Armageddon Mode

CHAPTER 3

“Wave off! Wave off!” The words shrilled in Tombstone’s helmet just seconds from the deck. To port, the bull’s-eye of the Fresnel lens lit up red as the LSO triggered the pickle switch he held in one hand.

The warning caught Tombstone completely by surprise. Until that moment he’d been squarely in the groove, with only the slightest of corrections necessary to keep the Tomcat floating gently toward the three wire stretched across the deck in front of him.

Tombstone’s left hand was resting on the F-14’s throttles, ready to provide small adjustments to power and set to engage the afterburners the instant his wheels touched the deck … a standard precaution in case his tail hook missed the arrestor cables and he needed to get airborne again in a hurry. Now he shoved the throttles to full power and brought the Tomcat’s nose up. The wings were already extended to provide maximum lift at low speed. As the Tomcat’s twin engines blazed into afterburners the plane accelerated, passing over the carrier’s roundoff and straight down the flight deck, twenty feet above the dark gray steel.

He caught a blurred image of motion below him, of men running, heads down, of a pale gray aircraft with engine pods slung beneath each wing lumbering into his path.

Tombstone thumbed off the spoilers and eased back on the stick, willing the Tomcat to miss the sharp, skyward thrust of the other plane’s tail.

Acting on instinct alone, he brought the F-14’s right wing up, narrowly missing the Viking’s rudder. Afterburners thundering, he flashed past the island, across the waist catapults, and out over the open sea once more.

“Wheee-oh!” Marusko said from the back seat. CAG had not said a word during the final approach and near-collision, but his relief now was heartfelt and enthusiastic. “Goddamn it, Stoney! You didn’t have to do that to impress me!”

Tombstone found he couldn’t reply, didn’t trust himself to speak. He brought the aircraft into a shallow port turn, circling back for another pass. The S-3A Viking’s tail extended about twenty-two feet above the deck. He’d not seen the actual clearance but doubted that his wingtip had missed the sub-hunter by more than a foot or two.

In all the time that Tombstone had been flying Navy jets, he’d been shot at and shot up. He’d engaged in dogfights, ejected from an aircraft suddenly gone dead, and trapped aboard a carrier deck at night with heavy seas running. Never, he thought, had he been closer to buying the farm than that near-miss. If he’d connected with the Viking, at least six men would have died right there: himself, CAG, and the S-3’s crew of four. God alone knew how many deck division people would have been caught in the fireball as plane after plane ignited, turning Jefferson’s waist into an inferno. Deck crashes were always bad. When they involved more than one plane … He took a deep breath. “CAG?” he said. “I think that one just about did it for me.”

There was a long silence. “Wait before you make any decisions, Stoney.

We’ll talk in my office.”

“Sure.” But Tombstone’s mind was already made up.

Admiral Vaughn leaned over the chart table with other members of his flag staff, studying the grease-penciled markings and time notations that plotted the paths of each of the vessels of Carrier Battle Group 14. Currently, Jefferson was cruising eastward at thirty knots, the hub of a circle spanning two hundred miles. The destroyer John A. Winslow was one hundred twenty miles ahead, the DDG Lawrence Kearny following a hundred miles astern. The frigate Gridley patrolled the CBG’s flank to the south, while Biddle continued searching for the lost sub contact to the north. The group’s Aegis cruiser, U.S.S. Vicksburg, lay thirty miles off Jefferson’s port quarter.

One last member of the carrier group prowled far ahead of the Winslow, two hundred meters beneath the surface. The U.S.S. Galveston was one of the Navy’s newest Los Angeles-class attack submarines. The nuclear-powered SSN had joined the task force only five weeks earlier.

Attack subs often worked closely with carrier battle groups, but CBG-14 had been operating without close sub support so far on this cruise. The Sea of Japan had been too shallow for sub operations, while the Thailand crisis had been resolved before Galveston could rendezvous with the Jefferson. Her usefulness in the Gulf of Thailand would have been limited in any case, but the situation here in the Arabian Sea was different. Here they were surrounded by hundreds of miles of open ocean, and under a potential threat from the world’s eighth largest navy.

