Alpha Strike

CHAPTER 10

“Now just how the hell do we explain this to Seventh Fleet!” Tombstone shouted into the receiver. “This was supposed to be routine FON ops — how many times do I have to explain that to you? Do you think that includes lighting up a foreign national’s aircraft? With fire control radar? Do you suppose he and his government might take the slightest bit of offense at that? Damn it, Killington, that’s a violation of every known rule of peacetime engagement!”

“And because my ship was ready, I’m talking to you now, Admiral! With all due respect, if you are ordering me to compromise the safety of the Vincennes, I decline.” Captain Killington’s voice was coldly self-righteous.

Tombstone glanced across the desk at the JAG officer, a lawyer with extensive expertise in international maritime. The JAG shrugged and nodded.

No help from that corner, Tombstone thought. I know as well as he does that no Board of Inquiry will ever blame him. That SOB is damned lucky he got shot at! The end justifies the means, in this case. But it’s entirely probable that he provoked the whole incident.

“I better not see a single action that can possibly be interpreted as aggressive out of you,” he warned Killington. “You’ve damned near gone over the line this time.”

“If I had, you’d have already relieved me,” Killington snapped. “And if you’re certain I have and you don’t, then stand by to join me at that long green table, shipmate. Because if I go down, you’re going with me!”

Tombstone slammed the receiver down and flung himself back away from the desk. The bitch of it was that Killington was right. If he relieved the man of command now, Killington would claim that he’d energized his fire control radar in self-defense. And if he didn’t, he would appear to condone any subsequent actions by the Aegis cruiser CO.

“You’re taking notes,” Tombstone said finally to the JAG officer sitting quietly across from him.

“Yes, Admiral. For what it’s worth, I don’t envy your position.” The JAG officer shook his head. “Either way, we’ve got problems. Can you afford to take the chance that he was right?”

“At this point, I’m going to. My gut tells me not to do it, but I’m going to leave him in command. Maybe the Navy knew what it was doing when it gave him command, maybe it didn’t. For now, I’ll trust the selection boards — if not Captain Killington himself.”

Tombstone leaned forward and punched the intercom button for CAG. Captain Cervantes answered up immediately.

“CAG, get me some air-power up there. I don’t want any repeats of the Stark business.”

As the JAG left the office, Tombstone glanced at the Western history book still open on his coffee table. As surely as Wyatt Earp had known what awaited him at the OK Corral, Tombstone knew that the battle group was standing into danger. If the Chinese wanted a shoot-out in the South China Sea, he’d be damned if he’d show up unarmed.

Onboard Jefferson, life suddenly became simultaneously much simpler and more complicated. Most of the more restrictive rules of engagement had just gone out the window on the trail of the submarine’s cruise missile, uncomplicating the maze of determinations a commander needed to make before launching weapons. However, the logistics of getting enough metal into the air to protect the carrier battle group more than made up for any simplification of the battle group’s engagement status.

The flight deck boiled with technicians. Red-shirted ordnance technicians hauled yellow gear to waiting S-3B and ASW helicopters, manhandling the torpedoes up to the weapons stations on the wings. Other ordies restocked the sonobuoy slots along the underbelly of the aircraft. Purple Shirts, the enlisted men and women who handled refueling, waited impatiently. Refueling and rearming an aircraft simultaneously was too dangerous.

The helos were ready to go first. They carried smaller weapons loads than the fixed-wing ASW aircraft, only two torpedoes each. The SAR helo, always airborne during flight operations, circled the carrier, waiting for the carrier to declare a green deck.

Up in Pri-Fly, the Air Boss swore to himself. He’d left two S-3’s on alert ten. As he watched, the stubby ASW hunter-killers taxied to the bow. The first, Hunter 702, lined up on the waist catapult. Hunter 7 10 went straight ahead to the port bow cat, its jets throbbing with the low, mesmerizing sound that gave it its nickname of Hoover.

The bow cat was ready first.

“Green deck!” the Air Boss snapped, scanning the flight deck for any lingering technicians within the lines that delineated the operating area.

“Green deck, aye,” the Air Traffic Controller, or AC, echoed. He repeated the Air Boss’s order into the sound-powered microphone that hung around his neck, and it was relayed to the Yellow Shirts and catapult officers on the deck.

The Air Boss saw the handler motion, and two technicians scampered out from under the forward Viking. The shuttle was now attached to the S-3’s forward wheel strut. The Viking’s engine ramped up, crescendoing into the full-throated roar of military power. The handler snapped off a salute, then ran to safety. The Air Boss could almost feel the catapult officer pause, take one last look around, and then press the pickle switch that would unleash the steam piston.

