The twilight patriots, p.1
The Twilight Patriots, page 1
THE TWILIGHT PATRIOTS
(formerly titled The Sunset Patriots)
By Charles D. Taylor
A Gordian Knot Thriller
Gordian Knot is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2015 by Charles Taylor
Copy-edited by: Patricia Lee Macomber
LICENSE NOTES
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Meet the Author
Charles Taylor is the bestselling author of thirteen naval action/adventure novels, primarily featuring the nuclear submarine service and the U.S. Navy SEALS. After serving as a Naval Reserve destroyer officer in the Atlantic and Caribbean, he followed a career in both educational and literary publishing. He currently divides his time between summers in Wyoming and winters on the Caribbean island of St. Croix.
Book List
Boomer
Choke Point
Counterstrike
Deep Sting
First Salvo
Igniter
Shadow Wars
Shadows of Vengeance
Show of Force
Sightings
Silent Hunter
Summit
The Twilight Patriots (formerly titled The Sunset Patriots)
War Ship
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This book is dedicated with love to my wife,
Georgeanne
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Much more than an author is necessary to complete a book.
This one would have been difficult without Candy Bergquist’s typewriter and patience, technical assistance from Commander Stephen H. Crane, U.S. Navy, personal glimpses of China from Emile Coulon and Arch and Jeannie McGill, Russian translation and insights from Peggy Coleman, and assistance in opening the closed port of Vladivostok from Lynn H. Loomis, the Map Room of Widener Library at Harvard University, and Captain W. M. McDonald, USN (ret.).
I am bothered by books that take place in faraway places with exotic names, yet fail to show me visually where the author is taking me. Alice W. I. Loomis was kind enough to prepare the map in the front of this book—even pinpointing Petaiho, which only the Chinese know of.
Equally appreciated is the willingness of friends who allowed me to borrow their names: Bob Miller became a character in this one from his help with my first book; twenty years ago, as young naval officers, Ted Magnuson and I exchanged tales of the Atlantic and Pacific and today he is the author of one of my favorite adventure novels, A Small Gust of Wind; and Tom Loomis, the last of the true tilters at windmills, is a much softer and more loving person than the character in this book.
Every word of Triple Murder that appears in chapter twelve was written by Jack Darby after his release from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma—”taking a shot” at becoming a writer as he put it to me. He never achieved that goal but it was one of the few he missed. As a real life adventurer and world traveler until his last days, he fancied being a character in this book. Jack died on September 14, 1981 in Auckland, New Zealand, before he could ever see himself in print. He was a fine and good friend and I think he would have liked the fictional rogue, Jack Darby.
The Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute continue to be an invaluable source for all my work.
And, it meant a great deal to me that Dan Mundy and Dominick Abel had no qualms about casting a critical eye my way.
UBSDQ
“We should lure the enemy to penetrate deeply into our territory … For victory, we must not hesitate to surrender some parts of territory … all This so the Red Army can hold the initiative …”
“It is possible to live on nothing but a furious hope.”
“Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Chairman Mao, 1893-1976
“Freedom costs, and it costs more than money. I paid four years of my life … and I never had a better bargain.”
Herman Wouk
DECEMBER 1984
PROLOGUE
At first, it appeared as a fleeting shadow on the ocean surface, perhaps a cloud. The Chinese pilot, his anti-submarine patrol plane in a gentle descent, circled lazily over the newly constructed oil platforms, the pride of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). On the second pass, the cloud assumed a shape, cigar-like. Cloud shadows were larger. Then he realized there were no clouds in that perfect, brilliant sky. Something ruffled the placid surface.
At almost the same instant, his radar operator reported a contact… one sweep … two sweeps … a solid contact right on the pilot’s visual bearing, possible snorkel … too small for a surface craft.
Contact lost! The pilot saw the shadow, now close off his port wing, disappearing, growing fainter. But there was no doubt about his contact. Submarine! Enemy submarine! No Chinese boats were reported in this area of the South China Sea.
A frantic call to Zhanjiang, South Sea Fleet Headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) brought an immediate response. A torpedo boat, already nearby, rose gracefully onto its hydrofoils and was vectored to the area. Perhaps intelligence had been correct. Soviet subs had finally penetrated a secure sector. They must be sunk!
The little boat, flitting on top of the calm sea at over fifty knots, occasionally dipped a bit to port or starboard. The crew, at battle stations, held on tightly with one hand, the other shielding their eyes from the sun’s radiance, the brilliance merging the horizon of sea and sky.
