Sword Point

by Harold Coyle

  The hand on his shoulder startled the weapons officer.

  He jumped, then realized that he had fallen asleep on duty again. On top of this horrible realization he heard the captain order, "Give me one, Weapons

  Officer." Without hesitation, the weapons officer leaned forward, flipped red protective cover up, pressed the red button numbered 1 on the cruise-missile launch-control panel and announced, "One fired."

  The release of compressed air and the rushing noise of the cruise missile racing for the surface were heard on a half-dozen ships.

  Information from sensors fed data into computers that analyzed it, compared it to historical data on diferent sounds and threats and sent its output to the officers on duty. For a second most of them failed to realize, or refused to believe, what the warning meant. Acceptance was rapidly followed by action as alarms blared, shattering the silence of the night with warnings given too late.

  The missile broke the water's surface, went into level flight and raced for the carrier.

  Gudkov's hand closed like a vise on the weapons officer's shoulder as the Iskra stopped shuddering from the release of the missile. Color had run from his face. Transfixed, he watched the information display as the submarine's own sensors and computers tracked the progress of the missile.

  Thoughts raced through his mind as it scrambled for a solution. It had been a mistake. A horrible mistake. But that didn't matter. He had no way of telling the Americans that. He had no way of proving that.

  They had no way of knowing that. All the Americans would know was that they had been attacked. They would now strike back, immediately, without hesitation, without mercy.

  Gudkov had only two choices that made sense. Break now and run, hoping for the best without any further offensive actions, or finish the carrier while he could, then run. Whether the war started accidentally or not no longer mattered. The Iskra was in a position to strike down the carrier that it might never be able to achieve again. Without further thought and to the surprise of all present, Gudkov ordered missiles 2, 3 and 4 fired.

  The weapons officer, now fully conscious of what he had done, froze. He was unable to act, move, think, or deal with the calamity he had initiated. He simply stared at the panel before him, dumbfounded, and began to shake uncontrollably. Gudkov realized that the weapons officer had lost control of himself. With all the force he could muster, he shoved the young man out of his seat, reached over and hit the red buttons labeled 2, 3 and 4. When the last missile had been launched, he immediately issued a string of orders to commence evasive maneuvers as the Iskra became the hunted.

  Aboard the U.S.S. Franklin in the Arabian Sea 0413 Hours, 16 June (0043 Hours, 16 June, GMT)

  The crew of the aircraft carrier U.S. S. Franklin were not ready to greet another day of war. After ten days of it, they were tired. The routine was the same each day. Morning air strikes off the deck before sunrise, a quick turnaround for an early-afternoon strike, another turnaround for a late-afternoon strike and preparation of a night strike by the specially equipped aircraft. Throughout the day there was continuous patrolling by fighters and E-2 Hawkeye AWACS. After each mission, maintenance and repairs, rearming and refueling and preparation for the next round were needed.

  Aircraft thundered across the deck around the clock, both taking off and recovering, sending vibrations throughout the ship and making sleep difficult for those off duty. Added to the physical strain of their job was the mental stress produced by the presence of danger, the close quarters, the irregular hours and the unending missions. A steady routine of war wears on the efficiency of men and results in less than optimum performance and in errors of judgment or downright negligence.

  The men of the Franklin were preparing the planes for the early-morning strikes and routine patrols. Topside 125 fuel handlers dragged their heavy hoses from aircraft to aircraft as they topped them off. Ordnance crews were below deck, carefully loading bombs, rockets and missiles from carts scattered about and between the aircraft in the cavernous hangar deck. Plane pushers were pulling readied aircraft to the elevators that would lift them to the flight deck with small tugs. On the flight deck, aircraft maintenance crews were conducting preflight checks on planes of the first wave. The catapult crews were preparing to receive their first aircraft of the day. Farther below decks the pilots were moving from breakfast to the briefing room to receive their mission and conduct their strike planning. Throughout the Franklin the ship's crew went about their tasks of operating, controlling and maintaining their ship and its planes.

  The squawk of the general-quarters alarm caught the crew off guard.

  Most couldn't understand why the Skipper had picked that time for a drill. They were not prepared, physically or mentally, for the impact of the first missile. Though the vast size of the carrier absorbed most of the explosion, there was a sudden tilt and a shudder. Men standing on their toes or performing a delicate operation were thrown off balance. An ordnance crew squatting under the wing of an F-14 Tomcat were about to secure an air-to-air missile when the impact of the missile knocked them down. The air-to-air missile dropped to the deck and rolled into the path of a tug pulling a plane to the elevator.

  The tug driver, startled by the alarm and unnerved by the impact of the missile, saw the missile drop and roll out. Without hesitation, he jerked the wheel of the tug and rammed into the wing of another aircraft that was heavily laden with bombs, missiles and fuel. The impacts of the next three missiles were masked by the thunderous series of explosions that ripped through the Franklin.

