Ohio Class

5

A knock sounded on the door. Stewart looked up from the maintenance log he was reviewing. "Come."

The door swung open and the Marine sentry leaned inside. "Sir. General Vintner to see you, sir."

"Send him in!"

A submarine, even a vessel as relatively spacious as the Ohio, was a bit cramped for formalities, and even the captain's office — a small compartment adjoining his stateroom, which, with desk, chairs, and other essentials, was almost claustrophobic — was little more than a glorified walk-in closet.

Still, Stewart stood as the general entered. Vintner wore a civilian jacket and tie. He was gray-haired, in his late fifties or early sixties, Stewart guessed, but steel-hard in both his bearing and the expression in his eye. "Captain Stewart?" he said, extending a hand. "Thank you for seeing me."

"Captain Garrett strongly suggested that I see you, sir. But it is a pleasure, believe me." He gestured to the only chair other than his own in the room.

Vintner chuckled as he took a seat. "Captain Garrett can have strong opinions. He's a real hard-charger. As well as a good friend."

Stewart sat down again behind the desk. "Yes, sir.

Uh… coffee?"

"Thank you, no. I don't want to take up too much of your time, Captain. I understand you're making ready for sea."

"That's what they tell me. I… gather you have something to talk to me about that may have a bearing on this deployment?"

"Possibly," Vintner said. His jaw hardened. "Possibly. If you will indulge me, I'd like to tell you a little story."

"Of course."

"Operation Millennium Challenge. Have you read anything about it? Summer of '02."

Stewart searched his memory. "Um… something in Naval Proceedings? The war games in the Gulf just before we invaded Iraq?"

"That's the one. What do you know about it?"

Stewart shrugged. "It was a large-scale exercise. We needed to know we could deploy our fleet elements efficiently. A preparatory exercise for the real thing."

"Exactly." Vintner leaned back in his chair. "As it happens, I was part of the OPFOR staff."

OPFOR. Opposing Force. In military war games, OPFOR was the U.S. force serving as the enemy against which U.S. units could be deployed, trained, and tested.

"Millennium Challenge," Vintner went on, "was the most elaborate and expensive war game we've ever put together — two years in the planning, and costing something like $250 million. Altogether, it involved all of the service branches, with almost fourteen thousand U.S. troops at seventeen locations and nine life-force training sites, and using a small army of computers to run the simulations. It wasn't aimed at Iraq, exactly, but it was set in the Arabian Gulf, and it simulated a conflict with a hypothetical rogue nation. The good guys were 'Force Blue,' of course. The bad guys, OPFOR, were 'Force Red.' The war was set to last for three weeks, and to end with the overthrow of Force Red's tyrannical dictator on August fifteenth."

"Nice to know things like that in advance."

"Tell me about it." He made a sour face. "It's important that you understand something here. This wasn't just posturing or saber-rattling — trying to be the big, tough kid on the block — and it wasn't intended to send a message to the Iraqi regime… at least, not solely. The commanding officer of the Joint Forces Command— under whose auspices the games were held — announced to the press before things got under way that the war games would test a whole series of new war-fighting techniques and concepts."

Stewart cocked his head to the side. "Like what? Nathan Bedford Forrest was supposed to have said the important thing in war was to get there 'fustest with the mostest,' or something of the sort. That's still pretty much what warfare comes down to."

"This is modern warfare, Captain Stewart. We're dealing with really key concepts here… like 'rapid decisive operations,' 'effects-based operations,' 'operational net assessments,' crap like that."

"Uh. Is this war-fighting, sir? Or marketing department buzz words like some major corporation?"

"Sometimes, Captain, it's damned hard to tell. In any case, at the conclusion of the operation, JOINT-FOR drafted a set of recommendations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisting that all points and concepts had been demonstrated successfully.

"That, Captain, is on the public record. Millennium Challenge was a huge success. We proved what we wanted to prove, and we've implemented key changes in our training, procurement, and war-fighting strategy based on that success."

"Uh-huh. Sounds good. What's the catch?"

"The catch is that it didn't happen the way we told the reporters, or the Joint Chiefs."

"Go on."

