More important, though, the ritual would help the men bond. Once all were on the same side of the ceremony, they would be more of a team, even if they didn't think about that consciously. Because officers— especially junior officers — weren't spared, the ceremony would bridge the gulf between them and enlisted men.
Perhaps more important for a submarine crew, it would even help close the gap between those who'd won their dolphins already and those new to the service who were still in their year-long probationary period. Submariners were a clannish bunch and didn't easily accept outsiders, "surface swimmers," until they'd proven themselves.
That unity of spirit was a necessary prerequisite to a mob becoming a crew.
As captain of the Virginia, Garrett was prepared to sacrifice just a bit of his personal dignity and the orderliness of the vessel's daily routine to make that happen.
It was a sacrifice ship captains had been making now for several thousand years at least, a time-hallowed offering to the traditions of the sea.
8
Black-hulled and silent, Shuhadaa again slipped like a great, hunting cat through the shadowed forests of the sea. The water here was shallow — less than thirty meters, just barely deep enough to allow the vessel to remain submerged.
If the Vietnamese possessed a decent antisubmarine search force, ul Haq thought, with ASW helicopters, it would have been a hopeless mission. They would have been spotted long ago, as visible in these brightly sunlit and shallow waters as a beached whale. But the target appeared oblivious to the threat closing in now from the southeast.
"Target in sight," ul Haq called from his place at the periscope column, peering into the eyepiece. "Bearing three-zero-eight, range… seven hundred meters."
"Target bearing three-zero-eight," Lieutenant Mahmud Jamal replied from the weapons board. "Range seven hundred meters."
Ul Haq took a last, long look through the periscope optics. This was no wood-hulled Vietnamese or Filipino fishing boat.
The Spratly Island facility was similar in many respects to the Chinese base at Small Dragon Island — a large marine platform built on pedestals like an oil rig, rising from a patch of coral barely above the surface of the water even at low tide. To the left, a heliport was connected to the main structure by a causeway. The base itself resembled a four-story apartment building, with clusters of microwave relays, radar masts, and satellite dishes on the roof.
Amboyna Cay — the Chinese called that speck of coral Anbo Shazhou — was a powerful symbol. It lay just 150 kilometers southeast of Spratly Island itself, the rock that gave its popular name to the entire archipelago stretched across 410,000 square kilometers of the South China Sea, and could, therefore, be considered to be the capital of this entire region. It also lay close to the border of a large patch of mostly empty ocean west of the Amboyna Cay that now, according to Chinese intelligence, was being actively prospected for gas and oil.
The Vietnamese base facilities on Spratly Island itself were out of the submarine's reach. Spratly was one of the few islands in the group with any land area at all, and Shuhadaa Muqaddaseen did not carry cruise missiles that could strike inland targets. But Amboyna
Cay was another matter. The Vietnamese base was built, in part, over the water.
Reportedly, it was serving as a supply center for the oil prospecting vessels operating to the west. Striking this base would send a decisive message to Hanoi: Your assets in these waters are vulnerable.
By using the rogue Pakistani submarine to make the attack, China distanced herself, could, as the American intelligence phrase so elegantly put it, "plausibly deny" any involvement in the incident. Hanoi might suspect Beijing's complicity, but once the attacks on western shipping began a few days later, they would have to publicly accept this as simply another terrorist outrage. With luck, they might decide that defending these islands was futile and withdraw. Or, again with luck, they might take overt action against Chinese interests in these waters, providing Beijing with the excuse necessary to move in with its own overt military muscle.
At worst, Vietnam would lose an important petroleum prospecting base, and their development of commercial assets in these waters would be delayed, possibly for years.
"May I see, please? Captain."
Ul Haq nodded and stepped back from the eyepiece, so that Commander Hsing could take his place. "Would you like the honor of ordering the attack, Commander?"
Hsing studied the target for a moment, then turned, shaking his head. "No, sir. I wished merely to verify your target."
Still letting us do your dirty work, ul Haq thought. The man was less advisor than spy.
No matter. During the past forty-eight hours, Shuhadaa had tracked and destroyed three fishing boats — two flying the flag of the Philippines, and one the flag of Vietnam. In each case, a boarding party had gone across in a rubber boat ostensibly to check their papers, assembled the crew on the afterdeck, machine-gunned them, then planted explosive charges in the vessel's bilge. There was no sense in wasting an expensive torpedo on a fifteen-meter wooden hull.
The Spratlys were an important fishing ground for both the Philippines and the Vietnamese, with several million tons of fish being taken from these waters each year. Sinking those fishing boats was, at best, an economic pinprick, more symbolic than anything else. Destroying the base now centered in the periscope's crosshairs, however, would be a far more savage blow, to both Vietnamese pride and economic interests.
Best of all, destroying that base would also strike directly at the soft, economic underbelly of the hated West — a strike at the Western oil interests, and at one of the governments supporting them.
"Very well." Ul Haq took his place at the periscope once more. It looked as if a helicopter, an ancient, Soviet-era MI-8 cargo transport, was being readied on the heliport. He could just make out the black specks of men moving about the aircraft. "Ready tubes one and three," he said.
"Tubes one and three, ready to fire," Lieutenant Jamal reported.
"Set running depth at one meter." That was, in effect, right on the surface. Any alert lookout on the Vietnamese base would almost certainly see the torpedoes as they approached.
But a fixed base would have some problem maneuvering clear of the threat. And the water was so shallow here; ul Haq wanted to make certain his torpedoes didn't slam themselves harmlessly into sand.
"Running depth set at one meter, Captain."
"Open outer doors, tubes one and three."
"Tube doors one and three are open, Captain."
"Fire one!"
The hiss of compressed air flinging the torpedo from its bow tube was audible throughout the boat. Ul Haq felt the deck shift with the change in trim, until the enlisted man on the trim tanks could compensate.
"One fired, Captain!" Jamal said. "Torpedo one is running straight and normal!"
"Fire three."
Again, the hiss of compressed air shrilled through the submarine.
"Three fired! Torpedo three running straight and normal!"
"Estimate time to target."
"Time on target for first torpedo… forty-five seconds."
Ul Haq glanced at the sweep hand on the control room clock, then returned his full attention to the periscope eyepiece. Patience … patience … A quick check to make certain the periscope camera was running. Beijing would want to see the films, if it was possible to return them to the Chinese.