Tipping Point

by David Poyer

  But … no chat, no data? Emission control had silenced radar and bridge-to-bridge radio, but usually commanders left satellite-mediated comms up. The servers were almost always ashore, and signals basically just went up and down from individual ships to the satellites. It would be difficult for an enemy to pick up such highly directional, ultra-high-frequency signals. And of course data and voice transmissions were scrambled.

  Unfortunately, the Navy hadn’t drilled in a non-data-linked environment for so long, it was an open question whether they could operate without it. It had meant less independent operations, more hands-on control by Higher, and a zero-tolerance mentality for any misstep.

  But, philosophy aside, without satellite data, the fleet wouldn’t have a threat picture, or over-the-horizon targeting capability. “We still have receive-only comms, right?”

  The comm officer sounded uneasy. “Problems with that, too, sir. Chief’s speculating TADIXS, the strike data system, may be getting jammed or phase-shifted. We’re trying to get up on the old HF broadcast, but it’s a goat-rope. The pool of people who remember those legacy systems is pretty small. And it’s only about a thousand-baud data rate.”

  “Okay, well, press on. Oh, and check the Inmarsat—we might be able to use commercial comms, at least, if the military systems go down. Status of Red Hawk?”

  “Relieved on station by Hawes’s bird. Crew rest and maintenance.”

  Dan signed off. He hung up and lay back, but after a few minutes sat up again, clicked the light on, and reached for the J-phone. The watch supervisor in Radio had a different explanation for the comm problem. She said they actually were getting transmissions from the satellites, but couldn’t break them. “All we get is a hiss, as if we’ve got the wrong key. But we’ve checked eight or nine times. Something’s off, but we don’t know what.”

  “We had problems with scrambled voice before … that delayed-sync issue. Could there be a common point of failure?”

  “If it was only on our end, the other ships’d be receiving. And they’re not.”

  “How do we know that, Petty Officer? If we can’t talk to them?”

  “We’re reading maintenance discussing the issue, sir. It’s not just Strike One. It’s PacFleet. Maybe worldwide. Something even weirder—staff comm-oh got Strike One to send Mitscher out to the east, she’s already pretty far out there toward the Philippines, to see if she could upload, without revealing our location. Guess what? Mitscher uploaded fine. It’s the download that doesn’t break into clear data, when we get it.”

  Just peachy. Approaching the Paracel Islands, two hundred miles off the Chinese coast … where coastal radars, air defenses, and cruise missile batteries would be waiting for them … and they couldn’t talk to each other, or pass targeting data. Other than by signal flags or flashing light.

  “Sir? You there?”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Carry on, and call me if anything changes.”

  He lay there worrying. A Vietnamese naval infantry brigade was joining the strike group, embarked in a World War II LST, to provide the ground assault force. They were being escorted by Vietnamese light units, frigates, corvettes, and missile boats. But they couldn’t carry out a landing in data silence; the American covering force would be blind to any riposte from the mainland.

  Which meant that sooner or later, probably sooner, Savo was going to get the order to light off her SPY-1 again, and report what she saw.

  Which would make her the target for every enemy aircraft, ship, and submarine in the South China Sea.

  * * *

  AT 0500 his Hydra chirped. This time it was Danenhower, calling from Main Control with the news that the machinery control system was being flexed. Dan muttered, “Okay, CHENG, it’s ‘flexed.’ Tell me what that means.”

  “Okay, well, you know each system’s controlled at three levels: on the bridge, in a central control station, and locally, in each machinery space. MCS lets ’em all talk to each other. So if we lose control on the bridge during battle, say, we have to press throttle commands and steering down to the local level.”

  “We’re going to have a slower response time, again? Is that the bottom line here?”

  “Not exactly. I’m saying we got bugs in our software, sir. We’ll have additional asses in the chairs down here, to be ready to take over if you lose control. I’m not saying it’s gonna happen, just that we’re making sure we’re ready, if it does. Since … we are at war, right?”

  Dan said they seemed to be, and he appreciated the thinking ahead. He hung up, then looked at the bulkhead clock. Almost dawn. No point trying to sleep any longer.

