SSN - Tom Clancy [25]
This particular submarine had excellent equipment, with the exception of her passive sonar outfit. That was the problem with all Russian submarines, as its captain knew. The Russians could not make a decent passive submarine sonar - at least not one that his country would be allowed to buy.
And that was a problem. At any given moment, there might be an American Los Angeles class submarine sneaking up on his position, and he would never know it until it was too late.
The captain of the Chinese submarine wasn't too worried about it, though. His was the lead ship of three. Below the waves, his Kilo was working in tandem with an older Romeo class diesel submarine. Above them, Jinan, a Luda class destroyer, patrolled the surface. Their mission was to hunt down and destroy any American ships and submarines. In addition, there was another Kilo well off to the side-not part of his task force, but it could provide assistance if he needed it.
The captain of the Kilo welcomed Jinan more than he did the Romeo. For one thing, the destroyer's two turbines were loud, which would hopefully distract any enemy's sonar from any noises his Kilo might make. Even more important, however, Jinan, like all Luda type II destroyers, carried two French ASW helicopters. Those would be very useful if the Kilo needed help while engaging an American submarine.
As pleased as the Kilo's captain was with the surface ship, he was equally displeased with the Romeo. It was an old attack submarine that had been reactivated from the naval reserve, and, in his opinion, it was more of a threat to his own submarine than it was to the enemy. It was too noisy, for one thing. That could be desirable when the noise came from the surface, but down below it would only serve to alert the Americans to the presence of one or more Chinese submarines in the area.
Worse, the farther he tried to get from the Romeo, the more it tried to stay close to him. The Romeo captain was no fool. He knew he stood a better chance under the protection of the Kilo than he did on his own.
Assuming, that is, that the Kilo captain didn't sink the Romeo himself.
Back on board Cheyenne, sonar was trying to reac-quire contact. Mack had gone back to 247 feet to continue the search, while at the same time maintaining copy over the floating wire.
In the control room, Mack was looking at the BSY-1 fire-control console, which he liked to keep online for himself. "Sonar, conn, have you regained contact on Master 24?"
"Conn, sonar, we're working on a possible contact," the sonar supervisor said, "but I'm not sure it's the same convergence zone one. This one may be a surface ship, Master 24 was tentatively classified as a submerged submarine,"
Several minutes later, the sonar supervisor reported that he had not one contact, but two, one Romeo submarine and one Luda destroyer, both bearing 020. They were both given new Master Numbers, designated Masters 25 and 26 respectively, since the sonar supervisor was not sure if either one was Master 24. Reconstruction would have to sort it out later. Without hesitating, the OOD ordered his section fire-control tracking party manned, Mack went to the sonar room.
"Good job," Mack said, unaware that they had failed to detect the Kilo that was in the area of Masters 25 and 26. "Anything else out there?"
"Not that we can tell yet, Captain," the sonar supervisor said, "but those two contacts are loud. We can hear them aurally, so there could be more ships operating in the area."
Mack left the sonar room and went back to the control room. The BSY-1 operators had a rough solution on range, about 30,000 yards.
At Cheyenne's current speed of ten knots. Mack would soon be within range to launch his Mk 48 ADCAPs at the Chinese contacts. When he got closer, he would