Armageddon Mode c-3

by Keith Douglass

  But in 1980, Vaughn had just made rear admiral, and his first deployed command had been a Navy carrier group operating in the Pacific. The temper of the U.S. Navy had been dismal then. It was not a good time for men, like Vaughn, with strong military aspirations. The Carter Administration had been hell-bent on slashing defense spending, and some members of a short-sighted Congress had been pushing for virtual disarmament. The American public, still wallowing in the post-Vietnam mire, had cared little about the need to maintain a strong guard against the communists.

  Against that political backdrop, Vaughn had seen his being given command of a carrier squadron as a truly important step. He’d been certain that he could make a real difference in the way America’s battered military was perceived, both by the government and by the people.

  One of the carrier’s ASW heroes had picked up a sub contact during routine patrol operations. The carrier’s antisub destroyers and frigates had converged on the area, searching, but had found nothing.

  Somehow, the contact had made its escape.

  It had been a time of increased tension throughout the world. Only a few months earlier, in December of 1979, the Russians had invaded Afghanistan, and nothing, not diplomatic efforts, not threats of an Olympic Games boycott or a grain embargo, nothing had convinced them to back down. There’d been several incidents at sea and in the air, and the threat of a war starting, by plan or by accident, had been very real. Standing orders from Washington held that no squadron commander could let Russian subs get close to one of the Navy’s precious carriers, and the vanished contact had already been well inside the squadron’s defensive perimeter. Vaughn had ordered the squadron to zigzag out of the area, while intensifying the search for the missing sub with his ASW assets.

  Then the sub had broached dead ahead, rising out of nowhere in spray and foam like some huge, glistening whale. With all the grace and maneuverability of an eighty-story skyscraper floating on its side, Vaughn’s carrier had smashed into the Russian sub.

  The full story might never be known, but later hearings and debriefings concluded that the Russian skipper had made a mistake. The sub, an Echo II nuclear-powered craft designed primarily for anticarrier operations, had evidently been trying to probe the American squadron’s defenses, another chicken-of-the-sea incident like hundreds of others. The Russian captain had probably eluded the earlier search by hiding his boat on the bottom, which, in those waters, was not very deep. When the American carrier had accidentally come bearing down on his location, sonar pinging away, he’d assumed that he’d been discovered and tried to get away. At the same time, the shallow water and the noise made by the other ships in the squadron had confused the American sonar. No one had heard the Echo II until it was already surfacing.

  Why the sub had surfaced in the first place was another unknown.

  Possibly the Russian skipper had thought he was under attack and decided that a fast surface was the only way to defuse a situation suddenly gone out of hand. Or perhaps there’d been a mechanical failure or a confusion in orders. Whatever the reason, before the American carrier could slow or change course, it had hit the Echo II just forward of the conning tower. Both vessels had suffered extensive damage, though obviously the sub had gotten the worst in the exchange. The sub had refused offers of assistance and had last been seen limping west on the surface. The carrier had suffered minor damage to her keel, and her forward sonar dome had been knocked out, requiring repairs in the States.

  And that was when Admiral Vaughn’s troubles had really begun. An anti-military Congress had insisted on hearings to determine culpability in the matter. He’d been grilled mercilessly about his part in the affair, with most of the committee’s attention focusing on whether or not he’d been patrolling too aggressively.

  Too aggressively! The Navy had held its own inquest, of course, and Vaughn had been cleared. He’d done nothing questionable, had operated within the letter of his orders, and had done nothing to bring discredit upon his service or his command.

  So why had he lost his command and wound up at a damned Pentagon desk?

  His transport to the Vicksburg was ready on the spot just vacated by the Helix, an HH-60 Seahawk with rotors unfolded and engine turning over.

  Nodding to Bersticer and the others of his staff who were going across with him, he started across the flight deck.

  It was inevitable, he thought, as he hurried across the steel deck, that the reason for his exile had been political. Once a Navy officer reached the rank of captain, hell, once he was a full commander bucking for captain, most of the forces that shaped his career were political in one way or another. But Vaughn’s problem had been part of the very focus of the Cold War, as well as the ongoing political blood-baths in Washington.

