First Salvo

by Charles D. Taylor

  The Russian hierarchy would accept nuclear war only if it was to combat a last-ditch NATO nuclear effort. Once the Russians thought the flow of battle in Europe was to their advantage, they would call for peace talks as their divisions swept across Central Europe to the Atlantic coast. By the time a cease-fire would actually be effected, NATO would no longer be a threat.

  “They’re ahead of schedule,” Nelson whispered to Carleton. “Probably want their General Keradin—dead or alive. But I never expected they’d go for the nuclear stuff this early.”

  One of the other COs stood up to ask Pratt’s staff man a question. “Just what does this EMP thing mean now from a strategic aspect? I mean we all know what it does technically, but they weren’t expected to go for anything like that this early. Does this mean they’ll set one off over us too?”

  “They don’t have to set off another right away,” came the answer. “All of us use the same satellites, whether it’s Saratoga or Kennedy or NATO headquarters.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Washington anticipated something like this could happen, and they’ve got some more recon satellites perched at Vandenburg right now. For all we know, they may already have launched. On the other hand, the Russians also launched some maneuverable killer satellites yesterday. We send one up; they go after it. If they can’t catch up to ours, they launch another ASAT; we send up our F-15s to fire antisatellite missiles at their antisatellite satellites…” He shrugged again, to Nelson’s amusement. “What we do is we go back to doing the same thing we did at Okinawa forty years ago—radar pickets. This time it’s Hawkeye aircraft and guided-missile frigates, and they’re facing the same threat—a cruise missile is just like a kamikaze.”

  Another staff officer appeared in the back of the briefing room, whirling a finger in the air to indicate “speed it up.” It would be hours before their own group was attacked, but Pratt’s plan was to disperse the formation even farther in case of nuclear attack. Pratt then intended to launch his own attack.

  He had asked Wendell Nelson to impress the role of submarines on both Tactical Action Officers and captains. Military use of the waters beneath the surface had changed radically since World War Two, the last time subs had proved their worth under actual wartime conditions. In those days, a submarine was actually an air-breathing creature, able to submerge only for short periods of time. Now they were truly submersibles, capable of navigating the strange subsurface world for extended periods. A true silent service, they traded in stealth and surprise. Their preferred environment was the open ocean. Effectiveness within the straits and narrows of the Mediterranean depended completely on their individual performance. Because subs from both sides were forced to pass through straits to gain access to the Med, the initial element for achieving success was to sever contact with the inevitable shadows that tracked them. The submarines would present a challenge when the confusion of combat released them.

  The reaction of the COs to Wendell Nelson was markedly different than the previous day. He was no longer an upstart—he was accepted as a full four-stripe captain in the forefront of radical antisubmarine tactics, and the traditional white attitude had become colorblind in the face of the Soviet threat. When they left, each commanding officer had access to antisubmarine tactics never before used. They felt they now had an even chance against Soviet numbers.

  As they waited on the stern of Yorktown to be heloed back to their ships, the action reports from Saratoga filtered in. The second Soviet strike had been as bad as the first. Three more tiny frigates sunk, two Halsey-class destroyers badly damaged, one sinking, a guided-missile cruiser gone, Yorktown’s sister ship, Essex, in danger of sinking, and Saratoga had been hit four more times. Large deck carriers were supposed to be able to survive four cruise missiles—she had taken seven and was still afloat. Her flight deck was buckled and in shambles. She was dead in the water, engine rooms flooded, fires ravaging much of the inner hull.

  Pratt announced later over the main radio net of his battle group that when Saratoga’s commanding officer asked for volunteers to try to keep her afloat, no able man would leave her.

  The legend of the Battle of the Mediterranean was growing.

  THE WAR IN SPACE

  Russian reconnaissance satellites over the Mediterranean suffered the same ill effects from the nuclear blast as the Americans’. That was accepted by the Soviets. But timing was also to Soviet advantage, for they instituted a new series of launches from deep in the Soviet Union at Tyuratum, scheduled to achieve orbit after the old ones were rendered ineffective. Launches from Vandenburg Air Force Base soon followed. U.S. launch vehicles had been stockpiled for such an event; replacement recon packages were ready on the launch pads.

