RED ON RED

1

USS Pasadena, East China Sea, 200 miles SSW of Qingdao

It had already been a long and dangerous deployment for the attack submarine Pasadena and here, at the end of it, Commander Mark Castillo was especially determined to be careful. Tired men made mistakes, and on a submarine, mistakes could be fatal.

It was a chilling truth that Castillo had recently seen in operation, up close and personal.

This was what he was thinking as he popped his head into the darkened closet that was Sonar and studied the sharp emerald lines that sliced through the waterfall display. The constant murmur of the ocean and its creatures showed up as a gentle green static that moved from top to bottom on the screen, giving the display its name. Sharp lines signified something else.

Something manmade.

The sonar watch supervisor was STS2(SS) Jimmy Busfield, a rail thin kid from the Texas panhandle. The boy crouched on the edge of his chair, staring intently at the display, hands pressed to his earphones. The ghostly glow of the screen colored his face pale green.

“Sovremenny?” Castillo asked, wondering if the intel report from the latest satellite broadcast was right.

Busfield looked up. “Oh, mornin’, skipper.” He pulled the phone off his left ear but kept the other one on.

One of the other sonar techs on watch glanced back but kept his phones on. The rest never turned around.

 “Yessir,” said Busfield. “She’s a Type 956, one of the skimmers the Russians sold the Chinese ‘round the turn of the century.”

Castillo smiled at the use of the word ‘skimmer,’ a sign of the casual contempt American submariners felt for their surface cousins. To a submariner all surface ships were either skimmers or targets. “Who is she?”

“Computer makes her Fu Zhou out of Qingdao.”

Castillo frowned and sipped iced Coke from a navy mug. That was what most amazed his crew about him. Not that he was a second generation immigrant from the bad part of Denver who had risen to command one of the U.S. Navy’s silent killers nor that he graduated from Mines with degrees in Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering, but that he’d gotten through an eighteen-year naval career without learning to drink coffee.

The situation plot in Control showed the destroyer moving south-southwest toward the Taiwan Straight and intel reported a fleet of amphibs and surface combatants gathering off Qingdao. The Chinese were setting up a major exercise. The report said that they were calling it AUTUMN HATCHLING, supposedly in honor of their newly designated national bird, the red-crested crane.

Castillo thought the name was apt for another reason. From where he stood HATCHLING looked to be a mock-invasion of Taiwan and it was clear that the Chinese hadn’t yet figured out the finer parts of amphibious ops.

At least not the ASW part.

“She’s a picket,” said Castillo.

Busfield nodded. Officially sonar techs weren’t privy to tactical intel, but the theories flowed freely in Control and Castillo knew that Busfield was smart enough to guess that Fu Zhou was running south ahead of the main invasion fleet.

“Has she made us?” asked Castillo.

Busfield shook his head. “That’s a big negahatchy, skipper. We’re under the layer and Sovremennys don’t have much in the way of sonar. She doesn’t even have a tail.”

Castillo nodded. Fu Zhou wasn’t much of a threat to submarines, even a tired, old 688-boat. She didn’t have a towed-array sonar that she could drop below the thermocline, the layer of water where the sharp temperature drop shielded submarines from surface sonar. Better yet, the Sovremenny’s only ASW armament was four 21-inch torpedo tubes. The new Chinese government had just purchased three Udaloys, destroyers plenty capable of hunting submarines, but thankfully they hadn’t taken delivery from the Russians yet.

Pasadena had drawn easy duty in tracking the destroyer during the exercise and Castillo was glad of it. It had already been an eventful WESTPAC. His crew was ready to return to Pearl.

Crew fatigue worried Castillo a lot more than the emerging Chinese exercise or even the tropical depression moving in from the south. There was no room for mistakes on a submarine. As if to underscore that fact, the Russians had lost a Victor III, the Daniil Moskovskiy, six weeks before in these very waters.

One of the Victor’s torpedoes had spontaneously lit off, opening her to sea. The torpedo room had flooded in less than a minute. The additional weight in the bow had pulled the submarine down nose first, throwing men and equipment around. When the Russians finally tried to blow ballast it was too late. Someone managed to get the first water tight door shut and dogged, which arrested the flooding, but which trapped the sailors in the forward compartment. Then Moskovskiy settled on the bottom.

Pasadena had been first on scene and they’d heard it all. Before the Russians had warned her off, they could hear the sound of trapped men banging on the hull and crying for help.

