Brink of War

8

Trouble rarely begins during the daylight hours. Even as humans lose track of their circadian rhythms, confusing day and night in the endless cycle of watches, duty, and meals onboard a carrier, disaster always seems to know precisely what time it is. It happens in the early morning hours, and more often than not, the people that must deal with it are awakened by watch-standers pounding on their doors. This time, it was different. And that worried me.

It was nine o'clock in the morning, and I had been at my desk for almost three hours after a hasty breakfast consisting primarily of cinnamon rolls and coffee. The sugar and caffeine were beginning to wear off, and I was starting to count the hours until an early lunch. I had the speakers in my office turned low, merely background noise. The normal tactical chatter surrounded me, filtered out of consciousness by my brain.

Ever since the first detection of our Russian submarines, we had kept a continuous antisubmarine patrol in the air. One of my speakers was dialed up on that circuit.

It was the tone of the pilot's voice more than the words he said that first caught my attention. I knew him, as I knew most of the pilots, and it wasn't often that he got excited. Not in public, at least.

Commander "Rabies" Grill was one of the most experienced S3 pilots onboard. While we were in the Spratly Islands, we had had our first encounter with an enemy submarine firing surface-to-air missiles. He rotated off Jefferson a few years ago, and had returned just two months ago, selected for full commander and headed toward the prospective executive officer ― PXO ― slot with VS29. His flight crews complained about his love for country music, and said he was fond of singing to them during extended flights. I had heard Rabies singing, and I pitied them.

Even now, I wouldn't have called his voice excited. Just out of character ― enough to catch my attention.

"Home Plate, this is Hunter 701. Is our bird sweet?"

Rabies was asking if his data link with the carrier was up and working. An odd question, since aircrews usually didn't worry about data links unless the carrier was bugging them. I glanced over at the data console to see for myself.

The symbol for the antisubmarine warfare aircraft was clearly displayed, moving in a circular orbit approximately forty miles northeast of the carrier. There had been some concerns earlier that day about the ice moving and the meteorologist had recommended moving to the north to stay in open water. If ice started forming, the sonobuoys must be able to break through it to reach the water, but the ice would prevent the antenna from deploying and transmitting the information back to the aircraft.

When Rabies had reported on station, he had noted that the water was essentially open at that point. However, the ice did indeed appear to be forming up to the south of his briefed pattern, and he was worried about problems later in the mission.

Now it looked like he had other things to worry about.

"Roger, Hunter 701. Good data link." The operations specialist's voice was calm and unconcerned. "Problem on your end?"

"No. Just wanted to make sure it was good for you, too."

The operations specialist rolled his eyes over the risque' remark.

"You need to talk to the USW module ― we're sweet and hot on number six, and I'm not hearing you talk to me about it."

"Hot?" The operations specialist now sounded interested. I could picture him leaning forward over his console, picking up his white grease pencil, and preparing to scratch notes on his radar screen as he watched the symbol representing the aircraft he was controlling track across it.

"How hot?"

"How does positive acoustic contact on a Victor and an Akula strike you? That hot enough?" I could hear the undercurrent of cool amusement in Rabies's voice. Rabies might take the brunt of some good-humored teasing within the squadron, but unlike most pilots, he was no slouch when it came to USW. Most pilots left it to their TACCOS, but Rabies knew more about it than just the tactical implications of getting his aircraft from one spot to another, of positioning it to drop sonobuoys where the TACCO wanted them.

"How close are they?" It was the TAO's voice now, breaking in on the interchange.

"Look for yourself," Rabies answered. "You said the data link was good, didn't you?" He left unspoken the possibility that the TAO couldn't read. But implied it quite clearly.

The circuit fell silent for a few moments. I could imagine the panic that was starting in CDC, the squawking over the bitch box, the calls going out over the ship's internal telephone system. Within a few moments, the TAO would have talked to the flag TAO, who would call the admiral. I glanced at the clock on the wall. Admiral Wayne was a believer in intelligence. Any second now… The phone rang. I picked it up myself. "Busby."

"Get down here." The admiral's sharp Boston voice was unmistakable.

As was his immediate reaction to new data on the missing Russian submarines. "You have been listening, I take it? Judging from the speed at which you answered the telephone, one might even suspect you had anticipated my call."

Admiral Wayne and I had been on three cruises together. If I could not anticipate his wants by now, I truly was a sorry intelligence officer.

"Of course I'm listening, Admiral." I left unanswered the rest of his comment.

"Do you know anything about this? Anything more than we've discussed?"

Another odd question, coming from him. By now Admiral Wayne should have known that anything I knew, he knew.

