by Tom Clancy
"Active sonar to starboard, bearing zero-one-zero, low-frequency, probably a sub." And that was not good news.
"Snapshot!" Claggett ordered at once. He'd drilled his crew mercilessly on this scenario, and the boomers did have the best torpedomen in the fleet.
"Setting up on tube four," the weapons petty officer answered. On command, the torpedo was activated. "Flooding four. Tube four is flooded. Weapon is hot."
"Initial course zero-one-zero," the weapons officer said, checking the plot, which didn't reveal much. "Cut the wires, set to go active at one thousand!"
"Set!"
"Match and shoot!" Claggett ordered.
"Fire four, four away!" The sailor nearly broke the firing handle.
"Range four thousand meters," the sonar officer reported. "Large submerged target, beam aspect. Transient—he's launched!"
"So can we. Fire one, fire two!" Ugaki shouted. "Left full rudder," he added the moment the second tube was clear. "Ahead flank!"
"Torpedo in the water. Two torpedoes in the water, bearing zero-one-zero. Ping-and-listen, the torpedoes are in search mode!" sonar reported.
"Oh, shit. We've been here before," Shaw noted, recalling an awful experience on USS Maine. The Army officer aboard and his senior sergeant had just come into the attack center to thank the Captain for his part in the helicopter mission. They stopped cold on the portside, looking around and seeing the tension in the compartment.
"Six-inch room, launch decoy, now!"
"Launching now." There was slight noise a second later, just a jolt of compressed air.
"We have a MOSS set up?" Claggett asked, even though he'd given orders for exactly that.
"Tube two, sir," the weapons tech replied.
"Warm it up."
"Done, sir."
"Okay." Commander Claggett allowed himself a deep breath and time to think. He didn't have much, but he had some. How smart was that Japanese fish? Tennessee was doing ten knots, not having had rudder or speed orders after submerging, and was at three hundred feet of keel depth. Okay.
"Six-inch room, set up a spread of three canisters to launch on my command. "
"Standing by, sir."
"Weps, set the MOSS for three hundred feet, circling as tight as you can at this depth. Make it active as soon as it clears the tube."
"Stand by…set. Tube is flooded."
"Launch."
"MOSS away, sir."
"Six-inch room, launch now!"
Tennessee shuddered again, with three decoys ejected into the sea along with the torpedo-based lure. The approaching torpedo now had a very attractive false target to track.
"Surface the ship! Emergency surface!"
"Emergency surface, aye," the chief of the boat replied, reaching himself for the air manifold, "Full rise on the planes!"
"Full rise, aye!" the helmsman repealed, pulling back on his control yoke.
"Conn, sonar, the inbound torpedoes are still in ping-and-listen. Our outbound unit is now on continuous pinging. It has a sniff."
"Their fish is like an early 48, troops," Claggett said calmly. His demeanor was a lie, and he knew that, but the crew might not. "Remember the three rules of a -48. It has to be a valid target, it has to be over eight hundred yards, and it has to have a bearing rate. Helm, all stop."
"All stop, aye. Sir, engine room answers all stop."
"Very well, we'll let her coast up now," the Captain said, out of things to say now. He looked over at the Army people and winked. They looked rather pale. Well, that was one advantage of being black, wasn't it? Claggett thought.
Tennessee look a thirty-degree up-angle, killing a lot of her forward as she rose and tumbling several people to the deck, it came so abruptly Claggett held on to the red-and-white periscope-control wheel to steady himself.
"Depth?"
"Breaking the surface now, sir!" the COB reported. A second later came a rush of exterior noise, and then the submarine crashed sickeningly back down.
"Rig for ultraquiet. "
The shaft was stopped now. Tennessee wallowed on the surface while three hundred feet down and half a mile aft, the MOSS was circling in and out of the decoy bubbles. He'd done all that he could do. A crewman reached into his pocket for a smoke, then realized that he'd lost his pack topside.
"Our unit is in acquisition!" sonar reported.
