Tipping Point

by David Poyer

  “Clear, coming to zero zero zero,” “Strafer” Wilker drawled, reporting to the air control supervisor eight consoles behind Dan. “Man, it’s just paved with fuckin’ ships out here.” “Storm” Differey was the copilot, with two crewmen. Four souls he had to remember, if things got dicey. “Okay, got a little trouble here … red light on number one DLA.” Wilker and the controller discussed it, concluding that since the forward data link antenna had just gone tango uniform, Strafer would have to keep the nose pointed away from the ship for the data link to work at ranges over thirty miles.

  Dan filed that away too. The helo also had some strike capability, with machine guns and laser-guided Hellfires, but it would be dangerous to pit it against anything with a real air defense. Dan planned to keep him in the air for three hours, recover for refuel and rest, and have him aloft again as they approached the IRGC exercise area.

  A silent Longley placed a covered tray and carafe on the table. Dan acknowledged with a nod, focusing now on the large-screen displays. The F-18s were just outside Iranian territorial waters, angling west at five hundred knots. Loitering speed, for them. He was noting the commercial air corridors, prominently displayed on the LSDs, when two threat symbols lit. Wilker called in, the display locating him over the entrance to the Knuckle. “Two gatekeepers hanging out here. Look like Combattante fast attack. I’m gonna moon you so you can—”

  Dan cut in: “Red Hawk, this is Matador Actual. Don’t let your data link positioning affect your tactics. Just make voice reports. Over.”

  La Combattantes, or Kama/Sina–class missile patrol boats, were regular Iranian Navy units. They were fast, displaced about three hundred tons, and were armed with automatic guns and antiship missiles. But they were deficient in sensors and not data-linked. A threat at close range, but with the fighters streaking overhead, Dan figured, they’d stand clear. At least while he and Mitscher went in. Coming out, with magazines depleted, maybe damaged and low on fuel, might be a different story. So far, he didn’t have a port of call inside the Gulf. Manama was apparently leaving that up in the air, seeing which way the cat would jump.

  To his right at the command desk was the general quarters TAO, Matt Mills, in the seat Cheryl had used to occupy. Now, as exec, she’d be Dan’s alternate, and supervise on the bridge . Past him Wenck was at the OS chief’s station. Donnie could turn in his chair and talk to the Terror, at the Aegis console behind him. Dan’s antisubmarine staff was behind him to his left; his surface strike team, headed by Amy Singhe, directly behind; to his right, the air control people and his electronic warfare sensor operators.

  All in all, almost thirty people in CIC and four more in Sonar, next door through the traditional black canvas curtain.

  Dan pulled the napkin off the tray. French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon. He made himself take ten bites, chew, and swallow, to keep the blood sugar up.

  Over the next hour they closed the Knuckle. Traffic was light going in, but outgoing was bumper to bumper, ships spaced every mile. Red Hawk gave the Combattantes a wide berth, then orbited over the great sweeping bend in the waterway, relaying back radar that showed small boats maneuvering deeper in the strait. Dan and Mills discussed the enemy order of battle, trying to work out who was where. Dan kept Mitscher and Savo in the middle of the incoming lane, so no one could accuse them of violating territorial boundaries.

  Electronic warfare data started coming in, both from Red Hawk and from Savo’s and Mitscher’s own eavesdropping. Aegis correlated them with radar and cross-bearings to show where the Pasdaran was gathering. C-802 batteries were lighting up on Larak Island, and on the Iranian mainland behind it.

  Chin propped on his fists, Dan mused on the murky history of the C-802. The missile had originally been a Chinese design, but the Iranians had reverse-engineered it with North Korean help. They were near-supersonic sea-skimmers with a pop-up maneuver at the end of their flight profiles. Dangerous, but his EW team had trained for hundreds of hours to jam them. And when they’d faced Syrian 802s in the Med, Wenck and Dr. Noblos had come up with a way to hijack the missiles’ link to their launching point, and reprogram their targeting. “Backseat Driver” had proven its worth off Israel. And if jamming, spoofing, and chaff didn’t work, he could shoot them down.