It was, then, a far-flung empire that Admiral Vaughn surveyed as he studied the lines and cryptic codings on the chart, a battle group spread across an area of ocean the size of his home state of Missouri.

But it was the silent and unresolved hunt of the Biddle that occupied his mind.

“Henry!” he demanded. “Still nothing from Farrel?” Damn the man, he should have had something by now.

“Nothing, sir,” Captain Bersticer replied, joining the admiral at the plot table. “His last message stated that the contact might be lying low, hiding on the bottom.”

Vaughn reached down and traced the line marking the limits of the continental shelf south of Kutch and Kathiawar. “What’s the depth up there … about fifty fathoms?”

“Yes, sir. That’s probably what’s limiting their sonar.”

“You’d think he could find something as big as a goddamned submarine in water three hundred feet deep,” Vaughn muttered. “How about we send Galveston in to help Biddle with the search, hey?”

Bersticer rubbed his dark beard thoughtfully. “I don’t know, Admiral.

It’d take a day for the Gal to get there, and we don’t know the contact is even still in the area.”

“That’s right.” Vaughn looked up, alarmed. “God! It could’ve given Farrel the slip. Hell, that thing could be heading straight for us at this minute, flank speed.”

“Captain Fitzgerald has informed me that he has two Vikings flying in support of Biddle now. If that Foxtrot is up there, Admiral, I’m sure they’ll run him down.”

“He’d goddamned well better!”

A familiar, scratching pain rasped within Vaughn’s stomach. Almost, he reached for the antacid tablets in his shirt pocket, but he held himself back. As he refused to tolerate weakness in his subordinates, he refused to reveal his own weakness to others. Gently, he massaged his stomach.

“I want a full report for transmission to CINCPAC first thing in the morning,” he said. “I don’t like to say this, but I really don’t think this ship is up to the, ah, challenge of this mission. Damn! Did you see the operations reports today? We nearly had a major smashup right on the flight deck!”

“I saw, sir.”

“Brakes on a Viking failed. Probable cause, faulty maintenance. Faulty goddamned maintenance! Someone wasn’t doing his job, that’s sure. And we all came within an ace of getting fried when a Tomcat nearly hit the Viking on final approach!”

“The pilot, I gather, is one of the best, Admiral. We were lucky there.”

“I dunno.” Vaughn looked away. “That kid is Admiral Magruder’s nephew.

You know that?”

“No, sir! I thought the names were a coincidence!”

“Well, he is. Maybe he owes his billet as much to politics as to skill, hey?”

“It’s possible, sir.”

“Damned straight it’s possible. I don’t like brown-nosing. A man should get where he is on his own steam, right? Not by politics!”

Vaughn caught himself. He’d been about to launch into a diatribe against Navy career politics. It was a sore point with him. Once a man made commander in this man’s navy it was all politics, with careers made or broken by who you knew.

He’d almost been broken, once, but goddamn he’d had the last laugh!

Here he was in command of a carrier battle group again after twelve bitter years.

The one thing that could screw things up for him was failure. Vaughn had a thorough fear of failure, and it seemed to him that whatever gods of the sea had granted him his wish of another CBG command were being capricious with him. Why did the new command have to be Jefferson, at the end of her deployment, her crew so worn down that disaster was an hour-to-hour possibility? It wasn’t fair.

“I’m going to want to tighten up the group, Captain,” he said, still studying the chart. “Bring those guys in closer. Hell, no one’s going to nuke us, for God’s sake. And the individual ships are goddamned sitting ducks scattered all over the ocean like that. Write up the orders. When we hit Turban Station tomorrow, we’ll tighten up.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Next. We’d better start holding exercises. Sharpen up the men. I don’t like being this close to a shooting war with men who could fall asleep at their stations, hey?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And signal Biddle. I want that goddamned Foxtrot found, and fast. No excuses!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“An aggressive posture, that’s the ticket, hey?” He studied the mark that showed Biddle’s last position. Where the hell was the Foxtrot now?

“There has been nothing for almost two hours, Captain.”

