Ohio Class

16

Most of a submarine's patrol time is spent waiting.

"New sonar contact bearing two-nine-five, Captain," the sonar officer said. "It sounds like another tanker, trying to enter the straits."

The weapons officer completed the TMA moments later. "Target speed eight knots, range thirteen hundred meters, sir."

Captain Damavandi stepped onto the control room dais. "Up periscope." Taking the periscope handles, he rode it to the surface. Harsh afternoon daylight glared off the water to the west, where a giant loomed against the horizon. He completed the requisite full circle, checking for other nearby vessels, then centered the targeting reticule on the contact.

Another huge one… larger than the Texan Star or any of the others they'd tracked so far. And it was heavily laden, the massive hull low in the water.

"Liberian registry," Damavandi said. He read the name off the bow. "Escondido Bay."

"Three hundred fifteen thousand tons," Commander Tavakkoli reported, reading from the warbook. "Three hundred thirty-one meters loa. American owned and operated."

"Excellent," Damavandi said. "Maneuvering! Come right to two-zero-five and increase speed to fifteen knots. Communications Officer!"

"Yes, sir!"

"Send to Bandar Abbas. 'Holy Mountain.'"

"Yes, sir!"

With Ghadir's periscope raised, the submarine's UHF antenna was above water as well. They continued to watch the target's steady approach, waiting for confirmation. Slowly, the angle on the bow increased, until the entire length of the vessel could be seen, spanning the northern horizon. Damavandi gave orders to swing to starboard, bringing her forward tubes to bear.

Less than five minutes after the initial transmission, Ghadir's communications officer announced, "Captain! Message from Bandar Abbas Naval Command! The message is 'Fire upon the sea!' It is confirmed, sir!"

Damavandi nodded, smiling. He'd thought this would be the one. Tehran wanted the largest target possible, the better to drive home its message: The straits are closed!

"Weapons status."

"Sir!" Lieutenant Taqi Ashkani, the weapons officer, reported. "Tubes one, three, two, and four are loaded and ready to fire!"

Damavandi took another long look through the periscope, as though to memorize every detail of the huge vessel now passing less than a kilometer off the Ghadir's bow. "Fire number one."

Ashkani's palm slammed against a switch at his fire control console. "Tube one fired electrically!" Damavandi heard the hiss of air expelling the torpedo from the tube forward, felt the slight rocking of the deck in response.

"Fire three."

"Tube three fired electrically," Ashkani reported. "Fire two."

"Tube two fired electrically."

"Fire four."

"Tube four fired electrically. Allah be praised! All torpedoes running straight and true."

Damavandi glanced at Mullah Hamid Khodaei, seated at his accustomed place by the weapons board, and kept his face impassive. A submarine is no place for religious fervor, he thought, but it was a thought he would keep to himself.

"Torpedo one has acquired its target," the weapons officer announced. A moment passed. "Torpedo one is locked."

"Cut the wire to torpedo number one."

"Wire cut. Torpedo one is running free."

He found himself watching the sweeping second hand on the big clock mounted on the control room's forward bulkhead.

"Torpedo three has acquired its target." Good. "Torpedo three is locked."

"Cut the wire to torpedo number three."

"Wire cut. Torpedo three is running free."

Ghadir was equipped with Russian-designed 533mm torpedoes. Wire-guided, they were fired toward their target, but could be controlled by signals sent along the wires that connected them to the submarine. Once close enough to the target that they could pick them up with their own on-board sonar, the wires were cut and the torpedoes free to travel the rest of the way to their target.

Through the periscope, Damavandi saw a sudden geyser of water erupt from beneath the supertanker's stern; moments later they heard the heavy thud of the warhead's detonation, and the men in the control room broke into a frenzy of cheering and shrill cries of "Allah is great!" and "Death to America!"

"Silence!" Damavandi bellowed, and the clamor subsided almost at once. "Attend to your posts!"

A second geyser of water erupted from the supertanker's starboard side, this one amidships. This time, when the explosion rumbled through the hull, the men didn't cheer, but Damavandi could feel their excitement, their raw joy.

"Torpedo one has missed, Captain," the weapons officer announced. And, when another moment had passed. "Torpedo four has also missed."

"No matter," Damavandi said, watching through the periscope. "I believe they have received our message. Communications Officer!"

"Sir!"

"Send to Bandar Abbas. 'The sea is burning.' "

"Yes, Captain! Allah be praised!"

Allah be praised. Fire was engulfing the stern third of the ship, which had already begun to settle visibly deeper into the water. Men were burning to death out there… a hideous way to die.

Ghadir, however, had just scored her first kill.

