The suwalki crisis, p.29
The Suwalki Crisis, page 29
He studied her face for a moment. “What do you think, Chief?” Whittemore asked. “You think I’d lead us on a suicide run?”
“Honestly?” She didn’t even blink. “Not a chance, sir. I believe in this boat. I believe in our robotic swim buddies. And I believe in this crew. We’ve taken every crazy thing the Navy’s thrown at us and made it work. We’ll figure this out too.”
Some of the tightness in Whittemore’s chest eased at his COB’s vote of confidence.
“Thanks, Chief,” he said. “For saying it out loud. Even the skipper needs to know he’s making the right call.”
“Always, sir,” she said. “But talk from you would lift morale.”
Whittemore nodded, then straightened, his decision made. “All right, COB. Pass the word. Any hands who can be spared from watch—meet in the crew’s mess in forty-five minutes. I’ll walk them through what we know, what we don’t, and how we’re going to win this next fight.”
“Aye, Captain,” she said. “They’ll appreciate that.”
As Whittemore turned toward the passageway, he paused and looked back. “Mr. O’Malley,” he called to the OOD, using the junior lieutenant’s name, “you have the CT.”
“I have the conn, aye,” O’Malley replied.
Whittemore caught Delgado just as the XO was coming back from the chart table.
“Rafe, one more thing,” Whittemore said. “When you talk to your division officers, make sure they’re telling their people the truth.”
“Yes, sir,” Delgado said. “About what, specifically?”
“About what they did off the Batanes,” Whittemore replied. “They didn’t just stop a landing on a few islands. They saved American Marines, Filipino sailors, and a lot of Taiwanese who would’ve been under that same air umbrella in a week. They helped keep a hostile fleet boxed inside the First Island Chain for another day. That matters.”
As Whittemore stepped through the watertight door toward his stateroom, he hoped he was making the right decision. A wrong move in their world was seldom recoverable.
When he reached his stateroom, he felt as if it had shrunk in the time he’d been gone. Like the walls were closing in on him. Brushing the thoughts aside, he sat at his fold-down desk, pulled out the battered notebook he kept separate from the official log, and let it fall open to a blank page. For a moment, the words escaped him. As he picked up the pen, the words took form and he began to write.
*******
PLA Navy Type 093B SSN Changzheng 15
West Philippine Sea
180 Miles Northeast of Palawan
Captain Luo Feng stood in the control room of Changzheng 15, studying the three-dimensional tactical display with the patience of a hunter who’d spent twenty years stalking prey through these waters. His Type 093B nuclear attack submarine—one of the PLA Navy’s most advanced boats—had been holding station at four hundred meters for the past six hours, listening.
“Captain, our HSU-002 has picked up something,” Senior Lieutenant Gao called from the UUV control station. “Bearing zero-four-seven, range approximately sixty thousand meters. Intermittent contact, very faint.”
Luo stepped to Gao’s console, eyes narrowing at the waterfall display showing acoustic data streaming back from the deployed HSU-002 reconnaissance drone. The large-displacement UUV had been patrolling a wide search pattern northeast of their position, an unmanned trip wire for the Southern Fleet carrier group bound for Palawan.
“Classification?” Luo asked.
Gao worked the controls, pushing the signature through their AI-enhanced acoustic library. “Unknown submerged contact. Low-frequency tonals consistent with…” He paused as another line of data populated. “Virginia-class reactor plant. Confidence seventy-eight percent, sir.”
Luo felt his pulse quicken. A Virginia-class. After the Batanes setback—Type 055 destroyer Changsha mission-killed, four battle barges destroyed, the invasion force forced to turn back in humiliation—Beijing had been clear: find the American submarines before they found the Palawan task force.
“Range estimate?” Luo asked.
“Approximately fifty-five thousand meters and closing,” Gao replied. “Contact is heading southwest at an estimated sixteen to eighteen knots. Current course will bring them into the Palawan operational area in roughly thirty-six hours.”
Luo walked back to the master plot, running the geometry in his head. The Americans had bloodied the Batanes task force with coordinated submarine and air strikes, using their drones and torpedoes like a scalpel. Now the Southern Fleet’s main effort—three carriers, three dozen surface combatants, the pride of the PLA Navy—was driving toward Palawan to lock down the southern throat of the First Island Chain.
