The Passage (62 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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He cleared his throat and flipped to the first tab in the clipboard as Dan thought about what nearly a ton of high explosive would do to a thin-skinned ship like
Barrett.
“This is the execute order from Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet to Commander, Carrier Group Two, directing him to activate Task Force One forty-two. Effective at oh-one hundred this morning, we are working for Rear Admiral Keith Larson. His flagship will be USS
Lexington.”
“Not
Lexington
!”
“The
training
carrier?”
Vysotsky grated, “The ops officer is trying to brief. Do you mind, Mr. Giordano?”
“No, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“Lexington's
the only carrier available on short notice. The others are all either deployed or in the yards for overhaul. At least she's close, Pensacola. She's embarking aircraft now.
“My impression, sir, is that this is a hastily scraped-up force. So far, it consists of
Lex,
us, and
Dahlgren,
two reserve frigates,
Voge
and
Bronstein,
and a tanker,
Canisteo.
Also one of the action addressees on this message is the
Munro,
although it's not really clear how the Coast Guard's going to fit into the command organization.”
They discussed the cutter for a few seconds. Quintanilla pointed out that Coast Guard ships, though they had guns, were limited in communications capacity, could not come up on NTDS, and had no real antiaircraft capability. “She might end up being more a liability than an asset, sir.”
“There's our missile sponge,” Lauderdale joked.
“We'll see,” said Leighty. “Continue with the brief.”
“PHMron Two, a squadron of hydrofoil gunboats out of Key West, is also assigned in support.”
Dan chewed the inside of his cheek, digesting all this.
Barrett
had just undergone a “chop,” a change in operational control. For commissioning, shakedown, and work-up, she had reported to Commodore Niles. But the Navy assigned forces for a specific contingency by task organizations, set up in advance and activated only when needed. Now they were under the operational command of Admiral Larson, embarked on the carrier. Captain Leighty was in charge of task group 142.1, the screening destroyers. Other task groups were the carrier itself, the air group, the oiler, and the PHMs.
That the carrier was
Lexington
was worrisome.
Lex
had a great and long history, but she was no longer a front-line unit. Her home port was Pensacola, where she served as a floating airfield to train naval aviators. She had an old engineering plant known for frequent breakdowns. If it faltered now, Dan thought, not only could she not steam; she might not be able to launch aircraft, either. The catapults were steam-driven.
Now, Quintanilla said, “Apparently, the mission is to deter the Soviets from intervening on the Cuban side while we isolate the forces that are already there … and I guess try to persuade them to withdraw peacefully. Intel estimates there aren't more than a couple hundred on the cays. Castro's probably waiting for our reaction. If we do nothing, he'll reinforce, raise the Cuban flag—you can see where that's going.
“From the other traffic, the Joint Chiefs are bringing up readiness as rapidly as they can in the CENTCOM/Caribbean area. But the fleet is spread thin, with two extra carriers deployed to cover Iran. Our group will buy time while
Kitty Hawk
is pulled from
stand-down and associated cruisers and destroyers are assembled from Charleston and Norfolk.”
Giordano said, “Felipe, any sense of what's driving this? What the Cubans hope to get out of it?”
“I'd be speculating. Politically, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Since the missile crisis, they've tended to avoid direct confrontation. The Cay Sal islands are Bahamian, not ours, but they must know we'd react violently to an occupation so near our coasts. It's not much to risk a major showdown over. There's really nothing there but a few rocks.”
“So why are they pulling our chain?”
Quintanilla said carefully, “Maybe Castro's trying to embarrass the President. He hates us, and this is just his way of telling him, Welcome to the big leagues. Whatever, if the
Kirov
group can join up, it'll be that much more difficult to kick them off the islands. We're supposed to keep that from happening, I guess.”
“Okay, that's the mission and the forces,” said Leighty. He stood there a moment more, leaning against a fire-control console. Posing again, Dan thought sarcastically. “How about the rules of engagement?”
“Sir, I've made copies.” He passed them out and went over them line by line. Then glanced at the captain. “That's all I have, sir.”
Leighty put both hands on the glass and looked down into it. Then he spoke, seemingly to the gears and machinery dimly visible through the transparent surface.
“So that's the situation. We're headed south now and will join up with Lady
Lex
sometime this afternoon.
