“Fastball, we’re hit!”
“Son-of-a… Our burners are out!”
Rat quickly relocated the MiG. “He’s coming around! There’s another MiG. Crossing our nose going north. He’s climbing to turn.”
Tomcat 106
Bird Dog focused on the MiG chasing Fastball as he listened to Rat’s pleas over the tactical.
“Fox Two!” Three seconds passed. “Yes! Splash one MiG.”
Music turned his head away from the MiG now leaving the scene. “Second MiG’s bugging out.” He quickly checked his JTIDS display. “He’s heading back toward Iran.”
“Find Fastball!” Bird Dog’s eyes scanned the horizon ahead of him, using the smoke and missile trails to locate his wing. “There,” he said. “At two o’clock. Going to burner.”
“Got ’em, boss.”
“He’s in trouble. Music, get a lock on that Fulcrum now! Use a Sparrow.”
“Working on it!” Music fiddled with his gear then a tone rang out over their headsets. “Got em. Dot’s yours, Bird Dog.”
“Waiting…” he watched the MiG weaving for position on Fastball’s Tomcat.
Tomcat 109
“He got him! Bird Dog got him!” Fastball shouted.
Rat swiveled her head from side to side trying to padlock. Things were happening at such a frantic pace. Even with her training, she was fighting to keep her situational awareness. “Jesus, where’d he go… wait, got ’em. Hammer One, Two’s blower out with a MiG at our three.”
“Rat! MiG twelve o’clock low, climbing!”
“I’m on the northern MiG. He’s at our three… turning… he’s in guns range… firing!” Rat’s eyes opened wide as she watched the stream of 30mm rounds from the Fulcrum cascade toward her F-14 in a downward arch. “He missed!”
Fastball fought his sluggish stick, jerking his Tomcat from side to side in a jinking maneuver. “Spanking the pony,” he used to jokingly refer to that in the RAG. Suddenly, with his life on the line, he didn’t feel much like joking. He was using every trick in his book and quickly discovered that may be he wasn’t quite as “hot” a pilot as he had thought. Maybe he should have listened to his RIO. This MiG had him and his only hope was his lead, who was still too far away. It was a setup and she had seen it coming.
Tomcat 106
“Come on!” Bird Dog cried out. “Get a lock, Music!”
“Lock!” The tone rose sharply.
“Hammer Two, break left on mark three… two… one. Break!”
“Fox One!” He fired, not waiting for a reply.
Tomcat 109
Fastball heard an umphf from his backseat as he yanked his Tomcat hard to the left and up, sending his bird into a steep, climbing turn. “You’re… killing… our… speed.” Rat grunted. “Fastball!” She felt her vision narrow against the heavy gs.
“He’ll blow right by!”
“He’ll shoot us!”
“He’s firing!” Thud thud thud! Three rounds ripped across the Tomcat’s frame, just missing the aft cockpit. Rat knew the MiGs giant 30mm rounds would tear her to shreds even if only one managed to strike her. “Fuel leak. We’re leaking fuel.”
“Rat, were done, get ready to eject!”
“No, not yet!”
“Get ready to…”
Boom! The MiG at their three o’clock suddenly broke into two and burst into a fiery ball of red-orange. The pieces fell toward the water. There was no chute.
Tomcat 106
“Splash one Fulcrum, southbound at angels fourteen,” Bird Dog called. “Music, where’s the bandits?”
“Heading east. They’re leaving.”
“Thank God.” Bird Dog sighed.
Tomcat 109
Johnnie waited a moment for Fastball to respond, but he said nothing. He hadn’t said a thing since the dogfight ended. Finally, she checked her gauge. “Oh my God. Hammer One, state is three point nine. We are way low. And our blowers are out. Leaking fuel. Need a Texaco fast.”
“Roger, making it happen.”
She switched to the ICS. “Fastball, I told you to watch your state. You stayed in burners way too long. We’ll be lucky to make it back to the tanker.”
He didn’t respond.
“Fastball! I’m talking to you.”
“Not now, Rat. Save it for the boat.”
