U.S.S. Seawolf

020130JULY06.

20.50N 116.40E South China Sea.

Speed 25. Depth 200.

Course 250.

Lt. Commander Clarke had the conn as they ran through deep water more than 100 miles south of the Chinese Naval Base at Shantou. The Xia was showing no signs of stopping, turning, or slowing down, just heading resolutely southwest down the coast.

Judd Crocker’s team assessed that her ops area would be somewhere out around 20.25N 111.46E, east- southeast of Zhanjiang, Southern Fleet HQ. And there she would doubtless dive, before heading out to begin her deep submergence trials. But there she would also probably come up occasionally, access her satellite, report defects if anything urgent popped up, and perhaps rendezvous with a surface escort.

The first time she did that, night or day, Judd Crocker would personally take Seawolf deeper and slide with the utmost stealth under her keel. Dead under. Accurate to a few inches, unseen, undetected, pinging sonar all along the hull, drawing an automatic picture on the fathometer trace; the one that would tell the U.S. Navy scientists back in Washington whether or not China had the capacity to hurl a big missile at Los Angeles and hit it.

By any standards, Captain Crocker had been charged with the most stupendous task. Spying on a foreign submarine, listening and watching, recording and tracking, was one thing. Trying to get a real close look, straight up her skirt, as it were, was entirely another, even more so without being caught doing it. But it had been done before, notably by the Brits in the Barents Sea at the height of the Cold War in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

^{Seawolf’s Southern Ops Area}

One of their COs got very close underneath a 10,000-ton Soviet Delta-class nuclear boat designed to carry submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), and took soundings upward along the entire submerged part of the hull. He got away with it, too…but to complete the measurements he had to raise his periscope 100 yards off her port quarter for the photographs that would reveal the above-water height of the missile tubes.

He eased the periscope up, the tip of it only 18 inches above the flat, calm surface. His aim was a seven- second, three-exposure snatch. But an oil smear wrecked all that. To his horror, he saw an image too badly blurred for camera work. And that meant at least a 30-second delay while it hung out to dry in the hostile Russian air.

To his further horror, as the image cleared he saw a small crowd gathering on the Delta’s bridge. And they were pointing straight at his periscope, and his recording camera, the eyes of the West, the ultimate intruder.

A massive three-day ASW hunt ensued, conducted by most of the Russian Northern Fleet, but the British commanding officer essentially ran rings around the Soviets and got away with the required measurements scot- free.

Very few American commanders knew that story, and none of them knew the man who did it. But not many COs had been tasked with repeating the maneuver, as Judd Crocker now was.

Happily he was sound asleep as Linus Clarke sped southwest, astern of the Xia, covering 25 nautical miles every hour.

The watch changed at 0400. Captain Crocker came back into the control room, and Clarke handed over formally.

“You have the conn, sir.”

“I have the conn.”

Both men were surprised at the noise the new Chinese boat was making. At 25 knots you could hear her for a long way, but then she was traveling fast for her, whereas Seawolf was merely cruising, just a little over half-speed, right in her quarry’s deaf stern arcs.

As Admiral Zhang had remarked that morning, “If only we could find a way to adapt that American satellite technology we acquired from them. But alas, we seem doomed to failure on that one. As I seem doomed to failure to find and ‘accidentally’ sink the American prowler. They cannot fool me, however. I know they’re out there, still tracking my very beautiful new Xia.”

It was 4:00 A.M. now and the C-in-C could not sleep. He remained alone in his study, overlooking the water. He was still in uniform, but he wore no shoes. Outside it was raining hard, with the onset of the South China monsoon season. Tomorrow there would be heavy mist out over the water.

But for now he just pored over his chart. The one that gave him all the depths after the 100-meter line south of Zhanjiang, the one that marked out clearly the operations area of Xia III.

At 0430 he tapped in a message to Zu Jicai, the Southern Commander, instructing him to place all 14 of his operational destroyers and frigates on one hour’s notice to leave for the Xia’s ops area. He instructed each ship to be on full ASW alert, laden to the gunwales with depth charges, depth bombs, torpedoes and, for those equipped with launchers, ASW mortars.

He ordered a satellite message to be delivered to the Xia’s CO that he was to surface immediately if he detected even the slightest suggestion of an American nuclear boat, and to report instantly to HQ. That way he could get his ASW fleet out there fast. That way the Xia would be safe. Even the American gangsters would not dare to hit her while she was on the surface in full view of the satellites.

He paced the room, slapping his left palm with his big ruler, running his fingers through his hair. “The trouble is, I have to rely on the American CO making a mistake. And since he is driving the top submarine in the American Navy, he probably makes very few.

“But if he does, I’ll get him. And what a moment that would be.” And in his mind he imagined the moment when he would speak to the C-in-C of the American military, sympathizing with the terrible loss of Seawolf.

But Mr. President, we are so sorry. However, if you send a big nuclear boat into any part of the South China Sea, especially so close to our coastline, to spy on our perfectly legal naval operations…then accidents can sometimes happen. What more can I say? If only you had told us you were coming, we would have been so much more careful.

Perhaps you will in the future. Again, our profound apologies, and deepest sympathies to the families of the brave men who died.

And for the first time in this longest of nights, a thin smile flickered across the broad face of the Commander- in-Chief of the People’s Liberation Navy.

Even though there was no reality; it was only in his mind.

3

030800JUL06.

20.00N 112.46E. South China Sea.

West of Hainan Island. Speed 6. Depth 300.

Course: racetrack pattern.

Seawolf’s quarry had slowed right down and gone deeper, and Linus Clarke seized the opportunity to take a fast look at the surface picture. He ordered the American submarine to periscope depth, but he didn’t see much. A tallow-colored mist hung low over the South China Sea, and visibility was down to a matter of perhaps 40 yards. He activated the lens into its all-seeing nighttime mode, but still there seemed to be nothing around. The seas were deserted, except for Seawolf and Admiral Zhang’s ballistic missile ship Xia, and she was two miles away, 500 feet below the surface.

These heavy mists are commonplace in July, around the 180-mile-long, tropical island of Hainan, home of yet another sprawling Chinese naval base in the northern town of Haikou. With the onset of the monsoon from the southwest, this was the heavy rain season, and the heat along Hainan’s spectacular beaches was ghastly, the humidity in the high nineties.

The operations area of the Xia was more or less where the brains onboard Seawolf had expected, 60 miles east of the Haikou base, 170 miles south-southeast of