He didn’t realize it then, but he was becoming part of a masterpiece — the eventual masterwork of noted naval artist Wilson Garrett: The Lost, Found. An image frozen for posterity.
The pilot clinging protectively to his wounded comrade, the helo hovering in a black sky like a guardian falcon, and the great dark ship looming out of the night before them.
“Aegis systems manager, do we have anything coming off the forward SPY-2A arrays yet?” Ken Hiro demanded from the CIC command chair.
“Negative, sir. All three forward planar arrays are nonfunctional. I’m getting an intermittent feed off of some of the cells in number two, but it’s not enough to process.”
“Deck teams are reporting heavy fragmentation damage on the front face of the superstructure,” one of the DC officers called forward from his station to the Cunningham’s exec. “Look’s like she’s trashed, sir.”
Hiro frowned. At the moment, the Duke was radar blind in her critical forward arc. She couldn’t see upriver, and that was just where the threats would be coming from.
“Go to visual surface-search sweep with the Mast Mounted Sighting system,” he ordered. “Cover the forward arcs. Aegis Systems Manager, do we have any alternatives?”
“Yes, sir.” The S.O. looked back from her station in the command cluster. “Have the Aegis access the navigational radar and process a tactical overlay from that. The Nav set is still fully functional. Range and bearing only and no fire control, but we will be able to produce a surface-search image off of it.”
“Very well, make it happen and make it fast.”
She did. On the Alpha screen, the glowing details of an active radar display began to flesh out the computer-graphics chart of the estuary.
“Multiple surface contacts!” the radar operator called out. “Bearing two seven zero at ten thousand yards. Four targets! Speed, thirty-eight knots. Range is closing!”
“Get the MMS on that!” Hiro commanded, straightening.
“Threat boards, what do we have on these guys!”
“Stealth systems have no data!” Mckelsie called back from the Spook bay. “We lost our receptors with the SPY array.”
“Signal Intelligence?”
“We have shock damage!” Over in the intelligence bay, Hiro heard a fist slam down on the top of a console chassis.
“Work, you son of a bitch!” Christine Rendino snarled.
“Okay … we are now reading four Skin Head search radars active in that arc. Given their speed and aggressive maneuvering pattern, I’d say we’ve got a group of Huchuan torpedo boats out there.”
“I concur. Bridge, we’ve got a problem! … ”
The rapid hammering of the waves faded away as the Five Sixteen boat lifted smoothly onto her hydrofoils. Lieutenant Zhou Shan felt the surge of elation that he always did at such moments. This night, however, the sensation lingered on.
All hands were at their battle stations. Bosun Hoong crouched at the base of the portside torpedo tube, his strong hand ready at the launching lever. Over the martial drumbeat of the racing engines Shan could hear the cracking of China’s flag in the slipstream. Ahead awaited his nation’s enemies.
This was the war he had searched for.
“… got a problem! Four hostile torpedo boats bearing two seven zero upriver. Closing the range. Attack posture. Intent is hostile.”
Amanda dialed the tactical display up on the bridge-wing repeater. “I see them,” she replied, holding the heavy handset of the sound-powered phone in place against her ear with a shrugged shoulder.
“Captain, this is the tactical officer cutting in. I have no firecontrol designation capacity remaining in the forward arcs! Advise we maneuver to unmask the functional arrays.”
“Acknowledged, Mr. Beltrain. We’re doing it now. Designate targets as you bear. Stand by to fire.”
“Helm,” she yelled in through the open bridge-wing hatch. “Hard right rudder. Engines ahead slow. Bring her around to three five zero.”
The ship began to ware about. As the Duke began to turn, Amanda snatched a set of low-light binoculars from a rack inside the hatchway. Switching them on, she lifted them to her eyes.
A mere hundred yards away, Retainer Zero One station kept low over the river. Two dots were afloat directly beneath the helo: the two downed aviators. And beyond them, upstream, were another row of pale dots: bow waves out at the limits of the binoculars’ imaging.
Lieutenant Zhou Shan buried his face into the foam-rubber eyepiece of the torpedo sight, focusing the lenses on his target.
The coastal guns were still hurling their illumination rounds, and now a new cluster silhouetted the enemy perfectly.
They were turning! They were coming broadside-on to give him a perfect shot! There was no mistaking that sleek, uncluttered design, that rakish mast array. It was an American — Cunningham. And Shan somehow knew that it was the same one that had decimated his squadron and that had killed his first crew. He felt the hand of destiny rest upon his shoulder.
“Stand by, torpedoes!”
On the Cunningham’s bridge, Amanda Lee Garrett was feeling the touch of destiny as well. The Red Chinese were launching a classic Jeun Ecoulle torpedo-boat attack, possibly the last one ever to be attempted. It was the equivalent of witnessing the last great cavalry charge at Omderman or the last clash of the dreadnoughts at San Bernardino straits.
She was seeing the turning of a page in the history of warfare. Historic or not, however, they threatened her ship.
“Captain, this is the tactical officer. We have designated the torpedo boats. Harpoon flights are hot. Ready to fire!”
“Shoot!”
The sound of the booster ignition startled Amanda. With her eyes narrowed and her hands pressed over her ears, she let the golden light and hot breath of the missile launch surround her.
Zhou Shan recognized his death, the four cometlike streaks of flame leaping from the foredeck of the American destroyer.
Yellow fire that changed to blue as the antishipping missiles converted from rocket to jet propulsion.
He had only seconds to act. One move left to him.
The first Harpoon struck the northernmost boat of the squadron. Fused for anti-small-craft use, it detonated instantly on impact — a rifle bullet striking an eggshell filled with nitroglycerin. The hydrofoil vanished in the heart of a cataclysmic explosion.
The second boat disintegrated. The third … a wave of annihilation rolling down on the Five Sixteen.
“Shoot!”
The magnificent Hoong wrenched upward on the manual firing lever. The propulsive charge fired and the cold, greased length of a Type 53 torpedo lunged out of the portside tube.
It seemed to hang suspended for an instant, then it plunged beneath the waves like a leaping fish returning joyfully to its home. It was the last sight Zhou Shan’s eyes recorded before his world vanished into the fire.
In the CIC, the last target symbol blinked off the Alpha screen. But an instant later, a hostile torpedo hack materialized.
“Fish in the water!” Charles Foster yelled from Sonar Alley. “Torpedo data annex has identified a Type 53 in active acquisition mode. Convergent bearing! We are targeted!”
“Mister Beltrain!” Hiro barked. “Initiate Mark 50 antitorpedo program. Set range safeties to minimum and set for intercept shot!”
The Exec tore the phone handset out of its clips.
“Captain! The Reds got a torpedo off! They’ve got us boresighted! Propping Mark 50 for antitorpedo intercept!”