“It’s possible they’ve left us.” Captain Raju Khandelwal braced himself with one hand against an overhead conduit. “Blow forward ballast.”

“Blow forward ballast, aye.” There was a rumble, and the thin shriek of compressed air forcing water from the submarine’s tanks. The deck shifted beneath Khandelwal’s feet.

“Take us up, Shri Ramesh. Level at twenty meters.”

“Twenty meters, yes, sir.” His Exec took his place behind the planesmen, reading the depth gauge over their heads. An ominous creak sounded through the boat as hull metal flexed. The Kalvari was not the most modern of submarines, nor the most silent. As she stirred and lifted from the bottom and her hull took up the full strain of the vessel once more, her framework creaked protest.

The sounds seemed especially loud. Kalvari had been resting on the bottom for almost five hours, ever since the sharp sonar pinging had warned them that a ship was searching these shallow waters for them.

Now, though, the waters around the Indian sub were silent, had been silent for a long time. The intruder, whatever it was, had no doubt decided to move on. If it had not, then it was certain to hear the submarine’s underwater groanings, but that could not be helped.

Khandelwal’s orders had been to leave Bombay Harbor submerged and to avoid detection by other vessels until he reached his station fifty miles off the Pakistani port of Karachi. He was operating under a tight deadline and had to be in his assigned patrol area no later than noon tomorrow.

Kalvari’s mission was to interdict Pakistani shipping, including that of Pakistan’s allies. That was why secrecy was so important. India’s Moslem neighbor could not survive for long without help from the outside, but New Delhi feared that world opinion would shift toward Pakistan once it was known that international shipping had been targeted by Indian submarines.

Who had the intruder been? Soviet, possibly … though an American task force was approaching the area. It was unlikely to have been Pakistani, not this far from Pakistan’s waters … but his orders had been explicit.

In any case, the exercise had been good for the men. He had a good crew, but none of them had combat experience. A taste of what awaited them under relatively safe conditions would help get them into the spirit of the patrol.

The deck, slanting somewhat as the sub rose, began to level off. He would take the sub up to periscope depth for a quick look around, to make sure they were really alone, and then proceed with the mission.

The hull creaked once again.

“Bridge,” Mason’s voice yelled. “CIC! We got the bastard!”

Captain Farrel picked up the handset. “Where? Whatcha got?”

“Solid passive contact, heading zero-one-five. Hull noises … and Chase says he just blew ballast. He’s close!”

“Go active.” He turned to the helmsman. “Zero-one-five, son. Ahead two thirds.”

“Zero-one-five, ahead two thirds, aye, sir.” Biddle heeled sharply to port as she went into a hard turn.

“Contact!” the sonar operator called. “Single screw to port! It sounds … it sounds like a Perry, sir!”

A Perry-class frigate. That could mean American, or … “Go active! Range!” Khandelwal clung to the brass grip on the periscope well, his eyes on the depth gauge. Ninety meters. Too deep yet to see what was going on.

He heard the chirp as the sub’s sonar operator began probing the water around them with sound. The ping of the echo followed close behind.

“Contact! Bearing one-nine-five, range two thousand meters! Closing at two-five knots!”

His boat’s survival would be determined by the decisions he made within the next minute, Khandelwal knew. He picked up an intercom mike and held it to his mouth. “Torpedo room! Stand by!”

“Torpedoes standing by, sir. Tubes one and two loaded, wire-guided.”

The Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate was an American design, but in this modern age of arms sales and weapons package diplomacy, that meant nothing. Only the year before, two had been purchased by Pakistan.

He listened to the chirp of sonar, his experienced ear noting the decreasing intervals between ping and echo. If this was one of the Pakistani frigates, as its aggressive pursuit suggested … “Captain, sonar! Splashes to port, close!”

Splashes! Depth charges or ASW torpedoes! He clicked the switch on the intercom mike. “Torpedo room! Fire one! Helm, evasive!”

“Bridge! Sonar! Torpedo launch at zero-one-five, range one-eight hundred!”

