Alpha Strike c-8

by Keith Douglass

  “TAO — all the ASW birds launched?”

  “Yes, Admiral.” The TAO pointed at the plat camera display on the closed-circuit TV monitor. “Last Viking just took off. Air Boss called Red Deck a few seconds ago.”

  Tombstone turned back to Batman. “Go see CAG. It sounds to me like a good time to try out one of your toys in the air, but he may have some other plans. It’s going to take a while to get one fueled and armed, anyway.”

  “They’re Tomcats, Admiral. Hardly toys.”

  “Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Captain.”

  “Sir?” Batman stiffened, wondering if he’d overstepped the bounds of their long friendship. Surely Stoney hadn’t let his stars turn him into a pompous asshole!

  He studied his old friend carefully. One corner of Tombstone’s mouth twitched. “They’re all toys, Batman. Until they start shooting, that’s what they are.”

  1310 local (Zulu -7)

  Hunter 701

  “Get those active buoys in the water now!” Rabies snapped.

  “What the hell do you think I’m doing back here, playing with myself?” the TACCO snarled. “Here!” He punched the button that fed fly-to points to the pilot’s display.

  “Got it!” the copilot said, the report rendered superfluous by the hard banking turn of the S-3. Sixteen minutes later, Hunter 701 had ringed the last position of the submarine with DICASS buoys, which were pouring electromagnetic energy into the water, alternately pinging and listening for a sonar return.

  DICASS buoys operated like a shipboard sonar. They provided highly accurate range and bearing information to the AW. The disadvantage was that the submarine could hear the sonar pings, trace back to locate the sonobuoys, and maneuver to evade the pattern. Additionally, using DICASS buoys gave away the fact that someone knew that there was a submarine in the area — and was trying to find it. The submarine, alerted, could exploit every advantage the ocean offered, including anomalous acoustic conditions, to evade contact.

  Don’t matter if she knows we know, Rabies thought, banking the S-3B sharply to get into position for the next drop. She already knows about us!

  “All buoys sweet and cold,” Harness reported, telling the rest of the flight crew that each buoy was operating properly and that none of the buoys had gained contact on the submarine.

  “She can’t have gotten far,” the TACCO muttered. “She only dived ten minutes ago. She’s got to be in the area!”

  “Acoustic conditions aren’t the best,” the AW said. Both of his hands were on his head, pressing the earphones tightly over his ears. He took one hand off, reached for his water bottle, and took a swig. “Warm, shallow water. Couple of deep trenches nearby. I’m betting she heads for one of those.”

  Sound energy, the TACCO knew, was essentially lazy. Or at least that’s how it had been explained to him in his earliest days as a student naval flight officer. It always seeks out the path that lets it travel the slowest. The actual mechanics of sonar detection and layers in the ocean were explained in a mathematical formula known as Snell’s Law. For the TACCO’s purposes, the “lazy” analogy was sufficient.

  Three factors made sound travel faster: heat, pressure, and salinity. Increase any one of those elements in a layer of water, and sound energy would bend away from that layer.

  The South China Sea had a hard, rocky bottom. This near the equator, the water on the surface of the ocean was continually warmed by the sun. Wave action mixed the surface water with the layer below it, creating an isothermal layer of warmer water approximately fifty feet deep. The depth varied, depending on time of day and the sea state. At night, the surface of the ocean cooled down slightly. During heavy weather, rougher seas mixed the warm water even deeper into the ocean.

  If the DICASS buoys were dropped in the shallow surface layer, the returning pings would be trapped below the warmer area of water and would not return to the DICASS receiver. The AW, knowing the characteristics of this part of the world’s waters, had set his buoys at a depth of two hundred feet, well below the layer.

  “Could be anything,” the AW continued. “There’re enough pinnacles and rocks down there to block the return. Or, if she headed in toward the coastline, the water might be too shallow to get a good return. I don’t know if — Wait!” he said suddenly. He pressed the headphones more tightly against his ears.

  “Buoy fifteen hot!” he said. “Bearing 310, range four thousand yards!”

