Blackmail

by Rick Campbell

  Samurai and TexMex joined the northern end of the combat air patrol, which was strung out on a north-to-south line facing the three Indian strike groups. It was quiet for the time being, as the Indian aircraft returned to their carriers to refuel and rearm. The reprieve was welcomed, as the additional Super Hornets trickled in from Truman and Reagan. However, the reprieve drew to a close when the three Indian air wings assembled above their carriers, then headed west.

  As the Indian aircraft approached, Houston counted them up. Forty-seven aircraft. They’d lost twenty-five on their last assault, compared to fourteen F/A-18s lost. The odds were still two to one, though, with the combat air patrol now up to twenty-four Super Hornets. The three Indian air wings combined again, and it took only a few minutes to close the distance.

  Samurai and the other F/A-18s fired two volleys of AMRAAM missiles as the two air wings approached each other, then evaded a barrage of incoming missiles. Moments later, the thirty-eight remaining Indian aircraft slammed into the twenty remaining American fighters, and the sky was filled with a dizzying array of aircraft and missiles as pilots dispensed chaff and targeted enemy fighters while weaving past exploding aircraft and streaking missiles.

  This time, however, the Indian fighters didn’t continue in toward the American task force. They had learned their lesson the last time, taking a beating from the American combat air patrol despite their numerical superiority. For this assault, every Indian fighter was fully armed with air-to-air missiles and they remained engaged with the F/A-18s. Their objective became clear: they were going to wipe out the American CAP.

  The sky began to thin and the hectic melee degenerated into individual dogfights. Houston did well, shooting down two Indian fighters, and as the second one splashed into the ocean, his wingman’s voice broke across his headset.

  “Samurai, tally two bandits on your six!”

  Houston glanced at his APG-79 radar display, locating the two Indian fighters settling in behind him. “I see ’em,” he replied.

  TexMex said, “I can’t help. I’m tied up with two of my own.”

  Samurai spotted his wingman headed south with two bandits in trail, then banked hard right to bring his Super Hornet around toward the two Indian aircraft behind him. He flicked a switch on his flight stick during the turn, selecting another AMRAAM. As his F/A-18 came around, he identified the two bandits as MiG-29Ks and targeted the closest one.

  He fired the AMRAAM and its internal radar took over, locking on to the MiG-29. The Indian fighter dispensed chaff and banked hard left, but the AMRAAM detected the aircraft speeding away from the chaff and adjusted course. As the missile sped toward the evading aircraft, Samurai turned his attention to the second MiG-29. It had launched one of its missiles, which Bitching Betty dutifully notified him of—“Missile inbound!”—and Samurai’s Radar Warning Receiver identified as a radar-homing Vympel R-77.

  There was an explosion to Samurai’s left. His AMRAAM had found its target, with the missile and MiG-29 morphing into a cloud of fire and shrapnel. There was no time to celebrate, as the R-77 was closing fast. Houston dispensed a burst of chaff, then banked right and inverted, turning his F/A-18 upside down. Pulling back on his flight stick, he streaked down toward the water, away from his chaff. The R-77 continued toward the reflective cloud of aluminum-coated fibers, passing through it. After verifying the missile lost track of his aircraft, Houston pulled back on his flight stick, leveling off at eight thousand feet, headed back toward the incoming MiG-29 as Bitching Betty alerted again.

  “Missile inbound!”

  The MiG-29 pilot had fired a second R-77 during Houston’s maneuver, and the missile was already dangerously close. Houston selected another AMRAAM and fired at the Indian jet, then dispensed a second round of chaff and banked hard right again. The R-77 stayed locked on to Houston’s F/A-18, veering toward his aircraft as it ignored the chaff. Houston dispensed another round and banked hard left, looking through his canopy to see if the chaff worked.

  This time, the chaff deployment was a success; the missile stayed locked on to the reflective aluminum fibers. He was about to return his attention to the MiG-29 when Bitching Betty alerted a third time. Houston’s APG-79 identified this missile as an infrared homing R-73. The MiG-29 had worked its way behind Houston, and after watching two radar-homing missiles fail, the pilot had shifted to a heat-seeker.