  Anticipating the use of killer satellites was a specially trained squadron of Air Force F-15s armed with two-stage, warhead-carrying rockets. It was not difficult for the engineers in the United States to determine which were the killer satellites, and once identified, it was up to the F-15s to climb to maximum altitude and fire their rockets into space. In the vicinity of its target, each rocket could maneuver with tiny thrusters to achieve lock-on. At 17,000 plus mph, they disintegrated the Russian weapons.

  The Soviet ASATs were actually orbiting satellites—but with one difference. They could maneuver in space, placing themselves in proximity with their target. Once in killing range, explosive charges propelled metal balls in the direction of their targets—which would be unable to maneuver. The outcome was much like the grape-shot used by sailing ships two hundred years before. Everything in its path was destroyed.

  Unlike the action on the surface of the Mediterranean, the war in space was not initially harmful to human beings. Once the computers took over, it was artificial intelligence versus artificial intelligence. The intent of both sides was to deny the enemy the use of intelligence and communications at the most critical moment—when their forces were racing toward each other. The winner, according to the computers, would be the one that had the latest intelligence concerning the location of the enemy and the most advanced weapons systems employed at that moment.

  Consequently, the space battle was not prolonged. Though both sides planned for the event, there were only so many rockets that could be positioned on the launch pads, only so many navigational, reconnaissance, or offensive weapons that could be placed atop the delivery systems. In the end, the space war—the first war of the future, the war that would shed no blood—was over in a matter of hours. The available machines had been exhausted.

  Once again, it was up to the human intellect to determine the outcome.

  ABOARD U.S.S. YORKTOWN, SOUTHEAST OF MALTA

  Until the attack on the Saratoga battle group, Russian warships hung back. They remained close to friendly shores under the protection of their own air cover. Their mission was to advance under the envelope created by air-launched and sub-launched cruise missiles. The cruisers and destroyers were to mop up, to finish off the stragglers. Then they would move on the soft underbelly in support of amphibious invasions. A second front, if Russia controlled the North Atlantic, would be the kiss of death for NATO.

  The picture beneath the surface remained murky for both sides. The objective of an attack submarine was to neutralize the aircraft carrier or any other capital ships. Often, this could be accomplished in conjunction with cruise-missile attacks by either surface ships or aircraft. But timing was vital, especially in the few short, crucial hours of actual combat. A submarine surfacing preliminary to the attack would be a sitting duck; after the attack, it would be unable to assist, its element of surprise compromised. To get into position to attack the surface force, a submarine was required to dispose of its own natural enemy—another submarine capable of equivalent stealth. Opposing groups of hunter-killer submarines were positioned in front of both Pratt’s and Konstantin’s battle groups. Their mission was to deny the other’s submarines the opportunity to break through into an attack position.

  It quickly became a one-on-one situation that day.
With detection capabilities greater than the range of their weapons, submarines attempted to outmaneuver each other to keep out of range, at the same time searching for a position to fire on the enemy. It was a prolonged, desperate cat-and-mouse game that could end only when one was sunk. In such engagements, the water would suddenly be full of torpedoes, each one intent on seeking out the target inserted by the mother-ship computer in its memory bank. A torpedo would attack on its own as long as its fuel held out. It was a deadly game—its outcome remained unknown to those who fought on the surface.

  Tom Carleton looked from the shiny slick in the bottom of his coffee cup to the dim red lights above him. The last sip had been cold, the powdered cream at the bottom rancid tasting. The dregs reflected the reddish glow.

  The status boards reflected the strategic situation in a ninety-degree arc from the Baltic Sea to North Africa. A second board displayed the area that he was specifically concerned with, the Mediterranean, and the enemy forces that would affect Yorktown and Kennedy’s battle group in the next few hours. The Soviet carrier group that had been off Alexandria the previous day was close to striking range—but not quite. Their job was not to initiate the attack on the American battle group. Both the Americans and the Russians knew that Kennedy’s group was much too strong, their attack aircraft superior to anything the Russians could yet launch from a carrier. But they should not retain that superiority after the initial salvo of cruise missiles—and that’s what the Russian group was moving up for now.