"The commander of Force Red was Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, an old-school Marine. They actually brought him out of retirement to play the role of the shrewd but crazy Middle Eastern dictator who headed up OPFOR's hypothetical country. Most of the details still aren't public. Some of the story, though, was leaked to the Army Times. Millennium Challenge was described as 'free play,' meaning both sides were unrestrained in their tactics, free to implement any strategy they pleased to secure victory. The emphasis, remember, was on a realistic analysis of a potential war in the Gulf. Force Blue was built around a standard U.S. naval carrier battle group. Force Red was much weaker, clearly inferior in strength and technology, with smaller vessels, including numerous civilian small craft and air assets. The sort of thing you'd be likely to find with a typical third world power in the region.

"General Van Riper protested the official assessment of the games. He called the new war-fighting techniques — the 'effects-based operations' and all the rest of that bullshit—'empty sloganeering.' And he should know. In the first three days of the 'war,' in simulation, General Van Riper and his vastly inferior Force Red managed to send most of the U.S. fleet — including one of our supercarriers — to the bottom."

"Jesus Christ!.. "

Vintner chuckled. "It's been called 'the worst U.S. naval disaster since Pearl Harbor.' General Van Riper was brilliant, absolutely brilliant! Perhaps his best stroke was in not using any radio communications at all. You know, of course, that we scored some of our best intelligence coups in Afghanistan by listening in on al-Qaeda's cell phone conversations. Well, Van Riper didn't use cell phones, and he didn't use radios. Nothing to give Force Blue's SIGINT boys anything to work with. The man employed couriers to get orders to his field commanders… and he also employed coded messages delivered from the minarets of local mosques."

"God. Like Paul Revere and his lanterns in the Old

North Church."

"Exactly. Low-tech all the way. The important thing was, he never tried to confront the U.S. armada directly. He armed his small craft and pleasure boats, maneuvered them in close, and waited. When Force Blue gave him an ultimatum to surrender, he delivered a coded signal… and the entire carrier battle group found itself under attack by swarms of pleasure boats and prop-driven civilian light aircraft. Some of the boats and light planes made suicide attacks, kamikaze style. Other pleasure boats were carrying Silkworm antiship missiles. One of those sank the supercarrier. Got it at damned near point-blank range, before its Phalanx defensive batteries could be powered up. Two more sank a couple of helicopter carriers with several thousand sailors and Marines on board. In fact, most of the U.S. ship losses were to cruise missiles that had been jury-rigged to fire off of yachts, barges, fishing boats, and that sort of thing.

"The really scary part was, as brilliant as the attack was, there was nothing in Van Riper's tactics that was new or startling. It was essentially just a larger scale repeat of al-Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen back in 2000. Remember that? A small civilian barge comes alongside while the ship is in port, and… bam! One of our destroyers crippled, seventeen American sailors dead, and thirty more injured.

"This time around, though, in simulation, sixteen U.S. warships had been sunk, and I don't know how many thousands of sailors, Marines, and soldiers were 'dead.' The rest of the American fleet was scattered and in complete disarray."

"You said, though, that the operation was a success."

"Uh-huh. It was. JOINTFOR Command simply resumed the game. The sunken ships were brought back to the surface, the dead sailors brought back to life, and the invasion continued as originally scheduled. Force Red continued to harass the U.S. fleet, but then General Van Riper discovered that his orders to his field commanders were actually being countermanded." Vintner shrugged. "At that point he quit. Resigned in disgust. In his after-action report, he charged that the whole exercise had been scripted so it would turn out the way it was supposed to. With a resounding Force Blue victory."

"Sounds like that's exactly what happened."

"Actually, no. Millennium Challenge started off as a genuine free-play exercise. I'm convinced of that. Only after day three, when Force Blue realized it didn't have a fleet any longer, did JOINTFOR step in and begin rewriting things."

"I don't get it! How could they justify a thing like that?"

"Easy. By backpedaling and by throwing out smoke screens. When the press questioned the JOINTFOR commander, he admitted the fleet had been 'sunk'… but said that the nature of the war game was such that we were operating in a heavily traveled international shipping lane — true — and that we were constrained by that in what defenses we could employ. Partly true… but misleading. He said we had to deploy our ships close to shore, and that in a real war, they would have been over the horizon and safe from that type of attack.

"What he didn't add, though, was that the Gulf is essentially a large lake. It's shallow, it's narrow, there's only one way in or out, and there's no room for maneuver. And there is no over-the-horizon where the fleet could be safe. Our potential enemies over there have very good radar coverage — and that means missile coverage — of the entire Gulf. Most of the sinkings in our little war-game exercise were carried out by cruise missiles launched at close range.

