SSN - Страница 5

Доступ к книге ограничен фрагменом по требованию правообладателя.

"Torpedo room, fire control, make tubes one and two ready in all respects and open the outer doors."

When the outer doors were open, Mack turned back toward the Han and increased speed to full. Both submarines were headed straight for one another in an underwater game of chicken that could potentially ignite a third world war.

"Conn, sonar, we have a torpedo in the water! Type SET-53, bearing 163. It's active, Captain."

"Range to Master 1 is 21,000 yards," reported the fire control coordinator.

Mack looked around his control room. There was a look of horror in the eyes of the young sailors who had not yet been in the Navy for six months. "All stop," he ordered.

"All stop, aye, sir," the helmsman repeated. Seconds later he added, "Maneuvering answers all stop."

The normal procedure for countering a torpedo was turn and run, flank speed, in the opposite direction. This was not, however, a normal situation.

The U.S. intelligence community had managed to secretly buy three of the Chinese type SET-53 homing torpedoes from the Russians in a not-so-friendly transfer of technology. From their various tests, they had determined that the maximum range of the SET-53 was five nautical miles, or 10,000 yards. Even building in a large margin of error by doubling that range to ten nautical miles, or about 20,000 yards, Mack knew that there was simply no way that the Chinese torpedo could hit Cheyenne.

It did, however, make Captain Mackey furious, and not just because this was an act of war against the United States by a Chinese submarine. More than that, this was an aggressive action against him, his submarine, and his crew.

Cheyenne was not in any immediate danger-not yet, at least. Just in case, however, the captain calmly ordered, "Rig ship for depth charge."

The Chinese captain had put his submarine in a very bad position. The Chinese leaders, wanting to demonstrate their power to the Americans, had given Han 402 orders to attack American submarines and surface ships operating in the area. The 402's captain was following his orders faithfully but he didn't believe those orders included suicide. And he knew all too well that attacking a Los Angeles class submarine was tantamount to suicide. If he could manage to get in close enough to attack Cheyenne, he would do so. If not, he would follow his orders and launch at whatever range he felt he could without getting himself killed, and then he would dive deep and hunt for American merchant ships.

When the active "pings" revealed Cheyenne's location, the Chinese captain realized that he had given away their location much too far away to effectively attack the Americans. With their own location revealed, closing with Cheyenne would put the Han at serious risk, which meant that his only real choice was either to simply turn and run or to first shoot at the Americans and then turn and run. The first option appealed to him the most, but the second option was what his orders demanded.

The Han captain gave the command to release a single torpedo and then began turning to his right. His only plan was to make a turn to the east and get away from the now-angry American submarine.

Mack thought about that torpedo in the water and what it meant. The Han had fired upon him witfiout provocation, which meant that China had decided to escalate. They would be starting hostilities at any moment, and all submarines would by now have been tasked by the Chinese navy to sink any American warships, merchant ships, or submarines as they exited their home ports.

All around the world, wherever Chinese vessels came in contact with American ships, there would be bloodshed. Some of them would get lucky. Some would win, and some would lose. But this particular Chinese captain had gotten unlucky when he decided to attack Cheyenne rather than a defenseless merchant vessel. And it was too late to change his mind. Mack immediately saw what the Han was doing. It was turning and running-in the direction of San Diego, which could only mean one thing. China was at war with the United States.

"Conn, sonar, the Chinese torpedo just settled dead in the water," the sonar supervisor reported. "Based on run time, it didn't even make it 6,000 yards."

Mack nodded. The Chinese had had their turn. Now it was Cheyenne's.

The Los Angeles class attack submarine began to pick up speed rapidly, rushing to get behind the Han. The Chinese submarine was running from them in an attempt to escape the American submarine and return to a safe haven, hiding somewhere off the West Coast, but Cheyenne wasn't about to allow that.

