presentation. And it didn't take him long to drop another bombshell.
The decommissioning of USS Los Angeles (SSN 688) had been canceled, the briefing officer said, and Los Angeles was nearly on station south of the Formosa Strait. There had been no traffic addressed to Cheyenne concerning Los Angeles, but the CTF 74 admiral confirmed her presence. Her mission, pending routing instructions that would prevent mutual interference between Los Angeles and Cheyenne, was to assist in escorting Cheyenne and President Jiang.
That was a serious mistake, Mack thought, but he kept his mouth shut. Los Angeles was the first of the 688s. He'd heard that her decommissioning had been postponed due to a lack of funds, but he didn't know that she still had enough crew left to even get under way, much less to fight the Chinese.
On top of that, she had the 'old' fire-control and sonar systems and no TB-23 thin line array, which meant that Los Angeles had little chance to detect the new Chinese submarine. Mack was afraid she would be sunk before Cheyenne even got under way.
This briefing was turning out even worse than the last one, Mack thought.
The briefing officer informed him that a Chinese North Sea Fleet Alfa class SSN, the Chung, would also escort Cheyenne and President Jiang. Chung's orders were to stay to me west and eventually to tne north ot a specially constructed track from the Formosa Strait to Zhanjiang Naval Base, and to proceed at an SOA (speed of advance) of six knots.
Outwardly, Mack didn't react at all, but he couldn't help thinking how quickly that Alfa would disappear at the hands of the hostile submarine. That didn't really matter, of course, he realized, not as long as Chung stayed out of Cheyenne's sector as ordered. In fact, it might help to flush out the new foe, whatever it was.
Mack would trade the Alfa for the new enemy submarine with pleasure. But Los Angeles, that was a different story. The two 688s could talk to and protect each other, but that would also be difficult at best.
When the room once again quieted, the briefing officer finally got to the subject that Mack and his officers were most interested in: the new threat, and what it might be.
The briefing officer said that, according to the CIA, the unknown submarine was believed to be the culmination of recent Sino-Soviet research and development into a next generation nuclear attack submarine. Deployment of the Mao, as they believed it to be called, had not been expected anytime soon. But now, with the damage inflicted upon Portsmouth and Pasadena and the evidence of the sonar tapes, it was obvious even to the CIA and nava! intelligence that the Mao was out there waiting for Cheyenne.
When it looked like the briefing officer had no more to say on the subject, Mack asked the other question he desperately needed answered. 'What about the non-acoustic ASW?'
'Sorry, Captain,' the briefing officer said, obviously prepared for the question. 'CIA still does not believe that an aircraft can use lasers to detect submerged objects and to communicate with their submarines.'
Mack hated that answer. He hated it because the answer wasn't, 'The CIA checked this out and found no evidence.' Instead, the answer was simply, 'The CIA cannot believe this, and so they won't check it out.'
Changing the subject, Mack asked if either the Hainan class mine layer or the mine-laying Romeo that Cheyenne sank last patrol could have laid mines near Zhanjiang Naval Base before they proceeded up the coast from Mandarin Bay. The briefing officer answered that Chinese minesweepers had scoured the area and found none.
The other COs in the room seemed satisfied with that answer, but Mack wasn't so sure. He would actually have felt better if the minesweeper had found some mines and disposed of them. Either way, though, he knew that there might be mines strewn along the last leg of Cheyenne's route. They would simply have to take appropriate precautions, either with MIDAS or an off-board sensor. If, that is, any Mk 48s remained by the time they entered that last hazard zone, the shallow-water leg en route to the Zhanjiang Naval Base.
The pre-mission briefing came to an end shortly after this, but Mack soon found that there were more unpleasant surprises waiting for him. When he returned to Cheyenne he learned from the combat systems officer that McKee, on the orders of CTF 74, was still restricting his torpedo loads, even though, to date, Portsmouth and Pasadena had expended none.
He thought of asking for a few from Pasadena and Portsmouth, since they wouldn't be putting out to sea anytime soon, but he didn't want to get into interfleet hassles. Once again only twenty Mk 48 ADCAP were on board Cheyenne.
Three hours after the briefing was over, President Jiang and his two bodyguards were led belowdecks by the executive officer and the COB. Mack could have allowed them to remain on the bridge, but he didn't. It was too crowded already, and he was still angry over the loadout.
Cheyenne's underway was uneventful, and the M-14s Mack had on the bridge stayed safely in their racks.
After submerging, Mack ordered the OOD to stream the floating wire. He also ordered the TB-23 towed array deployed far enough to ensure that the 960 feet of hydrophones were clear of their housing. After that, Cheyenne headed for the three hundred-fathom curve, which she would follow at the established six-knot SOA until she was due east of the Zhanjiang Naval Base. Then she would have nearly three hundred miles of westerly transit across the widest part of the continental shelf, all in less than one hundred fathoms of water.
The Chinese Alfa, Chung, was presumably in board of Cheyenne, where it belonged, more than 20,000 yards away according to its sector restrictions. And Los Angeles was outboard in the deeper water to the east, where she would remain until the turn to the west. Then Los Angeles would watch Cheyenne's 180, as President Jiang had quipped earlier.
Mack's biggest concern was the Mao. The TB-23 was their best bet for detecting it, and if they didn't encounter the unknown submarine before they had to switch to the TB-16 towed array, they could be in trouble.
Cheyenne, Los Angeles, and Chung heard nothing but fishing fleet and other merchant traffic. All three captains were relying on their contingent to do what and when they were supposed to do.
A day and a half later, as Cheyenne was nearing the turning point, sonar reported several conformal-array submarine contacts to the northwest, two at high speed on converging bearings. Mack manned battle stations and launched one of several SSIXS buoys, with pre-arranged reports just in case something like this were to happen. That was the safest way to communicate events to Los Angeles-SSIXS to CTF 74 for turnaround to Los Angeles for copying on her floating wire.
By the time battle stations were manned, sonar had four sonar contacts to the northwest. Only one was Chung, as determined by the Alfa tonals. The other three were Akulas. Chung was also communicating by underwater telephone, which was being answered by only one Akula.
Without a Chinese linguist aboard-or a Russian one for that matter-Mack could only guess at what was being said, but he assumed that the Chung captain was trying to talk himself out of a bad situation. The Chinese captain's answer came in the form of three torpedoes, one from each of the three Akulas, which were tracking on the bearing of the still-squawking Chung.
Mack shook his head. The Chung captain had not been inept. He had been ambushed by three of his fellow commanding officers, who were under the command of the still-at-large General Yu Quili, and he had done the best he could against them. His talking with the Akulas on the underwater telephone may have given his position away, but it also gave his Alfa submarine fire control system the ranges and bearings of the Chinese bullies.
He managed to launch two of his ET-80 torpedoes before Chung was hit by three 65cm torpedoes.
The Cheyenne control room and sonar room were in total silence as they witnessed the carnage. They had seen their share of enemy ships destroyed, but there was something about the spectacle of Chinese submariners killing themselves that made this especially poignant.
Five explosions and four submarines had been involved in the fray, and only one Akula survived it unscathed.
After the explosions, Mack turned to the south to head for the five hundred-fathom curve, where he could fully
