U.S.S. Seawolf

executive officer is Lieutenant Commander Bruce Lucas as of right now. His dog tags say it. His passport says it. His Navy papers say it. And our next-of-kin records confirm it. He’s never even met anyone who lives in the White House. He’s Lieutenant Commander Bruce Lucas. Understood? That’s all.”

There really was little for anyone to do while Seawolf was under tow. Communications accessed the satellite every half hour seeking new orders from SUBPAC, and the cooks were providing a very few meals for those who felt sufficiently well. But generally, the submarine had turned into a ghost ship. Officers sat in the wardroom drinking black coffee. Most of the engineers and electronics teams sat around belowdecks, playing cards or dozing, and the turbines were not driving anything.

The systems that provided air-conditioning and fresh water were working normally, and of course Lt. Commander Rich Thompson had the nuclear reactor, from which all power stemmed, running correctly. Master Chief Brad Stockton patrolled the boat ceaselessly, checking and encouraging the younger members of the crew.

The key to the immediate future rested in the reception the Chinese Navy gave the Americans when finally they arrived in Canton. If they were treated reasonably and permitted to remain on board their ship while the diplomats argued, that would be perfect, because it would mean no damaging announcements admitting that the finest submarine in the U.S. Navy had been hijacked by the People’s Liberation Army and all the crew were held captive in Canton.

That would cause outrage in the United States. There would be demands that the President act. It would be the 1980 Tehran hostage crisis all over again. And if the Clarke administration failed to frighten China into releasing the ship and its company, they too would be finished.

As potential crises go, this one was well on its way, but SUBPAC and its masters in the Pentagon were not announcing anything until Seawolf arrived in Canton and the Joint Chiefs could see precisely how the cards fell.

Meanwhile, Captain Crocker summoned Lt. Commander Mike Schulz, and the two of them went alone into the reactor compartment.

“Mike,” said the CO, “I don’t know what’s going to happen when we get to Canton. But there must be a chance the Chinese are going to try and get complete details of this submarine. I have some unwritten orders from the CNO in the event we fall into enemy hands. And it involves that isolating valve on the emergency cooling system. The one we both looked at in New London. I want you to activate it right now, so there will be no indications of failure when it fails.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Lt. Commander Schulz.

And so the Americans lurched on up the channel, the big steel hawser taking the strain as it had done for almost 150 miles now. They cleared the more agricultural reaches of the Delta, still moving north as fast as the destroyer and the tugs could drag and push them.

But it was three o’clock in the sweltering afternoon when they eased into the narrowing river and made their way into the submarine jetty. Judd Crocker decided there was no point in sealing themselves inside, and he and Master Chief Stockton opened the hatch and went up onto the bridge.

They blinked in the fitful sunbeams that now penetrated the rain clouds, and they blinked at the chilling sight that awaited them. A 200-strong armed naval guard was in formation on the jetty as they pulled alongside. The tugs edged Seawolf in, her 350-foot-long portside against the dock.

The Chinese used their own gangway to board the American ship. Immediately 20 of the guards crossed onto the casing and took up positions, still with their arms at the ready, in groups of five, covering the four main hatches. There was no way off the submarine, and in a matter of moments, the brutal reality of the situation was rammed home to both men staring down from the bridge.

A Chinese naval officer walked across the gangway carrying a bullhorn and he aimed it high, straight at them. Then in immaculate English he read out a written statement to Captain Crocker and his men:

“My name is Commander Li Zemin. I am in charge of all security at the Canton Naval Base of the People’s Republic of China. We believe your submarine to be carrying formal weapons of war, including a nuclear capability. These foreign weapons are strictly banned in the waters of the South China Sea. They are banned by the Paramount Ruler of the Republic, and here in China we insist that our laws and customs are obeyed.

“The crew of this ship is thus under arrest under the laws of the People’s Republic and you will begin disembarking, enlisted men first, then your petty officers and junior officers, with the high command of the ship disembarking last.

“We are in touch with your government, which denies you ever had orders to come so close to our shores. We thus hold you responsible, each man personally, for this most unfortunate breach of the peaceful trade routes of China. In due course you will face trial, and this may mean a long term of imprisonment.

“Meanwhile, you will begin vacating the ship. But you will leave the nuclear plant running, and you will permit your chief nuclear engineering officer to remain in the reactor room in order to confer with our Chinese naval scientists.

“Needless to say, should anyone offer any armed or physical resistance whatsoever, he will be shot instantly, plus a minimum of two of his colleagues. Now open the doors and begin filing out with your hands above your heads. You will be unarmed. Any man found carrying any weapon will be instantly executed.”

It had taken Admiral Zhang Yushu all morning to write that speech, and he was immensely proud of it. “Show those arrogant bastards who’s boss now, right, Jicai?”

Up on the bridge, Judd Crocker felt the wintry realization of their plight. There was no way around this. Unbelievably, but irrevocably, he and his crew were prisoners of the Chinese, and the way Commander Li was talking, that was liable to be so for a long time. Thoughts surged through his mind. What would the Pentagon do? What about the government? What about the President? How long would this nightmare last?

Whichever way he sliced up the problem, the Chinese were in the saddle right now. And at 17 minutes after 3:00 on that Friday afternoon, the commanding officer of USS Seawolf ordered the ship’s company to vacate the submarine and to surrender to Commander Li’s men in the precise manner he had ordered.

Beyond the jetty, he could see a line of 10 open Navy trucks, each one surrounded by more armed guards and drivers. Admiral Zhang had been flying them in all day, in small military aircraft from both Zhanjiang and Xiamen.

And now the door was opened and the CO saw the young Californian seaman recruit, Kirk Sarloos, lead the men out, his hands high behind the back of his head. There was something almost surreal about this, almost as if it could not be happening. But it was happening, and it was happening badly. A guard stepped forward and slammed the butt of his rifle into the small of Kirk’s back, knocking him hard toward the gangway. It was a long time since any of the Americans had witnessed gratuitous violence, some of them never. But there was no doubt that they were about to discover the realities of captivity in a country with a human rights record bordering on the plain barbaric.

The Chinese marched the Americans off the ship in groups of 10, herding them toward the trucks, throwing the occasional kick, the occasional punch, the occasional slam of a rifle butt. Not many of the crew made the trucks without some painful reminders, and the towering engineer from Ohio, Tony Fontana, received a massive blow to the head with a pistol for calling the Commander a “slit-eyed, fourth-rate Chinese motherfucker who ought to be working in a goddamned laundry.”

Then one of the deck crew laughed and was knocked unconscious for his trouble. Things were looking very bad from where Captain Crocker stood.

The evacuation took an hour before Commander Li, in the company of eight guards, entered the ship and ordered the two Americans off the bridge. He instructed them to stand unarmed in the control room while his men took down details of their names and ranks.

He formally told the CO that Seawolf was now confiscated by the Navy of the People’s Republic. The American crew had been taken to a civilian jail within the boundaries of the City of Canton, but the “High Command” of the ship, which would include the senior engineering officers, would be detained in the naval compound, while the “extraordinary engineers of China become familiar with the submarine.”

It was five o’clock in the afternoon before Judd Crocker, Bruce Lucas, Cy Rothstein, Shawn Pearson, Andy Warren, and Brad Stockton were individually marched out at gunpoint and driven to a cell block designed for Navy discipline but currently unoccupied. It was a low gray single-story building with small, high windows that had probably not been, cleaned since the Revolution. A smiling portrait of Mao Zedong was painted on the end