SSN - Tom Clancy [96]
At the naval bases where the Chinese task force was refueling, many of the piers where the ships were pulling in to be refueled were completely and utterly destroyed.
In all, twenty-three Chinese ships and submarines were destroyed outright. The explosions and fires resulting from the Tomahawks wreaked havoc on the fircfight-ing efforts of the small damage-control contingents at each of the mini-bases.
Ten more fast attack craft and four submarines were soon destroyed in secondary explosions also caused by the Tomahawks.
All in all, following the American Tomahawk attack, the total Chinese task force of sixty-two naval vessels was cut down to twenty-five ships, including eighteen surface ships and seven submarines: three Romeos, two Mings, one Kilo, and a single Akula. Of the eighteen surface ships remaining, not all of them had the fuel to fight the Americans and then return to China-but that didn't matter. The order came down from above that all twenty-five ships would fight-whether they had enough fuel or not.
Win or lose, many of the Chinese sailors would not be coming home from this battle.
Cheyenne's sensitive sonars picked up the sounds of destruction as Hewitfs Tomahawks found their marks. These noises were followed almost immediately by the distinctive sounds of the surviving Chinese submarines running out to sea.
Mack ordered Cheyenne to proceed to periscope depth. Once there, he radioed Independence, alerting her that the Chinese vessels had started in her direction. When that had been done, Mack manned battle stations and took Cheyenne back down to a safer depth.
"Conn, sonar," the sonar supervisor reported, "we've got far more than a dozen contacts headed in this direction."
"Sonar, conn, aye," Mack said. "Make tubes one and two ready in all respects, including opening the outer doors."
As was standard aboard Cheyenne, all four of her torpedo tubes were already loaded with Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes. She was now preparing to use them.
Cheyenne was waiting at a distance of about one hundred miles west of Ladd Reef, one of the westernmost points in the Spratly Island chain. Independence was operating two hundred miles west of Cheyenne'& position, three hundred miles from Ladd Reef.
The Chinese navy was not rated among the world's finest. As Mack listened to the reports coming in from his sonar supervisor, he could see why.
Active sonar was good for in-close work. Used properly, active sonar could give a competent submariner an effective firing solution, map a minefield, or help navigate an unfamiliar trench. Used poorly, in the hands of incompetent or inexperienced sailors, active sonar was the equivalent of hanging a target on the side of your ship and inviting the enemy to fire.
That's what the Chinese were doing as they sped toward the Independence carrier group. Many of the oncoming surface ships were pinging away with their active sonar, obviously searching for American submarines.
Mack was delighted. He could hardly believe it when Cheyenne's TB-23 thin-line array picked up faint signals that matched the variable-depth active sonar fitted to the new Chinese Luhu destroyers. The Chinese ships were too far away to detect Cheyenne, but their active sonar was illuminating their own submarines and providing Mack with both range and targeting data on the Chinese. Nearly thirty minutes passed before the active sonar source got close enough for the BSY-1 to decipher its range from the bearing rate.
"Captain," the sonar supervisor reported, "it's definitely coming from a Luhu destroyer. BSY-1 range is 88,000 yards to the pinging Luhu, bearing 092, but sonar isn't picking up any other signals yet."
Mack thought to himself that the Luhu, designated Master 98, must have been the first Chinese vessel to leave the Spratly Island chain after the Tomahawk cruise missile attack. He was sure, however, that it wouldn't