Tom Clancy Firing Point

by Maden, Mike

  The “Grape” had just pulled the fuel hose, crouching low beneath the slowly turning blades, powered by two GE T700/CT7 turboshaft engines. They’d been ordered to find the Glazov ASAP. As per SOPs, the purple-shirted Grape had shown Callaway the fuel mixture she put in his tank—like he was ever going to object—and the red-shirted ordnance crew had pulled the safety pins from their load of four anti-ship AGM-114 Hellfires, and a Mark 54 air-launched, anti-submarine torpedo. It was designed to be a non-combat mission but the Navy liked to be prepared for all eventualities.

  Especially the killing kind.

  It was pitch black, and despite its bulk, the big Ticonderoga-class Luzon was yawing in a cool, stiff wind that whipped the water into a Pitch 3, Roll 3 situation. Manageable, but not ideal.

  Callaway waited anxiously for the twenty-two-year-old LSE to clear him for launch before the weather got worse, and the night even darker. Night flying under the best of conditions—even with night vision—still induced maximum pucker factor for any pilot but especially a helo pilot. But that was the job he’d signed up for after graduating from Annapolis—Canoe U.

  Tonight’s mission was to find the sub and force it to the surface. Neither objective was easy.

  Either could get you killed.

  Callaway knew that finding an improved Kilo-class running on electric batteries while submerged was nearly impossible. Finding one ASAP was even more impossible, even with two Romeos on the hunt, the most advanced ASW helicopters in the air today.

  The plan was to first drop their entire complement of AN/SSQ-101 ADAR passive sonobuoys in a wide grid pattern centered on the Russian sub tender Penza. Each device deployed a translucent, pentagon-shaped umbrella of hydrophones listening for known improved Kilo-class sound signatures.

  With the help of the Romeo’s onboard computer, Callaway’s AWO would analyze the ambient sound forms to identify the Glazov’s signature by comparing them to all known submarine signatures stored in the Navy’s highly classified digital library.

  Making the impossible even more difficult was the fact that Callaway’s Romeo had been out of commission for several hours yesterday with a malfunctioning laser altimeter and the loss of hydraulic boost. That meant Callaway had to maintain seventy-five pounds of constant pressure on the left pedal just to keep it from yawing while also fighting the unboosted collective and cyclic inputs. Thanks to the constant training in “loss of control” emergency scenarios, the sweat-drenched pilot and his crew made it back to the ship, but it was a close call. Thanks to the two dozen perennially shorthanded, sleep-deprived maintenance people, the machine got fixed.

  It was nothing new for the maintenance crew. It was a 24/7/365 job to keep the helicopters aloft, and both seldom were, at least simultaneously. Keeping nearly twenty-four thousand pounds of machine and munitions in the sky without crashing was no easy feat while at sea. The salt air and water played hell with anything that could rust, clog, or corrode, and both were murder on the electronics gear, which was the primary weapon of the fabled helicopter.

  Now it was up to Callaway and the other Seahawk to get to the search area and begin ASW operations, and to do it all at night. With the naked eye it was harder than hell flying just two hundred feet above the black water and beneath a black sky, with no horizon for reference. Unless you had the luxury of NVGs, night flying over the Pacific meant flying by instruments, and when the instruments failed, people died. Most of the folks back home, including Callaway’s own parents, didn’t realize how often those instruments failed, including night vision.

  His wife did. Lieutenant Anne “Snow White” Callaway flew the nearly identical MH-60S “Knighthawk” airframe on vertical replenishment (VERTREP) and search-and-rescue (SAR) missions in the same carrier strike group. They were the first married couple ever assigned to their CSG. While fixed-wingers obsessed on call signs, most helicopter pilots eschewed them. It just wasn’t their thing. But the CSG flight ops center had given the Callaways their call signs not only to be able to distinguish the two pilots with the same last name during flight operations, but also to let the two married partners know when the other one was flying.

