The Monroe Doctrine

by James Rosone

  They’d spent the last two days getting into position around the Gulf of Oman. During this transit, they hadn’t come across any subs or surface warships. That was a good thing. It meant they should be able to wreak havoc on the merchant fleets sailing to and from the Gulf until a proper convoy system and escorts could be dispatched to deal with them.

  “It’s a big fat juicy target, sir. It looks to be flying a Greek flag while the other one is Italian,” commented Chen’s XO as he looked at the target on the nearby monitor.

  Chen continued peering through the periscope. His XO was right—they’d come across a large oil tanker. Then, maybe two miles behind the tanker, was a cargo container ship around the same size.

  “Down scope,” Chen called out.

  “Down scope, aye.”

  Chen turned to his XO. “That was a good find—both NATO-member-flagged ships. I think it’s time we start sending some tonnage to the bottom.”

  The XO smiled and nodded, as did the other officers on the Conn.

  Captain Chen turned to his sonar operator. “Sonar, Conn. Designate Sierra 1 and Sierra 2 Master 1 and Master 2.”

  “Conn, Sonar. Sierra 1 and 2 now designated Master 1 and 2,” replied the sonar operator.

  Chen smiled. It was time to hunt. “Helm, increase speed ahead two-thirds, five-degree down angle. Make our depth one hundred meters.”

  “Increasing speed to ahead two-thirds, five-degree down angle. Depth one hundred meters, aye, sir.”

  “Weapons Officer, load all tubes. Make weapons ready in all respects. Load tubes one through six.”

  “Load all tubes, make weapons ready in all respects, all tubes. Aye, sir.”

  Retrieving the phone, Captain Chen took a deep breath and made an announcement, one the crew had been anxiously awaiting since they’d learned about the start of the war: “Battle stations, torpedo.”

  *******

  10 Minutes Later

  Once the Changzheng 32 got within six thousand yards of the first target, their sonar detected another group of ships heading towards them. They’d spotted two freighters and a single tanker heading towards the Strait of Hormuz. That put the count at two ships leaving the strait and three heading in.

  Captain Chen smiled at the news. This is almost too easy. He almost wondered how many ships they could ultimately sink if they stayed here. He only wished they had mines with them. Maybe the Iranians will help us out with that one.

  Turning to his weapons officer, Captain Chen gave the order: “Weps, fire tube one at Master 1. Fire tube two at Master 2.”

  “Firing tube one at Master 1. Firing tube two at Master 2, aye.”

  Chen grabbed for the handset. “Conn, Sonar. Designate those other ships heading towards the strait Master 3, 4, and 5.”

  “Sonar, Conn. Designating Sierra 3, 4, and 5 Master 3, 4, and 5, aye.”

  “Time to impact is eight minutes,” the weapons officer announced.

  “Excellent. Weps, get us a firing solution on those three targets and let’s put a torpedo in them as well. Once we’ve fired on them, get our tubes reloaded. We’re going to do our best to slip away and go find us some additional ships to sink,” Captain Chen ordered.

  The officers on the bridge smiled broadly. This was a turkey shoot. There wasn’t a single enemy warship in the area that could even pose a threat to them. By the time the allies realized what had happened, they’d have sunk three large container ships and two massive oil tankers.

  *******

  Thuraakunu, Maldives

  Captain Luang sat in front of the computer screen in the small house they were using. He was looking at the real-time satellite surveillance of what was going on in the Gulf of Oman. From what he could see, a total of eight ships had been attacked in the area over a span of five hours. Coast Guard ships from Oman and a couple of naval vessels had been sent to assist in the recovery of the crews and to try to figure out what had happened.

  Luang knew what had happened: their new submarine had just struck and made its presence known. As he continued to examine the scene, he wrote down the type of ships that appeared to have been hit and whether they were traveling to or from the Arabian Gulf. Then he moved the satellite picture over to look at the nearby naval ports. In Oman, he could see their navy appeared to be sorting some of their frigates and destroyers. In Bahrain, it appeared the Americans were starting to sortie some of their warships out of the 5th Fleet Headquarters.

