Dispatches

by Steven Konkoly

  “I couldn’t help it, Mommy,” he said, turning his head to escape the backpack pushing into his face.

  Mari wanted to scream at the young man in front of them. She’d asked him to reverse the backpack twice already, but he’d just shook his head and mumbled something about it being her fault for having kids.

  “It’s all right, Erik. Next time make sure you pee on the man in front of you,” she said, shoving the black backpack as hard as she could.

  She instantly regretted her action, seeing that it caused a ripple effect in the crowd. The man spun around and raised a fist, his hand hesitating. Mari stepped in front of her children.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said forcefully. “But your backpack has hit my son’s face nonstop since we started. I wish you would wear it on the front of your body. Just until we get on the ferry.”

  “You should have thought of that before having a bunch of illegitimate kids.” He snickered.

  “My husband is the commanding officer of an artillery battalion stationed at the border,” she stated. “Why haven’t you reported to your Defence League unit? The reserves were called up weeks ago. I don’t see anything wrong with you.”

  “What’s the point of dying in a frozen foxhole on the border? Fucking stupid if you ask me,” he replied, keeping his hand up as if he might hit her.

  A thick hand grabbed his wrist. “Her husband is on the border, buying the rest of us time to escape. It’s a time-honored tradition called sacrifice. Something your generation doesn’t know the first thing about.”

  A stocky man with graying hair, dressed in a thick, gray and orange weatherproof jacket, held the man’s wrist in place.

  “Now you will reverse the backpack, or I will beat you senseless and let them walk over you. Your choice,” he said.

  “Fine,” said the young man. “I guess this is how your generation solves things.”

  “That’s right,” he said, nodding at Mari as the guy carefully removed his backpack.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “No. Thank you,” the older man said, squeezing between the young man and Mari. “Get behind your kids again, and I’ll make sure you have smooth sailing for the rest of the trip.”

  She noticed that he carried no backpack or luggage.

  “You’re not carrying anything?” she said.

  “I didn’t have time. My daughter is at Stockholm University. I have to be on this ferry,” he said.

  “Let me know if you need water or food. We have plenty to last the trip—if we ever get on the ferry,” she said.

  “We’ll get on. It’s moving slowly because there’s only one ferry at the terminal, and they’re loading it carefully. All of the ferries will be here shortly. Right now they’re waiting,” said the man.

  “Waiting for what?” she said.

  He leaned back and whispered, “Waiting for NATO to sink the Russian blockade.”

  “What? How could you know that?” she whispered back.

  “Because my son is a lieutenant at the Miinisadam Naval Base a few kilometers from here. I dropped him off before coming here. All hell is breaking loose out there. I’m pretty sure we just heard our own jets fly over.”

  “God help us,” she said, hugging her children.

  “God—and people like your husband and my son,” he said.

  “Say a prayer for them, children,” said Mari, buoyed by a complete stranger’s kindness.

  Chapter 3

  Baltic Sea

  Fifty-two miles north of Gotland, Sweden

  Through the night-vision-enhanced visor on her flight helmet, Lieutenant Commander Robyn Faulks watched the coastline slip past her F/A-18F Super Hornet. At three hundred and ten knots, the light green strip was long gone when she glanced right. She caught a glimpse of another attack aircraft in her flight of six Hornets. In less than a minute, they’d deliver their payload and turn for the Swedish coast, disappearing just as quickly.

  They’d launched from the USS George H. Bush nearly eight hours ago, stopping at Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall to refuel and wait for the final mission “green light.” They didn’t wait for long; the pilots and flight officers rushed to their aircraft less than two hours after arriving. They left with a pair of KC-135 refueling aircraft, the last strategic aircraft still stationed in Europe. The flying “gas stations” topped them off north of Denmark and returned to the protective cover of the United Kingdom’s air defense zone. With the secret approval of the Swedish government, the Hornets flew a low-level profile over the sleeping country, heading toward the Baltic.