  * * *

  SINCE almost everyone was at his or her battle quarters, the exec had arranged for breakfast on station. Dan made the rounds as gritty light oozed over the edge of the world. He drank coffee and ate sausage and egg patties clamped between fresh-baked biscuits, perched on a stack of wooden dunnage with one of the damage-control teams in the passageway outside the forward five-inch magazine. They were suited out, with tools, helmets, and masks ready to hand. No one mentioned the rape, and he didn’t bring it up.

  A paper-cup refill in hand, he strolled aft the length of the ship until he reached the huge enclosed drum on which the low-frequency tail spooled. Discussed replacing one of the transducer elements with the sonar tech getting the tail ready. Then walked forward again up the port side, greeting everyone he met, and let himself down one deck for a chat with Chief McMottie in Main Control.

  That complete, though little the wiser, he sallied out onto the main deck, clutching his cap against the wind.

  Savo charged unpityingly forward at twenty-five knots, blowers roaring, stack gas a fading stain on a cloudless sky. He could just make out the whale-call of her sonar. The sea rushed past, a bleached-looking, light-filled blue, dotted with knots of sallow floating weed. No one else was out, except for the lookouts, who lowered binoculars and nodded as he passed.

  He lifted his face to the sun and closed his eyes, relishing the heat-lamp glow, the scarlet flare behind his eyelids, the bluster of the wind. In the old days half the crew would’ve been out here, manning AA guns, passing ammunition, hoisting flag signals. Now their battle stations were inside the skin of the ship, in front of consoles and digital displays.

  As was his. When he opened his eyes again a bird was hovering, a motionless speck so far above, so disappearingly infinitesimal in the immense blue, he couldn’t make out exactly what it was. He blinked up, wanting to linger, to drink in the beauty of the passing sea one last time.

  Instead he turned away. Dogged the door behind him, and clambered up to the CIC level, placing each steel-toed boot heavily and carefully on the next gritty, dusty tread.

  * * *

  HE shivered in the arctic blast of the A/C. A glance at the LSDs told him GCCS was still down. Staurulakis got up from the command chair. “All yours,” she said, not meeting his gaze. “Course 010 at twenty-five. A hundred and twenty miles to Point Charlie. One hour to Vinson’s launch of the main strike.”

  At Point Charlie the battle group would shift into attack formation, to cover the Vietnamese landing. As sole antimissile asset, Savo would position between the mainland and the carrier while the initial Tomahawk and then air strikes went in. But until then, there wasn’t much to do with the sensors down, so he climbed the last ladder to the bridge.

  He was reclining in his chair, mind vacant, when a petty officer handed him an envelope. “Mail, Captain.”

  “What? How in the hell—?”

  “Red Hawk hot-refueled on the carrier. Brought it in on their bounce last night.”

  Mail. It seemed like something from the Neolithic. He ripped the envelope open. Laser-jetted, with Blair’s signature handwritten at the end.

  Dear Dan,

  They tell me your communications are shut down, but that there’s a chance mail might get through. I still have contacts I’m working in DoD, so maybe you’ll get an e-mail from me before this, or we’ll get to talk o
n the phone. But just on the off chance, I’ll drop this in the box.

  We’re in Maryland, at Dad and Mom’s, since they’re worried DC might be a target in some way. They broke in like kidnappers, hustled me and the cat into the car. Half an hour to pack—I could hear you laughing! The campaign is on hold right now. Fund-raising’s a moot issue—since the banking system’s frozen, and credit cards don’t work anymore. But everyone seems to think this will all be over by election day. Surely China and the U.S. aren’t crazy enough to think a war will settle anything.

  The stores are getting empty, though. If you see anything you might need, you buy it then and there, since you might not see it again. We’re stocking up on canned food, Scotch for Dad, Mom’s meds, and toilet paper. Also we bought new tires. Anything that depends on the Internet, sometimes it works, but mostly it doesn’t. Everyone who had anything in the cloud has lost it. Cash is still good, but you can withdraw only $200 a day. Dad has multiple accounts at multiple banks, but not all the terminals work. There was a program about rationing in World War II on NPR yesterday, which Mom thinks is some kind of warning.

  By the way, Nan says hi. Heard from her on Facebook before it went down. She said, “Tell Dad not to go anyplace dangerous.” I told her you had the seniority now to stay out of trouble. Just didn’t want to worry her.

