A time is set for the “attack” to begin and from then on the aggressor will use every piece of electronic guile, cunning, and naval hardware to get in close to the opposing carrier and “kill” her. No one actually fires a shell, or launches a missile, or even drops a bomb, but that’s what it feels like for the defenders when they pick up the telephone to hear the fatal communication. “Admiral, we regret to inform you, our submarine is three miles off your starboard beam, and three minutes ago we fired two torpedoes, both nuclear. You are history. Good morning, we’ll drop in for a cup of coffee later!”
Between the start and the completion of the three-day exercise, there are constant air “attacks” on the missile ships; computer and radar systems are tuned to record every detail, and every department throughout the fleet is monitored assiduously. The normal opening moves involve careful reconnaissance and probing, to establish the enemy group’s disposition, layout, and makeup. Step two is to deduce the enemy’s intentions and likely battle plan, while concealing yours from him. The normal outcome is a “victory” for the defenders because it really is almost impossible to get close to a carrier. And her missile men pick off the incoming attacks in pretty short order. They also “sink” a few ships and submarines while they are about it.
The Hawkeye radar station in the sky can see for so many hundreds of miles, an undetected attack above water is a great rarity. However, there are always instances of a Carrier Group’s outer layers being penetrated in these exercises, and the consequences are extremely uncomfortable for the “losing” commanders. No purely defensive measures are ever 100 percent effective. The occasional “leaker” will sometimes get through.
The vital question is, can he do any damage once he gets in? If he does, there will be, without doubt, a major postmortem, and there is always the unspoken threat that the exercise was in fact a high-level examination to identify future senior battle commanders. For the Navy brass there is of course the solace that it took one U.S. Battle Group to sink another. No one else could play in the same league. Nonetheless, defending commanders in these multimillion-dollar war games feel themselves to be on trial, and they expect no mercy from their opponents.
Which was, essentially, why Admiral Zack Carson and Captain Jack Baldridge were currently locked in conference with several of their senior departmental chiefs, deciding whether to order yet another night-flying exercise off the carrier, knowing how tired many of the pilots and air crews already were.
Opinion was just about divided on whether it was really necessary, but Captain Baldridge was an old acquaintance of his opposite number in the George Washington. “That sonofabitch will attack at night,” he said. “He won’t care how long he waits, he’ll come at us after dark. I know the guy. He’s as cunning as an old coon dog, hunts after dark, and we want CAP’s up there early, about a hundred miles up-threat. Nearly every goddamned problem we’ve had on the flight deck these past few weeks has been at night, and I think we should spend the next week keeping the pilots sharp.”
Admiral Carson said slowly, “Well, you guys, about eighteen years ago I knew an admiral who lost one of these war games to a small Royal Navy frigate group we were working with. Right out here in the Gulf of Arabia.
“The Brits lit up a destroyer like a Christmas tree, found some guy who could speak Bengalese, and made out like a tour ship. Next thing that happened they were on the line about two miles from the carrier, in clear weather, announcing they just fired half a dozen of those Exocet missiles of theirs, straight at the ole ‘mission critical’—a lot of people thought it was funny as hell. But not in Washington. It turned out to be a real embarrassment for that admiral. I could get by real easy without any of that bullshit breaking out here.
“So I’ll go with Jack. Start flying again tonight. Warn Arctic we want everyone topped up before dark.”
Moments later, even as the new night-flying orders were being prepared, the ship’s bush telegraph, which operates along the main upper deck where the pilots live, was buzzing. Squadrons were grouping together, pilots were razzing each other about shaky night landings, the Landing Signal Officers were checking schedules. Certain engineers and hydraulics specialists were already heading down to the gigantic hangars on the floor below—an area 35 feet high and 850 feet long, the overall size of three football fields.
This was the garage for the fighter/attack aircraft, the bombers and the surveillance planes. Also down here were the aviation maintenance departments and the jet engine repair shop. Directly above the for’ard end were the massive hydraulic steam rams for the catapults; above was the domain of Ensign Jim Adams, who would have First Watch as Arresting Gear Officer tonight.