  But if they overwhelmed him, in dozens stagger-fired from different locations to converge with a single time-on-target …

  Lounging in his seat, shivering, he wondered if Savo had been sent in as a deliberate provocation. After all, they’d nearly sunk an Iranian frigate last winter. And Dan personally had tangled with Iran several times.

  Or was that paranoia, megalomania, persecution complex? Surely no one cared.

  On the other hand, it could be just enough to convince the other side they were being deliberately goaded.

  * * *

  AS he’d expected, the Combattantes stood off as the U.S. warships passed. Red Hawk reported that the small contacts spaced along the northern boundary of the international strait were dhows. Dan suspected these were transmitting targeting data to the missile batteries, which remained locked on. Wenck asked if they should do some decoying drills, but Dan put a foot down. This was no time for simulations. The potential for misunderstanding, or simple fuckup, was too great. He maintained a steady twenty knots, covering ground while not burning too much fuel.

  Unfortunately, after the task group had passed, the missile boats drifted south, then fell in astern, following them in. Staying in their wake, but maintaining a standoff of about ten miles.

  If they were the gatekeepers, the gates were swinging shut.

  By the time the clock above the LSDs read 0700 he was exiting the Knuckle, passing south of Larak Island with four antiship missile radars locked on Savo Island. The exterior cameras were picturing a gentling sea, a blood-scarlet, cloudy horizon beneath the risen sun, when Lieutenant Singhe leaned on the back of Dan’s chair. “Sir. A word.”

  “Shoot. I mean—guess I shouldn’t say that just now.”

  She didn’t crack the slightest smile. Just leaned in, dropping her voice. “You wanted us to spin up Tomahawks on every C-802 battery we identified. How about a warning shot?”

  This was a surprise. Savo could do limited land-attack mission planning onboard. But he couldn’t “spin up,” or prelaunch program, a TLAM without Fifth Fleet authorization. Still, he had ordered Mills and Singhe to do engagement planning. “Uh … you’re not really spinning up, are you?”

  “Well, no. Just building the missions.”

  “That’s better. But, you’re proposing a first strike? On the Iranian mainland? I don’t think so, Amy.”

  “They’re illuminating us in firing mode. That’s a hostile act, according to our rules of engagement.”

  Dan cleared his throat. “There’s something you have to learn about ROEs, Amy. There’s the ‘ought to be’ and ‘what they say it is,’ and then there’s ‘how it’s interpreted.’ And after all that, there’s ‘what we do anyway.’”

  “I’m beginning to see that, sir.”

  “But regardless of any and all of the above, I’m not out here to kick off a war.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, that’s idiotic. As soon as we detect one launch, we should pull the trigger on every site we have localized.”

  Dan tensed, suddenly angry. Idiotic? “I’m not disagreeing with you, Amy, but I don’t have that authority. I could release an overwater strike, on a surface unit. But a strike on the mainland, no way. I appreciate your aggressiveness, but you need to stand down. And reread your battle orders.”

  She was frowning, those luxuriant eyebrows knitted. Seemed about to say something more, but Dan spoke first. “Let me make something clear, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes sir. Listening.”

  “We’re not out here alone. Us and Mitscher. Along with our Tomahawks, we have over a hundred more dialed in from the battle group, on every airstrip, tank farm, naval base, and barracks along the coast. Two wings of strike aircraft on fifteen-minute al
ert, and B-52s out of Diego Garcia behind that. We’re just the cheese on the mousetrap, see? If the Iranians feel like taking a bite, they’ll regret it.” He hesitated, eyeing the long strip of Qeshm. Not for the first time, he imagined how easily the Marines could take the whole island and, with two miles of water between it and the mainland, wall Iran itself off from the strait.

  That would mean all-out war, of course. But it might come to that, if both sides kept pushing chips into the pot.

  She nodded slowly. “But do they know that?”

  “Believe me, they do. This is a ritual dance, Amy. Like bees do, to send a message. It’s complicated. If anybody gets the steps wrong, things can go south fast. But all we have to do is steam in and then steam out. This is a freedom-of-navigation operation. A transit passage. And nothing more. So we’re not going to initiate anything that could be portrayed as an aggressive action. Understand?”

  She hesitated, then nodded again. Straightened, and went back to her station, leaving a quick glance of dark eyes and the scent of sandalwood.