"Come right! " Ugaki said, trying to be calm and succeeding, but the American torpedo had run straight through the decoy field…just as his had done, he remembered. He looked around his control room. The faces were on him, just as they had been the other time, but this time the other boat had shot first despite his advantage, and he only needed a look at the plot to see that he'd never know if his second submarine attack had succeeded or not. "I'm sorry," he said to his crew, and a few heads had time to nod at his final, sincere apology to them.
"Hit!" sonar called next.
"Thank you, Sonar," Claggett acknowledged.
"The enemy fish are circling below us, sir…they seem to be…yeah, they're chasing into the decoy…we're getting some pings, but…"
"But the early -48s didn't track stationary surface targets, Chief," Claggett said quietly. The two men might have been the only people breathing aboard. Well, maybe Ken Shaw, who was standing at the weapons panel. It only made things worse that you couldn't hear the ultrasonic noise of a torpedo sonar.
"The damned things run forever."
"Yep." Claggett nodded. "Raise the ESM," he added as an afterthought.
The sensor mast went up at once, and people cringed at the noise.
"Uh, Captain, there's an airborne radar bearing three-five-one."
"Strength?"
"Low but increasing. Probably a P-3, sir."
"Very well."
It was too much for the Army officer. "We just sit still?"
"That's right."
Sato brought the 747 in largely from memory. There were no runway lights, but he had enough from the moon to see what he was doing, and once again the copilot marveled at the man's skill as the aircraft's landing lights caught reflections from the lights on the ground. The landing was slightly to the right of the centerline, but Sato managed a straight run to the end, this time without his usual look over at the junior officer. He was bringing the aircraft right onto the taxiway when there was a flash in the distance.
Major Sato was the first Eagle back to Kobler, actually having passed two damaged aircraft on his way in. There was activity on the ground, but the only radio chatter was incoherent. He had little choice in any case. His fighter was running on vapors and memory now, all the fuel gauges showing almost nothing Also without lights, the aviator chose the proper glide-slope and touched down in exactly the right spot. He didn't see the softball-size submunition his nosegear hit. The fighter's nose collapsed, and the Eagle slid, pinwheeling off the end of the runway. There was just enough vapor in the tanks to start a fire, then an explosion to scatter parts over the Kobler runway. A second Eagle, half a mile behind Sato's, found another bomblet and exploded. The twenty remaining fighters angled away, calling on their radios for instructions. Six of them turned for the commercial field. The rest looked for and approached the large twin runways on Tinian, not knowing that they, too, had been sprinkled with cluster munitions from a series of Tomahawk missiles. Roughly half survived the landing without hitting anything
Admiral Chandraskatta was in his control room, watching the radar display. He'd have to recall his fighters soon. He didn't like risking his pilots in night operations, but the Americans were up in strength, doing another of their shows of force. And surely they could attack and destroy his fleet if they wished, but now? With a war against Japan under way, would America choose to initiate another combat action? No. His amphibious force was now at sea, and in two days, at sunset, the time would come.
The B-1's were lower than the flight crews had ever driven them. These were reservists, mostly airline pilots, assigned by a particularly beneficent Pentagon (with
the advice of a few senior members of Congress) to a real combat aircraft for the first time in years. For practice bombing missions over land, they had a standard penetration altitude of no less than two hundred feet, more usually three hundred, because even Kansas farms had windmills and people erected radio towers in the damnedest places—but not at sea. Here they were down to fifty feet, and smokin', one pilot observed, nervously entrusting his aircraft to the terrain-avoidance system. His group of eight was heading due south, having turned over Dondra Head. The other four were heading northwest after using a different navigational marker. There was lots of electronic activity ahead, enough to make him nervous, though none of it was on him yet, and he allowed himself the sheer exhilaration of the moment, flying over Mach-1, and doing it so low that his bomber was trailing a different sort of vapor trail, more like an unlimited-class racing boat, and maybe cooking some fish along the way…
There.