But maybe not so odd, given what had happened before. After all, Admiral Wayne had known about the American submarines in the area. And he had not told me. It was a simple matter of mistrust breeding mistrust, and one of the reasons I prefer to have no secrets from my admiral.

But RHIP ― rank has its privileges. I hauled my skinny butt up out of my chair and headed for TFCC.

As soon as I stepped into the small compartment located immediately off of the admiral's conference room, I knew this situation had gotten worse in the few moments it had taken me to walk down there from CVIC. In addition to the normal watch standards, there were three submarine officers in TFCC. I knew one of them well, Commander Hank Fowler. He was attached to the admiral's staff as the submarine community representative. I had found him to be a normal type of submariner ― that is to say, extremely bright, lacking in social skills, and having a utterly odd, dry sense of humor.

Submarines have three rules I = E/R, P = MA, and

"You can't push a rope." They are generally funny as hell, if you can get past the weirdness.

I stuck my head in SCIF, the Specially Compartmented Information module located immediately next to TFCC. I doubted that there was anything new to be learned there, but I wanted my people to know I was in the area.

That way, they could find me if they needed to.

Two seconds ― that's all it took. Then I stepped inside TFCC. I moved just barely inside the heavy steel hatch that separated the compartment from the conference room, which opened onto a small vestibule. I made eye contact with the admiral, then settled in to wait. He knew I was here and he would yell if he needed me.

Immediately, I knew we were in trouble. Not the carrier, but the submarine traveling with our battle group.

At the depths at which they operate in order to remain concealed, submarines have very few options for communication. They can launch a transmitter buoy, which will reach the surface and broadcast their message to anyone listening. Noisy, and it gives away the submarine's position.

If she's got time, the submarine can come shallow, send the message to the satellite, and back down to us directly. But there are disadvantages to giving up the protection of depth as well. Finally, there was the low-frequency option. The submarine carried an acoustic generator that could broadcast low-frequency tones. In addition to using her underwater telephone, code-named Gertrude, she could transmit a series of tonals that would pass a coded message to any platform with the appropriate receivers.

However, without the code book, the message could not be unscrambled.

Most USW assets now carry some form of recording equipment. While they may not be able to decode the signal immediately, they can transmit the frequency information to the aircraft carrier.

And we can decipher it. Oh yes, we can. And the chaos that I was seeing in the flag plot right now was evidence of that.

"How bad is it?" Admiral Wayne demanded. He was nose-to-nose with Commander Fowler.

"About as bad as it gets." Hank was as worried as I'd ever seen him.

"There's triple redundancy built into every system, but even that sometimes isn't enough. If three reactor coolant pumps are down, she's got problems." He shook his head, acknowledging the effect of Murphy on any sensitive military mission. "If it had to happen, you have to figure it would be here." "How many does she have onboard?" the admiral asked.

"Four ― with a couple of emergency measures built in as well. There are things that they can do, Admiral, and they may be able to fix some of it. But I have to tell you, being at depth, I wouldn't want to try. Too much goes wrong, you have to shut a reactor down ― and there you are. You have to use your batteries to come shallow, then maybe you don't have enough power to restart the reactor later on. And there you are, stuck shallow in Russian waters."

Finally, the admiral turned to me. "Anything to add?"

I shook my head. There was no additional intelligence data I could provide, nothing that would matter in this situation. There were submarines in the area, nasty tough ones, and our boat had problems.

The admiral stared at the large-screen display as though he could will it to change. The geometry of the attack was perfectly clear there ― our submarine, theirs, and the carrier battle group. "It's always a trade-off, isn't it?" He shook his head. "We can provide some additional protection for our own ship by moving the destroyer in closer to her, but that's likely to tip our hand. They'll know that we know, and we will know that they know that we know. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…" "When first we practice to deceive," I said, finishing the quotation.

Between Murphy and Shakespeare, I figured we summed the situation up pretty well.

The submariner spoke then. "There is one other possibility."

Whatever it was, I could tell by his expression he didn't like it. "They do carry a certain amount of spare parts, as well as some crackerjack mechanics and engineers. I've seen a submarine machinist's mate completely rebuild a main coolant pump while we were on a mission. It was amazing ― when we got back to port, the company that built it damn near cried. The tolerances were all off, he'd jury-rigged some gaskets, and it worked like a charm. And quiet ― quieter than the original. I think they offered him a ton of money to leave the Navy, but he didn't."

The admiral looked skeptical. "So you think they can fix it?"

The submariner nodded. "Even if they can't, they can still operate with one pump. Not as fast, not as long. And no captain is going to like it, operating without triple redundancy. But they can do it for a while ― maybe long enough to get another pump fixed. If you want them to."