  Saratoga’s group was no longer effective—what remained of it. An ASW squadron had been sent to their aid in an attempt to keep Soviet submarines from sinking the survivors. Though Saratoga’s group had been battered, they achieved what Admiral Pratt had most hoped for. They had absorbed the combined ravages of two cruise-missile salvos and submarine wolf-pack attacks, and enough of the ships were still afloat that they were keeping more units of the Soviet Navy busy than the enemy had obviously anticipated. That meant that the Russians were behind schedule. The elements of their fleet were not proceeding at the pace that Moscow had planned—and that was critical if the efforts in the Mediterranean were to coincide with the movement of the ground forces in Central Europe.

  Saratoga had also contributed through the efforts of her attack squadrons. Their targets had been the closest air bases within the Iron Curtain; their purpose had simply been to take out as much Soviet airpower as possible and to destroy runways and base facilities. They had been successful. With assistance from the Air Force, they might have been overwhelming, but the latter had been withheld to support NATO ground forces in the event of attack. Kennedy had been much too far away to recover those few Saratoga aircraft that returned. They had either made their way to the few safe fields that were left within range, or they ditched. Their success had also verified a second factor that was accepted but never mentioned—once the shooting began, there would be no carrier for the surviving pilots to return to.

  Carleton mulled over that as he studied the projected flight pattern of the air groups recently launched from Kennedy. He preferred to take his chances on the surface. Each pilot understood that his mission was essentially one way—that the Soviet battle plan was to eliminate the carriers first, and that delivering his weapons and escaping the Soviet defenses were just the beginning of his problems.

  Carleton considered the location of the Soviet Backfire bombers. They had been launched from untouched fields deeper within the Soviet Union and there was a bit more time for planning than Saratoga had been given, but their numbers were still impressive. It was what had been called a “maximum effort” in World War Two, an all-out attempt to achieve their goal in one attack. Either to allow the conflict in the Mediterranean to be drawn out for more than twenty-four hours, or to concede the prerequisite of the first salvo, would imperil the Soviet thrust into Germany.

  With the exception of his visit to Pratt’s quarters aboard Kennedy, Tom Carleton’s time on Yorktown had been spent in a small section of the cruiser. He allowed himself enough time on the bridge to become familiar with the watchstanders and to learn the eccentricities of his ship. The balance of his time had been spent in his cabin, one deck under the bridge, or in CIC (the Combat Information Center) two decks below his cabin. If Yorktown and its AEGIS system were the central nervous system of the battle group, CIC was the brain. It was as desirable and necessary a target to be eliminated as the carrier. The Russians would learn that soon if they were not already aware of it.

  “Fresh coffee, Captain?” It was one of the radarmen. “Just brewed a fresh pot.”

  Carleton looked in his mug again. “Can you swab this one out?”

  “No problem, sir. Cream or sugar?”

  He remembered the rancid aroma from the dregs of the cup. “No thanks, son. Black.” An acid rumbling in his stomach reminded him how long it had been since he’d eaten. Except for a courtesy call on the wardroom, any food he’d taken had been on the run. “Wait one, son. I know it isn’t your job, but could you give my steward a buzz and ask him if he’d send a couple of sandwiches in?”

  “Don’t worry about a thing, Captain. Any of us are more than happy to do anything we can for you.” He smiled, then added seriously, “It’s good to have you here, sir. We’ve all heard a lot about you.” With that, he was off.

  Carleton wondered for a moment at the last comment, then let it pass. There was so much to do, so little time. He saw the blinking lights on the boards indicating the approaching wave of Soviet Backfires. Not too much time until they crossed the line, the imaginary line delineated by the computer when the Russian bombers conceivably could launch their missiles. He knew they wouldn’t. At that distance, the computer projected only one to three percent hits. But as each minute passed, the success ratio improved.

