SSN

    Beneath the surface, operating twenty miles away from the carrier on either side, were the USS Bremerton and the USS Columbia. These submarines were playing defense to Cheyenne's ASW offense. They waited just far enough away from the carrier to not be affected by the group's noise while staying close enough to attack incoming threats such as Romeo class submarines armed with shorter-range torpedoes. Both Bremerton and Columbia were aware that the newer Akulas carried several long-range torpedoes, including the 65cm Type 65 wake homing torpedo, which had a range in excess of fifty nautical miles. These longer-range threats would have to be handled by Cheyenne or the S-3 Viking aircraft.

    On board Cheyenne, Mack was well aware that he would need to take care of the most dangerous ASW threats to Independence. The Akula submarines would be hard to detect and had weapons that could attack the carrier from long distances. He would have to take special ~™ tn H^I Ť,;th rhfise threats, even if it meant letting the noisier, less dangerous Romeos and Mings slip by, leaving them for Bremerton and Columbia to handle.

    Word passed rapidly throughout the Battle Group that evidence strongly suggested that the Chinese task force had arrived at the Spratly Islands and was now beginning to refuel. That told Mack that the battle was about to begin.

    Cheyenne was in perfect position to launch her Tomahawk cruise missiles at the refueling warships and their piers, but Mack agreed with the Battle Group commander's decision not to. Not even Cheyenne could have taken out all sixty ships, and launching her Tomahawks would have given away Cheyenne's position. That would have risked exposing her to any Akulas in the area, and hampered her in her ASW mission.

    Mack would have liked to go after the Chinese ships while they were still no threat to the Independence Battle Group, but he agreed with the decision. He would wait, silently, until the enemy submarines began to show up on his sonar consoles.

    Cheyenne wasn't the only U.S. asset in the area with Tomahawks on board. The USS Hewitt's entire Mk 41 vertical launch system had been loaded with sixty-one land-attack variants of the Tomahawk cruise missile. And as the Chinese ships steamed into the Spratlys, Hewitt received orders to launch her missiles.

    Within several minutes, Hewitt's entire arsenal had been fired and the Tomahawk missiles headed, at low altitude, for the Spratly Islands.

    By now, USCINCPAC had provided the ships in the area with extremely accurate digital terrain data of the islands. This intelligence, combined with the accuracy of the Tomahawk's GPS, ensured an unprecedented accuracy when the Tomahawks arrived at their destination.

    Forty-six minutes later the Tomahawks arrived at their targets. One by one the missiles impacted, giving the Chinese their first indication that perhaps the attack on the carrier Independence was not such a good idea after all.

    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.