Farrel’s fist came down on the console. “Left full rudder! Ahead flank!”

The guided-missile frigate leaped across the water, sea spray lashing across the bridge windscreen. It was possible to outrun a torpedo, but the range was damned tight for a stunt like that. Biddle could make thirty knots. A torpedo might do forty or more, depending on the type.

“Bridge, sonar. Torpedo is maneuvering. Looks like it might be wire-guided, sir.”

That might be a break. “Where’s our LAMPS, Bill?” he asked his Exec.

“Sonobuoy run. He’s right over the bastard!”

Farrel faced a terrible choice: try to outrun that incoming torpedo — probably impossible when it was less than a mile away — or try to break the concentration of the men directing it. Wire-guided torps were homed on their targets by commands sent down a thin wire unreeling behind the weapon. Once the torpedo acquired its own sonar lock the wire was cast off … or the sub could steer the thing all the way to the target.

If he could force the sub to turn away he might break the wire, but he had only seconds before the torpedo locked on by itself.

“Pass the word to the LAMPS,” Farrel said. “Fire on the target.”

He’d taken the step, and it was a terrible one. But by loosing the torpedo, that sub skipper had just forced Captain Farrel to choose between his ship and the submarine.

The location of Biddle’s sonar target had already been relayed to the circling Seahawk, which was further pinpointing the contact by dropping a chain of sonobuoys around the sub’s suspected position. Target data was fed into the two Mark 46 ASW torpedoes slung from the Seahawk’s hull.

At the command to fire, one of the torpedoes dropped away, a drogue chute opening at its tail to position it at the correct angle for entering the water. Arming when it hit the surface, it picked up the submerged Foxtrot almost immediately, circled onto a new heading, and dove.

“High speed propeller to port!” The hydrophone operator’s voice was sharp with fear. “Very close!”

“Hard to port!” Khandelwal’s knuckles whitened on the periscope railing. The maneuver might make them lose their own torpedo, but perhaps the launch alone might make Kalvari’s attackers back off. If they could just elude this new threat … At forty-five knots, the lightweight Mark 46 torpedo slammed into Kalvari’s hull just forward of her conning tower. The detonation of ninety-five pounds of Torpex ripped a gaping hole through both the inner and outer hulls.

Captain Khandelwal was hurled across the control room as an avalanche of water exploded through the port bulkhead. His exec, Lieutenant Joshi Ramesh, was smashed against the conning tower ladder by the waterfall.

In seconds, watertight doors imperfectly seated in concussion-warped frames gave way, and the Indian submarine began its final dive into darkness.

White water fountained high into the sky a mile off Biddle’s starboard side, accompanied by a bass earthquake rumble felt through the ship’s hull and decks.

“Bridge, sonar! Torpedo has gone ballistic. Passing two hundred yards astern.”

Farrel’s eyes stayed riveted to the plume of seawater, now cascading back across a troubled sea. “Make to the LAMPS helo,” he said. “Lay more buoys and listen for the sub. Stand by to recover survivors.”

But he already knew there would be no survivors. He’d saved the Biddle … but sent a submarine and seventy-eight men to their deaths.

The political repercussions would be spreading out already … and far more quickly than the base surge from the underwater explosion now rocking the Biddle.

The Indian rear admiral studied the teletype message in his hand and felt tears of loss and anger burn his eyes. There was precious little information there, but the statement needed no elaboration.

INSS KALVARI SUNK BY U.S. FFG, PERRY CLASS. NO SURVIVORS.

The message, transmitted from an IAF Mig-25 reconnaissance aircraft overlying the area, included coordinates positioning the loss one hundred miles west of Bombay, in international waters but well within the usual Indian patrol zones.

Kalvari sunk by a U.S. frigate! Why had the American opened fire? Why?

The admiral crumpled the message in his fist, then stood at his desk. It seemed plain enough. The Americans were coming to the aid of their Moslem ally after all. The Indian Parliament might have something to say about that. The war fever gripping the entire nation was like nothing he had ever seen before.

And Rear Admiral Ajay Ramesh would win his vengeance for the death of Joshi, his son.