  The TACCO glanced at his display. “Westernmost buoy. Makes sense — she’s running for the shoreline and shallow water. And for Vietnamese territorial waters. She knows we’re going to be reluctant to follow her in there, regardless of her nationality. I can damn near guarantee that if we shoot a torpedo into territorial waters, we’re going to hit something that’s going to get us in trouble. Murphy’s Law.”

  “Lost it,” Harness announced. “She was there, though. I’m sure of it.”

  “How the hell did she get that far without us hearing her? She’d have to have been making better than twelve knots — we had to have heard something, at that speed. Let’s lay another pattern,” the TACCO said. His fingers flew over the display, calculating the spacing between buoys, and then punched the information up to the pilot’s display.

  “Sir, you’re right,” the AW said thoughtfully, staring at his display. “She makes that speed, I’m going to get her, layer or no layer.”

  “But the DICASS contact was solid, right?”

  “No doubt. Too hard and sharp to be a biologic,” the AW answered, referring to the possibility that the DICASS buoy could have pinged on a whale or pod of dolphins. Even clouds of shrimp composed of millions of the tiny creatures could reflect back the sound energy from a DICASS buoy.

  “And I didn’t hear any biologics. No, I had a sniff of a sub, sir. No doubt.” The AW’s voice was firm.

  “Okay, so we chase her down and sink her,” Rabies broke in. “Come on, however she got there, she’s there. Give me the fly-to points.”

  “Coming atcha,” the TACCO answered. “But watch it — we’re getting close to the twelve-mile limit.”

  “You point, I’ll drive,” Rabies said.

  At this point, the TACCO thought ruefully, that was about the best he could manage. He puzzled over the question of how the sub could have slipped through their net of DICASS buoys.

  1336 local (Zulu -7)

  Pri-Fly

  USS Jefferson

  “Come on, it’s just a Tomcat to us,” the Air Boss snapped. “Same weight, same steam settings. What’s taking so long!”

  “Uh, sir — that new Captain is down there,” the phone talker said. “He’s giving the flight deck crew a hand. Guess he wants to make sure everything’s copacetic for those birds.”

  The Air Boss groaned. “Does he want those JAST birds of his launched or bronzed? Jesus, that’s all we need — a 0–6 ‘helping’ the flight deck crew. Is he on the circuit?”

  “Yes, Boss. He’s calling the JAST birds ‘Spook.’”

  The Air Boss slipped his headphones on and listened. Sure enough, Batman’s voice was there, talking to the catapult officer on the flight deck frequency.

  “Captain Wayne,” the Air Boss said, a note of urgency in his voice. “I think we need you up here in Pri-Fly overseeing this.”

  “Roger, Air Boss,” Batman’s voice said, recognizable even through the background howl of the JAST Tomcat engines. “I’m just checking on a couple of-“

  “Now, Captain,” the Air Boss heard another voice chime in. He grinned. The Admiral had undoubtedly wondered what was taking so long to launch the JAST birds. He must have turned on the CCTV, seen his former wingman on the flight deck, and extrapolated the reason for the delay.

  “Aye, aye, Admiral,” the Air Boss heard Batman say. “On my way up.” The Air Boss watched the captain walk back to the Line Shack, handing his headset to a junior brown-shirted Plane Captain.

  “Thank you, Admiral,” he heard a high voice say a few seconds after Ba
tman had removed his headset, thus severing his link with the flight deck radio circuit. The Air Boss suppressed a chortle. He wasn’t the only one who’d been watching Batman leave the circuit.

  While he doubted that the Admiral could put a face to the voice, the Air Boss recognized it as belonging to Aviation Boatswain’s Mate First Class Winkler, the yellow-shined handler supervising the launch.

  Then “You’re welcome, AB1,” the same voice said gruffly, “And stand by to launch another one of those birds. I have a feeling that the only way I’m going to be able to keep Captain Wayne out of your hair is to get his other bird airborne. With the Captain in it.”

  The Air Boss blinked. If he hadn’t already known it, he’d just learned a valuable lesson.

  Never underestimate what Admiral Magruder knew.

