Armageddon Mode

CHAPTER 26

CAG Marusko stood behind the lectern at the front of the Vipers’ Ready Room, rocking back on his heels as he brought the squadron up to date.

Tombstone sat with the others at the small metal desks with the folding wooden writing surfaces, like schoolboys being lectured by their teacher.

“We’ve hit them hard,” Marusko said. “Damned hard.”

Certainly, Tombstone thought, someone had decided to put the best possible face on things. CAG was running the briefing in the Ready Room in person rather than broadcasting it over closed-circuit TV. It was a way of maintaining contact with the men, for their morale … and probably for his own as well.

CAG continued the rundown, leaning against the lectern now.

The first phase of the Battle of the Arabian Sea seemed tragically one-sided to the men who’d participated in it. Two ships of the combined task force were badly damaged, a carrier and the all-important Aegis command cruiser, and the survival of both was in doubt. In the air, four Tomcats had been shot down — Army, Trapper, and Maverick from VF-95, and an aviator named Wildman Romanski in VF-97. So far, only two of the crews had been recovered from the choppy waters around the Battle Group.

And so far too, there’d been little to show for the blood and suffering of the past hour and a half.

There was another side to the numbers, though. CAG explained. A conservative estimate floating around the VF-95 Ready Room was that fifty Indian aircraft had been shot down, with as many more, possibly, damaged.

Fifty planes shot down, out of an estimated two hundred sent against the two F-14 squadrons. At least twenty of those had been accounted for by the Tomcats, for a kill ratio of five-for-one. Not the ten-for-one ratio of which Top Gun pilots were so justly proud … but then, the air battle had been confused beyond imagining, and one of the downed American planes had been hit before all of the aircraft could be launched.

Besides their air losses, the Indians had been hit on the surface and beneath it as well. The frigate Biddle had managed to cut off the four Osa-IIS as they fled back toward the Indian fleet. From a range of fifty miles she’d launched all four of her Harpoon antiship missiles, firing one after the other in rapid succession from the Mark 13 launcher on her forward deck. Three Osa missile boats had been sunk outright.

The fourth was badly damaged and limping toward the east at reduced speed.

To the northwest, the Marvhal Timoshenko had reported encountering an unidentified sub trying to work its way toward the heart of the task force. The Kresta II-class cruiser had fired a single SS-N-14 missile from one of the massive, awkward-looking quad launchers mounted on either side of the bridge. Called Silex by NATO, the missile carried an antisubmarine torpedo into the vicinity of the suspected sub and dropped it by parachute. At 0936 hours, the Timoshenko sonar operators had picked up the unmistakable crump of an undersea explosion.

There’d been no further submarine alerts since.

If all these reports were true, Tombstone thought, the Indians were probably feeling as badly used as the Americans were at the moment.

The question of the hour, however, was where they were going next. With Vicksburg badly damaged, it seemed all but certain that the battle group would be recalled, probably to either Masirah or Diego Garcia for temporary repairs, then up the Red Sea to the Med. The closest decent ship repair facilities were at Naples.

Nimitz and Eisenhower would arrive at Turban Station within the next few days. They would continue the fight. Tombstone studied the faces of the men around him and knew the same thought was in their minds. He read the anger there. They’d been hit hard and hurt. Now they wanted to hit back.

CAG paused in his narrative, watching the men closely. “Repairs to Cats One and Two have been completed,” he said. “As of ten hundred hours, Jefferson is again fully operational. The deck crew is conducting a final FOD walkdown at this moment.”

There was a stir among the listening aviators. With four cats on line, Jefferson could again launch and recover simultaneously. From CAG’s tone, it sounded as though the battle wasn’t over yet. The FOD — Foreign Object Damage — walkdown was designed to pick up any stray bits of debris or metal that might get sucked into a jet’s air intakes: It was always conducted just before launch operations, a part of carrier routine.

Perhaps it was the routine that was carrying all of them forward now, despite exhaustion, despite their losses.

Routine and … determination.

CAG rocked forward on the podium, his hands clasped over the edge. He seemed to look at each of the men in the room. “I’ve just had the word from Captain Fitzgerald, acting CO for the battle group. Mongoose is going as planned.” There was an explosion of noise in the ready room, whistles, cheers, and shouts, men pounding the writing surfaces of their desks and stomping on the deck.

“Jefferson …” CAG started to say, then stopped until the noise subsided. “Jefferson,” he continued, “has a job to do. A mission.

Captain Fitzgerald told me himself that we are not going anywhere until that mission is complete.”

CAG turned his gaze on Tombstone, who thought he detected the faintest trace of a grin tugging at the man’s mouth. “Tombstone? You feel up to leading your squadron?”

