Red Phoenix (74 page)

The ASW officer relayed his order, then listened for a minute to a new report coming in through his headset. “Bravo Six is picking up something from the DICASS Bravo Four dropped.”

Brown nodded in satisfaction. That was something at least. “When will Six be on top?”

The ASW officer made a rapid calculation. “Three minutes, Admiral.”

Brown felt his short-lived relief die. “That son of a bitch will be able to launch in three minutes.”

ABOARD
KONSTANTIN DRIBINOV

“Torpedo in the water! Aft and to port!”

Markov whirled to his first officer. “Release another decoy. And fire tubes one through six! Stand by for evasive action.”

It took an infinity of ten seconds to launch all six weapons. Every man aboard the
Dribinov
could hear the
clunk
as high-pressure air valves opened and closed. Each time they cycled, they sent a blast of compressed air into a torpedo tube, literally throwing the torpedo out into the water. Spent air was vented into the boat’s hull, and Markov and his crew yawned and swallowed as the pressure built.

“Sonar reports that the weapon is active, but it is drawing left.”

Markov felt his heartbeat slowing slightly. A bearing change that quickly signaled that the American torpedo had not acquired his submarine. And that meant it would probably miss. Confident that his prediction would be confirmed in a matter of seconds, he used the time to organize his thoughts, to plan his escape.

Menchikov broke into his thoughts with more bad news. “Sonar reports another torpedo in the water. They think it is distant, but it is directly ahead of us.”

Markov watched carefully as a young lieutenant marked the new threat on the plot with shaking hands. There wasn’t anything he could do. Not yet.

Clunk.
The last torpedo left its tube and whined away toward the fleeting enemy formation. Now! Markov spun to the helmsman. “Right full rudder. Slow to ten knots.” Reflexively he looked at the battery gauges. Thirty-two percent.

“Captain, Sonar reports the second torpedo’s seeker is locked onto something, perhaps the seabed.” A soft boom sounded from ahead as the American Mark 46 exploded on the muddy floor of the Yellow Sea. Markov smiled and relaxed, but not too much.

If they were dropping on him, it was time to get out. But not quietly. Markov had already decided to fight his way clear. The Americans might have detected the
Dribinov
too soon, but they would soon find they’d grasped a tiger by its tail.

He leaned over the plot, mentally calculating angles and ranges. “Steady on course two three zero. Tracking party, set up a solution on those two warships closing on us.”

ABOARD USS
CONSTELLATION

“She’s fired, sir! Torpedoes inbound for the heavies.”

Brown saw new lines appear on the display screen, closing on the center of his force. The ASROC-launched torpedoes from the
O’Brien
had almost certainly forced the enemy skipper to fire earlier than he would have liked. But the admiral knew his ships could still be in danger. Most of the amphibious ships and merchantmen couldn’t make much over twenty knots—not fast enough in a race with homing torpedoes moving at thirty-plus knots. He turned to his chief of staff. “Jim, order another course change. Bring the formation to zero three zero, and order all ships to maneuver individually to avoid torpedoes.”

ABOARD LST-1189
SAN BERNADINO

The
Newport
News-class LST
San Bernadino
was in trouble.

Originally stationed near the middle of the formation, she’d fallen farther and farther behind as faster ships raced by—intent on saving themselves. As an amphibious transport, she’d been designed for a sustained speed of twenty knots. Real speed and designed speed were proving two very different things, however. Since leaving Pusan, engine troubles had shaved four knots off the
San Bernadino’s
capabilities.

“Jesus!” Captain Frank Talbot, USN, flinched as a gray-painted Navy helicopter roared low over the ship’s bow ramp and flashed by the bridge windows at top speed. He pulled himself upright and grabbed the intercom. “Any luck, Mike?”

“Negative, skipper. We’ve still got that godawful vibration in the starboard shaft. It could seize up on us anytime now.” The chief engineer’s voice came tinny over the loudspeaker.

He was wondering how long he could push the plant when he felt himself flung hard against the rear bulkhead by a massive, thundering explosion.