"Low-level contacts from the north!"
"What?" The Admiral looked up. "Range?"
"Less than twenty kilometers, coming in very fast!"
"Are they missiles?"
"Unknown, Admiral!"
Chandraskatta looked down at his plot. There they were, the opposite direction from the American carrier aircraft. His fighters were not in a position to—
"Inbound aircraft!" a lookout called next.
"Engage?" Captain Mehta asked.
"Shoot first without orders?" Chandraskatta ran for the door, emerging onto the flight deck just in time to see the white lines in the water even before the aircraft causing them.
"Coming up now," the pilot said, aiming himself just at the carrier's bridge. He pulled back on the stick, and when it vanished under his nose, checked his altitude indicator.
"Pull up!" the voice-warning system told him in the usual sexy voice.
"I already did, Marilyn." It sounded like a Marilyn to the TWA pilot.
Next he checked his speed. Just under nine hundred knots. Wow. The noise this big mother would make…
The sonic boom generated by the huge aircraft was more like a bomb blast, knocking the Admiral off his feet and shattering glass on the wheelhouse well over his head and wrecking other topside gear. Another followed seconds later, and then he heard more still as the massive aircraft buzzed over his fleet. He was slightly disoriented as he stood, and there were glass fragments on the flight deck as he made his way back under cover. Somehow he knew his place was on the bridge.
"Two radars are out," he heard a petty officer say. "Rajput reports her SAMs are down."
"Admiral," a communications lieutenant called, holding up a growler phone.
"Who is this?" Chandraskatta asked.
"This is Mike Dubro. The next time we won't be playing. I am authorized to tell you that the U.S. Ambassador is now meeting with your Prime Minister…"
"It is in everyone's best interest that your fleet should terminate its operations," the former Governor of Pennsylvania said after the usual introductory pleasantries.
"You may not order us about, you know."
"That was not an order, Madame Prime Minister. It was an observation. I am also authorized to tell you that my government has requested an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council to discuss your apparent intentions to invade Sri Lanka. We will offer to the Security Council the service of the U.S. Navy to safeguard the sovereignty of that country. Please forgive me for speaking bluntly, but my country does not intend to see the sovereignty of that country violated by anyone. As I said, it is in everyone's interest to prevent a clash of arms."
"We have no such intentions," the Prime Minister insisted, taken very aback by the directness of this message after the earlier one she'd ignored.
"Then we are agreed," Ambassador Williams said pleasantly. "I will communicate that to my government at once."
It took nearly forever, in this case just over half an hour, before the first, then the second torpedo stopped circling, then stopped pinging. Neither found the MOSS a large-enough target to engage, but neither found anything else, either.
"Strength on that P-3 radar?" Claggett asked.
"Approaching detection values, sir."
"Take her down, Mr. Shaw. Let's get below the layer and tool on out of here."
"Aye, Cap'n." Shaw gave the necessary orders. Two minutes later, USS Tennessee was underwater, and five minutes after that at six hundred feet, turning southeast at a speed often knots. Soon thereafter they heard splashes aft, probably sonobuoys, but it took a long time for a P-3 to generate enough data to launch an attack, and Tennessee wasn't going to linger about.
47—Brooms
"Not with a bang but a whimper?" the President asked.
"That's the idea," Ryan said, selling the phone down. Satellite imagery showed that whatever the losses had been in the air battle, the Japanese had lost another fourteen aircraft due to cluster munitions on their airfields. Their principal search radars were gone, and they'd shot off a lot of SAMs. The next obvious step was to isolate the islands entirely from air and sea traffic, and that could be done before the end of the week. The press release was already being prepared if the necessity presented itself.
"We've won," the National Security Advisor said. "It's just a matter of convincing the other side."
"You've done well, Jack," Durling said.
"Sir, if I'd managed to get the job done properly, it never would have started in the first place," Ryan replied after a second's pause. He remembered getting things started along those lines…about a week too late to matter. Damn.