“I don't need to remind you that we're not all that used to operating in formation—especially at night. Either Commander Vysotsky or myself will be on the bridge at all times when we're in company. That doesn't mean the officer of the deck is relieved of responsibility. We won't be doing your job. But we'll be available on a second's notice. Inform us instantly if you're in doubt, and we'll drop what we're doing and help out.
“For the TAOs.” His eyes picked out Dan, Quintanilla, Lauderdale. “Every other confrontation we've had with the Cubans, they've backed down. But our job is to prepare for the worst, so let's do that. Felipe went over the rules of engagement. I want you to memorize them. There's not going to be time to look things up to see whether or not we fire. There's no doctrine that says we have to wait for them to shoot first if it looks like we're going to be attacked. This could be a first-salvo situation. The side that gets a solution and fires first is going to clobber the other guy.
“Dwight, we've got to be ready to fight fires and flooding. Your new damage control officer, Lohmeyer, he up to speed yet? He drew some flak at Gitmo.”
“He's learning, sir. I got the chief backstopping him. We'll be ready.”
Leighty spoke to the glass again. “
Barrett
will be the most capable ship in this task group. I anticipate carrying most of the radio nets. Mr. Lauderdale, review identification procedures with all your console operators. Make sure we have electronic threat profiles for the
Kirov, Tallin,
and the escorts. They can also target by video downlink from maritime reconnaissance, so we need to stay alert for overflights.
“Dan, we're going to need all weapons systems at Condition Three, ready for a heavy missile engagement. I want VT/IR ammo to the transfer trays in the five-inch, Phalanx loaded, AAW war shots in the loader drums. Have Mr. Horseheads test the chaff launchers and report to me. I want to see Mr. Kessler about our sonar. As soon as we break from here, get me an up-to-date status on ACDADS, what modes we can operate in, how many targets we can handle—”
“I can brief you on that now, sir.” He was glad he'd stopped in the computer room. Glad, too, that the news seemed to be good.
“All right, stay afterward and bring me up to speed. Anything else, gentlemen?” He waited for a moment, eyes still searching through the glass. “Thank you. Now let's get ready for this operation.”
24° 25′ N, 85° 01′ W: The Eastern Gulf of Mexico
H
E sat tensely in Combat, monitoring the progress of the tracking drill. Watching the bent backs of the weapons coordinators, engagement controllers, petty officers manning the radars and weapons and tracking consoles. They muttered rapidly into handsets or mikes, chanting an accompaniment to the green flicker of the consoles. Cold air roared from the diffusers. His ears skipped from one conversation to the next.
Voge'
s helicopter was making low runs from various quadrants, acting as a radar target for the antiaircraft-capable ships. At the same time, the combat air controllers were shaking down their tracking and handoff procedures. He followed the polyphonal murmur with only one mental ear. Tonight something underlay it that had been missing at Gitmo. Now each man knew he was preparing for battle.
The formation had gradually taken shape over the past day and evening. During the transit south, then west around the tip of Florida,
Barrett
had fallen in with
Dahlgren.
As they made westing the rendezvous point moved, too, jumping northwest. South of the Tortugas they'd linked up with
Bronstein,
then finally reached the new rendezvous, Point PAPA, 143 nautical miles due north of Cabo San Antonio and 110 miles due west of Garden Key.
Voge,
the other frigate, had come over the horizon an hour later, and following her, at last,
Lexington. Munro
was not in sight, but a message came in shortly thereafter reporting her position off Key Largo. Dan wondered whether he should call the staff watch officer on the carrier and ask if they could expect her to join and, if so, when.
A figure moved through the gloom, lifted a hand in greeting. Burdette Shuffert picked up the battle group commander's standing orders and slid into a vacant seat to read himself in. The tactical action officers were in three sections, Quintanilla, Dan, and Shuffert. They relieved each other an hour before the bridge stations
turned over. The Soviets knew U.S. watch procedures. Overlapping minimized the likelihood of being taken by surprise.
Dan slid down and went into Sonar, into a cramped blue-lighted shrine with the acolytes fixed in adoration on the sonar stacks as above their heads Barbie twirled, ignored. Fowler glanced up from the passive-tracking console. “Mr. Lenson, howzit going?”
“Okay, Chief. Everything working?”
“Looks like it at this end.”
“My guys have got sonar processing up and running on a separate computer. Dedicated to you.”
“That's good, sir, we might could need it with a Victor out there. Remember that contact we had west of Haiti? That could have been the boat that's supposed to be with this Soviet battle group.”