  “There you go, Captain.” The radarman appeared at his side with a steaming mug of coffee. There was also a doughnut in a napkin.

  Carleton sniffed the aroma appreciatively. “Where’d you find this?” he asked, gesturing with the doughnut.

  “Came up from the crew’s mess, sir. The cooks have been baking like crazy since last night. Figured they probably wouldn’t have a chance today. Hope you don’t mind. We’re not allowed to eat ’em in here, but the chief said he thought you might be careful.”

  “I never considered that, son. If there’s no food in here, I’ll be glad to have my sandwiches outside. I could use a little air anyway.”

  “If it’s all the same, sir, everyone sort of hopes you’ll stay in here—unless you really want to go outside. It makes everyone feel pretty good today to have you around.”

  So that was it! It was no secret. There probably wasn’t a soul on the ship who didn’t know that the next couple of hours would make all the difference in the world to them. The captain of the ship was a father figure. Until he proved otherwise, he could do no wrong. They were putting complete faith in a man they’d never heard of until a few days before. Then rumors about him generated stories that each man would accept as gospel.

  “Okay, son. If you insist, I’ll break the rules. And the next time I have a few bucks in my pocket, I’ll drop some in the kitty to cover costs.” He looked more closely at the mug. It wasn’t the same one he’d handed the sailor. This one had the seal of Yorktown on one side. Hand-painted on the reverse was “Captain Thomas H. Carleton, U.S.N.— Commanding Officer—U.S.S. YORKTOWN CG-48— Honorary Radarman.” It was his ship, all right!

  “Hope you don’t mind, Captain.”

  “Not at all. I hope you’ll let everyone know right now it’s a real honor for me.”

  It felt good. There was something special about commanding a ship—nothing like it in the world. He wanted Yorktown to be his for a long time.

  The disposition of the battle group spread before him on another board. Surrounding Kennedy were the nuclear cruiser Arkansas, two double-ended guided missile cruisers, Yarnell and Dale, and the two Spruance-class destroyers, Radford and Stump. Wendell Nelson was to
the south, toward the Gulf of Sidra, with seven more Spruance destroyers. A combined NATO force, made up of ships from Italy, France, and England, covered the northern flank. The small Italian carrier Garibaldi had reinforced this unit for antisubmarine purposes. To the east were the picket ships, groups of two to four units whose responsibility was both early warning and first-line harassment of the superior force aimed at the battle group.

  The initial flight of Backfires had just now passed over the Black Sea into Bulgarian airspace—eight hundred miles distant. A small initial launch of new, untested missiles could be expected at a range of about five hundred miles, when they were over the Aegean Sea nearing Greece. Even then, the odds for these missiles were slim. But the idea was that the Backfires, already harassed by the Hawkeyes and Kennedy’s fighters, would maintain a gradually increasing saturation effect.

  The picket groups were not under fire themselves. Attack planes from Kharkov were combining with wolf packs to make life difficult for the easternmost group. The American losses would be heavy out there, but if they could limit the effectiveness of the Soviet attack subs, Kennedy’s group had a fighting chance.

  Carleton was tempted to step outside and enjoy the fresh air when his sandwiches came. Instead, he circulated around the darkened room, talking with the sailors, offering the support they were looking for. Then he slipped up to his cabin and penned a short note to his wife. It had become a habit whenever tension set in.

  A change of clothes and a quick shave took only moments. To a crew as sharp as this one, a freshly pressed appearance would make all the difference in the world to morale. He also decided it would be a good idea to say a couple of words to them.

  ABOARD U.S.S. JOHN HANCOCK, ONE HUNDRED MILES NORTHWEST OF BENGHAZI, LIBYA

  Wendell Nelson convinced only the captain of Nicholson to call him Nellie; the others, though more at ease with him now, remained formal. He and Nicholson’s captain were the last members of the old “black shoe” Navy, the ones who had come aboard during the Vietnam era. They had cut their teeth on remnants of the old steam-boiler fleet or chased through steaming jungles in riverboats. Though they were educated in the weapons of the eighties, they were inured to the older traditions.