  Incidents between U.S. and Soviet vessels had been particularly numerous back in the sixties, when the Russian navy was vigorously expanding under the guidance of its number-one sponsor, Soviet CNO Admiral Gorshkov. Harassment by both sides had been commonplace, with ships crossing one another’s paths, penetrating each other’s formations, even deliberately trying to ram. The number of incidents had grown until, at one point, collisions at sea were averaging an incredible one a month.

  One of the worst of those had occurred in May of 1967, when the U.S. destroyer Walker cut in front of a Soviet vessel and sheered off, then sideswiped the destroyer Besslednyi, tearing loose a whaleboat and punching a hole in her side. The next day, unbelievably, the Walker had rammed a second Russian ship, holing her twice.

  In 1972, in a little-publicized agreement signed during Nixon’s visit to Moscow, the U.S. and the USSR had agreed to hold yearly meetings, to exchange information and review charges arising from such incidents.

  Called the Incidents at Sea Agreement, or INCSEA, it was designed to stop harassment on and over the high seas.

  It had worked well for eight years. Unfortunately, by 1980 the political balance in Washington had become extremely precarious. Russian aggression in Afghanistan, communist support for the Sandanistas, the collapse of detente all had suggested a final breakdown of any dialogue with the Soviets. Certain factions in Congress, with political careers riding on SALT II and good relations with the Soviets, had hoped to reverse what seemed to be increasing intransigence on the part of Moscow. The ramming incident had appeared to be the Americans’ fault … or at least the fault of the admiral who had been aggressively hounding the Russian sub. By playing up the incident and doing some aggressive hounding of their own, they had hoped to prove the benevolence of U.S. intentions toward the Russians.

  Too aggressive, the bastards had claimed. Even after being vindicated by the Navy board, there’d been little his supporters could do to shield him at the time. The Navy could not afford to antagonize the source of its yearly appropriations, and Vaughn, by fighting back, had made enemies on Capitol Hill.

  So he’d been quietly shunted aside — out of sight, out of mind. In a Crippling turn of irony, another U.S. carrier, the Kitty Hawk, had collided with a Soviet Victor in 1984. The Russian had been running with no lights in the hours just before dawn, and the collision had left pieces of the sub’s propeller embedded in the Kitty Hawk’s hull. By that time, though, America’s military reawakening in the Reagan years had been well under way, and the men involved had suffered none of the probings or ostracism that Vaughn had suffered.

  Vaughn understood the Navy’s reasoning — at least he tried to convince himself that he understood — but that didn’t change the bitter unfairness of it all. For twelve years he’d sat it out on the beach, his career at dead slow. His wife had left him four years earlier, a scandal in the tight circles of high-ranking Washington Navy society that had only added to his image as a has-been who’d never quite made the grade. He’d been ready to quit, to formally retire from the Navy, when the intervention of powerful friends in the Pentagon had opened up this new opportunity.

  Command of CBG-14.

  If he could carry out his orders … if Washingto
n or the Russians didn’t screw him once again, he could still salvage his career, salvage his life. But the sinking of the Indian sub had raised the old specters once more. Biddle’s aggressive patrolling had triggered the incident … or at least, that was how Washington would interpret it.

  And as COCBG, he was responsible for Biddle.

  He climbed up the ladder into the Seahawk, accepting a cranial and life vest from the crew chief. “We’ll be a few minutes taking off, Admiral,” the enlisted man said as Bersticer scrambled up the ladder and took his seat at the admiral’s side. “That Russkie helo’s on its approach to the Vickie now. We want to give them plenty of room.”

  Vaughn nodded as he strapped on the helmet. It figured. The Russians were always getting in his way! Well, God help the bastards if they ever got in his way again!

  0738 hours, 26 March

  CIC, U.S.S. Vicksburg

  In Greek mythology the mirror-brilliant shield of Athena was Aegis. The hero Perseus used it in his battle with the gorgon Medusa, fighting her by watching her reflection in the shield.

