Operation White Out, page 23
“Let me get this straight,” Li Wei said. “You have an underwater telephone that has long range and is undetectable by any party without an appropriate receiver?”
“Essentially, yes,” I answered. “Its output is virtually identical to background white noise.”
I arranged for Senior Chief Jackson and King to meet with their senior electronics and sonar technicians on Hi Bào to review their Gertrude installation. Ham’s divers would enter the bow section to determine a location to install the transducer.
“I’m sure you agree with me,” I said directly to Cmdr. Zhang Min, “that we must clear datum as soon as we can.”
“Datum?” Zhang Min said, turning to Li Wei.
Li Wei spoke to him briefly in Chinese.
Zhang Min addressed me, “Yes, I agree completely. The ChiComs are certainly even now heading this way to commence their search, where they believe Chángzhēng three-five disappeared. You call this datum, do I understand you properly?”
“Yes, Sir, you understand.”
USS TEUTHIS—BOTTOMED UNDER THE ICE, WAGONER INLET
The skipper addressed me in his cabin. “Mac, when do you estimate we’ll have working Secure Gertrude comms between Hi Bào and Teuthis?”
“Jackson’s people are kludging together a makeshift transceiver as we speak. Wilbur tells me the real problem is not the transceiver itself, but how to encapsulate it to retain our proprietary technology.”
“Do you think that’s necessary?”
“I trust Li Wei, but this is highly useful technology the Taiwanese can use in their own struggle against the ChiComs.”
“What does your heart tell you, Mac?”
I had to think about that. “These guys are facing impossible odds with virtually no outside support. Having secure comms between subs and surface could be crucial.” I paused in thought. “We could deliver an aluminum box with a seal that would indicate if it had been opened. Should they choose to open the box and reverse engineer the transceiver and then replace the seal, I guess I would probably not notice.”
“Do what you think best, Mac.” He paused and looked me in the eye. “We never had this conversation.”
I checked in with King and the ETs. They had a working model of the Secure Gertrude on their workbench and were in the process of stuffing the components into an aluminum box about the size of two side-by-side loafs of bread.
“I want you to attach a sealing strip,” I said, grabbing a piece of paper and sketching a two-inch wide strip embossed with our ship’s seal. “Once you install the box on Hi Bào, and it’s working, tack-weld the strip across the cover end opposite the hinges.” I indicated where on the box.
“That won’t stop nobody,” King said.
I looked at him sternly, and he shut up.
I headed to Dive Control. “What’s your status?” I asked Ham.
“I pressed down Harry, José, and Jimmy,” he answered. “They’re out there now scoping out the situation. We’ll know more in thirty minutes or so.”
I noted that Ham had chosen the two electronic techs along with the corpsman. “Notify me when you are ready to do the actual installation,” I told him. “Put the Basketball view on the Control monitor.”
“Yes, Sir.”
I headed to Sickbay. Joey was the only person present other than Sergyi.
“I’ve got a few minutes, Sergyi. You interested in starting a new chess game?”
“Hey, Mac…sure! But first, let this lovely lady finish task.”
I grinned at them as Joey continued his thorough sponge bath.
“Looks like you two don’t need me around,” I said.
“I try, Mac, really try, but the lieutenant here not interested. I think she look elsewhere.” He grinned ruefully and stroked her shoulder.
Joey flushed crimson, but continued the sponge bath. “You cut that out, you ornery Ukrainian, or I’ll pull rank on you!”
“Not happen, Joey. I no military!”
I laughed. “I’ll be back when she’s done, Sergyi.”
I made my way to the Yeoman’s Office where I shared space with Yeoman First-class Robert Dugan ever since Joey appropriated my stateroom. He was processing paper when I arrived.
“Hey, XO! ’Sup?”
“I need to process a whole bunch of stuff, Bob. Can you spare me fifteen with the door shut?”
“Sure thing, Boss,” he said, closing the door behind him as he headed for the Crew’s Mess.
As Dugan left, a terrific headache suddenly pierced my brain. Doc told me this would happen, but it still hit me like a sledgehammer. I closed my eyes and leaned back, took a deep breath, and focused on gaining control of the pain. The door opened quietly, and the next thing I knew, soft fingers were massaging my temples.
