Alpha Strike c-8

by Keith Douglass

  1426 local (Zulu -7)

  Spook One

  “Nothing here,” Mouse said.

  “Still showing contacts on the scope. Hell, according to this, we ought to be right in the middle of them!” Bouncer muttered, disgusted.

  “Can’t help what isn’t here. Maybe the avionics took a hit from the cat shot.”

  “Or maybe it’s ghosts. The way conditions are out here, all that warm, unstable air, it could be something else. A reflection off a contact miles away, multipathing through the atmosphere, an air burble, anything.”

  “Wouldn’t be unheard of in the South China Sea. Well, whatever it was, it’s not here now. I guess the Aegis guys were right — if they don’t see it, it’s not here.”

  “Shit,” Bouncer said, disgusted. “Better let the carrier know before they get all spun up about nothing.”

  1426 local (Zulu -7)

  Flight Deck

  USS Jefferson

  Alvarez felt as much as heard the jet wash from the F-14 dissipate. One moment he was leaning into the blast to stay upright. As it disappeared abruptly, he fell to his right, the heavy tie-down chains unbalancing him. He hit the deck hard and felt the nonskid scrape the skin off the back of his hand. One chain bounced off the deck and landed across his legs, curling between his ankles. He swore and struggled to his knees, wrapping the tie-down chain even more tightly around his ankles. He reached back to loosen the knot and looked forward toward the catapults for the first time.

  “Jesus, Bird Dog!” Gator shouted. “Wrong end!”

  The Tomcat was now nearly halfway through its 180-degree turn. Bird Dog was staring at the side of the carrier, trying to increase the rate of turn through sheer willpower. Two E-2C’s were parked directly in front of him. It looked like his wingtip Would just barely clear them. For a second, he wondered if he could fold his wings, decreasing the amount of room the massive aircraft took up. No, it wouldn’t be necessary, he decided, estimating that his wing would clear the E-2C’s by at least three feet. He shifted his gaze down to the end of the flight deck, focusing on the arresting gear, and caught his first glimpse — and last — of Airman Alvarez.

  The F-14 that had been headed for the catapult was now staring straight at him. Alvarez felt the wind scream by his head, first tugging, then jerking him off his knees. He screamed and grabbed for a pad-eye inset on the deck, desperate for something to hold on to to stop his roll toward the catapults and the F-14. His fingers slid into the pad-eye loop and caught. The tendons in his wrist and the muscles in his arm flashed into instant agony. The F-14, now only ten feet away, was generating typhoon-strength winds, the hungry jets sucking up everything in their path. Alvarez screamed again as the bones in his first three fingers snapped, and he began rolling back down the nonskid toward the jet engine intakes.

  Bird Dog jerked the throttle back, killing the twin jet engines. He felt them immediately start to spool down. But for the airman on the deck, it wasn’t soon enough.

  Alvarez’s body lost contact with the ground when the jet was five feet away. His head hit the edge of the nacelle and was crushed just seconds before the screaming turbines inside pulverized his body.

  The Yellow Shirt who’d been directing Bird Dog onto the catapult was behind the Tomcat, flat on the deck to avoid the jet wash from the engines. He caught a glimpse of the airman on the deck in front of the aircraft and had just enough time to scream a warning out on the flight deck circuit before a hot red wash of liquid and flesh spat out of the back of the engine nacelle. The spooling-down whine of the engine changed to a gritty clatter.

  CHAPTER 12

  Saturday, 29 June

  1430 local (Zulu -7)

  Niblet 601

  The Sikorsky SH-60F Ocean Hawk helicopter hovered forty feet above the ocean. From beneath its belly, it lowered a large reflective metal ball toward the surface, the wet end of its Allied Signals (Bendix Oceanics) AQS-13F dipping sonar. A wire cable connected the ball to the avionics equipment in the helo, making it appear as though it were tethered to the ocean. Its auto-hover capabilities enhanced the illusion by making it an exceptionally stable hovering platform, even with two Mark 46 acoustic homing torpedoes slung under an external weapons station on the port side. First deployed to the Fleet in 1991, it was the replacement airframe for the SH-3 LAMPS Mark III helicopter. ASW experts bragged about its impressive passive and active tracking capabilities. Submariners from every nation hated it for the same reasons. The Ocean Hawk was the pit bull of ASW helicopters. “Going down to one hundred feet,” the AW announced.

