“Captain, aye. Make your depth one-forty.”
Twenty minutes later, die Luda’s transmissions had faded away completely to the southeast. Forty minutes later, Judd risked coming above the layer to hear better. But there was nothing. And once more
“Gentlemen,” he said, “something real strange just happened. I am getting a distinct impression that someone out there doesn’t like us!”
“Funny you should mention that, sir…”
“Yeah, I was just thinking the same…”
The tone was light. But the subject was deadly serious…how did that damned Luda find them, miles from anywhere at periscope depth, in the middle of the night?
They all knew the Luda’s sonar was hopeless at 25 knots, even in a calm sea in the layer. There was no way she could have navigated herself onto
“No, sir. She was being vectored from outside her own ops room. Someone must have picked up our mast in this flat water…must have been from the shore…” Cy Rothstein looked concerned.
“It has to do with the curve of the earth,” said Frank. “No one can operate shore radar from a range of more than twenty-two miles.”
“We can.”
“Yes, but no one else has technology even approaching that.”
“They didn’t used to have. But the Chinese plainly have it now,” said the CO.
“How far?”
“I don’t know exactly,” said Shawn, the navigation officer. “But I think the nearest of the islands outside Zhoujiang Ku would be around forty miles north of here, and that’s where they must have been scanning from.”
“Then I am drawn to the conclusion that the Chinese have stolen our most advanced radar secrets as well as everything else,” said the captain.
“Jesus Christ. It would be just our luck to have them use it personally against us.”
“Hey…forty miles…that’s one hell of a way for shore radar…they into some satellite hookup or what?”
“Who knows? But we’re gonna have to be damned careful, that’s for sure.”
“I’m too young to die,” said Shawn, his voice rising to a little girl’s squeak. “And I hate the Chinese, and I can’t find my way home.”
Judd Crocker laughed as always at his young navigator, but a shadow quickly crossed his face when he spoke. “We have to face it, there is a certain Chinaman in that damned Navy who is determined to get us. He’s been trying to do it for three days.
“He’s twice mobilized half the fleet trying to blow us apart with charges and mortars, he’s had Navy fliers circling around trying to hit us with torpedoes from the air, he’s had sonobuoys in the water, and a half hour ago he ordered one of his elderly destroyers to run flat out through the night and try to sink us by ramming.
“Gentlemen, we have to take this fucker seriously or he’s going to whip our asses…and we have to remember that every time we raise the periscope anywhere near the shore, he’s gonna be watching. Remember, a half hour ago, he wasn’t guessing…he
Again the C-in-C could not sleep. He’d been walking alone on the beach, staring out to sea, his thoughts cascading through the deep waters. Where was the American submarine?
He walked disconsolately back to the house, listening to the sounds of the midsummer night. But to him the clockwork chirp of the cicadas was the pinging of a distant sonar. The whisper of the wind through the palm trees was the swish of a submarine’s blades through the water. And the sound of the waves breaking on the shore was the sound of his barefoot youth in the nearby city of Xiamen, living on his father’s boat, moored right off the beach.
He’d come a long way in a relatively short time. But he had to find that submarine. And the longer the chase, the more determined he was to blow a hole in Captain Judd Crocker’s
The admiral crossed the wide porch and softly entered his study through the French doors. He poured himself some iced tea and sipped it slowly. Then he had an idea, he picked up the telephone and dialed his secure line to Admiral Zu, who would not complain at being awakened. Not this week, with tensions running so high in the People’s Navy.
Jicai picked up on the third ring, and with good grace accepted his Commander-in-Chief’s apology for the hour.
“I called because we must not be beaten by this submarine,” he said. “And because I know you want it removed as deeply as I do.”
“Probably deeper, sir. How about a thousand fathoms?”
Admiral Zhang chuckled. “Jicai,” he said, “we have tried every conventional sonar and radar system we own. We have been close but never close enough, fast but never fast enough. I am drawn to the conclusion that we have access to only one system that may detect the American ship in time for us to strike.”
“Sir, it is entirely untried. We don’t even know if it will work.”
“The Americans plainly think it does. They have it fitted to all of their most advanced warships.”
“Yessir. But they have the original. Ours is…well, in the nature of a copy.”
“Yes. But it’s only a towed array. And we know how to make towed arrays that work very well.”
“Yessir. But we’ve never made one this long. And we’ve never even tested it yet.”
“That may be so. But our scientists have been very thorough, and the report says it will work better than any towed array we have ever had. The report says it will work as well for us as it does for the Americans.”
“Well, sir, it is one thousand yards long, which seems to me phenomenal…they say it will pick up every sound in the ocean for miles and miles.”
“If it will really do what our people say it will do, Jicai, it might find the American submarine for us. It is currently fitted to the new destroyer.”
“Yessir. It’s in a special housing on the stern. Under guard at the jetty in the Pearl River.”
“Can it be deployed right away?”
“Yessir. It’s completely ready for its final trials. Scheduled to start in two days.”
“Send it to sea, Jicai. Send it out to the area where the Luda picked up their mast, then have it start an area search pattern based on that position. The American probably thinks we’re hopeless at ASW, and he may not have cleared that datum. If he runs, we cannot catch him; but if he underrates us and stays, we might. The only ship we