One of the things I had wanted to process was what I was feeling at that moment under Joey’s soft touch. As the pain eased, I focused on my feelings and how in hell I would handle what would happen if I followed them.
“The Yeoman said you needed some professional attention,” Joey said softly, kissing my forehead.
Smart girl; she didn’t push the envelope.
Later that day, I sat with Joey in my stateroom, that was hers for the duration—with the door open.
“Joey,” I said in my most neutral tone of voice, “Sergyi and I met several years ago when we captured him underwater during Operation Ivy Bells.26 I saved his life for which he was very grateful. Later in that mission, Sergyi literally rescued me from certain death while risking his own life. As you can imagine, we developed a close friendship that has endured through the years.”
Joey sat quietly, listening to me, displaying no emotion.
I continued. “Sergyi is one of the best saturation divers I know. He’s a fearless underwater warrior. He hasn’t said this to me, but he fears his leg injury will take him out of the diving game, and diving is his whole life. I have a ship to run as XO. As much as I might wish, I simply cannot spend much time with him.” I looked into Joey’s eyes. “That’s why we’re talking.”
Joey’s face assumed a serious demeanor, and she nodded slowly.
“I’m not an uncaring lunk, Joey. You have not hidden your feelings for me, and I have deeply appreciated your tender caring for me. As a man, I’m simply not ready to move ahead on this track as much as I might want to. As XO, I don’t need this distraction. I’m asking you to turn it off. I know I’m asking a lot, but now is not the time or place. May I ask that you shift your focus to helping Sergyi through his dilemma? Please understand…I’m not asking anything from you except your best efforts to assist his recovery.”
I watched a single tear well up and roll down Joey’s cheek. She swallowed and came to her feet. “I will do my best, Commander.” She rose to her tiptoes and kissed my cheek. Then she swallowed and smiled weakly, turned, and left the stateroom.
Wilbur passed the watch to Franklin just as we ended our sixty-eighth day. I called Hi Bào.
“Hi Bào, this is Teuthis on the Secure Gertrude.”
“Teuthis, this is Hi Bào. We hear you five by.”
The incoming transmission was clear as a bell.
_____________
26 See the First Mac McDowell Mission, Operation Ivy Bells.
Teuthis, Hi Bào, and Qiántng Yóuchuán Èr travel 200 nautical miles north by northwest before turning west on the great circle route to Campbell Island.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Rendezvous
USS TEUTHIS—UNDERWAY WITH HǍI BÀO AT NORTH END OF WAGONER INLET
Sparks made the announcement over the 1MC, “Officers’ Call! Officers’ Call!”
Since we were still bottomed, I didn’t relieve the OOD, Wilbur, like I normally would. I showed up in the Wardroom with the other officers. Shortly after we were assembled, Capt. Franken-Ester opened the door.
I called out, “Attention on deck!” Normally, the skipper waved this off, but this time he let it proceed. He took his seat at the head of the table, and everyone else found a seat.
“We are entering a new phase of our mission,” the skipper said in a conversational tone of voice. “To call our mission eventful thus far would be an understatement.” He looked around the table as the officers chuckled quietly. “What we face now, however, eclipses anything we’ve experienced thus far, except for the XO.” He looked at me with a smile.
“ComSubPac has tasked Teuthis with accompanying Hi Bào and Qiántng Yóuchuán Èr to Taiwan. Somewhere between here and New Zealand, we can expect to rendezvous with Omaha, Houston, and Haddo. They will provide a protective screen against the almost certain arrival of one or more Chinese, as in ChiCom, submarines. The ChiCom subs will be looking for Chángzhēng three-five that we left on the bottom back there.” The skipper pointed generally south. “They don’t know about us. They suspect the Taiwanese, but I don’t think they know about the oil operation.
“We will meet Pigeon and Avalon somewhere north of the Solomons, where we will offload Lieutenant Kaper and Sergyi, and Hi Bào will offload her batch of prisoners. We’ll transfer our Taiwanese sailors back to Hi Bào as well.