  It was a potent name for a potent modern air defense system. Linked by fifteen on-board computers and sophisticated electronics to the SPY-1 radar system, Aegis could track hundreds of targets simultaneously, could guide upgraded Navy Standard missiles, and could even coordinate fleet defense with other ships in the squadron. In the so-called “Armageddon mode,” Aegis could track and fire automatically, without any input at all from the crew beyond turning it on. Any target meeting certain criteria of speed, course, and altitude within ten miles of the ship would be fired on.

  The vessel chosen to house Aegis was the end product of a long line of compromises. Originally designed as destroyers, the Ticonderoga-class cruisers had been intended as antiair warfare complements to a new type of ship, the nuclear strike cruisers (CSGN) that were to have been fitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Aegis was to have been fitted to both of them, creating an electronically interlocked AAW system. Then Congress refused to fund the CSGN program, and cost overruns threatened to torpedo the Ticonderogas and their high-tech Aegis system as well.

  At the beginning of 1980, the Navy changed the Ticonderogas’ classification from destroyer to cruiser, a move that made the cost overruns look better on the Pentagon’s books and better reflected the vessels’ abilities. As Aegis cruisers, the Ticonderogas became a vital part of the Navy’s global strategy. A total of twenty-seven were planned, providing missile and air defense coordination for each Navy carrier battle group as well as the four battleship combat groups.

  America’s Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers were widely regarded as the most capable antiair warships ever developed. U.S.S. Vicksburg, CG-66, was a recent addition to the class, having been laid down by Litton/Ingalls Shipbuilding, launched from the Ingalls floating dock in 1990, and formally commissioned early in 1991. Just over 532 feet long at the waterline, displacing 9,500 tons with a full load, Vicksburg’s hull was low and sleek with a sharply angled bow. Her superstructure was notoriously boxy, sandwiched between two massive gray cubes that faced fore and aft like gigantic bookends. Those cubes housed Vicksburg’s SPY-1B phased-array radars, which were visible on the slightly angled upper surfaces as flat hexagons, one aiming in each direction. The bridge was a flat line of windows planted atop the forward cube, dwarfed by the blunt steel mountain on which it rested.

  Vicksburg’s complement was twenty-four officers and three hundred forty men. Through the tangle of antenna arrays, data links, and satcom dishes, she was a high-tech spider at the center of a vast, electronic web, able to receive and process data from any of the other, ships or aircraft in the squadron or, by satellite, to communicate with CINCPAC in Hawaii or the Joint Chiefs in Washington.

  And the heart of the entire system was Vicksburg’s CIC, where the ship’s battle staff watched the electronic signatures moving within the reach of the ship’s senses and worked to piece together a strategy to deal with them. A seaborne analogue of the E-2C Hawkeye, Vicksburg could serve as a battle management system to coordinate the movements and responses of the entire fleet. Her SPY-1 was a marvel of computer-directed electronics, constantly searching for small, pop-up targets such as aircraft or missiles within forty-five nautical miles of the ship, while simultaneously scanning a much vaster area out to a range of two hundred miles for larger targets.

  Captain Randolph Cunningham of the U.S.S. Vicksburg had just entered the CIC. The Combat Information Center was part of an operational complex called the Command and Control Suite. The room was large, larger than the fact that the ship was built on a Spruance-class destroyer’s hull would have suggested, and it was dominated by four Large Screen Displays, or LSDS, set side by side above a bank of computer consoles.

  Elsewhere around the room were twelve smaller automated status boards, ASTABS in Navy jargon.

  The array of screens was designed to present Vicksburg’s Tactical Department with every piece of information they might conceivably need during battle. Each screen was individually programmable. One LSD might be set to display surface shipping, a second close-in air contacts, a third distant targets, a fourth intelligence data or updates. ASTABS could show the status of ships or aircraft in the squadron, data on tanker loading, ship cargoes, engagement tracks, sub sightings, anything the tactical people needed to help them comprehend the incredible complexity and movement of the participants in modern combat. Seat after seat at console after console was manned by sailors monitoring the electronic world beyond the cruiser’s bulkheads.

