Terror At Dawn

TWENTY-TWO

Well to the west and south of the fighters now plunging toward the coast, Commander “Rabies” Grill surveyed the ocean below him. Funny how after enough time spent staring down at water, you can pretty much figure out where you were even without your navigation gear. This nasty, dark body of water below him, for instance. It could never be mistaken for the clear dark blue surface of the Pacific, which seemed so deep and inaccessible. It was, Rabies thought, the most indifferent to human presence of all the bodies of water.

The Atlantic, now, that was a different matter. Crossing time to Europe was around a week to ten days, depending on how fast the admiral wanted to get there. Just off the coast of the U.S., there were the silty brown coastal waters, then the sudden, clear green path of the Gulf Stream as it made its way north, arced east near Greenland and Iceland, then headed back south along the coast off England and Wales, carrying with it rich nutrients from the East Coast through the Arctic realms. The boundary between the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Ocean was usually fairly clear, occasionally muddied by a few eddies that spun off from the Gulf Stream. Sometimes Rabies could even believe that he felt the line of mountains that ran down through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that almost divided the ocean into two bodies of water. Even with their jagged points well below the surface, they were a major factor in acoustic transmission and submarine detection.

And then there was the Med, ah, the Med. It wasn’t that Rabies liked the water that much — it was what it represented. Warm, sun-drenched islands, Italian food, Greek food, every imaginable cuisine brought to the coast of this ancient sea by the inhabitants of Europe and elsewhere.

While it might be a gourmand’s dream, as the busiest bit of water in the world the Mediterranean was a submariner’s nightmare. It was loud, noisy, and shallow. The water was dark green and brown, occasionally blue in the deeper parts, and in some places you could almost see the bottom. There were other problems with finding submarines in that area as well. The mouth of the Mediterranean was one of the strangest environments for acoustics in the world. Cold water flowed into the Mediterranean along the bottom, while warm water flowed out along the top, creating such turbulence near the mouth that any detections were virtually impossible. The salinity, too, differed widely between the two, as the salt water pouring out of the Med mixed with the salt water from the sea. The oceans were largely homogeneous when it came to salinity, but the Med was the one place that wasn’t, along with the Dead Sea, which was so dense and salty that it was virtually impossible to avoid floating. Not that that mattered to Rabies — there were no submarines in the Dead Sea.

Yet, when he thought about it, the Red Sea had to rank right up as his least favorite ASW environment. It was deeper than the Med, but the bottom was littered with wrecks and uncharted obstructions, all of which interfered with MAD and sonobuoy detections. The United States had made considerable strides in charting all the obstructions, but there was still a long way to go. Every country in this part of the world seemed to put up oil pipelines overnight, and the new ones were hardly ever annotated on the charts, even though the quartermasters did their best to keep up.

And then there were the drilling rigs. The ones far offshore — and even the ones near the shore — radiated broadband noise that shot through the entire spectrum, blanking out many useful frequencies. Normally, you could filter some background noise out, but there were so much of it here that you risked losing too much signal along with the interference.

Oh, well. Tough for him, but even worse for the submariners who tried to work in these waters and the Persian Gulf. For decades, it had been conventional wisdom that no submarine could operate in the Persian Gulf. During Desert Storm and Desert Shield, the United States Navy had proved everyone wrong. While the submariners despised working in shallow waters, they reported their exploits with such smugness that most of the other warfare communities wanted to smack them.

The latest intelligence reports speculated that the Iranians might have just received a shipment of minisubmarines from North Korea via China. The small ten-man-crewed boats were ideally suited to operating in these constrained waters. They were powered by a battery charged by a closed-circuit diesel engine, and unless they were charging those batteries or on the surface, they were virtually undetectable. They could cover long ranges with their late-generation battery technology, moving slowly but inexorably toward their targets.

There were two major shortcomings with mini-submarines. First, the accommodations made for the human crew who sailed in them were abysmal. Second, the mini-sub had limited storage capacity for weapons. From what he knew of the Iranian sailors, he doubted that the government placed very much emphasis on the first problem. In fact, he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that berthing space had been sacrificed for torpedo storage.

