Alpha Strike c-8

by Keith Douglass

  “Think of the impression we wish to convey. The South China Sea is ours, and we need no justification for patrolling any part of it. Particularly the area we have declared as an exclusion zone — the Americans are there at our sufferance, and have assumed the risk. I wish to accustom them to seeing fighters patrolling with impunity in the area. You will instill in each pilot the concept of cool confidence, that they have the right to be in the vicinity without any further explanation to the Americans. They will not respond to any challenges or inquiries from the Americans, nor will they ever venture within range to launch weapons on the American forces. You now see the beauty of this plan?”

  “I believe so. If the Americans attack our airplanes, that simply confirms to the world our position — that the Americans are hostile belligerents in a peaceful area of the world, stirring up trouble and attacking all other countries at will. If they kill our pilots and burn our aircraft, they will have done more to unify opinion against them than anything we could do.”

  “And the alternative result?” Mein Low demanded.

  “If they fail to act, then they simply reaffirm our rights to patrol our area at will. But, sir, what if they launch escorts to intercept and escort our small group?”

  “Even better. Let me show you what I intend.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the young operations planner began to understand just how much he had to learn about the art of operational planning.

  2000 local (Zulu -7)

  Hawkeye 623

  “All quiet back there?” Rabbit asked. It wasn’t really necessary to ask — had anything interesting crossed their screens, the scope dopes would have been screaming bloody murder.

  “Why? You got somewhere else to be?” Fingers asked. The ICS evened out her hard, clipped Maine accent, catching every additional consonant without emphasizing the missing ones.

  “Nope. Just logging the flight pay up here.” The pilot grinned at the copilot. It was sheerly one of the joys of being an aviator. Getting to fly, and getting paid extra to do it.

  “Looks like you spoke too soon,” Fingers said. “Looky who’s coming out to play! Four unidentified bogeys off the commercial routes. Inbound, angels fifteen, 420 knots. I call it Chinese fighters.”

  “You copy, Homeplate?” Rabbit said over tactical. “I’m going to start feeling a little lonely up here real soon.” It was one thing, he thought, to fly missions alone off the coast of southern California. An entirely different level of pucker factor to do it in the South China Sea. The quietly reassuring if occasionally obnoxious presence of a few Tomcats or Hornets would have sounded mighty fine right then.

  “Roger, copy,” the OS said. “Hang tight, Snoopy. We’re going to send some playmates up with you. Spook One and Two are launching as we speak.”

  Fingers shook her head. Spook was the call sign assigned to the two new JAST birds. She’d gotten a good look at them on the deck, both at the impressive avionics and at the stealth coating. Still, when you got right down to it, neither one had been fully op tested under real-time conditions. What looked like a workable system at Pax River didn’t necessarily work as advertised after multiple catapult launches, slamming tailhook recoveries, and the gentle ministrations of flight deck technicians. Had she been given a choice, she’d have opted for one of the regular Hornets or Tomcats — preferably the long-endurance Tomcat.

  She clicked her mike in acknowledgment and listened to the tactical chatter from the back of his aircraft over the ICS.

  Within minutes, the OSs on the carrier were complaining about the radar picture.

  “I know they’re off the deck. We’re picking up IFF responses to interrogation. But I’m not getting skin — just mode four squawk. What the hell are these birds, anyway?” the OS on the Vincennes asked the air tracker on the carrier over the private LINK coordination circuit.

  “Both Spooks are inbound your position,” the OS on the carrier advised. “Don’t worry — I can’t see them either. Aegis is picking up skin off them, and we’re tracking them over LINK. Let me know when they get close enough to paint.”

  “Hell of a way to run a war,” the copilot muttered. “Bad enough when we can’t see the bad guys, but now the good guys are invisible too!”

  “Be advised the Spooks will be taking high station on you,” the OS said, a note of puzzlement in his voice.

  “High station? What the heck for? Can’t we get someone down here close and personal?” the pilot demanded. “What dope-smoking idiot came up with that one?”

