Brink of War c-13

by Keith Douglass

  Until now.

  Our own aircraft were vectoring around behind the Aegis, leaving the missile engagement zone via a safe corridor marked out for their use. The Aegis would shoot nothing within that area, and nothing outside of her missile engagement zone. The Tomcats and Hornets were to get out of the area quickly, circle back around, and engage the fighters outside the MEZ.

  In the midst of the chatter from the Hornet pilots verifying the existence of the tanker, the Tomcat pilots divvying up the incoming MiGs, the lone S-3 Viking pilot we'd left to the north patrolling the last detection of the submarine chimed in. He had not much to say, just wanted to remind us that he was out there. Alone. Without any anti-air missiles.

  Batman promptly recalled him, bringing him into the starboard marshal pattern to get him out of the Aegis's MEZ, and told him we'd get him back onboard when we could. The S-3 declined, saying he just needed some gas and would prefer to remain airborne in case another submarine entered the area.

  The fighters were dominating the circuit now, shouting out those brief incomprehensible phrases that mean everything to the men in the air and nothing to the ones in the ship. The E-2 Hawkeye was frantically slipping in and out of the link, troubleshooting some avionics problem that kept her from being fully operational. It was her role to control the dispersion of the fighters, warn them of incoming threats, and generally maintain an overall tactical view of the air battle. It wasn't working, and until she could get her link fully operational, her data only garbled the incoming contacts from the aircraft themselves. The TAO wisely slipped her out of the data link until she could get her problems solved.

  It was over faster than I'd have ever thought possible. Six MiGs down, no American losses. The surviving MiGs turned back toward Russia, lucky to escape with their skins.

  Thirty minutes later, we'd gotten Jefferson headed back into the wind, with good wind across the deck. Tombstone and Skeeter slid into the starboard marshal, waiting for their turn to get onboard.

  "I'll be wanting to talk to Tombstone," Batman said quietly. "This little business you and he had going on with the codes ― what do you think about that, Commander? A fair thing to do to me?"

  I considered that for a moment. "I don't think so, Admiral. But I don't know what was on Admiral Magruder's mind at the time he laid it out for me."

  Batman was silent for a moment, then he said, "It better not happen again. You hear me? Now, let's get the hell out of here and go home."

  Without waiting for an answer, he turned and stalked off.

  I had a feeling that one of the first people that Tombstone Magruder would encounter when he reentered the ship would be Admiral Wayne. And from the look on his face, the conversation was not going to be pleasant.

  I decided to stay up on the bridge for a while longer, give them a chance to clear the area. When the elephants dance, it's a foolish man that walks in the middle of them.

  16

  Wednesday, 23 December

  1610 Local (+3 GMT)

  USS Jefferson

  Off the northern coast of Russia

  Rear Admiral Everett Batman Wayne

  On my way up to the flight deck to nail Tombstone, I stopped in at my cabin to cool off. Captain Collin Reddy, skipper of Jefferson, was waiting there for me.

  Reddy was a good man, one of the few S-3B TACCOs I was certain was headed for flag rank. It's not an easy job he has, playing airfield to an admiral and a CAG, and I extend every courtesy I can to him.

  "Saved me a trip," I said. "We're done here. Let's get the hell out of Dodge before the MiGs come back."

  When Captain Reddy didn't roger up immediately, I groaned. Problems, more problems ― just what the hell was so complicated about heading home?

  "OK, give it to me," I said.

  "We can't make best speed, Admiral," Reddy said bluntly. That's one of the things I like about him. He doesn't try to blow sunshine up my ass.

  "It's the ice. We're in clear water here, but I've got visual reports from the S-3 that it's starting to close in a little further north."

  We'd rounded Scandinavia on our way in and then headed a bit south, so I knew what he meant. "How bad?" I asked.

  "I don't know for certain. Normally, I'd ask that we get one of the Russian icebreakers out in front just to be safe. But under the circumstances, I figure they're probably not willing to oblige."

