SSN

    Somewhere in the central Pacific, a Chinese Luda class destroyer sat quietly, dead in the water. One hundred meters below it lay its partner in crime, a Romeo class diesel attack submarine. Their mission was simple: sink as many American vessels as possible. They had heard the news of China's losses in the Pacific Ocean, so they were pleased to detect a merchant ship, The Southwest Passage, an American merchant vessel two days out from Japan, en route to one of the Hawaiian Islands.

    The merchantman was not a big ship, but she was flying the American flag, and that made her a target. As soon as The Southwest Passage came within eighty miles, the destroyer captain launched one of his two Harbin Z-9A helicopters in order to confirm the identity and nationality of the ship.

    The merchantman did not, at first, realize the danger she was in, and her captain kept her on course. When the Chinese helicopter finally buzzed the bridge, however, he radioed their observations in to the U.S. Navy and received orders to alter their course to avoid, as the Navy radioman described it, "a possibly life-threatening situation."

    Unfortunately for the merchant ship and her crew, it was already too late. Without warning, three Chinese HY-2 missiles, variants of the Silkworm surface-to-surface missile family, came streaking across the sky, directly into the hull of The Southwest Passage. All three impacts came within seconds of one another, two in the aft section of her hull, the third closer to the bow.

    The Southwest Passage went down like a rock, not even pausing to break up. All hands were lost, most of them dying in the explosions.

    Aboard the Chinese destroyer, the captain was well pleased with the results. They had struck back successfully at the Americans, Even better, he had used only his destroyer in the attack. With luck he would be able to keep his submarine a secret, saving it as a surprise for a bigger fish, perhaps even a U.S. warship.

    Having just passed Midway Island, Cheyenne was about to begin turning southward when she received word of the attack on The Southwest Passage. Since getting underway submerged from Pearl, Mack had maintained the floating wire communications antenna streamed to get any information that the Navy might wish to pass along to them. He had expected intelligence updates, and information on the latest developments, but he hadn't been expecting news like that.

    According to the message, the attack had occurred due south of Cheyenne's current position. The coordinates were located approximately one day's travel at full speed-or about a day and a half at their current rate of twenty knots. Mack didn't hesitate. His orders allowed him some latitude, and he was prepared to take full advantage of that.

    Reading the message a second time, he gave the order to turn Cheyenne and head full speed toward the destroyer's reported position. In the absence of a formal declaration of war, the Chinese government would undoubtedly brand the destroyer a renegade. Which was fine with Mack. He intended to bring them to justice… American style.

    Twenty-six hours later Cheyenne received her second surprise. They had picked up a target, but it wasn't the destroyer. Instead, there was another signal masking the one they'd expected.

    Sonar quickly identified it as a diesel submarine, Romeo class. The Chinese submarine must have been having a problem with her snorkeling system because she was recharging her batteries on the surface-and making a tremendous amount of diesel noise in the- process. It was another two hours before they picked up the Luda destroyer running at about thirteen knots.

    Mack ordered battle stations manned. "Quite a day for going hunting, don't you think?" he said to the diving officer.

    "Sure is, Captain. It's not often you find an enemy submarine on the surface with its pants down like this one."

    For targets such as these, the Harpoon surface-to-surface missile-or, in this case, submarine-to-surface missile-was without a doubt the weapon of choice, especially since both the Chinese submarine and the destroyer were operating so noisily. Cheyenne was able to determine their positions precisely and easily, something that was highly uncommon at this distance.

    "Conn, sonar. Master 11 is bearing 013. Master 12 is bearing 002." Master 11 was the Romeo-class submarine; Master 12 was the destroyer. Neither of them had any idea what was about to be sent their way.

    Over the next ten minutes, the BSY-1 computers were able to determine rough ranges of forty-three nautical miles to Master 11, and forty-two nautical miles to Master 12. Cheyenne didn't need the actual range. As long as the targets were within reach of the Harpoons, it was the accurate bearings that counted.

    Mack was pleased with the target acquisitions. "Torpedo room," he called from the conn. "Remove the torpedoes and reload tubes two, three, and four with Harpoons. Leave an ADCAP in tube one."