The 737 had picked up the emergency blip while they were still two hundred miles from shore. It was not a signal from the Destiny. Air Command ordered them to investigate the signal directly before searching the sea for traces of the submarine. It could be from the vessel they were investigating. It might tell them something about Senior Captain Chien’s quarry. AC also felt that if the submarine had managed to surface, any survivors might be with the Americans.
The aircraft dropped to five thousand feet and started to turn southeast when they neared the coast. The pilot did not want to be headed toward the mountains at that height. The crew’s reconnaissance officer was using a Remote Observation Binocular System to search for survivors and wreckage. The left eyepiece received input from both thermal-imaging data, to detect personnel, as well as a scanner that used fluorescence to detect iron. Heat showed up in red, iron in green. The right eyepiece was a natural-light magnifier. By looking into both, the observer was able to conduct three kinds of reconnaissance simultaneously.
The recon officer was sitting at right angles to the pilot, directly beside the navigator. He picked up a series of thermal signatures before anything else. There were three, he told the pilot, plus several faint clicks from along the shore. They were in a small section of the coastline less than one square mile. The plane descended to four thousand feet. In less than a minute the recon officer had them in visible light. He boosted the right-side magnification to twenty, shutting the left eyepiece, which was set at ten-times magnification. He locked onto the coordinates and shifted to computer control. The binoculars, whose optics ran through the bottom of the fuselage, would now track the sector automatically as the aircraft moved by.
The three individuals were not Chinese. They were dressed in civilian parkas. The Destiny manifest listed nothing like that. The two who were waving at the aircraft were men. The sex of a third, lying in a ditch, could not be determined. It was warm, however, and alive.
Everything the binoculars saw was recorded digitally for further analysis. The remains of the vessel would be of particular interest to the Chinese Ministry of State Security, to whom the reconnaissance officer was reporting directly. However, they could do nothing for the people themselves. They could only report their position and hope that either someone would come for them or they could hold out until the Chinese vessels arrived.
The 737 went out to sea to search for traces of the submarine. They found none. There were no fluid leaks, no discernible wreckage, no bodies. There was also no hint of a heat signature. But that was not surprising. If the submarine was below forty meters, any radiant heat would be so diffuse in the cold sea as to be undetectable.
After circling the sea for nearly two hours, the 737 made another pass along the shore. The changing position of the sun would alter the shadows, possibly bringing out other details for the binoculars, specifics about the wreckage that forensic analysts might find useful. The submarine had apparently struck the vessel these men had been on. How and why might help them locate the submarine and prevent such incidents in the future.
The stranded men waved again, even more vigorously than before. They had to know they had been seen: The plane only crossed the section of shore where they had made their camp. Perhaps the men were attempting to thank the aircraft. In times like these, hope was as valuable as supplies.
After the low, slow pass, the 737 turned from the polar coastline and climbed back toward its cruising altitude. Fuel considerations made it impossible for the aircraft to stay any longer. The navigator contacted the Il-76 air tanker to arrange coordinates for refueling.
It had been a long trip for relatively little data. But “little” was not “nothing.” The crew knew that reconnaissance was not a job for the greedy or impatient, qualities that apparently have been lacking in whoever had commanded the operation in these treacherous waters.