The Russian Navy deployed a DSRV out of Vladivostok. It took them sixteen hours to arrive, but the Russians refused assistance from both American and Japanese naval units. Working around the clock the Russians managed to bring up 54 of the 98-man crew.

Castillo shook his head. The best way to avoid a similar fate was to focus on the present. “What else can you tell me about the destroyer?”

“She’s on course one nine three, 28 knots, I’d guess she has a full bell on. Her port screw’s cavitatin’. Probably time for an overhaul. Shift change was about 45 minutes ago, I could hear doors slamming and toilets flushing.” Busfield grinned. “Anything else you’d like to–”

The smile suddenly disappeared. He snapped the left ear-phone back on and his eyes darted back to the display. He toggled the 7MC switch. “Conn, Sonar. I have a subsurface contact.”

Castillo swore silently to himself. He stepped out of Sonar and called, “All stop.”

“All stop, aye aye, sir,” answered Lieutenant, j.g. Bob Glazer, the officer of the deck. “All stop.”

“All stop, aye,” answered the helmsman, who leaned forward and rung up all stop on the engine order telegraph. A second later a bell rang and the indicator matched the ordered speed. “Maneuvering answers all stop.”

Castillo’s jaw set. He’d had a two-thirds bell on, making turns for eighteen knots, radiating noise into the East China Sea like nobody’s business.

There was no reason to believe that Fu Zhou had heard them with her bow-mounted sonar, but a submarine was quite a different matter.

Castillo poked his head back into Sonar. “What do you have, Busfield?”

“She’s quiet, skipper. No reactor pumps.” He met Castillo’s eyes. “I’d say a diesel boat running on batteries, making turns for five, six knots, bearing three two zero.”

“Range?” asked Castillo, already knowing the answer.

Busfield shook his head. “I’m gonna need a turn, skipper.”

Castillo sipped his Coke. So was this a Chinese boat running interference for the destroyer or was this another hunter after the same quarry as Pasadena?

“Is she a Dolphin?” Intel reported that two of Taiwan’s four Dolphins were at sea. Undoubtedly, the Taiwanese would take great interest in the People’s Liberation Army Navy force assembling in the East China Sea.

Busfield screwed his eyes shut, listening to the soft whisper of the submarine’s propeller. His forehead glistened with sweat. “No, sir, not a Dolphin. Blade count is wrong.” The sonarman opened his eyes. “I make her a Kilo.”

Damn. That made her Chinese. How had he managed to get caught with his shorts down? The Russian-built Kilo was a very capable platform. Silent and heavily armed she would be a deadly adversary.

Castillo was tall for a submariner, six foot even, with dark eyes and skin the soft color of bronze. His father was Anglo, but his mom was Mexican (Castillo’s maternal grandmother had called him Marcos Castillo Martinez until the day she died) and he favored his mother.

He was good-looking enough to turn womens’ heads, but too much of a boy scout to ever notice. He was entirely devoted to his wife Dianne and their three children.

Castillo’s face had a way of taking on a sharp edge when he was thinking hard. The lean muscles in his jaw tightened, his brows hunched together, and his dark eyes smoldered. It was a look that often unnerved people, and Castillo was thinking hard now.

Castillo stepped back into control and caught Glazer’s eye. “Bare steerageway. Come to course three three seven.”

The OOD repeated the order and the Pasadena slipped ahead to three knots, the minimum speed at which the boat could hold a course. The helmsman put the wheel over and began a slow, ponderous turn.

Castillo didn’t know where the Chinese boat was and if he used active sonar he’d give away his own position. All passive sonar would tell him was a direction. But if he turned, it would give him a baseline to triangulate the Kilo.

“Man the fire control tracking party,” ordered Castillo.

The OOD and his watch team began plotting information on the Kilo, trying to pin her down. Tense minutes ticked by. Castillo looked over Glazer’s shoulder as the OOD worked out the problem and checked it against the BSY-1’s solution. He looked up. “She bears three one three at 4,000 yards.”

Something was wrong. Castillo lined the ships up in his head, the Chinese destroyer to the north, but moving south-southwest, the Chinese Kilo drifting toward the surface ship.

Of course.

She was lining up to take a shot.

“I need a course on the Kilo, right away,” said Castillo.

Glazer frowned at him. “What do you think it is, Captain?”

Castillo smiled. “I think we’ve stumbled into the middle of a Chinese war game.”

It was the only thing that made sense. If AUTUMN HATCHLING really were a dry run-through of an invasion the Chinese would simulate Taiwan’s response, and Taiwan’s first line of defense was its four American-built Dolphins armed with Mk 48 ADCAPs.

