Ashes of Victory

— 3 —

Swift, silent, and quite deadly, the Virginia-class submarine represented the culmination of thirty-five million labor hours of computer-aided design and development to create a worthy replacement for the aging fleet of Los Angeles — class submarines. Its innovations included stealthy pump-jet propulsion technology, improved sonar systems, and photonic masts instead of a traditional hull-penetrating periscope. The latter meant that the control room no longer had to be located at the top of the operations compartment under the sail, slaved to the periscope. Instead, it occupied the level below, at the widest beam of the ship, translating into a larger, open layout that improved information flow. It also meant that the officer of the deck would no longer need to hang on to a periscope, gazing through a maze of mirrors and prisms. Rather, the photonics mast housed an array of high-resolution, night-vision, and infrared cameras that fed selected large screens in the control room.

As Missouri cruised at a depth of sixty feet, so its tactical communications mast could break the surface, Commander Frank Kelly waited patiently behind the two electronics technicians as their communications system downloaded the day’s broadcast from US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT) in Bahrain. NAVCENT was the US Navy element of the US Central Command (USCENTCOM) with an area of responsibility that included the Red Sea, the Arabian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the eastern end of the Indian Ocean where Missouri currently operated.

Rolling his eyes at the pathetically slow speed of his encrypted satellite connection, Kelly leaned over and whispered to his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Roberto Giannotti, “Go figure, Bobby. Two billion dollars’ worth of state-of-the-art submarine and it takes longer than it did to get my mail off AOL on a dial-up modem.”

Kelly looked every bit the submariner. Short and wiry, he seemed built for enclosed spaces. Standing next to him, his XO, a former linebacker at Annapolis, looked like a giant.

Glancing over at his CO, Giannotti whispered, “AOL? My grandfather uses AOL. Maybe I should just call you Gramps from now on.”

“Go fuck yourself, Bobby.”

“Copy that, sir.”

The crew sometimes referred to the captain and XO as Abbott and Costello, given their senses of humor and an excellent performance of “Who’s on First?” at a ship-wide talent show.

Both men were single, one by divorce, the other by choice.

Kelly sighed, standing in the middle of the control room illuminated by wall-to-wall multifunction flat screens. The compartment swarmed with the coordinated activity of pilots, navigators, electronics technicians, weapons experts, and even sonar technicians. Unlike prior submarines, the Virginia-class didn’t have a separate sonar room.

Petty Officer Second Class Marshon Chappelle, the boat’s most experienced sonar technician, abruptly looked up from his large green console.

“Conn, Sonar! New Contact! Bearing two-zero-niner!”

Kelly snapped his head toward the sonar stations along the port side, opposite the starboard combat control consoles. Missouri’s six-month mission was to guard the waters of the Indian Ocean from the edge of the Arabian Sea to the coast of Malaysia in a constant loop. At the moment, it cruised a course southwest of Sri Lanka, some five hundred miles southeast of the Vinson battle group operating in the Arabian Sea, near the coast of Mumbai, India. And that all meant that the Mighty Mo, a nickname the submarine shared with the legendary World War II Iowa-class battleship, should be all alone. No contacts except for the occasional humpback whale.

“Russian or Chinese?” Kelly asked.

Chappelle adjusted his headphones, narrowing his eyes in concentration — and under the curious stare of the four junior sonar technicians under his command. The native from Harlem, New York, finally replied, “Ah, neither, sir. It’s USS 1990, and it wants its dial-up system back.”

Several sailors broke into laughter, including Giannotti.

“All right. Knock it off,” Kelly said, shaking his head and turning back to the radio station. It was an old joke but one that served as a constant reminder of the worldwide communications bandwidth challenge the US Navy hadn’t yet figured out how to solve. Missouri—as well as all Virginia-class boats — had been designed with two high-data-rate satellite communication masts — one as backup. However, in order to use either one, it required Kelly to make prior arrangements with the Navy to task a satellite to focus a “spot beam” on its coordinates. As such, it was reserved for large data dumps or videos. For day-to-day ops, the commander had to rely on the quarter-century-old technology trickling down operational updates from NAVCENT.

“Chappy, I think you missed your calling,” Giannotti said, chuckling.

Although Kelly would never openly admit it, Petty Officer Chappelle was precisely where he needed to be. In his eighteen years of submarine service, the commander had yet to see anyone who could match the kid’s ear and instincts for sonar work.

One of the electronics technicians finally presented Kelly with a printout, which he read, then passed to Giannotti.

The XO frowned after scanning it. “Boss, I’m all for taking out terrorist camps, but why us? My sister is the XO on Champlain, and they’re a lot closer,” he said, referring to USS Lake Champlain (CG 57), a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser escorting Vinson. “And my cousin is aboard Texas,” he added, referring to the Virginia-class submarine also escorting the carrier group. “Either can easily take the shot.”

“Tell me, Bobby, is there a vessel in the US Navy where you don’t have a relative?” he asked, though his own nephew, the son of his older brother, worked the engine room of North Dakota, another Virginia-class boat on station in Singapore escorting the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group.

The XO shrugged. “What can I say, boss? Big Italian family. And for what it’s worth, my uncle Gino, my mother’s brother, handles aircraft maintenance for one of the fighter squadrons on Vinson. Why don’t they launch an air strike instead of just burning fuel flying those damn CAPs,” he said, referring to the constant combat air patrol missions flown by carrier jets to protect the battle group.

