Chapter 16

16

Captain Cho was out of breath from his mad dash to the air-conditioned CIC belowdecks, his lungs exhaling the rank air of tobacco.

“Captain’s in Combat,” the tactical operations officer barked.

“I have the conn,” Cho replied.

“Captain has the conn,” the lieutenant repeated. That meant Cho was running the show.

The captain stood hovering over the shoulder of the sonar supervisor, his best sonar technician, a chief petty officer hand-selected for this billet by Cho himself. The CIC was the tactical nerve center of Cho’s ship, where his sensor operations were located. If combat was at hand, this is where he needed to be—not up on the bridge.

The two men stared at the large passive sonar display. Several types of sonar screens were pulled up. The chief pointed at the spectrograph display.

“The algorithm detected a likely torpedo tube door opening two minutes ago.”

“You concur?” Cho asked.

“Could be an anomaly.” The chief laid a finger on the screen. “But this? It sure looks like it to me.”

“Did we get an audio recording?”

“Nothing that I could make out.” The CPO grunted. “The algorithm must be smarter than my ears.”

“Not likely,” Cho said, clapping his old friend on the shoulder.

The chief had served with Cho on other boats for several years patrolling hostile waters. With or without audio confirmation, the chief knew what a torpedo door opening looked like on a spectrograph.

Equally important, his sonar computer had access to the U.S. Navy database storing tens of thousands of previously recorded audio and electromagnetic signatures of combatant vessels, including the sound of torpedo doors opening on every variety of North Korean submarines. No doubt the sonar’s computer matched up the spectrograph reading with a similar signature in the database.

In some cases, the specific submarine could be detected by the unique sound of its own particular doors. However, in this instance, no submarine was identified because not enough of the sound signature had been captured by the sonar computer.

“Where is it?” the captain asked.

The sonar tech then dragged the B-scan display forward, showing both the range and bearing of an object relative to their destroyer.

“Eleven thousand two hundred meters, bearing oh-eight-seven degrees.”

“No other signatures?”

“None.”

The captain breathed a sigh of relief. No other signatures meant no submarines in the water—or any of their “fish” racing toward them. Cho wondered if his sonar arrays had picked up the clanking of lost shipping containers colliding in the water or the industrial noise of a commercial fishing trawler instead of a torpedo door.

He turned to the radar technician.

“Anything?”

“No, sir.”

“Anything on the cameras?” Cho asked. A sub running at periscope depth would leave a thin, feathering wake on the surface.

The watch stander monitoring the optronic mast shook his head.

“Nothing, sir.”

Cho and his chief exchanged a relieved look.

“Log it in the computer as an anomaly.”

“Aye, sir.”

Captain Cho stood and stretched, and cracked his neck. He was still on his break. Time enough to go topside and finish his smoke.

“Keep me posted if anything else pops up. I’ll be back in fifteen.”

“Sir.”

Cho turned for the exit.

Alarms suddenly blared, and warning lights flashed.

Another sonar tech shouted, “Fish in the water!”

Cho whipped around and barked orders at his crew.

“Evasive maneuvers! Sound battle stations! Reports! Bearing, speed, range!”

The chief shouted back. “Torpedo bearing oh-eight-seven degrees relative. Speed…Wait…That can’t be right.”

Klaxon alarms blared throughout the ship signaling general quarters.

An electronic voice shouted in the ship-wide speakers, “General Quarters! General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations! All hands man your battle stations!”

“Speed!” Cho shouted over the keening Klaxon.

“Computer says…1,911 knots.”

“Impossible.”

“Eleven seconds to impact.”

Cho bellowed at his combat team, the finest in the fleet.

“Helm! Get me flank speed! Emergency power! Fire Control—torpedo decoys, now!”

The destroyer lunged forward like a panther, ducking its steel shoulder deep into a steep turn as the ship’s four big turbo-diesels roared belowdecks. Techs grabbed their station desks or risked getting thrown out of their chairs.

“Eight seconds to impact.”

“Decoys away!”

“Sonar, get me a target fix on that tango,” Cho said. “Fire Control, put three Red Sharks on that tango—now!”

The chief’s gaze was fixed on his screen. Even across the room, Cho could see the speeding torpedo track racing toward his boat, blazing a curving red trail across the black screen as it tracked his fleeing ship.

Rage washed over Cho. The Klaxon roared overhead.

“Somebody kill that alarm!”

The instantaneous silence was immediately interrupted by the roar of three vertical launch tubes firing in succession, sending three Red Shark anti-sub rockets into the air. Within moments, the Red Shark rockets would release their homing torpedoes into the water.

“Can’t shake his track, Captain!” the chief shouted.

The fire control station reported dutifully, “Decoys failing.”

Cho cursed. None of this was possible!

He snatched up the mic for the ship’s intercom and punched a button.

“All hands, prepare for impact! Prepare for impact! Prepare—”

Captain Pak nodded, his own sly smile curling his thin mouth. There was no way the King Jeongjo the Great could have survived such a strike. Even if the warhead hadn’t detonated, the kinetic energy of a nearly six-thousand-pound torpedo traveling at over nineteen hundred knots would have ripped through the destroyer’s hull like a railroad spike through a wet cocktail napkin.

All faces turned to their captain.

“Today we have made history. Today we have scalded the whimpering dogs,” Pak said. “And the Great Leader will wave our banner of glorious victory over our enemies.”

The bright young faces burned with pride.

And just as quickly, that pride was slapped away.

“Sonar reports one…two…three splashes, sir!”

Pak stiffened, fearing the worst.

“Sonar reports high-speed screws. Torpedoes!”

The tactical officer shouted his orders.

“Launch decoys! Flank speed! Evasive maneuvers!”

Captain Pak heard his words, but they sounded distant, as if shouted through thick glass. The ship’s active sonar pinged over the crackling loudspeakers, tracking the speeding torpedoes as they closed.

A calm washed over Pak as the sub angled nose-down in a desperate run. It was all in vain. His boat could barely make thirteen knots underwater; the torpedoes homing in on them traveled four times that speed.

Only moments now, Pak thought as the sonar pings rang faster and faster in their ears.

All eyes turned to him again, their desperate faces paled with doom.

What could he say to comfort them?

“We have done our duty, comrades,” Pak said. “What better death than that?”

A few heartbeats later, the hull shattered and they were all snatched away into the shadowless gloom of the sea.