"Basically, what Millennium Challenge proved was that the U.S. Fifth Fleet is in a very tiny, very narrow trap… kind of like the box canyons that figured so large in the TV westerns we watched as kids. Perfect place for an ambush, and damned hard to get out of if things turn sour."

"And so what the hell did it all prove, anyway?" Just hearing Vintner's description made Stewart angry. It was the protect-your-turf ass-covering that had been prominent during Vietnam, and forty years later it clearly was still business-as-fucking-usual.

Vintner shrugged. "JOINTFOR got its victory. The rest was pretty much covered up, except for the bit that got leaked."

"What happened to General Van Riper?" Stewart asked.

A shrug. "He went back into retirement."

"And you? Where were you in all of this?"

"I was a colonel then, serving on General Van Riper's staff. During the hearings afterward, I came across… well, a little shrill, I'm afraid. I was the one who first said things were rigged to guarantee a Force Blue win. Some of that was attributed to the general. Eventually, I was… encouraged to take an early retirement. They sweetened the deal by letting me retire as a general." Vintner looked away, his fist clenched on the arm of his chair. "Maybe I shouldn't have taken it. But there wasn't any other option open to me. If I'd refused, I would have spent my last six years in as a colonel, probably in charge of the penguin census in Antarctica."

"I see."

"At the time, I thought that was just the way things were. That I should be a team player, shut up, and let them do it their way."

"Well, the invasion of Iraq went off without a hitch. The Fifth Fleet wasn't sunk."

"Iraq wasn't being led by Saddam Van Riper, either. But you'll notice that the enemy's tactics over there have pretty much followed those employed by Van Riper. The insurgency in Iraq… that was mostly carried out by suicide bombers and IEDs" — Improvised Explosive Devices—"basically, home-made bombs and other low-tech tactics. Never try matching the U.S. forces strength for strength. Always try for the unexpected."

"Are you saying they're following Van Riper's lead?"

"No." He sighed. "Fortunately for our side, al-Qaeda and most of the military leaders in Iran right now are not anywhere close to being in Van Riper's league. Most of them are idiots… or at least completely uneducated in the science of modern warfare.

"But you don't have to be a freaking military genius to figure out that it's a bad idea to take on a U.S. carrier battle group with a small surface navy… but that ambushing that CBG with cruise missiles and suicide boats might give you a good chance of scoring at least a kill or two. And, God help me, I have to wonder how long public support for a war would last — no, worse, how long congressional support for the war would last — if we lost an LPD with a thousand Marines on board in there, or maybe the Kitty Hawk or Abraham Lincoln."

"You're saying we might win the war militarily, but lose it politically," Stewart said. "Just like in Vietnam."

"Bingo." Vintner shifted in his chair, folding his hands. "In modern war-fighting parlance, it's called 'asymmetric advantage,' meaning the little guy finds a way to yank the rug out from under the big guy.

"Mostly, though, I'm saying that exercises like Millennium Challenge perform a serious disservice to our young men and women in uniform. That kind of self-serving ass-covering bullshit puts their lives in danger. I don't care how many generals' and admirals' careers are saved — it's not worth the life of a single one of our people."

"I agree. But why… "

"Why am I coming to you with this?" Vintner grinned. "Actually, I went to Tom Garrett first. He's in Littoral Warfare, and in a position to put the word where it'll do the most good. And, like I said earlier, he's a hard-charger.

"And he suggested I come talk to you because you are going to be the sharp end of the spear pretty soon. I don't know what the Ohio is going to be doing out there. I'm not in the service anymore, and that's not my responsibility. But I do know that the people who ought to know better, the people in charge, didn't learn a damned thing from Millennium Challenge. For them, it's all cosmetic. A game to play, to win, and then they get to congratulate themselves on how great everything was, and maybe pass around some medals and citations.

"Captain Stewart, I am convinced that the Fifth Fleet is in serious danger over there. If Iran can find a way to launch a crippling strike on the fleet, or on the base at Qatar, it would make them the overnight heroes of the whole damned Muslim world. They know damned well they wouldn't win a stand-up fight. But they might think they could hurt us enough that we would apologize and leave. At the very least, they would have a shot at rallying the Islamic militants around their banner.

"And if that ever happens, the United States will find herself in a very precarious position."

"I'm not sure the Ohio could do much about it if it did."