  He hoped the Iranians would hold up their end of the bargain. The bastards aren’t exactly a reliable partner, Luang thought privately. Regardless, he wrote up the initial results of Changzheng 32’s attack and what appeared to be the American and Arab reactions to it and sent it off to Beijing.

  His next task was obtaining the needed food and other dry stocks required to resupply them. He’d need to get it all loaded onto their fishing trawler and head out to the rendezvous point in a couple of days.

  Chapter Nine

  Hospitalization

  Bay Pines VA Hospital

  St. Petersburg, Florida

  “Afternoon, Major Ryan. How are you feeling today?” asked a nurse as she began the process of checking his vitals.

  Ryan grunted. “Like a freight train ran me over,” he grumbled. “Is it possible to get another painkiller? This shoulder is really starting to throb.”

  The nurse nodded as she finished typing something into her computer. “Sure thing, Major. The doctor has authorized you two 10/325 Percocets every four hours for the pain. Let me sign two of them out for you from the Pyxis. I’ll be right back.”

  The nurse pushed her computer tray out the door and made her way to get him a couple of pain pills.

  It had been nearly a day since his surgery. The pain Ryan felt was still intense. The doctors had told him they’d gotten the infection under control; still, his body ached everywhere. His right shoulder was in a sling and taped up, and he wasn’t really able to move it—not that he wanted to. The slightest bit of movement nearly caused him to pass out.

  The doctors said he’d been lucky—the bullet that had hit him had gone straight through him. He’d been incredibly fortunate that he’d been hit by an armor-piercing round and not the standard ball ammo, or worse, a hollow-point. Had that happened, chances were he would have bled out and died back in Cuba or suffered significantly worse damage to his shoulder. As it was, the wound had become infected and they had had to cut some of the surrounding tissue out and pack it with special medication to keep the infection from spreading. He was in for a rough few days.

  When the nurse returned a few minutes later, he asked, “Ma’am, do you know if there’s a phone I can use to contact my wife? Also, if they drive down here, is it possible for my family to see me?”

  The nurse looked at him sympathetically. “I can move the room phone over to your bed for you. As to visiting, yes, your family can visit if they drive down here. I’m not aware of any civilian airlines being allowed to fly into any of our local airports at the moment. The military’s using them all, and frankly, I’m not even sure it’d be safe to fly here. I heard a Delta Airlines flight was shot down over Ocala the other day.”

  “How did that happen?” Ian probed. “I thought we’d largely secured the skies over south Florida. Sorry, I’m an Air Force pilot,” he clarified.

  The nurse just shrugged her shoulders. “No idea. I’ve been so busy since the start of the war that I haven’t had time to read or listen to any kind of news. All I know is our hospital is at max capacity with wounded from the war. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t try and transfer you to another hospital in the center of the country in a few days once you’ve recovered a bit more. They’re trying to keep all the military and VA hospitals in Florida available for the wounded coming in from Cuba; they get them stabilized and then transfer them to a hospital further away.”

  When the nurse left his room, Ryan reached for the phone and called his wife’s cell number. He’d talked with her once since he’d arri
ved in Florida, but it had been a short call before his surgery, mostly to just tell her he was alive and he’d be OK.

  The call rang twice, and then he heard the most beautiful voice in the world.

  “Is that you, baby?” the voice asked, almost cracking with emotion.

  “It sure is, babe. I’m out of my last surgery and doing fine. A little sore and banged up, but I’m alive and doing fine,” he tried to explain as his voice quivered with emotion.

  He heard some sobbing and crying on the other end for a moment before she sniffled a bit and got herself under control.

  “Are they still keeping you at Bay Pines, Ian?”

  “I don’t know. I plan on asking the doctor as soon as I see him. How have the kids been behaving? Are they doing all right with your parents?”