The Combat Center had been set up forward of the Ohio's control room, a compartment dedicated to managing operations ashore. When Stewart walked in, Drake and Wolfe both were there, bent over a map table upon which a satellite photo had been blown up into a large map. The resolution was high enough that Stewart could see automobiles, construction equipment, and individual people.

"Have you heard the latest priflash?" he asked. Drake looked up from the table. "No, Captain. What is it?"

Stewart handed him the translated flimsy that had just been handed to him. "Tehran has just upped the ante," he said as Drake read the message. "They've just torpedoed a supertanker in the straits."

"Christ Almighty… "

"HQ-NAVCENT has given all U.S. forces in the Gulf their orders — Defense Posture Bravo. That means we initiate no hostile action, and shoot back only if we or one of our ships is fired upon."

"Does that include that tanker, sir?" Lieutenant Drake asked.

"It means I could have decided to sink the sub that torpedoed her," Stewart replied, "if we'd been in the area. But can I launch Tomahawks now? No. However, this does bring Operation Sea Hammer into question."

Drake scowled, shaking his head. "Call it off? Can't do it, Captain. Not now. Damn it, they're two hours from the coast, and they haven't surfaced for an update. Besides, this isn't a NAVCENT/CENTCOM op. It's NAVSPECWAR, which means J-SOC."

Stewart nodded at the tangle of alphabet soup. "I understand that. But we should keep our options open, in case someone decides to start micromanaging. Don't you agree?"

Ohio's operational status was hazy, at best. She was in the AO — the Area of Operations — under the military jurisdiction of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, headquartered across the Gulf at Manama. Operationally, however, she was following orders given by Naval Special Warfare, which in turn was operating under the authority of the Joint Special Operations Command, headquartered back at Fort Bragg, Stateside. If CENT-COM issued him a direct order, he would clear it with J-SOC first.

Stewart doubted that CENTCOM would attempt to force the issue… but it could happen. Even in this age of instantaneous satellite communications, messages went awry and decision makers neglected to talk with one another. The biggest problem was that the situation here had just leaped another level on the crisis meter. With the attack on the Escondido Bay, this was now a shooting war.

And the Ohio was smack in the middle of it.

The cockpit of the Advanced SEAL Delivery System was more like that of a modern combat aircraft than that of any kind of boat or ship Mayhew was familiar with. The two naval officers were squeezed in side by side in a space less than seven feet wide, like pilot and copilot. Digital readouts, touch-screen controls, and a pair of TV monitors were situated on the forward console instead of traditional periscopes or windows on the outside world. The craft boasted two separate sonar systems — forward-looking sonar for detecting obstacles ahead, including man-made ones, and side-looking sonar for terrain and bottom-mapping, and for mine detection.

It was only right, Mayhew thought. The ASDS was a blunt and ugly looking vehicle on the outside, and as cramped as a trash can aft; the cockpit had better have some damned sexy controls if it was to justify the vessel's $230 million price tag.

"Time to bring her up and get a fix," Taggart said. "Raise the masts."

"Up scopes," Mayhew said, touching his control screen.

The ASDS possessed two masts, mounted side by side. The port mast was an optical periscope, though the image came up on a TV monitor on the console, instead of in an eyepiece. The starboard mast was for satellite communications, and also took an automatic GPS fix on the vessel's location each time it was raised above the surface.

The two men studied the image on the screen for a moment, walking it first through 360 degrees to make sure there weren't any surface craft close by. They appeared to have this stretch of beach to themselves.

"We're about five kilometers from where we want to be," Mayhew observed, studying the GPS readout. His official position, at least until he locked out with his men, was navigator.

"Less than two miles," Taggart said. "Not bad for sixty miles of dead reckoning."

Mayhew shot the older man a glance. Was he being sarcastic? Mayhew had trained long and hard with the ASDS, and took supreme pride in his ability to navigate. The truth was, a two-mile error wasn't bad, considering they hadn't poked the GPS mast above water since leaving the Ohio. But there was that whole submariner-SEAL rivalry thing, which could crop up at the damnedest times. Non-SEAL officers tended to see Special Warfare personnel as mavericks, as cowboys — or, worse, as lunatics — and didn't always take them seriously. Mayhew's only strategy throughout the training, both with Taggart and with other fleet officers, was to maintain a strictly professional mien.

But Taggart appeared serious. Maybe he was trying to keep things strictly professional as well.

"Yeah," Mayhew agreed. "Looks like we're just west of the port. We want to be at the river mouth to the east."

The landscape, revealed by an orange sun hot and low in the west, might have been the surface of an alien planet. It was barren, for the most part — sand and rock, salt plain and desert, baking in the summer heat. Several black, dome-shaped massifs rose from otherwise flat pans of sand, salt, and gravel. Inland, rugged mountains — the Shib Kuh coastal range — glowed in the evening sun against the northern sky.