My squadron. The sense of belonging, of being home, returned, stronger than ever. “Yes, sir!”

“Good. We’re making some minor changes. VF-95 will take the strike planes all the way in to the target. One Hornet squadron, VFA-173, will also be flying in the interdiction role, as planned. VF-97 will head for the rendezvous at Point Juliet and clear it until the strike assembles, then assist in the escort home. Yes … question?”

“What about CAP for the Jeff, CAG?” Coyote wanted to know. “We’re leaving her kind of exposed, aren’t we?”

“Well, the Intelligence boys all seem to think the Indies will have a lot more to worry about when they see the bunch of you coming after them than attacking our ships. Air defense over the land is expected to be heavy … but this soon after their heavy raid, they should be scattered and disorganized.” CAG’s grin became open, as though he was enjoying some humorous secret. “Just to be on the safe side, though, we have some newbies coming in to help you out. Actually, they’re up there now, have been for the last hour.”

Tombstone was tired, and couldn’t understand at first what Marusko was getting at. Newbies? The only newbies aboard were the replacements who’d flown aboard on the COD aircraft two days ago.

From the reaction of the rest of the squadron, they didn’t get it either.

“Don’t worry about it,” Marusko continued. “We’ve got it covered. Yes, Wayne.”

“Is there any threat to the squadron from the Indian fleet?” Batman wanted to know. “It’d be kind of a shame to go all the way in, all the way back, and find you all on the bottom after tangling with half the Indian navy.”

A subdued chuckle ran through the room.

CAG nodded. “Hey, the Captain thinks of everything. Don’t worry, people, it’s all in the bag.”

Beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean lay a canyon. Called the Indus Canyon, it was a sheer-walled gouge through the rock of the continental shelf, a valley scoured out by the uncounted millions of tons of sand and sediment washed down over millennia from the Himalayas and carried by the river’s current far to the south. For the first one hundred fifty miles beyond the mouths of the Indus, the canyon meandered through a plateau only a few hundred feet beneath the surface. Beyond that, however, the Indus currents broke from the channel in the continental shelf and plunged down … down into an eternal blackness nine thousand feet beneath the war and the sunlit waters of the surface.

At the edge of this blackness, a sea monster stirred, moving slowly from the valley’s depths toward the light. Three hundred sixty feet long, thirty-three feet broad, and displacing nearly seven thousand tons submerged, the U.S.S. Galveston was one of the latest American Los Angeles-class attack submarines.

For the past twenty-four hours, Galveston had been listening, coasting slowly through the dark waters of the Indus Canyon, her sonar ears alert to any sound beyond the normal chirping, creaking, clacking cacophony of sea life around her. Twice, the far-off pings of sonobuoys had reached across miles and touched her, but too distant, too weak to reveal her location in the sheltering confines of the undersea valley. Once, her chief sonar operator had detected the chugging throb of propellers, a sound Galveston’s acoustic library had identified as a Gearing-class destroyer, undoubtedly one of the six World War II-era DDS sold to Pakistan in the late seventies.

Captain Gerald Hawkins’s orders were both specific and vague. As part of the ASW screen for CBG-14, he was to precede the battle group toward the Indian-Pakistani border, remaining undetected by either side. All foreign submarines, whether Pakistani or Indian, were to be intercepted before they could approach the combined task force.

The vague aspect of his orders lay in what he was to do with the foreign subs once he’d caught them. A warning, transmitted through the water as a powerful chirp of sonar, might be sufficient to turn them away. But if necessary, he was to destroy potentially hostile subs before they could close with Jefferson or her escorts.

At prearranged times each day, Galveston was to rise to periscope depth.

Additional orders and updates of the tactical situation could be passed on to the attack sub then. At 1100 hours on the morning of March 26, Galveston’s radar mast broke the surface one hundred twenty miles northwest of the U.S.S. Jefferson. The situation update, together with Captain Fitzgerald’s new orders, were passed to the submarine via relay through a circling Hawkeye, and confirmed by satellite from Washington.

Minutes later, the radio mast vanished again, leaving scarcely a ripple to mark its passing.

At precisely 1125 hours, a series of round hatches set into the attack sub’s hull forward of her sail slid open. At a word from her commanding officer, a twenty-foot-long cigar shape rose from one of the tubes, expelled by a high-pressure blast of water.

The Tomahawk was a cruise missile developed in two different models, the TLAM (Tomahawk Land Attack Missile) and the TASM (Tomahawk AntiShip Missile). Originally designed to be fired from a submarine’s torpedo tubes, it was later discovered that each sub’s torpedo-carrying capacity was severely restricted by including Tomahawks on board. Beginning with the U.S.S. Providence, SS-N-719, all Los Angeles-class subs had fifteen vertical launch tubes, designed especially for Tomahawks, mounted within the bow casing between the sub’s inner and outer hulls, allowing them to carry full complements of both torpedoes and cruise missiles.