“I was thinking the same thing, Chief.” Dan watched the pen etch slowly along. “What's predicted range?”
“Uh, not too good. It's shallow here. Lots of biologicals. We're probably not going to get a good bottom bounce, either. Here's the prediction sheet, you want to look it over.”
“Uh-huh.” He ran his eyes down it. “How's the situation between you and Mr. Harper?”
Fowler molded an invisible soap bubble. “He seems to be acting more reasonable now, sir. Since you straightened him out on whose equipment this was.”
“Good. Well, stay alert, but pace yourself. We could be out here for a while.” Dan looked around again, then drifted back into CIC. He checked the electronic-warfare console over Hiltz's shoulder, then got himself a fresh coffee and stirred in lumpy yellow powdered creamer. He looked at the TAO chair but sat at a momentarily untended console instead.
He tapped keys and got the long-range plot, a picture of the formation and its surroundings out to two hundred nautical miles. Around the central cluster of the formation was open water, the Gulf of Mexico. If they had to fight, at least they had sea room. A few surface contacts flickered north of them. As he spun the track ball, hooked each one, and pressed the readout button, the system identified them and gave courses and speeds. Tankers, apparently, en route to the offshore oilfields of Louisiana. Far to the southeast, some surface and air activity near the Cuban coast. He picked up the interphone and asked Hiltz what he had in that direction.
When he felt satisfied, he tapped keys for the short-range plot. Now the carrier symbol occupied the center of the screen, a silently pulsing amber circle.
LEX,
said the readout. 220 013.5, course and speed.
Dan stared at it, his mind suddenly vacant. The glowing wheel seemed to spin as the data refreshed second by second. The howl of the wind grew in his skull. His hand crept up without thought
or knowledge to knead the old burn tissue that fissured his shoulder.
How the freezing men had screamed, floating in the dark. Then
Kennedy's
deck-edge lights had brightened, coming around. They'd thought, to rescue them. But then they'd steadied up, the massive towering bow filling the night, looming above the drifting, burning
Ryan …
. He sucked breath and jerked his eyes off the screen, rubbed them violently until green coruscating patterns blotted out the afterimages. The carrier wasn't the only thing he had to worry about now. Fifteen hundred pounds of high explosive arriving at one and a half times the speed of sound would tear
Barrett
apart just as thoroughly, leaving them dead in the water, sinking, on fire—
Shuffert, at his elbow: “Ready to relieve, sir.”
He took a deep breath, grateful for the interruption, and masked his apprehension with a gulp of coffee. Had to control his fucking imagination. Nothing was going to happen. They and the Soviets would hang around out here for a few days and make threatening gestures at each other till the diplomats came to some face-saving compromise. “Hi, Shoe. Sit down. Let's look at the formation first.”
He briefed the AAW officer carefully and thoroughly. Forgetting to tell his relief something could cost lives. He began with the formation, the screen stations, the capabilities of each unit and any equipment problems or limitations, the status of the weapons systems and sensors.
“What about helos?”
“We don't have enough to keep one overhead continuously. As FASWC, the captain has directed two four-hour searches. The rest of the time, a fifteen-minute standby on deck.”
“They flying armed?”
“Two Mark forty-sixes.”
Shuffert nodded and Dan went on. “The carrier's guide, offset from the center of the formation.
Canisteo
here.” He swept his hand across a great semicircle, subdivided electronically into glowing segments of arc. “Screen stations:
Voge
as a backstop;
Dahlgren, Bronstein, Barrett
out front. Notice
Bronstein'
s set farther out along the threat axis. She's got a towed array sonar streamed and is also going to act as a radar picket.”
“She's not NTDS-equipped.”
“No. Link Fourteen.” This was a Teletype readout plotted by hand. It meant that the older frigate would react more slowly than the rest of the force and that reports from her would come in more slowly, too.
“I don't think that's very good tactically, is it?”
Dan shrugged. “It's a trade-off. The captain decided to put her out there to take advantage of her sonar.”
“Okay. What have we got on the away team?”
“Last report has
Kirov
at twenty-one degrees north, eighty-five degrees thirty minutes west, steaming slowly for the Yucatán Channel. They're not being reported on NTDS yet.”
They covered the rest of the intel data and predicted sonar ranges and modes. Dan reviewed the comm plan, engineering status, and the rules of engagement. Shuffert said quietly, “Do we have release authority?”