The village of Bandar-e Charak was a clutter of square, single-story buildings for the most part, stretched in an arc along a mile of the coast. A river entered the Gulf on the east side of the town, emerging from behind a long, low sand bar. West were scattered docks, a few petroleum-processing facilities, and a fishery.

Six miles northeast of the port itself, one of those black massifs rose from the surrounding desert floor, a huge, rounded dark backdrop. Their objective — the Darya-ye complex, code-named White Scimitar — was located at the southern edge of that massif, tucked away within a steep-walled valley.

The failed Operation Black Stallion had attempted going in well to the west of Bandar-e Charak, the SEALs moving inland across a beach and a road, then swinging east to come at the site over the flank of the mountain. According to Lieutenant Wolfe, back on the Ohio, Pasdaran troops had been waiting for them up in those hills, with a large patrol emerging seemingly from nowhere. Possibly the SEALs had tripped sophisticated sensors going in, or, possibly, mission security had been compromised, most likely by the radar detection of the two SEAL boats. Either way, the Iranian troops had been hunting for intruders, and they'd found them.

Operation Sea Hammer was planned with an alternate approach, moving up the unnamed river and through the salt marshes behind it, swinging behind Bandar-e Charak and up into the massif from the east.

Taggart took the joystick control on the console in front of him and pulled it to the right. Obediently, the little submersible swung to starboard, turning east.

"We've got a priority flash coming through," Mayhew said. "Five gets you ten we're getting recalled."

"That sort of thing happen to SEALs often?"

"It happens often enough." The message was in text rather than voice. He ran it through the decoder and brought it up on-screen. "Well, shit."

"What is it? We going back to the barn?"

"It's a waffle. They're not calling off the mission, but we're not supposed to make the bad guys mad, either." He read Taggart the text.

"Doesn't apply to us," the submariner said. "We're not Fifth Fleet."

"No, but I'll bet that defense wouldn't help much if we got court-martialed for taking a dump in Fifth Fleet's living room."

"How do you want to handle it, Lieutenant?"

"You're asking me?"

Taggart shrugged. "Way I see it, we're not threatening anybody so long as we're parked out here and safely submerged. Your part of the mission is where it gets dicey — taking fifteen well-armed psychopaths six miles into Injun country. Can you do that without kicking over the hornet's nest?"

"Well, the way SEALs see things," Mayhew replied, "is the successful op is the one where no one sees you going in, no one sees you coming out, and no one ever knows you were there… at least until the fireworks go off. Yeah, we can do it."

"Okay, then. Let's get this bus east to your drop-off."

Churning silently through shallow water, the ASDS motored south at eight knots, unseen from the shore.

Sonar Tech Second Class Caswell listened to the weirdly echoing chirps and pings coming through the broadband equipment. Charting them — determining accurate distances and ranges — was all but impossible. Echoes off the shoal water to the north confused the picture, and there were a number of enemy transmitters. So far he'd identified at least two submarines in the area that were using active sonar, as well as a surface vessel and several stationary transmitters that were probably sonobuoys.

Master Chief O'Day stepped into the sonar shack. "How ya doin', Cassie?" the older man asked. Caswell jumped, startled. "Shit, COB!"

"Sorry, kid."

" 'S'okay. Jesus. Give a guy some warning next time." The Chief of the Boat grinned. "I just wanted to know how you were getting on."

Caswell nodded. "Okay, I guess. Work helps, y'know?"

"Yeah. Y'know, my wife left me after twenty-one years. I came home one day, and found she'd cleaned out her stuff and left. Took the joint account, too. It still hurts."

"How long ago was that, COB?" Dobbs asked. "About six years."

"Jeeze, doesn't it ever stop hurting?" Caswell asked.

O'Day shrugged. "I dunno. Haven't gotten that far yet. Point is, you get through it. Kind of like kicking the bottle. One day at a time."

Caswell nodded. "I guess that's what I'm learning. I… I was kind of close there, for a while…. "

"Close to what?"

"I don't know. Doing something stupid."

"Killing yourself?"

Caswell hesitated, then nodded.

"Yeah. I kind of figured."

"You did?"

"Like I say, I been there." O'Day rubbed his jaw. "You in the mood for some advice?"

"I guess so."

"Don't. If you think you're in a world of shit now, just try killing yourself."

"What do you mean? The idea is to make it stop hurting." The words started coming faster. "I mean… it just keeps going on and on and on! I try to forget her, but I can't. I try to sleep, and I can't. I try to pay attention to my work… and she keeps getting in the way. I don't want to screw everything up for everybody."

"Of course you don't. That's why you're not going to kill yourself."

