“Turn left to new heading one-eight-zero … now.”
Kuroda hauled the big four-engine turboprop ASW aircraft in a tight turn to the left. When he was on his new heading, the Myoko’s CIC operations officer was back. “Deploy on my mark … now.”
“ELINT, deploy now,” the pilot relayed the order.
“Deploying now, hai.”
“Radar, this is the captain, how are we looking?”
“Clear on this heading, kan-cho,” the chief radar operator reported.
“Sensor is wet,” the ELINT operator Kuminori Godai advised.
They were flying at five hundred feet, trailing a one-meter-long fin-shaped sensor connected to the aircraft’s sensitive computer system by a titanium/ceramic composite cable. Since the American submarine was not moving, presumably sitting quietly on the bottom, their magnetic anomaly detector would not work to pick it up. However, a new laser-detection device had been developed in the past year that solved such a problem. Sea water was all but opaque past two hundred feet, except in the blue/green spectrum. The sensor, trailing five meters beneath the surface, sent out a beam of blue-green laser light, and sensor-head detectors watched for a reflection of the light off a metallic object.
Almost immediately an excited Godai came back. “Positive laser contact. Definitely a submarine, identified as probably American Seawolf class. Bearing one-nine-nine. Position has been transmitted.”
“Bridge, CIC, we have a confirmed target,” Myoko’s executive officer Lieutenant Commander Tono Ogawa reported. “Range five thousand meters relative, bearing zero-seven-zero.”
Captain Kurosawa snatched the growler phone. “This is the captain. Do we have an independent confirmation from our own sonar?”
“Iie, kan-cho. Aircraft eleven and seventeen have both reported positive B/G L-1 contacts. It’s a Seawolf.”
“We’re not sure of the type,” Kurosawa said. “Conditions are too difficult. It could be another Chinese submarine.”
“Hai, kan-cho,” Ogawa responded.
Kurosawa turned to his first officer on the bridge. “Sound battle stations, submarine. This is not a drill.”
“Hai, kan-cho. Sound battle stations, submarine.”
“Turn to course zero-seven-zero, make your speed twenty-five knots.”
“Turn to course zero-seven-zero, make my speed twenty-five knots, hai, kan-cho.”
Kurosawa turned back to the growler phone and his XO in the CIC as the nine-thousand-four-hundred-ton destroyer heeled sharply to starboard and the battle stations klaxon sounded throughout the ship. “Get this off to the Noshiro, but hold your active sonar search until we’re within one thousand meters of their reported position. I don’t want to alert them.”
“Hai, kan-cho,” Ogawa said. “But, kan-cho, this is an American submarine,”
“You are mistaken, Ogawa-san. But I will not hold that against you. Now carry on.”
“Hai, kan-cho!”
The continually changing positions of every surface target in their vicinity was being worked out in the computers. Nevertheless, Harding made a paper plot at the starboard chart table. It helped him visualize what he was going to try to do if all his other options ran out.
“Conn, sonar, I think they’re on to us,” Fischer called the control room.
Harding pulled a phone from the overhead. “This is the captain, what have you got, Mel?”
“We had that unidentified dipping buoy about three minutes ago, and now all of a sudden the Myoko and the Noshiro are heading right for us and beatin’ feet.”
“We heard nothing from the buoy?”
“Negative, Skipper. But it found us. Maybe they worked out that blue-green laser detector we were briefed on back at Pearl.”
“Give me ranges and bearings.”
“Sierra seventeen, range four thousand eight hundred meters, bearing two-five-zero, making turns for twenty-one knots and accelerating. Sierra twenty-five, seven thousand three hundred meters, bearing one-five-zero, making turns for eighteen knots and definitely accelerating.”
“Stand by,” Harding said. He quickly plotted the new positions, courses and speeds, projecting their tracks, which intersected directly over the Seawolf.“Okay, good job, Mel. Keep a sharp watch now. We’re almost there.”
Harding wrote out a brief message to CINCPAC in Pearl outlining their present situation, the possibility that the MSDF had developed the blue-green laser system after all and what he was doing.
He motioned Paradise over and handed him the message. When his XO finished reading it he looked up in appreciation. “I would never have thought of it.”
“Get that back to comms and tell them to send it in the clear as soon as the antenna breaks the surface.”
For a moment Paradise wanted to discuss the order, but suddenly it dawned on him what the captain was trying to do. Everything the captain was trying to do, and he grinned. “Yes, sir,” he said, and he headed forward.
The XO, Tono Ogawa, rushed up from the Combat Information Center, a confused, urgent expression on his round face. “Kan-cho, we have a definite sonar contact.”
Kurosawa gave him an amused look. “Is the ship’s communications system inoperative?”
“No, sir. May I speak to you frankly, and in confidence?”
Kurosawa pursed his lips, but nodded. They stepped onto the port wing deck. “We’re in the middle of a hunt, Ogawa-san. We have found our prey, and we are about to engage it. What troubles you?”
“That is an American submarine. If we attempt to destroy it, there’s no telling what the American captain will do in retaliation. I urge caution, kan-cho, until we can sort out the reason that the American fired on Captain Tomita.”
“In the first place, you are mistaken about the nationality of that warship sitting on the bottom beneath us. It is definitely a Chinese nuclear submarine. An improved Han class, as a matter of fact. It violated our waters despite repeated urgent warnings to the contrary.” His eyes narrowed. “Now we shall kill it. But if we fail, then our comrades will take up the fight until it is finished.” He nodded. “Is this clear to you?”
“It is the reason the American jet fighters are here, kan-cho. If we fire our weapons they will fire on us—”
Kurosawa silenced him with a gesture. “One further word and I shall place you under arrest pending a court-martial.”
Ogawa was clearly struggling with what he knew to be the truth versus his sworn duty to uphold the orders of his commanding officer.
“Let us finish this operation, and then we’ll talk. There are certain aspects that you are not aware of.” Kurosawa gave him a friendly smile. “Can we do this together? Do I have your support?”
Ogawa bowed. “Hai, kan-cho.”
“Very well. Return to your duties.”
“Hai.”
The sound of the sonar pulse hammering the hull was unmistakable to everyone aboard. Nonetheless Fischer called the control room.
“Conn, sonar, they have us.”
“We heard it, Mel,” Harding said dryly. He switched to the ship’s intercom. “This is the captain, stand by for an emergency blow.”
A horn sounded through the boat.
Harding glanced at the chart. He had one opening in the pack of ships above. “Come right to three-four-zero degrees, make your speed five knots.”