The Art of War: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

he’d assumed command of Utah that he’d had the luck to latch on to a nuclear-powered boat. The Chinese diesel-electric subs were noisy on the surface and easy to follow because they couldn’t go very deep and they had to surface, usually at night, to recharge their batteries. The difficulty level rose geometrically, however, when two or more of them operated together. Chinese nukes, on the other hand, spent more time in port than they did at sea, probably because their reactors were unreliable and the boats needed copious maintenance.
    “What’s the name of this boat?” someone asked. Research in the ship’s computers couldn’t come up with a name, merely a hull number in the class.
    “It’s a Chinese military secret,” the chief of the boat decided.
    “The Great Leap Down, ” the XO quipped, so that is what she became to the American crew sneaking along behind her.
    Hanna and his officers had been ecstatic four weeks ago in the South China Sea when they realized they had a nuke on the hook. Then the ecstasy faded and mystification set in. The Chinese sub didn’t stooge around the South China Sea or the Gulf of Tonkin, or head for the Taiwan or Luzon Strait. She submerged, worked up to eighteen knots and headed south.
    Occasionally, at odd times, the Chinese captain would slow down and make ninety-degree turns to ensure no submarine was behind him, its noise masked by his propeller, and he would maintain that slow speed for a while to listen, “clearing his baffles.” While he did that, Utah, in trail, also listened. The Americans wanted to ensure that their boat wasn’t being trailed in turn by a Chinese or Russian sub. No, except for the Chinese attack sub and Utah, the depths were empty.
    After a half hour or so, the Chinese sub resumed cruising speed. A half hour to listen, then go. The routine must have been on the Plan of the Day. On a similarly predictable schedule, the Great Leap routinely slowly rose from the depths and descended again, no doubt checking the temperature and salinity of the water at various levels, and once poking up her comm antenna for a moment, probably just to receive message traffic from home.
    Captain Hanna and his officers remained alert. Russian subs occasionally used a maneuver known as a “Crazy Ivan” to try to detect trailing U.S. submarines. The Russian sub would make a 270-degree turn and come back up its own wake, trying to force any trailing sub to maneuver quickly to avoid a collision, which would make noise and alert the Russians to the trailing boat.
    Yet the Chinese maneuvered only to clear their baffles. The Great Leap Down held course to the south. Rounding the swell of Vietnam, the course became a bit more westward.
    The noise the Chinese boat made appeared as squiggles, or spikes, on computer presentations. The sonarmen designated the unique noise source with a symbol, then recorded and archived it. A movement of the noise source left or right meant the contact was turning; up or down, ascending or descending; getting quieter or noisier, slowing or speeding up. Following it required care and concentration, made easier by the fact that every maneuver the Chinese sub made changed the frequency of the sound. Taking on or discharging water to change her buoyancy, speeding up or slowing the prop, moving the rudder—all of that was displayed instantly on the sonar computer screens in Utah ’s control room.
    “My guess is she’s headed for the Strait of Malacca,” the navigator said to Captain Hanna, who was standing beside him studying the chart.
    “Into the Indian Ocean?”
    “Well, maybe.”
    Hanna seemed to recall that at least once before a Chinese boomer or attack boat had passed through the Strait of Malacca into the Indian Ocean. Normally they stayed in the western Pacific to intimidate their neighbors and strengthen Chinese demands for complete control of the China Sea. Yet this one was on a mission, going somewhere. As the navigator had predicted,