  CHAPTER 11

  Saturday, 29 June

  1410 local (Zulu -7)

  Spook One (JAST Tomcat)

  “What the hell is that?” Bouncer muttered. The carrier was vectoring the JAST Tomcat to the last position of the submarine to provide air cover for the helicopters and Vikings sowing the ocean with sonobuoys.

  “You got something?” Mouse demanded.

  “Wait a second — let me tweak and peak a little. Come on, come on,” the RIO coaxed, practicing his expert knobology on the radar.

  “There,” he said a few seconds later. “Things just got shook up a little on the launch, that’s all. I’m picking up some air contacts to the west. Low fliers, about five hundred feet off the deck. Flight of four, it looks like.”

  “Anybody else got them?”

  “Nope. Vincennes is checking right now, but they’re not holding anything along that bearing.”

  “But you’ve got video there?” Mouse persisted.

  “Sure do. Four solid blips, speed 450 knots, on a bearing that will take them just north of the carrier.”

  “Let’s go take a look, then,” the pilot said, tilting the nose of the modified Tomcat down. “We might as well find out if this PFM gear works.”

  “Might want to have some backup. You got people firing missiles around here, Mouse,” Bouncer said uneasily. At that airspeed, and heading for the carrier, the contacts weren’t likely to be commercial airliners.

  “One Tomcat is enough for a look-see,” Mouse argued. “We need help, the carrier will get it to us ASAP.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to wait for that,” the RIO said, listening to the tactical circuit chattering in his right ear. “They’re getting ready to launch the other bird right now.”

  “Let me guess,” Mouse said. “Batman’s driving.”

  “You got it. I never thought that flight rotation schedule would last for much longer than it took to get here. It surprised the hell out of me when he let us launch.”

  “The launch, you mean! It’s not like he’d steal your hop, Bouncer. He likes to sit up front with the adults.”

  “No accounting for taste,” Bouncer mused. “Me, I’m kinda happy back here. My ejection seat fires three-tenths of a second before yours does, don’t forget. And I’ve got a handle for it!”

  1415 local (Zulu -7)

  Pri-Fly

  USS Jefferson

  “Launching four more Tomcats,” the Air Boss said over the flight deck circuit. With the alert five Tomcats already launched, as well as one JAST bird and Thor’s Hornet, that put seven American fighters up to intercept four Flankers. The JAST air contacts, fed to all the ships’ radar displays through the LINK had initiated a flurry of action. Even though the SPY-1 radar on the Aegis had not detected the contacts, the carrier TAO was making the safety play — get help and gas in the air before it was needed. The Air Boss thought that Batman had probably had some input into that decision, said input resulting in said Captain grinning like a possum in the front seat of the other JAST bird.

  The Air Boss picked up the mike for the flight deck circuit. “Shoot that queer Turkey now,” he ordered. The Yellow Shirt on the deck whirled around, stared up at the tower, and flashed a big smile and a thumbs-up. With Batman airborne, there’d be less chance that he’d be able to kibitz anything else that happened on the flight deck.

  1416 local (Zulu -7)

  Spook Two (JAST Tomcat)

  “Damn!” Tomboy gasped, as the acceleration off the catapult slammed her back hard. “Sir, you sure about those settings?” she asked, referring to the weight figures the Cat Officer had displayed on the grease pencil board. The weight was used to determine the pressure settings on the piston that drove the catapult shuttle forward.

  There was no answer for a few moments as Batman concentrated on getting the JAST bird airborne and gaining altitude. “It’s Batman up here, Tomboy,” he said finally. “And yeah, I’m sure the weight was right. You’re just used to flying with that old lady, Tombstone. Got to get you used to a tactical launch again!”

  “There’s tactical and then there’s tactical, sir. Batman, I mean. You talking about the latter tactical?”

  “You betcha. Speaking of tactical, how’s your gear?”

  “Up and sweet. Need to screw with it for a while to figure out the finer points. Bouncer gave me a real solid rundown on it, but it’s one thing to talk about it, another altogether to get tactical.”

  “That’s what we’re up here for. Play with it until you’re comfortable, but learn it fast. And don’t worry — we’ve got plenty of company up here. If things get hot and you don’t feel one hundred percent yet, we’ll buster out. Not that we’re expecting any trouble. Most likely this is just a routine fly-over.”

