“Sonar, conn. Have the bearings to the three surface targets changed?” Harding asked.
“Negative, skipper,” Fischer reported excitedly. “They’re all within twenty-five thousand yards and closing fast. Still spread out over a twenty-degree arc. They know we’re here, or at least in the vicinity.”
“How about the Natsushio?”
“He shut down after his last turn to port. He’s out there, but I’m still getting nothing.”
Harding released the phone button and studied the main tactical display on the overhead CRT next to the periscopes. Paradise was at the rail.
“Looks like he doesn’t want us to follow him,” Harding said.
“It’s my fault he knows we’re here—”
“Belay that,” Harding said sharply. He knew what the Japanese sub driver was about to do and couldn’t believe it. Right now he needed all the help he could get, because he didn’t want to precipitate an all-out shooting war with the MSDF.