Armageddon Mode c-3

by Keith Douglass

  “Roger, BARCAP One-one. We are monitoring. Come to new heading one-nine-zero and intercept. Over.”

  “Roger, Victor Tango. We’re in.”

  “BARCAP One-two, come to one-nine-five and intercept. Over.”

  “Copy, Victor Tango. The Batman’s in.”

  He rammed his throttles to Zone Five burner and thundered toward the south.

  0751 hours, 26 March

  Tomcat 204

  Army held his Tomcat level at ten thousand feet, racing south as Dixie plotted the bogies ahead. They seemed to be strung out across the sky.

  If they were Sea Harriers off an Indian carrier, they must have simply launched and flown, without waiting to assemble into a larger formation.

  “Victor Tango One-one,” he called. “Army Dixie Two-oh-four. We are tracking estimated twelve to sixteen bogies, now at three-five miles.

  They’re low, wave-hopping. Two birds on board. Over.”

  “Roger that, Two-oh-four. You are clear to fire.”

  “Army Dixie Two-oh-four is engaging.”

  Two Phoenix missiles against sixteen targets. After that, they’d have nothing going for them but their guns.

  “Locking onto Target Alpha,” Dixie informed him. “Solid AWG track. Fox three!”

  The Phoenix dropped clear of the Tomcat and ignited. The contrail etched a dazzling white scratch across the blue sky to the south.

  “We have lock number two,” Dixie said.

  “Launch.”

  “Fox three!” The F-14 shuddered. “Okay, Army. We’re empty.”

  “Right. Victor Tango, this is Two-oh-four. We’ve popped the last of our six-pack.”

  “Copy, Two-oh-four. Come right to two-eight-five and hold, angels base plus five.”

  “Rog.”

  Army was known as a fastidious dogfighter, preferring to make a kill from long distance, with air-to-air missiles, rather than getting “up close and personal” as the more flamboyant kids in his squadron liked to say.

  Most Navy aviators preferred — at least claimed to prefer — the John Wayne approach. “Would John Wayne shoot someone from a hundred miles away?” Coyote Grant had asked him once during a party in the Me Jo quarters.

  “Would John Wayne use a goddamn missile?”

  That attitude had grown out of the Navy’s Top Gun program. Tombstone, one of Jefferson’s resident Top Gun aces, gave regular training sessions and exercises for the other pilots. He liked to point out that Navy aviators had been getting into deep trouble early in the Vietnam fighting because they relied too heavily on missiles … and had forgotten how to dogfight. That piece of lore was basic to every lecture on ACM and was now drilled into Navy aviators from their first day in the air.

  Army didn’t disagree with the concept, but he was a technical pilot, flying by the book and making his decisions by the book. No hot-dogging or seat-of-the-pants flying for him! If an aviator had a million-dollar high-tech missile with which to blow an enemy out of the sky before that enemy even knew he was being tracked, so much the better. As Patton had once put it, “The idea is not to die for your country, but to make some other poor bastard die for his.” Combat, whatever the kids with their aviator’s sunglasses and fighter jock jackets said or thought, was not a game, not a courtly joust between gentlemen, not a test of chivalry. It was fire, pain, and sudden death. “Chivalry,” he’d said during more than one Ready Room bull session, “gets you dead.”

  “Grand slam!” Dixie called. “Splash one bogie!”

  On his VDI, his second Phoenix closed relentlessly on another target. On the radar screen, he could see the bogie twisting away toward the south, trying to outrun its Mach 5 nemesis …

  0752 hours, 26 March

  Sea Harrier 101, Blue King Leader

  Lieutenant Commander Ravi Tahliani pulled back on his stick, urging the Sea Harrier to climb above the waves. Smoke still boiled into the sky a mile ahead where Lieutenant Venkateraman’s Harrier had vanished in orange flame and fragments.

  “Viraat! Viraat!” he called. “Blue King Leader! We are under attack!

  Blue King Three is hit!”

  “Roger, Blue King Leader. Overwatch reports several enemy fighters north of your position, range thirty to forty miles.”

