The detonation of the depth charge made the deck jump more than Pacino would ever have expected for a ship of nine thousand tons, and he was thrown into the periscope pole, banging his forehead. The lights went out, the room lit only by battle lanterns. The firecontrol console displays went blank for a second time. The sonar repeater stayed blank, never having come back up from its initial injury.
A dim voice came over the emergency communications network:
“Flooding in auxiliary machinery, flooding in—”
Pacino shouted over the announcement: “Chief, make the phone announcement and send the casualty assistance team to the torpedo room.”
Before the chief could do it a speaker in the overhead “REACTOR SCRAM, REACTOR SCRAM,” Engineer Linden reported.
Pacino turned to the ship control console and the Diving Officer.
“Flood depth-control tanks and put her on the bottom.” He reached for a phone to the aft compartment.
“Maneuvering, Captain, report cause of scram.”
“Sir,” Engineer Linden’s voice said over the connection, “I think it was just shock to the scram breakers, or a rod jump that caused a flux spike that tripped the protection systems. We’re setting up for recovery—”
“Don’t,” Pacino ordered. “Shut down the engine room. Shut the main steam bulkhead valves and shut down all your pumps. Shift the reactor to natural circulation and keep that compartment quiet. Have your guys take off their shoes if you have to.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Chief of the Watch, have you got a report from the torpedo room?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“XO, go to the torpedo room and take over. Get that flooding stopped and do it quietly.”
Keebes took off his headset and dumped it on the Pos Two console, then quickly headed for the aft stairway.
“Attention in the firecontrol team,” Pacino called. “We’re out of weapons, we’re surrounded by aircraft, we’ve shut down the engineering spaces and we’re sitting on the bottom. Within minutes I expect that the aircraft will be turning around and coming for us with more depth charges, and the surface forces will soon be here with their own weapons. Meanwhile, we’re not going anywhere until the flooding in the lower level is stopped, particularly since the flooding is too close to our only power source, the battery. In any case I’m hoping that with the reactor shut down we won’t be detected by passive sonar. And that since we’re on the bottom, active sonar won’t be much good either. The only thing we have to worry about is magnetic detectors, and there’s nothing we can do about that. Carry on.”
“That’s it?” Morris said. “You’re just going to play dead and hope they don’t shoot?”
Pacino nodded.
“Conn, Sonar,” his headset intoned, “sonar is back.”
Pacino stared at the screen, the digital images of the broadband sonar suite now forming on the chart, the screen taking a few moments to generate history as the sounds fell down the waterfall display.
“What have you got out there. Chief?”
“Bad news. Helicopters every point of the compass. One real close, must have a magnetic anomaly detector. Closer now, sir. Definite helicopter hovering directly overhead, and he isn’t moving.”
“Talk about worst case scenario,” Pacino muttered.
“Conn, Sonar, the other aircraft are closing.”
Pacino shook his head. Morris watched him, seemed to be studying him.
“Conn, Sonar, we have approximately thirty helicopters and one jet aircraft on our screens, not counting anyone in the baffles, and they’re all hovering within a thousand yards … Sir, I’ve just gotten two splashes directly overhead. We’re getting depth charged.
The depth charge detonated, and Pacino’s only impression was that Jack Morris’s face vanished, to be replaced by the deck, and when the darkness came he couldn’t tell whether it was because the lights went out or that he was no longer alive.
The explosion from the depth charge lifted ten thousand liters of water skyward in an angry fan of phosphorescent foam. Chu pulled his stick to his thigh, circling the Yak in a tight circle to port, trying to find evidence of the submarine’s presence. To the east and west several dozen helicopters were inbound. The other Yaks of his squadron had already gone back to Lushun, their fuel low. Chu’s tanks were going dry but he didn’t care. He would orbit the position of the submarine until his turbines sucked fumes if he could just see the American ship sink. It would be worth ditching the jet in the bay as long as he could have a piece of the damned Americans.
Chu climbed for a better view as the helicopters of the task forces, the squadrons from the Shaoguan and the land-based Hinds jockeyed for position along the channel as they searched for the sub, preparing to drop their ordnance. Chu half-expected the air commander to order indiscriminate depth-charging if for no other reason than to relieve their frustration over the submarine so far evading them. Finally he did order that, the helicopters with depth charges forming up into a line of aircraft, each to drop a depth charge in the channel midpoint with horizontal longitudinal separation of a hundred meters. The air commander then ordered that once the depth charges were gone, all torpedoes would be shot, going from west to east.
No submerged vessel should last long with that kind of weapon saturation.
For the first time in his flight Chu smiled in satisfaction as the helicopters moved into their depth-charging positions. Even if his Yak only had another ten minutes of fuel, he would still be airborne when the submarine sank, and he would have a grandstand seat.
“Razor Blade, this is Shaving Cream, over.”
Commander Jim Collins heard his squadron’s call sign on the UHF tactical control frequency and lined up his radio to transmit. This was probably the order to abort the mission, he thought. The F-14s of VF-69 were only a minute from their hold points, and he had expected only one radio exchange, either go or no-go.
“Shaving Cream, this is Razor Blade, read you five by over.”
“Roger, Razor Blade, break, you are authorized to proceed to the store and purchase all groceries on the list, I say again, you are authorized to proceed to the store and purchase all groceries on the list, break, over.”
“Roger, Shaving Cream, Razor Blade out.” Collins cut out the transmitting circuit-breaker on the radio console, annoyed that he had been asked to transmit.
But what the hell, he thought, the Chinese would soon know they were there.
“You hear that, Bugsy?”
“Yeah, Mugsy. We’re going in.”
“Arm everything and track everything.”
Collins put the stick down and dived for the deck, pulling up at an altitude of only twenty-five feet, the waves of the Korea Bay coming at the plane at Mach 2, the shock wave astern sending up twin rooster tails in the sea. A few minutes later the firecontrol radar was locked on to multiple airborne targets, all of them orbiting a single point in the sea.
“Mugsy, we’re in range, I’m tracking thirty-seven helicopters and a fixed wing aircraft all within a couple miles of each other. No surface contacts, all airborne. The Mockingbird missiles are all armed, all locked on, I’m calling Juliet.”
“Roger, releasing now.”
Collins hit his stick button a dozen times, launching the supersonic air-to-air Mockingbird missiles, the sky lighting up with each launch, the plane’s inventory quickly gone.
“Missiles away.”
To the north and south other flashes of light shone briefly as the other planes of the squadron of F-14s also fired their missiles, the squadron still on approach at supersonic speed.
Aircraft Commander Chu HuaFeng had looked away from the scene of the helicopters dropping their depth charges just long enough to check his fuel gages and note with dismay that both read empty. He wondered whether he would be airborne long enough to confirm the kill of the submarine. As he looked up from the panel he felt a small jolt, looked out the canopy to starboard and saw his right wing disintegrate and explode into flames — for no apparent reason. It seemed to take a long time for the plane to start falling to the sea below, but after a moment frozen in mid-air, it began to spin toward earth.