The Viking shot forward, reaching over 120 knots of ground speed in four seconds. With thirty knots of wind across the deck, that equated to 150 knots over the wings, enough to keep the aircraft airborne until its own engines could get it moving faster.

Fifteen seconds later, the same intricate ballet was complete on the waist cat, and the second Viking was airborne. The ASW helicopters followed in short order, three of them.

The Air Boss looked grimly satisfied. With a total of six ASW aircraft, along with the towed arrays of the surface ships and the cruiser’s own ASW helos airborne, being a submariner just got a lot less fulfilling.

“Admiral, how about a JAST Tomcat?” Batman asked quietly. “That look-down capability might come in real handy about now.”

Tombstone shot his former wingman a thoughtful look. “Are they configured to handle a sub-launched missile?”

“Don’t see why not. The best parts of the new avionics and radar are designed to handle sea-skimmers. Can’t come much closer to the sea than getting shot from a submarine, now, can you?”

“TAO — all the ASW birds launched?”

“Yes, Admiral.” The TAO pointed at the plat camera display on the closed-circuit TV monitor. “Last Viking just took off. Air Boss called Red Deck a few seconds ago.”

Tombstone turned back to Batman. “Go see CAG. It sounds to me like a good time to try out one of your toys in the air, but he may have some other plans. It’s going to take a while to get one fueled and armed, anyway.”

“They’re Tomcats, Admiral. Hardly toys.”

“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Captain.”

“Sir?” Batman stiffened, wondering if he’d overstepped the bounds of their long friendship. Surely Stoney hadn’t let his stars turn him into a pompous asshole!

He studied his old friend carefully. One corner of Tombstone’s mouth twitched. “They’re all toys, Batman. Until they start shooting, that’s what they are.”

“Get those active buoys in the water now!” Rabies snapped.

“What the hell do you think I’m doing back here, playing with myself?” the TACCO snarled. “Here!” He punched the button that fed fly-to points to the pilot’s display.

“Got it!” the copilot said, the report rendered superfluous by the hard banking turn of the S-3. Sixteen minutes later, Hunter 701 had ringed the last position of the submarine with DICASS buoys, which were pouring electromagnetic energy into the water, alternately pinging and listening for a sonar return.

DICASS buoys operated like a shipboard sonar. They provided highly accurate range and bearing information to the AW. The disadvantage was that the submarine could hear the sonar pings, trace back to locate the sonobuoys, and maneuver to evade the pattern. Additionally, using DICASS buoys gave away the fact that someone knew that there was a submarine in the area — and was trying to find it. The submarine, alerted, could exploit every advantage the ocean offered, including anomalous acoustic conditions, to evade contact.

Don’t matter if she knows we know, Rabies thought, banking the S-3B sharply to get into position for the next drop. She already knows about us!

“All buoys sweet and cold,” Harness reported, telling the rest of the flight crew that each buoy was operating properly and that none of the buoys had gained contact on the submarine.

“She can’t have gotten far,” the TACCO muttered. “She only dived ten minutes ago. She’s got to be in the area!”

“Acoustic conditions aren’t the best,” the AW said. Both of his hands were on his head, pressing the earphones tightly over his ears. He took one hand off, reached for his water bottle, and took a swig. “Warm, shallow water. Couple of deep trenches nearby. I’m betting she heads for one of those.”

Sound energy, the TACCO knew, was essentially lazy. Or at least that’s how it had been explained to him in his earliest days as a student naval flight officer. It always seeks out the path that lets it travel the slowest. The actual mechanics of sonar detection and layers in the ocean were explained in a mathematical formula known as Snell’s Law. For the TACCO’s purposes, the “lazy” analogy was sufficient.

Three factors made sound travel faster: heat, pressure, and salinity. Increase any one of those elements in a layer of water, and sound energy would bend away from that layer.

The South China Sea had a hard, rocky bottom. This near the equator, the water on the surface of the ocean was continually warmed by the sun. Wave action mixed the surface water with the layer below it, creating an isothermal layer of warmer water approximately fifty feet deep. The depth varied, depending on time of day and the sea state. At night, the surface of the ocean cooled down slightly. During heavy weather, rougher seas mixed the warm water even deeper into the ocean.

