He turned the Tai Chiang toward the Hefei.
“Superstructure is visible. Light smoke rising from target,” a lookout said from the bridge wing.
Using the height of the Hefei and trigonometry, Lin calculated a distance of fourteen miles to his target. The Tai Chiang’s infrared sensors verified his estimate. Three more miles to torpedo range.
“I can see the bridge,” the lookout said.
Lin’s finger caressed the torpedo release. Despite facing a fully armed destroyer, he would make sure his weapons hit. He stayed his course.
Ten and a half miles, his display read. Ten and a quarter. A red light flashed and an alarm whined.
“Wasp Head gunfire control!” he said. “We’ve been discovered. Jamming with Chang-Feng electronic countermeasures. Raising Sea Chaparral air defense missile launchers.”
He looked over his shoulder and watched a twin-rail launcher rise on the Tai Chiang’s fantail.
“Within launch range. Slowing the ship,” he said.
Lin tapped an all stop key and watched his battle control station display. An electromagnetic field in the engine room collapsed, and water coasted through parallel propulsion flow paths. Two beach-ball-sized valves rotated shut and cut off the seawater propulsion flow paths.
“Back full,” Lin said and tapped his controls.
A pair of booster pumps in the engine room sucked water from behind the Tai Chiang and pulled fluid backwards through the magnetic drive units. Reverse electric coils energized, polarizing and charging the reverse-flowing water. Hydraulic fluid reopened the ball-valves, letting water suck the Tai Chiang backwards.
Nine miles from the Hefei, the Tai Chiang shook as it slowed. Through his touch pad, Lin ordered each torpedo launcher to slide outward, but a warning light flashed.
“Damn! Low hydraulic pressure.”
Lin idled the port torpedo nest. Waning hydraulic pressure inched the starboard nest outward.
He hit all three starboard launch keys. Bridge windows shuddered as compressed gases spat torpedoes into the ocean. Three weapons swam toward the idled destroyer at twenty-eight knots.
“Starboard torpedoes away,” he said and sneered.
“Normal launch, torpedoes clear,” a lookout said.
“Ahead flank. Left twenty degrees twist,” Lin said.
The magnetic drive system thrust the ship forward. Bow thrusters shot water sideways to push the ship to its left. The Tai Chiang leaned hard over.
Lin’s infrared display alarmed when it identified rocket contrails from the Hefei’s six HY-2 anti-ship missiles. Heat signatures revealed that the missiles were racing toward the Tai Chiang at Mach 0.9.
Lin swiveled the ship’s forward-mounted seventy-six-millimeter cannon as quickly as the hydraulic plant could support and energized all radar systems. His Marconi radar painted the HY-2 missiles, fed the data to the central computers, and calculated optimal use of the Tai Chiang’s defenses.
He unloaded his four retrofitted American Standard anti-air missiles from the Sea Chaparral launcher. They shot from their launchers and accelerated to Mach 4.5.
Standard warheads sliced through three of the incoming HY-2’s in a fireworks display. Smoke plumes billowing above the water traced the paths of splintered missiles. The fourth Standard locked onto shrapnel and missed its target.
Lin monitored battle screens showing that the remaining three HY-2’s were chasing him at eight miles per minute. A computer display recognized the search pattern of the incoming weapons and recommended that two chaff canisters be expended.
Lin depressed a button. Pressurized canisters on the bridge wing popped open and belched metallic shards. Lin circled the Tai Chiang back underneath the blossoming cloud of metal. Snuffed by the metallic blizzard, his radar screens became intermittent fuzziness.
He ordered the Chang Feng ECM system to jam the incoming HY-2 missiles’ seekers but saw no effect. He refocused his jamming energy onto a solitary missile, and it spiraled into the water.
As the cannon steadied, Lin commanded it to attack the two remaining incoming missiles. Flashes erupted as each pump of the muzzle shook bridge windows. On Lin’s battle control station, the closest HY-2 missile disappeared as a fused proximity round exploded and crumpled its fuselage.
The final incoming missile passed through the chaff cloud over the Tai Chiang. It circled and attacked the chaff three times before exhausting its fuel and splashing into the sea.
Lin turned the Tai Chiang’s computer to jamming the Hefei’s gun control radars. Five-inch shells from the destroyer dropped far from the Tai Chiang, and Lin knew the Hefei’s counterattack would be short lived.
In the distance, three explosions rocked the Hefei. The ocean erupted around the destroyer. As it settled, the ship listed.
Lin drove the Tai Chiang back into range and launched the three port-side torpedoes to finish the job. The Hefei sank in less than ten minutes. Only a few lifeboats dotted the water.
Lin remembered his father boasting about ice water in the veins helping him outmaneuver people on opposing sides of transactions. He inhaled, sensed his slow pulse, and realized that he was his father’s son.
CHAPTER 23
“What do those buoys indicate?” President Ryder asked.
“They’re launched from a Trident submarine to indicate that it has sunk. A sensor sets them off when the ship descends below crush depth,” Admiral Mesher said.
“You’re sure it’s the Colorado?”
“The buoys are submarine-specific.”
“It can’t be faked?”
“Impossible. The frequencies are top secret and scrambled.”
“I mean the sinking. Could that be faked?”
“Unlikely. The warhead explosion and the implosion of an airtight compartment indicate that the Colorado was destroyed. We’ll be running the acoustic tapes through the Johns Hopkins Oceanic Research labs, but all evidence indicates that the Colorado is on the bottom.”
“How long until we find the wreckage?”
“This was in the same depth of water as the Titanic,” Mesher said. “It could take months.”
“Okay, let’s assume for the moment that the Colorado was sunk. Who sank it and why?”
“It’s possible that Lieutenant Slate accidentally shot himself with his own torpedo,” Mesher said.
“Who the hell was he shooting at? Us?”
“Doubtful, sir. We would’ve heard him. I’m just offering theories.”
“Keep going.”
“It’s possible that a torpedo detonated in its tube.”
“How likely is that?”
“Unlikely.”
“You’re not building a good case.”
“There’s also the possibility that a foreign vessel penetrated our escort perimeter and sank the Colorado.”
“Admiral, the nation is breathing down my neck about that Trident. If you were in my shoes, would you say that the Colorado is on the bottom of the Atlantic?”
“I can’t speculate further until more evidence becomes available.”
“Give me your gut feel.”
“Mister President, this is like being blindfolded and shooting a shouting man. You don’t know if you’ve hit your target until you hear silence. Even then you may not be certain who you hit, if anyone. But based upon the data we have now, the Colorado was destroyed.”