“Make your speed eight knots…steer 000. Abe, I want you to go on up here for twelve miles, then come right to 060, out to the two-hundred-meter line.”
“Aye, sir.”
Columbia cleared Choiseul Bay at 2106 and headed back up the track northeast, back along the route they knew the Hai Lung must follow if it were bound for the same spot where Boomer and Bill had observed the periscope the previous February.
The Americans reached their patrol area, just south of the forty-seventh parallel at seventy-two degrees east and waited, for a patient twenty-four hours. The trouble was, the Hai Lung did not show up, and they patrolled slowly all through November 17, the sonar men silently watching the screens and listening.
That evening was scheduled to be their next to last in the Kerguelen area, and Boomer knew he would soon have to access the satellite, report their plan, and request permission to leave on November 20.
But at 2224 on November 17, a charge of excitement shot through the ship. Boomer was in the navigation area when a sudden voice from the sonar room stopped him dead. It was the sonar officer, Lieutenant Bobby Ramsden. “We’re getting something, sir,…slight rise in the background level…it’s difficult to explain…but I don’t believe it’s weather.”
A few minutes went by. With Boomer now in the sonar room with Lieutenant Commander Curran, the young sonar Lieutenant spoke again. “Faint engine lines coming up. Relative ninety-two. Alter to one hundred thirty-five to resolve ambiguity.”
Columbia slewed around. Ten minutes later, the bearing was resolved at 053. The “waterfall” screen was now showing definite engine lines. The computer was flashing the information through its brain, comparing the lines to the bank of examples they carried. Jerry Curran was monitoring three screens simultaneously, and when he spoke, a bolt of electrified emotion shot clean up Boomer Dunning’s spine.
“Hell, sir, this is a Russian…the computer says right here we got the engines of a goddamned Kilo.”
“The computer doesn’t know its ass from its elbow,” commented the Commanding Officer, softly. “It’s K-10.”
“Might I ask with due respect how we know that, sir,” asked Lieutenant Commander Krause, who had just materialized, as he was prone to do at critical moments.
“You sure can,” said Boomer. “Because that’s the only one it could be…no other nation which owns a Kilo, except China, has the remotest interest in being anywhere near Kerguelen. If it did, Fort Meade would know.
“Besides ourselves, China is the only nation truly exercised by Taiwanese activity. They own four Kilos now. And Fort Meade knows where three of them are…two in Zhanjiang, and one in Shanghai. The fourth, K-10, is missing according to our latest satellite. It left Canton on October 15, three days after the Hai Lung. But it was a bit nearer, and it’s a bit faster…trust me, Mike, the engine lines on that screen are the lines of K-10.” And then he grinned and added, “The one that got away.”
“What now, sir?”
“We stay clear, watch him from a safe distance. He might know something we don’t. But the Hai Lung is still our first objective.”
This was the first sign of life Columbia had encountered since passing a tramp steamer in the Tasman Sea three weeks previously. Every eye in the control center was focused on the computer screens.
Commander Dunning, who had watched and waited patiently for so many days, was standing next to the periscope, and he snapped out his first urgent command since the Kurils. “Come left 350. I wanna stay ten thousand yards off track.”
“Three-five-zero, aye.”
Lieutenant Commander Curran spoke next. “This, sir, looks like a little task for our new sonar tracking system.”
“Oh yeah…the one where we blunder around disguised as a porpoise.”
Lieutenant Commander Curran laughed. “Yessir, that’s the one. And I do understand your skepticism, but it’ll work. I’ve seen the trials. We can ping the intruder on active sonar for as long as we wish, and he’s never gonna know we’re here.”
“Of course, if it doesn’t work,” replied Boomer, “we might be a bit too dead to know whether it worked or not.”
“Sir, it won’t malfunction. It’s just regular active sonar, but when it pings the Kilo they’ll think it’s a porpoise singing, or a shrimp farting, or a whale copulating…we can vary the sound all the time. Honestly this thing is one big miracle. It’s designed for active tracking…it’s perfect for us right now. Just so long as we don’t use it regular or too often.”
Commander Dunning, who was accustomed to believing that active sonar alerts your enemy, shook his head. “I guess so, Jerry. But don’t be wrong, for Christ’s sake. Something tells me the Chinese in K-10 are likely to be trigger-happy, and I’d prefer them not to open fire right back down the beam of the fucking singing porpoise.”
“Yessir, I agree with that. But I’m very confident. We’ve been testing it for about three years. We can just ping ’em on active, enough to keep track, and they’ll never know they’re being watched.”
“Who bats first?” asked the Captain, drolly. “The porpoise or the farting shrimp.”
“Sir, I thought we’d come to the plate with a blue whale waving his dick,” replied the Lieutenant Commander with mock seriousness.
“Excellent,” replied Boomer, with equal mock seriousness. “Please proceed.”
Lieutenant Commander Krause now spoke seriously to Boomer Dunning. “Sir, has anyone given much thought to what precisely K-10 is doing down here?”
“Same as us, I guess,” said Boomer. “Trying to find out what the Taiwanese are up to and where…if they don’t already know.”
“You actually think the Chinese know where they are, sir?”
“No. Not really, Mike. But let me put it this way. Just think how we found out the little that we know — a billion-to-one sighting of a periscope last February and the outlandish disappearance of the Cuttyhunk. Both are kinda fluky, not real intelligence.
“Then we get some half-assed report of a hotshot nuclear professor being seen in some remote submarine dockyard near Taipei, and Arnold Morgan puts two and two together and makes about a zillion. Except that he may very well be right. My point is that we have not tackled this project with any serious determination, and yet we have damned nearly walked right in the front door.
Columbia slewed around. The bearing was resolved at 053…definite engine lines. “Hell, sir,…the computer says right here we got the engines of a goddamned Kilo.”
“Can you imagine how much more the Chinese must know? They have about a million spies in Taiwan for a start, and they watch every move that nation makes. If they don’t know professionally more than we know accidentally, I’d be amazed. And here comes their newest Kilo…you think it’s a tour ship? Nossir…that baby is here on business…and I would not be in any way surprised if it had come to do our dirty work for us. What’s more, we’re gonna let him.”
“We’re about ten thousand yards northwest of the Kilo’s projected track. He’s about eight miles out right now.”
“Okay. Come right…050. I intend to remain on a northeast-southwest patrol line, ten thousand yards clear.”
The Kilo came on at a steady seven and a half knots, driving forward under the command of Captain Kan Yu-fang, holding her on course 237.
An hour later, the Chinese submarine passed, at periscope depth, still snorkeling, her intake valve jutting starkly but unseen into the bright moonlight, which had, unusually, cast a cold path on the long, black ocean swells. Kan Yu-fang suspected nothing.