SEVEN
USS Jefferson
TFCC
Wednesday, May 5
0130 local (GMT +3)
Admiral Wayne paced in the small compartment, too annoyed to stay in his elevated leatherette chair. The attack on his two CAP made no sense, no sense at all. Why would the Iranians start something now?
“Answers, people. I need answers,” he said into the silence broken only by the calls from the tanker as the fuel-low Tomcats chivvied in line. “What just happened up there? And more importantly — why?”
Lab Rat watched the admiral pace. “Sir, I think… that is, Chief Armstrong agrees with me… well… it may have something to do with the construction taking place in Iran.”
Batman paused. “The photos you showed me before?”
“We initially classified it as something else, but the look this morning caught a convoy of trucks with heavy equipment headed into the area.”
“Where? Show me again,” the admiral ordered.
Lab Rat held out a sheaf of photos.
“In the conference room,” the admiral said. “Red light’s too hard.”
Lab Rat followed the admiral into the conference room located just off TFCC. Batman spread the photos out on the table, and the intelligence officer walked the admiral through their analysis. When he finished, the admiral said, “Okay, so they’re building an airstrip. But why jump us now? What sense does that make?”
“No answers, sir. But the two are related somehow — I can feel it.”
“Find out,” the admiral ordered. “And make it fast, Lab Rat. I got a feeling that we don’t have much time.”
Tomcat 109
local (GMT +3)
“Rabies” Grill held the KS-3 tanker at a steady course and speed as the fuel-starved Tomcat made its approach. The rigid basket streamed out behind the aircraft, a small but critical target for the approaching fighter.
“Come on, Fastball,” Rabies said. “You done this a thousand times before, buddy. Just snuggle on up here right now, come on, you got it…” Rabies kept up a calm, confident chatter as he coached the younger pilot in on the basket.
And just how the hell had Fastball gotten so low on fuel? Never mind that—Rabies thought he could probably guess what had happened. The bigger question was why Rat had let it get to this state. She was the one who knew enough to keep an eye on the gas gauge even when her idiot pilot figured that playing afterburner was a free ride.
But now wasn’t the time to talk about it. There’d be plenty of time to assign blame later, after they got this stupid nugget and his starved Tomcat back on the deck.
“You’re looking good, good, real good,” Rabies said as he watched the approach. “Just a hair lower, mate, that’s it.”
A hair, hell. That damned idiot was bouncing around the sky like a yo-yo. They’d be lucky if he plugged it on the first pass.
But he had to, didn’t he? Fuel state almost at the flameout point — just two snorts less of fuel, and that Tomcat was about to be just another hunk of metal on the ocean floor. Hell, if he were a RIO, he would have punched out by now and left it to the pilot to explain to the CAG why he’d returned without his canopy or his RIO.
“Bingo,” Rabies said, as against all odds the green light on his panel lit up, indicating a good seal with the Tomcat. “Hold on, buddy. You gonna be feeling a lot better here in a second.” Rabies’s copilot flipped the pump switch, and aviation fuel started pumping into the nearly-empty Tomcat tanks.
“Now if he can just hold on a few minutes, get that stuff shifted into his online tank,” the copilot muttered. They both knew what the problem was — the fuel was going into the fuel
tank not in use, and had to be pumped from that one to the one in use before they could be sure that the Tomcat wouldn’t flame out.
As they watched the fuel transfer figures click over, Rabies started to breath easier. Finally, when their gauge indicated that they’d transferred two thousand pounds to the Tomcat, Rabies felt at ease.
“Okay, Fastball. That’s enough to get you home with some left over for sightseeing,” Rabies announced. “Pull on out of there, buddy. We got other customers lined up.”
“Roger,” Fastball said, all business and no hint of the disaster that had almost happened in his voice. And no thanks, either, for the job they’d done coaching him in and not ragging on him about his fuel state. The youngster’s attitude pissed Rabies off.
“You know the way home?” he asked. “Because if you don’t listen to Rat for a change, you’re not going to have enough fuel to get back onboard.”
