Chapter Two
Evening, Wednesday, April 27
East China Sea, 200 Miles West of Japanese Waters
USS Louisiana, SSBN 743, cruised along like a ghost in the dark East China Sea waters. She’d been diverted there as an obvious act of desperation 48 hours ago, when the USS North Dakota had failed to report in. The commander of the Louisiana knew full well that something was going on in the United States, just not exactly what that meant. That there was a disruption underway was of little doubt, since they’d been under Emergency War Orders ever since they’d been diverted from their operational area in the Bering Sea.
“Any traffic?” the COB—Chief of the Boat—asked as he watched the monitor showing a live feed from the periscope.
“Negative,” the comms officer replied. “Some low-band traffic from that Japanese frigate.” The COB nodded and ground his teeth, a habit that had cost him his 2nd wife a few months ago. Well, that and her inability to keep her legs closed when he was on deployment. But the teeth thing had featured prominently in their divorce case.
He hated having his boat in these relatively tight waters. The Ohio-class was most at home skimming along in arctic waters, under a thermal layer. Safe and invisible, awaiting the call to unleash nuclear hell. They could stay there for months at a time if necessary. The Virginia-class they were looking for was a nuclear fast attack. Unlike the Ohio-class, the Virginia-class was a hunter. They hunted enemy versions of the Ohio. Though that didn’t mean the Ohio was incapable of hunting if necessary.
“Sonar, contact!” The COB’s head came around. “Register contact Alpha,” the sonar supervisor said, and the computer board showed the approximate range and direction. “Looks like a Golf, sir.” The COB nodded; that would be their boy. The North Dakota had been here to hunt and monitor an old Soviet-era Golf boomer, Golf-27, which had been given to the North Koreans and had just reentered service. They could carry and launch Scud missiles, and the Norks were supposed to have nuclear Scuds now. The Japanese were rightfully nervous about this development.
In the sonar section, specialists were running the sonar return through multiple computers, comparing them to old Cold War era recordings of Golf-27. It would have been Los Angeles-class fast attacks following them back then. The recording had likely been made on tape, and since converted to digital. It only took five minutes for sonar to report.
“We show a 95% probability that it’s Golf-27.” That cut it. The COB grabbed the squawk box handset and punched the captain’s cabin.
“COB here, sir. We got the Golf.”
“Be right there.”
A half-hour later the sub’s command center was bathed in blue light as they closed in on the nearly 30-year-old submarine. Sonar had continued to massage the data and reported that the sub ran quieter than it had when last in service. Likely it had been modified by the Norks, no surprise there. The old Golf-class, diesel electric instead of nuclear and with outdated everything, was no more a match for the Ohio-class than a WWII-era Gato-class would have been. Yet, a state of the art Virginia-class was still missing in action, and communications were down.
“Sonar, con!”
“Go sonar.”
“She’s going shallow. I’m getting some transients from her. Sounds like liquid pressurization maybe.”
“Jumping Jesus,” the COB said, “are they fueling the fucking Scuds?” The captain glanced at the big map. They were currently 150 miles South West of Kyushu, the southern-most Japanese main island. Well within range of a Scud.
“Takes about an hour to prep one of those Scuds,” the captain said. “Take us to periscope depth and deploy the VLF antenna. Enough of this shit, we need orders. I’m not sinking that old tub without authority.”
“And what if they prepare to launch?” the COB asked quietly.
“I’ll deal with that when the time comes,” the captain said. His stomach growled. “We ever going to get some chow up here?” As if on cue, a pair of crewman in white cook’s jackets carried in a rack of trays, and the smell of fish wafted through the compartment.
The COB snickered. “Your powers are impressive, sir.”
“Stow that shit,” the captain said with a chuckle. One of the cooks brought over a pair of trays. Nice big succulent chunks of cod in a light sauce, with broccoli and mashed potatoes. “I thought cookie said we were out of the cod,” the captain said to the cook.
“He sends his complements, sir,” the young man said, “he got 50 pounds of fresh fillets from the tender we UNREPed from.” The captain grunted and tasted the fish. It was great. He hated to do underway replenishment in rough seas, but they’d been critically low on supplies. Now he felt a lot better about it.
“Tell him he’s a sneaky SOB and send my regards.” The young man saluted and went off to see that the rest of the command crew was served. There were also hamburgers for those who didn’t like fish. The captain ate as his boat stealthily rose toward the surface.
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