U.S.S. Seawolf

Depth 300 feet. Speed 12.

Bearing zero-two-zero.

USS Seawolf was creeping silently along southwestern Taiwan, heading nor’nor’east, staying in the deep water, 18 miles offshore. Lt. Shawn Pearson was hunched over his chart, plotting their course inch by inch up the coast. “We can continue along here for quite a way, sir,” he said. “Seventy miles from now, still holding this course, we’ll still be in almost five hundred feet of water…wanna leave two sandbanks to port twenty-five miles farther on from here, but aside from that we’re golden.”

“Our biggest problem is knowing when the Xia leaves,” replied the CO. “It’s only about seventy miles from the Xiamen base to the choke point of the Strait. She’s gonna be across here, on the surface, hopefully just south of us, in about three hours. If the satellite passes don’t fit our program we just need to get inshore and watch for her to show up.”

“She’s big enough, sir,” said Frank. “Half again as big as us. And she makes a noise. If she comes this way, we’ll find her.”

In fact Seawolf picked her up at 1130, 18 miles away. It was a sharp piece of work by the technicians, because they had been busy in the previous hour with a lot of surface ships, all Chinese, all Navy, all growling their way out from Xiamen, probably on some kind of an exercise.

Right now Judd Crocker had his ship positioned at 23.25N 119.55E, facing the open sea, with Taiwan 20 miles astern. They patrolled slowly, just south of the lonely Peng-hu Islands, with their miles of breathtakingly perfect sandy beaches.

The ops room was still picking up a lot of activity 30 miles to the southwest, but that was not a priority. The priority, all 13,000 tons of her, was right now headed at 25 knots to a point 20 miles southwest, and Judd Crocker ordered, “Left standard rudder…make your course two-one-zero…make your speed fifteen knots.”

That way he figured he’d run right in behind the Xia and finally track her out to the really deep water he craved. But one hour later, the picture changed rapidly. Sonar picked up a succession of thunderous explosions in the water, the unmistakable sound of antisubmarine depth charges.

What the hell’s going on?

That was one unspoken question. But there was another more important one running through the assembled minds: Have they spotted us?

If they have, they’re a bit off target, thought the CO. They are moving toward us, but their depth charges are going off 10 miles south of us. Since one of ’em has to blast within 15 feet of the pressure hull to do any serious damage…well, right now it’s not life-threatening.

Typically, Judd said, “Well, XO, what do you make of all this?”

“Not a problem yet, sir,” said Clarke. “But if they are advancing in line, and hammering away with all that hardware, they have us in some kind of a trap, right? We can’t go north into the shallow water, and they are to the south of us. We have to go through them. Sir, they’ve got us bottled up.”

“Not quite, Linus,” replied the CO, not ordering a change in speed or direction. And now the explosions were growing louder, a situation Judd knew was going to get worse. At 3,000 yards a depth charge can sound like an atomic bomb, if you’re scared.

“Conn-Sonar. Heavy ordnance out there right now, sir. Still depth charges and some lighter stuff as well.”

“Scare charges, possibly hand grenades,” muttered the CO. “They haven’t the first idea whether we’re here or not. Gimme a reading on the Xia.”

“Still making at twenty-five knots on the surface, sir. Still on course one-three-five. She’ll pass four thousand yards to our southwest. The way the Chinese Battle Group’s moving, she’ll be about three miles north of ’em when we pick her up.”

“Thanks, Kyle.”

Seawolf kept moving stealthily forward, slowing down to ensure her precise position astern of the Xia when the moment came. It was like maneuvering at the start of a yacht race, into the final countdown, burning off time, jockeying for position. Judd Crocker, personally at the conn, was good at that, not as good as his father, but certainly too good for the Chinese.

“I’m going in closer,” he said, amid the thunder of the charges. “Right in tight behind the Xia, maybe less than a mile…watch it for me, Linus…check with Kyle and Shawn…this is pretty damned tricky…remember that right now we can’t go real deep if we get caught…keep our speed as low as possible…but get right on the stern of that damned big submarine of theirs.

“Those frigates will sure as hell stop throwing depth charges and mortars when she closes them. I’m not sure how good a shot their lead mortar man is, but he doesn’t want to slam one into China’s newest submarine. They’d probably execute him…so they’ll let up for sure while the Xia goes through.

“Then they’ll probably start up again, but by that time we’ll be through as well, so long as we get in real tight, right in her stern arcs. I’m coming to periscope depth for a quick look. How’s your trim, Andy?”

Seawolf’s massive hull angled up and then leveled off right below the surface. The periscope slid smoothly up from the top of the sail, breaking the surface of the calm turquoise sea.

“She’s right where she’s supposed to be…I’d say she’ll cross our bow in the next five minutes.…still heading southeast.”

“DOWN PERISCOPE…FIVE DOWN…MAKE YOUR DEPTH THREE HUNDRED.

“Don’t want to hang around near the surface too long,” muttered the captain. “Even though we’re far away from any shore radar, and those warships are causing such a commotion they probably wouldn’t detect us if we ran up a flag. But we take no chances…not in this game. We just assume that every man’s hand is turned against us.”

Seawolf edged forward, running smoothly now at 10 knots, her sonar room softly tracking the oncoming Xia on passive. “Okay, sir…we should turn in right now…”

“Left standard rudder…course one-three-five…make your depth three hundred feet…increase speed…twenty- five knots…we’re going in now…”

Clarke now had the conn, and he steered the American prowler almost into the wake of the Xia. There was less than 1,000 yards between them, but at this depth Seawolf left no telltale surface disturbance, and her superb acoustic cladding made her almost undetectable.

The thunder of the depth charges was growing louder now, inside the two-mile range. For the past few minutes it had seemed as if they were headed into a major war zone, as the mortars detonated with booming resonance deep in the sunlit summer waters of the Strait.

“Enough to wake the dead,” observed Brad Stockton.

“Worse than that,” added the CO. “It’s enough to wake the Taiwanese Navy. They’ll be wondering what the hell is going on. Dollars to doughnuts they’re on the horn to the Pentagon right now, reporting that mainland China appears to have declared war.”

At 25 knots, the Xia and her shadow were covering a mile every two and a half minutes. And suddenly the underwater bombardment stopped as the giant Chinese missile boat came within range. Up on the surface the three Luda-class destroyers formed up line astern to watch the great symbol of Chinese naval power come steaming by on the surface. Captains are called Colonels in the People’s Liberation Army/Navy, and all three of them now stood with the ship’s company, beneath the ensign of the PLAN, the scarlet flag with its single yellow star set above the distinctive black and white bars. The three Jianghu frigates formed up identically to the east, and the entire six-ship Fleet offered a salute as the Xia went by, officers and men alike cheering and clapping as she rolled past.

They were still cheering as she steamed away from them, for almost a mile — almost a mile too long for Judd Crocker and his men, who had also slid right by, literally under the Chinese noses. And now Seawolf was safely heading southeast, beyond the barrage. And when the depth charges began anew, blasting holes in the calm waters, in a northern direction, it was much too late to harm the American interloper. And soon the noises began to soften and then die away altogether, as Clarke gunned Seawolf onward out into the deep Pacific, away from Admiral Zhang’s trap.

Now there was complete peace beyond the Americans’ pressure hull as they proceeded along the lovely south coast of Taiwan, where the plains of lush farmlands rise up to meet the great range of the Chungyang