  Samurai dispensed a round of infrared decoys, then banked hard right, but the missile stayed locked on, swiftly closing the last few hundred yards. Houston tried another burst of infrared decoys and a hard bank to the left, but the missile remained locked on to the larger heat signature of the F/A-18’s twin engines.

  Houston banked hard left again just as the missile reached his aircraft, and a bright flash was accompanied by the sound of shrapnel tearing through his aircraft. Samurai’s F/A-18 began trailing orange flames and black smoke from its starboard engine as Bitching Betty informed him of the obvious.

  “Engine right! Engine right!”

  Another engine gone, Samurai thought. This time, however, he wouldn’t make it back to the carrier. In addition to an engine on fire, Houston’s flaps were damaged and he had difficulty maintaining a straight course. His F/A-18 was shuddering and losing altitude rapidly, despite pushing his left engine to maximum power.

  Being half Japanese and with his aircraft going down, Houston entertained the thought, if only for a few seconds, of a kamikaze attack. However, there were no enemy surface ships nearby and better judgment prevailed anyway. He reached between his knees and pulled the ejection handle beneath his seat. The canopy’s explosive bolts blew, sending the top of his cockpit spiraling away, and Houston was blasted into the air along with his seat.

  After his parachute opened and he began drifting toward the ocean, Houston realized that the reflective tape on his helmet was going to come in handy.

  85

  USS HARRY S. TRUMAN

  “Loss of bravo-two-one.”

  The strike controller’s report aboard Truman was professional and monotone, his voice failing to match Captain Sites’s mounting concern. Standing in the aircraft carrier’s Combat Direction Center, Sites monitored the task force’s engagement with the Indian Navy with rising trepidation, paying little attention to the thin layer of smoke hanging in the overhead. Even though the aircraft carrier’s compartments had been sealed when setting General Quarters, smoke seeped inside CDC as Truman’s crew battled the fires. Air samples were being taken to ensure breathing protection was not required.

  A second strike controller reported the loss of another F/A-18, and Sites assessed the tactical situation. Bush and Eisenhower were still down, but Reagan was back on-line. However, her ability to sustain flight operations was tenuous, easily knocked out again if the carrier was hit by another round of Shipwreck missiles. Russian guided missile submarines were continuing to penetrate close enough to launch their surface attack missiles, but the task force was making each submarine pay dearly, vectoring a round of HAAWCs into the surrounding water. Russian attack submarines were probing the third ASW tier, but the destroyers and cruisers, along with the few MH-60Rs that remained, seemed to have kept the Russians at bay.

  To the east, the task force’s combat air patrol was losing aircraft faster than replacements arrived. As the Indian aircraft whittled away at what remained of the task force’s combat air patrol, Sites spotted another wave of thirty aircraft inbound from the Indian carriers. He studied the red icons; the numbers didn’t add up.

  The task force’s F/A-18s had splashed over thirty of India’s seventy aircraft, yet the Common Operational Picture still showed seventy aloft. Sites finally realized what the Indians were doing. Although the American task force was beyond range of India’s land-based tactical fighters, naval aircraft could land on the three Indian carriers and refuel. The Indians were ferrying additional aircraft aboard their carriers, replacing their losses, something the American aircraft carriers couldn’t do in their current location. A
s American airpower attrited and Indian forces were replenished, the battle would tilt rapidly in favor of India.

  It was time to vacate the area. The task force’s first objective had been accomplished, destroying the Russian surface Navy. The carriers could retreat and conduct repairs, then reengage with additional ASW assets to deal with the Russian submarines. Sites examined the Common Operational Picture on his display, searching for an exit route. Russian submarines were pressing the task force’s northern and western sectors, with the Indian Navy to the east. That left the south, although there was no guarantee the Indian Navy’s submarines weren’t closing in from that direction. However, there were several American submarines on the back side of the task force, guarding against a Russian or Indian end-around.