  Her helmet-integrated HUD flashed a thirty-second warning, which she knew would be seen by the flight officer seated behind her. The mission profile required the strictest emissions control (EMCON) standards, prohibiting the use of radar, radio gear or internal communications circuits. Silencing the internal link was overkill, but mission planners didn’t want any of the pilots “fat fingering” the wrong button and giving the Russians an excuse to escalate tensions.

  Still, allies were allies, and the United States wasn’t going to turn its back on NATO. The two stealth missiles attached to her wing pylons were a testament to their continued commitment. Twenty seconds. In her HUD, she saw the missiles’ status change to “Armed.” A string of secondary symbols confirmed that latest targeting data uploads had been received less than a minute ago, ensuring that the missiles would reach their targets without using radar.

  Capable of autonomous targeting, the LRASM (Long Range AntiShip Missile) would use a combination of radar, infrared signature and electronic intercept data provided by Finnish sensors to independently detect and track their targets—ensuring the simultaneous delivery of each one-thousand-pound warhead. Only one missile was needed per ship, since the Russian’s Baltic Fleet consisted of nothing heavier than a Sovremenny class destroyer. A reserve missile would loiter twenty miles away from the first Russian vessel, just in case one of the ships got lucky. Within the span of seconds, the naval blockade of the Baltic States would be lifted. Ten seconds to launch.

  She watched the countdown timer, giving a thumbs-up to her flight officer when it hit zero. The aircraft shuddered, adjusting to the sudden reduction in weight. A brilliant yellow-green flash filled her visor, as the LRASM’s booster propelled the cruise missile ahead of the Hornet. The light faded as it pulled away, the missile travelling two hundred knots faster than her aircraft. A second shaking, followed by another night-vision bloom confirmed the successful launch of their final missile. She counted a dozen successful booster ignitions before the last LSARMs were swallowed by the night.

  Her HUD displayed a Time-To-Target (TTT) of twenty-eight minutes. They’d be long gone before the Russian ships hit the bottom of the Baltic. Faulks eased her aircraft into a shallow turn, proud that the United States was not out of the fight.

  “Red Dragon Redux”

  Chapter 4

  USS GRAVELY (DDG-107) off the coast of Delaware

  Early December, 2019

  Lieutenant Commander Gayle Thompson stared into the darkness beyond the starboard bridge wing. The frigid air stung her face, forcing her to squint against the wind created by the ship’s transit. Not even the horizon was discernible.

  There’s nothing out there, she thought.

  She still couldn’t fathom the sheer absence of shipping traffic outside of the Delaware Channel. Four months into the crisis, and the humanitarian aid from Europe had trickled to nothing—not that it had ever really started. Russian aggression across the Eastern European front started within a month of the EMP attack against the United States, effectively drawing NATO into a quagmire of idle military threats and useless political posturing across Europe. One former Soviet satellite nation after another fell to bloodless coups, or in some cases, Blitzkrieg-like attacks. The brief battle in Estonia had been particularly bloody, for both sides. In less than a week, Russian Federation borders extended to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. NATO didn’t expect the Russians to s
top, not with the United States out of the picture.

  Tensions at sea had returned to Cold War levels, an era Thompson had never experienced during her eleven-year career. Few of the sailors onboard Gravely remembered the days when a constant, low-grade fear of the Soviets ruled the sea. NATO and Soviet seaborne units played endless games of cat and mouse, the contest occasionally turning deadly. The Russian surface navy posed little threat in 2019, the supremacy myth surrounding their missile-bristling warships was busted more than two decades earlier. The same couldn’t be said about their submarine force, which was why Gravely had spent the past one hundred and four of the past one hundred and eight days at sea. A four-day stop to reload weapons at the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station represented the crew’s only break since the “event.”