Meanwhile the distant whine of engines being checked over was already beginning on the sweltering tropical heat of the flight deck, where the Tomcats, the Hornets, the deadly, all-weather Intruder surprise bomber, the EA-6B radar-jammer, and the ever-present Hawkeye, were being prepared once more to go to work.
271600MAY02. 15S, 3W.
Course 165. Speed 8.
“Okay, Ben, I’d say St. Helena is about a hundred miles off our starboard beam now. We better start looking for the tanker. Getting real low on fuel. He better show up.”
“He’ll be there, Georgy, in about two to three hours I’d guess, just before dark. We have not seen a ship for a week—so we’ll have the place to ourselves, I’d think.”
“This is a big ocean, Ben. Something go wrong down here, take six months to find us.”
“If something goes wrong down here, we don’t want anyone to find us. Better to swim to Africa. Remember what I told you about St. Helena. That’s where the English locked up Napoleon for six years after Waterloo. He died there. We might end up in his old cell. Keep going as quiet as you can.”
“I’m quiet, Ben. You have to admit that. No mistakes, eh?”
“One minor one, Georgy. Just that one, in the straits. Remember? I almost jumped out of my skin.”
“You jump more if we hit that tanker. I had to speed up, you know.”
“I’m not complaining, Georgy, but in that area the Americans are very, very thorough. Someone might have heard us.”
“For only twenty seconds, Ben.”
“That’ll do for the Americans. They are very alert to any mistake by anyone. Just hope no one noticed.”
“If anyone did they gave up a long time ago. Not even see aircraft for a week.”
“Well, that’s true. We’ll just take care, hold this speed and start looking for our fuel about two hours from now.”
“Okay, Ben, you’re the boss.”
290900MAY02. USS Thomas Jefferson.
5N, 68E. Course 325. Speed 30.
Midway between the Carlsberg Ridge
and the Maldives. 2,500 fathoms.
“Okay. Start time 1200 confirmed. George Washington about five hundred miles due north. That means her SSN’s might be as close as three hundred miles already. Order both our submarines into sectors northeast and northwest ASAP. And have everyone else on top line from 1000. I don’t trust their Group Ops Officer any better than he trusts me. He might just go ahead and start this thing right away, and no one will give a shit if we bleat. We take no chances.”
Captain Baldridge was glaring out over the Admiral’s Bridge, which was in pretty stark contrast to his boss, who was grappling with the crossword from the Sunday edition of the Wichita Eagle someone had sent up to him. “Easy, Jack,” he muttered. “They won’t close in on us before the start time. This is a heavy overhead area. Everyone would see. How about another cup of coffee? We’re ready.”
“Well, I don’t look for an incoming air strike till after dark, but I just don’t trust their submarines. I don’t trust any submarines except for the ones directly under our control. Those guys are brought up to be the sneakiest shits in the Navy. They can’t help themselves. And they know roughly where we are. So we might as well have a full active policy, every one of our sensors needs to be up and running, active and
passive.”
Admiral Carson looked up, and said laconically, “Eight-letter word, starting with ‘T’—Devious Roman Emperor.”
“Mussolini,” growled Jack Baldridge, unhelpfully.
“Close. But I guess Tiberius might fit a bit better. He was a tricky old prick in his time.”
“Shoulda been a submariner,” said Baldridge, hiding his constant amazement at the obscure facts the admiral stored beneath that farm-boy thatch of straw hair. “Anyway I’m still taking no chances with the enemy’s submarines, and with your approval I’ll thicken up the ASW effort for the first thirty-six hours.”
“Go ahead, Jack, we don’t wanna get caught with our shorts down. But of course you won’t forget to bias it a bit west because we’ll be flying in that direction. Their SSN’s are always gonna be our major threat. You got that right.”
010430JUN02.
Billy-Ray Howell and the newly fit Freddie had already led the eight Tomcats home after “wiping out” the entire attack force of the George Washington—caught them 250 miles out, off the Hawkeye’s radar, but held their fire until they were sure. Both the enemy submarines had been located and “torpedoed,” one still a hundred miles from the carrier. The other was dispatched by a couple of anti-submarine helicopters when it was detected on radar, at periscope depth, twenty miles out.