As he lay stunned and bleeding on the deck, Talbot felt the bridge tilting downward, toward the sea, and saw the ship’s pointed bow rising sharply toward the sky. That was odd, he thought hazily. And then the answer came to him. The torpedo must have exploded directly under the
San Bernadino’s
keel, breaking her back and ripping her in half.

Talbot felt tears for his ship and crew dripping down his face and tried to get to his feet on the sloping deck. Then the pain hit. It drove him down into unconsciousness moments before the ship’s stern section plunged below the cold surface of the sea.

ABOARD USS
CONSTELLATION

News of the
San Bernadino’s
fate swept quickly through the Flag Plot, leaving only a stunned silence.

Brown felt his jaw tighten. First blood to the enemy. He turned to his chief of staff. “I want a full-scale search and rescue op for survivors. I don’t want a single, goddamned man left out there in the water. Clear?” He didn’t wait for the man’s reply before swinging to face the ASW officer. “What about the other torps?”

“No hits, sir. Sonar shows they’ve all run out of gas.”

That was something. The bastard out there had been forced to fire too soon. If they hadn’t spoiled his attack, he probably would have caught more than the slow-poking
San Bernadino.

“Bravo Six is reporting, Admiral. That boat’s running at high speed, but the signal’s fading.”

Brown refocused on the hunt at hand. What was done was done. His job now was to make sure no more enemy torpedoes sought out his ships. “All right,
O’Brien
and
Duncan
have had a chance. Let’s give the helos their turn.”

The ASW officer nodded his understanding and ordered a circle of sonobuoys placed around the sub’s last position, allowing for its reported speed and the time elapsed since it had last been detected. One was hot almost immediately.

“He’s still moving, Admiral. Speed estimated at…” The ASW officer paused, then grew two shades paler. “Bravo Six has a classification, sir. It’s a Tango-class diesel boat.”

The admiral felt like an idiot for asking, but he went ahead anyway. “Get a confirmation on that.”

The officer spoke into his headset, then listened. “No doubt about it, sir. Six has a very strong signal.”

Brown felt the hair lift off the back of his neck. There were no Tango-class submarines in the North Korean Navy, or in the Chinese Navy for that matter. The only Tangos in the world belonged to the Soviet Union. The Russians had just put their oar in the water. “Jim, get me CINCPAC on the secure net. Tell them I have FLASH traffic for Admiral Simons himself.”

He looked at the ASW controller. “Get those helos on top of that Russian s.o.b., and get some reliefs spooled up. I want everything we’ve got aloft. We’re up against the first team here.”

“CINCPAC is coming on line, sir.” The chief of staff handed him the red secure phone and continued, “We’ve also got a preliminary count on survivors from the
San Bernadino.
Rescue helos have picked up fifty-two men so far, and
Bagley
is still quartering the area where she went down.”

Brown nodded grimly. The LST had carried a crew of 290 men, and most
of them were probably dead. Well, if he had his way, they’d soon be avenged tenfold. The only thing he could be thankful for was that the
Bernadino
hadn’t been carrying any troops. But that was small consolation.

ABOARD
KONSTANTIN DRIBINOV

Markov was not happy. “One explosion, that’s all?”

“Yes, Comrade Captain. But sonar reports hearing the target breaking up.”

Markov wasn’t consoled by the report. One hit out of six torpedoes. A miserable performance.
Dribinov
would have to do better than that in this next attack. He tapped the two closest dots on the plot reflectively. The submarine’s next targets would be the two American escorts charging toward it. Missing either of them could prove fatal, not just embarrassing.

He looked up from the chart at his first lieutenant. “Dimitri, how are they coming?”

The man put down his phone. “Three tubes reloaded, the fourth in half a minute. And we have good firing solutions on both contacts.”

“Three will have to do. We don’t have half a minute. Shoot!”

The
Dribinov
shuddered again as three more torpedoes were flung out into the water. Markov moved to the helmsman. “Left ten degrees rudder. Steady on three one zero. Slow to five knots.”

His battery was now down to twenty-eight percent charge. He would have to conserve what was left and try to sneak out.

ABOARD USS
O’BRIEN

“Torpedo inbound! Bearing zero four three.”

