The Ghost War

But those targets were obsolete oil tankers, not American destroyers with the most advanced counter- torpedo systems in the world. No one in the Chinese navy really knew how the Typhoon would perform in combat.

They were about to find out, Tong thought.

“Reduce speed to ten knots,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do we have final visual confirmation?”

The operations officer tapped his screen again, and there it was, a recon photo straight from the satellite overhead, time-stamped 12:55, the big gray boat cutting sturdily through the waves, the photograph’s resolution good enough to reveal the big “73” painted in white on its side.

The DDG-73. The USS Decatur.

Tong admired the precision with which his commanders had calculated this mission. Despite all China’s progress, America still thought that China was a poor backward nation unworthy of respect. The Decatur had killed twenty-two Chinese, and the United States had not even apologized.

Today China would have its revenge. The Xian would fire one Typhoon, enough to cripple the destroyer but not sink it. An eye for an eye, as the Americans said. And the Americans would learn what they should have already known, that they needed to treat the People’s Republic as an equal.

“Reduce speed to three knots.” The Typhoons had one great weakness. They could be launched only when the Xian was nearly stopped. But since the Decatur had no idea that the Xian was in the vicinity, the submarine’s speed hardly mattered.

“Yes, sir.” The Xian slowed perceptibly.

“Prepare to dive to two hundred meters on my command.” Hit or miss, Tong didn’t plan to hang around once he launched. The Americans would expect him to flee west, to the Chinese coast. Instead he planned to take the Xian southeast, into the open ocean, and depend on the sub’s ability to stay silent.

The combat center was hushed now, every man looking at Lieutenant Han, the sub’s weapons control officer. Tong nodded to Han. “Fire.”

“Away,” Han said quietly.

The Xian shifted slightly as the Typhoon left its hull. Tong heard — or maybe just felt — the hum as the underwater missile accelerated away. A couple of his men gave each other tentative thumbs-up signals, but Tong didn’t even smile. “Now dive,” he said. They would have time later to savor what they’d done. If they survived.

TWO HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE XIAN, and ten miles north, Captain Henry Williams sat in the Decatur‘s combat information center. He was glad to be well off the coast, out of range of Chinese captains who might want to avenge the previous week’s accident by trying to ram his ship.

The Navy had finished its preliminary inquiry into the crash. As Williams had expected, it had found he’d done nothing wrong. Still, the days since the accident had been difficult. Willams couldn’t understand why a bunch of college students had thought that playing games with an American destroyer would be a good idea.

So now the Decatur was cruising loops in the East China Sea, and Williams was splitting his time between his ship and the Reagan, where he’d met three times with the Navy’s internal investigators. He’d even lost the pretty L.A. Times reporter, Jackie, who’d gotten bored after a couple days sailing laps and headed back to the Reagan. Probably for the best, Williams thought glumly. Neither he nor his men believed they had caused the accident, but killing twenty-two civilians didn’t do wonders for morale. Even in the combat center, his officers seemed to be moving at three-quarters speed. Maybe he ought to call a meeting, make sure his men knew they’d done nothing wrong.

The torpedo alarm blared, jolting Williams to full attention. Had to be false, he thought. No way could a Chinese sub get close enough to launch on them without being picked up by his sonar operators.

Next to Williams, Lieutenant Umsle, the Decatur’s tactical action officer, was already on his phone. “Sonar’s confirming a launch, sir.”

In an instant, the ship’s morale became the least of Williams’s problems. “General quarters!” he said. “Immediately!”

A siren rang across the ship. “General quarters! All hands to battle stations! This is not a drill!”

Umsle listened for a few seconds more before hanging up. “The good news is we should have plenty of time. It’s way out. Twenty thousand meters.”

Even a fast torpedo covered only forty-five knots an hour, about 1,300 meters a minute. The Decatur would have at least fifteen minutes for evasive action, and the fish would probably run out of fuel before it reached the Decatur. Obviously, the Chinese captain had been so worried that he would be spotted that he had been afraid to launch from close in.

“Full power to the turbines and hard left,” Williams said. Preserving his ship was the first priority. Then the Navy could bring its attack subs into the area and take out the Chinese sub that had been foolish enough to make this hopeless swipe.

“Yes, sir.” A jolt of power ran through the ship as the engines began to produce peak power.

Umsle’s phone rang again. He listened, then handed Williams the black handset. “You need to hear this, sir.”

“Sir.” It was Terry Cyrus, the Decatur’s sonar chief. “We’re getting an unusual read. The bogey looks like it’s running at two hundred fifty knots.”

“That can’t be right.”

“I know. But it is.”

A Shkval? Those were Russian, and anyway they didn’t work.

“You’re certain?”

“Certain, sir. The arrays are running perfectly. It’s unmistakable.”

“Is it on us?”

“Unclear. It may be a two-stager.” In other words, the missile would slow once it got close to the Decatur and become a conventional acoustic wake-homing torpedo.

“Okay. Assuming it’s on us, how many minutes to impact?”

“Three.”

Three minutes. “Thank you, chief.” Williams turned to Umsle. “Hail the XO”—the executive officer, the Decatur‘s second-in-command, currently on the bridge—“and tell him to get the damage teams ready for impact in three minutes. We’re not outrunning this thing.”

THE NEXT MINUTES SEEMED to pass in a single breath. The torpedo-missile, whatever it was, closed steadily. It seemed to be running blind, not changing course to track the Decatur, but that didn’t comfort Williams. It surely would deploy a second guidance system once it got close. Indeed, two miles from the Decatur, the torpedo surfaced briefly and corrected its course, turning toward the destroyer.

What Williams didn’t know was that the Typhoon had a GPS system and a satellite transceiver that linked it to the Bei overhead, enabling it to home in on the Decatur effortlessly. The Decatur‘s towed array, which created a noisy “wake” capable of confusing a conventional acoustic homing torpedo, had no chance of stopping the Typhoon.

Once the torpedo corrected its course, Williams accepted the inevitable. Time to focus on saving his men. “Clear the turbine room,” he said to Umsle. The engine rooms were close to the waterline and filled with heavy equipment — among the most vulnerable spaces on the ship. “And tell everyone else to buckle down for impact.”

For just a second, Williams let himself pray. Please, God, make it a dud.

It wasn’t.