  As Sites’s eyes shifted to the narrow escape route to the south, yellow surface ship icons appeared on his display. Confusion worked across his face, and when the icons turned red, beads of cold sweat formed on his brow. A new enemy strike group had arrived, cutting off the retreat path for the American task force. As he wondered what ships they were, his Common Operational Picture tagged the contact in the center of the enemy formation as CNS Liaoning, the formidable Chinese aircraft carrier and sister ship of Kuznetsov, sold to China after the fall of the Soviet Union.

  Son of a bitch!

  Sites slammed his fist onto his console. He’d been told the Chinese had agreed to remain neutral. Now, with the outcome of the battle tilting away from the United States, China’s entry into the conflict was the nail in the coffin.

  Red icons appeared beside the Russian-built carrier as its fighters launched. Ten, twenty, thirty … Liaoning’s crew was proficient, rapidly launching its air wing. When there were thirty aircraft aloft, they began their journey, moving swiftly north toward the American task force.

  Sites’s shoulders sagged as he monitored the Chinese air wing’s journey. As the aircraft approached the task force’s air defense perimeter, provided by the cruisers and destroyers to the south, the Chinese fighters shifted their flight path, vectoring to the northeast. It looked as if the Chinese fighters were going to join the Indian aircraft and wipe out the remaining American combat air patrol, then penetrate the task force in the weakened sector to the east, where Indian aircraft had heavily damaged or knocked six of the surface combatants off-line.

  Sites’s eyes went to the blue icons representing the damaged surface combatants. The Ticonderoga cruiser Vicksburg was still down, and another destroyer had dropped off the air warfare grid. That left two damaged destroyers in the area. They’d be overwhelmed.

  As the Chinese aircraft continued toward what remained of the task force’s combat air patrol, four more F/A-18s—two from Truman and two from Reagan, were racing out to support.

  Too little, too late.

  When the thirty Chinese fighters closed to within missile range of the American and Indian melee, their icons switched from red to yellow. As Sites studied his display in confusion, their color changed to blue, as did the icons representing the Chinese ships to the south. The unit designation of the aircraft carrier also updated, and a wave of relief swept over Sites.

  The aircraft carrier to the south wasn’t Liaoning.

  It was USS Roosevelt!

  86

  USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT

  Captain Dolores Gonzalez monitored the Common Operational Picture on her console in CDC, wondering what her counterparts on the other four American carriers had endured. Bush and Eisenhower had been damaged severely enough to terminate flight operations, and it looked as if Truman and Reagan were limping along. The sky above the American task force was mostly clear, aside from the air battle to the east and several dozen Super Hornets circling above Truman and Reagan—about three squadrons—waiting to refuel and rearm.

  Gonzalez knew the pilots aloft were exhausted by now, while Roosevelt’s were fresh, chomping at the bit since they’d left Pearl Harbor under the cover of darkness. Several weeks ago, with the aircraft carrier’s Island superstructure reduced to twisted and molten metal by a Russian Shipwreck missile, Roosevelt had arrived at Pearl Harbor for repairs. The initial damage assessment estimated it would take six months to return the carrier to service, but Captain Debra Driza, commander of the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, had challenged her workforce, invoking USS Yorktown as inspiration.

  USS Yorktown (CV-5), operating in the Pacific in May 1942, had participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea as the Allies tried to thwart Japan’s expansion across the Pacific. During the hectic battle, as dusk settled over the Pacific, six Japanese pilots incredibly mistook Yorktown for one of their own carriers and attempted to land, their mistake pointed out by Yorktown’s anti-aircraft gunners. Other Japanese pilots properly identified Yorktown, and the carrier was hit with a bomb that penetrated the Flight Deck and exploded belowdecks, causing extensive damage that experts estimated would take three months to repair.

