by Jeff Nesbit
Truxton pursed his lips. “What about the Israelis? Don’t they have that carrier nearby?”
“Yes, just fifty miles out from here.”
“Make the call,” Truxton ordered. “Get their fighters here, right now.”
“What about channels?” Smith asked.
“I don’t care!” Truxton exploded. “Get those IAF planes here now!”
Smith turned to another officer. “You heard the vice admiral. Make the call to their ship’s captain.”
“The LCS ships?” Truxton hardly paused to take a breath.
“Two are within range and will be here shortly,” an officer answered.
“Better than none, but we still need more,” Truxton said. “What do we do about the attack boats that will be here any moment?”
“Our guns will get most of them,” Smith answered.
“But not all of them,” Truxton said.
“No, probably not all of them.”
“And the fighter planes?”
“Our planes are already turning around, coming back from Bandar Abbas,” Smith said. “And because you left some behind, we can engage the first to arrive.”
“How soon can the Israelis get here?”
“They’ll get here to meet the second wave.”
“What about the subs?”
“We have enough laser-guided missiles to go after all of them. Just barely.”
“So if we don’t get them all?”
“We’d better brace for some direct hits,” Smith said.
Truxton sighed. “Okay, then. Settle in, boys. We have a long day in front of us, and we’ll need all hands on deck. We just need to keep the Abe afloat. I don’t intend to be the first commander to see an American supercarrier sink to the bottom of the sea. That’s our goal, until the cavalry arrives.”
33
THE WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM
WASHINGTON, DC
The room was quiet. Everyone at the table knew the stakes—and what their beleaguered 5th Fleet carrier faced in the next hour or so.
General Alton had briefed everyone, including the president, as quickly as he could once they were assembled around the table in the Situation Room. The news was grim.
It wasn’t the nature of the swarm attack that had taken the Pentagon by surprise; it was the sheer numbers coming at the Abraham Lincoln in waves less than one hundred miles off the southern coast of Iran.
Just as the intelligence community had been surprised by the depth of the covert uranium-enrichment facilities and nuclear warhead development in the Revolutionary Guards’ military facilities spread across Iran, it was now equally surprised at the raw numbers of fighter jets, missiles, subs, and attack boats that had descended on the Abe like an angry swarm of bees.
The satellites had picked up the fighter jets the instant they left their concealed hangars in the Makran mountains near Jask. The Pentagon had already locked in coordinates, and a barrage of cruise missiles would shortly level each location.
But that’s like locking the proverbial barn door after the cows have wandered outside, DJ mused to himself from his straight-backed staff chair at the side of the Sit Room. Doesn’t do the Abraham Lincoln much good right now.
General Alton had been given the raw numbers from the staff to the joint chiefs just a couple of minutes earlier, and he’d quickly summarized them for President Camara and his senior staff. The supercomputers had crashed all of the different detection nodes together to produce a snapshot of what the Abe was facing.
It was a nightmare scenario, far worse than anything they’d ever simulated in their many—and expensive—war games on a battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz. Clearly, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had meticulously prepared for a day such as this one, and the Pentagon had not done all of its homework.
It wasn’t the first time the American intelligence community or the Pentagon’s leadership had been surprised by capabilities in the volatile and highly unpredictable Middle East. But it will be the last time, Dr. Gould thought darkly from his seat to the right of the president. Never again.
“So,” the president said, “we weren’t quite prepared for this sort of attack?”
“We anticipated a swarm,” General Alton said quickly. “What we didn’t anticipate is that it would come at us from so far south, so close to Pakistan.”
“We had no idea they’d built hangars there, or placed subs and boats at Jask? Is that right?” asked the president.
“Yes, sir,” Alton answered. “That’s correct. We did not know those hangars were there, or that they’d pre-positioned so many boats and subs at Jask.”
Anshel leaned forward in his chair. He was seething, and the veins seemed ready to burst on both temples. “Tell me how this is possible!” he said, his voice rising with each word. “We’ve had the entire southern coastline under surveillance for years! How did we miss what they built at Jask, right under our noses?”
Alton didn’t duck the question. “We missed it, Dr. Gould. That’s all I can tell you. All of our intelligence said that Jask was a resort area for the Guards’ leadership, nothing more. They’ve been going there for years, and we never detected any sort of activity. They concealed it very well.”
“We can get into all of that later,” Camara said, cutting him off. “Right now, I want to know what Vice Admiral Truxton needs to turn back this threat—or, to put it more bluntly, whether he can turn back this threat.”
Everyone instinctively turned back to the many satellite videos running in real-time on a half-dozen display monitors around the room’s periphery. At the center of all of them was the Nimitz super-carrier, sitting there like a massive floating target.
“I can at least tell you that we took out all of the Silkworms we’ve had system coordinates for. None of them got off the ground. That’s made it easier to take on the rest of the threat.”
“Good,” Anshel said.