“Yes. The captain wants us to contact him or the XO if at all possible. But if we've got missiles incoming, we have authority to fire in self-defense.”
“How's NTDS holding up?”
“We've got solid Link Eleven with the carrier,
Dahlgren,
and
Voge.
Like I said,
Bronstein
has only the Teletype. She's reported some glitches, but they're copying data.”
“Okay, I relieve you.” Dan nodded and started to hit the 21MC to tell the captain he'd relieved, then didn't. “I'll go up. Something I want to ask him.”
“Okay.” Shuffert was already hunched forward, head turned a bit, listening, Dan knew, to the muffled murmur that came from all around him.
 
 
HE stopped for a quick whiz in the little urinal near CIC, then ran up the ladder, making his heart pump and thud after four hours of sitting.
The bridge was completely dark. Even the indicator lights had been masked with tape, until only the dark-adapted eye could detect them. His weren't; the green brilliance of the iconoscopes burned away night vision. He brushed past someone standing near the door, felt his way past the helm to the chart table, and from there groped forward to the smooth leather back of the CO's chair. His outstretched fingers pressed something soft before he jerked them away from the captain's leg.
“Who's that?”
“Sorry, sir. Mr. Lenson, properly relieved as TAO by Lieutenant (jg) Shuffert.”
“Very well. You'd better lay below, grab some sleep.”
“Captain, I wanted to ask about
Munro.
We still don't know if she's going to be in the screen. I can call the staff watch officer—”
“No!” The captain's tone softened. “Sorry. I mean, I'm glad you're on things like that, but don't bother. She's not part of One forty-two point one in the comm annex to the op order. I think we can conclude Admiral Larson's got some other plan for her.”
“Uh, all right, sir.”
Harper's voice from the dark: “All engines ahead standard, indicate pitch and rpm for fifteen knots.”
“Sir, did Mr. Horseheads report to you on your chaff question?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Another shadow. When it spoke, Dan recognized Norm Cash. The supply officer said, “Captain? We've got a major problem, sir.”
“What's that, Norm?”
“We're out of cartridges for the copier. Ordered some in Miami, but when the guys open the box, it's for Xeroxes, not Savins.”
Dan felt his way to the starboard side and looked out the slanted square window. His vision was returning. He cupped his hand against the Plexiglas, then stepped around and through the open doorway, out under the stars.
They sparkled across the sky like sequins tacked across black velvet by a master dressmaker. The warm night breeze breathed in his ears. From below came the steady roar of steel plowing water. He leaned back, to see the lookout outlined against the Milky Way. For once, he wasn't dicking off, but searching the horizon. Somebody must have told him the first hint they might have of an incoming SS-N-19 “Shipwreck” missile would be the reddish flare of its exhaust, like a hovering, slowly brightening comet.
The night-orders message had them steaming in the area of Point PAPA, on a course angled across the wind, so the carrier could turn and launch aircraft within minutes of an alert. Their current course was 210. That would put her off their starboard quarter, nearly astern. He craned over the splinter shield and saw it—not only the dimmed running and deck-edge lights but the sudden yellow blowtorch flare of a jet being catapulted off, afterburners lighted. He could imagine what kind of confusion reigned over there, operating aircraft from a ship that hadn't done it in years. But she was getting the planes off. In Combat, Dan had watched them orbiting a hundred miles out, two F-4 Phantoms under
Barrett'
s control.
Sweeping his eyes across 180 degrees of darkness, he picked out four more sets of lights—running dimmed but not totally blacked out yet. On his left hand, so distant that only her white masthead light was visible:
Bronstein,
the older frigate, built in the early sixties and light on defensive armament. She had a good antisubmarine suite, though, and could most likely deal with a Victor; Leighty was probably right to put her out there as an ASW barrier, though it was cold-blooded. In an air attack, she'd have to depend on
Dahlgren's
and
Barrett'
s missiles for cover.
On the far side of the formation, red sidelight burning below masthead and range:
Dahlgren.
She and
Barrett
were spaced symmetrically on either side of the missile-threat axis to cover the other ships, and especially the carrier, with their long-range weapons.
The next lights, seemingly twinned, although they were separated by some distance, were the carrier and the oiler. Roughly centered in the protective ring of the screen, neither carried defensive weapons worth mentioning, though, paradoxically,
Lexington
bore the most powerful striking arm of the force, her aircraft; and without the fuel, parts, ammunition, and stores
Canisteo
carried, the other ships would have short legs indeed.

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