“Roger, holding TACAN,” Rat’s voice said, and Rabies winced at the coolness in her voice. He’d just screwed up — not as bad as Fastball almost had, but enough so Rat would make sure he heard about it later. It was one thing for a RIO to rip her pilot a new asshole — another thing entirely for the tanker toad to rag on him, no matter how egregious the sins.
“Thanks, Rabies,” Rat said finally, as the Tomcat unplugged and dropped quickly below and away from the tanker. “I owe you one.”
Hey, okay. Rabies allowed himself a slight smile. There was something about Rat that had always attracted him, and maybe he hadn’t blown his chances entirely with her. Not if she was willing to talk to him like that.
“Save some auto-dog for me,” Rabies answered, referring to the soft-serve ice cream dispensed in the dirty shirt mess, the product of which looked uncannily like dog turds. And not very healthy dogs at that.
A single click from Rat’s mike acknowledged his transmission. Rabies had a feeling that that was the most he’d ever get from Rat.
EIGHT
USS Seawolf
Wednesday, 4 May
0300 local (GMT –3)
Just outside the Straits of Hormuz
Captain James Bellisanus had not slept much in the last three days, and he’d long since lost track of whether it was day or night outside. His crew maintained their normal three-shift rotation, but aside from his XO, there was no one that Bellisanus could really delegate his duties to. Not that he didn’t have a number of competent officers in his crew — he did, and he was justifiably proud of the fact that each one was far more qualified in submarine operations that any he’d ever worked with before.
But that didn’t change the fact that Seawolf was steaming in exceptionally dangerous waters. The water outside the Straits was damnably shallow, for the most part, although there was one deep rift that ran outward from the confined waters to dump into the Indian Ocean. Still, for the most part, it averaged far too shallow for Bellisanus’s liking.
Adding to the problem was the fact that, after the Mediterranean, this was one of the most heavily traveled passages in the world. The constant stream of deep draft commercial vessels, smaller fishing boats, and general shipping kept the crew in a constant state of edginess. They had to stay deep, in order to avoid problems.
Additionally, sonar propagation was exceptionally poor. The water was too shallow, too warm, and cluttered with noise. The final fly in the soup was the presence of the massive oil-drilling rigs. They, too, added a tremendous barrage of noise to the sea. They also were poorly charted, particularly the undersea pipelines that ran across the ocean floor.
No, it was not a good environment for a submarine. And Bellisanus had his suspicions that the Seawolf’s operating circumstances were going to get a lot worse before they improved.
His XO, Lieutenant Commander Francis “Frankie” Powder, was equally pessimistic, although he tried not to show it. But the message that had come in late last night had given them both reason to worry.
“They’re not serious, are they?” Powder asked for the second time. He held out the offending message.
“I’m afraid so. And it’s not like it’s unexpected news, is it? Submarines have been operating in the Gulf since Desert Storm, and there’s no reason for us not to go on it,” Bellisanus said.
And if truth be known, submarines had been in the Gulf for a lot longer than that, although Bellisanus wasn’t sure that Powder knew just how long. It was a closely held secret — in the earliest days, it had been common wisdom that no submarine would ever deploy in the Gulf. The water was too shallow for concealment, the sea floor too littered with uncharted dangers.
And just because it was common wisdom, the Navy had decided to prove that it could be done. Submarines, some operated by the Navy, others under the control of agencies identified only by initials, were quietly slipped into the warm bathtub. It went on for years before Desert Storm, and now accepted wisdom was just counter to what it had been then. A submarine could operate in the Gulf. Maybe not as comfortably as in open water, maybe not as safely, but it could be done.
And every submariner Bellisanus had ever met hated the whole idea with a passion. It ran counter to the guiding precepts of submarine operations and risked the submarine’s primary advantage — the ability to remain hidden, undetected, until it was time to strike.
“Yes, sir. Jeez I just hate it there, though,” Powder said.
“That makes two of us. The crew’s ready for it, though.”
“Yes, sir. I’m certain they are.” Powder was responsible to the CO for crew training, and Bellisanus had been impressed with his innovative training techniques and his absolute patience as he walked through the problems. The junior officers knew that Powder’s scenarios would challenge them, but they also knew that he’d be right there beside them, guiding them to the proper solutions and keeping things safe. As a result, they’d gained confidence and expertise far greater than most crews.