The Han's top speed was twenty-five knots; Cheyenne was doing thirty-one knots, and the range to Master 1 closed rapidly. Both commanding officers knew it would only be a matter of time before the Americans were within firing range.

Aboard the Han, the Chinese captain's options were limited once again. He could continue to run, prolonging things for a short while longer, or he could turn and fight.

His orders were clear, and so was his choice. At his command, his submarine came around in another slow turn and bore down on Cheyenne.

It was a noble gesture, but a futile one. The Han captain was racing to get within torpedo range, knowing that the effective range of the American Mk 48 ADCAP was more than double that of his Chinese SET-53.

"Conn, sonar, two torpedoes in the water, more SET-538, bearing 165."

The fire control coordinator reported the range to Master I as 18,000 yards.

Mack wasn't worried. Clearly, the Chinese had done this out of desperation. They wanted to go down fighting, and their only hope was to get lucky-and a torpedo in the water was a chance to get lucky; a torpedo unlaunched was nothing.

Cheyenne had closed to within striking range, but Mack didn't give the orders to shoot yet. There were still two chances for the Chinese to get lucky, if those SET-53s really had a range of 20,000 yards. Captain Mackey once again gave the orders to prepare for a possible torpedo hit, and also to take evasive action by launching two ADC (Acoustic Device Countermeasure) Mk 2 decoys.

The decoys, which were launched out of what were in effect mini-torpedo tubes, accomplished exactly what they were intended to do and decoyed the torpedoes in a direction other than that of Cheyenne. The Chinese torpedoes ran out the length of their course without hitting anything solid. Their momentum spent, they settled to the ocean floor, taking Han 402's hopes with them.

Though Mack had trained nearly his entire career for firing on an enemy submarine, he had never really expected it to happen. But Mack, like the others aboard Cheyenne, was a professional. He was calm as he gave the command, "Firing point procedures, Master J, tubes one and two."

A BSY-1 operator reported the relevant target data to the captain.

"Match sonar bearings and shoot, tubes one and two," Mack said, his voice cool and steady.

"Match sonar bearings and shoot, tubes one and two, aye," the fire control coordinator repeated the command.

The Mk 48s were launched from the weapons control console and were ejected from their tubes. Their Otto fuel engines came to life, powering their pump jets.

"Tubes one and two fired electrically," said the combat systems officer at the weapons control console.

As soon as the torpedoes entered the water, the Chinese submarine began to turn. Mack guessed that they were going to try a ninety-degree turn away from the Mk 48s, but the seeker heads on the ADCAPs were doing what they had been designed to do: hunt down an enemy submarine. They stayed with the Han as it twisted and turned.

"Both torpedoes have acquired Master I," reported the combat systems officer. Both Mk 48s had found the enemy submarine with their own sonars and no longer needed to be guided by Cheyenne's fire-control system via their guidance wires.

"Cut the wires, shut the outer doors, and reload tubes one and two," ordered Captain Mackey.

"Conn, sonar, two explosions, bearing 162." A cheer erupted in the control room, but Captain Bartholomew Mackey did not join in. The sailors were celebrating the fact that Cheyenne had just achieved her first blood, but Mack knew that more than that had just happened.

War with mainland China was now a fact of life. A short time later, Mack secured from battle stations and ordered Cheyenne to proceed to periscope depth.

Using SSIXS (Submarine Satellite Information Exchange System), Mack communicated their actions to the higher-ups in the Department of Defense and the Navy. As Mack had suspected, message traffic indicated that their encounter had not been an isolated incident and Cheyenne soon learned that what seemed like an all-out war had been started by China in an attempt to assert its position in the new world order.

Cheyenne'1 s orders were again confirmed and she was to remain on course, sprinting and drifting until arriving at Pearl Harbor so that she could resupply and join other American units in the South China Sea. There was one important change in her orders, however: she was now allowed to attack any Chinese naval vessel she encountered so long as her trip to Pearl would not be overly delayed.