  "I wish someone could tell me what the hell exactly the circumstances are," I said. "I'll be damned if I know what's going on up here."

  Reddy shrugged. "For what it's worth, this is one of those times I'm glad I'm not in your shoes. As for Jefferson, I'd like to stay below ten knots until we clear the danger area. A little slower after sunset, even.

  We should be able to resume normal transit speeds in about thirty-six hours."

  "That long? What does it do for our maneuverability?"

  "Restricts it some if we find thicker ice." He hesitated for a moment, then continued. "I recommend we contact the Norwegians. Ask them to stand by to assist."

  "Good thinking." That was the kind of planning that would earn him those stars. "They're not going to want to come into Russian waters, but I'm pretty sure they'll be willing to meet us at the line of demarcation.

  I'll have my chief of staff take care of it."

  Reddy stood. "Then, with your permission, I'll get this boat headed north."

  I clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll be on the flight deck if you need me."

  On my way out, I stopped by COS's office and filled him in. He was flipping through his procedures gouge as I left.

  I trotted down the passageway and hung a left, headed for the ladder that would take me up to Air Ops and the flight deck. I'd just set my foot on the first rung when the General Quarters alarm sounded again.

  I started swearing as I wheeled around and headed back for TFCC. I passed Reddy in the passageway. He shouted, "It's the sub. She's in trouble," and continued running forward for CDC.

  Sailors were swarming now and I was running against the tide. I made it into TFCC in record time and ran forward to the TAO console. He heard me coming and looked up. "It's the sub, sir. She had some problems just as she started down and she's back on the surface. The Akula is still submerged but closing fast."

  "What's the problem?"

  "The reactor coolant pumps. The last one on line tripped off and the skipper's not going to be able to submerge until he gets it on line."

  Submerging even with only one pump was risky. I'd been foolish to let him move away from us before he had at least two of them back on line.

  "Where is he now?"

  "Fifty miles astern of us, sir. Headed this way at five knots on emergency diesel propulsion." The TAO, a submariner by trade, looked distinctly worried. "She's like a freight train with that thing running.

  They won't need a visual or outside targeting data to find her."

  "How many S-3s do we have in the air?"

  "Just one, Hunter 701." He circled the cursor around the symbol.

  "And he's at bingo fuel."

  "Figures." I buzzed CDC and got Reddy on the horn. "We need to set Flight Quarters and get gas in the air along with some more USW assets."

  "Working on it now, sir. We're coming right as I speak."

  I glanced up at the ship's heading indicator and saw he was right.

  Like I said, Reddy's a good man. "How much longer?"

  "Eight minutes, maybe a little less. We're crewing up helos and S-3s right now, along with a tanker."

  "What about fighters?" I asked.

  "I've got them on deck after the S-3s."

  "Move them up. Two of them at least." I could not have pointed to any one factor that made me give the order. There were no launch indications coming in from SCIF, no other data to suggest that we were about to have MiGs inbound again. But they'd been so ready to send them out before, had done so twice already with absolutely no provocation. I wasn't taking any chances this time.

  "Aye, aye, Adm
iral," Reddy said after a moment. He was waiting for an explanation, but I didn't have time for one right then. I hung up the phone and reached for the microphone to tactical and got the cruiser on the circuit.

  "Same MEZ and safe passage sectors as before," I told the TAO. I could hear the activity in the background behind him. "No indications ― just be ready to launch on a moment's notice."

  "We're ready now," the cruiser TAO answered. "Just give us a target."

  "I hope you don't have one. Be ready anyway." I signed off and turned back to my own watch team. They were puzzled but ready.

  COS poked his head into TFCC. "Admiral, the Norwegians are pleased to help out. They're dispatching one of their deployed icebreakers. She'll rendezvous with us at the line of demarcation, about fifty miles ahead." "Do they have any reports on the ice?" I asked.

  "It's setting in now, sir. But nothing their ship can't handle."