  “Blue King Leader, Blue Five!” another voice interrupted. “They’ve got a lock on me!”

  Tahliani twisted his head, trying to see. Blue Five had been nearly four miles behind him and to the right. “Break left, Blue Five!” Gods!

  How could the Americans kill over such a distance?

  He snapped his Harrier into a hard right turn, his eyes still scanning the eastern sky, looking for Blue Five. The pilot was Lieutenant Rani Gupta, son of an old family friend, and one of Tahliani’s proteges.

  There! He could just make out Rani’s Harrier, a speck just above the water, streaking south. In the sky to the north, a white contrail was plunging toward the fleeing plane.

  “Chaff, Rani!” he yelled into his helmet mike. “Chaff!”

  There was no answer, but the speck was rising now, fighting for altitude, a standard maneuver for trying to disengage from a radar-homing missile after strewing clouds of chaff in its path.

  It didn’t seem to make any difference. The contrail continued to plunge from the sky. Faster than Tahliani’s eye could follow, it stopped, merging with Rani’s plane.

  A puff of flame and black smoke smeared the sky, followed by a much brighter flash as Rani’s fuel and weapons detonated. Flaming wreckage continued to climb straight into the sky, paused a moment, then fell back toward the sea. If the young Indian flyer had managed to eject, there was no sign.

  “Viraat, this is Blue Leader. Blue Five has been destroyed.”

  “Roger, Blue King Leader. Continue the mission.”

  Continue the mission. Tahliani’s face settled into a hard scowl behind his dark visor. His primary mission had been to engage the American fighter cover protecting their carrier, opening the way for ground-based strike aircraft. Only after the ground-based aircraft were engaged were the Sea Harriers to turn their attention to the American and Soviet ships. For that purpose, Blue King’s aircraft each carried two Sea King missiles slung beneath their down-canted wings.

  But for air-to-air combat, all they had were four R-550 Magic air-to-air missiles and their cannons. Magic was comparable to the American Sidewinder, IR-seekers with a range of perhaps two miles. He had nothing, nothing with which to counter an enemy still thirty-five miles away!

  How was he supposed to carry out his mission when he could not even get close enough to the enemy to fire?

  But possibly there was a chance. He had his Sea Harrier in a steady climb now, gaining altitude to extend the range of his Ferranti Blue Fox radar. Maximum range for an aircraft-sized target was about thirty-five miles for the system. Perhaps … There it was, a lone aircraft at the very limit of his radar’s range, traveling toward the northwest. If it was an American Tomcat, it had a top speed of better than Mach 2 and could easily out-pace his Harrier.

  But perhaps there was another way …

  CHAPTER 19

  1925 hours EST, 25 March (0755 hours, 26 March, India time)

  Oval Office, the White House

  “You sent for me, Mr. President.”

  “Yes, Admiral. Come in.”

  Admiral Magruder approached the enormous desk. He’d never seen the President looking this worn. The crisis of the past two days had drained the man.

  As it had drained him, he admitted to himself. Magruder had not slept well — or long — these past few nights. He didn’t expect to sleep this night either, not with the latest reports coming out of the Arabian Sea.

  “I thought you should know, Tom,” the President said. “The battle group is now under full attack.”

  Magruder felt his stomach knot. Matt … “No hits, no casualties that we know of yet,” the President continued.

  “But once the storm breaks, it’s going to be bad. I’ve … I’ve reque
sted the presence of the Indian ambassador. He’ll be here in another fifteen minutes. Maybe we can still work something out … a disengagement, a cease-fire. But …” He left the rest unsaid, and Magruder nodded his understanding. If Indian warplanes were already airborne, the chances of recalling them were slight.

  The President leaned forward, his hands clasped on his desk. “Matt, this is the crunch. The reason I brought you here. I need your help.”

  Magruder couldn’t tell if the President was referring to his summons to the office now, or the whole purpose of his transfer from the Pentagon.

  Perhaps he meant both. “I’ll help anyway I can, Mr. President.”