Triggered by a ten-foot lanyard connecting missile and launch tube, the solid-fuel rocket boost motor ignited in a cloud of gas bubbles and boiling water, driving the missile upward at a fifty-degree angle. The motor burned for seven seconds, long enough to punch through the surface and into the air. Then the booster fell away, wings deployed as the missile nosed over into horizontal flight only meters above the surface, and the missile’s air-breathing gas turbine switched on.

Within seconds, another Tomahawk broke the surface, then another and another. At Mach.7, the cruise missiles arrowed southeast toward their target.

Three hundred miles away, another, much larger submarine was watching the approaches to Bombay. Four hundred seventy feet long and sixty feet through the beam, it was one of a special class of nuclear-powered attack subs known to the West as Oscar.

The Oscar had originally been conceived as a platform for anticarrier operations. Its primary mission was to stalk American aircraft carrier battle groups. In time of war, the Oscars would be directed to participate in long-range missile bombardment of the U.S. carriers, coordinating their strikes with missile launches from surface ships and long-range bombers. The Oscar’s broad girth was made necessary by the cruise-missile launch tubes built into the hull on either side of the long, flat sail. Six square hatches on either side each covered two tubes. The sub carried a total of twenty-four SS-N-19 antiship missiles, high-speed, long-range weapons that could carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.

One after another, the sleek ship-killers burst from the waters above the submerged Oscar, discarded their empty boosters, and deployed the swept-back wings. Using information relayed to the Oscar from Soviet reconnaissance satellites orbiting overhead, the SS-N-19s began flying north, homing on the same targets as those already marked by the American Tomahawks.

“Today, Lieutenant, you are a hero for all of India,” Ramesh said. “Your triumph will be remembered always!”

Admiral Ramesh faced the young lieutenant. He was so young, so like Joshi, that for a moment he wanted to reach out and embrace the boy. But professional decorum, and Lieutenant Tahliani’s obvious embarrassment, held him back.

“I did my duty, Admiral,” the boy said. “We all only did our duty.”

Admiral Ramesh shook his head. “You’ve done more than your duty, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “You may well have won for us the victory we needed.”

Tahliani’s flight had been the stuff of legends, of the ancient Hindu epic legends. Decoying an American F-14 with one of his Sea Eagles, he’d then shot it down with a Magic AAM. He could have launched the rest of his antiship missiles then and fled, but the boy had known that the alerted American defenses would probably knock down the Sea Eagles long before they reached their targets.

Instead, he’d rounded up a few companions and set out on his long and fuel-costly detour around the American fleet, avoiding several U.S. pickets along the way. In a triumph of long-distance navigation and flying skill, he’d reached a point from which he and his men could launch their remaining missiles. Radio traffic between the Soviet and American vessels monitored from the shore indicated that the Russian carrier was now burning, incapacitated by at least one serious missile hit.

That strike, together with the damage done to an American command cruiser, had spelled victory for the Indian navy. Now there remained only one more task, The remaining carrier, the Americans’ Jefferson, was launching aircraft. It seemed likely that they were a strike force, that their targets were the airstrips and military bases that had launched the attack on the combined squadron.

If this last, desperate thrust by the enemy could be blunted, the Americans would have to admit defeat. The old dream of an Indian Ocean free of outside influences and under New Delhi’s firm political control would become reality at last.

A klaxon blared and Admiral Ramesh looked up. “Now hear this, now hear this,” rasped from the loudspeaker. “Prepare for missile attack.

Admiral Ramesh to the Flag Bridge, please. Admiral Ramesh.”

For Ramesh it was as though the pieces of a complex puzzle had suddenly snapped into place. He’d been expecting some form of retaliation by the Americans and Russians for the damage done to their forces. Still, when Tahliani had returned in triumph from his strike, when the news had come through from Naval Headquarters at Bombay that the land-based attack had overwhelmed the American defenses and hit their command ship, he’d allowed himself to believe that the enemy might cut their losses and retreat.

But that was not to be. This would not be a matter of raid and counterraid, but of two giants, battling to the death.

“Lieutenant,” he snapped. Tahliani drew himself to attention. “Your aircraft are being fueled and rearmed. On my authority, you are to get as many aircraft off the deck as possible. I don’t want the same thing happening to Viraat as happened to the Kremlin!”

“Yes, sir! Are we to fly the Sea Harriers ashore?”

Ramesh shook his head. “No, Lieutenant. I will have special instructions for you.” He reached out and grasped the young man’s arm.

“But for now, go! While you still can!”

