“What kind of Bear?” he asked immediately.
The pilot glanced at the copilot, who was staring back aft, searching for the contact. “He’s not certain, but he thinks he caught a glimpse of a large ventral pod. If he’s right, that makes it a Bear-J.”
The copilot looked away from his binoculars for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I saw it, Admiral.”
“A Bear-J. Now what the hell would it be doing out here?” Tombstone said, puzzled.
The Bear-J was the Russians’ version of the U.S. Navy’s EA-6A and EC-130Q TACAMO aircraft. It possessed VLF — very low frequency — communications gear that enabled it to stay in contact with national command authorities and missile submarines from almost anywhere in the world. The ventral pod housed the kilometers-long trailing wire communications antenna. The aircraft was slightly over 162 feet long, with a wingspan several feet larger than that. In addition to its guns, the Bear-J could also carry the largest air-launched missiles in the CIS inventory, and sported outsize, extremely fine resolution radars.
“Have you told anyone about this?” Tombstone asked.
“Your people already know. And Jefferson — she’s on station for the Greenpeace monitoring mission.” The pilot couldn’t entirely keep an offended note out of his voice. “Admiral, we’re five minutes out from Adak.” The pilot motioned toward the extra fold-down seat in the cockpit. “If you’d like to stay, we’d be pleased to have you in the cockpit for the landing.”
As long as I park my butt before you have to order me to and I quit second-guessing you, Tombstone thought, a sliver of wry humor cutting through his concern over the Bear. The only thing worse would be if you had to explain how I got smashed up when the landing got rough. He took the hint and strapped in, turning sideways and craning his head around to look forward. He might be three grades senior to the pilot, but as long as they were in the air the pilot had command of the aircraft and was responsible for the safety of the passengers. And that included keeping senior officers from getting themselves hurt.
The copilot reported that the Bear was now maintaining position two miles behind them. He then abandoned his binoculars and resumed the prelanding checklist that the Bear had interrupted.
Flying this close together in marginal weather was a foolishness Tombstone would have never permitted in his own air wing. Not unless the tactical situation were critical.
Maybe this tour would be as interesting as his uncle had promised, after all.
1625 Local
Tomcat 201
Ten minutes later, the fighter was orbiting above the radar contact’s position, barely two thousand yards above the ocean. Bird Dog could see the rough chop of the waves, the massive shape of a whale moving below them, the clear sky — and nothing else.
“Where the hell did it go?” Bird Dog asked.
“Damned if I know. But it was there before.”
Bird Dog heard the frustration in Gator’s voice. “Well, maybe it was a submarine,” he said skeptically. “I suppose it’s possible. But I’d bet on the fellow down there.” He watched the whale surface, flip a tail at the aircraft, then dive.
Gator snorted. “About time you started believing me on radar contacts, Bird Dog. A biologic doesn’t give that solid of a return, if you see it at all. After the Spratly Islands, I would think you’d be a little bit more cautious about sea ghosts.”
“Just because you were right that time doesn’t mean you’re right every time.”
During the Spratly Islands, the first clue that China was behind the aggressions had come from Gator’s sighting of two intermittent contacts on radar. At the time, Bird Dog had voiced his opinion loudly that Gator had been drinking too much coffee, and was making radar contacts out of sea clutter. When an island five thousand feet below them had disintegrated into a massive cloud of tank fragments, bodies, and bamboo building materials, Bird Dog had been forced to admit that his RIO was right.
“Let’s circle this area for a while, see if we pick anything else up,” Gator said, his voice holding no trace of animosity. “I know what you think about sea ghosts, but this wasn’t one of them.”
“Okay, let me call Mother and tell her what we’re up to. Damnit, Gator, we’re going to end up tanking again if we stay out here much longer.”
“You might want to consider doing it earlier than you need to,” Gator said, tension creeping into his voice.
“Why? You holding out on me?”
“No. It’s just that I don’t want to be running short on fuel if something unexpected comes up. You know the old saying — better safe than sorry?”