Kelly shrugged. “Theirs not to make reply, Bobby. Theirs not to reason why.”

Giannotti sighed before whispering, “Except that now the entire civilized world will know where we are.”

“I know that. And we’re going deep and hauling ass toward the coast of Malaysia the moment it breaks the surface.” Dropping his voice a couple of decibels, Kelly added, “Besides, you want to get your own command in the near future, right?

Giannotti nodded.

“Well, this is the kind of stuff CO’s gotta handle without batting an eye, so, get rolling.”

It was no secret that Kelly had been grooming Giannotti for the job.

“Aye, sir,” he said, and walked over to Missouri’s pilot and copilot.

Until the Virginia class, all submarines were controlled by a combination of a helmsman, who steered the submarine with the rudder and managed the bow planes, and the planesman or outboard, who controlled the boat’s angle with the stern planes. They were supervised by the diving officer, as well as by the chief of the watch, who handled the submarine’s buoyancy. The Virginia class’s new generation of fly-by-wire controls replaced all four positions with just a pilot and a copilot, who took orders from the officer of the deck, who at the moment was Cmdr. Kelly. The dramatic change had been viewed as a bit of heresy by the submariner community, even by Kelly when he first transitioned from a Los Angeles — class sub. But after his third deployment in the Mighty Mo, traditional control rooms and periscopes now seemed like something belonging in a museum.

“Set depth to one-two-zero feet,” Kelly ordered. “Bearing zero-niner-zero. Ahead slow.”

Giannotti relayed the commands to the pilot and copilot. The former, a seaman in charge of the rudder and stern planes, read back, “Setting course zero-niner-zero, aye.”

“Setting depth one-two-zero, aye,” read back the copilot, a petty officer third class controlling the bow planes.

Next to them sat the reactor operator, who in a Virginia-class ship also handled the duties of the traditional throttleman. A petty officer second class, the RO read back, “Ahead slow, aye.”

While the pilots and RO did their thing, hands on their respective video game — like joystick controls, Giannotti stepped over to the combat control consoles and handed the firing order to the senior-most weapons officer, who validated it and began to key in the prescribed coordinates.

Kelly watched the well-drilled process in silence as the crew confirmed and executed the order to fire a single BGM-109 Tomahawk missile.

“Depth one-two-zero,” the copilot reported.

“Bearing zero-niner-zero,” the pilot said.

“Speed zero-four knots,” the RO confirmed.

Missouri, as well as all Block II Virginia — class boats, carried twelve Vertical Launching System (VLS) tubes. Eight housed BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles with an operational range of 1,550 miles and four carried MK 48 torpedoes to complement the four traditional torpedo tubes mounted on the bow.

The instant the weapons officer confirmed the order and the coordinates, which were read back to Giannotti and then Kelly, the commander, gave the order to fire.

A few keystrokes later, the weapons officer said, “Missile away.”

All heads turned toward the large screens above the combat center consoles, one of which showed a view of the bow as captured by one of the high-definition cameras on the photonics mast.

Below the surface, a single hatch swung open, and a burst of bubbles from the discharge of pressurized cold gas marked the ejection of the capsule housing the Tomahawk.

The buoyant capsule rose fast, breaking the surface and completely exiting the water before a solid rocket booster ignited for a few seconds, thrusting the 2,900-pound missile into cruise flight.

The Tomahawk’s turbofan engine took over as the wings unfolded, accelerating to its cruise speed of 550 miles per hour, as the onboard guidance systems used GPS navigation to steer it to its preordained coordinates.

Approximately 1,100 miles west, Mohamed al-Asmari, a Yemeni national who had been imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp but then was released and repatriated to his home country, woke for Fajr, the early-morning prayer. In addition to him, three other former detainees from Guantanamo, along with another twenty-two jihadists, lived in this camp, where they had daily instruction in the building of improvised explosive devices. Two of the men had grown up in the United Kingdom and were teaching English to their fellow mujahideen as a part of a plan to eventually send them to Europe or America as Syrian refugees.

The camp had been built mostly from old cargo containers trucked in from the port of Hodeidah. From a distance, they didn’t look like much, but a closer inspection showed window air conditioners mounted in holes that had been cut with a torch in the side of the containers. A portable generator powered them, as well as the lights, several laptops, and the roof-mounted satellite dish.

Al-Asmari went outside to empty his bladder. He enjoyed the mornings, before the heat of the day became unbearable. Finished, he turned to go back inside to pray.

Just a few feet above the horizon, the Tomahawk dashed over the desert sands, its GPS guidance system now assisted by its terrain contour matching (TERCOM) system.

As it approached the target, the system’s Digital Scene Matching Area Correlation kicked in, providing terminal guidance while being tracked by an Enhanced Imaging Systems satellite operated by the National Reconnaissance Office. And circling the camp at three thousand feet, a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator focused its cameras to capture the event in high definition.

Inside his metallic home, al-Asmari unrolled his prayer mat and knelt, facing Mecca. He bowed forward and touched his head to the mat just as he heard the faint sound of a jet engine.

Before he could sit up, the Tomahawk dropped right in the middle of the terrorist enclave. Its one-thousand-pound high-explosive warhead detonated with enough force to shred his metal container as well as the surrounding ones, turning them into red-hot shrapnel that propagated radially at the speed of sound, ripping through the rest of the camp in a nine-hundred-foot radius.