The PLAN had few effective ASW assets. It would be easy enough for the Taiwanese to pick off China’s troop carriers one-by-one. No invasion would be successful unless the Chinese learned how to conduct effective ASW ops.

If that was the goal of this exercise, the captain of the Fu Zhou had failed miserably. He wasn’t zigzagging and he was moving slowly enough that the diesel boat had been able to get into prime firing position.

After a few minutes, Glazer said, “The sub’s on course zero five two.”

Castillo nodded. Just as he thought. He toggled the 7MC. “Sonar, Conn. Do you have an ID on the Kilo?”

“The computer doesn’t have a match,” answered Busfield’s voice. “She must be one of the new ones, 376 or 377.”

“Will you be able to hear her if we move out of the layer?”

“As long as the TACTAS is deployed we can hear her.”

The Tactical Towed Array Sonar was a string of hydrophones attached to a long cable. Pasadena could rise above the thermocline and still listen below using the towed array.

The Kilo had played a good game but she’d lost. (To Pasadena at least. There was still no indication that Fu Zhou knew she was there.) If she moved the U.S. sub would hear her with her tail. If she stayed where she was they could use set and drift to calculate her position. And the nuclear-powered 688-boat had the advantage of time. Eventually the diesel-powered Kilo would have to come up to snorkel. When that happened Pasadena would have her.

Castillo gave his OOD a wolfish grin. “Take her up to pee dee, Mr. Glazer. I want to see this.”

Glazer smiled back. “Aye, aye, Captain. Diving officer, make your depth six-two feet.”

The diving officer, a torpedoman chief, leaned forward and barked several orders. To his left the chief of the watch adjusted the ship’s trim using the ballast control panel. The helmsman and stern planesman pulled back on their control yokes. Pressurized air flushed ballast water to sea while hydraulics angled the bow and stern planes up. Water streamed over the submarine’s control surfaces providing lift.

Pasadena started to rise.

Castillo reached up into the overhead and grabbed an EAB manifold, anchoring himself as the ship took on a distinct up angle.

There was no doubt how this encounter would turn out. The Kilo had the destroyer dead-to-rights. It was always fun to watch a submarine get the better of a skimmer. One of Castillo’s proudest moments had been when he’d slipped into the middle of the Reagan battle group during a RIMPAC and gotten close enough to snap pictures of the mess cranks throwing garbage off the carrier’s stern.

Castillo set his Coke down in a cup holder and went to the periscope stand. He began searching for a shadow in the water, turning round and round, his face pressed to the periscope, sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

Rising toward the surface was the most dangerous evolution a submarine ever conducted. Castillo only had a sketchy idea of the surface picture and it wouldn’t take a very big freighter to send his submarine straight to the bottom of the East China Sea.

The periscope broke the surface and Castillo’s quick three-sixty revealed only the Chinese destroyer. He estimated her target aspect as port bow. Moboard told him she was three thousand yards away and closing. Like the Kilo, Pasadena was lined up for a nice shot.

And the destroyer still didn’t know they were there.

Castillo smiled. This was the perfect opportunity to give his crew a little practice. “OOD, develop a firing solution on the Chinese destroyer.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

The 7MC blared to life. “Conn, sonar, the Kilo’s flooding tubes.”

Castillo tensed. He briefly considered the possibility that the Kilo was going to take a shot at Pasadena, but it just didn’t make any sense. Even if China were preparing for a real invasion instead of just conducting an exercise why would they commence hostilities before they had all their forces in place? No, the Kilo had to be trying to rattle them.

Castillo’s hands tightened on the periscope grips. The Kilo’s captain would find that it would take a lot more than an open torpedo tube to shake Mark Castillo.

“Conn, sonar,” shouted Busfield, “I have a high speed screw in the water.” Panic edged the young man’s voice.

The rapid high-pitched pinging of the torpedo’s active sonar filled Control.

“Fish in the water,” shouted the OOD.

Adrenaline surged through Castillo’s body. Fish in the water. Tube two was set up for a snapshot. He could release his own fish, deploy countermeasures to decoy the Chinese torpedo, and crash-dive beneath the layer.

But he had only seconds to decide.

And if he fired on a Chinese vessel without provocation he’d start a war.

“Doppler shift on the torpedo,” yelled Busfield.

“That’s affirm,” said the OOD. “She’s opening. Bearing three zero zero. Three one zero. Three two zero.”