  “We still have one chance, you know.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Disengage. Break off and run for it.” The President held up one hand as Magruder’s face showed his surprise. “No, don’t say it, Tom. Wait until I’m through. The whole question is whether our claim to those waters ten thousand miles from this desk is worth the lives of several thousand of our boys.”

  Magruder tried to smile, and failed. “Mr. President, it’s a little late to reconsider now, isn’t it?”

  “Admiral, the man who sits at this desk thinks of carrier battle groups as a tool. A way to reach out and influence other parts of the world, other leaders. Okay, threaten, if you prefer. But in international politics, a threat is generally a lot more effective than a plea. It’s the way the damned system works.”

  “Granted. You used us a time or two, remember? At Wonsan? In Thailand?”

  “That’s why I called you, Tom. Your battle group is really up against it this time. When I sent you into Korea, we both knew you’d be outnumbered, but it was a quick, sharp action. Get the Marines in, get our people, get them out. And the Koreans didn’t have much to threaten your ships with beyond some outdated strike aircraft armed with free-fall bombs.”

  “Those were dangerous enough, sir.”

  “It was also a controlled response. If the North Koreans pushed too hard, well, we still had the U.S. air units stationed in South Korea and in Japan. We could keep things at a relatively low level, without escalating.”

  It certainly hadn’t seemed that way at the time, Magruder remembered.

  They’d been worried about the Soviets, worried about Korean reinforcements. And at the end, the Korcoms had launched a desperate attack on the invasion fleet with a number of low-level bombers.

  Sometimes, he thought, politicians could have remarkably selective memories. “Yes, sir.”

  “This time, it’s totally different. Jefferson and the other ships with her, they’re all we have in the region. All. And the Indians have just called our bluff. My bluff.”

  “Nimitz and the Ike will be in the region within another few days.”

  “By which time it will all be over. No, I’m beginning to wonder if our best bet might not be to pull back. I feel sure that if I told Ambassador Nadkarni that we were disengaging, breaking off and heading back for Diego Garcia, well … I doubt that New Delhi wants to be perceived as aggressors. It’d be in their best interests to turn back and let us sail away, a bloodless, diplomatic victory.”

  “Not quite bloodless, Mr. President,” Magruder reminded him. “There’s the crew of that Indian sub that went down a couple of days ago.”

  “True. But if an Indian air strike hits our ships, that will be just the beginning. Maybe now is the time to stop the killing.” The President rose suddenly from his chair. He turned and faced the tinted window, looking out past the Rose Garden toward the up-thrust spike of the Washington Monument. “The point is, I could stop it. Now.”

  “But at what cost, Mr. President?”

  He chuckled. “It would be political suicide, that’s for damn sure.” The President reached up and pressed his hands over his eyes. “After Grenada … Panama … the Persian Gulf … Wonsan? If I back down in front of the world and some nut starts tossing nukes over there … But I think I’m beyond caring about that anymore.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the next election, sir. I think you know that.”

  Magruder considered for a moment. “What’s happening with the Russians right now? The ones at Turban Station.”

  “Some of their officers are aboard our Aegis cruiser now. There … there’s no word from the Russian carrier. Kremlin is southwest of the Jefferson, farther from the Indian mainland and not in the direct line of fire. I’ve been talking with the Commonwealth representative today.

  Reading between the lines, I’d guess they’re still trying to guess which way to jump on this one.” He returned to his chair and slumped back into it.

  “What do you think they’d do if we packed up and left? If we left the Indian Ocean to the Indians?”

  “Lovely thought. My other military advisors don’t think they could handle the Indians alone. The Kremlin isn’t in the Jefferson’s league.”

  “My guess, sir, is that they’d follow through with what they’re there to do. Continue the mission.”

  “Which is …?”

  “Two-fold, Mr. President. Extend Commonwealth power into the Indian Ocean, if for no better reason than to convince the world that they are still a world power. And, maybe more important, to try somehow to stop a nuclear holocaust near their borders.”

  “Holocaust. Such a heavy word. Such an evocative word.”

  “That’s still our mission, isn’t it, sir? To stop that holocaust?”