“I think so, too. And we’ve got some experienced people on board,” Bellisanus said.
“Not enough. That’s okay — we’re growing our own. Trained our way.”
Your way, you mean. Bellisanus did not begrudge giving his XO the credit he deserved. “Tomorrow, I think. After sunset, of course. Any comments on that?”
“No, sir,” Powder answered. “When’s the carrier going in?”
“Day after. We’ll go in ahead of them and sanitize the area for the carrier.” Bellisanus paused for a moment. Just what the hell had Iran been thinking when they’d launched a deliberate attack on the Jefferson’s CAP? Didn’t they know that would immediately provoke the U.S. into a strong and pointed response? And much as they slavered about having American forces in the Gulf, you’d think they’d do what they could to keep us out, and taking a shot at our CAP sure isn’t the way to do that. They’ve seen that principle demonstrated often enough since Desert Storm.
“Anything more on that suspected diesel?” Bellisanus asked.
“Not in the last traffic, but we’ll get an update before we leave. According to intell, all hulls are accounted for. Two tied up at the pier, one in rework, and one… well, we know about her.”
“Yes, sir.” The last hull, the El Said, was a hulk on the bottom of the Gulf. She’d rammed a pipeline — and what did that say about the Iranian military, that even their own subs didn’t know about pipelines? — and had been lost with all hands. Rumor had it that part of the crew had survived in an after compartment, but that Iran had not been willing to allow foreigners to attempt a rescue. They’d left their own men there on the sea floor to die of asphyxiation, drowning, or injury.
What must it have been like, assuming the rumors were true? To live out your last few hours, knowing that your military had abandoned you, left you to die? Had they cursed their leaders in the end, finally seen things for what they were? Or had they kept to their faith, knowing that they were dying as martyrs assured of a place in heaven? Every time Bellisanus checked the chart and noted the penciled-in correction adding the hull of the El Said as a hazard
to navigation, he wondered about the men left down there to die.
“We’ll have eight hours to conduct the sanitization,” Bellisanus said. “Then the carrier will move into the safe haven, and her assets will take over keeping the subs at a distance. We’ll move slightly north, not too far from our launch basket.”
And pray to god we don’t have to launch. If there is a submarine out there, and if we do launch Tomahawks, then our survival odds go down a great deal. Because then there’s no more guessing — they know exactly where we are.
“Steak and lobster tonight?” Powder suggested.
“Sure.” While submariners ate far better than their surface counterparts, the steak and lobster was always a favorite. “At least you might have a shot at filling Pencehaven for once. I swear, the supply officer has to recalculate all our provisions since he came onboard.”
“Worth it, though,” Powder said.
“Yep.”
Sonarman First Class Otter Pencehaven had arrived onboard just five months before the cruise began. If Bellisanus had been pressed to describe him in one word, he would have called him the original blithe spirit. Nothing in the world seemed to bother him; if the submarine ever, God forbid, sprang a critical leak, the captain suspected that Otter would be seated at his console, having a little snack — snacks were important to Pencehaven — that ineffable smile on his face as he stared off into space and invented the one device that would save the submarine from certain disaster.
Pencehaven was a tall, lanky man, without a spare inch of flesh on his sparse frame. His tall form was topped by a smiling, cherubic face at odds with the rest of his body. He was skilled in all areas of sonar operations, but passive acoustics proved to be his true strength. The other men swore that he could find black holes in the ocean.
Shortly after Pencehaven arrived, he was followed by Sonarman Second Class Renny Jacobs. Jacobs was a good eight inches shorter than his friend, and sported a stocky frame. If Pencehaven was a brilliant theorist, Jacobs was the engineer that made his friend’s ideas work. Together, they made a formidable team in sonar. They had served together onboard the Centurion, quickly formed an inseparable friendship, and they had requested orders to the Seawolf together. They were already legendary within the sonar community, and their detailer quickly made arrangements to honor the request.
The Art of War c-17 Page 6