  "How about Jefferson?" Silence then. "They said it might be tricky, sir. They're talking with Captain Reddy now, working out a plan."

  "We can get through, can't we?"

  "If we steam straight for them right now, sir, we can."

  The wrong answer. There was no way I could head for the icebreaker, not with my submarine under siege from two very potent Russian boats. I glanced up at the relative wind indicator. We'd come around to a decent course for launching aircraft. Just at that moment, I heard the rumble overhead increase into a full Tomcat howl. The plat camera showed two fighters on the cat with the USW assets lined up behind.

  "Tell them to stand by, then," I said. "Try to get a feeling about whether or not they're going to be willing to come in after us if we get in a tough spot."

  I saw doubt on COS's face. Privately, I agreed it would be unlikely, but I wasn't going to say so in front of the troops. The Norwegians had to live in this part of the world with the Russians, and they weren't likely to want to charge into the middle of a confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. "We'll take whatever they can give us."

  "Roger that, sir." COS headed off to make sure everyone was playing from the same game book.

  "Sir? Is there anything I should know?" the TAO asked.

  I knew why he was asking. I'd known about the sub; maybe there was something else I was keeping from them. The TAO had the balls to put me on the spot about it.

  "No, nothing. Just call it a bad feeling, that's all," I answered. I watched the screen as the fighters arced out from the carrier, followed in short order by their slower USW brethren, with the helos bringing up the rear. The fighters would be first on station over the sub.

  "Admiral, all aircraft launched and four Hornets in Alert Five," the TAO said. "The air boss is ready to recover the fighters in the stack."

  Tombstone. There was no time now for what I needed to say to him, not with the sub in trouble and air on the way to the rescue. Maybe later.

  Might be better that way anyway give us both a chance to cool off, avoid saying words that we could never take back.

  "Very well," I said. "And Admiral Magruder should be first on deck, shouldn't he?"

  The TAO pointed at the screen. "He would have been."

  I started swearing as I saw what the double nuts bird was doing…

  17

  Wednesday, 23 December

  1630 Local (+3 GMT)

  En route to USS Jefferson

  Off the northern coast of Russia

  Vice Admiral Tombstone Magruder

  As I saw it, there wasn't much choice. I'd been monitoring the problems with the sub on tactical and saw the carrier start its turn into the wind. The word came out that we'd stay in the marshal pattern while the fresh fighters and USW birds were launched. But I could tell from the seas that it was going to take some time to get into favorable winds, and the ice creeping out from the shoreline and down from the north was going to be a problem in sustained operations.

  So there we were, flying fat, dumb and happy with a hefty fuel reserve ― what else were we supposed to do?

  "Skeeter," I said over our private coordination circuit, you ready?"

  Two clicks acknowledged my transmission. "Let's go, then. Combat spread, you take high." Another two clicks, and I saw Skeeter up above me peel out of marshal and head east. I was just a split second behind him.

  Skeeter climbed and settled in at the correct altitude, taking his cues from me. I descended to seven thousand feet, with Skeeter maintaining the correct separation slightly behind me.

  The submarine was tough to pick out at first. The sea up here was dark, oily black. Gator vectored me in on her LINK position. I finally found a streak of black in the whitecaps and blowing spray. "Got her," I announced.

  "Me, too," Skeeter said. "Looks like her playmates are still submerged."

  "I'm going down to take a look, maybe reassure her that we're in the area. Stay at this altitude unless I tell you otherwise." Two clicks again.

  I descended in a tight spiral centered on the stricken sub. There were people in her sail, three of them that I could make out. No obvious signs of damage, no smoke. They stared up at me. I was at five hundred feet, low enough that they could make out my tail insignia. I wanted to make sure that they knew who we were.

  The men in the sail were armed with shotguns. Even from this distance, they looked cold and miserable.

  Then I saw why. Barely below the surface, only three hundred yards away, I could see an area of darker water. A feather trailed aft from a periscope poking up from the sea. As I watched, the Russian submarine's sleek sail broke the surface of the water, followed by the bow at a slight up angle and then the stern. An odd conical pod stuck up from the tail assembly.

