“Sonar, conn. Understand.” Mack could have almost expected that. The convoy was on guard against any submarine contact, and they had mistaken the Romeo for Cheyenne. “Any change in the remaining convoy?” he asked.
“Conn, sonar. Negative. Convoy same as before.”
“Sonar, conn, aye. Match sonar bearings and shoot, tube three, Master 63 and tube four, Master 64.”
“Match sonar bearings and shoot, tube three, Master 63, and tube four, Master 64, aye, sir.”
Mack walked to his stool and sat down to wait as the torpedoes raced toward their destination. With the escorts busy attacking one of their own submarines, there would be less warning than ever of the approaching doom. Not that the convoy itself had ever reacted to their ship’s being torpedoed.
Mack’s attention shifted as a new report came in.
“Conn, sonar. Explosions on the bearings of Masters 63 and 64. They’re going down, Captain.”
“Sonar, conn, aye. Any reaction from the escorts?”
“Conn, sonar. Affirmative. They’re drawing left, turning north. No, wait, sir. The convoy is changing course. Coming starboard. The convoy is changing course to their right.”
“Captain,” the combat systems officer said, “the BSY- 1 computer shows the convoy is turning to the north as well. Ranges to the contacts indicate the escorts are settling in behind the limping convoy.”
Cheers swept through Cheyenne as crew members congratulated one another. They had done it! The convoy was turning and heading for home.
But when the executive officer suggested standing down from battle stations, Mack shook his head. They would remain at their stations while Cheyenne was repositioning to finish that tanker. Mack thought that it might try to get back under way and slip into the Spratlys during the night, if it had not spilled all its tanks’ contents.
As Cheyenne closed on the wounded tanker, Master 60, Mack’s hunch proved correct. The ship was back under way and headed for the Spratly Islands. An Mk 48 from tube one finished the job, however, and soon Cheyenne was headed back towards McKee. It was time to rearm and resupply, and to take a deep breath before it started all over again.
8. Patrol
It was still dark when Cheyenne completed reloading her torpedo tubes and vertical launchers from McKee. The submarine tender was still anchored off the coast of Brunei under the protection of the Independence carrier air cover.
As in their previous refit, on the final day Captain Mackey, his combat systems and operations officers, navigator and communicator, and sonar officer, proceeded to McKee’s war room for their pre-underway briefing, but this time the other officers from Cheyenne also would attend the meeting.
Now that Cheyenne and McKee had established a smooth mini-refit routine, Mack wanted all his officers present. Besides, CTF 74 had requested the remaining officers’ presence at this briefing. Partly because of that, Mack expected this upcoming Patrol 3 to be of more significance, if that were possible, than the previous two.
Mack and his group rendezvoused with the executive officer, engineer officer, and the remaining junior officers outside the war room. He knew the younger officers were all excited and beaming with curiosity, but he also knew he could count on them to maintain a professional decorum during the briefing itself. Nodding at them, he led the way into the war room.
CTF 74, the briefing officer, and McKee’s captain were already seated. When Mack and his group entered, and after they had all exchanged the normal greetings and taken their seats, the briefing began.
Normally, these briefings were a mix of old information and new orders, but this time there was an added element: intel that could not be passed to Cheyenne via flash traffic. This intel — and this briefing — was based on information that involved the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Operatives in Vladivostok and Beijing had determined that the commander-in-chief of the Chinese navy was personally concerned about losses inflicted by Cheyenne on his forces. But that wasn’t the only tidbit the Agency had turned up. They had also learned that, somehow, the Chinese had determined that Cheyenne was the sole SSN responsible. Their best guess was that the Chinese had probably gotten this information through the loose lips of other SSN sailors in port at Yokosuka, but NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) was still working on that.
That changed the situation for Cheyenne, but it didn’t change her orders. Cheyenne had another war patrol to undertake before any other U.S. SSNs would be assigned to the same arena as Cheyenne.
Mack didn’t react to the news, but it didn’t really bother him. On the one hand, he was just as happy not to have other U.S. SSNs in the area. It certainly made things simpler, without the need for measures to prevent mutual interference with his fellow commanding officers. Besides, the Chinese had already been gunning for Cheyenne. The only thing that had really changed was that until now the Chinese had believed that there were three SSNs operating nearby. Now they knew there was only one—Cheyenne—and they would focus their efforts on hunting her.
The only real downside to Cheyenne operating solo was that she could use help in tracking down just where and how the seemingly never-ending supply of Russian Kilos and Alfas were getting into the hands of the Chinese. Mack couldn’t help thinking that it was almost like the old story that if the Chinese population were to start walking into the sea, the trail of people would be endless, as the reproduction rate far exceeded the destruction rate. Mack grimaced, remembering the story. He knew it was old because for decades the Chinese had been controlling the birth rate, often through inhumane processes.
The briefing officer, continuing on with his report, said that USCINCPAC and CINCPACFLT were not taking the Chinese commander-in-chief’s comments lightly, especially since he had found out that the losses inflicted by Cheyenne had not, in fact, been the work of three SSNs, but could all be blamed on a single boat. Still, Mack’s superiors were more than pleased with Cheyenne’s successes, and were not intimidated by the Chinese commander-in-chief.
With that in mind, and with the utmost faith in Cheyenne, her officers, and her crew, the Oahu admirals’ directives were for Cheyenne to proceed back to the north of the Spratly Islands and establish a patrol routine, shifting per the operations order from one area to another. Soon, maybe in a few weeks, Cheyenne’s sister 688s, USS Columbia and USS Bremerton, would arrive on station. Before then, however, they would have to finish their own surveillance assignments in the Sea of Japan and in the northwest Pacific off Petropavlosk, respectively.
The combat systems officer had earlier briefed the captain that the mix of Tomahawks in the vertical-launch tubes had been changed to a mixture of land-attack missiles only, both TLAM-C and TLAM-D. The TASMs had been removed and replaced with the TLAM-Ds. That was Mack’s first hint about possible action concerning airfields and runways. The TLAM-D version contained bomblets for creating craters, a real nightmare for aircraft trying to take off.
The briefing officer confirmed Mack’s guess. This type of action would be an option once the location of the runways had been confirmed and the imagery processed. Once that happened, Cheyenne would be notified via VLF message traffic over the floating wire and directed to periscope depth where targeting data would be downloaded by satellite directly to Cheyenne’s CCS Mk 2 console. This data would come from the theater mission planning center, located at the IPAC intelligence center in the USCINCPAC compound on Red Hill, Oahu.