Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  As he studied the screen, Shapiro approached. “CINCLANTFLT has the word, Admiral. They wanted to know if we were going to change our plans. I said no.”

  “Good work, Jerry.” A good chief of staff knew the commander’s intentions and could often speak for him, especially when their course of action was this clear. No, Ward thought, if he had any Last Best Moves, he would have already used them.

  One thing, though. “Call Scott and Fitch.

  Have them run for the Polish coast. There’s no way they’ll get out of the Baltic in time.” He paused, then explained. “I think the balloon’s going to go up real soon now.”

  “Sir, it’ll be at least an hour before they’re in range of Polish air cover.”

  Ward sighed. “I know that, Jerry, but Gdansk is the closest friendly territory. Tell them to run like hell. Tell them to burn out their engines.”

  Shapiro left in a hurry. Ward pondered all the information laid out in front of him. There was one vital fact missing. How long did he have before EurCon tried to hammer his convoy? He couldn’t attack on his own — not without orders from above. Besides, he really didn’t want to. Every minute of peace brought his ships half a mile closer to safety.

  By now word of the attack on Canyon would have flashed up the chain from commander in chief, Atlantic Fleet, to commander in chief, Atlantic, to the National Command Authority — a fancy name for the President. Modem communications would put his message in the President’s lap in minutes. But how long would it take to get a decision back down the chain of command?

  “Don’t just sit here, Jack,” he muttered to himself. Although the American ultimatum hadn’t yet expired, somebody somewhere had started shooting. For all practical purposes, he was already in a battle. “Don’t let the enemy make the first move.”

  All right, think. So far EurCon had hit one container ship. Where were the planes, missiles, and submarines that should be barreling in on this convoy?

  Leyte Gulf was too valuable a target to be ignored or bypassed, even if its firepower made it a tough target. Just the political value of taking out one of the U.S. Navy’s Aegis cruisers early in a war would make the attempt worthwhile.

  Making piecemeal attacks, though, was worse than foolish. If the French and Germans really were going to war right now, they’d already given him precious time to alert his forces, to warn Washington, and to do all the things you really don’t want an enemy to do.

  Ward frowned. No matter what the Poles said, he didn’t believe Canyon had struck a mine. Mines were very precise creatures. Any mines laid by EurCon forces would be equipped with timers ready to activate them in concert with a set-piece surprise attack. Instead, he was willing to bet that some German or French sub skipper had seen Canyon, a little ahead of schedule, plowing past him. Knowing that the merchant’s supplies were vital, the man had opted to send her to the bottom rather than let such a fat prize get away.

  He nodded. That hypothesis fit the facts.

  So somebody had jumped the gun. If that was the case, EurCon’s senior commanders would be almost as flummoxed as he was. Once a decision came down from Paris and Berlin, they would move quickly enough, but they weren’t ready to launch a massive strike — not just yet. And that meant he had a few precious minutes to make some final crucial preparations.

  Ward started at the top — reacting to what he believed to be the most immediate threat. A submarine had attacked his southernmost convoy. Well, submarines were also the best way to sink an Aegis cruiser, especially one steaming in restricted waters and crappy sonar conditions.

  He punched keys on the pad to his left. The image on his primary display shifted as numbers and curved lines, representing depths and bottom contours, glowed to life. The screen also showed his own group’s planned track. It ran slightly east of straight north.

  At twenty-two knots, an hour’s travel would put them abreast of the Groves Flak and Fladen banks, two shallow spots on the seafloor that would make perfect hiding places for small diesel submarines. And the already narrow channel narrowed even further near there. That was bad. Very bad.

  Ward called his helicopter coordinator on the intercom. “Mike, I want somebody up checking both those two banks for lurkers. Stick to a passive search only for now. If there are French or German subs up there, let’s see if we can find them without tipping anybody off.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  He listened as the lieutenant quickly issued orders to launch one helicopter each from Leyte Gulf and Simpson.