Still, there were worse things, weren’t there? After all, most of their missions lasted no longer than a few days, and while conditions might be unpleasant, the crew could at least survive without decent beds. And really, if you got right down to it, the life expectancy of the crew after firing a missile was short enough that bunk beds weren’t what you might call a necessity of life. He patted his control stick fondly, thinking about the torpedoes and antiship missiles slung under his wings. At least, if he had anything to say about it, their life span would be short. It was like what they said in the Russian Navy — the Soviet Navy back then — with radiation sickness rampant among submariners due to inadequate shielding on the early-generation reactors. It was a standing joke that there was no family tradition of submarine service like there was the United States Navy. Soviet sailors who spent much time at all on board nuclear subs were often sterile.

“Anything?” he asked over the ICS, although he already knew the answer. If there’d been the slightest hint of a contact, his TACCO and enlisted technicians would have him dancing to their tune by now. Although he was the pilot in command, the TACCO in the back, a few years his senior, was mission commander. Unless a decision involved safety of flight or safety of crew, the TACCO’s word was law.

Rabies didn’t like it much, but on balance it made little difference. After all, if he wanted to head back to ship, there wasn’t much anybody was going to do to stop him.

“Nothing yet,” the bored voice of the TACCO replied. “Let’s give this pattern another fifteen minutes, then move it to the south a bit. They may be near the entrance, lurking around that new pipeline down there.”

“Roger,” Rabies said cheerfully. He glanced at his copilot, a young woman on her first cruise. “It’s always like this, you know. Like watching grass grow.”

“Could be worse. We could be assigned surface surveillance,” she answered.

Rabies shuddered. “Bite your tongue.” There were few things that the Viking pilot liked less than flying down near to the surface and buzzing commercial ships looking for identifying characteristics and recording the rigging. For one thing, whoever painted the ships usually had lousy handwriting. And for another, it wasn’t that unusual to find that some nations made frequent military use of their commercial fleets. All too often, there was some raghead hiding behind a couple of containers with a Stinger propped up on his shoulder ready to take out the first American he saw.

No, hunting submarines was what they were for. But the youngsters had to do their time on surface surveillance and taking tracking — he had put his time in when he was a junior pilot.

“Rabies, head south,” the TACCO said, his voice a notch higher than it had been before. “You got the mark.” A new symbol appeared on Rabies’s display, indicating a fly-to point from the TACCO.

“You got something?” he asked.

“Maybe. Faint indications of a diesel engine — it fits for the one they may have on board, according to the intelligence summary. But it’s real intermittent and long-range — we won’t know until we get closer. It’s worth looking at, though.”

That final assessment, Rabies knew, came from the enlisted technicians. Although the TACCO was in tactical command and Rabies might be the pilot in charge, all the people on board knew who really held the keys to their success. It was the first-class petty officer seated next to the TACCO, the one with the finely trained eyes and ears who could sniff out the sound patterns made by machinery from among noise, signals from noise, submarines from surface ships, and friend from enemy.

AW-1 Greenberg, the antisubmarine warfare specialist flying this mission with them, was exceptionally good, even among the elite community of aviation subhunters. He had recently completed a tour with the intelligence staff in San Diego, and was completely familiar with all the intelligence that was too highly classified to ever make it to the fleet. That was probably why the XO had him on this mission, hoping they could pull something out of their ass on this one. Because if there was anything that made a carrier nervous, it was having undetected submarines in the area. What you couldn’t see, you couldn’t kill, and the only thing that worried them more than submarines was chemical or biological weapons.

“Dropping two,” Rabies said, nodding at the copilot. She dropped a sonobouy at the indicated point, then watched as he navigated from point to point as directed by the TACCO. When he finished, the electronic plot indicated a long line of sonobuoys.

“All buoys cold and sweet,” Greenberg reported, indicating that each of the new sonobuoys deployed was working properly but not detecting any contacts. “Hold it—got it. Buoy thirty-four, sir. Buster.” Buster meant bust your ass getting there.

