Overwhelming Force

by Andrew Watts

  “Hello, Johnny.”

  “Hello, Lucy.”

  “You dump your girlfriend yet?”

  “Nah.”

  “You still trying to figure out the best way to do that?”

  “Yup.” He grinned as he looked back down at the three-inch-thick binder on his lap. It was filled with highly classified procedures and maintenance information. “I figure that my not calling her anymore, not returning her emails, and blocking her from all of my social networks will do the trick.”

  “Dude. Just sack up and tell her.” Lucy scanned the panels in front of her, checking the readouts and system status of the missiles under her control. “I mean, come on already. Be a man.”

  Johnny laughed. “Says my female missile combat crew commander.”

  Their conversation stopped as a loud two-toned alarm sounded throughout the room.

  The two junior officers sprang upright in their chairs, Johnny practically throwing the binder onto the floor.

  Lucy’s eyes scanned the information coming in to her on her screen. She yelled, “Stand by to copy the message.”

  Over the encrypted communications channel in front of Johnny came the fast-talking voice of a senior enlisted Air Force man who was on base at Warren. “Alpha…Seven…Charlie…Foxtrot…”

  Both Lucy and Johnny wrote down the verbally transmitted authentication code with rapid precision. When the transmission was finished, they both stood up and proceeded to unlock their separate locks on the safe. Inside was the launch key.

  The next several minutes were spent communicating back and forth with two other officers in a separate launch facility, verifying the codes’ authenticity and the accuracy of their transcription.

  Then Lucy heard the words she had never expected to hear.

  Lucy made the man on the radio repeat it. “Say again, this is not an exercise.”

  “Affirmative, this is not an exercise. This is real-world.”

  Lucy and Johnny looked at each other, their faces confused. Lucy could feel her heart pounding in her chest.

  “Come on, let’s go, Johnny,” she said.

  “They said this was real-world…”

  “We’ll talk in a second. Let’s enable the missiles.”

  He nodded quickly, his face white.

  They each inserted their separate keys into the large metallic sections on the wall where they were needed. Lucy had done this so many times she thought she could do it blindfolded. But now her arm turned to mush, and her body moved like it was weighed down with sandbags.

  She began reciting the verbiage that would start the launch of her missiles, reading from the long checklist on the binder in front of her. “Unlock code inserted.”

  “Stand by…unlock code is inserted,” replied Johnny. He glanced at her. “How is this real? Lucy, this can’t really be real? Who are we…?”

  She ignored him. The red digital clock on the wall was ticking away. Closing in on ten minutes. They would need to hurry. “Enable switch to Enable.”

  Johnny moved his hands over the knobs and dials. “Enabled…”

  Almost there, Lucy thought. Almost there. Follow your training, Lucy. You’re a steely-eyed missile man.

  Five stories above and one mile to the west, a farmer drove his Ford pickup truck along the outskirts of his property. He watched as the floodlights near the missile silo up on the hill came on. Well, that’s weird, he thought.

  He stopped his vehicle and got out of the cab, squinting, trying to make out what he was seeing.

  “Now what in hell is that?”

  Steam or smoke of some type was coming out of the silo.

  “Government fools…probably leaking radiation everywhere…”

  It was a clear night, and the air was crisp. A beautiful canvas of twinkling stars overhead. The farmer turned to head back into his truck when the noise began.

  A low rumble and a grating alarm, barely audible in the distance. He looked again at the hill. Now more smoke was coming out of the silo. Billowing white smoke. Then flame. Huge tongues of yellow-and-orange flame, shooting out of the exhaust openings.

  The first missile launched upward in a rage of bright fire, its thick smoke trail following it into space. The farmer caught sight of another missile launching out of the corner of his right eye. The rumbles grew more intense and he could feel them in his feet. Or was that his knees shaking?

  “God have mercy.”

  He turned around in place, seeing a third missile take off on the horizon, several miles to the north. He continued turning round and round, scanning the sky. There must have been a dozen of them, all arcing upward and away. Giant white vessels of death, traveling to a distant land.

  6

  USS Farragut

  75 nautical miles north of Guam

  The war had only just begun, and Victoria Manning had already experienced the rush of combat. With the assistance of a P-8, she had scored a confirmed kill on an enemy submarine. It was likely one of the submarines that had attacked Guam with cruise missiles an hour earlier. Now it was cracked open, on the bottom of the ocean.

  She had almost sortied again, right after landing. One of the young sonar technicians thought he got a sniff of a second Chinese sub. Instead, they had told her to shut down while the P-8 covered the area with buoys. It had turned out to be a false alarm, but she didn’t mind. There was going to be a lot of that, she realized. And she would rather launch on a false alarm than be on board when a submarine targeted their ship.

  The battle of Guam had awakened the crew from any remaining vestiges of peacetime lethargy. Now every blip on the radar scope could be an enemy aircraft. Every odd noise heard through the sonar technician’s headphones might be a Chinese fast-attack submarine opening up its torpedo doors. Everyone was now high-strung. Lives were at stake. And there was no pressure on earth like the desire to keep her fellow members of the pack protected. No one wanted to let their shipmates down by missing something. But Victoria knew that this optempo would cause burnout.