“Too fucking close,” growled Captain Baldridge, somewhat ungraciously, to the operators. Then turning to the admiral he said, “Sneaky pricks, submariners. Told you. Never take a chance with those bastards.”
“You don’t need to remind me about ’em, Captain,” replied the admiral. “They’ve been a preoccupation of mine for years. I’m always darn glad to get ’em out of the way in these exercises. I’m almost like you. I don’t trust ’em. But I admire them, and you plain hate ’em.”
“Bastards,” confirmed Jack Baldridge.
And now the exercise was over, and the Jefferson had scored an overwhelming victory. Radar beams had crisscrossed the sky and ocean throughout the hours of darkness, and below the surface, the underwater men in the SSN’s had searched tenaciously for each other. Both of Admiral Carson’s submarines had survived the night intact, and the big Kansan had called the operation off just before dawn. He was within one hour of taking out the opposing carrier either with missiles or torpedoes. The George Washington had only one live escort left.
“Shoulda sunk ’em all,” muttered Baldridge.
“Not necessary,” said the admiral. “The record will be clear enough. I thought our guys, specially the pilots, were damned good tonight.”
The weather had turned bad shortly after midnight. There had been a lot of wind, and low, heavy clouds were making the landings more perilous than usual. One by one the fliers had brought them thundering into the deck. The hooks grabbed and connected every time.
With the wind on the increase and rain sweeping straight down the angled deck, they waited for the arrival of the last one—the Hawkeye, lumbering in from its high-altitude tour of duty. Ensign Adams, on another night watch as Arresting Gear Officer, was at his post on the pitching deck, watching for the dim navigation lights of the big radar aircraft.
The Landing Signal Officer standing right out on the port-quarter was in phone contact with the Hawkeye’s pilot, Lieutenant Mike Morley, an ex-Navy football tight-end, out of Georgia. Morley was good in any conditions, but he was at his best under real pressure, at night, in difficult weather. Right now he was following nighttime low-visibility landing procedures. He was coming in at 1,200 feet, six miles out.
The LSO attempted to instill confidence in the incoming crew. “Okay, Mike. Four-eight-zero, you’re looking great…watch your altitude…check your lineup…”
One mile out, the big E-2C Hawkeye was still right on the landing beam, and the LSO heard Morley say quietly: “Okay, I’ve got the ball. Nine thousand pounds.” They could now see the powerful beams of the landing lights on the aircraft’s wings, rushing in toward the stern of the carrier, rising and falling with the buffeting headwind. Everyone was on edge as the last of the Jefferson’s nighttime warriors came charging home.
Jim Adams shouted into the darkness, “Groove!” And now they could hear the howl of the props on the Hawkeye’s eighty-foot-wide wingspan as it bore down on the ship, an angry, glowing alien from space, made tolerable only by the design on its rear fuselage, the old familiar white star in the blue circle, the red stripe, and the single word: NAVY.
“Short,” yelled Adams, then seconds later, “Ramp!”—and Mike Morley flew the Jefferson’s battle-line quarterback fifteen feet above the stern, then hard into the deck, poised to open the throttle as the wheels slammed in, but hauling it closed as he felt the hook grab and the speed drop from 100 knots to zero in under three seconds. The scream of the engines drowned out the spontaneous roar of applause which broke out from several corners of the flight deck. There were beads of sweat on the forehead of Mike Morley, and he would never admit his heart rate to anyone. “Came in pretty good,” he drawled in his deep Southern voice, as he walked away from the Hawkeye. “Y’all did a real fine job gettin’ me down. Thanks, guys.”
171430JUN02. 26N, 48E.
Course 040. Speed 8.
“You sure we go outside the big island, Ben? Gets real rough out there.”
“Not, I assure you, as rough as it would get if we got caught between the island and the mainland. The Pacific Fleet patrols those waters these days. I do not think there is overhead surveillance, but I cannot risk being spotted by a U.S. warship. They are extremely jumpy at best. If they did see us, they would be very curious.”
