U.S.S. Seawolf am-4 Page 12

  “Sir.” Master Chief Brad Stockton had arrived in the control room. “You want me to let the CO know we’re groping around the ass of a six-thousand-ton Chinese destroyer? It’s the kind of thing he takes a big interest in.”

  “I don’t think there’s a need, Brad. Just taking a look. She’s not even transmitting on anything. I thought we’d cross her wake about a mile astern, get our pictures, then retreat a couple of miles and keep the ESM mast up, see if we can vacuum up a few details of her new radar and communications systems. Ex-USA, I believe.”

  “Well, okay, sir. If you say so. But I do think the CO should know roughly what we’re up to. We’re awful close 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.
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  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.

  Judd knew also that one of the giant Soviet ICBM Typhoons had wrapped one of its two propellers around the array of another of the Royal Navy’s nuclear spy ships in the Barents Sea, HMS Splendid, on Christmas Eve 1986. The Typhoon ripped it off the much smaller British submarine, and the Soviets retreated with the array still entwined.

  But right now Judd had to decide what to do himself. Until they unlocked the prop shaft they were trapped, so the decision essentially made itself. There was no point submerging again, with no propulsion. They could not get away, and in the end they’d have to return to the surface.

  So the CO ordered a diving team to prepare for immediate action. Master Chief Brad Stockton selected eight men, four for the initial dive, with four more for backup on the casing behind the prop. Within minutes, the men were being suited up in wet suits and flippers. Brad ordered scuba gear to be brought out, along with oxyacetylene cutting equipment, big double-handed wire cutters, even axes, anything to hack the array off Seawolf’s prop.

  The team made its way to the sail door, starboard side, hidden from the Xiangtan, and one by one they moved along the casing toward the stern, where they would begin the work. However, the first man around the aft end of the sail instantly came into the view of the Chinese gunnery team, and in a hail of small-arms fire the entire diving team was driven back, bullets slamming against the one-inch-thick steel of the sail, and ricocheting in all directions. It was a miracle no one was killed. But no one was, and they retreated safely back into the submarine.

  So the first guideline was laid down: The Chinese were not about to let the American submarine break free, or even allow its crew out of the hull.

  Judd Crocker appreciated the situation, and reconsidered his narrowing options. If he had any mobility, he could have considered taking out the destroyer with torpedoes, but more Chinese ships and aircraft were surely on their way.

  The captain of that goddamned destroyer won’t be keeping this little epic to himself, he thought. Unlike my fucking XO.

  Since he could not get to the screw and then get away, they were, by any standards, already prisoners of the Chinese. But the Xiangtan was not trying to sink them, and they were in international waters with several miles to spare.

  It seemed for a few moments that no one on either ship knew quite what to do, but suddenly the Chinese made the first move, launching one of their Haitun helicopters off the stern. Judd watched it through the periscope, clattering low over the sea and hovering right above Seawolf’s bow. Then its door opened, and four men were lowered onto the submarine, each of them carrying what looked like heavy-duty gear on his back.

  “What do you make of that, Brad?” asked the CO, handing over the periscope.

  “I don’t know what they’re doing, but that’s not a diving cylinder he’s using…it’s metal welding gear…you know what I think? These guys are planning to weld a couple of big iron hooks on our bow so they can tow us into shore.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No…that’s what they’re doing.”

  “Well, why don’t we drown ’em…just submerge again?” offered Shawn Pearson.

  “Good call,” replied the CO. “Open main vents…Officer of the Deck, take her down.”

  Seawolf’s ballast tanks flooded up again and she commenced her rolling motion, wallowing down into the sea rather than sliding into it with full propulsion. Judd kept the periscope up and watched the Chinese helicopter come in fast and low and take the men off. But he could not go on doing this indefinitely without running out of air. So he ordered the submarine back to the surface, back to the standoff, which in a world of bad options was probably his best.

  He drafted an immediate signal to Pearl Harbor: “Seawolf surfaced in position 20.30N 113.35E. Immobilized by towed array around propeller. Chinese destroyer Xiangtan in company. Small-arms fire prevents work on propeller. For’ard gun mounting continues trained on my sail. Surface and air assistance required soonest.”

  The satellite signal from SUBPAC was back in 15 minutes: “LRMP arrives 1200. CVBG arrives within air range 24 hours. Surface support 48 hours. Diplomatics in hand.”