"Maybe not. But Captain Garrett felt it was important that you know what's going on at the top of the brass pyramid. We have good people at every level of our military hierarchy, but we also have sycophants, blame-passers, and assholes, too, just like in any big organization. If enough people at high command levels have the same head-in-the-sand attitude as the JOINTFOR people running Millennium Challenge, it could seriously hamper us, even cripple us, if we found ourselves up against an adversary worthy of the name in the Gulf. The more people at an operational level who know the score, the better. At least, that's my feeling. And Tom Garrett's, too, evidently."

"And mine."

Vintner stood up. "Well, I've said my piece. Like I say, I don't want to take up any more of your time."

Stewart stood as well, and they shook hands. "I appreciate your coming in to talk to me. Did you have a long drive?"

"Nah. I live in Oregon. A few hours' drive. No biggie."

"Well, thank you, just the same. Believe me, I'll keep in mind what you said."

"Thank you, sir. That's all I ask."

The retired Marine came to rigid attention for a moment, just as though he were centering on the hatch in front of a superior officer. Then he turned, opened the door, and was gone. Stewart heard the Marine outside the office door snap to attention, heard Vintner's easy "As you were, son."

And then he was gone.

Was it Josephus, the First-century Jewish historian who'd written of the Roman army, who said that the Romans' battles were bloody exercises, while their exercises were bloodless wars? His point had been that Rome had conquered the known world because they had a superb army, one that trained constantly and in the most realistic ways possible.

The U.S. Navy submarine service had a similar philosophy. Drills and training exercises were as realistic as possible, in order to give the men a taste of what the real thing was like, whether it was a torpedo attack, an emergency surfacing, or a fire or flooding "casualty," as an accident on board a sub was known.

But realistic training exercises weren't just to help the crew prepare for the real thing. They were designed to help the officers overseeing the evolution learn where the crew was weak, what needed attention or more work, where a problem might arise if the real thing arose, even to pinpoint individual sailors who might be having a problem in some area, where they might be given some extra help or incentive.

If problems were noted, then ignored because they made a department look bad, that was a deadly threat to the entire boat. Within the brotherhood of the submariner service, there was no room for that kind of deliberate blindness.

And that, Stewart reflected, could as easily be applied to the whole world of international relations and the U. S. Navy's role both as peacekeepers and as guardians of the sea lanes.

A U.S. Navy submariner was used to being the sharp point of the weapon — out in front where the action was hottest. It always helped to know, though, that your own people were there to support you, to provide the backup and support you needed to survive.

He did not like what Vintner's indictment implied.

Commander Jack Creighton stepped up to the periscope dais.

He surveyed his domain. Pittsburgh's control room was surprisingly spacious, though crowded at the moment with officers and men at their duty stations. Popular myth insisted that submarines were claustrophobic sewer pipes crowded to the point of madness. In fact, Creighton felt a certain fondness for the close quarters. It was reassuring to know that over a hundred shipmates shared this sealed space, which had been designed with astonishing precision and efficiency.

Along the starboard bulkhead were the fire control stations, including the BSY-1—pronounced "Busy-one" — combat system, the heart of Pittsburgh's death-dealing power. To port were the ship controls, including the ballast controls, ship status board, and navigational consoles. In the port-forward corner were the side-by-side bucket seats — complete with seat belts — for the helmsman and planesman, with the diving officer between and behind them, literally watching over their shoulders. At the moment, the control room was red-lit, standard procedure when it was night "on the roof" and the crew needed to keep their eyes dark-adjusted.

Satisfied that all was running nominally, Creighton walked the few feet aft to the Mark 18 periscope. There were two periscope mountings, set side by side on the raised platform. The Type 2 scope, to port, was a basic optical attack scope — one little changed from its WWI antecedents. The Mk. 18, however, was the most advanced optical periscope in the Navy's inventory, though it had been superceded in terms of bells and whistles by the more advanced photonics mast system employed on board the new Virginia-class attack boat… or on the Ohio-class refit. The Mk. 18 could see in low-light conditions, and the view could be projected to a number of large-screen monitors elsewhere on the boat. It also included a 70mm camera for recording the scenes for later analyses.

"Up scope."

As the periscope slid silently up out of its deck housing, Creighton draped his arms over the snap-down handles, "hanging on the scope" as he pressed his eye against the eyepiece, and walked it in a complete circle, checking the horizon for a full three-sixty to make sure they hadn't come up close aboard an unheard and unsuspected surface vessel.

The surface upstairs was brightly if unevenly lit. The waters were moonlit, and the light from the city cast a wavering glow that shifted and broke with the movement of the waves. The immediate area was clear, though there were a number of vessels visible. Most serious was a light patrol frigate less than a thousand yards off Pittsburgh's starboard beam. She was close, and she was in approach… though not dead-on.

