were within the privacy of the McKee captain's stateroom. Mack was a big believer in keeping his crew informed, but that didn't mean he wanted to discuss what could be highly classified information in front of unauthorized personnel.
The chief mess specialist on duty in the McKee captain's stateroom departed as soon as Mack and the others arrived. When he had gone. Mack exchanged greetings with the captain of Pasadena and again expressed his pleasure at the lack of injury aboard.
Once seated around the table, with cups of fresh coffee at their elbows, the COs of Pasadena and Portsmouth attempted to explain what had happened, but there simply wasn't much hard information they could provide. The first clue either of them had that they were in trouble was when they found torpedoes in their baffles. In both cases, neither of the torpedoes had gone active until it was too late, and they had detonated at a standoff distance. The skimpy bit of sonar data that had been collected over their towed arrays was only enough to determine that tonals from their attacker could not be correlated to any specifically known submarine.
Mack wasn't surprised at that. The standard tonals that correlated to nearly every Russian, Chinese, and Third World country ships were little help in differentiating submarine classes. Plus there was no screw-blade information.
Mack said, 'Sounds like what saved you was a fire-control placement or detonation planning error. That would fit with Cheyenne's recent experiences: newly built submarines with newly trained Chinese crews sent to attack experienced U.S. submarine crews.'
CTF 74 agreed with Mack's assessment, but he had a further question: If the crews were so inexperienced, how did they detect Pasadena and Portsmouth! And in an aspect that allowed passive torpedoes to home undetected, for a while at least, on what must have been a reasonably good solution.
'I hate to suggest it, Admiral,' Mack said, 'but maybe someone needs to go back and re-evaluate our position on non-acoustic ASW. Were their any unusual Chinese or Russian aircraft in the area around that time?'
It was a sobering thought for every officer in the room, and the CTF 74 admiral promised to get right on it. He would see what he could iearn, and hoped to have an answer before any of his SSNs put to sea.
Mack hoped the admiral could turn something up. He knew that the submarines would not wait for an answer before returning to their patrols. There was a threat out there, and Cheyenne and her sister ships would have to deal with it, whether they could put a name to it or not.
While Mack was at his debriefing, discussing Cheyenne's recent patrols and learning what little information was available about this new threat, his officers and crew were overseeing Cheyenne's refit.
The sonar men on Pasadena and Portsmouth brought their last sonar tapes leading up to and following the torpedo explosions. These tapes were fed to Cheyenne's sonar consoles and her BSY-1 computer consoles, while the sounds were played over both the sonar room and control room speakers. This was not virtual reality. It was in situ reality, stark reality of a new foe-a chilling new foe.
Cheyenne's sonar operators and BSY-1 operators put seven different computer consoles, four in sonar and the three in control, to work analyzing the sparse data. They played the tapes over and over again, enhancing them with the computers each time and then starting the cycle again. They were even able to merge the tapes from both SSNs, a feat made possible by the accurate timekeeping systems on U.S. submarines, but they weren't able to leam anything useful.
Then they slowed the tapes, and got their first break. When the tapes were slowed enough to produce sub- harmonics of the main electrical frequency line, the chief sonar man noted a warbling that could not be attributed to slowed tapes, or even merged tapes. The chief sonar man had never heard that particular sound before, but he knew what it was: the sound of a previously unknown submarine. More than that, he knew that it had to be an anomaly of the new submarine's signature, which was masked at higher frequencies, even at the base frequency.
In order to be certain, the chief sonar man, along with Cheyenne's executive officer and the sonar men from Pasadena and Portsmouth, applied this same technique to previous Cheyenne recordings of other Chinese and Russian submarines. They found no matches. This anomaly was new, and it was unique. Even better, it was a low, low frequency, something the TB-23 thin line array would thrive on if they let it search that low.
When Mack was informed of the anomaly, he immediately dubbed it, 'a slowly varying constant.' He'd picked up that term in a 'pure math' class, and it seemed more than appropriate for this war with the Chinese.
It was several days before the McKee captain notified Mack that the next war patrol briefing would again be at the naval base headquarters. Mack had expected that. He had been alerted earlier that Cheyenne had been selected as the obvious choice for this next-and hopefully last- mission: to move President Jiang into Zhanjiang Naval Base.
Prior to the briefing, Cheyenne was moved next to McKee as planned, except that she didn't actually swap locations with Portsmouth. CTF 74 had decided to move Portsmouth outboard of Pasadena on the other side so that there would be one less move when Cheyenne was finally loaded and ready to sail for southern China with President Jiang aboard.
With all Cheyenne's preparations completed prior to this briefing. Mack decided to make it a nearly *'all hands' evolution. All officers definitely needed to be there, and with the promise of information on the new foe lurking out there, somewhere, waiting to take on the famous Cheyenne, the entire sonar division also needed to be present. And with President Jiang and his two heavies taking up berthing space, Mack invited the COB to meet the space intruders.
The chief of the boat also needed to figure out how to keep the president and his heavies out of sensitive spaces. Being on good terms with them would be easier than trying to force the cooperation of the heavies, especially since no one aboard Cheyenne could match the sheer bulk of Jiang's bodyguards. The COB already had formulated an initial plan: lots of food, desserts, and movies in the 'goat locker.'
Mack had informed the executive officer to take care of the president himself. The executive officer's stateroom had two bunks, and so he would share his space with the Chinese leader. The second bunk had been used by the NSG OIC, but he and his detachment had been off-loaded prior to this last trip, acting as the couriers to Yokosuka with Mack's latest war patrol report under their guard.
It had been difficult for Mack to agree for the detachment to be transferred prior to this patrol. He was concerned about possible non-acoustic ASW aircraft, and had agreed mostly because he knew that if Cheyenne remained fully submerged for the entire transit they wouldn't be able to detect ESM contacts anyway. But he did add Cheyenne's ESM operators to the list of briefing attendees, just in case.
The briefing turned out to be one for the books. It started off dramatically when the briefing officer opened the meeting with, 'Captain Mackey, our commander-in-chief sends his greetings.' Then he dimmed the lights and nodded for the video tape recorder to be started.
Mack had half expected the briefing officer to be kidding, or to be referring to someone else, but he wasn't. As Mack and the assembled officers looked on, the face of the President of the United States filled the screen.
'Captain Mackey,' the President said, speaking from the Oval Office, 'the State Department will soon release a report of an impending summit between me, President Jiang Zemin, and Premier Li Peng in Beijing. Premier Li Peng is expected to relinquish his claim to power at that time.' He paused for a moment before going on. 'However,' he said, 'in all fairness to Cheyenne, no mention of your involvement in this historic event is authorized, at least not until you have successfully delivered the rightful Chinese president to Zhanjiang Naval Base.' He paused again to allow his words to sink in. 'Captain Mackey, the First Lady and I would like to wish you Godspeed, fair winds, and a following sea. Good luck to you, and to the heroic men of USS Cheyenne,'
The briefing officer ordered the monitor turned off and the room lights brightened, but few people noticed. Everyone was talking, with an excitement that was rare even in wartime mission briefings.
The President hadn't really said anything that they didn't know about, but the simple fact of the President talking directly to them added to the importance of Cheyenne's mission.
It took several minutes for the room to quiet down. When it did, the briefing officer continued with his