"Well, we seem to have done that with India, according to what Dave Williams just cabled in." The President paused. "And what about this?"
"First we worry about concluding hostilities."
"And then?"
"We offer them an honorable way out." Upon elaboration, Jack was pleased to see that the Boss agreed with him.
There would be one more thing, Durling didn't say, but he needed just a little more thinking about it. For the moment it was enough that America looked to be winning this war, and with it he'd won re-election for saving the economy and safeguarding the rights of American citizens. It had been quite na interesting month, the President thought, looking at the other man in the room and wondering what might have come to pass without him. After Ryan left, he placed a telephone call to the Hill.
One other advantage of airborne-radar aircraft was that they made counting coup a lot easier. They could not always show which missile killed which aircraft, but they did show them dropping off the screen.
"Port Royal reports recovery complete," a talker said.
"Thank you," Jackson said. He hoped the Army aviators weren't too disappointed to have landed on a cruiser instead of Johnnie Reb, but he needed his deck space.
"I count twenty-seven kills," Sanchez said. Three of his own fighters had fallen, with only one of the pilots rescued. The casualties were lighter than expected, though that fact didn't make the letter-writing any easier for the CAG.
"Well, it's not exactly like the Turkey Shoot, but it wasn't bad. Tack on fourteen more from the Tomahawks. That's about half their fighter strength—most of their F-I5's—and they only have the one Hummer left. They're on the short end from now on." The battle-force commander went over the other data. A destroyer gone and the rest of their Aegis ships in the wrong place to interfere with the combat action. Eight submarines definitely destroyed. The overall operational concept had been to detach the arms from the body first, just as had been done in the Persian Gulf, and it had proved to be even easier over water than over land. "Bud, if you were commanding the other side, what would you try next?"
"We still can't invade." Sanchez paused. "It's a losing game any way you cut it, but the last time we had to come this way…" He looked at his commander.
"There is that. Bud, get a Tom ready for a flight with me in the back."
"Aye aye, sir." Sanchez made his way off.
"You thinking what I am?" Stenni
s's captain asked with a raised eyebrow.
"What do we got to lose, Phil?"
"A pretty good admiral, Rob," he replied quietly.
"Where do you keep your radios in this barge?" Jackson asked with a wink.
"Where have you been?" Goto asked in surprise.
"In hiding, after your patron kidnapped me." Koga walked in without so much as an announcement, took a seal without being bidden, and generally displayed the total lack of manners that proclaimed his renewed power. "What do you have to say for yourself.'" the former Prime Minister demanded of his successor.
"You cannot talk to me that way." But even these words were weak.
"How marvelous. You lead our nation to ruin, but you insist on deference from someone whom your master almost killed. With your knowledge?"
Koga asked lightly.
"Certainly not—and who murdered the—"
"Who murdered the criminals? Not I," Koga assured him. "There is a more important question: what are you going to do?"
"Why, I haven't decided that yet." This attempt at a strong statement fell short on several counts.
"You haven't spoken to Yamata yet, you mean."
"I decide things for myself!"
"Excellent. Do so now."
"You cannot order me about."
"And why not? I will soon be back in that seat. You have a choice. Either you will resign your position this morning or this afternoon I will speak in the Diet and request a vote of no-confidence. It is a vote you will not survive. In either case you are finished." Koga stood and started to leave. "I suggest you do so honorably."
People were lined up in the terminal, standing in line at the counters to get tickets home, Captain Sato saw, as he walked past with a military escort. He was only a young lieutenant, a paratrooper still apparently eager to fight, which was more than could be said for the others in the building. The waiting jeep raced away, heading for the military airfield. The natives were out now, unlike before, carrying signs urging the "Japs" to leave.
Some of them ought to be shot for their insolence, Sato thought, still coming to terms with his grief. Ten minutes later, he entered one of Kobler's hangars. Fighters were circling overhead, probably afraid to stray offshore, he thought.