“Inform your watch sections and be on full alert. We don’t want to become victims of overconfidence in our superiority.” The skipper looked around the Wardroom. “Are there any questions?”
Joey raised her hand. “How long before we meet Pigeon?”
The skipper glanced at Seth.
“We’re about twenty-eight days from our general rendezvous point north of the Solomon Islands, plus or minus twelve hours, depending on what happens along the way.” Seth glanced at a sheet in front of him. “Pigeon will take ten days at twenty-two knots with a brief stop-over at Pearl.”
There were no other questions. The skipper rose to his feet. Before I could call the officers to attention, they all stood as the skipper left the Wardroom. I glanced at the clock on the Wardroom bulkhead. It was nearly midnight on February 5, our sixty-eighth day since leaving EB. I turned to Franklin.
“Relieve Wilbur a few minutes early and get us underway. Be sure to study the Captain’s Night Orders. He wrote some specific important instructions.”
The Captain’s Night Orders specified our order of progress as we got underway for points north. Hi Bào would run at eight knots and 300 feet a nautical mile ahead of Qiántng Yóuchuán Èr. To conserve its compressed air supply, the tanker would follow at eight knots at periscope depth, extending its intake mast when there was no sea ice around. Teuthis would follow both, clearing baffles every hour, ensuring nobody was following or closing on us from behind.
At 0100 on day sixty-nine, Franklin brought Teuthis to periscope depth for a satellite fix. He transmitted the fix with his offset to Hi Bào by Secure Gertrude. The tanker turned to north by northwest and set eight knots, its air intake just skimming the surface. Hi Bào led the little convoy, keeping the tanker in her starboard quarter. Teuthis followed, maintaining her distance and clearing baffles every hour on a random basis. Ahead lay 200 nautical miles of open ocean with a scattering of ice and occasional larger pieces—twenty-five hours of getting used to cruising in a fairly tight formation, keeping a wary eye out for ChiCom subs.
By the middle of Waverly’s watch eight hours later, the seas were picking up, driven by the westerlies flowing generally out of the northwest and entirely around Antarctica. Within an hour, Qiántng Yóuchuán Èr dropped down to 100 feet to run her Stirlings on compressed air.
The skipper asked me to join him and the OOD, Waverly, at Plot.
“I don’t entirely understand how the automatics on the tanker work,” he said, “but clearly they are smart enough to handle these seas. Let’s go deep before things get ugly. These wind-driven swells can run fifty feet or more.” He turned to me. “What’s Hi Bào’s test depth?”
“Three hundred meters,” I answered. “That’s nine hundred eighty feet.”
“That’s my understanding,” Waverly added.
“Okay,” the skipper said, “Waverly, you contact Hi Bào and tell her to drop to three hundred meters. If she has a way to control the tanker, have her move the tanker down as well. While you’re doing that,” he stopped to look closer at the chart on the plot table, “take us down to twelve hundred feet. Don’t let shallow water creep up on us.”
“Hi Bào, this is Teuthis,” Waverly transmitted on the Secure Gertrude.
“Hi Bào, aye!”
Waverly directed her to drop to 300 meters and verified that Hi Bào had some control over Qiántng Yóuchuán Èr.
“Diving Officer, make your depth one-two-zero-zero feet.” He left the angle up to his Diving Officer, Chief Cedrick. As we dove, he said to Senior Chief Dokey, “Chief-of-the-Watch, mind your trim.”
“Aye, aye, Sir. I’m pumping ballast right now,” Dokey said.
Grinning broadly, Tubes set the bubble at twenty degrees, causing cup crashes throughout the sub as Teuthis creaked and groaned her way to depth. “Diving Officer,” Waverly said, “ease your bubble. Come to depth nice and easy.”
“At one-two-zero-zero feet, zero bubble,” Tubes reported.
“At neutral trim,” Dokey reported.
“Conn, Sonar, I have a new contact bearing zero-seven-zero, designate Sierra-eight-nine. He’s distant, difficult to hear, but he has suppressed cavitation.”