If the DICASS buoys were dropped in the shallow surface layer, the returning pings would be trapped below the warmer area of water and would not return to the DICASS receiver. The AW, knowing the characteristics of this part of the world’s waters, had set his buoys at a depth of two hundred feet, well below the layer.

“Could be anything,” the AW continued. “There’re enough pinnacles and rocks down there to block the return. Or, if she headed in toward the coastline, the water might be too shallow to get a good return. I don’t know if — Wait!” he said suddenly. He pressed the headphones more tightly against his ears.

“Buoy fifteen hot!” he said. “Bearing 310, range four thousand yards!”

The TACCO glanced at his display. “Westernmost buoy. Makes sense — she’s running for the shoreline and shallow water. And for Vietnamese territorial waters. She knows we’re going to be reluctant to follow her in there, regardless of her nationality. I can damn near guarantee that if we shoot a torpedo into territorial waters, we’re going to hit something that’s going to get us in trouble. Murphy’s Law.”

“Lost it,” Harness announced. “She was there, though. I’m sure of it.”

“How the hell did she get that far without us hearing her? She’d have to have been making better than twelve knots — we had to have heard something, at that speed. Let’s lay another pattern,” the TACCO said. His fingers flew over the display, calculating the spacing between buoys, and then punched the information up to the pilot’s display.

“Sir, you’re right,” the AW said thoughtfully, staring at his display. “She makes that speed, I’m going to get her, layer or no layer.”

“But the DICASS contact was solid, right?”

“No doubt. Too hard and sharp to be a biologic,” the AW answered, referring to the possibility that the DICASS buoy could have pinged on a whale or pod of dolphins. Even clouds of shrimp composed of millions of the tiny creatures could reflect back the sound energy from a DICASS buoy.

“And I didn’t hear any biologics. No, I had a sniff of a sub, sir. No doubt.” The AW’s voice was firm.

“Okay, so we chase her down and sink her,” Rabies broke in. “Come on, however she got there, she’s there. Give me the fly-to points.”

“Coming atcha,” the TACCO answered. “But watch it — we’re getting close to the twelve-mile limit.”

“You point, I’ll drive,” Rabies said.

At this point, the TACCO thought ruefully, that was about the best he could manage. He puzzled over the question of how the sub could have slipped through their net of DICASS buoys.

“Come on, it’s just a Tomcat to us,” the Air Boss snapped. “Same weight, same steam settings. What’s taking so long!”

“Uh, sir — that new Captain is down there,” the phone talker said. “He’s giving the flight deck crew a hand. Guess he wants to make sure everything’s copacetic for those birds.”

The Air Boss groaned. “Does he want those JAST birds of his launched or bronzed? Jesus, that’s all we need — a 0–6 ‘helping’ the flight deck crew. Is he on the circuit?”

“Yes, Boss. He’s calling the JAST birds ‘Spook.’”

The Air Boss slipped his headphones on and listened. Sure enough, Batman’s voice was there, talking to the catapult officer on the flight deck frequency.

“Captain Wayne,” the Air Boss said, a note of urgency in his voice. “I think we need you up here in Pri-Fly overseeing this.”

“Roger, Air Boss,” Batman’s voice said, recognizable even through the background howl of the JAST Tomcat engines. “I’m just checking on a couple of-“

“Now, Captain,” the Air Boss heard another voice chime in. He grinned. The Admiral had undoubtedly wondered what was taking so long to launch the JAST birds. He must have turned on the CCTV, seen his former wingman on the flight deck, and extrapolated the reason for the delay.

“Aye, aye, Admiral,” the Air Boss heard Batman say. “On my way up.” The Air Boss watched the captain walk back to the Line Shack, handing his headset to a junior brown-shirted Plane Captain.

“Thank you, Admiral,” he heard a high voice say a few seconds after Batman had removed his headset, thus severing his link with the flight deck radio circuit. The Air Boss suppressed a chortle. He wasn’t the only one who’d been watching Batman leave the circuit.

While he doubted that the Admiral could put a face to the voice, the Air Boss recognized it as belonging to Aviation Boatswain’s Mate First Class Winkler, the yellow-shined handler supervising the launch.

Then “You’re welcome, AB1,” the same voice said gruffly, “And stand by to launch another one of those birds. I have a feeling that the only way I’m going to be able to keep Captain Wayne out of your hair is to get his other bird airborne. With the Captain in it.”

The Air Boss blinked. If he hadn’t already known it, he’d just learned a valuable lesson.

Never underestimate what Admiral Magruder knew.