  Thompson had expected to take on additional crewmembers during the stop, but the Atlantic Fleet barely had enough sailors to put the minimum number of required ships to sea. The asteroid strike south of Richmond, Virginia, had killed, injured or “disappeared” more than a quarter of Naval Station Norfolk’s sailors and officers. Even more surprising, she had retained command of Gravely. It seemed logical that Atlantic Fleet commanders would put someone more experienced in charge of one of their most important assets. Thompson had half the sea-time experience of a typical captain. Either she had proven herself worthy during the three weeks following the event, or they had run out of command-eligible officers. She guessed it was a combination of both.

  The door next to her clanged open, spilling red light onto the bridge wing’s crisscrossed metal decking. The officer of the deck held the door open several inches against the wind.

  “Captain, CIC reports a POSSUB bearing zero-six-five/two-nine-five relative. Sonar is working on a classification. TAO requests permission to bring the ship to a new heading of one-one-zero to resolve the bearing,” said the officer.

  She instinctively turned her head toward the relative bearing of the possible submarine, staring once again at a black canvas of howling winds and crashing waves.

  “Come right to course one-one-zero,” she said, grabbing the door handle and pulling it open far enough to slip inside. “Tell the TAO I’m on my way down to CIC.”

  The bridge felt like a sauna compared to the bridge wing, the temperature outside barely hovering above freezing. The familiar smell of burnt coffee permeated the dark space, competing with the salty, open ocean air. She closed the watertight door and locked the handle, hearing the door hiss. The ship’s positive pressure system, designed to prevent biological or chemical weapons intrusion, had recharged the pressure behind the door. The system ran continuously while they were underway.

  “OOD, let’s get a lookout on that relative bearing with night vision. You never know,” she said, heading toward the ladder that would take her off the bridge.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” said the young officer.

  “Captain’s off the bridge,” announced a hidden petty officer to her right, startling her.

  She felt the ship turn as she slid down the ladder, landing in front of the door to the captain’s stateroom. Her stateroom. Located between the bridge and the Combat Information Center, it gave the commanding officer quick access to either critical station, a necessity she had never fully appreciated before assuming responsibility for the lives of Gravely’s crew. A few twists and turns later, she descended to the Combat Information Center entrance.

  “Captain’s in CIC!” yelled a sailor at a nearby console.

  A petty officer at the chart table announced, “Ship is steady on course one-one-zero.”

  Lieutenant Mosely rushed to meet her.

  “Ma’am, I have every sonar tech on the ship crammed into sonar control, trying to figure this out. There’s no traffic out here, so they were able to isolate the signal,” he said.

  “The contact just appeared out of nowhere?” she asked.

  “We’ve had the passive towed array below the thermocline layer for several hours, looking for any long-range stalkers,” he said, walking away. “ST1 Herbert is convinced this contact came into detection range above the layer, either snooping for electronic signatures or receiving updated orders. The submarine just descended below the layer.”

  “Does sonar have any idea what we’re looking at?”

  “They’re still trying to classify the contact.”

  “So this could be surface noise caught in a convergence zone?”

  “They don’t think so. The signature is too distinct to have crossed the layer and bounced around for hundreds of miles. Plus, it appeared too suddenly.”

  She nodded and followed him through the dimly lit CIC to the sonar control room. Beyond the curtain separating the two spaces, several men and women huddled around the AN/SQQ-89 Integrated AntiSubmarine Warfare Display. They quickly made room for her.

  “What do we have, Herbert?”

  “Ma’am, if I had to guess before the analysis was finished, I’d say we’re hearing reactor equipment.”

  “A boomer?”

  “I can’t say, ma’am. Could be a fast-attack boat,” replied the petty officer.

  “Not a surface contact?” she pressed.

  “Negative, Captain. Guardian just lit up our sector. No surface tracks.”

  Shit. The presence of a nuclear-powered submarine was bad news, regardless of the type. It meant Russian or Chinese nuclear assets had been sent closer to the U.S. mainland; a move deemed unacceptable by the National Security Council and Pentagon planners. Gravely’s orders were specific: Hunt and kill any subsurface contacts in their operating area.

