of its own.
Just that quickly, the Xian, the newest submarine in China’s fleet, was in contact with its masters onshore — all the while remaining five hundred feet below the surface of the ocean, connected to the buoy by a fiber-optic cable. The technology was the most advanced in the world, a generation ahead of similar systems on American submarines. The Xian could even get real-time video imagery of ships all over the western Pacific, thanks to a network of Chinese satellites in low earth orbit that were connected to the Bei through a control center near Beijing.
Of course, the Xian had to be careful not to stay connected for too long. The United States monitored Chinese satellites, and after a few seconds, American signals-intelligence equipment on Guam, Okinawa, and Alaska could begin to target the buoy’s location. To protect itself, the Xian made contact with the Bei only twice a day.
Still, the satellite link had proven extraordinarily useful, Captain Tong Pei thought. Especially now, with American ships searching for Chinese subs. Thanks to the link, the Xian could get orders while staying hidden at the bottom of the thermocline — a layer of water where the ocean’s temperature dropped quickly, distorting sound waves and making the Xian much harder to find.
Before taking over the Xian, Tong had commanded attack submarines for almost two decades. He was the most experienced commander in China’s fleet. But he had never commanded a boat remotely like the Xian. And he had never been on a mission like this one.
Twelve hours before, at 0100, Tong had received his initial orders for this operation. He expected that the transmission they’d just received would include the final confirmation. He was glad to have the fail-safe of two separate orders. He wasn’t nervous, not exactly, but what he was about to do would echo around the world, and he wanted to be sure he wasn’t making a mistake.
* * * THE XIAN WAS THE THIRD of China’s new Shanghai-class subs, by far the most advanced submarines that China had ever built. Until a few years before, China’s armed forces had relied on leaky ships, rusting submarines, and fighter jets whose design dated from the Korean War. China had refused to show its weapons to visiting American generals, for fear that they would sneer at the country’s weakness.
These days, China still kept its ships and jets secret. But now the country wanted to hide its strength. Chinese students studied engineering and software and fluid dynamics at the top universities in the United States. Some stayed in America and made fortunes in Silicon Valley. But most came home, and more than a few were working for China’s navy — whose top priority was building a submarine that could challenge the American fleet.
China’s focus on undersea warfare was pragmatic. Building surface ships capable of challenging the United States would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, more than China could afford, at least for now. Even a single nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was a massively expensive proposition. No country, not even the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, had tried to compete with the United States in aircraft carriers.
But submarines were much cheaper, billions of dollars instead of hundreds of billions. And a lone sub could wreak havoc on an opposing fleet. In World War II, a single German submarine had sunk forty-seven boats in less than two years. Of course, the Xian wouldn’t sink forty-seven American ships, but if it scuttled even one it would change the balance of power in the western Pacific, forcing the Americans to back off China’s coast.
Taking out an American boat wouldn’t be easy. The American navy had not been seriously challenged since the Battle of Midway in World War II, when it decimated the Japanese fleet and started the United States on the path to victory in the Pacific. The collapse of the Soviet Union had only lengthened its lead. Its aircraft carriers, destroyers, and nuclear attack submarines were the best in the world.
But if any submarine could successfully break through the American defenses, it was the Xian. Put into the water just last fall, the Xian was the most advanced diesel-electric submarine ever built — in China or anywhere else. Noise-reducing anechoic tiles coated its hull. A seven-blade skewed propeller enabled it to slice through the water almost silently. Advanced electric batteries powered it, allowing it to stay underwater for weeks.
Further, the PLA’s engineers had greatly improved the Xian’s secondary power source. Besides its batteries, the sub had an “air-independent propulsion” system of hydrogen fuel cells. When the batteries and fuel cells ran together, they could push the Xian to thirty knots in short bursts, almost as fast as American nuclear subs.
The Chinese had also nearly closed the gap with the electronics and sonar systems that the U.S. Navy used. The Xian’s computers ran noise-filtering and noise-recognition software that made the Xian’s sonar operators, for the first time, competitive with those on American submarines. And the Xian’s satellite link meant that it could get regular updates on ships far outside its sonar range. The combination meant that the Xian could avoid the submarines and frigates that formed the outer cordon of American battle groups and get within torpedo range of the big prizes, the destroyers and cruisers and carriers that were the heart of the United States fleet.
And at that point the Xian had an even more unpleasant surprise for the American navy.
INSIDE THE XIAN, Tong read over the order one final time and tucked it into his pocket. “Retract the buoy,” he murmured to his communications officer. Then, to his operations officer, “Any change in the target’s direction?”
“No, sir. Still one-eighty at twenty knots”—directly south, toward the Xian, which was cruising north—“at fifteen knots. Range now seventy kilometers”—about forty miles.
“Take us to sixty meters”—two hundred feet, in the middle of the thermocline.
“Yes, sir.” The ops officer tapped the touch screen in front of him a few times and the Xian began to ascend, so gracefully that Tong could hardly feel it rise.
“Set us on combat status.”
“Yes, sir.” The officer tapped his screen three more times. All over the submarine, LCD panels turned from a steady green to a flashing yellow, warning the Xian’s crew that an attack might be imminent and that silence — always important on a submarine — was more crucial than ever.
“And ready the Typhoons for launch.”
Tong felt the surprise in the room as he spoke. The ops officer paused, only for a second, before he answered.
“The Typhoons. Yes, sir.”
The control room was nearly silent now. On his control monitor Tong saw the Xian slowly rise toward the surface: 150 meters… 140… 130… The officers and crew moved precisely, no wasted motion, not even wasted breath, yet the anticipation in the cramped room was palpable. These men all knew now what they were about to do. And they were ready.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER TONG’S MONITOR briefly flashed red, alerting him that they were now twenty kilometers — about twelve miles — from the target, within range of the Typhoons. The Xian carried two of them, Chinese versions of the Russian VA-111 Shkval.
Though they were called torpedoes, Shkvals were basically short-range cruise missiles that targeted ships, and the Russians had never been able to make them work properly. They often outran their guidance systems and badly missed their targets. They also had an unnerving habit of swinging back on the subs that launched them. When the Kursk, a Russian nuclear sub, sank in the Barents Sea in 2000, there were rumors, never proven, that a malfunctioning Shkval had caused the accident. For whatever reason, after the Kursk went down, the Russians stopped trying to build Shkvals.
Despite those problems, China’s admirals had seen the Shkval’s potential as they searched for a weapon that might overcome the American fleet. At a secret lab outside Shanghai, their naval scientists had spent five years redesigning the missile’s guidance systems and engine. And they’d succeeded. In tests off Hong Kong in the last two years, the Typhoon had proven capable of successful launches from as far as twenty-five kilometers out — about fifteen miles.