  A great fireball rolled through the confines of the hangar deck, incinerating crewmen where they stood, detonating munitions lying on the deck and hung from aircraft, and feeding itself on fuel in the aircraft and in ruptured fuel lines. Crews of the Franklin's escort watched in awe as the flames vented out from the hangar deck into the predawn darkness. The flight deck itself was ruptured as munitions from below blew great gaps in it. The all-consuming fire turned inward as well as outward, seeking out and passing through passageways that crewmen had neglected to close and through the holes created by the explosions. Men running down narrow corridors to their battle stations were met head on by the tentacles of the fireball. Those in compartments below the hangar deck were crushed by the force of explosions and fragments that ripped through the deck from above. In less than a minute hundreds of men were dead and many horribly burned.

  The fireball dissipated. A stunned silence punctured by random exploding munitions was rapidly followed by a flurry of reports and activation of the ship's damage-control system. The captain knew that his ship was hurt badly. The helmsman reported loss of steering, followed rapidly by the report that there was a complete loss of propulsion despite the fact that the engine room had escaped damage.

  The captain quickly deduced that the missiles which had hit his ship in the stern had damaged the rudders and the screws. Already he could feel the Franklin slowing. The captain turned his full attention to saving his ship while escorts around the carrier scurried in a vain effort to track and kill the attacker.

  Though the captain and the surviving crew would struggle against the inevitable for hours, the Franklin was mortally stricken. Too much damage had been caused to too large an area too fast. Power lines and water mains that were needed to fight the spreading fire were ruptured.

  Many members of damage-control parties had been swept away in the first minutes of the calamity. By midmorning the fire was out of control.

  Reluctantly the captain turned his crew's efforts from saving the ship to saving as many of the men as possible. The transfer of the wounded was begun and preparations for abandoning the ship were made. When the Franklin finally rolled over and sank in the early evening of 16 June, she took twelve hundred men and a piece of each survivor with her.

  The Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 2230 Hours, 15 June (0330 Hours, 16 June, GMT)

  Like everyone else on the staff, Lieutenant General Horn was confused as to what the Soviets were
up to. On one hand they attacked the U.S.S. Franklin and on the other they maintained the same routine patrol patterns and activities throughout Southwest Asia that they had been running since the U.S. had gone into Iran. Even the Soviet carrier group in the Indian Ocean was maintaining its past level of operations without any hint of deviation.

  Initial reports from Iran showed that ground and air operations were at the same level as they had been for the past four days. The first satellite photos of the day showed that the Soviet 28th Combined Arms Army was where intelligence had projected it would be at first light.

  Soviet aircraft continued the same level of operations north of their self-imposed limit.

  Only the submarine attack was out of the norm.

  There had been a lively debate between the intelligence officers of each of the services and the Joint Staff as to what was happening. Many felt that the commander of the submarine had jumped the gun and had launched his attack too early (as had happened just prior to the invasion of Finland in 1940, when a Soviet artillery officer had fired a preparatory bombardment twenty-four hours too soon). Another theory was that the Soviets were simply trying to slip in a cheap shot, hitting just one ship in the hope that they could provoke the U.S. into overreacting or could take out a major warship without the U.S. reacting at all. A few believed that the Soviet attack was meant as a warning, an attempt to scare the U.S. off from going deeper into Iran.

  One young naval commander had even put forth the idea that the sinking of the Franklin had been an accident, that someone had gotten excited in the heat of the moment and fired.

  Whatever the motivation or reason, the facts were that a Soviet submarine had attacked a U.S. warship in international waters and, according to reports so far received, had caused tremendous damage and hundreds of deaths.

  The President had asked for recommendations from the Joint Chiefs of Staff by midnight. An initial briefing on the situation, followed by presentation of several recommendations, had taken less than an hour.

  Horn now had thirty minutes to review the situation and present to his boss, the Chief of Staff of the Army, his recommendation on not only what should be done in response to the attack but also what changes, if any, the Army needed to make in current plans and operations. The Navy was already preparing to initiate operations against Soviet forces in the immediate area. The Chief of Naval Operations had ended his briefing to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by saying laconically, "Just give me the word, and those bastards are history."

  Horn believed that the attack was a warning and an intentional act. The 17th Airborne and the 28th Marine Regiment had consolidated their toeholds in Iran and were expanding them. The 12th Infantry Division's lead elements were landing at Bandar Abbas at that very moment. The convoy carrying the 10th Corps's equipment was entering the Indian Ocean. The Air Force was well established and in strength in Iran and Oman. These developments, coupled with intelligence reports that the Soviets were having severe logistical problems complicated by guerrilla activity along their lines of communication, led Horn to the conclusion that the Soviets were desperate.

  Desperate people do desperate things in an effort to correct the situation.

  Horn intended to recommend that the U.S. retaliate in kind immediately.

  The current situation and Soviet logic and actions reminded him of the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. The rabbit, finding himself with one hand stuck on the Tar Baby, hit the Tar Baby with his free hand, only to get it stuck. When that happened, the rabbit kicked the Tar Baby in an effort to teach the Tar Baby a lesson and free himself. That also failed. The rabbit continued to attack the Tar Baby until he was so stuck that he had no hope of freeing himself. The Soviets, with one hand stuck in the fight against the Iranians, would now find their other one stuck dealing with the U.S.

  Navy. Horn's only concern was what would follow. Would the Soviets continue to fight the Tar Baby until they were totally committed or would they see the light and back off?