Of course. Castillo took a deep breath. “The fish is meant for the destroyer.”

Glazer looked at him with a blank face.

“It’s an exercise round, lieutenant.”

A relieved smile crossed Glazer’s face.

Instead of high explosives, this torpedo was armed with a suite of sensors. The exercise round would track the destroyer’s movements as she tried to evade the attack, but it wouldn’t explode.

Castillo reached forward and toggled the 7MC. “Sonar, Conn, we believe the fish to be an exercise round.”

“Conn, Sonar, aye.”

Castillo leaned into the periscope but he closed his eyes and said a quick Hail Mary. Thank God he hadn’t taken that snapshot.

He opened his eyes. The Chinese destroyer had finally figured out she was being stalked from below. She kicked up a rooster tail of white spray as she turned her stern toward the torpedo and put on flank speed.

It wouldn’t save her. The max speed of the Test-71 torpedo was forty knots. The best the destroyer could do was thirty-three. The destroyer’s fate was governed by an equation whose variables were time, speed, and distance, and the solution set was rapidly converging.

“Surface contact executing a hard turn and coming up in speed,” said Busfield.

“I see it,” said Castillo softly. He could see the fish’s wake now as the weapon closed the destroyer. There wasn’t anything that could save the Fu Zhou’s captain now. He’d have some explaining to do to his squadron commander during debrief. That was one after-action report Castillo was glad he wouldn’t have to write.

“Second torpedo in the water,” shouted Busfield. “And the Kilo’s moving.”

Castillo frowned. A second exercise round? That couldn’t be right. He was about to turn and ask the OOD what Busfield had said when the first torpedo hit.

A fountain of flame and spray erupted from the destroyer’s stern. The shock wave followed seconds later, a deep angry rumble that shook Pasadena like she was a toy. Castillo grabbed the periscope to keep from falling.

“That was a war shot,” shouted the Chief of the Watch.

“Get me bearing and range to that fucking submarine,” shouted Castillo. “Do it now.”

He looked back in his periscope just in time to see the second fish hit. The torpedo struck the destroyer amidships, breaking her in two. By Castillo’s count it took fourteen seconds for both halves of the broken ship to slide smoothly beneath the sea.

He flicked the periscope grips up. “Where’s the Kilo?”

Glazer glanced at the diving officer.

“Where’s the Kilo?” Castillo roared.

“We lost her,” said the OOD. “In the noise of the explosions.”

Castillo clenched his jaw and stabbed at the 7MC. “Sonar, Conn.”

No response.

“Sonar, Conn.”

Castillo pushed through the Sonar room door. Busfield lay slumped over his console. One of the young techs leaned over the petty officer, his eyes wide with fear. “You OK, Jimmy?”

 Castillo shouldered the panicked seaman aside and ripped the headphones off Busfield’s head. A thin trace of blood marked the boy’s ear. He must’ve had the gains turned all the way up.

Busfield blinked and looked up. “Skipper?”

Castillo swore under his breath and stabbed the 7MC. “OOD, get the corpsman up here. And a relief sonarman.”

The boy had been stunned by the sudden sound of the concussion amplified by Pasadena’s sonar, but he’d be OK. That was more than Castillo could say for the poor bastards on the destroyer.

Castillo stepped out of Sonar, a man whose nice orderly world had suddenly gone straight to hell. A Chinese submarine had just sunk a Chinese destroyer. “Kilo?”

Glazer shook his head.

There might be survivors on the surface. Castillo’s responsibility under maritime law was clear, but the Kilo was still out there somewhere and if she would sink one of her own who was to say she wouldn’t take a shot at an American SSN? He couldn’t conduct rescue ops and hunt an enemy submarine at the same time.

His ship had circled impotently as the men trapped in the forward compartment of the Moskovskiy slowly died, their desperate tapping growing fainter and fainter as he listened. Castillo squeezed his eyes shut, drew a deep breath, and made his decision. He opened his eyes and said, “OOD, surface the ship.”

“Sir?” said Glazer.

“You heard me,” snapped Castillo. “There are men dying up there. Sailors just like you and me.”

Glazer turned away. “Surface the ship, aye aye, sir.”

Castillo stabbed a button on the 7MC. “Radio, Conn. Get out here, Chief.”

RMC Frank Borkow stepped out of Radio. “Do you want to send a distress signal, skipper?”

“Not now, Chief,” snapped Castillo, his voice wavering with emotion. “I have flash message traffic for the National Command Authority.”

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