The sonar operator’s report galvanized the Bridge and Combat Information Center into immediate action. Levi’s first order called for flank speed, and the gas-turbine-powered warship responded like a sports car, slicing through the sea as its speed climbed over thirty knots.

O’Brien
’s CIC crew cursed silently as they tried to keep track of their own ship’s evasive maneuvers while still keeping tabs on the Soviet sub’s last reported position.

Levi stood braced against the tilting deck as his ship turned, hoping he’d made the right decision. Instead of turning away from the oncoming torpedo, he’d ordered a turn toward the enemy. The idea was not to be where the launching unit had predicted and to get away from the torpedo’s seeker.

“Bridge, this is Sonar. No change in torpedo bearing. The signal may be splitting into two or more weapons.”

Well, that didn’t work, Levi thought. He ordered another rapid course change. Screw closing on the sub. Coming right, he steadied perpendicular to the torpedoes’ approach. Maybe giving them a rapidly changing angle would throw them off.

The sonar room reported again. “We now have three weapons in the water. Bearing rate on one is changing. It may be going for
Duncan.
Rate is still steady on the other two.”

Levi clenched his fists. There was nothing more he could do. “Pass the word, all hands brace for impact.” He looked out to starboard and saw another ship heeling sharply. The
Duncan
was also maneuvering.

IN THE YELLOW SEA

Soviet SET-65 torpedoes use passive sonar to home in on the sounds made by a ship’s engines and propellers. As the two torpedoes fired by
Dribinov
at
O’Brien
closed on their target, their robot brains brought them in behind the American destroyer—with one a hundred yards back.

Both tiny onboard computers evaluated the closest noise source as the rapidly turning screws of an American
Spruance
-class destroyer. Both were wrong.

They were homing on a Nixie, a torpedo decoy towed behind most U.S. Navy warships. No bigger than a garbage can, the Nixie was designed to make noise on the same frequencies as the ship towing it, but so loud that any attacking torpedoes would be spoofed into attacking the decoy instead.

It worked.

The
Dribinov
’s first torpedo closed on the Nixie and detonated when its proximity fuze sensed the target’s position changing rapidly.

The explosion of its six-hundred-pound warhead threw a hundred-foot-tall geyser of icy water into the air, drenching sailors watching from the
O’Brien
’s fantail. At the same moment the shock wave rippling out from the explosion lifted the destroyer’s fantail almost clear of the water, and for a moment the
O’Brien’s
propellers raced as they neared the air.

The second torpedo, intent on the same target, raced through the roiled water left by the explosion and suddenly found itself without a noise source to home in on. The SET-65’s forward-looking seeker didn’t have the intelligence to realize that its original target was now to its left and behind. And the control logic preprogrammed into the torpedo’s tiny brain was simple, direct, and mistaken: If a target is lost, circle right and look for another.

Meanwhile,
O’Brien
’s captain had not been idle. As soon as the first weapon exploded, destroying his Nixie, he’d ordered a hard left turn. Not only was he now closing on the Soviet sub’s estimated position, but he and the second torpedo were heading in opposite directions with a combined speed of eighty knots—over ninety miles per hour.

It took roughly thirty seconds for the Russian torpedo to circle completely around to face
O’Brien
’s stern. By that time the destroyer had covered thirteen hundred yards, over half a nautical mile. The torpedo’s small size meant a small, short-range seeker, with a maximum range of a thousand yards. So it never heard the
O’Brien
again and simply continued its turn. Left behind by its prey, the torpedo circled mindlessly for about five more minutes, then ran out of gas and sank quietly to the bottom.

ABOARD USS
O’BRIEN

Levi’s heartbeat was starting to slow toward normal when he heard a tremendous, rolling explosion from the right and felt the
O’Brien
rock for an instant. His head snapped right in time to see another towering column of water like the one that had appeared behind his ship. This one, though, wasn’t made up of only white, foaming water. It was stained a dirty black and gray and located directly under the
Duncan’s
stern.

The column sagged and then collapsed back into the sea, leaving the frigate hidden for half a minute under a dense cloud of mist and smoke. When it emerged, the
Duncan
was visibly listing to port and down by the stern.