  “I think that would be me,” a too-familiar voice said. “Any problem with that, son?”

  The pilot swallowed hard. “No, sir, Admiral. High station sounds just fine.”

  2220 local (Zulu -7)

  Spook Two

  “Good contact on the inbound bogeys,” Tomboy said tersely.

  “Man, those guys have got to be sweating it,” Batman answered. “What’s the range?”

  “Three hundred miles and closing. We going in to take a look at them?”

  “I’m going to try. Let me know what you’re getting off them when we get closer. I don’t want them to know we’re there. With any luck at all, they’d have to get a visual on us to know we’re here, if intell is right about their radars.”

  Spook Two was nose-on to the intruders, presenting its least detectable aspect. Batman made a minute adjustment in his course, pointing the JAST bird’s oddly configured nose at the Chinese fighters. No point in giving them any better a target than they deserved. While Batman still had a number of tricks up his JAST sleeve, he wanted to keep them in reserve.

  “Nothing spectacular, Batman. Low-grade air search radar. Not much chance of them seeing us,” the backseater said after a moment. “Don’t think we can make it into visual range without being detected, though.”

  “I kinda figured that,” Batman said. “Sure would like to get a look at their wings, though.”

  “Roger that. I’ll yell the second I even smell fire control radar.”

  “That’ll have to do. Don’t know that I like it, but it’s how we planned it.”

  And if I don’t like it, Batman thought, it’s for damned sure that E-2C Hawkeye doesn’t. Nothing like being tied to a stake as a sacrificial lamb to make a pilot feel unwanted and unloved. Damned smart plan of Tombstone’s. He knows the Chinese would never expect us to leave the Hawkeye up here alone. Ergo, they’ll come to one of two conclusions. Either we’re not worried because we know we’re not responsible for the attacks, and we’re proving it by putting the E-2C up alone — or they’re not alone. And with the JAST low observability characteristics, Batman didn’t expect to be detected by any damn Soviet-built airborne radar!

  A cold smile crossed his face, hidden by his oxygen mask. Now let’s just let them try to figure out which it is, he said to himself.

  2230 local (Zulu -7)

  Chinese Flanker

  Off the coast of Vietnam

  “We execute our orders,” the pilot commanded. “You see how this was all planned out? Our advisers knew exactly what we would encounter near the American battle group.”

  “I admit that I doubted their assessment. Leaving one of their six surveillance birds unprotected did not seem reasonable,” his backseater admitted.

  “Which is why we’re just paid to fly. Just ensure that your fingers stay off the targeting functions. We are to give them no cause for alarm.”

  “Understood. How close will you approach?”

  “Just to the edge of our weapons envelope.”

  “But tell me — what would we have done if their fighters had appeared? Four Flankers against all the aircraft that they can launch? It would be a difficult tactical position, to say the least!”

  The pilot smiled, a cruel edge to his mouth. “They will not attack us, that much is clear. They cannot risk starting a war so close to our homeland. Should their fighters appear, we will do exactly what we are doing now. Fly straight and level, in a nonthreatening fashion, and proceed towa
rd their Hawkeyes. We would simply fly the same escort pattern on their Hawkeye that they would intend to fly on us.”

  After all, the pilot thought, it was their sea. Not the Americans’.

  CHAPTER 20

  Wednesday, 3 July

  2230 local (Zulu -7)

  Spook Two

  “Homeplate, they’re getting mighty damned close!” Batman radioed.

  “Roger, Spook Two. No deviation from authorized plan,” Tombstone’s calm voice replied.

  Batman clicked his button in acknowledgment. He’d rather be up here, where he could fight and maneuver as necessary. Whatever they paid a rear admiral — and Batman had a good idea of what that was — it wasn’t nearly enough. To have to stand by and watch fighters approach an unprotected aircraft, praying that you’d read their intentions correctly and that you wouldn’t lose aviators and an aircraft on a stupid hunch — could he have done it himself? As much as he’d disliked it initially, the political infighting and maneuvering at the Pentagon rarely got anyone killed. A career or two, maybe. It was too easy to forget, trapped in the massive rings of the Pentagon, that men and women were still out here on the front lines.