And somewhere out there in the dark water, an American submarine was hunting them.
“Captain,” his executive officer, Commander Wu, said quietly at his shoulder. “If this is the same boat that hit Changsha, they’re dangerous. Their UUV tactics, their coordination with carrier aircraft… Captain Shen did everything by the book, and they still tore his task group apart.”
“Shen relied too much on his surface screen,” Luo said, keeping his tone respectful. Shen Tao had been a rival at the academy, but even rivals deserved honor when wounded in battle. “He assumed the Americans would behave like they did a decade ago. He was wrong.”
Luo turned to the sonar supervisor. “Update HSU-002’s tasking. Put it on this contact’s track. Passive trail only. I want continuous course, speed, and depth estimates. No active pings. Do not let them realize they’ve been detected.”
“Yes, Captain. Uploading new mission parameters now.”
“XO, draft a priority signal to Southern Fleet Command,” Luo said. “Route it through the quantum-encrypted channel. Report probable Virginia-class submarine inbound toward the Palawan operating area. We are in contact and will maintain covert surveillance.”
Wu nodded and moved to the communications position.
Luo studied the plot again, thinking three moves ahead. The American captain—whoever commanded that Virginia-class—had shown skill off the Batanes. But here, the Southern Fleet had the initiative. Carrier air wings, ASW helicopters, surface action groups, and now forward warning from his UUV net.
“Captain,” Gao called. “HSU-002 is adjusting course to shadow the contact. Maintaining standoff at fifty thousand meters, just outside their likely detection envelope.”
“Good. Maintain continuous monitoring,” Luo said. “I want updates every fifteen minutes. And make sure HSU-003 is ready for launch. If this American boat makes any aggressive move toward the carrier group, I want options.”
“Yes, Captain.”
The control room settled into the focused quiet Luo preferred during stalking operations. Low voices. Deliberate movements. Every man on watch aware that somewhere ahead, an enemy submarine moved through the same black water—confident, and for the moment, blind to the fact it had been found.
Luo allowed himself a thin smile.
The Americans believed their submarines and unmanned systems gave them an untouchable edge. Off the Batanes, they had been lucky and well prepared.
But Changzheng 15 had been waiting for them.
“The hunt begins,” he said softly. “Steady as she goes. Maintain contact. Silent running. Let’s see where our American friend intends to go.”
In the depths of the West Philippine Sea, two predators now moved along converging paths, each testing the other’s reach with machines and mathematics. The battle for Palawan would begin here, four hundred meters down, long before any carrier launched a fighter.
And only one submarine would reach the main fight with the element of surprise still intact.
Chapter Twenty-Two:
Hell in the Bering Sea
30 April 2033
0302 Hours Local
USS Intrepid (DDG-145)
South of Shemya Island, Bering Sea
GIDEON’s threat board bled red over the western Aleutians.
Shemya’s radar icons winked out one by one, tiny green diamonds going black under a wash of inbound tracks. Each impact showed up as a hard spike on the log, then a smear of static.
“Latest battle damage assessment from Eareckson,” Commander Walsh said, voice flat. “Primary search radars gone. Secondary’s limping. Comms farm is on fire.”
Captain Asa Trammell shook his head once. He kept his hands locked behind his back so they wouldn’t drum on the CIC rail. The deck thrummed under his boots as Intrepid rode the next swell. A bulkhead creaked somewhere behind him as the hull flexed.
“How many people still left out there?” he asked.
“Minimal skeleton crew,” Walsh said. “Five they told us stayed behind. Everybody else went east two nights ago with the last C-17s.”
“Five stayed,” Trammell repeated.
“They knew the risks,” Walsh said. “They chose to keep pushing radars and comms as long as they could.”
Trammell watched the last Shemya icon blink to gray.
“Get them out of your head,” he murmured. Louder: “Show me the assault package.”
The main display recentered. The EDEP joint task force sprawled across half the Bering, a dense knot of red hull symbols and aerial tracks—the forward slice of two-thirds of the PLA North Sea Fleet and most of the Russian Pacific Fleet. Closer in, a smaller formation peeled off from the main body, sliding toward Shemya.