  “Well, that all sounds a bit slow. Six hours for a long-range maritime air patrol to get here, a day for a carrier group, two days for surface ships. I suppose we can just about stop the Chinks doing anything major to our bow for that long. But it’s not likely to be easy.”

  Meanwhile, on the stern of the destroyer there was a lot of activity. And at a little after 0600, both Haitun helicopters got into the air, carrying between them a heavy steel hawser in a huge U-shape beneath them. Judd watched them lower it deep into the water right behind the stern of the submarine. Then they towed it forward of the propeller, then even farther forward, still deep-submerged below the ship, until it was right in front of the rudders and the after-planes.

  Then the two Haituns went back to a height of around 100 feet, and slowly began to fly in a tight circle, almost overlapping each other, though staying well clear of each other’s blades. This had the effect of twisting the hawser into a steel knot around the narrow stern of the submarine. It could not slide forward because of the massive bulk of Seawolf’s hull. And it certainly could not slide aft, past the huge bottom rudder and twin after-planes.

  The Luhai quickly began to reverse, and the two ends of the hawser were lowered onto the aft deck where the helicopters landed, and it seemed to Judd that about 10,00 °Chinamen took over. He guessed what was coming next, and he was right. The ends of the hawser were made fast on the deck. And at 0730 on the morning of July 5, 2006, in the South China Sea, USS Seawolf, the pride of the U.S. Navy’s Silent Service, began a long tow, backward, into captivity. For how long, no one knew; for what purpose, Judd Crocker had a very fair idea, particularly since there was now a Chinese escort of two aircraft overhead and a fast patrol boat close aboard on either side.

  Cy Rothstein assessed that the Chinese would tow them into Canton and try to strip-search the entire ship, copying every one of Seawolf’s secrets, the sonar, the radar, the computers, the propulsion machinery, the nuclear reactor, the combat weapons, the cladding on the hull. Never had China been so lucky. Never had she had such a supreme opportunity to create an underwater fleet in the absolute image of that of the USA.

  The only question left, in Cy Rothstein’s opinion, was the fate of the crew. Would they release them? Or would they subject the principal officers and crewmen to a searching interrogation, enlisting the help of the best submariners in the U.S. Navy to assist them in their quest to match the West in terms of modern sea power?

  Cy did not, obviously, know the answer to that one. Nor did anyone else. But at this point Judd Crocker was forced to reconsider his scuttling options — i.e., getting the crew off and into the water with life jackets, then sinking the boat.

  He realized the catastrophic potential of his boat falling into the hands of the Chinese. Now, only scuttling could prevent this, sinking her in international waters where the U.S. Navy could protect their secrets. But such a drastic course of action carried too high a price. The Chinese had opened fire on his men once, and for all Judd knew they would probably do it again. The cost of scuttling Seawolf might be killing the entire American crew.
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  Judd Crocker realized they were effectively prisoners of the Chinese, and that they might be subject to interrogation. However, he did hold out reasonable hopes that the diplomats might sort something out, and that some horse-trading on behalf of the U.S. government might gain their release. In the meantime, they could do nothing except wait for the next move from their new hosts.

  And an uncomfortable wait it would be, already close to Chinese waters. Xiangtan was dragging them toward Canton at four knots, which meant a journey of 20 hours. And with no propulsion, they rolled back and forth all the way, despite the calm seas. All other power systems were working, so they had light and air-conditioning from the reactor. They also had plenty of food and water, and they had their communications, so the CO was able to keep SUBPAC up to speed with each development.

  But there was little to report. They could either seal themselves in the mighty steel capsule of Seawolf, defy the Chinese to the end, and keep the hatches tightly battened down in the hope of release. Or they could surrender to the Chinese and feign outrage at being arrested in international waters during the perfectly peaceful conduct of their business.

  Surrender or not, he ordered all evidence of the photographs, including the camera and the film-developing material, destroyed and then jettisoned out through the torpedo tubes. The passport of his XO was shredded and went with them.

  Judd more or less rejected the possibility of a policy of sealed-in defiance, on the basis that the Chinese at some point would try to smash their way into the submarine, and that would entail a significant battle in which a lot of people would most certainly die, both Americans and Chinese.

  One way or another, it was deeply frustrating to be sitting in one of the most powerful combat systems on earth, a nuclear boat with the capability of sinking not only Xiangtan but many of her seaborne colleagues, too. She carried the ADCAP Mk 48 torpedoes for just this sort of task, in case the U.S. went to war during one of her tours of duty.