“At once, sir.”
Park looked up to examine the sonar contacts displayed on the monitors, his finger tracing their tone lines. None were labeled hostile.
“Captain,” said the sonarman, “we do not have contact with the 688I. Only merchant vessels.”
“This one, contact three. How close is it?”
“Sir, eleven thousand yards.”
A large ship by the look of her tonals, Park noted, and pounding south at eight knots in the outer shipping lanes, away from Shanghai, possibly bound for Pacific ports. Perhaps even the Philippines.
“First Officer, you will put us on a course to intercept contact three. When you have confirmed that the contact is in fact a merchantman, you will summon me from the engine room.”
The wardroom phone chirped. Scott shoved aside the remains of a rare filet and French fries and snatched the receiver. “Captain.”
“Officer of the deck,” said Dozier. “Sonar’s picked up Chinese warships. They’re pinging.”
“On my way. Call away battle stations.”
“Battle stations, aye, sir.”
Scott shouldered past busy officers and sailors and eased in behind the sonar watch. In a glance, he saw that the reported frequency tonals were only a few miles off the China coast, their active sonar displayed as a pattern of dancing dots.
“Three of ’em, sir, two DDs and a frigate,” reported the chief. “A squall’s degrading sound reception, but the DDs for sure are ex-Russian Sovremennyys. No ID yet on the frigate.”
“Probably deployed from Dingdao to find out what happened to their Kilo.”
“Yes, sir, that’d be my guess, too.”
“If the Red Shark hears them she’ll steer clear, which might push her in our direction. What else have you got?”
“Merchie headin’ south, big one.” He rattled off its bearing and range.
“Okay, let’s poke up the ESM and see what’s what.”
Scott clapped the weary chief on the shoulder and went back to control. “Bring her up to PD.”
“Periscope depth aye,” repeated OOD Dozier.
The Reno, after conducting a thorough sonar sweep that confirmed there were no ships in the immediate area, rose slowly, carefully.
Scott, at the Type 18 periscope, motioned “up” with raised thumbs. As the Reno approached PD with the scope’s head extended toward the surface, Scott got a glimpse of the furrowed bottoms of waves: On the scope’s video monitor they looked like the underside of gray cloud cover. “Here we go,” Scott said.
A moment later the periscope broke the surface and kicked up a feather. Scott pushed the scope around once, then stopped on the bearing of the pinging PLAN warships. Focused on infinity, Scott saw a sky and ocean the color of gunmetal and, on the horizon miles away, a row of black matchsticks. The Type-18’s electronic signals receiver confirmed that a maze of ship-borne radars was active topside.
“Got ’em. They’re hull down. I can just see their mast tops. Control, bring me up another five feet so I can see a little more. But watch your depth.”
As the Reno rose higher, Scott rotated the scope through 360 degrees, looking for intruders, but he saw none. Back on the targets, this time with more scope out of the water and the Reno’s sail barely skimming the bottoms of wave troughs, he got a good look at the warships’ busy top hamper, the black watch caps on their funnels, a forest of antennas.
Kramer studied the slaved video monitor. “Skipper, those two on the left are definitely Sovremennyys; the other one for sure is a Jiangwei frigate. See that stepped mast she has?”
“Let’s hear what they’re saying. Raise the ESM,” Scott ordered.
The mast was barely out of the water when the electronic receiver panel lit up like a Christmas tree. The technician monitoring reception announced, “Sir, we’ve got J-band 700-MA and 756 search radars, also X-band and Y-band commercial, and two airborne Chinese 0J-bands.”
Scott angled the scope’s optics skyward. “Right, I see them both. Amphibs. They’re looking for someone, probably us. See them, Rus?”
“Got ’em; they’re SH-5s.”
Eye to the scope, Scott said, “Bearing on those X- and Y-bands?”
“X-band bears three-one-zero. Its source is between the Sovremennyys and the coast. The Y-band bears two-eight-zero.”
Scott spun the scope onto the bearing but saw only gulls and a fast-moving squall. “Rus, check that Y-band bearing against the merchie’s last position.”
“Aye, sir.”
Scott slapped the scope’s handles up. “Down scope, down ESM. We’ll give those guys a wide berth.” He gave Dozier a new course to steer, away from the PLAN warships, and ordered the Reno down to 150 feet.
Kramer said, “Captain, Y-band is definitely the merchie. Range twenty-five thousand yards. He’s drifting right on a heading of one-eight-zero. Actually, he’s picked up the pace a bit: he’s making turns for ten knots.”
Scott summoned Kramer, Rodriguez, and the quartermaster of the watch to the plotting table.
“So where is she?” said Scott. “Where’s the Red Shark?”
Kramer said, “Well, for one thing, the NKs probably don’t know who’s been left standing — us or the Kilo. For another, they’re going to stay away from the Chinese Navy. Their mission is to break out of the Yellow Sea, and the only way to do that is to make tracks into deep water and not get hung up south at Zhongxin Gang and Taowang Gang. Hell, those bights are good places to hide in but are as shallow as a kiddy wading pool.”
Scott traced the coast of China with his finger, stopped when he got to Shanghai and its sandy Huang-pu’ River delta. “I agree, Rus, they’ve got to stay offshore or risk running aground in the shallows.”
“Captain,” said Rodriguez, “there’s another factor to consider.”
“Shoot.”
“The north-south shipping lanes into Shanghai are like an expressway at rush hour, always busy. I think the Red Shark’s skipper wouldn’t want to get trapped inside one of those lanes, because if he did, he might not be able to swing out through traffic to get around the delta at Shanghai. He’d want to make his swing starting somewhere around Dongtai, not any later, and make for deep water.”
“Maybe he already has,” Scott said.
Kramer, tapping his front teeth with a pencil eraser, said, “What would he do once he’s past Shanghai? Turn southwest and make a run down the coast until he felt it was safe to break out?”
“No, sir,” Rodriguez said, “if he did that he’d just get himself trapped again inside traffic lanes and, well…”
Scott looked at the young officer.
“Sir, this may seem a little crazy, but if I was him and once I’m outside the lanes, I’d try to make a run for it by tucking in behind a merchie, maybe that one heading south.”
“Conn, Sonar—”
Scott grabbed the mike hanging over the table. “Conn, aye.”
“Captain, we’ve got more active pingers to the southwest,” said the sonar chief. “I make it at least six Luda-class DDs. They’re workin’ down the coast in a staggered forty-five with a four-thousand-yard interval.”
Scott acknowledged the report, then went back to the plotting table. “I think, Mr. Rodriguez, that what we just heard bolsters your theory that the Red Shark’s skipper wouldn’t want to be nailed in littoral waters by Chinese destroyers. So let’s take a look at that merchie, the one heading south, and see what we can find.”
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