Pacino stood up from his stateroom’s conference table as the knock sounded at the door. He was still staring at the chart taped to the tabletop when Jack Morris, Greg Keebes, Bill Feyley and Ray Linden walked in.
All were noticeably tense as they gathered around the table. On the aft wall Pacino had taped a large chart of the Go Hai and Korea bays, the Lushun area in the center. The channel leading through the Lushun/ Penglai Gap’s forty-mile length was about twenty inches long on the wall chart. The conference table’s blown up photocopy was larger, the forty-mile-long channel taking up too much of the large table’s surface.
The chart was covered with a sheet of clear mylar. Colored grease pencils lay scattered on the table.
Pacino went up to the wall chart and took a pen from his coverall pocket to use as a pointer. The eastern mouth of the bay ended at Lushun to the north, Penglai to the south. The Lushun peninsula was a finger of land pointing southwest, the P.L.A Northern Fleet main base on the furthest south point of a bulbous tip at the end of the peninsula. Sixty miles south of Lushun Point was the northern hump of the broad
Shantung Peninsula, the blunt point of land that separated the Go Hai from the Korea Bay at Penglai, and extended further east to separate the Korea Bay from the Yellow Sea to the south. In the center of the restricted waters between Lushun and Penglai were the islands of Miaodao. The passage for shallow draft ships was fairly broad north of the islands, and there was also plenty of water for transit south, closer to Penglai. On the chart Pacino had drawn a red mark along the twenty-fathom curve, the minimum depth they would need to transit submerged through the gap.
For the twenty-fathom depth, there were two channels open to passage east. The larger of the two was the Bohai Haixia Strait, a tube of water forty nautical miles long and six miles wide at its narrow throat. The smaller channel lay to the south, the Miaodao Strait, south of the islands in the middle of the gap. Although the Miaodao Strait was wider at the mouth and the exit, it narrowed to a mere thousand yards in width north of Penglai.
Pacino said: “In less than three hours we’ll be at the mouth of the gap. In the next half hour I want to come up with our final exit plan. Our only constraint is our previous arrangement with the Tampa. The four of you consider yourselves the Chinese. Your force strength is listed in front of you. Leading the fleet is the aircraft carrier Shaoguan. It has four squadrons of Yak antisubmarine vertical takeoff jets, each jet equipped with MAD detectors.”
He looked at Morris.
“Jack, that’s a magnetic probe that senses a disturbance in the earth’s magnetic field caused by large deposits of iron, like submarine hulls. Only works when the ship is shallow and when the jet is directly overhead, but it will confirm a sub’s position when sonar probes sniff it out. The carrier also has two squadrons of Harbin Z-9A choppers, also MAD equipped each designed to kill subs with torpedoes and depth charges.”
“The fleet has five subs, three Han-class nukes, two Ming-class silent diesel-electric boats. Destroyers-seven Ludas, four Udaloys, three Luhus. Frigates-thirteen Jianghus, three Jiangweis and one Jiangnan. Thirty-four fast attack torpedo patrol boats. And two dozen land-based Hind helicopters modified for antiship service. Now, I’m going to the conn to get to periscope depth and grab our traffic off the satellite and get a final navigation fix. I’m hoping for some last minute intelligence on the deployment of the fleet. I’ll be back in, say, twenty minutes. When I get back the four of you will outline your plan to keep the two American subs from escaping your bay. You got all that?”
The officers nodded. Pacino left them, knowing that if they sweated over the plan as much as he had they would be more likely to understand his reactions over the next few hours.
In their shallow transit it took only moments to slow and come up to periscope depth. Pacino hadn’t seen the outside world since the evening before, when he had been shooting at the Chinese aircraft and the frigate.
When he raised the periscope, he was surprised by the grayness of the sky and the ugly brown of the bay water. Raindrops clouded the scope lens as a fierce wind blew on the surface. Visibility was still good, unfortunately, but the wind was blowing the wave tops to a height of two to three feet, a high sea for an enclosed bay like the Go Hai. Radio reported the satellite transmission had been received in the computer buffer. The global positioning system had swallowed their navigation fix from the GPS NAV SAT pinpointing their location with an accuracy of a few inches. Pacino lowered the periscope and ordered the ship back down, then walked to the wardroom to grab a cup of coffee. He nodded at the officers gathered around the table, most of them unable to sleep knowing that the evening watch would be a combat watch. Pacino splashed the coffee into a Seawolf cup, the steam of the dark brew rising to the overhead. He downed a sip, burning his tongue, and saw Sonar Officer Tim Turner and Communications Officer Jeff Joseph looking at him.
“What’s the word, Captain?” Turner asked.
“We breaking outta jail tonight. Skipper?” Joseph put in.
“We’ll do our damndest,” Pacino said quietly.
“Are you gonna brief us on how?” Turner asked.
“Nothing to brief. We line up our torpedoes and our Javelins and our Mark 80s and we come out shooting. At the end of the day we’ll see who’s left.”
“That’s it?”
Pacino looked at them. What more was there to say? Finally Pacino spoke: “Trust me. We’ll be back in Yokosuka before you know it, and then you’ll get Captain Duckett back.”
The two junior officers shared a look. Joseph spoke.
“Sir, we were hoping that you’d be staying on as captain.”
Pacino looked up from his cup.
“Thanks, but after this is over I’ll be run out of town on a rail. Admiral’s orders.”
“Then is it true, sir? The rumors that you’re here because you’re not afraid to shoot?”
“I don’t think so, Jeff. True, I have no career to protect, no ass to cover, but the reason I’m here is that I’ve done this before. Two years ago, under the polar icecap.”
“What happened?” Joseph pressed.
“My ship went down. Lost the crew to the sea and radiation.” Pacino said, amazed at his voice staying level.
“What about the other guy?”
“We took care of him.”
The lieutenants smiled. Pacino headed for the door.
Turner called after him: “Sir?”
“Yes, Mr. Turner.” Pacino looked into the younger man’s eyes.
“Good luck, sir. Kick their butts.”
Pacino nodded solemnly, realizing the young officers had just told him they trusted him in spite of the news about his last mission.
Pacino walked back down to his stateroom, taking the radio message board from the radioman. He paused outside his door, reading the message from the Tampa to Donchez stating the wounded ship’s status.
The line about Murphy being operated on was news-Morris had told him about the rest, and it had sickened him, making him look forward to the moment when he could release his weapons. He fought hard to keep his mind from flooding with images of the old days with Sean Murphy, the friend who had shared his whole adult life, the friend who had risked his own Navy career to go A.W.O.L. to attend Pacino’s father’s memorial service, the friend who had sat up night after night next to Pacino’s hospital bed when death was close, the friend whose wife and children formed a second family. A friend who now lay dying from two bullet wounds and the torture of men who now would try to sink them. Pacino stuffed the message into his pocket. Beneath it was the intelligence message he had hoped for, Donchez’s relay and interpretation of the deployment of the Chinese fleet. But something seemed wrong.