  “What’s the surface layer?” the other enlisted technician asked.

  “Sixty feet today. That ought to put us well below it,” the first AW answered.

  “We’ll see. There’s nothing I like about this contact at all, not a thing. Surface-to-air missiles on a submarine! God! It’s unnatural, and unsportsmanlike!”

  “You better get something here,” the pilot announced, his hands and feet moving in coordination to keep the helo hovering. “We’re too near to the twelve-mile limit to go in any further.”

  “You watch the surface, sir. Any sign of her coming shallow, you’re going to want to be skedaddling out of here.” With a max speed of 150 knots, the SH-60F needed a good lead on any SAM the sub would fire to survive.

  “Speak of the devil, Sir, probable periscope, bearing 285, range three thousand yards!”

  “That’s it, boys!” the pilot snapped. “We’re getting the hell out of here! Reel that sucker in!”

  The winch sang, heaving the sonar transducer out of the water. As soon as it was clear of the sea, the pilot kicked it in the ass.

  “Hunter 710, she’s all yours!” the pilot said.

  “Thanks a lot. We’ll sneak in a little closer, see if we can get a VID from outside of missile range,” Rabies answered. “Want to stick around in case we drive her back under?”

  “Roger, we’ll be around — just outside of the SAM envelope.”

  1431 local (Zulu -7)

  Hunter 701

  “Can’t say that I blame them,” Rabies said. “Now let’s see if we can get a visual.”

  He circled the datum the helo had passed to him, watching the black stovepipe sticking up. A small wake, a feather, curled behind it, showing the direction of travel.

  “Surfacing!” the copilot said. Slowly, a black sail emerged from the sea, water streaming off its sides. “Oh, shit,” he said after a second. “It’s not possible.”

  The AW craned his head around, looked through the cockpit windscreen, and whistled. “Sure as hell is, boss,” he said softly.

  “A Kilo submarine fired on Hunter 701,” the TACCO said slowly. “And that-“

  “Is definitely not a Kilo. It’s a Han-class diesel boat, one of China’s own production models. We’ve been chasing the wrong boat,” Rabies said.

  1900 local (Zulu -7)

  Admiral’s Cabin

  USS Jefferson

  Tombstone studied the young pilot sitting across from him. Of all the mistakes of the day, this was the most painful to deal with. Amidst the confusion of the sub-launched missile from the Kilo, the Han submarine, the Flanker incursions, and the ghost contacts, they’d lost an airman. While the tactical errors would be debriefed endlessly, no amount of analysis could change the result for Airman Alvarez.

  He’d already talked to the squadron CO about Bird Dog, and he had a fairly good idea of what the pilot was like. Now that all the aircraft were back on deck, and the pilot had been debriefed by both the Safety Officer and the JAG Officer, it was Tombstone’s turn to try to determine exactly what had happened.

  Not so different from any of us at that age. First cruise, still psyched about flying Tomcats. By now, it’s feeling normal to strap on a jet after breakfast and launch screaming into the wind, but that hasn’t cut through the sheer excitement of it all. He knows about fear, just a little, from trying to get back onboard at night, but he hasn’t faced the reality of it yet. Not how bad the
fear can really get.

  He thought back to his own earlier days on the carrier. With far more experience than this pilot had, Tombstone himself had had to face the fear that was a daily part of their lives. Two bad passes at the carrier, at night in foul weather, and Lieutenant Commander Magruder, hotshot F-14 pilot, had been ready to call it quits and settle into civilian life with Pamela. In the process of helping Batman fight his own personal demons, Tombstone had come to terms with his own. Flying F-14s wasn’t a guarantee of immortality — every student pilot knew that — but it took time and age to assimilate that fear.

  “You know there’ll be a formal JAG investigation,” he said. He kept his eyes fixed on the pilot’s face. Deep in the blue eyes, he saw his own image reflected back at him.