“Let’s go get them,” Rabies said gleefully. He put the Viking into a sharp turn heading east. They were at the very edge of their assigned area, maybe just a touch closer to the coast than he would like, but well outside of the known Iraqi shore-based missile ranges.

Known ranges. He wondered if anyone else noticed that little phrase.

“I’m holding a diesel engine, a couple of pumps, sir,” Greenberg said, his tension evident only in the fact that his voice was a little faster than normal. “Could we make a pass and check out the surface?”

“You got it,” Rabies said, putting the aircraft into a descent. It was a sanity check of sorts, to take a good look at the surface of the ocean where you thought you had a submarine to make sure there were no ships in the area that corresponded to it. It was an especially necessary precaution in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, all of which had heavy merchant traffic.

Thor sat ramrod straight in his ejection seat, his head turned so that he could watch the catapult officer. He circled the stick, got a thumbs-up in return, and nodded with grim satisfaction. Of course the Hornet’s control surfaces worked well. They always did. The light, easily maintained fighter was always in perfect condition — at least, the ones that he flew were. The Marine Corps quality-assurance technicians made certain of that.

On signal, he eased the throttles forward to full military power. They clicked past the detente and into afterburner. The catapult officer stood, snapped off a sharp, proper salute, then crouched down and touched the deck and pressed the pickle. In the space of a microsecond, Thor returned the salute, faced forward, and braced himself.

As always, the first jolt was hardly impressive. An instant later, what began as a gentle jolt changed into crushing pressure on his chest as the light fighter slammed down the catapult. The Hornet rattled, steam boiling up from the shuttle, clumsy and ungainly while still bound to the carrier by the shuttle, yearning to be away from the steel and in her natural element. Finally, when the noise had built to an almost unbearable level, he felt the sudden, sickening drop and release of pressure that told him he was airborne.

Now, the trick was to stay that way. He let her grab the air and pick up speed before putting her in a steep climb, heading for altitude to wait for his wingman to join on him. Ten seconds later, he heard the announcement that his wingman was airborne. Precise, exactly as scheduled — just the way the Marine Corps liked it.

They joined up with the ease of two pilots long used to working with each other and headed for the fighter sponge. It was a designated bit of airspace where the fighters would assemble in an orderly stack, waiting till the flight was at full composition, then breaking off into fighting pairs to seek out and engage the enemy. It took far less time to actually execute than explain, and soon Hornets were peeling away from the stack.

“Hornet 102, vector. Bearing zero-seven-zero, range ten. Probable Forger. Good hunting.” The E-2’s voice reeled off initial vectors for the rest of the flight, disbursing them along different angles of the approaching wave of aircraft.

“Going to be hot,” Red Tail remarked. “Damned SAM sites. They ought to let Special Forces loose on them.” Understood, but not voiced, was the assumption that if Marine units had been ordered to destroy or neutralize the SAM sites, there would have been no question about it.

“Just like playing dodge-’em ball in grade school,” Thor said. “You ever play that?”

“No, not that I recall. What was it?”

“You take about thirty of those damn red bouncy balls, you know, the kind you never see anywhere except grade school. Maybe a volleyball or two. Put them all in the center of the gym and divide the kids up into two sides. At the whistle, everybody races out and grabs a ball, streaks back to the line, and then does his damnedest to nail somebody on the other side with a ball. Hell of a lot of fun, as long as you keep moving.”

“I like the sound of that,” his wingman said, his voice studiedly casual. They both knew they were simply making conversation for something to do while they waited. “Maybe we should get a gang up on the flight deck to play.”

“No. Have to be the hanger bay. We’d lose too many balls over the side.”

“Good point. Still, it sounds like fun.”

The topic of childhood games exhausted for the moment, both fell silent. On their HUDs they could see the array of Hornets, the spacing between them increasing as they headed toward feet-dry. Once they were dry, they didn’t know exactly what waited. They thought they did, but you could never be certain until you were actually in the middle of a furball.

“Tallyho,” Red Tail said, his voice tight. “You see it?”

“Yeah, I got it. Take high.”