Admiral Wayne stared at him for a moment. "It always comes down to this, doesn't it?" he said softly. "For the skipper on that sub and for me. How far are we willing to go to finish the mission? What do you think he's going to want?"

"I think he is going to want to finish the mission." Fowler smiled a little, and I caught a glimpse of the kind of decisions he must have had to make during his command tour. "The first thing they make sure of in sub school is that you're not afraid of the deep water. Or claustrophobic. If I were that skipper, knowing what my mission was, I'd want some peace and quiet so I could take a shot at fixing at least one of the pumps.

Remember, he's not screaming for rescue right now. He's just advising us of the situation, letting us know what he can and can't do. If he needs help, don't worry ― you'll hear about it."

"If you were him, where would you like to be?" I asked.

Fowler pointed a stubby finger at a series of lopsided, stretched-out circles. "There. That looks to be the nearest thing I've seen to an undersea canyon in this part of the world. Deep water, and the canyon will trap most of the sound. It's the closest thing to a hideout around."

"Not much place to run, though. Not if that Akula gets a sniff of her."

The Akula was the deepest-diving submarine in the Russian inventory.

It was also the fastest, capable of speeds exceeding thirty-five knots, far faster than anything we had in the water. Even our new Seawolf couldn't chase her down.

Admiral Wayne nodded. "That's the plan, then. At least for now." He turned to me. "Get on your secret line to SUBLANT. Get them to tell that submarine to lay low and fix it. We're here in case they need us, and I can have that destroyer in their immediate vicinity if they need protection. But for now, we stick with the game plan." "What do we tell Rabies?" I asked.

"Why the hell should I tell him anything?" Admiral Wayne looked annoyed.

"Because sooner or later he will be back onboard," I said. "Sure, I'll tell him not to talk, but too many people have already seen what's going on. There are a lot of smart people on this aircraft carrier, Admiral, and most of them don't work for me. They'll be asking questions ― and we need some answers." The admiral sighed. "It's not like they're going on liberty and will be shooting their mouths off in bars, is it? Why do I have to tell them anything?"

Because it will get us in trouble if you don't. Just like now ― you knew about the American sub with us and you didn't tell me about it.

Secrets ought to be what we keep from the enemy ― not from each other.

I didn't say that, of course. There was no need to ― the admiral knew it as well as I did. Instead, I said, "Morale, sir. Rabies is a smart officer ― he'll figure it out soon enough."

The one thing you never want to say onboard a carrier is What else can go wrong? As soon as you do, something else will. I saw Admiral Wayne start to say the words, felt a mild pulse of fear, then looked back up at the large-screen display.

Sometimes it wasn't even necessary to say it ― just thinking it was bad enough.

Two enemy aircraft had just appeared on the far eastern quarter of the display. In these close quarters, they were well within our weapons range, as we were within theirs. Not that anybody was thinking weapons ― of course, this was a goodwill mission. Some war games, sure, that sort of thing.

"I'll be in SCIF," I said abruptly. In two steps I was back in my own domain. The admiral followed me. I pulled the heavy steel hatch shut behind us, locked it, and went immediately to the sensor operator.

"Anything?"

"Just those MiGs that launched. So far, they're following the same patrol pattern as the earlier missions." The technician looked at me, then returned his gaze to the screen. "We have some reason to worry about them?"

I shook my head. "No video downlink?"

Video downlink was a method of communication between an aircraft and a submarine or surface ship. It was one of the most critical bits of SIGINT, or signal intelligence, that we could detect. VDL was used for passing targeting information from the aircraft, who had a farther horizon, to the shooting platform. If you think there are no submarines in the area and you start detecting VDL, you know you've been mistaken. In this case, if we detected VDL, we would know that the MiGs were talking to the submarines chasing ours.

Or worse ― that the aircraft were passing targeting information on the carrier to one of the submarines. If they were carrying the new 280-mm torpedoes, we were in serious trouble. One shot right under the keel could sink an aircraft carrier.

"Might be nice to get me some help over here," Rabies's voice said.

"I'm a little short on air-to-air missiles right now."

I saw what Rabies was worried about. The two Russian aircraft were rapidly approaching his location. The S3 has a maximum speed of 450 knots.

The MiG could do about three times that ― not a fair contest. Furthermore, the S3 carried only torpedoes and a few antisurface weapons, nothing capable of taking on a determined fighter. There was no contest.

"Where is our CAP?" the admiral snapped. "Damn it, get that man some help!" Before he could even finish his sentence, I heard the air traffic controller in CDC talking quietly, urgently, with our airborne fighters.