  Working in tandem, the two SH-60 Seahawks would sweep back and forth across the areas he’d tagged, using their MADs and dropping dozens of LOFAR sonobuoys to hunt for EurCon subs lying doggo. The only trouble was that he still wasn’t sure what he could do if they actually found any. Under the existing rules of engagement, he could only fire if fired upon. The Kattegat wasn’t wide enough to enforce a declared exclusion zone.

  While listening to the radio chatter in his headset, he checked the display more closely.

  Simpson’s other helicopter, 401, was out on surface search duty — patrolling to the south. He issued another order. “Get 401 down as soon as the other birds are off. I want her refueled and rearmed for ASW. I think we’ll need her.”

  Symbols crawled across the screen as his units responded to their new instructions. The minutes passed slowly while Ward ran through his limited options over and over again. Waiting like this was the hardest part of any naval commander’s job. In battle, supersonic missile speeds left very little time for thought — and no time at all for worry.

  Shapiro came up and stood quietly behind Ward’s chair, waiting. His news wasn’t urgent, then. The admiral took another moment to examine the display before swiveling around.

  “Washington says stand by. No changes to the rules of engagement.” The chief of staff saw Ward’s reaction and added, “Admiral Macmillan said to shoot when you have to, and he’d sort it out later.”

  Ward sighed. It was nice to have CINCLANT’s support, but now was the moment to strike, while EurCon was still trying to —

  “Sir!” The lieutenant coordinating his helicopters broke in, his voice climbing rapidly. “401 reports several streaks of light moving from west to east, heading straight for us!”

  Too late. We’ve missed our chance, Ward realized. EurCon had decided to throw the first punch.

  SH-60 SEAHAWK 401

  Lieutenant (jg.) Bill Alvarez, piloting Seahawk 401, looked over at his sensor operator in shock. Lieutenant Tom Calhoun was on his fifth cruise. He had over five hundred hours in Seahawks. This was Alvarez’s first deployment, and things were moving a little too fast for him. “What will Leyte do?”

  “Open up, my friend.” Calhoun’s eyes never left his instrument console. “Turn port, new course three three zero, speed seventy knots. Take us down.” Even though Alvarez was the pilot, Calhoun was the mission commander. He had the sensor displays, and the experience to know what he was looking at. Alvarez, like any other helicopter pilot, was kept busy enough just keeping the Seahawk in the air.

  Wheeling the big machine to the left, Alvarez juggled his cyclic stick, collective, and throttle, smoothly losing altitude and slowing until Seahawk 401 clattered only thirty feet above the Kattegat’s dark waters.

  As Alvarez maneuvered, Calhoun amplified his initial report. “Negative radar contact on vampires. Visual and FLIR only. Estimate ten plus, low altitude. Negative ESM.”

  EurCon’s stealth missile technologies were getting another battlefield test — a successful one. The Seahawk’s APS-124 radar wasn’t powerful enough to spot the incoming missiles against all the clutter created by the Kattegat’s short, choppy waves.

  Calhoun broke radio contact with Leyte Gulf.

  “They’ll find out the rest for themselves. We’ve done our bit for Uncle Sam, we’re on our own time now. Turn port again, new course two two five.”

  Automatically Alvarez complied. He was trained to obey orders immediately, and Calhoun
’s orders were eminently sensible. The planes that had launched those missiles at the convoy could still be somewhere close by. And the best way to avoid attracting their unwanted attention was to throttle the Seahawk’s engines back, lay low, and pretend to be nothing more than night air. Throttling back would also conserve fuel — giving them up to an extra hour of flying time. With their parent ship under attack, it might be a long while before 401 could land. Just as important, the new course kept them well clear of both Leyte Gulf and Simpson.

  Neither man wanted to be shot down by their own side in all the confusion.

  Repeated flashes shattered the darkness off to the right. He automatically closed one eye trying to preserve his night vision.

  Leyte Gulf carried over a hundred antiaircraft missiles, loaded in vertical launchers fore and aft. She was firing from both launchers.

  A blinding flare signaled the first launches. For a moment, the ship’s bulky shape was outlined in a flickering orange-red light. Then rocket exhaust covered her bow and stern in billowing smoke clouds, lit from within.