  The pilot nodded and looked down at the floor. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. It all happened so fast. One second I was taxiing, the next second the brakes are blown and I’m heading for the side. I remember thinking about the E-2’s, wondering if I’d clear them. That Plane Captain — he just appeared out of nowhere. I’d just taxied through that part of the flight deck, and he wasn’t there then. Then all at once …” The pilot’s voice trailed off.

  “That’s the way it happens,” Tombstone said. “Even in the air. Four hundred knots, ten knots — makes no difference. You train to react without thinking, because there’s never enough time. You either do the right thing, or you’re dead. Sometimes you do the right thing and you’re still dead.”

  “I keep seeing him — just those last couple of seconds.” The younger pilot’s voice was a low monotone. “He’d snagged a pad-eye. I cut the engines as soon as I saw him, but it wasn’t fast enough. He was looking at me, and I could see him screaming. I don’t think it was words, not from the way his mouth was moving, just screaming. I keep wondering what I could have done to prevent it, why I didn’t just ram into the JBD or one of the E-2’s and save the kid’s life. Then I realize there wasn’t time; I couldn’t have gotten turned fast enough by the time I saw him. Maybe if I’d looked before I turned, maybe-“

  “Maybe you could have,” Tombstone said, interrupting the emotionless recital of the facts. Bird Dog’s voice suggested that he was still in shock. The sooner Tombstone could cut through the cocoon that was isolating the pilot from reality, the sooner he’d start to deal with what had happened. “It’s not probable, but it is possible.”

  Bird Dog flinched as though Tombstone had struck him. “You’re saying it was my fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter right now. It might have hours ago, when either you or a plane captain might have noticed the hydraulics leak that caused your brakes to fail. But nothing you can do will change what happened. You either learn to live with it, or you’ll be tossing your wings on CAG’s desk before the cruise is over.”

  “Maybe I should just do that now,” Bird Dog said. He shut his eyes for a moment and tried to imagine taxiing an F-14 on the flight deck again. All he could see was the screaming face, eyes hidden by the goggles and cranial helmet, one arm stretched out against the baking black nonskid, the fingers slipping, the horrifying rumble of the Tomcat’s right engine, the wet sucking grinding, metal clashing on metal as the body and the tie-down chains were ingested. Two turbine blades tore through the fuselage, barely missing Gator, ripping narrow bloody gashes in the cockpit.

  It had been as sudden and unexpected as the destruction of the Spratly rock. One minute the tank crew had been alive, staring up at his aircraft. If he’d been closer to the island during those last moments, he might have seen the same expression on their faces as he’d seen on Alvarez’s — a stark realization that cut to the heart of each man, the inevitable truth that no man was immortal. He shuddered and tried to block the vivid details out of his mind, as well as the logical conclusion to that train of thought. If he’d been close enough to see the tank crew’s faces, to look into their eyes in the split second before they’d died, he would have been close enough to die himself. Even if the missile had not sought out the Tomcat as preferred prey in the deadly long-range game of strike warfare, fragments of debris thrown aloft by the explosion would have surely been sucked into the Tomcat’s jet engine. FOD. A silly-sounding acronym for Foreign Object Damage, FOD was a long-standing nightmare for some pilots. It was odd the things they came to fear, it occurred to him. Each pilot had his or her own peculiar fixation. Some obsessed about cold cats, the failure of steam pressure during the flight stroke. Others worried about hydraulics leaks, or the wiring harnesses that carried the complex electronic connections between the pilot’s instruments and the avionics black boxes. Unlike most of his peers, Bird Dog had never had a particular item he worried about. Coalescing in his gut, however, was a conviction that it was not any one thing so much as a particular accidental sequence of events that would finally get him. Something meaningless, like a hydraulics leak. He shut his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. It kept coming back to him, one persistent thought. Had Alvarez been conscious long enough that the deadly blades would work their way up his body to his torso, then his head? Had he had those milliseconds to know that he was dying in one of the most horrible ways possible on an aircraft carrier? To Bird Dog, that was the most horrendous thing he could think of — to see death coming, and to know there was no way to avoid it. “Stop,” Tombstone ordered. “Look at me.”

  Bird Dog opened his eyes and stared at the admiral.

  “There are two things you’re going to do. First, you’re going to Sick Bay. Second, you’re going to get some sleep. If you’re going to make it through this, it’s better that we find out immediately. Commander,” Tombstone said, turning to the squadron CO.