  “Routine-right,” she said, letting her hands wander over the dials, feeling the familiar shapes and watching the display change in response to her tweaking. “Nothing’s ever routine when you’re tactical, sir!”

  “Who’d you learn that from, Tomboy? Tombstone? And it’s Batman, damn it!”

  “Not Tombstone,” she said. Batman glanced in his small rearview mirror as the low chuckle in her voice caught his attention, but her head was still buried in the scope. “Better teacher than that.”

  “And just who might that have been?” he said, his curiosity piqued by both her tone of voice and her answer.

  “Best teacher of all, for a Tomcat RIO. A MiG driver was kind enough to continue my education, back when we were over Norway,” she said, referring to the combat she’d seen on her first cruise. “And when a MiG teaches you a lesson, you don’t forget it. Not for a long, long time.”

  1425 local (Zulu -7)

  Flight Deck USS Jefferson

  “About time!” Bird Dog muttered. He might be the last bird off the cat, but at least he wasn’t sitting alert five. He eased forward on the throttle, feeling the vibration from the jets transmitted to his seat. The Tomcat, as clumsy on land as it was agile in the air, rolled forward. Bird Dog let it pick up a little speed, steering it toward the Yellow Shirt, and then eased back on the throttle. He tapped the brakes gently, chafing at the slowness of the flight deck ballet, as it became apparent from the Yellow Shirt’s frantic waving that the Tomcat was bearing down on him just a little too fast.

  Airman Alvarez scanned the flight deck, got his bearings, and then started across the hot tarmac. Although the sun was already dipping below the horizon, the rough nonskid still held the heat of the day. He could feel it through the soles of his boots, the prickle of the heat making his feet sweat and aggravating the athlete’s foot he’d picked up last week. It had to be from the showers, he thought, desperately wishing he could rip his boots off and scratch.

  The tie-down chains slung across his right shoulder bit into his flesh, the weight making him list slightly. He shrugged, trying to hitch the chains up closer to his neck as he felt one trying to slide off his shoulder. Carrying them on one shoulder had been a mistake, since he was now unevenly balanced, but putting one over each shoulder increased the probability that he’d step on the trailing ends and stumble.

  He squinted at the sun, which was merging with the horizon off the carr
ier’s port side. The flight deck throbbed faintly under his soles as the carrier accelerated. He saw the sun shift relative positions slowly as the carrier turned into the wind. He’d better get moving, or the Air Boss would have his ass for fouling the flight deck.

  Alvarez started across the flight deck. The yellow-shirted handler, forty feet away and slightly to his right, was lost in the setting sun. If he hurried he could get the tie-down chains over to Groucho before the Air Boss caught sight of him.

  Only two more years of this shit, he reminded himself, Then his enlistment would be up and he’d be back to cruising the beaches of sunny San Diego, feeling the heat beating down on his back from the sun instead of radiating up through his flight deck boots from the baking nonskid and steel decks. The way he felt right now, he’d have to spend the first month of his new civilian freedom sleeping, just to catch up. But he wouldn’t have to sleep alone, he mused, and certainly not with eighty other men, the way he did now, in the packed berthing compartment six levels below the flight deck. His thoughts drifted away from the flight deck and into a series of explicit daydreams that lacked just faces on the girls to make them come true.

  Bird Dog felt the brakes slip and stamped down harder on the pedal. He swore, feeling the mush beneath his feet. Hydraulics, it had to be! Suddenly, the problem was not how fast he could get to the catapult, but how much deck space he had in which to stop. The time-distance calculations flashed through his mind intuitively. Not enough distance heading toward the catapult, he was sure. He stamped down, slewed the taxiing Tomcat into a hard left-hand turn, and dropped the tailhook. If he could get it headed back down the flight deck toward the stern, the drag produced by the tailhook and the extra time might let the marginal brakes act. As a last resort, he could snag one of the arresting wires with his tailhook and get the jet stopped before it rolled off the stern into the ocean.

  Ten knots had never felt so damned dangerous before.