USS TEUTHIS—UNDERWAY IN THE SOUTHERN OCEAN
Upon receiving information on S-89, Waverly brought Teuthis to the left to give Sonar a beam aspect on the contact. He called the skipper. I heard the call and joined the skipper in Sonar.
“What do you have, King?” the skipper asked.
“Hard to tell, Sir, but I think he’s running below the layer. We didn’t pick him up until we got down here.”
“Any details?” the skipper asked.
“No, Sir. I need some time to evaluate. He’s drifting right.”
The skipper went to Control. “Officer-of-the-Deck,” he said, “contact Hi Bào and have her and the tanker slow to seven knots while we figure out what we have here.”
It was a couple of hours before King was able to tell us anything about S-89. He called the skipper and me to Sonar.
“He’s definitely not one of ours. I tried to match him up with Omaha, Houston, or Haddo. Nothing at all fits. As his profile became clearer, I found several match-ups with Chángzhēng three-five, but the match was not perfect. Then I got a couple of minutes of clear lines. Sierra-eight-nine is a perfect match to Chángzhēng three. I think she’s down here looking for three-five.”
“How far off is she?” the skipper asked.
“Four hundred fifty miles, Sir. That’s why we had such trouble getting anything at all. She seems to be making a beeline for Thurston Island.”
“Can she hear us?” the skipper asked.
“Highly unlikely, Sir,” King said. “She’s noisy, and her sonar is nowhere near as good as ours. If we can barely hear her, the odds are very high that she does not hear us. In fact, if she’s doing over ten knots, and I believe she is, she couldn’t hear us five miles away.”
“When will you have her track, heading, and speed?” I asked.
“Half-hour or so. We’re still working on getting a steady trace.”
“Whoa, King!” one of the sonar watchstanders said. “Listen to this.” He put it on the speaker. “It’s like someone just opened a sound channel.”
“Let me work out the details,” King said. “I’ll get back with you as soon as possible.”
I stepped out to Plot. Chief Fonzarelli had the nav watch. “Fonzie, how deep is the water here?”
“We’re passing over the continental break, Sir. We’ve been running over an eighteen hundred foot bottom for a while. The bottom just dropped to eleven thousand feet.”
“Skipper,” I said, turning as he joined us, “we just opened a clear sound channel to Sierra-eight-nine.”
“Plot a track on this guy as soon as you can,” the skipper told King.
Shortly thereafter, King reported, “Sierra-eight-nine is at four hundred miles, doing twenty knots on a course for the middle of Thurston Island.”
“That’s about where Chángzhēng three-five would have had her last opportunity to call home with position info,” Fonzarelli said.
“Looks like she slows down every ninety minutes or so for a look around,” King said. “When that happens, we need to remain quiet, or she can hear us through this clear sound channel.”
The skipper looked at Waverly. “Set quiet condition throughout the ship. Have the ship and crew ready to go to ultra-quiet on a moment’s notice.”
We stood around the plot table while Waverly passed the word through the sub. As the blowers slowed, Teuthis took on an eerie quietness. It wasn’t the dead silence of ultra-quiet, but as things quieted down, I became aware of every sound above background. It almost felt like sleepwalking.
“Notify Hi Bào of our actions,” the skipper told Waverly.
I was in the Wardroom sipping coffee and working on ship’s papers—a never-ending task for an XO, when Joey stuck her head through the door.
“Mac, can we talk?”
I motioned her into the room. “What is it, Joey?”
“It’s Sergyi. He doesn’t seem to be getting better. He’s not deteriorating, but he’s not improving either. I think he’s deeply discouraged.”
“Has he spoken with you about this?”
“Not really. I thought perhaps you could give me some insight.”
“Ever since he joined our team, Sergyi has contributed more than his fair share. Right now, he may feel he is letting us down. He isn’t, of course, but he may feel that way. Anything you can do to boost his self-worth and help him feel part of the team will go a long way.” I smiled at her. “Would you please ask Doc Everest to see me when he gets a chance?”
I finished the stack of papers in front of me, chief petty officer evaluations, and stepped down the passageway to Sonar.
