U.S.S. Seawolf

to a critical part of our mission. And remember, sir, we don’t know how long that towed array is, and we don’t know what angle they have it down in the water.”

“My judgment says we’re fine,” replied Linus. “And since they seem to have stolen everything from us short of the Washington Monument, we’ve got a lot of rights, and I’m about to exercise those rights. Turning in now… right standard rudder…steer course zero-nine-zero…make your speed eight…”

And USS Seawolf turned across the wake, sliding through the water astern of the destroyer, her periscope jutting out as she made the crossing.

Except she never got there. Almost, but not quite. Her giant propeller snagged on the tough towed array, 75 feet below the surface, wrapping the thick black rubberized tail hard around, twisting it into an impenetrable ball 15 feet across, and then winding it on and on, with the array trapped between the blades, until finally the shaft could fight it no more, and Seawolf’s entire propulsion mechanism came to a halt, the propeller jammed rigid.

No one knew it, but the very first tug on the array by the vast inertia of the submarine had yanked it clean off the stern of the Chinese destroyer. And now its weight was slowly dragging the submarine’s stern down.

There was no semblance of uproar, just a heavy slow-motion quiet at a strange angle. And it was, even to a sleeping submarine commander, tantamount to a shriek for help that would have pierced the deafness of Beethoven. In two and a half seconds flat, Captain Judd Crocker was wide awake, fighting his way out of his cabin door. Five seconds later he reached the conn.

“What’s going on, XO?” he snapped, seizing the periscope, which was still up and trained on the stern of the Xiangtan. There were only three seconds left before the periscope dipped below the surface, but for Judd Crocker that was plenty. Xiangtan’s stern was only 500 yards away, not the mile young Linus had believed.

“Depth ninety feet, sir…increasing. Speed zero. Bow up angle seven degrees. INCREASING,” reported the planesman, an edge entering his voice as the great submarine wallowed backward in the water.

“It may not be that bad, sir,” offered Linus. “Just temporary. I think we may have snagged something, sir.”

“SNAGGED!” exclaimed Judd. “We’re in the middle of the South China Sea. Or at least we were when I was last in the conn forty minutes ago. There’s nothing out here to snag. Barring a Chinese destroyer close aboard.”

“I went across her stern to get pictures,” said Linus Clarke. “I stood at least a mile off. But I still seem to have been too close.”

“Jesus, Linus! What d’you mean a mile, for Christ’s sake. It’s only five hundred yards. I’ve just looked. Oh, Jesus Christ! Linus, you had the fucking periscope in low power. It looked like a mile to you, but it was five hundred yards for real. And you just drove straight into his towed array.”

“LOW POWER, SIR. OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! I can’t believe this. I’m extremely sorry…”

“So am I, Linus. So am I,” said the CO resignedly, hardly believing it himself. Judd had seen this once before when a student of his had made the same mistake. And now one twist the wrong way on the periscope handle had pushed the Chinese destroyer almost four times farther away to Linus’s eye than it actually was.

“Conn maneuvering…unable to answer bells. Main propulsion shaft jammed. Investigating…emergency propulsion is available.”

“Captain, roger. We may have something wrapped around the screw…so propel maximum on emergency… and try main propulsion in astern…we might just be able to unwind it.”

“One hundred feet, sir…ten degrees bow up.”

Judd shouldered the XO to one side and ordered a short blast of high-pressure air into the after-main ballast group, in a desperate attempt to stop the stern-down trend.

Somehow he remained outwardly calm. But inwardly, he was seething. FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING XO…what a total prick…we’ll be real lucky to get out of this one.

Judd’s mind raced, scanning the options. What do I do? Dive? Surface? Declare war? Scuttle the ship? Surrender? Call the cavalry? FUCK ME!

And then, Steady, Judd. For Christ’s sake, steady. Think it through, from best to worst.

Best was easy. If we’re very lucky the destroyer’s CO will think his array snagged the bottom — maybe won’t even notice it’s off for a few minutes — if he’s real stupid.

But from there, the entire scenario went south. Because he’s still not going away, is he? He’ll want to mark the position to get the fucking thing back.

Judd’s mind raced on. Since he’s going no place fast, it’s me who must make the move. But I’m stuck with three knots max on emergency propulsion…and I’ve got 50 fucking tons of deadweight on my stern. And not much chance at all of restoring the main shaft. Holy shit!

This was the real loneliness of command. There was no one he could turn to, least of all. his XO. And all around him his team was coping, rock steady, with a crisis beyond the realm of their worst nightmares.

“Conn maneuvering…shaft will not move in astern, sir…EPM running ahead full.”

“Planes are answering.…One hundred and ten feet steady…trim’s good, sir…that is with five degrees bow up.”

“Conn-Sonar…all contacts drowned out by EPM, sir.”

Judd knew he was running out of options. If he stopped the emergency propulsion motor, Seawolf would also stop. And the weight aft, too heavy to be compensated for, would drag her down, stern first.

The only chance of stopping that was to blow the main ballast tanks. And holding even an approximate trim that way was unbelievably noisy anyhow and unlikely for more than 30 minutes before the sheer physics of the game overtook him.

Lack of air, a depth surge up, or, even worse, down, or an excessively steep angle — any of those could routinely “scram” the reactor, crippling the beleaguered Seawolf totally.

If, alternatively, he left the noisy emergency motor running, he was deaf to the outside world, but could probably maintain depth, give or take 30 feet.

But he couldn’t maintain a steady periscope depth under those circumstances, which meant he’d be blind as well as deaf. At PD, on the little emergency motor, he’d end up showing the whole sail occasionally, which would nicely advertise his presence to the entire South China Sea. The EPM was only a get-you-home kit for peacetime use. It was about as stealthy as a buzzsaw.

Judd fought off a feeling of helplessness. There was only one conclusion. He had to get back to the surface and check out the propeller. But that meant surfacing right beside the Chinese destroyer, though at least they were in international waters.

And so he issued the command, and Seawolf wallowed her way clumsily up, her motion slow and ungainly, barely under control, a wounded whale with a harpoon jutting out of her backside. Judd Crocker took the periscope in the dawn light. The rain had stopped and the sea was very beautiful, but the sight that greeted him was not good.

Through the glass he could actually see the ghastly tangle of thick black wire wrapped hard around his propeller, locking it rigid.

Worse yet, he could see now, 200 yards off his port beam, one 6,000-ton Chinese destroyer, with a gun turret pointed straight at Seawolf’s bridge. From where Judd was looking it seemed to be pointing straight between his eyes.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” he breathed.

The CO’s mind flew. The situation was dire, but not unique. Submarines had wrapped their propellers around towed arrays before, most spectacularly when a Royal Navy nuclear boat did it in the Barents Sea back in the early 1980s, surfaced, cut it free, and made her way home safely.

And of course everyone knew of the incident somewhere off the Carolinas in the late 1970s when a cruising Soviet submarine wound the towed array of an American frigate into its prop. Navy folklore says the submarine had to surface, much like Seawolf had done now, while the crew tried to cut their way free with inadequate equipment. The American crew apparently sat on the stern of the frigate, eating hot dogs for lunch, howling with laughter and loudly cheering every failed attempt by the Russians to clear their huge propeller.