U.S.S. Seawolf

So far only Captain Crocker was privy to all of the information, and every 12 hours he was ordering Seawolf to periscope depth, to suck a fast message off the satellite, telling him whether the Xia was still testing her systems moored alongside in Huludao or whether she was at last heading south, into deep waters.

Right now, with Judd Crocker and his team 1,300 miles out from Pearl, the Xia was still at her jetty, and Judd fervently hoped she would stay there until he had covered 3,000 more miles to reach the eastern waters of the Yellow Sea, where he hoped to pick her up as she steamed south, probably on the surface. The rest was going to be truly hazardous.

The CO planned to brief his senior officers as to the precise nature of the mission. But first he was trying to familiarize himself with the vast but somewhat shallow waters of China’s submarine production area. The only available charts were Japanese, and their underwater surveys were, Judd thought, pretty unreliable. But the northern waters of the Yellow Sea have been for centuries almost bereft of foreign shipping, except by invitation of mainland China.

Because it is essentially a cul-de-sac, there is literally no reason to go there. Running north from Shanghai, the Yellow Sea quickly becomes 300 miles wide, but after less than 200 miles it becomes bounded by South Korea to the east. Three hundred northerly miles later it runs into a choke point, only 60 miles wide, at the entrance to a massive bay stretching almost 300 miles northeast-southwest. There is no escape from the bay except back through the choke point.

Way up to the north of that bay, on the borders of the old province of Manchuria, lies the great shipyard of Huludao, on the north side of a jutting peninsula, bounded by a gigantic sea wall. It is here that China builds her attack submarines. All five of the 4,500-ton Han-class (Type 091) guided-missile boats were constructed in Huludao. It was here that the original Xia itself was built.

But Liaodong Bay is not much deeper than 100 feet anywhere, bounded as it is by great salt flats, so when an SSN leaves here it must not only run to the choke point on the surface, it must proceed south on the surface for another 400 miles before reaching any deep water whatsoever. The northern Yellow Sea is a strange place to build underwater warships. The weather in winter is shocking, the border of the snowswept plains of Inner Mongolia being only 100 miles away. Huludao possesses only one advantage, that of privacy, indeed, secrecy.

Curiously, another of the major Chinese shipyards is also located up in those northern waters — the one at Dalian (Dawan), on the northern peninsula of the choke point, where they build most of the great workhorses of the Chinese Navy, the Luda-class destroyers.

Judd stared at the chart, trying to put himself in the Chinese captain’s mind: What would I do if I were in a brand-new ICBM submarine, and was almost certainly being watched by an American nuclear boat somewhere?

Well, the Yellow Sea’s deeper to the east along the Korean shore, so I’d come to the choke point and keep running southwest for maybe four hundred miles. I’d stay on the surface until I was down here…where am I? Thirty-four degrees north…then I’d run north of the island of Cheng Do…then I’d make a beeline for the deep water…over by these islands west of Nagasaki…then I’d dive, real quick as a matter of fact…that’s what he’ll do, I think. That’s where I’ll be waiting for him.

Judd Crocker called a conference of his key personnel in the control room: Lt. Commander Clark; Lt. Commander Rothstein; the navigator, Lt. Shawn Pearson; the sonar officer, Lt. Kyle Frank; the marine engineering officer, Lt. Commander Rich Thompson; the chief of the boat, Master PO Brad Stockton; and the officer of the deck, Lt. Andy Warren.

“Gentlemen,” said the CO as he closed the door, “I have asked you to come in for a briefing on the nature of our mission. In short, we are going to China, to the eastern waters of the Yellow Sea, where we are trying to pick up their brand-new ICBM submarine, the new Xia, track it south, and then ascertain its precise measurements from keel to upper casing.”

“How exactly do we do that, sir?” asked Rothstein. “They probably won’t invite us over with a tape measure.”

“Cy, we have to get under its keel, directly under, and then use an upward sonar to get a complete picture of the underwater shape and depth of the submarine, from surface to keel. Then we range her from surface to casing and that way we have a dead accurate measurement of her precise height.”

“Yes, I see. But what exactly do you mean directly under its keel — you mean a couple of hundred feet below?”

“Cy, I actually mean a hell of a lot closer than that.”

“Can you tell us why we’re doing this, sir?”

“Yes, Brad, I guess so. Inside that submarine will be the very latest intercontinental ballistic missiles, the one they’ll throw at L.A. should they ever decide on such a course of action. For obvious reasons, we must know the precise range of that missile, how far it will go and whether they really could hit our West Coast from the far side of the Pacific Ocean. Basic intelligence, really. We’re on a top-classified spying mission, and we must not get caught.”

“Presumably, sir, we’re discussing the technology they stole from the USA in the final years of the nineties?”

“And a bit before that, Cy. Anyway, you all know the theory. We can’t measure the missile, but if we measure the submarine that carries it, we’ll know its height. Which I’m guessing will be around forty-five to fifty feet. There’s probably around nine feet of engine in there, and maybe four feet of warhead. The rest’s fuel, and our guys can ascertain within about a hundred yards how far that baby will fly.”

“How about the diameter, sir?”

“They have that. Picked up the hatch measurements from the satellite photographs.”

“Sir, I’ve known you for a lot of years,” said Brad Stockton. “And I can tell you’re holding back the bad news…”

They all laughed, and the CO continued, “There’s so much of that I’m not sure where to start!

“First of all we have to find the submarine, but we’ll have plenty of assistance from the overheads so long as she’s on the surface. Second, they’ll guess the Americans are watching, so they’ll be pretty vigilant watching for us. Third, Fort Meade is afraid they have stolen our most up-to-date ASW system, which will allow them to spot us underwater from space, from their own satellite. Which would make us pretty easy prey if the water’s not deep and they send ship after ship to look for us.”

“Jesus Christ. Do we know if they have this stuff operational?”

“No. We only know that they have it. We’re not sure whether they know how to use it. Anyway, if we stay in deep water, we’re fairly safe. They have nothing that will catch us, nothing remotely fast enough.”

“And sir, if we had to, could we blow ’em out of the water?”

“Andy, that would be frowned upon. If they hit us, they’d probably get away with it — a marauding American nuclear boat creeping through Chinese waters, et cetera. But if we hit them, I’m afraid it would be regarded as an act of war, since we really have no reason to be there, four thousand miles from our home base.”

“You mean you’d just let them destroy us?”

“No, Andy, if it came down to a straight us or them, well, there could be only one answer to that.”

“Not us. Right, sir?”

“Not us. That’s correct, Andy. But officially, we’re not allowed to do that. Our orders are to stay undetected.”

“But that, as we all know, may be easier said than done,” said Cy Rothstein quietly.

“Correct. But we have to try. And we have to get our mindset straight. We are in a devastatingly powerful attack submarine. We could probably take out half the Chinese fleet if it came right down to it. But that’s not our job. We will be thanked profoundly at home only if we come back quietly with information, photographic evidence of what the hell the goddamned Chinese are up to…and how much of our stuff they have stolen and utilized.”

“Is that our only mission, sir?”

“Not quite. The Chinese have recently commissioned their third and newest Luhai-class destroyer, a big six- thousand-ton gas-turbine ship with an endurance of fourteen thousand miles, and guided missiles they can project to seventy miles. The Pentagon thinks the damn thing may have a ballistic trajectory ASW weapon. It’s called a CY-1. They want us to locate the destroyer and take a look. But we’ll need to be careful. CNO thinks it might be