“Eng, mark our ETA at the finish line,” Lennox ordered, the bite in his voice showing some of his own frustration.
Vaughn went to the chart table, glanced at the sonar display one last time, took out his dividers, checked the ESGN position a second time, then said to Lennox:
“The ETA is negative, XO. We’re here. We crossed the finish line two minutes ago. We’re now 1.1 nautical miles into international water. We made it!”
Lennox looked at the sonar display, his face still grim. The Tampa had indeed made it out of the bay.
But now there was no way Seawolf would.
Commander Jim Collins taxied the F-14 to the number one catapult while latching his oxygen mask to his flight helmet, the word MUGSY printed in block letters above the visor of the helmet. Collins commanded VF-69, the Reagan’s F-14 squadron. He was on his last sea tour as a pilot, and hated the idea of leaving the flying fleet for nuclear power school, where he was assigned to learn how to command a nuclear aircraft carrier. The thought of spending a year with a bunch of green submarine-bound ensigns at nuke school was an unhappy one, as was the notion of spending two years as XO of a carrier before he could spend four years in command. He wasn’t a fool and realized he should take some satisfaction in having been chosen for higher command, but he would still find it hard to give up flying supersonic fighters. It was what he did. Watching the action from the bridge of the carrier didn’t exactly compare to seeing it from the cockpit.
The thought of this operation being the last for him made the adrenaline flow. The cockpit was an extension of his body, the sky waited for him, as did the Chinese fleet. He would not need to wait much longer.
His body ached from the hours in the ready room preparing for the mission, the hours without sleep, waiting for the go order.
Finally, his F-14 was lined up on catapult one, the deck sailors attaching the catapult to the nose gear
Collins checked his instruments, the twin turbines purring aft, waiting to be kicked into full thrust. Collins tested his ailerons, rudder, and elevators, the last item on the checklist. He spoke into his intercom to his radar intercept officer. Lieutenant Commander John Forbes.
“Ready, Bugsy?”
“Ready, Mugsy.”
The radio handles had developed separately years before, but now somehow it seemed fitting that the squadron commander and his RIO would go by gangsters’ names. To some deck-bound types they were considered loose cannons.
Collins nodded to the deck officer below. Aft of the aircraft a large thrust-deflector shield rotated upward to protect the deck crew from the F-14’s jet exhaust.
The deck officer signaled with his wands, and Collins’s gloved left hand reached the throttle levers and pushed them forward to their stops, the jet turbines aft shrieking as they spooled up. Collins watched the instruments, then pulled the levers right past the de tents and forward again into the AFTERBURN position.
Far aft, the turbines’ nozzles opened and injected fuel into the jet exhaust, the hot gases igniting for the second time, adding even more thrust to the jet’s push.
Collins looked out his canopy to the Deck Officer and saluted. The Deck Officer, now crouched low on the deck, his forward leg bent, his aft leg ruler straight, quickly waved his wand forward in a big arc, the wand finally touching the deck, then coming up to point straight ahead down the deck into the wind. The catapult operator activated the cat, and Collins’s F-14 rocketed down the carrier’s deck under the three-g acceleration of the steam-driven catapult and the F-14’s own jets on full afterburners.
Collins’s skin stretched aft, his body thrown into the seat as the big jet accelerated. The deck and the dark sea flew toward him as if he were falling through a blurred tunnel. At the end of the cat the jet was doing one hundred and fifty knots, enough to stay airborne, but barely. Collins felt the jolt as the catapult disconnected, freeing his nose wheel of the deck, and the ship faded astern as he retracted the landing gear, the jet surging forward as the gear pulled up out of the slipstream.
The jet continued accelerating as Collins pulled the stick back, and the sea and the carrier shrank behind as the fighter clawed its way skyward, the airspeed and altimeter needles winding up on the panel. Collins smiled at the sheer joy of flight, pulling the jet over into a tight turn, entering the pattern to wait while the other pilots in his squadron took off and joined him. As soon as they were aloft he would lead the way to their hold-point two nautical miles east of the line from Lushun to Penglai, the line of Chinese international waters.
With luck, once they were there, they would get the word to fly in and kick ass.
The ship had taken on a fifteen-degree list to port and had begun to settle noticeably into the water. Fleet Commander Chu Hsueh-Fan continued to stare out the port bulkhead glass windows toward the west, hoping to catch sight of the fleet sinking the American submarine. The ship seemed quiet now, the engines long since dead, the fires continuing to rage but the firefighting given up by order of Ship Commander Sun Yang. The flooding was uncontrollable, the damage extending through four major compartments to port and amidships. The abandon-ship routine was almost complete. All the lifeboats and rafts were over, all the survivors floating in the boats watching the crippled vessel.
Somewhere far below an explosion rumbled through the bowels of the dead ship, the detonation sharp at first, then settling into a sustained roar. Chu shivered at the sound, the carrier’s death-rattle. The ship’s heel increased suddenly to twenty-five degrees, the deck becoming a steep ramp. Ship Commander Sun Yang broke into the room, the door slamming against the bulkhead, the tilt of the ship keeping the door from latching open, as Yang stared at Chu.
“Fleet Commander, our helicopter is waiting. It can’t hold onto this deck much longer. The ship is about to capsize.”
Chu turned around, his face lit only by the dim battery-powered battle lantern. His face was deeply lined.
“You go. Transfer the flag. Get that submarine. I will stay here—”
“Sir, you can’t do this. Tien is already waiting in the helicopter. This is Tien’s fault. If you go down with this ship his story will be the one they believe.”
“You tell the story. I let Tien botch this operation … I will join my men who suffered for it. Now go.”
Sun Yang was about to speak when the deck began to roll further to port, now a dangerous thirty-degree angle. He shook his head, turned and made his way up the steep deck to the door.
“At least try to swim out of here, sir. My helicopter will circle the water to find you …”
Sun ran down the steps to the flight-deck level, the passageways barely illuminated by the battle lanterns, emerged from the superstructure and paused while his eyes adjusted to the dark. He made out the gaping hole in the deck, a brief hellish impression, the torn steel girders, the ripped piping, the dangling cables, mangled deckplates, the jet-fuel fires and reflections of fires from the lower decks, and the sight of some two dozen torn bodies. Another distant rumbling explosion shook the deck, the energy of it more a feeling than a sound, the bass of the shock vibrating Sun’s chest, the treble barely registered in ears already abused by the earlier explosion when the missile hit the ship.
He became aware of the sound of beating helicopter rotors and ran toward the sound, skirting the deep gash in the ship, and found the Hind helicopter hovering over the ship, no longer able to idle on top of the deck because of the steep angle. Sun threw himself toward the door, and men grabbed him as the helicopter lifted off the ship.