  When their base had come under a false attack during the first day of the war, his wife, Lory, and their six kids had left to go stay with her parents in Tennessee. That was eight days ago.

  “I want to come see you,” she announced, not answering his question.

  “Why don’t you wait until I talk with the doctor and find out if they’re keeping me here or sending me somewhere else? I’d hate for you to drive twelve hours to St. Pete, only for me to get transferred to some hospital in Omaha or something.”

  There was a momentary pause. Finally, Lory said, “Fine. If I don’t hear something from you by tomorrow morning, though, I’m driving down.”

  “What about the kids? You aren’t bringing them down here, are you?”

  “No, I’ll leave them here with my parents. They say it’s safe again, but who knows? I heard on the news a Delta plane was shot down over Ocala. The FAA had only reopened domestic air travel to Florida the day before, and then that incident.

  “Oh, honey, it’s been so scary these last eight days. Then when you got shot down…I didn’t know what to think. I think around the second day after you’d gone missing, someone from the Wing told me you’d been recovered by a Special Forces team. They were just waiting on the right opportunity to get you out of there and back to Florida.”

  Lory almost lost it again as she recounted those first few days when he’d been reported missing. Their kids were little—all six of them under the age of nine. But even they knew something bad had happened to Daddy. They just didn’t know what or were too little to fully understand.

  Ryan pulled the receiver away from his ear and held it against his chest as he used his left hand to wipe away some tears. He took a couple of breaths in to regain control of his emotions as he heard his wife ask him a question.

  “Sorry about that, Lory. Can you say that again?”

  “I was asking if you had heard anything about the rest of your squadron? Are they doing OK?”

  “No, I haven’t talked to anyone from the squadron yet. I’m not sure if they know I’ve been recovered or that I’m in a VA hospital right now. They’re probably busy as heck flying missions,” Ryan replied.

  Thinking about his squadron made him feel bad that he wasn’t there to help them. He honestly had no idea if any of them had been shot down like him or killed.

  In the background, Ian could hear the kids acting up. It sounded like his two boys were arguing with one of his daughters and things were getting tense.

  “I’m on the phone with Daddy. Quiet down!” Lory barked. The kids stopped arguing immediately but rushed toward the phone, begging to talk with him.

  Ian took a few minutes to talk with the older kids. He told them he was all right, that he’d gotten hurt but the doctors had fixed him up like new.

  It was incredibly hard talking with his kids and not being there for them. They told him they were scared. They wanted to know if it was safe to go outside or if the Chinese might bomb Grandma’s house or her neighborhood. Being a fighter pilot, that was hard to hear. It was his job to protect the country from those kinds of attacks. Instead, here he was, shot down during the first day of the war. The chances of him getting another aircraft and getting back into the action was somewhere between zip and zilch if he had to guess. The Air Force didn’t exactly have spare F-22s, and they weren’t manufacturing any new ones.

  Ten minutes later, he finally said his goodbyes to his wife and the kids. They needed to get going, and he was being told the doctor would be in to see him soon.

  When the doctor did finally arrive, he went over some of the details of Major Ryan’s injury and what they’d done to patch him up.

  “So, Doc, am I staying here or getting transferred somewhere else?” Ryan asked.

  “Where’s your family staying, Major?” asked the doctor.

  “My wife and kids are staying with family in Nashville.”

  “Well, Major, I think I can get you transferred to the Nashville VA hospital,” the doctor said with a wink. “I’ll put in the transfer paperwork. Once you’re seventy-two hours post-surgery, we’ll move you.”

  For Major Ryan, this was the best news he’d heard since he’d learned he was getting out of Cuba. He’d be able to recover at a hospital near his wife and kids.

  He couldn’t help but smile as he called Lory back to let her know that in forty-eight-hours, they’d be transferring him to a hospital near them. She and the kids would be able to see him in a few days, and on a regular basis too.

  His wife cried a bit but was happy they’d be reunited soon. He’d be able to see his family and eventually come home to finish recovering, surrounded by his wife and kids.

