Kilo Class

I do myself no honor, nor to the exalted leaders in this room.” And, almost in tears of rage and frustration, he finally sat down and held his head in his hands.

No one spoke for several moments. And then Admiral Zhang looked up and said quietly, “If we assume that there were not chronic, identical, mechanical failures at exactly the same time, we must, I suppose, examine the case of collision. But with two submarines going in precisely the same direction, and at precisely the same speed, it would be a scientific impossibility to arrange for impact of such force that both submarines were so badly damaged they sunk to the bottom of the ocean leaving no trace whatsoever.

“I suppose the leader could have reversed course one-eighty degrees, possibly to regain telephone contact, and then crashed into his consort. But I calculate those chances at several million to one.

“My professional judgment is, therefore, that whatever has befallen our two ships was most certainly not an accident. I am obliged to remind everyone of an old saying: when you have eliminated the impossible, only the truth remains. This was no accident.”

He waited, as if for the inevitable argument from men who have no wish to confront a highly unpleasant truth. But there was no argument. The Admiral rose once more to his feet and stared around the room. “My friends and colleagues,” he said. “The question I believe we must ask is, first, who could have done this terrible thing? The answers are very few. To hit and destroy two submarines without being seen, you need a faster, bigger submarine with very sophisticated weaponry and tracking ability. Almost certainly a nuclear boat, with unlimited range, to hunt and find its targets in that huge area of water.

“That means our enemy is either Russia, France, Great Britain, or the United States. Because no other nation has that capacity. I dismiss Great Britain and France as having insufficient motive. I consider most seriously the case of Russia, who we know is under pressure from the United States not to provide us with the Kilo Class submarines. But I am drawn to the conclusion that we are such close business partners in Naval matters that Russia simply would not have wanted to perpetrate such an outrage. Especially with several of her own very best submarine officers on board.

“No, gentlemen, of the possibilities before us, I find, with much regret, that action by the Americans is by far the most likely. AND I AM SAYING WE HAVE GOT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.”

The Paramount Ruler looked up, drew deeply on his cigarette, smiled, and said, “Thank you, Zhang. You are as my own son, and I admire your unflinching loyalty and your great care in this matter. But I wonder if perhaps my great friend Yibo Yunsheng from the Eastern Fleet would honor an old man, whose fighting days are over, and explain to me the mystery of vanishing submarines, and why such events apparently have no bearing on vanishing anything else?”

Admiral Yibo, a former commanding officer of China’s eight-thousand-ton strategic missile nuclear submarine Xia, the old Type-092, rose to his feet and bowed formally. “You do me honor, sir,” he said. “And I may not be able to add to your great wisdom, but the problem with submarines always arises from the simple fact that you cannot communicate easily with them when they are underwater. You cannot see them and you cannot talk to them.

“Therefore everyone is entirely dependent upon their communicating, and in this case they were in touch with us through the Russian Northern Fleet Comms Center, which set up a satellite link back to our Southern Fleet Command Center. The arrangement was that they would access the satellite every forty-eight hours, when they came up to periscope depth to recharge their batteries.

“Let us assume the most likely scenario. They came to periscope depth at 0405 and passed us their message, time, position, speed, and course. The Americans were waiting and sunk both Kilos by simultaneously using two controlled torpedoes a half hour later, when the submarines were both still running their diesel engines and could be tracked.

“The following night, we naturally receive no communication. And if the Kilos had been running at, say, eight knots, we must assume they are now perhaps a hundred and eighty miles southwest of their last known position and are having a radio mast problem, or experiencing some other trouble. The following day we are plotting them three hundred and sixty miles beyond the point where they were hit, but we do not know their precise course. This means there is now an area of some sixty-five thousand square miles in which they could be.

“But the ocean is two miles deep. And now another day has passed and our search area is even bigger, and even if someone were to tell us exactly where the boats were, what could we do? Send down a diver. Of course not. And for what? Everyone is dead. The submarine is not only wrecked, it’s beyond the grasp of our Navy. Not even the mighty USA could do that much about it.