  In the Indian Ocean 0845 Hours, 16 June (0545 Hours, 16 June, GMT)

  The crews of the aircraft carrier Gorki and her escorts had been at general quarters for over two hours without a clue as to why. Aboard the Gorki all they knew was that something out of the ordinary had happened. The officer on duty had roused the Admiral before dawn.

  Shortly after that the fleet went to general quarters and began to take evasive maneuvers. At first light half of the Yak-36 fighters had scrambled from the Gorki. It wasn't until 0800 that the ship's captain had begun to release the men for breakfast and then only one third at a time. While the men ate, no one dared speculate or inquire as to why the unusual behavior. They would be told in time, one petty officer said, if they needed to know.

  Admiral Boleylev and his staff would not have been able to give their men a clear answer if they had wanted to. They were operating in the dark just as the crews of their ships were. The call to general quarters, the evasive maneuvers and the combat air patrol were in reaction to a series of reports that were not clear and could mean anything. The first report, with which the duty officer had woken the Admiral, was that there had been a sudden and unexplained surge of encoded communications traffic from the American carrier battle group operating to the north of them in the Arabian Sea.

  They had even intercepted several uncoded ship-to-ship communications from the U.S. S. Franklin and her escort that talked about transfer of wounded and survivors. This had been rapidly followed by an increase in air patrols by the U.S.S. Hornet's carrier battle group to the south of them and initiation of electronic jamming of the Gorki's long-range radars. The Gorki was now running blind.

  Boleylev sat in the officers' mess but could not eat. The only reason he was there was that he needed a break.

  His stomach was upset by acid from too much coffee and from nerves. He was pushing himself too hard. Not that he had much of a choice. The orders given to him before they sailed from Vladivostok were to proceed to the Indian Ocean, where his fleet would put pressure on and harass U.S. naval forces. On order he was to neutralize the base at Diego Garcia and commence operations against U.S. convoys headed into Iran.

  The Gorki and the task force built around her were outnumbered in ships three to one and in carrier aircraft four to one. Rather than Boleylev's putting pressure on the Americans and harassing them, the Americans were doing it to him.

  There were two carrier battle groups, one north of him, built around the U.S.S. Franklin and the battleship U.S.S. Utah, and one south of him with the U.S.S. Hornet. The day before, the Utah had detached itself from the Franklin's battle group and headed south toward the Gorki. Contact had been lost shortly before nightfall yesterday. This worried Boleylev, especially since patrols from the Gorki had so far failed to find the Utah that morning. In addition, the normal morning recon flight made by U.S. aircraft had not yet been reported. The two U.S. carrier battle groups tracked the Gorki constantly and alternated "practice" strikes against Boleylev's task force daily in an attempt to keep him off balance and wear down his men. On one such occasion, all the planes from both carriers popped up over the horizon and came in from all points of the compass toward the Gorki at full speed. The speed of the attack and the surprise it had achieved had almost resulted in a shooting incident.

  As a result, very tight control was maintained on the ship's surface-to-air missiles. Standing orders were that they could be fired only on Boleylev's orders. He did not want to start a war with the U.S. accidentally.

  In the Gorki's operations center the air-defense officer stared at his radar screen and his instruments. For the last hour and a half he had seen nothing but static. The Americans were jamming his radar. Though that could be considered a hostile act, the air-defense officer was sure nothing would come of it. The strength of the jamming 131

  indicated that the source was relatively near, probably a carrier-launched EA-6B Prowler, an aircraft specially built to conduct electronic-warfare operations. Whatever the
source, it rendered the ship's radars ineffectual except for very close in. To overcome this, the escorts had dispersed more widely than normal in order to increase the early-warning distance for the task force and, in particular, the Gorki.

  It was the electronic-warfare officer who detected the incoming missiles.

  Faint signals were heard. The electronic-warfare officer leaned forward and listened intently. When he was sure of the signals, he notified the air-defense officer that multiple Harpoon missiles were inbound. A computer plot indicated an intercept course with the Gorki and the cruiser Kynda, which was providing close-in protection for the Gorki. The air-defense officer hesitated. He had not seen anything quite like these plots before.

  The radar was still unable to provide the computer with the clear data needed to positively identify them. Whatever they were, their number continued to grow: from six to ten, to fifteen, to twenty-one and still more coming. The air-defense officer finally recognized the missile attack for what it was just as a wave of similar plots began to appear from the south.

  He hit the ship's alarm and shouted over the intercom that they were under attack from thirty-plus antiship missiles. With the incoming missiles too close for the jamming to have any effect, the Gorki's computer began to relay accurate information to the ship's officers and weapons systems, and antimissile missiles were automatically trained on the incoming missiles.

  Green lights flashed on the control panel, indicating that the systems were locked on and ready to fire. All that was needed was the initiation of the automated defense sequence.

  The air-defense officer, however, did not initiate it. He was, as the standing orders stated, waiting for the order from the ship's captain.

  The captain, in turn, was waiting for the order from the Admiral, who was, at that moment, scrambling up a ladder to the control room, wondering why the antimissile missiles had not yet been launched.