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to rub it in.”
Bird Dog made the call to the carrier and told the operations specialist on the other end what they’d seen. Or rather, what they’d not seen. The OS sounded dubious, and dropped off-line for a moment to confer with the tactical action officer (TAO).
While Bird Dog was waiting for an answer, Gator gave off a sharp yelp from the backseat. “Look! And you talk about sea clutter!”
Bird Dog put the Tomcat into a tight left-hand turn and studied the ocean below. A glossy black shape was lurking just below the surface, a huge man-made leviathan. “Holy shit,” he said softly. “Jesus, Gator, what is it with you and submarines? There are probably no more than two or three Russian submarines deployed in this whole ocean, and you get me marking on top of the only one within two thousand miles.”
He could hear the smugness in Gator’s voice as the RIO replied, “Guess I’m just good.”
“Or lucky.”
The tactical channel was now chattering with demands for information, directions to maintain contact, and anxious queries about their fuel status from the OS. Finally, a familiar voice cut through the chatter.
“Tomcat Two-oh-one, say identity and classification of submarine.” The slight Texas twang was all Bird Dog needed to hear.
“I don’t know, Admiral — wait, let me drop down a little.” Bird Dog shoved the control yoke forward, and started down toward the surface of the ocean. He arrested their descent at two thousand feet above the ocean, continuing to circle over the contact to get a better look at it.
“An Oscar,” Gator said softly. “That’s the only thing of that size that would be out here.”
“You sure? It could be a Typhoon at that size.”
“No.” Gator’s voice held a note of finality. “I can see enough of the sail structure from here to make the call. That’s an Oscar, no doubt about it.”
Bird Dog relayed the information back to Mother, and then felt a slight chill as the implications started to settle in.
The Oscar was the latest cruise missile ship in the Russian inventory. It had one, and only one, primary mission in life — killing American aircraft carriers. The building program had begun at Shipyard Number 402, located at Severodyinsk, in 1982, during the height of the Cold War. The Oscar I and the later Oscar II were the largest submarines to be built by any nation, except for the Soviet Typhoon ballistic missile boat and the U.S. Trident SSBN.
The Oscar carried the SS-N-19 Shipwreck antiship missile, with either a conventional or nuclear warhead. With a range of greater than three hundred nautical miles and a speed of Mach 2.5, the five-thousand-kilogram missile was a deadly threat to any surface ship. The Oscar could receive targeting information from most Soviet tactical aircraft, as well as satellite downlink positioning. Both of those assets permitted it to fire at surface ships well outside its own sensor range. In addition to the Shipwreck, the Oscar carried the SS-N-15 and S-16 torpedoes. Although hard data was scarce, her 533mm torpedoes were reputed to be capable of speeds up to forty-five knots, transporting a high-explosive or nuclear warhead of 1,250 pounds on a straight run, or in acoustic homing mode. Supposedly, one of those torpedoes exploding under the keel of a carrier would be sufficient to break the carrier’s back.
“How far away from the carrier is she?” Bird Dog asked. He winced, hearing the slight tremor in his voice.
&
nbsp; Gator’s voice was dark and somber. “Four hundred miles, right now. But with her speeds, there’s nothing to say she couldn’t close that to within Shipwreck range within one day.”
“You’d better tell the Admiral. I think he’s going to be real interested in this.”
1630 Local
USS Jefferson
Rear Admiral Edward Everett Wayne, “Batman” to his fellow aviators, swore quietly as he listened to the RIO’s report. An Oscar. Great. Just when every asset in the United States Navy had been lulled into a peaceful sense of security because of the demise of the Soviet Union, an Oscar turns up. What the hell were the Intelligence people thinking? And why hadn’t he had any warning at all about this possibility?
He stared at the large blue video screen that dominated the forward bulkhead of Tactical Flag Command Center (TFCC). Judging from the relative geometry, the carrier battle group would be safe from the Oscar for at least another day, maybe more, depending on what course she followed.
“Get some Vikings in the air. Now,” he snapped. “It’s time we got some work out of them.”