The oil platforms shimmered ahead like islands, their decks in contact with the surface. Then their legs began to show. In moments, they grew out of the sea like trees.
The captain, dropping her binoculars for just a second to use the radio, tapped the helmsman on the shoulder, pointing just to the left of the bow. The wheel turned ever so slightly. The boat changed course almost unnoticeably, heeling slightly to port.
A sailor next to the captain shouted, pointing almost directly ahead of the bow at a plane lumbering slowly over the water only a few hundred feet in the air. Smoke floats appeared, marking the placement of the sonobuoys in the water. They were spread in a large, uneven circle miles in diameter. Somewhere inside that circle was the invading submarine.
The captain, her expression resolute, reached for the control lever, pushing it forward slowly, allowing the boat to gently decrease its speed. Retracting its hydrofoils, the hull settled gradually into its natural habitat, bow dipping slightly to the waves. It heeled a bit now as she steered for the center of the circle.
The plane swept out to the flank of the string of sonobuoys, banked sharply, then came in low over the water. The boat captain heard the pilot clearly over the radio. The sonobuoys had the contact located exactly, the magnetic detector on the plane’s tail confirming there was a submarine desperately trying to escape. They knew it had to be a conventional boat with diesel engines. A nuclear sub would already have departed the area at high speed.
The plane banked to the outside of the circle, then swept back in again. This time, the boat crew saw an object tumble from the aircraft, immediately followed by another, then a third. Water rose into the air from the depth charges.
The plane turned toward the outside of the circle, running parallel to the invisible line of explosives it had dropped. The boat moved slowly toward the spot the plane had attacked as calm temporarily returned to the surface. The crew knew that a submarine was frantically maneuvering underneath, seeking a new course and speed and depth even before the splash of the depth charges announced the attack.
Then came a deep rumbling from the ocean. The surface lifted perceptibly for a moment, foaming white, then erupted into an immense geyser lifting tons of water hundreds of feet into the sky.
A second followed, then a third, the last bursting forth even as the first began settling. The aircraft turned down the same line again, coming in lower than before, dropping three more depth charges in a positi
The boat, on command from the pilot, picked up speed slightly, turning toward the roiling waters. This time, the pilot did not make an attack run, instead coming in low to determine the effect of the depth charges.
The boat captain listened carefully to her radio. There was oil on the surface. One of the depth charges must have been close. But there was none of the flotsam that normally surfaced from a sub breaking up. The pilot reported a shadow, vague at first. Then he could identify the long, narrow craft struggling toward the surface. It had to be seriously wounded, its crew terror stricken, desperate to escape a watery grave.
Suddenly, there it was, popping from the water like a cork, out of control. The plane could not complete the job of finishing off the sub as well as the patrol boat could. The pilot ordered the small craft to attack.
Torpedoes were set for just ten feet of depth. The attack was simple. The submarine didn’t appear to be moving. From five hundred yards the first fish was fired, and then a second, both at point blank range. The run was short, much less than a minute. The first torpedo hit forward of the sub’s sail as some of its crew were tumbling out of the hatch in the conning tower. The explosion lifted the sub’s bow into the air, the bullnose completely out of the water for just a second. Then the blast rolled over the craft, shaking men from its sides, enveloping the boat with cascading water. The sound of the explosion followed, cracking across the water, blotting out all sound on the patrol boat.
The second torpedo somehow missed, but it wasn’t needed. The sub was already settling bow-first into the ocean, its stern lifting slowly, almost gracefully like a diver. More men scrambled out of a hatch in the after section. The captain gave an order and her boat moved closer to the sinking craft, her machine guns already chattering. No survivors were desired. No pity was felt for the invading sub or its crew. Anger replaced the logic of returning with a prisoner.
A small raft was inflated. The sub’s remaining sailors frantically tried to launch it from the side opposite the patrol boat. The captain swung around the sub’s stern, now high out of the water, allowing her machine gunners to rake that side. The remaining survivors, desperately scrambling for any safety, were hit again and again, the heavy bullets smashing them into the deck, tossing them in bits and pieces into the water.
Then there was quiet. No human beings were moving. The boat slowed down and the captain and her crew watched the sub slide, slowly at first, then more rapidly as the angle increased, toward the bottom of the South China Sea, the ocean it had no right to have been found in.
The pilot and the captain spoke again briefly on their radios. The plane waggled its wings in salute, then headed just slightly south of west, back to the Zhanjiang headquarters base.