  *******

  Orlando VA Medical Center

  Orlando, Florida

  “Good afternoon, Sergeant. Sorry for my delay, I know I was supposed to speak with you an hour ago,” the doctor said as he walked over to a computer and large monitor near the bed.

  Sergeant Rob Fortney only shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t like he had any place to be.

  The doctor logged in to the computer and pulled up Rob’s digital file. A moment later, he brought up an image of this morning’s X-ray on the large monitor for them to look at together.

  “Your X-ray from this morning looks good. They were able to remove the last little bits of shrapnel from your thigh. It also looks like your femur only sustained a couple of stress fractures. These will heal nicely over the next few weeks, provided you take it easy and do your best to stay off it. We’re also giving you an experimental drug that’s supposed to help your bones heal up substantially faster. In conjunction with that, we want you to take some calcium supplements for the next couple of weeks. I think between a few of these supplements and you taking it easy, we’re going to have you patched up like new within the month.”

  The doctor then pulled up another image, this one of his head. “Your concussion also looks good. Your latest CT scan and MRI don’t show any lingering trauma or problems, and the cognitive brain test came back normal, so that’s good.”

  “That all sounds great, Doc. But how long does it mean I’ll have to stay here?” asked Fortney.

  The doctor closed the files and logged out of the computer before he made eye contact. “Well, technically, we can release you tomorrow. But before we do that, I need to know something. Do you have a place to live or anyone that might be able to help you?”

  Fortney had been living with his older brother, Eric, in Brandon prior to the war. The plan was for him to live there while he went to USF in Tampa so he could save some money and just focus on school—not having to worry about getting a job to pay for an apartment was the best Eric could offer him. Eric had opted to become a firefighter instead of being a cop like their dad and grandfather before them. He’d also served in the military, as a firefighter in the Air Force.

  Sergeant Fortney nodded to the doctor. “I do. I’m staying with my brother.”

  “OK, then why don’t you contact him and see if he can pick you up?” the doctor advised. “I’d also recommend contacting your Guard unit and find out what they want you to do. When you get ready to leave, I’ll write up a profile for you outlining what you’ll be
allowed to do physically for the next four weeks. You’ll likely need a little bit of physical therapy before you’ll be able to return to full duty, but we’re going to wait to start that until those stress fractures heal up.”

  “All right, Doc. That sounds like a plan to me. My brother’s a firefighter, so let me call him and see if he’s off and able to pick me up. If he’s not, can I stay here until he is?”

  “Yeah, I don’t see that being a problem. We can let you stay a day or two longer if needed, but that’d be about it before we’d have to transfer you to a longer-care VA facility. We’re starting to get a lot of casualties coming in from Cuba and we need the bed space.”

  When the doctor left, Fortney reached for the phone near his bed. His brother picked up on the first ring. He was technically on duty the following day, but he was sure his boss would give him the day off or that he could swap a day with someone else.

  The following morning, Fortney was reminded of why his family had chosen to settle in Florida and why he’d made the decision himself never to leave. It was early December, and the weather was in the low seventies, with virtually no humidity this time of year. It was pure paradise.

  Fortney was sitting in a wheelchair at the hospital exit when Eric’s jet-black Ford F-150 Raptor pulled up and stopped right in front of him. He smiled at the sight of his brother’s new toy. When Fortney had talked with Eric a week ago, he’d told him Ford had been offering some ridiculous discounts to military, veterans, and first responders since the start of the war. He’d traded in his four-year-old F-150 for the fancy high-end sport version and essentially kept his payments the same.

  Eric placed the truck in park, hopped out and came over to him. “Damn, it’s good to see you, little brother. How’s the leg feeling?”

  Eric picked up his meager belongings and tossed them in the crew cab. The orderly pushed the wheelchair a bit closer to the passenger door so Rob wouldn’t have as far to walk with the forearm crutches he needed to use for the next month.