  Did the Navy know somehow? he wondered. Know which aviators had the guts to make the kind of calls Tombstone was making this very second? Did they test us somehow? And have I got what it takes to risk the lives of men and women on a plan like this? Tombstone does.

  This year, Batman’s record would go before the rear admiral promotion board. For years, he’d dreamed of putting on those broad gold stripes and silver stars. Now, for the first time, he wondered whether he was ready for it, and whether he’d accept it if the promotion were offered. Listening to Tombstone’s calm voice on the tactical circuit, he tried to convince himself that he would have been able to maintain the same solid presence that brought reassurance to the crew of the carrier and the Air Wing.

  “They’re joining on us, Homeplate,” he heard the E-2C copilot say.

  “Straight and level, Snoopy,” he heard Tombstone reply. “They’re not here to start a war — they just want a good look-see. Too close to use anything except guns where they are, if that helps.”

  “Roger,” the Hawkeye aviator replied, a trace of relief in his voice.

  “Watch them,” Batman growled at his RIO. “The second they look tactical, we’re on them.”

  “Got them solid, sir. They’re going to know we’re here, picking up our radar, but they won’t know exactly where. We’re ready.”

  For fifteen excruciating minutes, Batman watched as the Chinese fighters flew formation on the E-2C, close enough for the Hawkeye pilot to wave at his Chinese counterpart. Finally, without ever acknowledging the greeting, the Chinese fighters broke off. Batman breathed a sigh of relief and heard a few quiet oaths on the tactical net.

  “Keep an eye on them, Spook Two,” he heard Tombstone say. Batman marveled at the even tone of the Admiral’s voice. The gamble Tombstone had taken with the lives of his aviators had paid off.

  Could I have sounded like that? Like everything had worked out exactly as I’d planned?

  Somehow, Batman doubted it.

  1224 local (Zulu -7)

  Combat Direction Center

  USS Vincennes

  The TAO let out a deep sigh as the Chinese Flankers turned north, and glanced at the captain at the next console. The captain ripped off his headset and tossed it on the narrow desk. “Ghosts, huh? I don’t think so! We let those bastards push us around like we were the fucking Vietnamese!” the captain snarled. “What the hell do they think this ship is — a patrol boat?”

  “What is all this supposed to accomplish, Captain?” the TAO asked. He had spent the last hour with his finger poised above the button that would assign missiles to the incoming fighters. His people were tense and uneasy, and the adrenaline that the tactical situation had generated was slow to ebb away.

  The ghost contacts generated by the warm, humid air didn’t help, either. Whatever the previous contacts had been, the ones he’d just been staring at for the last hour were real.

  “Hell if I know,” the CO snapped. “Prove to the world that we’re a bunch of pussies, I guess, Not that we haven’t proved that often enough. TAO, first time one of those bastards wanders in within weapons release range, I’m going to plug him. Admiral Magruder can put out all the fancy rules of engagement he wants, but there’s nothing he can say or do to compromise my right to defend my ship. The first hint of hostile intent, and you’re weapons free. You got that?”

  The TAO nodded. Down here in the sandbox, the captain’s plans made more and more sense. A hell of a lot more sense than the admiral’s did, as a matter of fact. He stood and stretched, feeling the bones in his back and neck pop. Politics — the Aegis did anti-air warfare a lot better than he did subtle diplomacy. And now the captain had dumped it squarely in his lap by ordering him to shoot if the fighters came within range to release their weapons.

  If they did close the ship to within weapons release range, there might not be time to get the Captain to Combat. With the captain absent, the entire decision rested with the TAO. He rubbed his neck with one hand and stared bleakly at the large-screen display in the front of the packed compartment.

