SSN - Tom Clancy [9]
What this amounted to was that the Chinese submarine had gone active on the American submarine and both submarines now had an accurate firing solution. Mack didn't expect the Chinese captain to let this opportunity slip away. The Han was currently outside its own torpedo range, but that could change rapidly.
"Conn, sonar, the Han just started up again. It's making turns for twenty-five knots, sounds like she's really straining. They are closing quickly."
Captain Mackey reversed course to minimize the range closure white he ordered tubes one and two made ready in all respects.
"Torpedo room, fire control, make tubes one and two ready in all respects and open the outer doors."
When the outer doors were open, Mack turned back toward the Han and increased speed to full. Both submarines were headed straight for one another in an underwater game of chicken that could potentially ignite a third world war.
"Conn, sonar, we have a torpedo in the water! Type SET-53, bearing 163. It's active, Captain."
"Range to Master 1 is 21,000 yards," reported the fire control coordinator.
Mack looked around his control room. There was a look of horror in the eyes of the young sailors who had not yet been in the Navy for six months. "All stop," he ordered.
"All stop, aye, sir," the helmsman repeated. Seconds later he added, "Maneuvering answers all stop."
The normal procedure for countering a torpedo was turn and run, flank speed, in the opposite direction. This was not, however, a normal situation.
The U.S. intelligence community had managed to secretly buy three of the Chinese type SET-53 homing torpedoes from the Russians in a not-so-friendly transfer of technology. From their various tests, they had determined that the maximum range of the SET-53 was five nautical miles, or 10,000 yards. Even building in a large margin of error by doubling that range to ten nautical miles, or about 20,000 yards, Mack knew that there was simply no way that the Chinese torpedo could hit Cheyenne.
It did, however, make Captain Mackey furious, and not just because this was an act of war against the United States by a Chinese submarine. More than that, this was an aggressive action against him, his submarine, and his crew.
Cheyenne was not in any immediate danger-not yet, at least. Just in case, however, the captain calmly ordered, "Rig ship for depth charge."
The Chinese captain had put his submarine in a very bad position. The Chinese leaders, wanting to demonstrate their power to the Americans, had given Han 402 orders to attack American submarines and surface ships operating in the area. The 402's captain was following his orders faithfully but he didn't believe those orders included suicide. And he knew all too well that attacking a Los Angeles class submarine was tantamount to suicide. If he could manage to get in close enough to attack Cheyenne, he would do so. If not, he would follow his orders and launch at whatever range he felt he could without getting himself killed, and then he would dive deep and hunt for American merchant ships.
When the active "pings" revealed Cheyenne's location, the Chinese captain realized that he had given away their location much too far away to effectively attack the Americans. With their own location revealed, closing with Cheyenne would put the Han at serious risk, which meant that his only real choice was either to simply turn and run or to first shoot at the Americans and then turn and run. The first option appealed to him the most, but the second option was what his