He centered the frigate in the periscope's crosshairs. "Target, bearing zero-zero-five… mark."

"Sonar contact Sierra Niner-five," the sonar officer called back, identifying the target. "Twin screw, military screw. Library IDs her as a Vosper Mark 5. Speed fifteen knots."

"Hull number seventy-two," Creighton said. "What do you have on her, Dick?"

Lieutenant Commander Dwayne Tracy — with the inevitable nickname "Dick" — was Pittsburgh's executive officer. He was already looking up the warbook information on the contact, which was stored in Pittsburgh's extensive computer memory.

"Iranian Navy Alvand class," he said. "Former Vosper Mark 5 class. Hull 72 is the Alborz … formerly the Zaal. Displacement of 1,540 tons, full load. Two shafts. Two cruise diesels, 3,800 bhp, top speed seventeen knots… but with two TM-3A boost gas turbines at 46,000 shp, top sprint speed of 39 knots. Sonar, Type 174, hull-mounted. Armament… five-cell Sea Killer SSM, one 114mm DP, one dual 35mm AA, four 20mm mounts, two 12.7mm MGs, one Limbo ASW mortar.

Crew of 135."

The frigate was probably primarily employed for harbor patrol off Bandar Abbas. She could sprint and she could hit, though ASW mortars, like the hedgehogs of WWII, were not notoriously accurate. At a speed of fifteen knots, she was not going to pick up anything on sonar. The roar of water rushing past her hull would drown out any trace of the lurking American sub.

On her current heading, the Alborz would miss the Pittsburgh by a generous margin, passing off her starboard side, coming no closer than eight hundred yards.

"Control Room, Sonar!"

"Go ahead, Sonar."

"Captain… new contact, designated Sierra One-one-eight, bearing zero-zero-zero. Single shaft, military screw… and she's quiet. On the surface, but I think it's a diesel boat, sir."

Creighton panned the periscope slightly counterclockwise, checking astern of the passing Alborz. He didn't see anything….

No! Wait! A low, black shadow momentarily blotted out the lights of the port.

"Helloooo… target!" he said softly. "Sonar! You think it's a Kilo?"

"Negative, Con. Not a Kilo. I don't know what the hell it is. But it's damned quiet. My guess is it's trying to slip out in the Vosper's wake."

Over the past decade or so, Iran had acquired a number of Kilo-class diesel attack submarines from the former Soviet Union. The boat was the CIS's premier military export sub, deadly and stealthy in the extreme. Some sources said Iran now possessed ten Kilos.

But the new target wasn't a Kilo…

Creighton took his time examining the low silhouette. Under starlight enhancement he could make some details of the other boat's sail. She was rising low, her deck completely submerged, but the sail wasn't as long as a Kilo's, and the periscope mast arrangement was different.

He couldn't be certain, but he thought he just might be looking at an Iranian Ghadir-class submarine.

The Ghadir had been launched three years ago, in May 2005. Precious little was known about them, though, because the Iranians had been careful about deploying them. All that was known was that they were ultraquiet, the design based on the Russian Kilos.

The frigate's speed suddenly made some sense. By creating a churned-up wake of white noise, the frigate's captain was creating a kind of shield within which the Iranian boat could travel almost undetected. It was sheer chance — as well as a tribute to U.S. sonar technology and the sonar watch's talent — that they'd picked that target out of the hash.

Creighton considered the situation a moment. Pittsburgh had been deployed to the waters off Bandar Abbas for several reasons: to scout out the harbor approaches, determine the nature and strength of the local defenses, and to pay close attention to military vessels in-port.

The Ghadir-class boats were definitely of serious military concern to the United States, and this was a God-given opportunity to get a closer look at one.

"Helm!" he said. "Come right to zero-zero-zero. Maneuvering, ahead slow."

"Helm coming right to zero-zero-zero, aye aye, sir," the enlisted man at the helm announced.

"Con, Maneuvering. Ahead slow."

They would come about in a half circle and drop onto the Iranian submarine's tail. The frigate could provide a sound screen for both submarines.

Efficiency. Creighton liked that.

"Down scope!" He didn't want to give Pittsburgh's presence away with either a periscope wake or the telltale rush of surface water on the tube.

Silently, a black shadow in the black waters, the Pittsburgh turned to pursue her prey.