Red Tail peeled off and ascended, dropping back into the classic fighting-pair position. Thor descended slightly, the two targets heading for them now visible.

Most of the world’s combat air fleets had learned their tactics from watching the United States Navy and Marine Corps, so it was no surprise when opponents assumed a similar disposition. Thor felt a hard sense of amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You may know what it looks like but you ain’t got a clue how to use it,” he said softly. “Come on, asshole. Bring it on.”

Abdul’s gut tightened as he surveyed the line of American aircraft heading toward his shore. He felt a moment of shame and then dismissed it. It did not matter what he felt — what matter was what he did. And, whatever else happened, he expected there to be a lot fewer Hornets in the air when he was done.

“Wait,” the ground-intercept controller snapped over the common circuit. “Maintain your positions. They must be within range of our support forces. Do not engage over open water.”

The line of death, the pilots had taken to calling it, even though the commander had indicated it was to be called the line of glory. But all of them knew what would happen if they ventured over that line themselves. The shore-based missile operators were not sufficiently skilled in telling the difference between enemy aircraft and their own, and there was every chance they would be taken out with friendly fire. Any Iraqi pilot who wanted to stay alive had better plan on staying behind the line of death.

Oh, but in front of it — that was where the glory would be. It troubled him on some level that his commanders felt that they needed to rely on missile sites rather than the fighters. There had been some discussion of the Republican Guard during Desert Storm and Desert Shield, and how they’d had cut and run at the first contact with the enemy.

But we are not ground forces. We are pilots, born, bred, and trained for this mission. We will not run.

Without being entirely aware of it, Thor absorbed the information displayed on his HUD. There was something about the formation that bothered him, bothered him on a level he couldn’t entirely grasp. There was a long line of antiaircraft sites along the coast, spaced with a regularity that resembled the Maginot Line. Then, just behind that, a line of aircraft laid out in a straight-line geometric pattern. Their intent was obvious — have the shore installations take the first shot, then follow up with their fighters to take out whatever made it through that line. The entire concept of layered defense was something United States Navy had worked on for decades.

It’s too even. That’s the problem. Well, that won’t last. As soon as the fur starts flying, even the best plan goes out the window. But, as they say, an average plan executed immediately and violently is better than a great plan executed too late.

“Little shits,” Red Tail said conversationally over tactical. “Guess we scared them, huh?”

“Yeah. Looks like they’ve got orders to stay well back. I wonder what we could do that would get them out here.”

“Don’t know, man. Maybe we’ll have to go in and drag them out.”

Drag them out. Easier said than done. For all of his bravado, Thor knew that getting past the overlapping shore antiaircraft sites would take some doing.

The shore sites themselves were marked with black Xs, each one labeled with the target designation. Shaded green circles radiated out from each X, some quite regular, others irregular. Those represented the detection ranges of the radars as corrected for terrain, atmospheric conditions, and other known obstructions. Within the green, there was a smaller area crosshatched in red, indicating the kill zone. Within the red area, the radars had an eight-percent chance of being able to put a missile in your vicinity. Of course, whether you were there when the missile arrived at the spot was another matter altogether. Finally, just outside the green area, about half the distance from the side, was a yellow dotted line. This represented the counterdetection range, the range at which Thor could expect to detect pulses from the shore radar before the radar detector saw Thor. In general, counterdetection ranges were one and a half times as large as detection ranges.

Overall, the shore sites provided a solid interlocking stretch of green along the coast. There was no way to avoid going into it unless you went far to the north and came in that way, and that wasn’t going to happen.

Fortunately, there was an answer. Two Wild Weasel teams armed with antiradiation missiles were leading the pack, going in slightly ahead of the conventional fighters. Each one carried missiles that would home in on the shore-site radar signals. Even if the transmitters were then turned off, the missiles would remember their location and head directly for the antennas that were radiating signals. In theory, at least, the antiradiation — or HARM — missiles would cut a swath of destruction through the antiaircraft installations, enabling Thor and his cohorts to get inland.

“I hold you on course, on time,” the voice of the E-2 Hawkeye backseater said. “Estimate thirty seconds until you’re within range.”