“Yankee mother fuckers, hah? We stay away from them.”
“Yes, Georgy. For the time being we stay away from them—and everyone else for that matter.”
“What about next refuel? Under half left.”
“Well, this thing will go well over 7,000 miles at this speed. We’re around 1,750 from the Carlsberg Ridge. Then another 250 to our final refueling point. We’re fine, Georgy.”
“Okay, what’s that, another ten days before we look for tanker?”
“Exactly. Are the crew all right?”
“Not bad. It long and boring, but we change that soon, eh?”
“Remember your chaps, all fifty of them, understand they are conducting a critical mission on behalf of Mother Russia. You should perhaps remind them of that.”
“High risk though, Ben. I don’t think I ever see home again. Either way.”
“Maybe not home. But you will have a new one in another place. We will take care of everything.”
261200JUN02. 21N, 64E. Course 005. Speed 10.
On board the Thomas Jefferson.
Three weeks into their on-station time, Admiral Carson’s Battle Group was four hundred miles southwest of Karachi and six hundred miles southeast of the Strait of Hormuz, home of the Iranian Naval base of Bandar Abbas. To the west lay the coast of Oman, to the north, the deeply sinister mountain ranges which reach down to the coast of Baluchistan.
On the direct instructions of the admiral, Captain Baldridge had called a conference of the main warfare departmental chiefs. They were all there, sitting around the boardroom-sized table in the admiral’s ops room—the key operators from the Combat Information Center, the senior Tactical Action Officer, the Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer, the Anti-Air Warfare Officer, the Submarine Element Commander, Captain Rheinegen, the master of the carrier itself, Commander Bob Hulton, the Air Boss. From the rest of the group, there were six senior commanders, including Captain Art Barry, of the guided missile cruiser Arkansas, New York Yankees fan and buddy of Jack Baldridge. He had flown thirty miles, from the western outer edge of the group.
For several of them it was a first tour of duty in the Arabian Sea, and Zack Carson considered it important to let them all understand why they were there, and to impress upon their various staff officers the critical nature of this particular assignment. “Now I know it’s real hot out here, and there doesn’t appear
to be that much going on,” he said.
“But I’m here to tell you guys that this is an extremely serious place to be right now. The tensions in the Middle East have never been a whole hell of a lot worse, not since 1990. And as usual ownership of the oil is at the bottom of it all—and I don’t need to tell you that every last barrel of the stuff comes right out past here—Jesus, there’s more tankers than fish around here as I expect you’ve noticed.
“The policy of the State Department is pretty simple. As long as we are sitting right here, high, wide, and handsome, no one is going to cause much of an uproar, no one’s going to monkey around with the free movement of the oil in and out of the Gulf. However, should we not show a U.S. presence in these waters, all hell could break loose.
“The Iranians hate the Iraqis and vice versa. The Israelis hate the Iraqis worse than the Iranians. The Iraqis are plenty crazy enough to take another shot at the Kuwaitis. The Saudis, for all their size and wealth, are damned badly organized, and they control the most important oil field on earth—the one brother Saddam was really after in 1990.
“I guess I don’t need to tell you how dangerous it would be for world peace if anything happened to take that big oil field out of the free market. I can tell you the consequences if you like—the United States and Great Britain and France and Germany and Japan would be obliged to join hands and go to war over that oil, even if we had to take the whole damned lot away from the Arab nations. And that would be kinda disruptive. I expect you recall that in 1991 the USA sent five Carrier Battle Groups into the area, enough to conquer, if necessary, the entire Arabian Peninsula.
“But, gentlemen, while we are here parked right offshore, and making the occasional visit inside the straits, no one, but no one, is going to try anything hasty. And if they should be so foolish as to make any kind of aggressive move, I may be obliged to remind them, on behalf of our Commander-in-Chief, that for two red cents we might be inclined to take the fuckers off the map. Last time I heard a direct quote from the President on this subject, he told the CJC he wanted no bullshit from any of the goddamned towelheads, whichever tribe they represented.
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