An explosion and shock wave from a decoyed North Korean torpedo hammered the Reno. She staggered like a drunk, yawed as if gut-punched, and, like a drunk, struggled to right herself.
Scott saw piping in the control room vibrate to invisibility, saw shock-mounted lighting fixtures shatter, paint chips and dust plume into the air. He felt the deck drop away as if he were riding a runaway elevator. Something carried away topside with a scrape and roar of steel on steel down the length of the pressure hull. Somewhere aft he heard water blowing in under high pressure. Then a stuttering water hammer.
The ship’s emergency lighting recycled twice, then kicked back to service normal. The smell of scorched insulation stung Scott’s nostrils, and a moment later he was viewing the control room through a blue haze. The roar he’d heard was a fire extinguisher honking on empty.
“Damage report, all compartments!” Scott bellowed over the 1MC.
“Skipper,” said Kramer, his chest heaving, “reactor’s at full power, we’re making turns for thirty-three knots, depth one-eighty. Course zero-seven-five.”
“Very well, but get that damage report in here on the double.” Scott toggled a mike. “Sonar, Conn, where’s that other NK fish?”
“Lost it, sir, took off after one of our decoys. All I’ve got is the Red Shark, fading on a bearing of two-six-zero.”
“What’s the merchie doing?”
“Slowing, probably gonna heave to and change his drawers.”
“Yeah, like us. What about those DDs and frigates?”
“Speeding up. I’ve got nine contacts now moving east, not west.”
“All right. Keep on them. They’re on their way here for sure.”
“Aye, sir.”
“I want a plot on the Red Shark. My guess is she’s heading for that littoral zone south of Chenjigang. If I was him now, I’d want shallow water to hide in, and there’s plenty there.” Scott found the OOD. “Put us on two-six-zero. All ahead flank.”
“Sir…”
Scott turned to Kramer. “Damage?”
“Not too bad.” He rattled off a short list of cracked lines and spun-open valves that needed attention, food stores strewn in the galley, and a small fire that had broken out in an electrical cabinet in the sonar equipment room. “That torpedo went off close aboard. Engine room said they saw the hull dish in and pop out again. They put this baby together real good, Skipper.”
“Let’s see if she can hold together long enough to find that North Korean bastard so we put him away for keeps.”
Park sat slumped in the captain’s chair in the control room. Water trickled down the scope from a packing gland damaged by their own torpedo detonation closer aboard than he had at first realized. The engineering officer warned that the explosion had damaged two shock-mounted rafts that supported a portion of the fuel cell’s manifold connected via flexible joints to the frozen valve. His report of a potential sound short to the hull, as well as the possibility that the valve and line had been wrenched out of alignment, had thrown Park into a depression from which the first officer couldn’t rouse him.
“Comrade Captain, please, sir, your orders.”
Park avoided the officer’s pleas. The crew kept their eyes glued to their work and stood like mannequins at their stations, not daring to look away.
“Sir, we are south of the Chinese warships patrolling the coast. There is no trace of the American submarine. Perhaps it was damaged or is fleeing from the Chinese. With deepest respect, sir, if we maintain a southerly course, we can reach Shanghai at sunset and make our transit to deep water. By daybreak we will be south of Shanghai and from there can proceed east for Okinawa. I am sure we can pick up another merchant vessel along the way.”
Park looked at him but said nothing.
“Perhaps, sir, you should now respond to Admiral Woo’s signal. Tell him we have been under attack, that we have damaged an American submarine. He will understand your reluctance to reply earlier. He must have good reasons for wanting us to risk sending a message. Perhaps even that he is recalling us.”
Park roused himself. “Recalling us?” he said. “Is that what you hope for, to return to Nam’po?”
“Why, no, Comrade Captain, I’m only suggesting that—”
“We will carry out our mission as ordered.” Park stood and took a deep breath, obviously in control of his emotions again. “When we have cleared the area I will radio Admiral Woo and advise him of our situation. In the meantime you will maintain our present course until we reach Taowang Gang, then turn us southeast. Maintain combat and torpedo stations until further orders. The men can take their meals at their stations.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Park seemed to have found a reserve of strength. He started for the wardroom, then stopped. “Prepare a message for Admiral Woo. Tell him we have been delayed by the presence of an American submarine but will be back on schedule soon. Tell him nothing about our torpedo attack but say that the American is being hunted by the Chinese. I will fill in the details later.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Park stomped into the wardroom. He needed a moment to gather his wits. In hindsight he realized that he’d made a terrible mistake. He should have held position, hidden in the Pacific Conveyor’s wake. Instead he’d panicked, sure that he’d been discovered, when in fact the American sub might have just taken a sniff and gone on by. Instead he’d broken cover and fired, perhaps damaging the 688I but not sinking it. But now he understood: The Chinese were hunting for the American sub that had sunk their Kilo. He’d inadvertently poked a stick into a hornet’s nest, and he had to flee their stings.
The through-ship talker squawked, and Park froze: “Comrade Captain! We have an emergency in the engine room!”
50
Lieutenant Kang had a look of death. Park examined the sleeve that had been installed around the valve earlier and saw to his horror that it, too, had swelled, a sure sign that the line was about to rupture and release hydrogen into the compartment. Liquefied, it would, if released under high pressure, instantly solidify, then evaporate. Small comfort. No matter how it was released, combined with oxygen, it might explode.
“Evacuate and seal the compartment,” he ordered. “Later we will surface and try to reach the main valve in the line from the fuel cell under the superstructure. We’ll shut it, then bleed off the hydrogen in the compartment and purge it with fresh air.”
Park turned and headed forward, his legs unsteady, his hands balled into fists to hide their shaking.
The Reno picked her way along the coast, where marine life, bars and channels, turbidity, and pollution degraded sonar reception. Scott knew the Reno was too big and ungainly for close littoral combat, her 7,000-ton bulk too hard to maneuver and too easy to detect, unlike the Red Shark. But Scott was sure that’s where the North Korean sub had fled after their encounter, and he had little choice but to track her down there.
He tried to put himself in the North Korean skipper’s mind. The man either lacked patience or was too easily spooked to action. Why else would he have broken cover and fired at the Reno? Could he be spooked again? Scott thought he could, especially with the pressure the Chinese DDs and frigates were applying. He felt the pressure himself and knew he didn’t have much time left to find and hit the Red Shark before the Chinese were down his throat. The NK skipper had to be feeling the pressure too, which might cause him to make another mistake. Just don’t you make a mistake, Scott reminded himself.
He looked at the ship’s clock: 2120. How many junks and steamers had they underrun? How many fishing boats with gill nets over the side waiting to snag a diving plane? Scott had run up the scope at least a dozen times to check bearings against known landmarks on the navigation charts only to see lights coming at them out of the gloom, usually a lantern-festooned junk oblivious to the Reno’s presence. They’d been steaming in shallow water for over six hours, the sandy bottom at times coming within yards of the Reno’s keel. Another coat of paint, Kramer had joked, and then there was the damage topside caused by the torpedo…