Vengeance

42 USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Dusk was creeping across the Middle East, the sun sinking beneath the horizon as the Theodore Roosevelt strike group entered the Strait of Hormuz, headed into the Persian Gulf. It had been an uncharacteristically rainy day in the strait, with visibility out to only a few hundred yards in the waning light. Rather than monitor the small displays on the ship’s Bridge, Captain Ryan Noss had decided to monitor the strike group’s status from the aircraft carrier’s Combat Direction Center, located three levels below the Flight Deck.

On watch as the Operations Officer was Captain Dolores Gonzalez, her eyes scanning the Video Wall, a collection of two eight-by-ten-foot displays mounted beside each other, with a half-dozen smaller monitors on each side. With the apparent threat being only one or more Russian submarines, only the standard Combat Air Patrol was aloft, but an E-2C Hawkeye was at twenty-five thousand feet, its radar searching the skies for hostile aircraft or missiles in case the Russians had more nefarious intentions.

Although Noss was relatively new aboard Theodore Roosevelt, having relieved the former Captain, Rich Tilghman, only a few months ago, Gonzalez was near the end of her tour of duty aboard the carrier and one of the veterans of the brutal battle in the Arabian Sea against the combined Russian Pacific Fleet and Indian Navy, occurring at the apex of Russia’s Blackmail operation against its NATO foes. By the time Roosevelt joined the conflict, black smoke had been billowing upward from the other four American carriers engaged in the battle, with Eisenhower and Bush forced to terminate flight operations due to the extensive damage, while Truman and Reagan limped along, somehow retrieving, rearming, and launching aircraft while fires raged in compartments damaged by missile strikes.

Theodore Roosevelt had entered the battle late, still scarred from an earlier engagement with the Russian Pacific Fleet. Its Island superstructure was still a molten mass of steel and her hangar bays were scorched black from the fires that had raged inside. But her flight systems — catapults, arresting wires, and elevators — were operational again. Shipyard tiger teams had done an admirable job, beginning the carrier’s repairs in Pearl Harbor, then continuing their efforts as the carrier sailed across the Pacific, with the ship navigated from Secondary Control located beneath the Flight Deck, instead of the mangled Bridge.

After the battle in the Arabian Sea, Theodore Roosevelt’s Island superstructure had been rebuilt, and now one would have to know where to look to spot the residual scars in the Hangar Deck. Noss knew that those who had participated in the vicious engagement — especially Captain Gonzalez, who had been the Operations Officer in CDC — would never forget what Theodore Roosevelt and the other American carriers had endured during the devastating battle.

After scanning the Video Wall displays and failing to note anything unusual, Noss shifted his thoughts to the aircraft positioned on the strike group’s perimeter. Three MH-60R anti-submarine warfare helicopters were approaching bingo fuel and would head back to the carrier shortly. His eyes moved to the Flight Deck display; three replacement MH-60Rs were preparing to take off and would be on their way to relieve the on-station helicopters in a few minutes.

While the battle in the Arabian Sea had been primarily an air battle, the potential upcoming engagement with the Russian submarine in the Persian Gulf would be a test of the carrier strike group’s anti-submarine capabilities. Theodore Roosevelt had four surface ship escorts: USS Chosin, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, and three Arleigh Burke — class destroyers: USS Halsey, USS O’Kane, and USS Paul Hamilton. Each of those ships had two triple-tube torpedo launchers, but Noss figured that no Russian submarine captain would approach close enough to be sunk with torpedoes launched from surface ships. Russian heavyweight torpedoes had sufficient range to sink their target while the firing submarine remained outside counterfire range.

Instead, the strike group would rely on its anti-submarine aircraft. The squadron of MH-60R helicopters aboard Theodore Roosevelt was augmented by several more helicopters aboard the aircraft carrier’s escorts. But the most potent anti-submarine platforms had recently joined the Theodore Roosevelt strike group. The fast attack submarine USS Asheville and the guided missile submarine USS Michigan had joined the strike group a few hours ago as it passed through the Gulf of Oman. Asheville was traveling in front of the strike group, searching the water ahead, while Michigan trailed the strike group in case the Russian submarine attempted to sneak up from behind.

Thus far, there had been no detection of the expected threat that lurked beneath the water’s surface.