  When Allied intelligence decoded a Japanese message a few days later, learning of a major operation aimed at gaining a foothold at the northwestern tip of the Hawaiian Island chain, Admiral Chester Nimitz gathered his comparatively meager naval forces, rushing them toward Midway Island. With four Japanese heavy aircraft carriers approaching and having only Task Force 16—USS Enterprise and USS Hornet—at his disposal, Nimitz directed Yorktown be made ready to sail alongside Task Force 16. Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard workers labored around the clock, and three days later, Yorktown set sail with her sister carriers.

  Captain Driza’s challenge had been met, and USS Roosevelt set sail a day behind Eisenhower and Bush as they passed Hawaii, westbound for the Indian Ocean. Roosevelt’s Island superstructure was still a molten mass of steel and her hangar bays scorched black from the fires that had raged inside. But her flight systems—catapults, arresting wires, and elevators—were operational. Shipyard tiger teams had remained aboard Roosevelt, continuing repairs as the carrier sailed across the Pacific, with the ship navigated from Secondary Control, located beneath the Flight Deck, instead of the mangled Bridge.

  Roosevelt, along with several destroyer escorts exiting the repair yards, had traveled across the Pacific under darkened ship and complete EMCON—Emissions Controls; no radar or communication emissions—staying beyond visual range of other ships during the transit. Additionally, as they approached the American task force and their Indian opponents, Roosevelt and her destroyer escorts had activated their electronic countermeasure suites, emitting the radar signature of Chinese ships while the outbound aircraft kept their Identification-Friend-or-Foe transponders secured.

  Gonzalez turned her attention to Flight Deck operations as Roosevelt began launching another thirty aircraft from her bow and waist catapults. Navy leadership knew the carrier would arrive late to the battle and replacement aircraft would be sorely needed, so Roosevelt had been outfitted with six Super Hornet squadrons instead of the standard four, plus two squadrons of MH-60Rs. The first wave of thirty F/A-18s would engage the Indian fighters tangling with the task force’s CAP, while the following wave of F/A-18s would attack the second wave of incoming Indian fighters.

  Whatever survived those two battles would join forces with the three F/A-18 squadrons above Truman and Reagan, then deliver a warm welcome to the three Indian aircraft carriers.

  87

  PENTAGON

  The president took a sip of lukewarm coffee, keeping his eyes fixed on the thirty-foot-diameter screen at the far end of the Current Action Center as red and blue symbols moved slowly across the display. The tension and silence of the first few hours had been replaced by the murmur of quiet conversations, loosened ties, and unbuttoned shirt collars as the men and women around the table monitored the battle’s progress.

  A few hours earlier, USS Roosevelt’s air wing, with the assistance of the task force’s combat air patrol, had shot down all Indian aircraft aloft. After refueling and rearming her F/A-18s, Roosevelt had joined forces with the remaining task force aircraft, finishing off Pyotr Velikiy
and Kuznetsov. Turning their attention back to the Indian Navy, a one-hundred-plus aircraft assault was en route toward the Indian aircraft carriers, which were retreating rapidly toward shore with their destroyer and frigate escorts. A single strike likely wouldn’t sink the three carriers, but it would bloody their noses.

  Now that the outcome of the battle was clear, the president turned to his advisors.

  “What’s the next step in the Indian Ocean?” he asked McVeigh.

  “We’ll pull the task force back temporarily while we continue repairs on all four carriers. Hopefully we can get Eisenhower and Bush back up without a shipyard visit. We’ve got shipyard tiger teams waiting in Diego Garcia, plus four replacement air wings, stripped from the aircraft carriers in the repair yards, on their way. Once all five carriers are operational and their air wings are at full strength again, we’ll engage the remaining Russian submarines.”

  “What’s the status of the two submarine forces?” the president asked.

  McVeigh deferred to Admiral Brian Rettman, the Chief of Naval Operations, who answered, “It’s difficult to say this early, as submarines don’t communicate during battle. By doctrine, they stay at optimal search depth and speed until the conflict is over or have previous orders directing them to report in at a specific time.” Admiral Rettman glanced at the clock. “In another two hours, whoever survived will report in, as long as there are no hostile contacts in their operating area.