The symbols on the screen changed direction immediately and streaked north from their position south of the carrier battle group, interposing themselves between the carrier and the intruders.

Something cold in my stomach went sour. It wasn't going to start this way, was it? With nerves rubbed raw on either side, aircraft approaching each other too fast for rational thought, missiles fired before anyone truly thought out the consequences?

"Rabies, get your ass out of there," the USW controller said urgently.

"Come on, man…"

Rabies's aircraft was now turned away from the MiGs, beating feet back toward the carrier. But the Russian aircraft were far closer to him than our own fighters were.

What had we been thinking? Leaving him out there alone? Or had the admiral reasoned that putting up fighters to escort him would escalate the tensions, that there was no real danger to an unarmed S3 Viking supposedly conducting safety of navigation operations? I was beginning to doubt that we could ever have sold anyone on that particular explanation for disobeying the prohibition on USW missions.

No matter. At this point, the situation was critical.

Admiral Wayne grabbed a microphone from the overhead, the one hard-wired into the tactical fighter net. He stared at the two friendly fighter symbols on the large-screen display as he spoke. "This is the admiral," he said. "Listen up."

"Tomcat lead, Admiral. I'm listening." The lead pilot's voice was cool and collected. "We're about to have us a situation here. Any guidance?"

"I'm not going to second-guess you on this," the admiral began. "At the first sign of any hostile activity, you nail their asses. But don't jump the gun."

There was silence from the aircraft. I could tell what they were thinking ― Gee, thanks, that helps a lot, Admiral… For what it was worth, I agreed with them. But what else could the admiral tell them? Don't take the first shot at the Russians ― but don't let the Russians take it either.

It was deadly silent inside CVIC. No one moved, as though to do so would disturb the pilots forty miles away. Most of them were pilots themselves, and I could see that they were imagining the situation inside the cockpit. Playing out their reactions to the MiGs, figuring out how they would handle it themselves. Hands moved, almost involuntarily, reflexively fighting the battle taking place on the screen.

It was difficult to breathe. The tension inside TFCC was palpable.

The aircraft symbols on the large-screen display moved slowly, creeping millimeter by millimeter across the projection. Altitude and speed indicator numbers clicked over silently on the data display at the TAO's right hand. Rabies was hauling ass, buster ― as in "bust your ass getting here" ― toward the boat. The MiGs were right on his tail now.

"A little too close for comfort," I heard him grunt on the speaker.

No shit. The MiG symbol was so close to that of the S3 that the two were merging. Rabies must be able to see him, practically feel his breath down the back of his neck.

"Little bastard is all over me," Rabies continued. "He and playmate ― we got one directly overhead, and I think the other is right under us. They're swapping places ― the turbulence is hell. Where the hell are those Tomcats? Damned fighters ― never around except during meal hours."

Admiral Wayne keyed the microphone in his hand. "They should be almost to you. Have you got a visual yet? Same altitude, dead ahead."

"No, not yet. TACCO's got them on LINK, but I don't ― wait, there they are."

"Expand the picture," Admiral Wayne ordered. The TAO's fingers danced over the keyboard, zooming out on the one small piece of sky crowded with fighters and one lone S3. The scale grew larger, reducing the area displayed on screen. I could see them now, the two fighters moving slightly away from the S3, the two friendly Tomcats boring in on them.

Our Tomcats were in combat spread, one high and one low. It was an effective fighting formation, and one the U.S. Navy had perfected over the decades.

"Doesn't look like they're going to scare that easy," Rabies said.

"But as long as they go pick on someone their own size, I'm happy."

A new voice broke in. "We'll take it from here."

"What the hell do you think I've been trying to do?" Rabies answered.

"Play patty-cake?"

The lead Tomcat pilot arched in toward the MiGs, bearing down on them with the rest of his flight behind him. Just as they were within short-range-missile distance of the MiGs, the Russian aircraft veered away.

The Tomcats followed them, closing on their tails now, in perfect firing position, but the MiGs ignored them.

"What the hell was that all about?" the TAO wondered aloud. Batman just grunted.

We watched until the MiGs were back in Russian airspace. The Tomcats broke off as they reached the twelve-mile limit and turned back to the boat.

A training mission, perhaps. Or maybe just a reminder. We might never know which one.

"Admiral?" I asked. "Sir, about the American submarine-"

"No discussion," Batman ruled.

"One other question, then?" I asked.

"Shoot."

"What do we tell Tombstone about this? The subs, the MiGs?" Batman was silent for a moment, then said, "Nothing."