  Anyway, I’ll write again. So far we’re all right, is the main thing I wanted to say. We don’t hear much about what the military’s doing. The administration’s slapped censorship on the networks. All you hear is patriotic bullshit about how we have to defend our old ally Japan, and noble democratic India. How North Korea’s set to bomb and invade the South. We do get some actual news from the Post and the BBC, but we’re mainly just in the dark about what’s really going on. Has Vietnam really come down on our side? Dad can’t believe that. You know he fought there in ’67, in the Marines.

  Anyway I’ll write again. E-mail me when you can. I’ll watch the news for anything about Savo Island.

  Much Love,

  Blair.

  PS—Tom’s checking on your boat every couple of days. He says the bilge pump is working. Whatever that means.

  * * *

  MIDMORNING. He was rereading Blair’s letter when the duty radioman presented the clipboard. Dan ran his gaze down it, then started again at the top.

  After taking the Spratlys, Strike Group One was to remain in the South China Sea, holding the islands and intercepting remaining commerce. Savo and Mitscher, accompanied by Pittsburgh, would detach to head east. Off Luzon, they would rendevous with USS Curtis Wilbur and two Japanese destroyers. Dan would command the Ryukyus Maritime Defense Coalition Task Group as something like a temporary commodore.

  The joint U.S./Japanese surface strike group would fill the blocking position behind Taiwan that the George Washington battle group had been intended to occupy. A second TBMD-capable cruiser, USS Monocacy, was en route from Guam. The third ALIS-capable cruiser, Hampton Roads, was finishing a hasty fitting-out in Pearl Harbor and would be under way to join shortly.

  A separate SI message advised that the U.S. submarine force was leaving the exits to the Pacific, where it had patrolled so far, and moving closer to shore. There, the subs would clear the path for future offensive operations. But Intel cautioned that much of the enemy sub fleet—like, Dan thought, the Songs that’d passed them on their way out of the IO—had already vanished.

  Almost as an afterthought, the message said the allies and the “Opposed Powers” were now in a de facto state of hostilities. All satellite comms and data links were down, reducing the Navy to HF radio and UHF/VHF line of sight. On the other hand, all Chinese reconnaissance assets, at least that the U.S. knew about, had been taken down as well.

  He kneaded his neck, understanding, reluctantly, the repositioning of Savo to the east. Only one day’s steaming distance. But they’d be entering a wholly different theater, against a wholly different threat.

  The South China Sea would be a battleground, but strategically it was secondary. Even if China broke out here, it would expand into empty sea. Its logistics would be vulnerable to submarine operations, as Japan’s had been in an earlier war. The allies—Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia—would fight back, to defend their own claims in the area. If Zhang pushed south, he’d lose the war.

  But a penetration of the eastern, Philippines-Taiwan-Japan line would let China pincer Taiwan and isolate South Korea, crushing two of America’s oldest and best-armed allies. The next step would be to break out, threaten the second island ring, and neutralize Japan. If that happened, the U.S. could find itself pushed back so far it might never be able to return.

  The world would look very different then.

  “Captain.”

  Chief Van Gogh, looking worried. Dan coughed into a fist, initialed the message, and handed it back. “Yeah, Chief?”

  “GPS is acting up. Says we’re in central Luzon, four hundred feet up a mountain.”

  This wasn’t good. “We’ve got an inertial nav system, Chief. Can we run on that?”

  “For a little while, sir. But it’s going to degrade over time.”

  Dan squinted out the window, at the sun sparkling on the waves. What was going on over their heads? Far over their heads, hundreds of miles up. No one had reported any shootdowns of U.S. satellites, but their comms and data links were all but useless, and now their navigation was screwed too. Something was going on. “We’ve still got a sextant, right?”

  Van Gogh brightened. “Oh, yessir! A sextant, and a chronometer.”

  “Get a time tick and pull out the reduction tables. We’ll shoot a sun line at noon, and do evening stars. We can run on Aegis and dead reckoning in between.” He paused, glancing out at the glittering sea again. “Now lay a course for the Bashi Channel.”