  The first pair of SAMs leapt up out of the roiling smoke clouds, their own smoke trails also glowing. Even from twenty miles away, their exhausts looked like giant-sized highway warning flares soaring high overhead, almost too bright to look at. It was a spectacular and frightening sight.

  A second later, with the first two missiles already high overhead and starting to arc over, a second pair thundered out of the expanding clouds. Then another pair and yet another roared skyward, until the cruiser, moving through the water, had built a towering arch of missile smoke trails.

  Looking aft, Alvarez waited for their own ship to launch. Nothing. “Where’s Simpson!”

  Calhoun shook his head. “She doesn’t have a fancy radar like the Aegis.” He sucked in his breath a little, figuring. “Against stealth missiles, it’s going to be close. There,” he said finally. “She’s firing now.”

  A new pair of fiery streaks leapt up from the horizon and leveled out, seemingly headed straight toward them. After a few seconds, Simpson’s missiles started drifting to the right, then flashed past their starboard side.

  Leyte Gulf’s SAMs, now invisible, started to reach the incoming EurCon missiles. In the dark middle distance, well off to starboard, flashes suddenly erupted, burning away the night in blinding white pulses as proximity-fused warheads went off. But the flashes marched closer as the waves of enemy missiles bored in.

  Then it happened.

  An enormous explosion lit the sea between the two American warships. An image flashed against the darkness, so quickly and so blindingly bright that Alvarez realized what he had seen only after the flash faded. He’d seen a merchant ship’s hull, dark against a brilliant white and yellow and orange light that backlit but also enveloped its victim.

  Blinking away the dazzling afterimages, Alvarez scanned the horizon. A dull orange glow remained. On the FLIR, the gray-white image of the merchant ship, warm against the cold sea, grew whiter and whiter toward the bow until the display shimmered and sparkled with the heat of the flames. A ship was on fire. Oh, God. He felt chilled to the bone, despite the sweat staining his flight suit.

  “Turn right, new course two seven zero,” Calhoun ordered. “I’m going to take a peek with the radar.”

  Turning, Alvarez carefully watched the altimeter. He could almost hear the waves outside and feel the mass of the water below him. Helicopters were nimble, but this close to the surface, he wouldn’t get a second chance to correct any mistakes.

  Calhoun hunched over his multifunction display. His shoulders stiffened and he keyed his radio mike. “Echo Five, this is 401. Ten contacts, five zero miles, at three zero zero, speed six zero zero. Negative ESM.”

  There were enemy aircraft out there, still closing on the embattled convoy with their own radars shut down.

  Calhoun quickly flicked a switch. “Radar off. Turn us to zero three zero, now!” The urgency in his voice almost spun the helicopter by itself. “Increase speed a little.”

  Alvarez steadied on the new course — nudging his collective forward until they were up to a hundred knots. While Calhoun anxiously scanned the sky to the northwest, they were too close to the sea for him to do much more than watch his flight instruments. The few glances he could spare were for the battle out ahead of them now.

  More glowing sparks streaked low over the water toward the convoy — coming from the south now. Jesus, they were being hit from two sides.

  It was impossible to see details at this range, but the patterns of light told the story. He knew what it had to look like, with missiles flashing in. He also knew what the men on those ships were doing, hunched over their displays, sweating, each man doing his assigned job and fearing the first mistake. Any mistake, even the smallest, could bring death and failure for them all.

  Simpson and Leyte Gulf were both firing now, launching SAM after SAM in an almost continuous stream.

  “There! Ten o’clock, Bill!”

  Alvarez snapped his head over to the left and followed Calhoun’s arm. A narrow arrowhead shape, silhouetted against the night sky, passed quickly from left to right. Turning on the Seahawk’s radar, even for that brief instant, had been like waving a red flag in front of a maddened bull. Now they were being hunted. The enemy pilot must have run down their radar bearing. He had to be searching for them with his bare eyes. Radar couldn’t pick them out this close to the surface.