  All the delicate maneuverings by diplomats, politicians, and admirals would come down to the judgment of one thirty-one-year-old lieutenant commander running on too little sleep and too much coffee. Well, they’d told him he’d get lots of responsibility early in the Navy.

  There was something to be said for the captain’s orders. He’d been right before, when the missiles had been inbound. If the TAO had had to depend on the CARGRU’s orders then, the ship would probably be a flaming datum now.

  He sat back down and glanced at the time-of-day display in the lower right-hand corner of his screen. Good thing it was in military time. He tried to remember how long it had been since he’d been out on the weather decks — or even on the bridge, for that matter. How many days had it been since he’d seen sunlight? His daily routine took him from his stateroom to the wardroom to Combat, with a pre-watch check of the engineering spaces every six hours. Without the time counter on his screen, he would have lost any sense of daily rhythm.

  Weapons-free if fighters come within weapons release range, he wrote in the pass-down log. Wasn’t likely that he’d forget to tell the other TAOS, but it never hurt to write it down. He thought for a moment and then added per CO’s order and signed his initials with a flourish. It never hurt to cover your ass, either.

  1000 local (Zulu +5)

  United Nations

  How delicate are the lines we walk, Ambassador Wexler thought, studying her counterparts. Around the table, the faces staring back at her were fixed in the same bland expression she held on her own. Ambassador Ngyugen looked particularly impassive, while Ambassador T’ing radiated the same pervasive low-level sense of malevolence she’d come to associate with him in the last year.

  “Again, we protest the Chinese exclusionary zone declared in the South China Sea,” she said, carefully adding a note of indignation to her voice. “These are international waters, and the warships and aircraft of all nations have the right to peacefully transit and use them.”

  “And has one of your aircraft or ships been denied access?” the Chinese ambassador said smoothly. “If so, perhaps you could make this committee aware of that incident?”

  “Chinese fighters have flown threatening profiles against our assets in the South China Sea,” she replied. “As of four hours ago, peaceful American aircraft have been under interception by your nation.”

  “Ah, but you claim every nation has free access to those areas. You must be consistent — either they are international areas, and we have every right to be there, or one nation has the right to control access to them and limit the use of others. If the latter, then I would suggest that authority would fall to those that border the body of water, not to a nation so many miles distant. Or do some rules apply only to other nation
s and not to America herself?”

  Rules apply to restrain the conduct of nations such as yours, she thought. For a moment, she was tempted to give voice to the unspoken and politically deadly thought. It’s true — and we’ll never say it out loud — that when nations such as yours learn to act in a civilized manner by international standards, we’ll quite gladly pull back to our own playpen. But until some semblance of respect for human rights and the rights of other nations manages to penetrate your policy, you’re going to have to count on seeing us around.

  She heard herself mouthing some bland reassurances automatically, requesting merely that the Council take note of the instances and posturing that a formal protest might be filed. It wouldn’t, she knew, and every other nation around the table knew it as well.

  For the time being, the American forces were going to have to walk the same narrow line between peace and conflict that she did.

  1113 local (Zulu -7)

  VF-95 Ready Room

  USS Jefferson

  Tombstone and Tomboy sat side by side in the high-backed leatherette VF-95 ready room chairs. The chairs formed eight rows, taking up the front part of the ready room. Tombstone, by virtue of his rank, claimed a front row seat, and motioned Tomboy into the seat next to his.

  “You ready for this mission? Might be a little boring, a quick qualification flight in a normal Tomcat, after what you’ve been flying,” he said lightly, taking the opportunity to study her face carefully.

  “Hell, I’m just glad we’re on to fly instead of pulling alert. And those JAST birds aren’t all that different from a normal Tomcat, Admiral,” she said. “They do the same things, only better. The controls are the same, but the black box configurations give me a hell of a lot more gain on the radar. It’s a Tomcat with a few extra fancy toys.”