SSN - Tom Clancy [108]
The captain decided that after today's reactor startup Cheyenne would stay critical every time in port so long as there was a threat of ballistic missiles. If the Typhoon launched, there would not be time to conduct pre-critical checks, reactor start-up, and engine room light-off before the missiles detonated in the sky over the Tsoying Naval Base.
Upon returning to the ship, the combat systems officer reported the weapons loading complete, including two Harpoon missiles, just in case. Mack wasn't happy that torpedo space was traded for Harpoons, but at least they weren't loaded in the torpedo tubes.
After departing her mooring alongside McKee shortly before dark, Cheyenne got under way and headed to the north off Kangshan on the surface. Since the Russian RORSAT satellites had been sweeping the area for the Chinese, the intent was to fool the satellites into believing thai Cheyenne would be patrolling to the north, when actually she would be doing an end around to the east of Taiwan, where the water was deeper. Cheyenne no longer had her running lights energized, nor the submarine ID beacon. She was running "darkened ship." But she was not alone in running without any lights to give away her position.
The stillness of the night was broken by the staccato noise of gunshots-smaller caliber in the after port quarter and somewhat larger caliber in the after starboard quarter. These sounds were followed by the distinctive impacts of ricochets off both sides of the sail.
The source of the gunfire maneuvered past Cheyenne at high speed, essentially on the same course. There were two attack craft, and their passage could be heard by the bridge watch slanders who had ducked down behind the safety of the high-tensile-stress steel.
"Officer of the deck, Captain," Mack said. "Rig the bridge for dive and lay below ASAP. I have the conn."
Never before had the bridge been rigged for dive so quickly. The spray from the opened main ballast tank vents nearly engulfed the men as they made the final closure of the bridge clamshell. Cheyenne was already passing forty-five feet when the last man reported being down, bridge hatches secured. Mack had finely timed the dive to ensure that the upper bridge-access hatch was shut before the surface of the sea reached that height.
When the ship stabilized at 90 feet in only 130 feet of water, Captain Mackey used the sound-powered phone to explain to the crew what had happened. A Chinese (Soviet-built) Komar class fast attack craft was in a running gun battle with a Taiwanese fast attack craft. The 25mm (Chinese) and 76mm (Taiwanese) gunfire was what they had heard and what had bounced off the sail.
Cheyenne had needed to submerge quickly before the Komar launched its SS-N-2 surface-to-surface missiles and the Taiwanese craft reciprocated with its Otomat missiles. The chances of the missiles inadvertently hom-;-~;Ť th* "innnrpnt" Chevenne's sail had been too great. Similar incidents between the South and North Korean gunboats fighting it out nearly twenty years before had not been lost in the archives of submarine history.
Some of the crew had sustained minor injuries during their rushing to lay below. The OOD, looking at his bleeding fingers and those of his compatriots from the bridge, tried to bring a little levity to the situation. "Does this mean," he asked, "that we're eligible for the Purple Heart?"
The executive officer answered that it would be the first for submariners since World War II, but that it was worth a try. The joking in the crew's mess and the wardroom that night served to ease tensions, as each man from the