“There is one saving grace.” Alton paused. He knew Vice Admiral Truxton had been harshly criticized by some on the joint chiefs for his decision to hold back a third of the 5th Fleet when he’d been ordered to send everyone forward to meet Iran’s navy south of Bandar Abbas. Right now, though, Truxton looked like a genius.
“Which is?” Camara asked.
“Vice Admiral Truxton did not deploy the entire fleet to Bandar Abbas,” Alton said. “He kept a third of the planes and ships back, for some reason. If he’d sent everything forward to Bandar Abbas, Iran’s move coming in behind us would meet almost no resistance. The Abe would be under water by now.”
“So Truxton knew something?” Camara asked.
General Alton grimaced. “It was intuition, on his part. Something didn’t feel quite right, so he kept part of his fleet in reserve.”
And they’d probably raked him over the coals for it, DJ thought.
There had been a steady stream of explosions apparent from the satellite images on several of the screens, even as they’d discussed the situation in just the past few minutes. Everyone, even DJ, could see the Abe was under a constant wave of attacks from all sides. It was impossible to tell, though, what was going on with only the naked eye. Only the computers knew the score for sure.
“So does Truxton have what he needs?” Camara asked again.
“We have enough jets, barely, to take on their fighters—but only for the first wave. We’ve asked the Israelis for help. Their IAF Bandits will be there in a few minutes.”
“The same ones that flew in and out of Iran?” Anshel asked.
“Yes, the same ones,” Alton said. “They’ve been on a carrier since finishing their mission. They all just took off and are headed toward the Abe even as we’re talking here.”
“Do we have enough ships to counter their attack boats?” asked the president. “They have so many of them, how can we possibly deal with that swarm?”
“Truxton says he kept enough ships back to take them on, and two of our LCS ships will be there for the second wave as well. W
e just need to hold them off initially, until reinforcements can get there.”
“And the subs?” asked Anshel.
Alton looked over at the Navy contingent at the table. None of them moved. They’d been completely unprepared for the number of ninety-foot Yugo submarines that Iran had managed to build with North Korea’s help in the past five years. It was a wildcard that no one had anticipated and left the Abe wide open for a successful suicide attack.
“We thought they only had four Yugos,” Alton said quietly. “It turns out they have a dozen of them now—or more.”
“Built for them by North Korea?” Anshel demanded.
“We presume so,” Alton answered.
There was an awkward silence in the room. They’d made considerable progress in recent years with strategic blue-green laser communication between orbiting satellites and submarines, which gave them a decent chance of detecting even a large number of underwater threats.
But the sheer number of Yugos advancing on the Abe—combined with the fact that two of the American subs needed for closer triangulation had initially deployed to Bandar Abbas—would overwhelm even the redundant computer system, leaving detection in some cases to a person looking at a scope.
There was the very real possibility that a seven-person Yugo sub, carrying a tactical nuclear payload developed in North Korea, could make its way through the Abe’s defenses and cave in the side of the ship if it came in behind a successful fighter jet bombing run.
“Mr. President, I can assure you that the vice admiral has every hunter at his command out looking for those Yugos,” Alton said. “He’s doing his best, with limited resources at his command right now.”
“But his best might not be good enough, General,” Camara said. “And if we lose the ship?”
“We will not lose the ship,” Alton said. “The vice admiral has surrounded the nuclear power plant with almost everything he has on board. It would take at least two direct hits to get to it.”
“But if the Abe is out of commission, for any reason?”
“We’ll have given the Strait to Iran—for the time being,” Alton answered grimly. “At least, until we can regroup.”
There was a sudden commotion at the other end of the room. Something had just happened. They all looked over at one of the monitors. Balls of flame had erupted from the center of the Abe and had been picked up by the satellites instantly.
“The Abe has been hit by a suicide plane,” one of the officers announced. “Three missiles took the plane out of the sky, but it was already headed toward the power plant. It was a direct hit.”
34
THE GULF OF OMAN
The captain of the midget submarine built in just the past two years in Iran—under the direct supervision of North Korean military advisors at a covert shipyard southeast of Bandar Abbas, near Minab—was proud of his command. In the past two years alone, his own sub had taken on any number of covert missions in the Strait of Hormuz.
They’d already planted dozens of mines in strategic locations throughout the Strait, for instance, making it difficult for any combat ships to navigate the Strait during a conflict. They had also successfully tracked more than a dozen commercial ships through the Strait, preparing for the day they might be called on to sink one of those ships in a war of attrition.
The sub had virtually no ability to contribute in any sort of combat scenario, but the North Koreans had been able to modify the original design of the midget sub enough to give it a much longer range than the West believed. Through a combination of battery conservation, surface maneuvers, and occasional dives, it could make a one-way trip out to sea.
The Yugo captain was on just such a one-way mission right now. The crew aboard the sub knew there were only two options at the end of their journey—they’d either reach their target, or they would be forced to surface and wait to be captured by the Americans.
They did not communicate with anyone on their trip out to the deeper waters of the Gulf of Oman. They had no way of knowing the fate of any of the other Yugo subs. The sub was a mere ninety feet in length and barely handled a skeleton crew of seven people, including the captain.