  * * *

  CHERYL Staurulakis came in at 0900. Dan got up and stretched. “XO, I’m going up to the bridge, have a look around. Let me know if anything starts.”

  “Yessir.”

  He stopped in his cabin and took a leak. Glanced out the little forward-facing porthole at a flat, dusty, light-filled sea. Still shivering; even with the foul-weather jacket, CIC had been freezing. At least on the bridge, it would be warm.

  The pilothouse was so quiet he could hear the chronometer ticking over the nav table. Everyone had flash gear ready: hood, gloves, goggles, gas masks buckled to thighs. He paced from the starboard side, where Iran was visible as a low, sere coastline, to port. Where four tankers spaced out toward the west, growing smaller and smaller, like old photos of the Great White Fleet. The sea had smoothed, though the monsoon wind still blew. The sky was still overcast, but now with a queer reddish tinge to the slate, from all the refineries, plus the ever-present sand.

  He nodded to the 25mm remote console operators. Wondering if what he’d told Singhe was totally true. About this being a message … that was clear enough. But the part about everyone knowing the steps … that was less self-evident. Especially when the Revolutionary Guard were involved. They were known to act independently of the regular navy, and sometimes, even, of the political leadership.

  His Hydra beeped. “Captain,” he snapped.

  “Sir, Weps here. Got a train issue glitch in Mount 22 … the port CIWS.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Not sure yet. Failure in the train mechanism, or possibly the card that controls it.”

  Dan tried to keep his voice level. If a C-802 popped over the horizon, near supersonic at twenty feet above the water, and jamming and decoys failed, the Sea Whiz was the last card he could play before seeing what three hundred pounds of armor-piercing high explosive did to an aluminum superstructure. “This is a bad time for gremlins, Ollie.”

  “Realize that, sir. Got the first team up there doing fault isolation now.”

  “Get it fixed. Report back.” He snapped off, realized everyone on the bridge was watching, and tried to look unconcerned.

  But it wasn’t easy.

  * * *

  BACK in Combat, he juggled a too-hot paper cup at the electronic warfare stacks, reducing the blood content in his coffee stream. The leading EW petty officer was plotting each jammer and fire-control radar that brushed its fingers over them. A golden opportunity to refine the Iranian order of battle. In the intelligence sense, his mission was already a success. The jamming was annoying, but the petty officer assured him it wouldn’t affect their ability to detect launches.

  Hoping he was right, Dan strolled to the command seat again. Staurulakis glanced up, looking haggard, hair straggling out of her ponytail. As well she might; she and Dan were standing watch and watch, and the exec had too much to do on her off-hours to waste them sleeping.

  “We’re past the Knuckle,” she murmured. “No hostile action yet, but numbers are still building. Think it’s just a bluff?”

  Dan stared at the large-screen display, which showed a steady increase in small contacts along the Iranian coast. The exec muttered, “They have to know what we did to their frigate. I wonder if that’s hurt their confidence in their great new missiles.”

  “They have more than just 802s,” Dan said. “They’ve got that rocket torpedo. The Shkval-K. And mines. But I worry about all these small craft.”

  Staurulakis eyed the screen. “Over two hundred of them … a lot North Korean built … with multiple rocket launchers, missiles, and torpedoes. Plus, yeah, mines, if we let them get in front of us. We don’t have a great detection rate on those.”

  “I’ll take it. Thanks, Cheryl.” Dan resumed the command seat, warm where her bottom had just left it, and zoomed in. He keyboarded and moused, pulling out data. Four of the faster contacts might be hovercraft, but as he did the arithmetic his fingers slowed. Sixty contacts out there. Impossible to say which classes without a visual ID from the helo, but he wasn’t sending Red Hawk in among scores of small boats, every one of which probably had Misagh shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles.

  If they swarmed him … A Pentagon war game two years before had free-played just that tactic, with horrendous results. He didn’t plan to repeat the mistakes the Blue commander had made. The most essential lesson was that, like a fight in a dark alley, he had to keep the enemy at arm’s length, where better U.S. sensors, data, and long-range weapons could attrite their numbers. In other words, keep them inside his kill zone, while he stayed outside theirs.