  “Doesn’t make much sense if we don’t have a prayer of pulling it off in the first place, does it? I’m running the risk of plunging the United States of America into that same holocaust … beginning with nine thousand boys in CBG14.”

  “There’s another reason we’re there, Mr. President.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Freedom of the seas. Our commitment to our allies in the region, to open sea lanes and right of free passage.”

  “I wonder how valuable that really is.”

  “It’s principle, Mr. President. How important is a principle? Like freedom?” He took a deep breath. “You know, sir, the Navy has faced this same sort of thing before. The Gulf of Sidra, 1986.”

  “That was hardly the same as this.”

  “I don’t see how it was that much different, Mr. President. Qaddafi decided the Gulf of Sidra was exclusively his, and he set out to prove it at the point of a gun … or at the point of some Su-27s and Nanuchka corvettes, if you prefer. The Navy challenged him on that, at the orders of one of your predecessors.

  “The point was, it’s foolish to lay claim to waters that you can’t control. There was never any question that we could smash the Libyans.

  They gave us the provocation by threatening our ships and aircraft. We responded. The Gulf of Sidra is considered to be international waters, case closed.”

  The President gave a grim smile. “This is different. We could lose!”

  “Could be. We could take the history lesson back farther if you like.

  The Mayaguez. World War I and unrestricted U-boat attacks. The War of 1812. The Barbary Wars when Moorish pirates captured our ships and people and held them for ransom.”

  “We won those too.”

  “Yeah, but they weren’t foregone conclusions at the time. Hell, the odds against us in 1812 weren’t that much better than we’re facing now, and in the case of the Mayaguez, we lost more Marines killed than the number of merchant seamen we rescued. In each case, the only thing that pulled us through was the willpower to finish what we’d set out to do … or what others forced on us in the first place.”

  “This thing goes beyond principle, Admiral. Or finishing what we started. A lot of reputations in this town are riding on the big carriers. You know that, don’t you?” When Magruder nodded cautiously, the President went on. “Critics of the nuclear carriers have been saying for years that a single missile could sink one, that they’re big, slow, vulnerable … and expensive. Can you imagine the uproar if Jefferson is sunk or disabled by an Indian attack?”


  “And is that why you’d have them pull out, Mr. President?”

  The President sighed. “No. Once, maybe. Not any longer.” He appeared to be studying his hands, clasped before him on the desktop blotter, very carefully. “Things could have gone very wrong for us at Wonsan. Or at Bangkok too, for that matter. We could have lost ships there. We did lose men.”

  “Maybe the question is whether the men die for nothing. Or if it means something.”

  The President looked up at Magruder. “I should hire you to do my speeches. You have my speech writer beat all hollow.”

  “I only get passionate when I’m telling the truth, Mr. President. All I know, sir, is that if those big carriers of yours are to have any credibility in the future, you have to use them. Seems to me if you don’t, you risk losing the whole damn fleet, simply because they’re no longer a threat.”

  Magruder paused and swallowed hard. He was thinking of Matt. What he was saying now was going to have a very direct bearing on Matt’s future, maybe even on whether he lived or died, and the knowledge was a searing pain in his breast. The irrepressible Tombstone would be in the forefront of the fight, no matter what. Winner of the Navy Cross at Wonsan, of the Raniathepbodi — the Thai equivalent of the Medal of Honor — at Bangkok, the hero … But he had to say what he believed.

  “Mr. President, you know as well as I do how important the credibility of our fleet is in the world. You also know as well as I do how much we lose when the world sees us sacrifice principle for … for convenience.

  If the Indians attack, we fight. We have to. And if there’s any way on God’s Earth to get in there and separate those two before they start throwing their nuclear toys at each other, well … I think we should.

  We have to.”

  The President studied Magruder for a moment that dragged on and on. Then he nodded. “I know, Tom. And I agree.”

  “Testing me, Mr. President?”

  “No, Tom. Testing myself.” He reached out and pressed a button on his desk. A Secret Service man appeared in the door seconds later. “Yes, Mr. President?”