  As officer in charge of a helicopter detachment on the USS Farragut, steaming in the eastern Pacific on the opening day of war with China, Victoria would need to manage her men’s mental state as much as their workload. She needed her men to be at peak effectiveness.

  She herself was not immune to these conditions. She knew that she would need to get rest, food, sleep, and exercise whenever she could. But that was easier said than done.

  She had missed dinner, but when the young CS on duty in the wardroom found that out, he had rushed down the nearest ladder to the galley to get her something to eat. It was just a little gesture of kindness, but many on board had begun treating Victoria differently over the past few weeks. There was an increased sense of pride among the crew. They were a family, and family took care of each other. All at the same time, Victoria was like a parent, a sibling, and a boss. The crew treated her with a special reverence. She had shown the wisdom and capability to lead the ship to victory, and out of harm’s way, when the storm was darkest. She had earned a reputation for competence, and as someone who placed her men above all else.

  So she understood the cook’s gesture of kindness but was nonetheless touched. She had smiled and thanked the CS before he had left her alone in the wardroom. She was glad he did, because she had eaten no more than three bites before her hands started shaking and she doubled over, trying not to cry.

  Victoria got up quickly and went back into kitchenette, which was connected to the wardroom, throwing her food in the trash, careful to cover the uneaten morsels with a paper plate so she wouldn’t insult her cooks. She stood in the kitchen area, sweating and gritting her teeth, willing herself to calm the fuck down. Beads of sweat ran down her forehead.

  She breathed in deeply and blew air out her mouth. Through the porthole in the wardroom galley, she could see the blue horizon moving up, pausing, and then moving back down, the rhythm of the waves never-ending. She breathed to that rhythm now, forcing herself to relax by thin
king of something that made her feel safe and happy. She thought of her father. She wished she could see him again. Then she began wondering if he, as the admiral in charge of America’s newest carrier strike group, was being hunted by a Chinese submarine this very moment.

  She slammed her open palm into the steel refrigerator door, trying to get ahold of herself. Flashes of today’s flight entered her mind’s eye. Gripping the stick and adjusting the heading even though she wasn’t technically flying the aircraft because she didn’t trust her 2P not to screw up the weapons run. Eyes scanning back and forth between the multipurpose display that showed the submarine track and the switches and buttons and her tactical checklist. The whitewater shooting up into the air on her left side when the submarine detonated below. The wave of relief and guilt and pride she’d felt when she’d seen it. The cheers and smiles of the men in the hangar when she’d landed. And the fear that she knew had been in all of their hearts.

  Victoria knew she should be pleased. Proud, even. She had succeeded in her mission. She had been the acting CO of her ship a few weeks ago when they had fired missiles at a group of Chinese warships. She had given the order then. But tonight had been the first time she’d actually pushed the button. Victoria had once again been tested. And once again, she had answered with skill and courage.

  So why now, after the fact, couldn’t she stop thinking about those silent killers in the deep blue? How many more subs were out there? For every one they found and killed, how many more were now leaving port? Or already hunting them, getting closer to ending the lives of everyone aboard that she had worked so hard to lead?

  It was her duty to hunt down and kill every Chinese attack submarine that might be a threat to the USS Farragut and the rest of the warships in company, before they sent a torpedo into her ship’s hull.

  Logically, she knew that she shouldn’t take all of this responsibility on herself. There were hundreds of people who were fighting this fight. But as the senior helicopter pilot on board, and one of the top ASW experts in her surface action group—the group of destroyers and warships she was with—she felt a unique burden.

  She couldn’t get herself to stop thinking about the Chinese sailors that were now dead on the ocean floor. Or perhaps they were trapped in some compartment, freezing to death as they ran out of air? Victoria knew that the Chinese were her enemy, and that they were trying to kill her. But try as she might, she couldn’t prevent these thoughts from coming to her now.

  Alone in the small galley, praying no one would walk in on her, she used meditation techniques to calm down. Focusing on her breath. Letting the unpleasant thoughts pass her by. After a minute, her pulse and breathing began to slow.

  It helped to think about her father. While she worried about him, her love for him calmed her. She would see him again soon, she told herself. His carrier was near Hawaii. With any luck, they would meet there. Maybe they could get a few days off. Have dinner. Have a conversation. Anything would suffice. She just wanted to spend time with him.

  For years she had lived her life trying to prove herself to him and telling herself that she didn’t care. Then she’d harbored a deep anger towards him after the death of her mother. There were a lot of little reasons for the way she had felt, none of them any good.

  But over the past few months, their relationship had finally gotten to a better place. Now it wasn’t their strong-willed personalities keeping them from talking, but time and distance. Fate and war.

  A ray of setting sun shone through the sole porthole in the space. A whistle signaled the top of the hour, along with some mumbled announcement that she couldn’t quite make out.

  “Okay. Let’s go, Victoria,” she whispered to herself, closing her eyes and forcing her way out the door.