  C’mon, for Pete’s sake, Callaway said to himself, keeping one eye on the signalman’s red light wands and one on the pitching deck, which seemed to be pitching even harder now. His airborne tactical officer (ATO) and copilot was hyperfocused on the twin-engine readouts.

  “Finally,” Callaway whispered in his comms as the enlisted landing signalman switched his red wands to green. The LSE extended his arms and lifted them up laterally, indicating to Callaway that he had permission to raise the Romeo into a hover position before taking off.

  Callaway increased the throttle and raised the collective, holding his cyclic and pedals neutral to the stiff breeze buffeting the ship as he brought it into a hover. As the digital gauges swept and climbed across the glass cockpit, the ATO called out the numbers. “Looking good,” he added hopefully, like a prayer, as he always did during liftoff. But his “prayer” was routine, and pilots were devoted to their routines, especially ones that kept them from getting killed, even the superstitious ones.

  The LSE then began twirling the green wands, granting permission for Callaway to begin his turn forty-five degrees right, and then power away. In reality, helicopter pilots ignored these instructions from the man on deck—his ass wasn’t in the seat, and his feet weren’t on the pedals. The transition from hover to forward flight was the most dangerous part of the flight. Helicopters needed forward momentum to actually fly, and physical forces trying to crash his aircraft played their hardest in the movement between the vertical and horizontal planes.

  This transitional window was also the reason why the ATO remained fixated on the readouts. The Seahawk was perfectly capable of flying on a single engine when it was traveling at speed and in a forward direction. But the Seahawk became a flying brick if one of the engines quit during the transition window. If Callaway couldn’t get enough air speed when an engine quit, it meant crashing into the Pacific strapped to twelve tons of metal and munitions plunging toward the ocean floor.

  “Gauges green, on the go,” Callaway said. He gently eased the cyclic forward and the collective farther upward as he hit the pedals to begin his turn out over the brooding waters of the rolling black Pacific.

  Within moments, the helicopter rose to its cruising altitude, then turned full throttle, racing through the starless night just two hundred feet above the deck toward the target some two hundred and twenty miles distant.

  * * *

  —

  One of the many features of the MH-60R Seahawk that made it such a formidable anti-ship and anti-submarine weapon was its Block III upgraded Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System (LAMPS). LAMPS was developed to extend the reach of surface vessels whose radar and sonar systems were limited by the physics of range and distance.

  Putting Callaway’s Seahawk two hundred miles in front of the Luzon allowed it to feed its data via LAMPS back to the ship in real time. This exponentially increased the Luzon’s ability to deal with surface and underwater threats beyond the horizon.

  In effect, everything Lieutenant Callaway’s Seahawk was seeing, optically or electronically, the CIC of the Luzon was also seeing.

  It also meant that Admiral Talbot, several thousand miles away in Washington, D.C., was receiving the same real-time information. Because of the sensitive nature of the mission, President Ryan wanted his most experienced naval officer in charge of the operation. It was imperative that the Glazov be found and neutralized, but it was in no one’s interest to start a shooting war with the Russians.

  At least, not yet.

  39

  The heavy wipers slashed away the rain spattering the bridge windows but Captain Yevgraf still couldn’t see a thing in the cloud-darkened night sky, including those damned American helicopters circling his ship high overhead—two MH-60R Seahawks, according
to his electronic warfare officer.

  Heavy cloud cover erased what little horizon he might have chased. A starless night lay like a blanket over the sea. Despite the heavy thrumming of his churning diesel motor belowdecks and the wind whistling in the rigging, Yevgraf couldn’t help but feel if not hear the heavy beating of the Seahawk rotors booming above him.

  He thought for sure they’d give up when the storm worsened. They’d dropped a dozen of their passive AN/SSQ-101 ADAR sonobuoys on their first run. His own sonar man had picked up the splashes of the three-foot-long, thirty-nine-pound devices. That meant the Glazov below heard the splashes, too—their sonar people were far superior to his own. And even a deaf sonarman would have heard the pinging of the Americans’ active sonobuoys that followed.