Then he turned and raced for Viraat’s island.

Lieutenant Tahliani adjusted his helmet strap as he performed a cursory run-through of the checklist strapped to his thigh. Fuel okay … power on … stick controls okay … A deck officer was signaling. He saluted, glanced up at Viraat’s island, then adjusted the Sea Harrier’s exhaust ports, vectoring them for a rolling takeoff. One of the Sea Harrier’s many remarkable features was its short start-up time. He released the wheel brakes and was moving down the carrier’s deck toward the ski jump ramp within five minutes of the alert.

The latest reports indicated that two separate groups of antiship missiles were approaching the Indian fleet, one from the northwest, one from the southeast. Almost certainly both missile flights had been launched from enemy submarines in the area, though the northwestern group could possibly have come from the surface ships of the enemy fleet. The nearest missile was still twenty kilometers out. There was time yet.

The Sea Harrier vaulted from the ski jump and into the sky. Tahliani redirected the exhaust ports to full aft and climbed. Other Sea Harriers followed, gathering in an assembly area five kilometers southwest of the Viraat.

From the high perch of his cockpit, Tahliani had a splendid view of the Indian fleet, spread out from horizon to horizon beneath him. Viraat and the smaller carrier Vikrant were at the flotilla’s heart. Kalikata, one of the Indian Navy’s Kresta II cruisers newly purchased from the former Soviet Union, led the squadron ten kilometers ahead. And surrounding these three were the destroyers, frigates, and corvettes that made up the body of the fleet, all steaming northwest at a steady twenty knots.

“Blue King Leader, this is Viraat.” He recognized the voice. Admiral Ramesh himself was calling.

“Viraat, this is Blue King Leader. Go ahead.”

“Lieutenant … the battle may well be in your hands now.” Tahliani heard the strain in Ramesh’s voice. “Execute Plan Three.”

“Roger, Viraat. Plan Three.”

American ECM eavesdroppers might well be listening in. The melodramatic-sounding Plan Three referred simply to a series of earlier briefings, covering possible contingencies in the event of an attack against the Indian naval squadron.

Plan Three called for Blue King to fly off the Viraat and head north for friendly airfields on Kathiawar. Along the way, they were to watch for targets of opportunity — American ships or aircraft that might be attacked with a minimum of risk for the Indian Sea Harriers.

Tahliani knew that Ramesh had been saying more but had not wanted to put it into words when he knew the Americans were listening in. The admiral was expecting some special effort from Tahliani’s squadron, an attack that would make the Russian-American effort too costly for them to pursue.

A flicker caught Tahliani’s eye. Looking down, he saw — thought he saw — a ghost of motion, something flashing low across the water at the very limit of vision.

Viraat was firing her SAMS. He could see the contrails below him, like white threads against the dark water. The missiles were reaching toward the southeast. Seconds later, he saw a flash, like the popping of a strobe light, far off on the horizon. There was another … and another …

Something skimmed in from the northeast, streaking straight toward the Indian carrier. Tahliani saw it and wanted to scream warning, but it was too late. There was a soundless eruption of smoke and debris close alongside the Indian carrier, as the widening ring of the shock wave raced out from the vessel’s hull on the water. The strike was so sudden that the surprise was like a physical blow.

The carrier is hit!

Surface-to-air missiles continued to rise, not only from the stricken Viraat but from the other ships in the fleet as well. The Indian navy had nothing like Aegis, however, to coordinate the defense, and the response was sluggish, befuddled possibly by the surprise and numbers of the attack, or by the fog of enemy ECM jamming on radars and fire control directors.

Another missile was hit short of the Viraat, but a companion skimmed past the fireball and planted itself in the carrier’s side. Tahliani saw the cascade of debris spewing out of the hull opposite where the missile had struck, saw the mushrooming pillar of oily smoke shot through with flame rising from the carrier’s deck. Viraat was burning now, her deck a sheet of flames fed by burst fuel lines and exploding munitions.

It took him several minutes to realize that Viraat had gone off the air, her radio dead. He wondered if Admiral Ramesh was still alive.

The sight of his carrier cloaked in rising smoke was so shocking he scarcely noticed that other ships in the Indian fleet were hit. A pall of smoke was hanging above Vikrant where at least one missile had struck from the southeast, while the cruiser Kalikata was a blazing funeral pyre, dead in the water and listing hard to port.

There was no turning back now. Grimly, Lieutenant Tahliani gathered his squadron — eleven other Sea Harriers that had managed to launch before disaster struck — and turned toward the northwest.

The Sea Harriers, those that survived the next two hours, would be able to land in Kathiawar. But Lieutenant Tahliani was determined now that the American strike aircraft would have no place to land when they returned from their mission over India.