  She walked down the darkened passageway of the destroyer, balancing herself as the ship rolled with the waves. She could smell the start of dinner being cooked in the galley below decks, heard the sounds of the ship alive around her. The high pitch of running engines. The white noise of radios and electronics being cooled by fan motors, of fluid running through pipes in the walls and the sound of many steel-toed boots walking through the passageways. The banging of maintenance and the blood-curdling screech of needle guns. Dozens heading the opposite direction greeted her as she walked through the passageway.

  “Afternoon, Airboss.”

  “Good afternoon.”

  “Afternoon, ma’am.”

  “Afternoon.”

  Victoria made her way aft and into the maintenance shop in the hangar and began doing her paperwork for postflight. She chatted up her lead maintenance petty officer and then decided to check on some of the other men doing work on the bird.

  It was a quiet afternoon, the bright orange sun just above the horizon. She stood near the edge of the flight deck, arms folded across her chest, staring into the distance. Trying not to overthink her flight and trying not to worry about her father. She was drunk with fatigue. Her eyes burned with a combination of sweat and oil, and she tried to rub them clean with the dry sleeve of her flight suit.

  “Boss, they wanna know if they can wash the bird. Flight schedule says we’re not flying for the next eight hours when we pick up the alert again. You still good with that?”

  She looked up and saw LTJG Juan “Spike” Volonte standing over her, the dim light of the open hangar outlining his flight suit and jet-black hair.

  Normally this wasn’t something that Spike would ask. The maintenance crew would just do it according to the schedule. But the US Navy was now in open combat with the only other superpower in the world. Even now, a Chinese submarine officer might be looking at them through his periscope. Spike was making sure that any change to their ability to fly and fight was communicated effectively.

  The freshwater washdowns weren’t for looks. Well, maybe a little. But mostly they were to keep the saltwater from corroding the aircraft. Keeping equipment clean and working was an essential part of being a warfighter.

  “Yes, go ahead with the wash. We need it. I told the captain we were done flying for the next eight hours.”

  “Roger.” He walked away and spoke to the maintenance senior chief and gave him the thumbs-up. Then he walked back to Victoria.

  Spike didn’t speak. He just stood next to his boss as they both looked out over the sea. The sun cast an orange light around the other ships in their group, each of those ships heaving and rolling as they steamed forward. She realized that Spike was the one other person on the ship who had launched a torpedo and sunk a submarine in combat. Yesterday, she would have also realized that he was the only other person in the Navy that could say that. But yesterday had been a different world. Now that the Chinese fleet had attacked the US Navy near Korea, Japan, Guam, Australia, and Hawaii…who knew how many other submarine killers there were?

  “There goes five-one-two,” Victoria said. She was referring to the side number of the helicopter taking off next to their ship.

  On the flight deck of the USS Michael Monsoor, an MH-60R helicopter lifted off the deck and nosed forward, gaining speed and altitude. It would patrol the skies for the next two and a half hours, using its radar and FLIR to detect and identify enemy ships, carrying sonobuoys, torpedoes, and a dipping sonar in case they needed to react to enemy submarines.

  “How long they up for?”

  “They’ve got three bags planned. James E. Williams’ crew takes the baton from them at zero two hundred, then we pick it up again at zero four thirty.”

  There were three ships in the group with embarked helicopter detachments. Each day they worked out a flight schedule so that someone was always flying, and another was on alert. The helicopters were used, along with a few drones, to identify the unknown radar contacts and respond to any number of other issues that might come up. Logistics. Search and rescue. An enemy submarine.

  “How’s the team holding up?” Victoria was asking Spike about the enlisted maintenance men who he was now in charge of. They made up the majo
rity of the thirty sailors in her air detachment.

  “They’re alright, boss. AE2 is worried about his pregnant wife. Everyone’s worried about their families. But overall, everyone’s holding up fine. Senior Chief has been good about making sure people were sticking to the training and maintenance schedule.”

  Victoria said, “Routine is our friend right now. Everyone has a job. The routine gives us something to focus on. Let’s plan to get everyone together tomorrow before the flight schedule starts. We got anybody you want to recognize?”

  “We have a few awards we can give out.”

  “Good. Let’s do that, and I’ll speak to folks about—”

  On the fantail, there was a young enlisted girl standing aft lookout. She wore a sound-powered headset. It was bulky and uncomfortable, and she kept shifting it around. It worked like a homemade walkie-talkie. The girl spoke frantically into it now, pointing at the horizon as she yelled.

  Spike and Victoria turned in the direction she was pointing. “What the hell?”

  To their north, a cloud of white-gray smoke had formed over the distant surface of the water, and a missile was arcing up into the sky above it. The smoke trail was very thick, reminding Victoria of space shuttle launch footage. A moment later, a second missile launched in the same direction. It was so far away they couldn’t hear the noise.

  Bells and sirens rang throughout the ship, and the 1MC blared: “General quarters, general quarters. All hands, man your battle stations…” Men began running on the flight deck, quickly stowing their gear and heading towards their stations.

  Victoria tensed up but didn’t move. She just kept staring out at the horizon, studying the distant smoke trail. “Those missiles aren’t headed towards us.”

  She could feel Spike’s eyes on her. “Boss, come on, we’re going to GQ. We gotta go.”