  “Understood, Admiral,” the commander said. “He’s back on the flight schedule tomorrow.”

  Bird Dog stared at them dully. Back on the flight schedule, back on the flight deck. Strapped inside a jet with no way out, other than ejecting, which was as likely to kill him as anything else. Just like Alvarez … a little faster if he hit the canopy and snapped his neck, a little slower if his seat launched too soon and flung him into the flaming exhaust of his RIO’s seat.

  How easy it was to die on an aircraft carrier! Somehow, that wasn’t something that had ever really sunk in, despite numerous hours of safety lectures and briefings. He shuddered, wondering if anyone else in the squadron knew how dangerous it was on the flight deck.

  Of course they did, he reminded himself. They’d been doing this for years. Hell, Bird Dog had lost classmates all the way through the training pipeline. Aircraft broke, pilots did stupid things, and aviators died.

  But somehow it’d never been brought home quite as dramatically. It was one thing to launch with another aircraft and never see the aviator again. It was another experience altogether to have a young sailor shredded by the blades of your jet engine. And to know that you were partially responsible.

  A picture flashed in his mind, something he’d seen as he’d staggered out of the Tomcat after the accident. What was it? it was important, he was sure. Suddenly it came to him.

  Across the flight deck from him, perched on the top of a Tomcat, had been Airman Shaughnessy. He could almost see the jet blast and wind ruffling her short hair, tossing it over in front of her eyes. Her hair! That was it! Shaughnessy had been on top of the Tomcat without her cranial on, a clear violation of every flight deck safety regulation.

  Hot anger flooded him. People ignored safety rules at their own peril. Look where it’d gotten Airman Alvarez. He’d forgotten the first rule of flight deck survival and hadn’t kept his eyes continually scanning the area around him.

  Bird Dog might not be able to do anything about Alvarez’s death — not now — but he might be able to keep another airman from dying through her own stupidity. He stopped abruptly and reversed his direction. He’d put a stop to her dangerous attitude right now. He finally tracked Chief Franklin down in the Chiefs’ Mess. The Mess was a combination galley and lounge that provided some privacy for the
more senior enlisted members on the ship. Its door was decorated with an intricately woven display of “fancy work,” a collection of specialized knots and braided line that enclosed the anchor insignia of a chief petty officer’s collar insignia.

  Bird Dog knocked on the door and then pushed it open without waiting for a response. Twenty chiefs, both male and female, were clustered around the room, drinking coffee, playing cards, and just generally trying to unwind. A few glanced up as he entered the compartment. It wasn’t unheard of for an officer to look for a Chief in the Mess, but it was considered bad form to discuss business in the Mess. Common courtesy and tradition dictated that the officer merely ascertain the presence of the Chief, and then take care of business outside in the passageway or in their work center spaces.

  Chief Franklin stood up as Bird Dog stormed into the Mess.

  “Evening, Lieutenant. Something I can help you with?”

  “Shaughnessy was up on the aircraft without a cranial on,” Bird Dog said abruptly. A slight chill seemed to settle over the Chiefs’ Mess. “You know the rules, Chief,” he continued doggedly, ignoring a few pointed glances from the master chiefs.

  The older man rubbed his face thoughtfully. “She’s bad about that,” he admitted. “But I gotta tell you, Lieutenant, she’s a damned fine technician. Got a real feel for those Tomcats, and takes her job real serious. Good sailor, right attitude. She’s gonna do real well.”

  “She’s no good to the Navy if she falls off an aircraft and cracks her skull open. And if she can’t follow safety rules herself, how competent does that make her as a supervisor? Damn it, Chief, a good sailor in my book follows orders!”

  “I see your point, Lieutenant. I’ll have a word with her. And no disrespect, sir, but which would you rather have? An up aircraft or all the nit-picky little rules followed?”

  “I don’t consider safety rules to be nit-picking. My Branch follows all the rules, Chief. It’s not up to Shaughnessy — or you or me — to decide which ones we’re going to obey and which ones we aren’t. I don’t expect to have to talk to you again about this. Put her on extra duty — two hours a day for two weeks. Maybe that’ll teach her a lesson.”