“I imagine they’ll be happy about that,” his chief of staff, Captain Jim Craig, remarked. “Their CO was telling me he’s getting damned tired of ferrying mail back and forth for us. To have a real submarine problem, as nasty as it may be, that’s meat and potatoes for the S-3 Viking ASW aircraft.”
Batman nodded sharply. “It’s the kind of opportunity I don’t want to have on this cruise. I told Tombstone I’d keep his people safe.”
The TAO, seated at his console two feet in front of Batman, swiveled his chair around and looked at the admiral. “Sir, we need to get that Tomcat some more gas if she’s going to mark on top while we prep the S-3s. He’s got enough gas to stay on station for another hour and still make it back safely, but-“
Batman cut him off. “Good thinking. Better to have too much gas than too little. The first situation you can fix — the second you can’t. Make it happen.”
The TAO turned back to his console and talked with his counterpart located in the Combat Direction Center (CDC), fifty feet forward on the ship. After a hurried conversation, he toggled the circuit off and turned to the OS manning the plastic status board located on the right side of the TFCC. “Put down Seven-oh-one and Seven-oh-two for the next two events. Seven-oh-three and Seven-eleven will be in Alert Fifteen. And we’re launching another tanker now, now, now.” Without waiting to see if the OS had caught it all, he turned back to his console.
“An Oscar. What does that suggest to you?” Batman asked his COS.
Captain Craig looked thoughtful. With thirty years as surface ship officer in the Navy, four at-sea commands under his belt, and an advanced degree in ASW systems from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, he had forgotten more about submarines than Batman had ever known. “Nothing good. She could make us real unhappy characters by just staying within weapons release range.”
“And that Bear-J up around Adak doesn’t make me breathe any easier. Based on that, I think we have to assume that the Oscar has detailed targeting information on the entire battle group.” Batman turned back to the screen. “And is in contact with Russia’s military command. The question is, why? Is this just another one of those political statements, or something worse?”
Captain Craig shook his head, a weary expression crossing his face. “And I thought we’d seen the last of these games. Figured I’d make one last deployment, then think about retiring. It’s starting to sound like I might want to put that off some.”
Batman clapped him on the shoulder. “Better now than ten years from now,” he said. “The Navy needs us Cold Warriors — after all we saw, we’re the only ones with the right suspiciously paranoid mind-set to detect the first signs of trouble.”
The COS shot him an amused look. “Do I detect a lack of confidence on the admiral’s part in our superb intelligence network?”
Batman snorted. “Hell, they couldn’t even tell us when the Wall in Germany was going to come down, and every last one of them missed the breakup of the Soviet Union. Given that, what do you think the odds are that they detect a reunited commonwealth on the move again?”
“I wish to God I didn’t agree with you, Admiral. But I do.” The chief of staff stared forward at the screen watching the arcane symbology that represented the battle group, her aircraft and escorts, steaming west just south of the Aleutian chain. “And I hope to hell both of us are wrong.”
Tomcat 201
“You think she knows we’re here?” Bird Dog asked.
“Probably,” Gator answered. “At this low of an altitude, we’re putting a helluva lot of noise into the ocean. I thought I saw an ESM antenna pop up there a little while ago. Either way, I think we can count on her knowing we’re here.”
“Well, there’s not much she can do about that, is there?”
“I don’t think so.” Bird Dog’s voice sounded doubtful. “But after the Spratlys, with those surface-to-air missiles on that submarine, I’m not feeling so safe and secure orbiting over a submarine anymore.”
Bird Dog swore quietly to himself, wishing he’d paid more attention to the last intelligence brief. Did the Oscar carry a surface-to-air missile? And if so, what was the range? “How about we move on up to four thousand feet?” he asked. “Just give us a little safety room.”
“No objection from back here. I think I’ll still be able to follow her — from that altitude. I’ll let you know.”