“Sir, it is my most depressing duty to tell you there is nothing we can do about a lost submarine that far from home. Which is why we may not wish to admit losing one. We are dealing here, sir, with the most brutal, underhanded form of warfare. No one admits what they did. No one admits what has happened to them. In submarines that has always been the way. You will know, sir, in your great learning, that we cannot ever announce that our two new Kilo Class boats were hit and destroyed by the imperial forces of the United States.”

“Thank you, Admiral Yibo. I am indebted to you for your wise counsel. Comrades, the hour grows late, and I am tired and must retire for the night. I think we should have a talk with the Russians tomorrow. Perhaps they may know more. Let me leave that to you, and perhaps we should reconvene here later in the morning, say at 1100, and decide what, if anything, we ought to do.”

He rose wearily to his feet and was escorted out into the corridor by two secretaries. The Political Commissar followed them out, as did the Party General Secretary and the Chief of Staff. The Naval officers made no move to leave. Admiral Zhang picked up the telephone and called the Southern Fleet Headquarters, hoping that something had been heard from the missing submarines. The answer was as it had been for three days now. Nothing.

At the age of fifty-six, Admiral Zhang Yushu was probably the best Navy Commander in Chief China had ever had. He was a big man, six feet tall, with a swarthy, rounded face that looked somewhat Western. He wore his thick dark hair longer than is customary in the Chinese political and military establishment, and glared at the world from behind heavy, horn-rimmed glasses. He was the son of a freighter captain from the great southeastern seaport of Xiamen, and had been born on the ship, during times of terrible poverty just after World War II. At the age of twelve, he could have stripped the ship’s engine and put it back together. He knew how to navigate the South China Sea, and at fifteen had been capable of commanding any one of the medium-size freighters that plied the busy coastline to the west of the Formosa Strait.

He won a place at Xiamen University and gained the best possible marine engineering degree. He took two additional courses in the study of nuclear physics, and at twenty-two joined the Navy, where his rise to prominence was swift and sure. At the age of thirty-nine he was commanding officer of the new Shanghai-built Luda Class guided-missile destroyer Nanjing. At forty-four, he was appointed Commander of the East Sea Fleet, and four years later became Chief of the Naval Staff. The Great Reformer, the late Deng Xiaoping, who at that time was still holding on to his last active chairmanship, that of the Military Affairs Commission, promoted him to Commander in Chief of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy, because he believed that Admiral Zhang was the man to mastermind the modernization of the Chinese Navy.

Deng made the appointment because of one conversation he had with the young Admiral, who told him, “When I was a very little boy, my father was the best freighter captain in Xiamen. He worked harder than anyone, and he was cleverer than anyone, but our ship was old and it continually went wrong. My father was probably the only man on the whole waterfront who could have kept it going, but the struggle was impossible because we were poor, and people with better, faster, and more reliable freighters took the best of the trade, especially in transporting fruit and vegetables. In maritime matters, sir, there is no substitute for the best equipment. I would rather have ten top-class modern submarines than a hundred out-of-date ones. Give me ten brand-new guided missile destroyers, fifty modern frigates, and a new aircraft carrier, and I’ll keep this country safe from attack from the sea for half a century.”

Deng loved it. Here was a modern man who could see beyond the horizon. He knew the elderly High Command of the People’s Liberation Army would not like what they heard, since most of them still believed that huge numbers of half-trained men—2.2 million soldiers — and a vast, near-obsolete fleet of aging warships was preferable. Deng, however, knew instinctively that Admiral Zhang was his man.

The decision to equip the Chinese Navy with the ten Russian-built Kilos had in the end been Zhang’s, and it was he who urged the Navy paymasters to buy the sixty-seven-thousand-ton aircraft carrier Admiral