"Huh?"

"Look, on board a submarine, there are only so many ways to off yourself. The doc has all the dangerous drugs locked up. No place to hang yourself. No privacy. No, you'd have to get a weapon out of the arms locker and try to blow your brains out.

"And let's say you're able to do that, see? There'd be an inquiry. Jesus, kid, do you hate the skipper that much that you'd put him through that kind of hell? That's assuming he survived, 'cause if you fired off a weapon down here, the Iranians would hear it, and they'd be all over us. You want to take your shipmates with you?"

"N-No, COB."

"But the real pain would be if you fucked it up. There was this guy on a sub I was stationed on about fifteen years ago… nice kid. Twenty, maybe twenty-one. His brand new wife dumped him, and he went off the bulkhead. Trying for a Section Eight. We had ourselves a nice little stand-off in the torpedo room, him stark naked and raving about Jesus Christ and holding a pistol to his head, while me and the boat's doc tried to talk him down."

"What happened?"

"Damnedest thing I ever saw. The boat's skipper came down, held out his hand like this, and said, 'Give me that weapon, mister. I'm Jesus Christ on this boat, and that's a fucking order!' This kid damned near fainted, but he lowered the gun and handed it over.

Pure force of will, I guess. We had him in handcuffs and sedated before he knew what hit him. Inside of twenty-four hours he was on his way stateside."

"Did he get court-martialed?" Dobbs asked.

"Nah. The skipper recommended a medical discharge. He got it, eventually, but he was in the hospital for quite a while. So, Caswell… how bad do you want out of the Navy?"

Caswell shook his head. "Not that bad."

"Good. Because, like the skipper said, we need you. We need your ears. Right?"

"Right, COB."

"What was that? I couldn't hear you."

"I said, 'Right, COB.' "

"That's better. Now listen up. I've been where you are right now, okay? And let me tell you something. It never, ever gets so bad you can't wait one more day. Can you do that? Wait one more day?"

"Y-Yeah. I guess so."

"Know so. I'm not going to make pacts with you, or any of that shit. All I want is that if you get to where you want to kill yourself, you just make a pact with yourself… to wait one more day. I think you'll find that you're glad you didn't do it. You hear me?"

"Yes, COB."

"Good. You've got some good people looking out for you. Your department head. The exec. Doc Kettering. Me. We're all watching you to make sure you don't do something stupid… but we're also here to help you if we can. You can always—"

Caswell held up his hand, a sharp, urgent movement. The pitch of one set of sonar pings had just changed and was growing stronger. He hit the intercom switch. "Control Room, Sonar. An enemy vessel has just changed course and is heading straight toward us. Heavy pinging."

"Acknowledged, Sonar. What can you tell me?"

Caswell closed his eyes, as if to better merge himself with the sound. He could hear the steady throb of the other vessel's screws behind the chirp-ping of its sonar.

"Control Room… target is a surface vessel. Twin screws. Type 174 hull, sonar bearing two-eight-five. Speed twenty knots. Estimated range… two thousand yards." He listened a moment longer. "Captain, I don't think he has a lock. He's moving too fast."

"Acknowledged, Sonar. Keep on him."

The pinging was audible now to unaided ears throughout the Ohio. The chirps and their echoes grew louder… more insistent…

… and then they were receding as the pounding of the ASW warship's screws passed overhead.

O'Day let out a long, pent-up breath. "Good call, kid."

"I think the bastard is trying to drive us," Dobbs said. "At twenty knots, though, he's not going to hear very much."

"He's changing course again," Caswell said. "He's turning south, out into the middle of the straits. Still banging away like mad."

"Probably hopes to spook us," O'Day observed. "Maybe get us to pop a fish at him."

"There's something else," Caswell said. Damn! This one was close! "Control Room! Sonar! I have an air contact, directly overhead! Sounds like a helicopter, hovering low over the water."

"Acknowledged."

For a long, achingly tense moment, Caswell listened to the faint sound of a helicopter's rotors, a muffled whop-whop-whop transmitted down through the water. He was listening now for the telltale splash of something dropping into the water — sonobuoy, torpedo, depth charge….

And then the sound of the helicopter began fading.

"Control Room, Sonar. Helicopter contact is moving off toward the south."

"Very well."

O'Day sagged, leaning against the sonar room entranceway. "Jesus, kid. Good ears."

"Just doing my job, COB."

"Well… keep on doing it. Well done." The Chief of the Boat turned and left the compartment. Just doing my job.

Caswell was startled to realize just how important that was right now. How very much he didn't want to let down his shipmates.

And even how much he wanted to please the skipper.

A long time later, he was startled again when he realized he hadn't thought about Nina once during that whole encounter.