Search and Destroy: A World War 3 Techno-Thriller Action Event by Nick Ryan

Author:Nick Ryan [Ryan, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-11-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7:

For almost thirty hours, Oklahoma City ran south at over twenty knots until she lay fifteen miles off the eastern tip of Zhujiajian Island in the Putuo Sea. Coe studied the plot with the Nav at his shoulder and pointed to a cluster of small islands and atolls that lay further to the south.

“Here,” he described a small patch of ocean with his finger, sixty nautical miles to the southwest amongst a cluster of small Chinese islands dominated by Jiushan Chain Island. The location would place the American submarine fifteen miles due east of Baisha Bay and well within striking distance of coastal shipping routes.

The Nav re-plotted the course and the Assistant Navigator, the XO and finally Chris Coe concurred. The Oklahoma City crept further south with four hundred feet of ocean above them, moving more cautiously now that they were approaching fleets of small commercial fishing craft.

Captain Coe stepped over to the Navigation Plot and stood beside the Officer of the Deck. His expression became a frown of thoughtful contemplation. The submarine’s track showed Oklahoma City running southwest and passing to the north of Maluan Island.

Captain Coe prowled the conn for several minutes, moving about the confined space like a haunting ghost. Finally, he came back to the Officer of the Deck.

“OOD, let’s slow her down for thirty minutes.” As he spoke, Coe re-checked the time. In half an hour the Midwatch would be on. “I want to put the thin line out.”

“Aye, sir,” the OOD answered, then raised his voice and barked instructions. “All ahead one third and make turns for seven knots. Man stations to deploy the TB-23.”

The order was echoed several times.

“COW, inform maneuvering that we are deploying the TB-23,” the OOD added.

After running at high speed for so long, the sudden diminished hum of the submarine’s reactor coolant pumps being set to ‘slow’, and the muted sounds of the propeller made the conn seem eerily quiet. The crew felt the 688 shuffle in the ocean as she decreased speed.

Coe waited until the towed-array was deployed, paid out from a receiver in the port horizontal stabilizer. The TB-23 Thin Line Towed Array was a sophisticated acoustic detector, with a hydrophone array over nine hundred feet long, towed on a two-thousand-foot length of cable. The TB-23 was specifically designed to detect very low frequency noise at very long ranges.

After just a few minutes, the sonar supervisor clamped his hands over his headphones and then leaned forward to closely study the glowing screen in front of him.

“Conn, sonar. I’m picking up a faint contact.”

The Executive Officer was the first man to reach the sonar station. Richard Wickham studied the display for several seconds, then turned to Coe.

“It appears to be a Chinese flotilla or convoy, Captain,” Wickham said, pointing to a wide arc of broadband towed array contact on the screen bearing zero-four-two or three-two-eight. “It’s a cluster of ships, probably five or six at a guess, travelling south.”

Because the towed array’s ‘beams’ were conical-shaped cones emanating

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