briefing officer emphasized, CINCPACFLTs orders were that Captain Mackey would have to bide his time, ensuring that any submarine contacts he planned to attack were the Akulas unless fired upon by any other class.
So far, Mack had not been pleased with the nature of this briefing, and he had been even less pleased with the information he had gained. And it was about to get even worse.
In addition to the Akulas and the diesels, the briefing officer said as he neared the end of his presentation, there was a new wrinkle as well. At least one Hainan class attack craft fitted out as a mine layer was active in comms last week, paired with an old Romeo at Zhanjiang Naval Base, the headquarters of the Chinese South Sea Fleet. The old Romeo-which was the Chinese-built version, six feet longer and with eight torpedo tubes-was rumored to be outfitted with twenty-eight mines instead of fourteen torpedoes. To make matters worse, a Pothead radar, probably the Hainan, and a 'Snoop Plate' radar, maybe the Romeo, had been tracking up the coast from Mandarin Bay. They had turned to the east near Hong Kong before being lost two days ago.
Mack was glad when the briefing came to an end. He'd had enough bad news for one day. Unfortunately, there was more to come.
When he got back to Cheyenne, Mack learned from the 'combat systems officer that, against Mack's expressed instructions, McKee was still restricting Cheyenne's torpedo loads. It didn't help to learn that McKee was doing this for all the right reasons. Bremerton, a pre-VLS boat, and Columbia, a 6881 like Cheyenne, also had to be supplied. The arrival of Portsmouth and Pasadena in two weeks from the Atlantic Fleet would only serve to add to the strain.
Politics again. Mack thought. The shift in the traditional '60-40 split' of submarines, 60 percent for COM- SUBLANT and 40 percent for COMSUBPAC, had obviously preceded the equivalent transfer of torpedoes to PACFLT. Now only twenty Mk 48 ADCAP were on board Cheyenne, and some might have to be used for long distance off- board minefield sensing before Mack would decide to use MIDAS, the short-range under-ice and mine-detection sonar mounted on the sail.
Although its frequency was nearly twenty times that of die BSY-1 spherical active array, it was still detectable by the enemy. Mack wished even more that he had that FOR-MIDABOD sensor capability. R and D or not, the United States had shown during Desert Storm that the playing field of war was a better checkout of newly emerging systems than simulated targets and ranges. And its frequency, which was more than five times that of MIDAS, was not detectable by other than its own transducers.
All of which meant that Cheyenne would have to contend with quiet diesels and mines while attacking the quiet Akulas, and she'd have to do it with a shortage of torpedoes.
Shaking his head, Mack ordered Cheyenne to get under way before anything else could go wrong.
Cheyenne submerged to periscope depth at the fifty fathom curve and then altered her course to the south. In this direction the shallow waters of the Formosa Strait quickly gave way to the depths of the South China Sea. Within a few miles, the ledge would fall off to nearly 1,300 fathoms.
'Captain, officer of the deck. Sonar reports the sound of chains dead ahead of us. I can't see any mooring buoys, but with this sea state three, they could be bobbing up and down, hard to see.'
Mack acknowledged the report and quickly left his stateroom, making a beeline for the sonar room. Putting on his own headset, which he had insisted be available for him whenever he wanted, Mack heard the sounds sonar had reported. But they were not the clunking noise of mooring buoys. They were clinking noises that he had heard once before in the Mediterranean, as the sonar officer during his first submarine assignment on a 637, when Egypt's Romeo submarines had laid mines in the Gulf of Sidra.
'Officer of the deck, come around to the west and get the combat systems officer and executive officer to the conn,' Mack called from the sonar room.
A few minutes later, Mack explained to the officers gathered at the conn that they were up against moored mines. If it had not been for the sea state causing the mines to move up and down and the chain links to rattle against themselves, Cheyenne would have been close to being history. He also knew that Cheyenne could probably skirt the minefield using MIDAS, but that would not help other sea travelers, including the other 688s on their way to help. Instead, they would have to try to take out the mines with off-board sensors.
To do this, the warhead grain burn would not be incited, allowing the torpedo to be command-detonated in the minefield-assuming that the torpedo didn't merely set off the mines with its screw noise. If everything worked as planned, and the torpedo detonated in the proper position, the sympathetic concussions should set off a number of mines.
Mack did not want to expend more than two Mk 48s. That would leave eighteen for Cheyenne^ Taiwan-area sanitization duties. To eliminate the minefield with only two torpedoes, Cheyenne would have to rely on the high frequency of the torpedo's transducer, nearly twice that of MIDAS, to paint the scene well enough to ensure that the minefield was plotted prior to their attempting the kills.
Cheyenne didn't need to man battle stations for this evolution. The mines couldn't shoot back. Besides, Mack would stay at least five thousand yards away, standing back at a comfortable distance, far beyond the mine detection and destruction capability.
The combat systems officer alerted the TMOW (torpe-doman of the watch) of the plan to swim out tube three and then tube four if necessary. At the same time, Mack informed the crew over the 1MC of what would be happening. They would be able to hear the Mk 48 Otto fuel engines spinning up, which one could pick up through the hull while the torpedoes were still close, and Mack didn't want them to be alarmed and wonder what was going on. He also wanted to alert the personnel sleeping in the torpedo room, who would have to get up and move their portable skid bunks so that the tubes could be reloaded.
'Conn, sonar, we have diesel lines bearing 285. No screw blade information yet. But it's not a submarine's diesel. More like two old Chinese twelve-cylinders firing away, out of sync with each other. No bearing drift, either. He's closing.'
Cheyenne had detected the Hainan. Mack was sure of it. Which meant the Romeo might be around.
Mack found himself wondering how accurate his intel was this time. Naval intelligence and the CIA had been wrong a bit too often lately, and it was especially important this time. If he could count on the report that the Romeo had replaced all its torpedoes with mines, he wouldn't have to worry about getting shot at. On the other hand, he couldn't just ignore the Chinese submarine, either. The last thing he wanted was a submerged collision at sea.
Mack decided it was time for some active sonar practice-forward of the beam in sector searches. This would alert the Romeo, but that's what Mack wanted. With luck, the Chinese captain would be smart enough to 'pull up his pants and go home,' as the old saying went. Besides, it was better than two quiet submarines running into each other.
Within minutes of going active, sonar reported contact on a submarine based on the elevation angle of the returning energy. Range 1,850 yards and on the same bearing of the twelve-cylinder diesels' platform, which also was being painted by the BSY-1.
Mack wanted to make tube one ready for a snap shot, but he couldn't. His orders prevented him. He could only fire first at an Akula, not at a Romeo.
Moments later, though, Mack realized that he wasn't going to need to fire. He knew that when sonar reported the submerged contact blowing ballast and increasing speed, two shafts, four blades each, and squawking on his underwater telephone to the Hainan.
The Chinese Romeo's captain had indeed decided to get away from the famous Cheyenne, but he had panicked, remembering too late that the Hainan was above him. He ordered the main ballast tank vents opened, but it was too late to stop his ascent. His full rudder turn didn't help either, because the Hainan turned in the same direction.
Moments later, the Romeo's sail sliced through the thin Hainan hull, right at the engine room. The Hainan diesels sputtered and died, their hot engine blocks cracked by the much cooler seawater. Its captain ordered his men to abandon ship as the seawater continued rushing in, helping to put out the fires but causing the tiny craft to sink beneath.
The Romeo was undamaged, but its mission was over. It was going to be busy rescuing the survivors from the