  The problem they faced was localization. The towed array gave them a direction, but no distance. Their first tactic would be to send an aircraft down the line of bearing from Gravely, hoping to detect the magnetic disturbance caused by the submarine’s metal hull. Unfortunately, this tactic wasn’t an exact science and could last for hours. Despite the sheer volume of math and science behind antisubmarine warfare operations, luck played an almost equally important role.

  To expedite the process, they’d utilize Guardian’s extensive supply of passive sonobuoys along the detection bearing to fix the location of the sub. Easier said than done against a moving target that could be anywhere along a thirty-to fifty-mile line.

  “Very well,” said Thompson, backing up a few feet. “TAO, report this as a POSSUB, high confidence, and request that Guardian remain on station to assist. We’re going to need their sonobuoys. Set flight quarters for Spotlight One-One. I want the flight crew briefed and the helo in the air within thirty minutes.”

  “I’m on it,” said Mosely, disappearing through the curtain.

  “And TAO?” she said. Mosely reappeared. “Energize the Aegis system. Once the sub figures out we’re prosecuting them, they might do something desperate. I don’t want anything slipping through our net.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” he said enthusiastically.

  Thompson turned to Petty Officer Herbert. “How long until we’ve resolved the bearing?”

  “It’ll take the towed array at least fifteen minutes to steady on our new course. We’ll have a solid bearing to pass on to the helo at that point.”

  “I want to know what we’re up against before the helo is airborne,” she said.

  “If this submarine type is in the catalogue, we’ll get it classified within ten minutes,” said Herbert.

  “Excellent,” she said. “Nice work. All of you.”

  Lieutenant Commander Thompson left the cramped space and caught up with Lieutenant Mosely.

  “I’ll be on the bridge. Let me know as soon as sonar classifies the contact.”

  She barely heard them announce her presence on the bridge. Thompson settled into the captain’s chair and closed her eyes. Her head swam with scenarios and contingencies. Once Lieutenant Mosely passed the report, there would be no going back. Atlantic Fleet commanders would commit Gravely to the fight. Kill or be killed. A seasoned submarine captain versus—don’t go there. She knew Gravely
’s combat systems inside out, and so did her crew. They were ready for anything.

  Chapter 5

  “Guardian” P-8 Poseidon Aircraft

  37 miles southeast of USS GRAVELY

  Lieutenant Commander Kyle West scrutinized the tactical action display in front of him. Seated in a row on the port side of the aircraft’s cabin, four additional operators monitored the aircraft’s sensors and surveillance feeds, making sure his display had the latest data from all transmitting units. The seat pitched downward, pulling his stomach with it. A few more of those, and he might lose his midnight snack. The P-8 was a militarized version of a Boeing 737, not exactly the ideal passenger aircraft for low-altitude submarine-hunting maneuvers. He took a few deep breaths and tried to ignore his worsening stomach situation.

  “Sonobuoys Kilo-Three and Kilo-Four picking up the track,” announced one of the enlisted operators in West’s headset.

  He pressed a button and replied, “Got it. Track hooked.”

  Unable to get a MAD reading from Gravely’s helicopters, Guardian and Sentry, another P-8 aircraft launched from Naval Air Station Oceana and started deploying passive sonobuoy patterns ahead of the reported bearing line in a “hail Mary” attempt to find the submarine. After exhausting more than three-quarters of their sonobuoy load out, they got lucky. A subsurface contact passed through one of the patterns, ten miles away from the helicopter. While Guardian swooped down to deploy more sonobuoys, Spotlight One-One closed the distance to the submarine, hovering nearby with two armed torpedoes.

  So far, the Type 093 Chinese submarine had maintained course and speed, heading toward the Delaware Channel at ten knots, a relatively quiet, but urgent running speed. All of that was about to change. They needed to fine-tune the submarine’s position for a deliberate torpedo attack by the helicopter. He expected all hell to break loose underwater once the submarine was pinged by the active directional sonobuoys.