  Calhoun slewed the helicopter’s thermal imaging sensor, its FLIR, over, and they were rewarded with the black-and-white image of a French Mirage screaming low over the water — flying hundreds of knots faster than they were.

  Both men held their breath. If the enemy pilot spotted them, they were goners. Then, after a thirty-second eternity, the predator banked left and headed north. He was giving up, going after more profitable or more visible targets.

  Alvarez looked back at the formation. New missile flashes were backlighting smoke trails made by previous launches. Only a few of the SAMs appeared to be headed in their direction. Some went to the west or south, and some even seemed to be headed straight north. Was the EurCon strike force attacking from that direction, too? In addition to the SAMs, rapid-fire, rhythmic flashes from both ships showed that their guns and Phalanx systems were in action as well. The enemy missiles and aircraft had punched through the convoy’s outer defenses.

  On this course, the helicopter was closing the formation rapidly. One of the cargo ships was clearly visible, enveloped in flame and thickening black smoke. Suddenly and irrationally, Alvarez wished for a weapon — some sort of missile or gun, any sort of missile or gun. He wanted to chase down that enemy fighter they’d seen and splash the bastard.

  A ripple of light, almost a sheet of flame, to the north caught his eye. The EurCon aircraft they’d spotted earlier were firing a new salvo of air-to-surface missiles.

  Using binoculars, Calhoun studied the display for a moment, then radioed in another warning. Breaking contact with Leyte Gulf, he said, “All right, Bill. New course three five zero. And slow us down again.”

  Alvarez complied, now almost unmindful of the water below. Out the helicopter’s right window, the formation was hidden in a mass of smoke. Flickering lights inside the cloud showed when missiles or guns fired. The burning ship had drifted outside the smoke, dead in the water.

  A bigger, brighter flash near where Simpson should be alarmed him for a moment, but Calhoun, listening in on the radio circuit, announced, “Got one with the Phalanx!”

  The frigate’s automated, six-barrel Galling gun had knocked down a EurCon missile just a few hundred yards from impact.

  Calhoun heard another report passed over the radio and paused, listening intently. When he spoke again, his voice was somber.

  “Tartu’s burning.”

  More glowing lights streaked low across the sky. The next missile wave had arrived. Alvarez couldn’t see the displays, but knew the American warships’ defenses were already pressed to the
limit.

  “Change course. Due north.”

  He followed Calhoun’s order without thinking, keeping his eyes riveted on the formation.

  The smoke cloud now hid the ships completely. Inside, explosions rippled like chain lightning, but he couldn’t see any detail at all. Calhoun, studying the Seahawk’s ESM display, could tell part of the story.

  “Simpson’s Mk92 radar is gone,” he announced quietly.

  Shit. If Simpson’s missile fire control radar was off the line, she’d been hit, and worse, the hit made her vulnerable to the next wave.

  “How about using the radar?” Alvarez asked.

  Calhoun shook his head. “Negative. It won’t tell us if she’s a hulk or just dinged. Don’t sweat it yet, Bill. Might be nothing but a scratch.”

  Both men knew he was lying. Any hit on a frigate-sized ship by a modem antiship missile would wreak havoc — killing dozens of men in a searing, shrapnel-laced blast, dozens of their friends and shipmates. The older, more experienced Calhoun was doing his best to steady his younger, greener pilot, and maybe himself as well.

  More flashes lit the cloud’s interior. Large flashes. Missile impacts. Before they had time to make sense out of the pattern, the still-burning Tartu vanished in a giant white fireball. Alvarez glanced at a digital clock on the Seahawk’s instrument panel, instinctively marking the instant the big container ship died.

  “Tartu was loaded with Patriots,” Alvarez said shakily. He crossed himself in horror.

  “Yeah.” Calhoun nodded, but kept his eyes on the displays, trying to wring more data out of them.

  A sound came over the water, barely audible over the helicopter’s engines. Alvarez had braced himself for a shock wave, but at fifteen miles all that was left of Tartu’s death was a low rumble.