  Cunningham studied the displays showing the Vicksburg’s helo status for a moment. The Russian Helix had landed safely, dropped off her passengers, and was now headed for the Kreml with Admiral Dmitriev. The three Russian staff officers were now being escorted forward to Vicksburg’s wardroom. The second helo, the Seahawk carrying Admiral Vaughn and his staff, was inbound with an ETA of four more minutes. He should have met the Russians, he knew, but Vaughn’s instructions about no formal ceremony had been explicit. That was just as well. Seas were rough, and the Soviet officers would probably prefer to be greeted in the dry security of Vicksburg’s wardroom, rather than the spray-drenched openness of the CG’s fantail.

  He would have to go aft to greet Admiral Vaughn, of course. CBG-14’s admiral would expect that.

  He was just about to turn and leave the CIC when the Tactical Officer called to him. “Captain?” The officer was standing behind an ET chief seated at one of the consoles, puzzling at the display on one of the LSDS. “Something funny here.”

  “What do you have, Hark?”

  Commander Gregory Harkowicz pointed. The screen displayed numerous white blips against a dark blue background. Letters and numerals tagged most of the contacts, identifying them as ships and aircraft belonging to the battle group. But there were four close-spaced blips to the northeast, still unidentified.

  Cunningham squinted at the screen. “Aircraft?”

  “No, sir. Surface vessels. Range thirty miles. Contact is intermittent. They come and go. That suggests very small targets, maybe fishing smacks. Speed eight knots.”

  That made sense. Seas were running at three to five feet. A small boat could easily be lost in the radar reflection from the ocean, registering only as it rose to the crest of each wave.

  “How long have they been there?”

  “We picked up something maybe an hour ago, Captain,” the ETC said. “But it disappeared and didn’t show again. This has just been within the last ten minutes.”

  Cunningham stared at the display, trying to milk additional information from the uninformative screen.

  “Five gets you ten it’s a dhow fleet,” he said softly. “But …”

  Harkowicz looked at him. “You’re thinking patrol boat?”

  “Could be. Cruise Druze.”

  The TO chuckled. During the carrier operations off Lebanon during the early eighties, there’d been some concern that one of the warring Lebanese factions might attempt a suicide att
ack on a Navy ship with a light plane or speedboat packed with explosives … or even with a single fanatic on a hang glider. The hypothetical lone commando on a hang glider had been dubbed “Cruise Druze,” and the word had stuck.

  “Give me a Jane’s readout for India, Hark,” Cunningham said. “List only.”

  An ASTAB nearby flickered, and a column of ship names, numbers, and types replaced a readout on fleet fuel consumption. Cunningham scanned the list as it scrolled. His eyes widened. “Stop. Oh … shit.”

  “Sir?” Then Harkowicz saw what the Captain had noticed. “Oh …”

  “Thought I remembered Osas,” Cunningham said. “Eight Osa IIS, each carrying four Styx SSMS. We’d better-“

  “Captain!” the ET chief called. “Unknowns accelerating! Radar makes it twenty knots! Twenty-five … thirty knots!”

  No native dhow could manage thirty knots. “Battle stations!” Cunningham snapped. The Tactical Officer’s hand was already slapping down on a large, red button on a nearby console. “Sound fleet alert!”

  But he wondered if it was not already too late. On the screen, new bogies were appearing, separating as if by magic from the larger blips marking the unknowns.

  “It’s goin’ down!” Harkowicz shouted. “Missile launch! Missile launch!”

  CHAPTER 16

  0739 hours, 26 March

  Patrol Boat K91, INS Pralayi

  Senior Lieutenant Javed Chaudry was a fatalistic man, but that didn’t stop him from slamming his fist against the bridge console and biting off a savage curse as the two Styx missiles roared off into the northwest, dazzling pinpoints of light drawing white contrails across the sky. INS Pratap, Patrol Boat K93, wallowed in the heavy seas to starboard, her two forward SS-N-2 canisters open and empty, the cloud of smoke from the double launch still boiling across the water’s surface.

  He’d hoped to get closer before launching, much closer. The American carrier was barely in range of the giant missiles now, and the launch would alert the U.S. squadron that it was under attack.