His orders were to scan the Go Hai Bay for ships, patrol craft, divers or evidence of a shipborne amphibious assault by White Army forces. Unlikely, he thought, but those were the orders, and he watched the radar screen and sipped his tea, trying to shake the heaviness from his eyes … The blip on the screen two miles offshore from Dagu flashed as it was first registered by the SPY-45 system. A small contact, no bigger than a piece of driftwood. Sai logged it in and called for more tea.
The blip could be nothing more than a piece of garbage or a drifting fishing boat, perhaps even a loose dinghy.
Twenty minutes later Sai frowned at the small contact.
It had not disappeared like a chunk of garbage or driftwood. It seemed to be moving northward at a slow steady pace, only a few clicks, walking speed. But it had regularity. When the blip continued on north, Sai decided it was just some sort of detritus drifting in the current.
At 0500 exactly, at a position two kilometers east of Qingtuozi, the blip reversed itself and began moving to the south.
No piece of driftwood or castaway dinghy could do that if it were merely drifting in the current. And a fishing boat would not be trolling so close to shore. It might be some kind of White Army spy boat or a raft of White Army divers. Sai called the officer in charge of the platoon. Leader Peng Chung, who no doubt would have something to say about the mysterious contact. Perhaps they needed to get a patrol boat out on the bay to identify the contact.
At 0510 Leader Peng squinted at the blip on the SPY-45 screen. The contact was continuing south at its creeping slow speed. For the next ten minutes Peng monitored the contact and its motion, then reached over Sai to the console and adjusted a knob, changing the scale of the projection so that the contact’s detection was at the bottom and its furthest north penetration was at the top.
The computer-generated curve drawn through the contact’s previous positions was a straight line north, a curving turn some fifty meters in diameter, then a straight line to the south.
Peng stood up abruptly and reached for a phone.
While he waited, he caught sight of Sai’s inquiring look.
“It’s a submarine,” Peng said quietly.
The phone to the control-room periscope stand buzzed. Murphy grabbed it.
“Captain.”
“Radio, sir. The SITREP is ready to send. Request the Bigmouth antenna.”
“Captain, aye, wait.” Murphy tapped the shoulder of the officer on the periscope. Lieutenant Commander Greg Tarkowski.
“Let me look.”
The world outside was getting lighter with dawn only fifteen minutes away. The situation report needed to get out before the sun rose or the antenna exposure during daylight could risk detection. Murphy did a quick circle in low power, seeing the world at a distance, then engaged high power with the right periscope grip. The shore, only a few thousand yards away, jumped suddenly close, as if he were standing, wading in the water. Not a soul was visible in the shabby buildings crowded together along the shoreline.
Murphy turned the scope over to Tarkowski.
“Radio, Captain,” Murphy said, tilting his head toward the overhead where the Conn Open Mike microphone was nestled among the valves and pipes and cables.
“Prepare to transmit.” Murphy looked at Tarkowski pressed up against the scope.
“Raise the Bigmouth and transmit the SITREP.”
Tarkowski acknowledged. Twenty-five feet above them, from the aft part of the sail, the Bigmouth antenna raised steadily upward, the top of the mast breaking the surface. The pole continued rising out of the sail, rising steadily higher until it towered ten feet above the top of the periscope, fat as well as tall, over a foot in diameter.
The transmission began, a ten-second burst to the satellite overhead, the text of the message a summary of all the Chinese communications received since the Tampa had arrived onstation. As the Bigmouth antenna was lowered back into the sail. Murphy felt at once relieved and apprehensive. Relieved because the SITREP was out and the antenna was down. Apprehensive because the sun was rising, exposing the ship to a greater chance of detection, and because the transmission might have given them away to an alert surveillance crew ashore. But for the next four weeks, or until called back by the Pentagon, this SPEC-OP would continue, and Tampa would remain at risk, spying on the Chinese.
Commander Yen Chi-tzu maneuvered the heavy airplane to the end of the runway and coaxed the old turbines to full power, his eye on the number-three engine tachometer and oil-pressure indicator. That engine would fall off the airplane someday, he was convinced, if the maintenance technicians continued to neglect it. Still, other than some vibrations, it came uncomplainingly up to twenty-four thousand RPM.
The big four-engined jet, an ancient British-built Nimrod antisubmarine patrol craft, lifted off the runway and headed south toward the point the Dashentang radar station had detected a suspicious contact. It was undoubtedly a false contact, Yen thought, but he didn’t mind. Better to be flying than cooped up in the ready building, trying to sleep, waiting for word about the encroaching White Army.
It did not take long to maneuver the plane over the water east of Beitang and cruise over the supposed path of the radar contact. The sun was rising as Yen approached the point in the bay where the spy boat or submarine was suspected. Yen, as he was trained, flew east of the intercept point so that he would be up sun of the contact. As he approached the intercept point, still a mile away, he thought he saw something.
He flew toward it, keeping it down-sun, and now as the plane closed the contact he blinked hard, not quite believing.
It was a periscope. No doubt. Yen keyed the radio button on the control yoke and called the contact report back to Dashentang, then flew back around, alerting the crew to prepare the load he was about to drop into the sea.
“Conn, Sonar,” Murphy’s earphone crackled, “we’re getting aircraft engines, close contact.”
“Air search!” Murphy called to Officer of the Deck Tarkowski. Tarkowski flipped his left wrist down, scanning his view upward, rotating the scope rapidly.
“Goddamn,” Tarkowski said.
“Mark on top! Looks like a P-3. Dipping scope.”
Tarkowski snapped up the grips and rotated the hydraulic control ring, and the periscope dropped into the well, coming down slowly, slowly.
“Conn, Sonar, the aircraft is still close, high-bearing rate. It’s circling us.”
“Get us out of here, course east,” Murphy ordered.
“Ten knots.”
“Helm, all ahead two thirds,” Tarkowski called to the helmsman at the control panel.
“Left fifteen degrees rudder, steady course east.”
“Station the section tracking team, OOD, and restart the port turbine generator. Start up the port main engine and shift propulsion to both mains.”
“Aye, sir, station the section tracking team and restart the port engine room The OOD reached for a phone and began barking into it.
“Conn, Sonar,” Murphy’s headset intoned, “splashes in the water up our port side. Sonobuoys, sir … confirmed. Sonobuoys, bearing zero four zero.”
The aircraft was dropping buoys into the water, each one a listening device with a portable radio, listening for them to drive by and nailing their position.