  The Victor, then. But where was the Akula? And just what did they have planned for our sub?

  The Victor was edging in, her own sail now filling with people. Two of them were struggling with equipment. They propped it up on the edge of the sail, evidently into a slot built to accommodate it, then stepped back.

  Machine guns. Probably fifty cal from the looks of them, or the Russians equivalent. Not much use against anything except a lightly armored craft.

  Like a submarine.

  Or a Tomcat.

  The USW aircraft weren't going to be much use, not unless they had loaded a gun into the slot on the SH-60. I doubted that they had ― using the fifty cal required leaving the side door open, and the wind-chill factor in this climate would be deadly.

  The Victor continued to close until she was barely one hundred feet away from the U.S. boat, a deadly close range for ungainly submarines surfaced in open sea. Then I saw the canisters dangling over the Russian sail. Self-inflating rafts, their mechanism activated by salt water.

  The Victor's crew lowered one into the water. After a few seconds, it started expanding into a brilliant yellow rescue boat. It wasn't designed as an assault craft ― merely as a lifeboat ― and its rubberized hull couldn't withstand a blast from a shotgun. It would fill quickly and sink within a minute, consigning its crew to the frigid water.

  Surely the U.S. sub skipper knew that. But he wouldn't ― he couldn't ― let the Victor's lifeboat approach.

  Or would he?

  He would. I saw the hesitation in his movements, the arm upraised to hold fire. Did he think that the Russians might simply want to talk to them? Could he possibly believe that after the cat-and-mouse game they'd played for the last week?

  Or did he feel what I'd felt with Ilanovich, a kinship of fellow warriors that transcended national boundaries? Could he blast the lifeboat, knowing that that action would condemn men just like him to certain death? Would he hold on to any sliver of hope that there might be an innocent reason for their entirely insane deployment of the life rafts?

  The life raft was pitching in the seas, sliding up the side of one swell sideways and coming down bow-first on the other side. Russian sailors were piling into it now, none of them obviously armed. There could have been sidearms, though, and I was certain that there were. Then they cast off from t
he Victor, and sailors manning paddles steadied the boat in the seas and headed for the U.S. sub.

  "We've got company." For a moment, I had the illusion that the sub skipper was talking, then I realized it was Skeeter. "Four MiGs inbound, Tombstone. I think you better grab some altitude before they close on us."

  "On my way." I slammed the throttles forward and nosed the Tomcat up into a steep climb. With MiGs inbound I wasn't going to be able to stay at sea level and baby-sit a sub skipper who was about to make a serious mistake.

  Gator, Sheila, and the ship all started yelling at the same time.

  Launch indications, this time for submarine-based antiship missiles.

  Long-range ones, more than capable of reaching the carrier thrashing about in the icy water.

  The Akula. Judging from the roiling water I saw ten miles to the north, she was the culprit.

  "Tombstone." Batman's voice was deadly. "Get the hell out of there.

  You're inside the missile engagement zone, clobbering the Aegis picture.

  Get down to sea level, stay out of the way. There's not time for you to clear the area ― now move."

  "Tombstone, we can't just-" Skeeter started.

  "You heard the admiral," I snapped. "Now head for the deck." Unless we wanted to risk being the unintended recipient of a Standard missile, we needed to be well outside of her targeting area. "Gator, find out where the safe-passage corridor is and get me in it."

  "Already on it," Gator said. "Turn right to heading three two zero.

  We're two minutes out." "Skeeter know?" I asked even as I was standing the Tomcat on wingtip to comply, all the while descending as well.

  "Better. Sheila does."

  I pulled us up at barely one hundred feet above the sea, too close under almost any conditions except these. But cold air is thick, easy to fly in. It gave us a margin of safety that we wouldn't have had in warmer climates.

  "They're coming after us," Gator warned. "Range, fifteen miles and closing. Descending through ten thousand feet now."