174 Break through the Blockade

The damage was simple. Almost all of the integrated blocks in the circuit had been broken through!

It was a common problem now so designers had to take some precautions when designing the site such as adding a voltage regulator circuit and a current limiting resistor to protect the power supply, and so on.

When the technicians took the ground wires between each part of the circuit apart, they found that most of the ground power of the integrated block had low resistance to the ground. This illustrated that a number of integration blocks had been burned.

"Pulsed electromagnetic waves?"

"High-pressure shock waves?"

"An electronic bomb?"

Sabin was caught in a tangled situation. Was the submarine carrying some of its country's newest weapons and swimming deep to test its capabilities?

Which country's submarine is it? Japan? China? Russia?

No matter which country it is, since the other party could break through layers of strict anti-submarine blockade to come here, then it means that its stealth performance is excellent. If they could make it float out of the water, they could seize the submarine fair and square, and then let the foreign ministry delay ten to 15 days and use the precious time to study the new technology!

"Someone get me through to Djibouti's operational command department immediately!" Lieutenant General Sabin tidied his collar and strode towards the command room.

............

As the saying goes, "the most dangerous place is often the safest place." Chen Fan endured his pain and controlled the electric eel to slowly move forward into a coastal city eight kilometers away called Tadjoura. He hid there under a seaport wharf.

Eight kilometers usually would have taken a few minutes for the electric eel to reach. Now it took an hour to reach the dock, where he almost fell down in the mud.

Biting the tip of his tongue to keep himself awake, Chen Fan hurriedly mobilized the electric eel's electromagnetic wave to stimulate the body tissue to recover more quickly. If he waited until early in the morning, he was afraid the terminal will be dyed red with blood and the world news coverage would read, "...found the body of a great unknown monster on the Djibouti port…"

Weakness and drowsiness were like two dragons raging in Chen Fan's mind, constantly torturing his nerves. After only ten minutes, Chen Fan's head tilted sideways and he quickly fell asleep. Fortunately, the bleeding of the electric eel's wound was not serious. The flow was almost clean due to the blood clot formed on the surface of the wound. After about ten minutes of stimulation, the bleeding stopped.

It was hard to describe the intense comfort of sleep; it was better than holding an attractive woman.

The electric eel was asleep, but the French naval and air force base in Djibouti was too busy. This is because the head office ordered the strait to be closed at all costs, and if the submarine escaped, all the officers would be demoted by two ranks. They had a very simple goal, which was to keep the submarine in the harbor and then wait for it to run out of supplies. It would then have to rise to the surface.

There were many ways to block a submarine during a war, but if they wanted to intercept a submarine in peacetime, they had only one or two options. One was putting mines everywhere. Another was to use a large number of submarines to intercept. However, the ruby-class nuclear attack submarine docked at the naval base, along with three other conventional power submarines, would not be sent out to carry out this mission.

There were closely packed mines, the strait was directly blocked by the military, and all the ships inside had to stay where they were.

The mines these days were no longer the single-purpose mines that existed decades ago. They could not only actively identify the acoustic signature of submarines that had been input but could also recognize the passing of ships and submarines in the water. The inductive mines could detect small pressure changes. Others were self-navigating mines, remote-controlled mines, soft mines, and many other types of mines.

It took Chen Fan a good 16 hours to recover from his sleep, and by the time he had transferred his mind to the electric eel, its wounds were already covered with red and black scabs. It tickled and it made him felt like scratching.

Along with the scabs was the inexhaustible weakness, the lack of food for more than 20 hours, and the amount of energy it took to stimulate healing. The hunger was severe. It had an urge to bite its own claws and devour them.

"Eat!"

That was all the electric eel had could think!

The wound took a night to heal and without large movements, it might not split again. The electric eel surveyed the surroundings carefully and found no ships around. Then it slowly went toward the central channel.

Tut...Tut...Tut...

When it had just eaten a dozen-meter-long whale, an AS565SA Panther anti-submarine helicopter passed over the sea at 30 meters level height. The shocked electric eel immediately froze on the seafloor.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The anti-submarine helicopter dropped a cylindrical-shaped sonar buoy 20 centimeters in diameter and half a meter long just two kilometers from the cabin.