This particular Yugo was just one of three in the Iranian navy that carried a tactical nuclear missile on board. The crew knew it would need to get quite close to its target, the American Nimitz supercarrier, in order to fire a torpedo at close range. They knew it was a likely suicide mission, but they were prepared for it—and for their fate.
The captain did his best to scan the horizon for any sign of activity on each trip to the surface, but the trip had been quiet. He’d heard nothing from the sub’s surprisingly robust passive sonar system near the surface, and he’d seen nothing visually with the naked eye.
As he neared the coordinates on his map—and the very large target—the captain was careful to come up from the depths. The United States ran a worldwide underwater surveillance system in all of the world’s oceans, including the Gulf of Oman, but Iran had long ago discovered the nodes’ locations and charted paths through the passive sonar network.
No, the captain knew that only a fairly specific sonar sweep would pick up their sub as they approached the supercarrier. But that would be difficult. The North Koreans, for instance, had shown them how to mill their propeller blades so they were extraordinarily quiet, and the energy system contained components mostly developed in the United States.
The captain appreciated the irony. The technology for the blades had come from a Japanese company, Toshiba, via the former Soviet Union, to North Korea and then to Iran, and the highly efficient energy storage system had largely emerged from Western technology.
The Yugo crew didn’t need a sonar system to recognize their target. They knew where it was in the open water, and it wasn’t moving. The crew grew anxious as they drew very near their target and began to ascend toward the surface of the sea. They expected to pick up the telltale signs of an approaching torpedo at any moment. At two other times, they’d heard nearby sounds from their own simple passive sonar system, but they were more likely actions taking place elsewhere.
At one point, they did pick up the sounds of some sort of approaching weapon, followed an instant later by the clear signs of a direct hit. The captain knew, with some certainty, that a Yugo very close to them had been hit.
He saw the opportunity. The destruction of a sub so close to theirs would create a cornucopia of noise in the vicinity for the next few minutes. He pushed the engines to their maximum speed and took direct aim at the target just above them.
Without thinking, or telling the crew about his endgame, the captain made the fateful decision to use the Yugo sub as its own torpedo. He would get as close to the supercarrier as he could and wait until the last possible moment to release his torpedoes.
The captain knew the supercarrier was dealing with so many threats—most of them on the surface or from the air—that they were overwhelmed by the swarm tactics. There was a good chance he could come up right under the target undetected. At least, that was his hope.
As he neared the surface, his passive sonar system started going haywire. There were dozens of objects all around him in the water. Many of them, he guessed, were recent casualties. The captain pressed forward. There was no turning back.
An instant later, the Yugo crashed into the hull of the ship. Without hesitation, the captain released the torpedo that contained a small nuclear payload. It detonated on impact within seconds, blowing a massive hole in the hull of the ship and obliterating the Yugo and its crew at the same time.
35
MOSCOW, RUSSIA
The courier hand-carried the latest SVR briefing report to Rowan’s private quarters. Once he’d been briefed on the latest actions near the Strait of Hormuz, the SVR’s director of intelligence had ordered the report sent to the prime minister immediately. It contained information that he knew would be of immense value to Rowan and the Duma leadership.
Rowan thanked the courier and open
ed the briefing report. He smiled as he read through the top sheet, summarizing the current situation in the Persian Gulf. The satellite pictures were especially telling.
Just as his military staff had predicted, the Americans had managed to minimize the damage from the anti-ship missiles developed once upon a time in the former Soviet Union. Despite the cruise missiles’ enormous speeds and ability to evade detection, the Americans had used their next-generation electronic counter-measures to literally turn their guidance systems off. The damage had been nil.
But, also as his military staff had predicted, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had managed to surprise the American Navy’s leadership with a massive, asymmetrical attack behind their fleet’s main strike force.
There had been two direct hits on the Nimitz supercarrier positioned at the opening to the Strait of Hormuz as a show of force to keep the Strait open. The satellite pictures clearly showed the aftermath of a plane crash near the ship’s power plant and a second huge gash in the ship’s hull near the power plant.
The SVR report predicted that the carrier might actually sink, but Rowan knew that wasn’t likely. Nor did it matter to Rowan or Russia. Iran had achieved what it had needed with its attack. It had shown that the Americans were vulnerable and had forced the fleet’s forces to pull back from the Strait to protect their flank. There would be no immediate battles south of Bandar Abbas.
For the time being, the Strait of Hormuz would be closed to ship traffic. And, as he always did, Rowan saw a clear opportunity in the face of the panic and chaos that would shortly begin in the world economic markets as the price of oil inevitably began to spiral upwards. What’s more, Iran’s temporary military victory at the Strait also presented an opportunity. And Rowan was always eager to take advantage of any opportunity when it came to oil.
He leaned across his desk and pressed the interoffice intercom. “Nicolai, come in here for a moment,” he said quietly. “We must talk.”