“Roger,” Thor acknowledged. “Stand by, boys and girls — Mom has the keys to the playground.”

Sure enough, as they descended through the cloud cover, Rabies’ radar picked up a small lozenge of a contact. He banked, spiraling around down toward it, and caught the glint of sunlight reflecting off a metal hull. “Some gunboat,” he complained. “Well, that’s too bad.”

“I don’t think so, sir. This isn’t sound from a surface ship. No way.” Greenberg’s voice was confident. “It’s way too deep.”

“You sure, Greenie?” Rabies asked doubtfully, playing the wet blanket even though his pulse was already beating faster at the tone of Greenberg’s voice. “Lots of merchant traffic down there.”

“This is not a merchant,” Greenberg said, his voice not the slightest bit defensive. “It’s a submarine. And it’s mine.”

“All right, then!” Rabies turned to his copilot. “Call it in!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” she said. She glanced wistfully at the controls in his hand, sighed, then picked up the mike.

“Okay, okay,” Rabies grumbled. “I did promise, didn’t I? Your aircraft.” He waited till her hands were on the controls and she had positive control of the Viking.

“My aircraft,” she acknowledged. Rabies picked up the mike.

It was his own damned fault, wasn’t it? He had told her she could fly the next pattern. After all, that was why they put a senior pilot together with a new pilot, wasn’t it? To give the youngsters some experience, to let them practice under an expert pilot before sending them out with a green team. That’s the way it was in the Navy — you trained your own replacement.

And Lord knows, if anyone deserved a chance, this kid did. She had good reflexes and even better airmanship skills, not to mentioned a healthy dose of common sense. She even knew a fair amount about submarine acoustics, and that was saying a lot. Most Viking pilots like to emphasize the fact that they were pilots — jet pilots — not four-eyed geeks who read intelligence summaries and studied sound-velocity profiles. They were jet pilots, by God, and nobody was going to forget it.

But she’d always been interested in the technical details of acoustics and classification, so much so that Rabies was almost embarrassed for her. Rabies had even begun to suspect that at heart she was just as much of a geek as Greenberg was.

Rabies called the carrier, filling them in on the detection although the data was already flooding onto their screens via the secure link. The TAO on the carrier already knew exactly where each one of the Viking’s sonobuoys were, and they could even get real-time transmission from each one via a link with Viking to display the contact in the ASW module.

But there was nothing like eyes on a target to get a good, accurate picture of what was going on. Even in the data link, sometimes the details were lost, some of the fine details that had alerted Greenberg to the presence of a submarine.

As he spoke to the carrier, Rabies kept an eye on his copilot and the progress they made between the fly-to points. Just as he anticipated, she handled the aircraft as though it was an extension of her body, deftly maneuvering from point to point with minimal fuel usage and popping out sonobuoys at precisely the right moment to land exactly where the TACCO wanted them.

“All buoys sweet and hot,” Greenberg sang out, no trace of smugness in his voice. Rabies understood — as did Greenberg — that there had never been actually any question about whether or not there was a submarine there. Rabies was just doing his job, and Greenberg had known indisputably that he was right. There had been no contest.

“Roger, Viking,” the carrier acknowledged. “Maintain firing solution on contact at this time. I repeat, maintain firing solution.”

“What the hell?” his copilot asked. She glanced over Rabies, the question plain on her face. Why they hell weren’t they putting a couple of fish in the water to take the bastard out? After all, they had a strike inbound on the shore installation, didn’t they? Did anyone actually believe that this little bastard was just out here for a walk in the park? Not possible, not this close to the carrier. Although the minisub was still too far to attack, it wouldn’t be long before it was within range of the carrier, and that was assuming that the information they had about weapons ranges was accurate.

“There are a couple of nations around here that have minisubs,” Rabies said, distaste in his voice. “It’s possible it could be somebody else’s. They’re going to verify that there are no neutrals or friendlies in the area through some top-level channels. If they don’t get an all-clear, we don’t get weapons-free.”

It was his copilot who summed up what they were all feeling. “If they close within weapons range of Jefferson, we don’t have a choice.