Captain Li Han went from sailor to sailor, saluting each of her crew in turn. This was the first Soviet vessel sunk in Chinese territorial waters, and they had faithfully performed for the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Republic of China. This should be a lesson to the Soviet forces increasingly in evidence in the seas surrounding their peaceable country—when the Russians learned that one of their subs was missing.
But, the attack and probable loss of that sub was already known. When the sub floundered to the surface, it managed to radio position and the desperate situation, not knowing if it could hold out. Immediately, the Russian carrier lurking to the south of the island of Hainan launched jet fighters.
The hydrofoils lifted the victorious patrol boat free of the ocean’s surface, the engines roaring at full power to carry the heroes back to base, to the welcome they had earned. The sun, now past its zenith, was in her eyes as the captain headed her boat west toward their base. The fifty knot speed would have them home by midafternoon.
Li Han was startled by the hand tapping her helmet. Turning, lifting her binoculars in the same motion, it took no time to locate the jet fighters coming in directly astern. They were already in the last stages of their approach, the lead plane close to the surface, the other slightly higher.
Frantically, Captain Li Han grabbed the wheel, yanking it hard to the left, the boat instantly heeling to port to avoid the closing aircraft. But the boat’s little weapons were no match for the large rapid-fire guns of the jet, and the boat was bouncing too much to shoot accurately.
The lead jet had no such problem. The pilot saw the splash of his shells, adjusted his stick minutely, and watched the track in the water follow the wake of the boat. The splashes reached the craft. Wood and metal flew as he raked one side of the boat, tearing apart the starboard gun crew as he passed over.
Instantly, the second jet was on them, following the wake of the patrol craft as the captain frantically swung her rudder to starboard for a few seconds, then back to port. Her plan worked, briefly. The high speed jet was approaching too fast and only a small number of shells hit the boat. But those bullets found their mark, hitting the sailor next to Li Han, spinning him off his feet, then over the side. The captain momentarily lost control as the panel disintegrated in front of her, miraculously leaving the steering gear intact.
Now the third plane was upon them, this time firing rockets that clawed jagged chunks out of the deck before destroying the port gun and its crew. There was no longer any method of defense, no matter how meaningless. The captain threw her wheel over again as deadly shards of metal flew in every direction, cutting down her crew. A series of shells from a fourth jet ripped the bow completely off.
A diesel engine coughed and stopped. A second sputtered, then caught on again, only to race out of control as its shaft broke. One engine continued, but it couldn’t push the craft through the water at anywhere near the speed the boat needed to remain on its hydrofoils. The slowing of the boat was gradual at first, as was the settling effect. The captain could no longer swing her rudder. The remnants of her crew huddled on the shattered deck of the boat, the terror of impending death reflected in their eyes.
The first Russian plane completed its circle and was making a second run on the patrol boat, machine guns blazing, bullets ripping into boat and bodies with equal ease. The captain’s voice ripped from her chest in a loud scream of rage and hatred. She knew in her heart that the aircraft would show no more mercy than she had to the submarine. Without feeling initial pain, she was thrown to the deck by the impact of a heavy caliber bullet tearing into her shoulder. The roar of a jet engine competed with the sound of her command breaking apart as she became aware of her own blood spurting across the deck.
The boat was settling, canting to port as water surged into the hull where the bow once existed.
Captain Li Han rose slowly to her feet, lifting her body with her good arm, the other hanging by shiny tissue from the remainder of her shoulder. There was no movement on deck. She gazed blankly at the torn bodies amidst the wreckage of her proud little boat. As another jet swooped down, she attempted to turn the rudder, anything to evade the incessant tearing sounds, the exploding of the rockets around her. Something struck her right hip. She lost her footing for a moment then recovered, noting calmly that there was still no pain. Yet the blood on the controls was her own. With her left hand she turned the wheel, but there was no response. Her boat was dead in the water, the cant to port increasingly rapidly.
She was slipping in her own blood, unable to stay on her feet. Another thump on her side spun her around, knocking her torn body into the jagged remains of a torpedo tube. Looking up, she could see the jet bearing down, tracer bullets spurting from its wing guns, ripping into her boat, her command, the first PLA boat to sink an enemy submarine!
Her last thoughts were of the happiest days of her life and of the handsome American who had loved her. Once again, she saw the moon over the beach at Petaiho, the shimmering sea. “I love you, Ben,” she whispered.
Through the haze of blood in her eyes, she was aware of the line of bullets bursting up the deck toward her.