A call from the headquarters came over the helicopter's radio. "Black Panther, Black Panther, any underwater targets?"

"Reporting command, no suspicious targets found for the time being!"

After three days!

43:0711°42'N and 43°07'E, at 2:00 am local time...

After three days of shelter and recuperation, the electric eel's injuries had mostly recovered. Only a little pain remained but nothing serious.

During these three days, there were anti-submarine helicopters passing by above the electric eel from time to time. Anti-submarine patrol aircraft also flew over, but it was not a big threat for the electric eel. The ship that could use the active sonar detection to find the electric eel was not currently sailing. After all, the "submarine" was equipped with an unknown weapon that could destroy the sonar.

When the electric eel crept two kilometers away from the mine's lock line, Chen Fan had only one thought in his mind. Were these crazy people's mines copied and pasted using a computer?

There were three layers of anti-submarine networks. At the bottom were self-submerged mines; at the middle were anchor mines; and at the top were floating mines, not to mention submarines. It would not be a problem to block even whales in this area.

One hundred meters was usually the best range between mines for attacking submarines. For warships, 20 meters was the best distance between mines. Beyond that distance, a mine could damage the ship, but it would not necessarily sink it.

The electric eel was now two kilometers from the mine lock. If he detonated it within that range, would the shockwave knock him out?

Well, let's find the spear first! Chen Fan hesitated for a moment, then controlled the electric eel to move to the area where the mine exploded.

Previously, the electric eel threw away the 40-ton spear to save time fleeing the explosion.The violent explosion's shockwave at that time not only blew the electric eel away, it also blew away the spear.

With the electric eel's sharp vision, the spear was quickly found. It had been blown more than 700 meters away by the shockwave, and was now slanted into the mud on the seabed.

Looking at the spear stuck in the mud, a brilliant idea flashed through Chen Fan's mind. What if Chen Fan dug a hole to hide the mine?

The shockwaves would be absorbed by the earth. At a distance of two kilometers, it would be weakened by the earth. The impact energy transferred to the electric eel would never be a threat!

With a few wiggles, the eel swam a distance of 1,800 meters from the locking. The electric eel put down its spear and gently dug a large hole in the seafloor with its claws.

How loud was the sound of the electric eel digging? Well, it was below 40 decibels. And what is the acoustic signature of a quiet submarine that is very good at being quiet while doing its job? It's 90 to 100 decibels.

How many decibels can sonar pick up in the ocean?

It must above 90 decibels, because the noise in the ocean itself was 90 decibels. If it were less than 90, the strange noise would be covered by the ocean itself!

As for the decibels that the electric eel emitted as it swam, they were much lower—almost no more than ten decibels. Because sound travels differently on land than in water, 100 decibels on land equals about 44 decibels under water!

After digging the hole, the electric eel completely buried itself in it. Its four claws clung firmly to the earth and it took two deep breaths!

Boom...

The blue light emitted from the electric eel's body spread to the mines in 0.01 seconds. More than 600 volts immediately flowed through the iron casting primer detonator and intruded inside. It first lit the chamber and detonator, then detonated the high explosive weighing 1.2 tons.

Rumble... rumble… the area in the distance was densely covered with more than a dozen mines, resulting in a loud roar within an instant!

How frightening were the effects of more than a dozen torpedoes exploding?

The electric eel felt as if the earth and the sky had collapsed, and a shockwave that seemed to tear everything apart swept across thousands of meters of sea.

"Ah!" Secondary Sergeant Tamifei was at the radio station's nearby. After seeing the water soar up into a water tube several stories high, his jaw dropped. He could not believe his eyes.

After about ten seconds had passed, Tamifei slapped his face, not sure if this was a real event. He felt dizzy and grabbed the radiotelephone and exclaimed, "Bad news, sir. The mine block network we placed five kilometers south has suddenly exploded!"

"What?" The commander of the naval base in Djibouti was immediately panicked. Is the submarine crazy? It had been blocked here for just a few days, and now suddenly wanted to dash through the mines?