Bird Dog tapped the throttles forward slightly and put the Tomcat into a slow, graceful spiral upward. He glanced overhead and saw the heavy, thick bottoms of the clouds looming above him. “Three thousand, maybe,” he said, hazarding a guess. “I’ll throttle back so you can keep a visual on her.”
At 2,800 feet, just below the bottom of the clouds, Bird Dog leveled the Tomcat out. Gator informed him that he still had a clear, if slightly fuzzy, visual on the massive black hull sliding through the water.
“Who would’ve thought we would have been able to see her?” Bird Dog said. “That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, the whole purpose of a submarine is to remain hidden. Doesn’t she know that the water is so clear up here that we can see down thirty or forty feet?”
“That’s what worries me,” Gator said soberly. “The Oscar can fire her Shipwreck missiles while submerged, and there’s absolutely no reason for her to stay at shallow depths for any period of time, not unless she’s coming up for a communications break. And if this were a com break, she would have already stuck an antenna up, squirted out her traffic, and been back down at depth. There’s only one reason for her to stay shallow like this.”
“She wants us to see her? Why?”
“I’m flattered to think that you believe I can read the mind of a Russian submarine commander,” Gator said sarcastically. “But for what it’s worth, I can think of only one reason that she would stay this shallow. She wants us to see her.”
“Why?”
“That, my friend, is the real question.”
1650 Local
Adak Island
The C-130 shuddered to a halt, using up most of the runway as it gently braked. The Bear aircraft had broken off when they’d started their final approach to the small island airstrip, and now circled overhead at fifteen thousand feet.
Tombstone paused at the C-130 hatch and stared out at the cold, barren island before him. The hard arctic wind buffeted him, and the movable metal steps now rolling up to the aircraft swayed gently. He sucked in a deep breath and felt the frigid air sear the delicate tissues of his lungs.
In the distance, he could see a forlorn line of P-3 ASW aircraft parked on the tarmac. Just a few years ago, there would have been two complete squadrons of the Orion aircraft permanently stationed here, ready to pounce on the first sniff of any Soviet submarine that ventured into these waters. Now, due to downsizing, or right-sizing, as some called it, he thought bitterly, most of the United States Navy assets were being pulled back to the mainlan
d. Only these five aircraft remained on this isolated base, the forward edge of the American continental security envelope. He looked over in the other direction and saw the squat gray concrete building that housed the SOSUS station, now silent and cold. Adak had been a challenging duty station for generations of ocean systems technicians, but the bean-counters in the Pentagon had decided this forward-deployed ASW capability was no longer needed.
The peace dividend. He snorted. What they never seemed to realize was that peace was a temporary state of affairs between conflicts. By stripping herself of so much fighting capability, America simply guaranteed that a long, economically painful, and manpower intensive buildup would be required the next time. And there would be a next time, he thought, surveying the westernmost base under his command. Regardless of how much the politicians claimed they’d achieved it, and how much the everyday citizen wanted it, he couldn’t convince himself that this peace would last. It was merely a matter of time before it crumbled.
The rickety steps finally reached the aircraft, and two technicians hurried to decouple the frail structure from the small yellow tractor towing it. By hand, they pushed it over against the aircraft. Its forward lip clanged against the scarred and battered surface of the C-130.
Tombstone wrapped his parka around himself more tightly, grateful that his supply clerk back in ALASKCOM headquarters had insisted he take it, along with the thick, fur-lined gloves now snuggled in his pockets. He reached for the metal railing, intending to make the short dash down the ladder and to the waiting van without the gloves.
A technician grabbed his hand as he reached for the railing. “Sorry, sir, but you’ll want to put those gloves on first. You touch that metal, we’ll have to bring the hot water out to unfreeze your hand from it.”
Tombstone nodded his thanks and pulled the gloves on before stepping out of the aircraft and onto the metal platform. He touched the metal railing and felt the bitter cold seeping through the thick leather and fur. The man who had grabbed him had been right. He walked down the steps, feeling the structure shudder and sway in the forty-knot gale. By the time he reached the van, only twenty feet away, the cold was already seeping through the parka and his face was numb.
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