  * * *

  MITSCHER joined that afternoon. She crossed his bow and settled on his port quarter. “Stony” Stonecipher was riding shotgun again. They raced northeast at flank speed, tails out and pinging, short-range nav radars on. The helo buzzed around ahead, laying sonobuoys. He kept the lookouts alert; you wouldn’t think binoculars would be that useful, but he’d seen from the SATYRE exercises how often a sub would get caught visually when he upped scope.

  That evening the sky turned lurid and ominous: a deep russet, with high bands of gracefully scalloped cirrus hung like gaudy bunting above heaped piles of cumulus, clotted low and dark where the hidden sun was perishing. The scarlet light seeped into the gently rocking sea, as if—and he tried hard not to think this, but couldn’t help it, leaning over the splinter shield and looking aft, past the Harpoon launchers canted out from the stern—as if their wake were drawn through blood.

  He was stepping out of his coveralls when the bulkhead phone chirped again. He answered it this time to Dave Branscombe’s excited voice.

  The comm officer read from the message. “Para One. Mainland jets have swarmed ROCAF F-16s patrolling the Taiwan Strait, shooting four down and dispersing the rest. China now has air superiority over the strait.

  “Para Two. Premier-General Zhang Zurong has made the following, quote Four Peaceful Announcements, unquote. First: China seeks no wider war. Second, no country will be attacked unless it attacks China, or refuses to help build a lasting stability and order in Asia and the Pacific Rim.

  “Third, in order to build a peaceful, orderly Pacific free of weapons of mass destruction, any foreign force capable of delivering nuclear weapons will be dealt with by any means necessary, to prevent escalation.

  “Fourth, any aggression against Chinese soil will be answered by a similar or greater level of destruction visited on the American homeland.” A moment of silence, then, “So far, no response from the White House. That’s the message, Skipper. Being run up to you, but thought I’d better call, soon as I saw it.”

  “I’ll be on the bridge,” Dan said.

  He rezipped his coveralls and climbed to the pilothouse, mulling the attack on the inner island chain�
��s keystone. The allies couldn’t hold the center, between Japan and Taiwan—Okinawa, the Senkakus, the Ryukyus—without air defenses and antiballistic missile coverage.

  Which meant Savo Island, and her sister cruisers, would be the last line of defense.

  If they failed, the inner island chain would fall. And the war would be, if not lost at the outset, enormously long and bloody.

  Maybe even … like World War I.

  He stumbled over something soft, and had a bad moment. Then realized, not a body; not yet, anyway. Just the watch team’s life jackets and flash gear, rolled and ready. He edged forward in the dark, arms outstretched, struggling against a sense of doom as overwhelming as the nausea that also threatened.

  They weren’t ready for this. A beta-test system. Five antimissile rounds left, against hundreds of weapons poised across the strait. And a silent, faceless evil driving wedges into his already sick, exhausted crew.

  His hands quivered, his neck ached, flashes seared his retinas. He stood silent for a long time, one hand spasmodically gripping the back of his command chair, reluctant to climb up into it.

  The nations groped lost in the labyrinth. Once more, the god of war demanded sacrifice. Once more, human beings had miscalculated, and brought down Armageddon.

  But his duty, and that of his ship and crew, was clear.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Ex nihilo nihil fit. I write from a braiding of memory, imagination, and research. For this novel, I resorted again to references and interviews accumulated for previous books about Navy and joint operations. I interviewed the master chief who inspects BMD cruisers, whom I knew from previous duty, and a commodore who skippered one cruiser and now commands a strike squadron. I sailed aboard an Aegis cruiser and did on-site research in several of the various locales.

  The following background sources were also helpful. The list of Dan’s decorations in chapter 4 was submitted by longtime Poyer Crew member Bruce James. The congressional testimony owes much to an unclassified presentation by John H. James to the Tidewater ASNE. The information on monsoons in chapters 6 and 10 is from NRL Monterey, Marine Meteorology Division. The discussion of boarding regimes owes a lot to “Broken Taillight at Sea: The Peacetime International Law of Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure,” by Commander James Kraska, JAGC, USN. Chapter 13 was loosely based on U.S. Navy History and Heritage Command’s “U.S. Navy Relief Efforts After the Indian Ocean Tsunami, 26 December 2004,” and on “Multi-Service Procedures for Humanitarian Assistance Operations,” a tactical memorandum I edited while at the Surface Warfare Development Group.