  So what if the Americans had echolocated the sub? Yevgraf chuckled. The Glazov’s captain was a cool customer—ice water for blood, and brass for balls. And smart. He just sat down there, waiting the Americans out. If he didn’t move and didn’t make a sound, the Americans would still have their doubts. And when the Seahawks finally left, he could surface and restock from Penza’s stores of food and fuel.

  But rough seas delayed replenishment and the bastard choppers had returned.

  The sound of the beating rotors was maddening. The grizzled Russian captain pulled the night-vision binoculars to his red-rimmed eyes. He scanned the sky again. Where the hell were they?

  He couldn’t see shit from inside the bridge. He barked at his XO. “You have the conn.” He reminded the younger man to maintain course and speed, which was little more than holding their position against the tide. He didn’t dare stray too far away from his comrade below with his batteries nearly expended.

  Yevgraf pulled up the hood of his slicker and stepped out onto the starboard bridge wing some twenty-five meters above the water line. He cursed the roaring wind in his ears and the rain stinging his eyes. He felt more than saw a black shadow in an even blacker sky low in the distance.

  He raised the binoculars to his eyes again—at exactly the wrong time.

  Blinding light blasted his eyes.

  The old Russian cursed violently, dropping his binoculars. He grabbed his aching eyes, praying the white-hot sunspot burning into his retinas would fade quickly. Rotor wash from the Seahawk hovering just six meters away from the bridge wing battered his body.

  The blast from the Seahawk’s thirty-million-candle-watt beam of short-arc xenon light was made worse because the dark had dilated Yevgraf’s eyes, and the binocular lenses had magnified it.

  Yevgraf’s XO flung the bridge door open.

  “Captain! The Americans are calling for you on the radio!”

  Yevgraf’s sight finally returned. He spun around and faced the fearsome helicopter, shielding his eyes from the blinding arc light. He could make out the shape of the four ship-killing Hellfires strapped beneath the port side stub wing pointed at his ship.

  He flipped a bird at the helo and turned back inside the bridge.

  * * *

  —

  Lieutenant Callaway fought the gusting winds with his controls to maintain his position parallel with the Penza’s bridge.

  When the Russian captain flipped him off, Callaway and his copilot laughed.

  “You see that, Luzon?” Callaway said in his comms. He knew the Luzon’s CIC was getting a live feed from his video camera, as well as the other Seahawk still circling overhead. The other bird had enough fuel for another fifteen minutes before needing to head back to the barn. His bird had forty. He hoped that was enough time.

  “You think that old salt is pissed now? Just wait a minute,” Luzon’s radioman replied. “But still, you better watch your six.”

  “Roger that,” Callaway replied. The ATO killed the spot and they reengaged their night vision. Callaway saw three Russian two-man teams dashing out on deck, two armed with SA-25 “Willow” MANPADS, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, the other with an RPG. They each found covered firing points and raised their weapons skyward. The RPG team was focused on Callaway’s bird. His ATO turned the spotlight on them and warned the other helo.

  “You see those guys, Sara?” Callaway asked. With a shorthanded air crew, AWO Sara Arendas was doing double duty tonight as both the bird’s acoustic systems specialist and gunner, manning the pintle-mounted M60D 7.62 mm machine gun. She had a clear view of all three Russian teams through her NVGs.

  “Got ’em, sir.”

  Callaway heard Arendas racking the machine gun. “Don’t get an itchy finger just yet.”

  “My finger’s secured, sir. But say the word and I’ll scratch those pukes right off the deck.”

  If the Russians were that heavily armed, Callaway was glad he wasn’t fast-roping SEALs or Marines onto the deck to seize the ship. Charging toward a rudder room belowdecks with breacher charges and power saws was hard enough without getting shot at with automatic fire.

  * * *

  —

  “Who the fuck is this?” Yevgraf demanded in thickly accented English.

