They scurried down the hatch, and Sergeyev locked it before he dropped into the control/attack center as rounds hammered the hull, the impacts lessening as it sank, until stopping altogether. The silence that followed was accompanied by the wide-eyed stares of his crew.
Ignoring them, he said, “We bought the freighter time to get away. Nothing we can do about the survivors. Ahead two-thirds. Set depth nine-five-zero feet. Bearing zero-six-zero. Get me to the shipping lanes, Leonod. It’s time we disappear.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Captain,” asked Zhdanov, his pale face filmed with sweat, as was Popov’s. “Where… where are we going?”
“To finish our mission, Anatoli. To kill Vinson.”
Despite the heroic efforts of the crew to extinguish the fires, Morgenthau began to take in more water than the pumps could extract from its rapidly flooding structure.
As the cutter began to settle into the sea from her stern, Briana gave the order to abandon ship. The cutter’s motor surfboat joined the two RIBs deployed by the well-drilled crew.
As they started loading the wounded first, Briana reached for the radio on the bridge and instructed the pilot of the Dolphin to make a run for US Naval Base Subic Bay in the Philippines and issue an alert with their fix.
Briana also had the Dolphin pilot relay the coordinates of Nuovoh Arana and its last known heading. A minute later, she received confirmation from her pilot that they had contacted Subic Bay and two US Navy vessels patrolling the base had been deployed to rescue them and to intercept the runaway freighter. In addition, a navy C-130 Hercules turboprop maneuvering off the coast of Manila was dispatched to track it.
Commander Briana Sasso, the last person off Morgenthau, watched with the other survivors as the historic 3,250-ton cutter spewed trapped air and vanished beneath the Pacific.
Like her stunned crew, she felt shocked by the sudden disaster. However, as she glanced at the quarter moon and inhaled deeply, she felt grateful that the only casualty tonight had been her beloved cutter. But then again, an honorable burial at sea for the Pride of the Pacific — as Morgenthau was known — was far more dignified than the humiliation of it falling into the hands of the Vietnamese Navy.
She’s gone, sir,” Petty Officer Marshon Chappelle reported from his station.
“Where? How?” Cmdr. Frank Kelly asked, standing shoulder to shoulder with Lt. Cmdr. Robert Giannotti, hovering over the sonarman.
“South China Sea shipping lanes, sir. There must be a couple dozen tankers and container ships moving in both directions. Can’t find anything in that noise, sir.”
“Terrific,” Giannotti mumbled. “Now what?”
Kelly crossed his arms, inspecting the maritime chart showing a hundred-mile-wide lane running northwest to southeast between the Philippines and the western coast of Taiwan. The northwest-bound lanes then split to the Sea of Japan, Korea, and to multiple ports in the Pacific Ocean.
“Plot us a course to the shipping lanes,” he finally said. “Northwest heading.”
“Are we playing his game again, boss? The admiral ain’t gonna be happy.”
“Leave the good admiral to me, Bobby. Get rolling.”
“Sure, boss, but why northwest? Bastards could be headed the other way.”
Kelly just stared back at him. C’mon, Bobby, show me that you’re ready to get your own command.
“The carriers,” Giannotti finally said, closing his eyes before adding, “Vinson in the Taiwan Strait. Roosevelt in the Sea of Japan. And Stennis struggling to reach Honolulu. All to the northwest.”
Kelly nodded approvingly. “The favorite entrée in our ghost sub’s dinner menu.”
— 20 —
Shortly before noon, the first pair of F-35A Lightnings from the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill AFB, Utah and from the 61st and 62nd Fighter Squadrons at Luke AFB in Arizona landed on Runways 23 Right and 23 Left.
The stealthy, advanced tactical jet, with a projected service life up to 2070, resembled the single-engine sibling of the twin-engine F-22 Raptor. It had the ability to sneak up to any enemy completely undetected before unleashing its impressive wave of violence, plus it could outperform prior generation jets thanks to its compact design and thrust-vectoring technology. And like its larger sister, it could fly at altitudes above 65,000 feet, 15,000 to 20,000 feet higher than other fighters.
The lopsided combat-kill ratio of the Lightning engaged in exercises resulted from its ability to dispatch adversaries before its presence was ever detected. With the assistance of KC-10 tanker aircraft, the state-of-the-art fighters would be an overwhelming deterrent to the Chinese Sukhoi Su-35S twin-engine multi-role fighter aircraft.
From a number of international sources, Beijing quickly learned that the Lightnings were now in the neighborhood.
I can’t believe we’re already here, Lt. Amanda Diamante thought as she performed her walk-around. She hung on to sections of her weathered Super Hornet for balance as the carrier plunged through rough seas. In the distance, the carrier’s surface escorts wallowed in the troughs between foaming, towering waves.
On the way from the Arabian Sea to the South China Sea, the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group had been handed over from the US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) to the US Pacific Fleet (USPACFLT) with orders to patrol the turbulent waters along the 125-mile-wide stretch of ocean between the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.
A dozen yards away, standing ramrod straight, arms crossed, and seemingly impervious to the bouncing flight deck, Maintenance Master Chief Gino Cardona towered next to his lanky boss, Lt. Cmdr. Ed Stone, as they supervised the preflight from behind the mirror tint of their sunglasses.
It was typically quite windy here due to the tunnel effect created by the coasts of the PRC and the ROC. On top of that, surface currents were quite strong as this stretch of water linked the South China Sea to the East China Sea along the coast of China.
A light mist washed across the flight deck, wetting her short auburn hair sticking to the sides of her face.
Wiping her brow with the sleeve of her flight suit, Amanda ignored the master chief and his boss, and she took a moment to inhale the salty air and stare out to sea. A looming sun stained the sky over the South China Sea with dancing shades of orange and yellow amid swirls of white steam wafting from the catapult tracks in the deck.
And just as she started to feel damn proud to be in the navy, Cardona shouted over the noise of the waves and the constant racket of the busy flight deck, “Not a scratch, Deedle! Not a fucking scratch!”
Ninety minutes later, she shadowed Lt. Cmdr. Juan Ricardo in a two-plane section, completing their final loop of a wide sweeping barrier combat air patrol over the southern end of the white-capped Taiwan Strait.
Amanda eyed her FCS caution light to make sure it was off before scanning her fuel gauges. They were scheduled for aerial refueling in fifteen minutes from an F/A-18F tanker fifty-eight nautical miles out and closing on the BARCAP jets.
She also knew that standing by on the catapult were two Super Hornets on Alert Five status, manned by none other than Cmdr. Benjamin Kowalski, with Lt. Cmdr. Trey Malloy as his wingman, ready to go airborne if incoming aircraft appeared to be a threat to the strike group.