“Local amphib group,” Lieutenant Commander Alice Meilof said from the TAO console. “GIDEON’s ID confidence is high. One PLAN LHD, two LPDs, six Ro-Ros, one Russian helicopter carrier. Screened by one Type 055, two 052Ds, three Type 054A frigates and a modern Russian Gorshkov. Couple of older escorts and at least two oilers in trail.”
Four hundred miles overhead, a US reconnaissance satellite painted the stormy sea in ghost-green overlays. On the Ops floor, tiny triangles bloomed off the LHD’s stern—helos spinning up on deck. LCAC icons blinked into existence as they nosed out of well decks and started to fan toward the island.
“It’s a smash-and-grab,” Walsh said. “Crater the runways and sensors, land a regimental slice on the ruins, then turn Shemya into a forward SAM and logistics node. Once that’s up, they pivot big guns and helos toward Adak and Saint Paul.”
As he spoke, the island chain to the east glowed. GIDEON shaded in Adak with layered blue rings—Marine A2/AD batteries, NASAMS, HIMARS, Navy and Air Force radars stacked atop a Cold War outpost rebuilt into a modern forward fortress during the new Pacific pivot.
“Attu’s gone,” Meilof added. “Last Global Hawk run and the latest satellite pass both show PLA and Russian flags over the old LORAN site. SAM masts going up along the ridgelines. No friendly signatures anywhere.”
Damn, we should have found a way to make ’em pay for turning Attu and Shemya into stepping stones for Adak and Dutch Harbor next.
Intrepid rolled under him as she cut across the wind, engines steady at fifteen knots. Trammell widened his stance and rode the motion out, boots scraping a fraction across the deck as he kept his hands still locked behind his back. Above, her SPY arrays sat cold, slabs of dead metal against darker sky. Every instinct in Trammell wanted them set ablaze.
“Are we still off their plots?” he quizzed, hoping the weather was still working to their advantage.
Lieutenant Mason Matsin, GIDEON liaison and ACV officer, glanced over from his console. The red light of the battle stations made his face look hollow, eyes reflecting the composite picture. Trammell had met his father, Mick, years ago—a retired warrant, now a key player with the Taiwan Study Group. Like father, like son—Mason now controlled the Navy’s warbots, preparing for battle in the Bering Sea.
“For now, yes, sir. GIDEON’s confidence is about seventy percent that they still don’t have a firm track on us,” Matsin said. “Weather’s garbage, sea clutter’s high, and our emissions are buried in the noise floor. Their search patterns are all biased toward Shemya and Adak. As far as their picture’s concerned, we’re just background.”
“Good,” replied Trammell. “Then we use that. Show me our swim buddies. I want to see how we have them deployed.”
A second layer bloomed on the screen. Blue icons rippled out from the Intrepid, highlighting their autonomous combat vessels.
Stormwatcher-2 and -3 rode ahead and slightly abeam, their mastheads painting thin, low-power cones across the dark sea.
Doomhammer-1 and -2 drifted further back, squat stacks of vertical cells in composite hulls, almost stationary, ready to unleash a fury of cruise missiles when ordered.
Closer in, smaller marks twitched and shifted like nervous fish beneath the waves and riding just above them.
“These are our Seeker XLUUVs and Zealot autonomous surface vessels,” Meilof explained as she pointed to them. “We moved our Seeker and Zealot hulls toward Attu and Shemya ahead of their operation to get them in position. We’ve kept them in low-profile mode, emissions tight until we’re ready to unleash them.”
“What’s the loadout for the Seekers?” asked Trammell.
“Copperhead-500M torpedoes,” Meilof replied. “Quiet, long-range. They’ll hurt ’em.”
“And the Zealots?” he asked.
“Each Zealot’s carrying two quad-packs of improved Hellfire-class ATGMs,” she answered. “They also have a pair of MANPADS. If the fight gets personal, they have a suicide charge in the bow to ram a ship with. For now, the Zealots’ squawking radio traffic mimics that of a local fishing vessel.”
Walsh snorted in amusement. “Deadliest Catch’s best-armed crab ships in the Bering Sea.”