  “Lieutenant Commander Charles Ellis, U.S. Navy, commanding the USS Luzon, two hundred and twenty miles east-northeast of your position. Over.”

  “And what do you want from me, Captain Ellis?”

  “You are ordered to command the Russian Federation Navy submarine Glazov to surface immediately.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Commander,” Yevgraf shouted.

  “Repeat, you are ordered to command the submarine Glazov to surface immediately.”

  “You are mistaken, Commander. I am a civilian vessel. I am not—”

  “Cut the shit, Ivan! You’ve got three choices in front of you. Two of them sinks your boat. One of them lets you sail back home in one piece.”

  “This is an act of war. By what authority—”

  “By the authority of the President of the United States.”

  “I do not acknowledge your president’s authority to attack my ship.”

  “Acknowledged or not, it’s going to happen. Ping Glazov to surface now or I will sink you. Then Glazov will have to surface and then I’ll board him or sink him.”

  “Even if I had the authority to comply—”

  “Last chance, Captain. You have thirty seconds. I have sonobuoys in the water. I will know if you ping or not. Ping the Glazov up or watch your ship go down. Your choice. Over and out.”

  Yevgraf swore violently as he slammed the radio mic back into its cradle. He shot a glance at his XO.

  The executive officer knew that look all too well. Yevgraf wanted to fight. The old man had visions of dying gloriously for the Rodina.

  The XO didn’t.

  “The Luzon will be here before the Glazov can be refueled and restocked, Captain. It’ll have to surface no matter what. They kill us and the Glazov is stranded out here. Glazov’s only choice then will be to be boarded by the Americans or to scuttle.”

  Yevgraf’s eyes burned holes in the XO. He spat on the deck. Coward!

  Nervous young crewmen froze at their stations. Everyone knew the old man was crazy.

  The XO stood his ground. If he was going to die, he’d do it standing up to this broken-down old bastard. “Our mission is to protect the Glazov.”

  Yevgraf flashed a feral grin, then snatched up the intercom mic.

  “Sonar room! This is Captain Yevgraf. Prepare to ping Glazov!”

  40

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE

  The President held up the pitcher of water, offering to pour Arnie van Damm a glass.

  Arnie sat on the couch, his face souring. “Never touch the stuff.”

  “Suit yourself.” Ryan filled a glass for himself and headed back over to the chair next to him.

  “Admiral Talbot on line one for you, sir,” came over the intercom.

&nbs
p; “Thank you, Betty,” President Ryan said. He stood and crossed over to his desk.

  Arnie gestured as he rose from the couch that he’d leave but Ryan waved him back down. He punched the secure line and picked up.

  “John, I hope this is good news.”

  “The best possible news. We finally found the Ivan.”

  Ryan grinned ear to ear. “That’s fantastic.” He threw a thumbs-up at Arnie.

  “I won’t bother you with the technical details,” Talbot said, “but suffice it to say he’s turned tail and run, and we’re still on him. We’ll track the Glazov all the way back to Vladivostok. If he tries to do anything stupid, we’ll shove a couple of Mark 48s up his poop chute for the effort.”

  “Make sure that everyone involved knows how much I appreciate this and please congratulate them for me on a job well done.”

  “I’ll convey the message personally. Do I have permission to return the Roosevelt strike group to its original deployment?”

  “As you see fit.”

  “I’ll contact Admiral Pike immediately.”

  Ryan ended the call.

  “That sounds like a win to me,” Arnie said. “Score one for the Navy.”

  “Yeah, feels pretty good, I have to admit,” Ryan said. “It was a thousand-to-one shot.” His voice trailed off, his mind working a new problem.

  “Jeez, don’t break a leg jumping up and down for joy.”

  Ryan glanced up. “Say again? I wasn’t listening.”

  “You don’t seem too happy.”

  “I’m giddy as a schoolgirl.”

  “Yeah, I can tell. What’s the problem?”

  “No problem. Not exactly.”

  “Let me guess. You’re worried that sub wasn’t the pirate after all.”