  The classic strategy against overwhelming forces was to defeat them in detail. Use maneuver and cunning to isolate a portion, wipe that fraction out with superior firepower, then move on to the next engagement with an improved force ratio. Napoleon had used that tactic to perfection.

  But two huge ships couldn’t outmaneuver high-powered speedboats and hovercraft skimming over the calm strait. They’d be surrounded, like a wagon train circled by Plains Indians. Then, on signal, all the boats would turn in to attack.

  His gaze fastened to the Weapons Inventory screen above the Aegis display. The numbers weren’t tactically satisfying. Even assuming one kill for one shot, and engaging eleven targets per minute, that would leave more than enough boats to overwhelm them … Or, wait … he’d forgotten Mitscher. The destroyer was data-linked and tactically merged with Savo, was for all intents and purposes the same ship, only with double redundancy on sensors and weapons. And he had the F-18s overhead, two low, four more stacked above them, mainly in case the few Iranian jets still operational decided to get into the act, but also on call to help suppress a mass attack.

  Okay, things weren’t totally dark. But he couldn’t assume the other side had the same Big Picture, were operating as information-rich as NATO or U.S. forces. Certainly not once Savo and the EA-6B twenty thousand feet up started jamming them. After the Iranian radars blanked, they’d be limited to line of sight, and dust and haze plus comm jamming would make even visual targeting and own-force coordination difficult. He clicked to the air controller’s circuit and asked for each flight of fighter/attacks to make a low pass through the Pasdaran exercise area. And to keep on doing that, to give the impression of endless streams of F-18s screaming in.

  “Captain?” Van Gogh, brandishing a rolled-up chart. “You said to keep you posted. See these islands to port? The big one’s Bozorg. The small one past that, Kuchek. Once we pass those, we’re in their op area.”

  Dan checked the paper chart against the nav screen, matching longitude first, then latitude. If shots started flying, he had to be absolutely certain they were in the international straits. That would be the first thing the Iranians would accuse him of—violating territorial waters. “Okay, that’s consistent with what I have on the verticals, Chief. Thanks for backing me up.”

  “We really gonna call them on this?”

  “Absolutely.” Dan wond
ered why he was even asking.

  “So you want this guy now, right?”

  The navigator stepped aside. Behind him was SK3 Kaghazchi, the ship’s go-to for translation. Dan murmured, “Hey, Bozorgmehr,” and, after a moment, pointed to the unit commander’s chair. What the hell.

  The emigre slid into it, smiling. He was mustached, dark-skinned, in his mid-thirties; his long, closely shaven skull gleamed in the overhead light. Dan was never sure how far to trust him—storekeepers didn’t undergo the toughest clearance requirements—but he had a deep, authoritative bass that sounded like Allah himself on the radio. Dan picked up the Navy Red handset. Time to pimp everybody. Especially Mitscher. “Matador actual for Anvil actual. Over.”

  “This is Anvil actual.” Stony’s voice, all right. He must have been sitting by the handset.

  “See those small boats ahead? I make sixty of them, in two waves. Over.”

  “Copy, concur. I hold them.”

  “I’m having the Hornets sweep ahead of us. My intentions are to close up so we can put more fire on target if we have to. Also it’ll make things easier for the air. So move in on me. Interlocked defense.”

  “Got it. How close you want me, what direction?”

  “Five hundred yards. On a bearing of”—he hesitated—“due north.”

  “Coming to station. Over,” Stonecipher said.

  “Mitscher’s turning to starboard,” Mills muttered.

  Dan signed off and nodded. The enemy had already split his forces, about two-thirds of the boats to the landward of the channel, the other third to port, south of the oncoming Americans.

  Time to let them know what he expected, and what would happen if they didn’t comply. He gave Kaghazchi his instructions, making sure the guy understood what he wanted to communicate. Five miles’ standoff. No illumination by fire-control radars. A clear warning he’d open fire if any surface craft closed in. “Tell ’em we want innocent transit, as defined by international law. Let us through, stand clear, and no one has to die for his country.”

  The bushy eyebrows lifted, but Kaghazchi nodded. They went over the phrasing, then Dan called Radio and warned them to start taping. He switched to International Call and passed the storekeeper the handset.