A few people laughed at the comment. Trammell remembered watching the show as a kid when it had first aired.
“OK, people, here’s what we’re going to do,” Trammell said. “We can’t stop the landings or this EDEP task force from hurting our people or seizing these islands. But we damn well can punch them in the face and bloody their nose. When this wave assaulting Shemya gets closer to the shore, we’re going to hit it. I want our UUVs to hit their amphib ships with their Copperheads, Hellfires against LCACs and landing craft, and MANPADS for those helos. As to the rest of their ships, I want the Doomhammers and our own missiles to go after the supply vessels, oilers, and other Ro-Ros. If we can score a few hits against some of those destroyers or frigates, all the better, but supply, oilers, and Ro-Ros have more strategic value in this fight than those combatants’ ships. Understood?”
“Aye, sir. We’ll move the Stormwatchers into a screening position now. Once the missiles fly, it won’t take them long to figure out our location and begin firing back,” Walsh explained. “They’re our best shot at staying in the game and punching back.”
Trammell nodded. He knew the enemy would try to overwhelm their defenses, and it wouldn’t be hard. There was only so much a single Arleigh Burke destroyer could do against a force that outnumbered them by thirty to one.
Matsin spoke up from his display. “GIDEON’s running attack patterns, Captain. It’s treating this as a magazine trade—our autonomous rounds for their high-end SAMs and CIWS cycles. We might not be able to sink the North Sea Fleet tonight. But we can force them to expend a lot of missiles early in the fight. This will force them to withdraw to rearm in a friendly port and that buys us more time for help to arrive.”
“That’s the idea, Lieutenant,” Trammell acknowledged, glad to see Matsin’s head was solidly in the game. “TAO, you and your watch standers retain veto on every firing solution. No black-box shots. GIDEON recommends, we decide, got it?”
“Aye, Captain,” Meilof confirmed.
The deck shuddered as Intrepid eased a few more degrees onto the intercept heading. CIC lights dimmed a shade as power shifted toward supporting the autonomous combat systems.
“Range to the Shemya group?” Trammell asked.
“Down to fifty-two nautical miles,” Meilof said. “The LHDs and LPDs are five miles off the coast. We got positive ID on the helos and LCACs inbound to beach from an overhead ISR bird courtesy of the Air Force.”
On the screen, green triangles peeled off the big red hull, angling toward the smoking island. Behind them, LCAC icons edged out, fan trails drawn as faint gray cones.
“Set engagement zones,” Trammell said. “Seekers engage at will. Unleash the Zealots. Let’s see what kind of damage we can inflict before they hit the beach.”
Meilof worked her console, conferring with operators to port and starboard. Translucent blue rings bloomed around the Seeker icons. Smaller, tighter arcs wrapped the Zealots.
“Autonomous weapons are engaging. Enemy just detected them. They’re reacting,” Meilof called out as they watched the threat picture continue to evolve.
On cue, new inbound red tracks streaked toward the Zealots. Antiship missiles fired from the escort vessels engaging them.
Intrepid’s hull groaned as another swell battered the ship. Somewhere, a mug slid on a console lip as someone snatched it with a muttered curse.
On a side pane, Adak flickered. Blue and red icons tangled there—missile traces, Marine positions, NASAMS shots bracketing incoming.
“How hot is Adak getting?” Trammell asked, his eyes watching the two battles unfold at the same time.
“Hard to say. The PLA fired some cruise missiles at them, but it looks more like it’s more probing fire. Likely trying to see what kind of defenses they have,” Walsh explained. “You can see the Marines answering. They just fired a string of NASAMS at them. This isn’t the main show, not yet, sir.”
“Good, maybe we can thin out some of those ships’ magazines before they hammer Adak with it,” replied Trammell.
“Copperheads are inbound. Seekers are attacking,” Meilof announced as they watched their underwater attack dogs go to work.
On the Shemya pane, Copperhead traces slid closer to their targets. One torpedo curved up toward the larger PLA helicopter landing ship’s stern. Another was zeroing in on a PLA landing transport dock, similar to a US Navy San Antonio–class vessel. Two more torpedoes angled for an escort frigate and a Russian helo carrier.
