Blackmail

85 USS HARRY S. TRUMAN

“Loss of bravo-two-one.”

The strike controller’s report aboard Truman was professional and monotone, his voice failing to match Captain Sites’s mounting concern. Standing in the aircraft carrier’s Combat Direction Center, Sites monitored the task force’s engagement with the Indian Navy with rising trepidation, paying little attention to the thin layer of smoke hanging in the overhead. Even though the aircraft carrier’s compartments had been sealed when setting General Quarters, smoke seeped inside CDC as Truman’s crew battled the fires. Air samples were being taken to ensure breathing protection was not required.

A second strike controller reported the loss of another F/A-18, and Sites assessed the tactical situation. Bush and Eisenhower were still down, but Reagan was back on-line. However, her ability to sustain flight operations was tenuous, easily knocked out again if the carrier was hit by another round of Shipwreck missiles. Russian guided missile submarines were continuing to penetrate close enough to launch their surface attack missiles, but the task force was making each submarine pay dearly, vectoring a round of HAAWCs into the surrounding water. Russian attack submarines were probing the third ASW tier, but the destroyers and cruisers, along with the few MH-60Rs that remained, seemed to have kept the Russians at bay.

To the east, the task force’s combat air patrol was losing aircraft faster than replacements arrived. As the Indian aircraft whittled away at what remained of the task force’s combat air patrol, Sites spotted another wave of thirty aircraft inbound from the Indian carriers. He studied the red icons; the numbers didn’t add up.

The task force’s F/A-18s had splashed over thirty of India’s seventy aircraft, yet the Common Operational Picture still showed seventy aloft. Sites finally realized what the Indians were doing. Although the American task force was beyond range of India’s land-based tactical fighters, naval aircraft could land on the three Indian carriers and refuel. The Indians were ferrying additional aircraft aboard their carriers, replacing their losses, something the American aircraft carriers couldn’t do in their current location. As American airpower attrited and Indian forces were replenished, the battle would tilt rapidly in favor of India.

It was time to vacate the area. The task force’s first objective had been accomplished, destroying the Russian surface Navy. The carriers could retreat and conduct repairs, then reengage with additional ASW assets to deal with the Russian submarines. Sites examined the Common Operational Picture on his display, searching for an exit route. Russian submarines were pressing the task force’s northern and western sectors, with the Indian Navy to the east. That left the south, although there was no guarantee the Indian Navy’s submarines weren’t closing in from that direction. However, there were several American submarines on the back side of the task force, guarding against a Russian or Indian end-around.

As Sites’s eyes shifted to the narrow escape route to the south, yellow surface ship icons appeared on his display. Confusion worked across his face, and when the icons turned red, beads of cold sweat formed on his brow. A new enemy strike group had arrived, cutting off the retreat path for the American task force. As he wondered what ships they were, his Common Operational Picture tagged the contact in the center of the enemy formation as CNS Liaoning, the formidable Chinese aircraft carrier and sister ship of Kuznetsov, sold to China after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Son of a bitch!

Sites slammed his fist onto his console. He’d been told the Chinese had agreed to remain neutral. Now, with the outcome of the battle tilting away from the United States, China’s entry into the conflict was the nail in the coffin.

Red icons appeared beside the Russian-built carrier as its fighters launched. Ten, twenty, thirty… Liaoning’s crew was proficient, rapidly launching its air wing. When there were thirty aircraft aloft, they began their journey, moving swiftly north toward the American task force.

Sites’s shoulders sagged as he monitored the Chinese air wing’s journey. As the aircraft approached the task force’s air defense perimeter, provided by the cruisers and destroyers to the south, the Chinese fighters shifted their flight path, vectoring to the northeast. It looked as if the Chinese fighters were going to join the Indian aircraft and wipe out the remaining American combat air patrol, then penetrate the task force in the weakened sector to the east, where Indian aircraft had heavily damaged or knocked six of the surface combatants off-line.

Sites’s eyes went to the blue icons representing the damaged surface combatants. The Ticonderoga cruiser Vicksburg was still down, and another destroyer had dropped off the air warfare grid. That left two damaged destroyers in the area. They’d be overwhelmed.

As the Chinese aircraft continued toward what remained of the task force’s combat air patrol, four more F/A-18s — two from Truman and two from Reagan, were racing out to support.

Too little, too late.

When the thirty Chinese fighters closed to within missile range of the American and Indian melee, their icons switched from red to yellow. As Sites studied his display in confusion, their color changed to blue, as did the icons representing the Chinese ships to the south. The unit designation of the aircraft carrier also updated, and a wave of relief swept over Sites.

The aircraft carrier to the south wasn’t Liaoning.

It was USS Roosevelt!