easterly course, making 12 knots on the surface of waters that were only about 50 feet deep.
They were in the strictly prohibited area of Liaodong Bay, an 80-mile-long by 60-mile-wide cordoned-off zone stringently patrolled by Chinese Navy ships, way up on the northwest corner of the Yellow Sea.
Shortly before 0730, Admiral Badr went below and ordered a course change to the south, back down towards the choke point 120 miles away. It was too shallow to even go to periscope depth out here. And they were constantly under the observation of their protectors in the Chinese Navy.
But the North Sea Fleet of the People’s Liberation Army/Navy were not the only eyes upon them. At 0745, almost immediately after they made their turn, Big Bird, the U.S. military satellite, snapped off several shots of the
By then, of course, the
Meanwhile, Ravi and Shakira stayed on the bridge as the day grew warmer. Ahmed Sabah brought them coffee, while the rest of the crew carried out their customary daily equipment checks. Admiral Badr huddled in the navigation area with Ashtari Mohammed, poring over the sprawling Navy charts, plotting their way through the myriad islands around the southeast coastline of Japan, their route to the North Pacific.
Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe stared at the photographs of
He was looking at a map reference of 40.42N 121.20E. The NSO had helpfully identified the submarine as the only
He pulled up a chart of the Yellow Sea and Japan on his computer and gazed at the screen.
Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe did not like dead ends. His dislikes especially included the Yellow Sea and everything to do with it. And here was the
He requested blowups of the very clearly focused pictures, and an hour later, he could see three figures on the bridge. But all of them wore hats, and the photographs were shot mainly from directly overhead, making it impossible to identify any of them, even with regard to rank or nationality.
He stood up and walked to the door, stepping out into the corridor, which led along to the Director’s office on the eighth floor of the OPS-2B building, with its massive one-way glass walls and twenty-four-hour heavily armed guard patrols.
“I just hope,” he murmured, as he walked, “that we haven’t inadvertently shot another photograph of Major Ray fucking Kerman, right out there, large as life, on the bridge of the damned
They were due southeast of Jejudo, the big holiday island off the southernmost tip of South Korea. The
It was somewhat tricky coming through the archipelago, but there were wide deep-water routes that would permit the
Selection of this particular route had occupied hours of their time in the week before departure. General Ravi had very much wanted to swerve northeast and up through the tight, shallow Korea Strait into the almost landlocked Sea of Japan. His broad plan was to exit the Sea 600 miles later through La Perouse Strait, then head up through Russia’s Sea of Okhotsk, and make a dash through the Kuril Islands into the open waters of the Pacific. Sheltered, protected water all the way.
But Ben Badr had objected, strenuously, on about ten different fronts. Worse, Shakira agreed with him. So did Captain Mohtaj.
The crux of the matter was that Ben Badr had become a very serious submarine officer in the past couple of years, constantly operating under the same sense of danger that affects all submarine commanding officers.
“Just look at this Sea of Japan,” he said. “I know it’s big, and I know it’s 480 miles wide and 1,000 miles long, and I know it’s very deep right across the Yamato Basin. But it’s a death trap. If we got in there and ran into an American warship, we simply could not use our speed to get away. They’d pick us up and we’d be like rats in a trap, because we could not get into open ocean. We’d either have to turn around and get back to the Korea Strait, or head for La Perouse, a classic choke point, way north of Sapporo at the end of Hokkaido Island.
“Ravi, they’d sink us. And if we tried to sink them, they’d send more ships from their base at Okinawa, and we
“Well, I understand the remote possibility of being detected by the U.S.A.,” said the General. “But if we did creep through quietly and made La Perouse Strait, we could move quietly into the Sea of Okhotsk, which is huge, and slide through one of those gaps between the Kuril Islands on the right, and into open ocean.”
“Ravi, I actually regard the Sea of Okhotsk with even more dread than the Sea of Japan, mostly because it’s considered by the Russians as their private ocean. And it’s full of their warships and submarines. I don’t know if the Americans are in there or not, but if they are, and they pick us up, we’d be in an ocean bounded by land, Russian, on three sides, with a line of Russian islands barring our only escape route into the Pacific.
“If the Americans are watching anywhere in this part of the world, it’s got to be the passes between the Kuril Islands. In my view, it would be potential suicide to try and escape that way. It’s a bit longer, but we have time, and I say we head straight for the Pacific. Forget the Sea of Japan, and Okhotsk. Let’s just get clear of these communist nutcases, into open ocean, and make our own way to our destinations. We’re in a very fast boat, and I just hate to see us squander that advantage in landlocked oceans.”
General Rashood saw the sense of the argument but continued to believe that Ben Badr was being somewhat overly cautious. Shakira was equally adamant, though.
“Don’t we have enough risk?” she said. “What’s the point of taking more when we don’t need to. Also, I would not want our operational Commanding Officer to be making an underwater journey entirely against his will. I know my husband is in overall command, but surely we don’t want to put more pressure on Ben. After all, if we do get caught, he’s the one who has to get us out.”
