In these waters, the contact could be either Soviet or Indian. Either way, the battle group’s new admiral was not going to care for potentially hostile subs getting too close to his command.
Minutes dragged by. Farrel was beginning to wonder what Mason was playing at when the CIC Officer called again.
“No joy on the pinging, Captain,” Mason said. “He may be out of range.”
Farrel scowled. “Understood. Alert the Air Officer. I want a LAMPS up ASAP. Maybe we can peg the contact with sonobuoys. And have the comm shack raise Jefferson. Admiral Vaughn’s going to want to know about this.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Farrel replaced the telephone handset, then walked to the starboard wing. He raised his binoculars and scanned the horizon toward the northeast. There was nothing there, no periscope wake, no oil slick, only endless blue water under a cloudless sky.
Submarines these days could launch homing torpedos from ten miles away … or pop a sea-skimming cruise missile from three hundred miles out. A Foxtrot would not be carrying SSMS, thank God, but the threat was serious nonetheless.
“Now hear this, now hear this,” the shipboard loudspeaker brayed from the afterdeck. “Stand by to launch helo. Stand by to launch helo.”
Farrel heard the thutter of the LAMPS III helicopter as its engines revved to takeoff rpms. Then the SH-60 Seahawk lifted from Biddle’s fantail with a roar, its shadow momentarily flicking across the bridge.
He turned his binoculars on the gray insect shape as it angled off toward the northwest, low above the water.
Biddle’s two Sikorsky SH-60B Seahawks were LAMPS III helos designed for ASW. The LAMPS designation stood for Light Airborne Multi-Purpose System, a computer and sensor array that integrated surface ships and helicopters to extend the reach and effectiveness of antisubmarine warfare. Each Seahawk was equipped with dipping sonar and air-dropped sonobuoys. Foxtrots were antiquated diesel-electric submarines, neither quiet nor nuclear-powered. Whoever this one belonged to, it should be easy enough to pinpoint by checking along the general direction of the contact.
Who did the Foxtrot belong to, India or Russia? With the outbreak of war between India and Pakistan, it was important that they know. The threat of war with the Soviet Union had receded for the past several years, as Russia’s internal economic and political problems grew worse.
But if that was an Indian sub out there … Just how close was the battle group to becoming caught in the crossfire between two warring powers … the way Stark had been caught in 1986?
Farrel continued to study the ocean surface with a growing sense of unease.
CHAPTER 2
Captain James Fitzgerald shifted in the high-backed, leather-covered seat on the bridge. Golden light spilled through the broad, slanting windscreens, highlighting wiring conduits in the overhead and the gleaming brass handles of the engine-room telegraph. The enlisted men in whites, the chiefs and officers in khakis, went about their duties with the calm efficiency Fitzgerald had come to expect of them during these past, grueling eight months.
His gaze went outside the bridge and to the deck forward, where the jet-blast deflector was rising behind an F/A-18 Hornet of VFA-161. The deadly little multi-role fighter was squatting over the slot of Cat One as deck handlers in their color-coded jerseys moved about, poking, prodding, checking, readying the aircraft for launch. Steam from the last catapult launch still swirled about the handlers’ legs. A second Hornet shuddered on one of the waist cats further aft as its engines blasted against the unyielding steel of its JBD.
The voices of the Air Boss and his assistants aft in Pri-Fly could be heard over a monitor. “Cat Four, Four-oh-one, stand by!”
“Thirty seconds. Red. Green on fifteen.”
“Deck clear. Stand by! Stand by!”
“Green!” A throbbing roar sounded from the carrier’s waist, and the F/A-18 on Cat Four vaulted forward, sweeping past the first Hornet still waiting on Cat One.
“Four-oh-one airborne.”
“That’s three to go.”
The dance on the deck continued, ponderous, complex, and deadly.
Aircraft carrier flight decks were the most dangerous workplaces on Earth. Everything was in motion: men, machines, the deck itself. There were no guardrails if a jet blast caught a man, or if he took a careless step backward. Engines shrieked continually, making speech possible only through the bulky Mickey Mouse ears the directors wore. Jet intakes could suck a man to his death in an instant … or thirty tons of aircraft could break free from an improper tie-down and crush him like a runaway truck.
Fitzgerald worried about his command, about his men. This cruise had strained all of them to the breaking point, and he feared that worse was on the way.
Tired, he thought. They’re all tired. He reached up, pushed the ballcap with U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson, CVN-74 emblazoned in gold above the bill to the back of his head, then removed his aviator’s sunglasses so he could rub his eyes. And I’m tired too.
The international situation was worsening … fast. The cold war between Pakistan and India had just flashed hot.
Was this their fourth major war, or their fifth? It was easy to lose track, and it depended, Fitzgerald decided, on just how the skirmishes were counted. This current clash along the Indian-Pakistan border looked like it might blow up into something as nasty as the war of ‘7 1.
There were reports of Indian armor gathering along the rim of the Thar Desert, and air strikes at Pakistani Air Force units as far west as Karachi. Tensions in the region had been mounting for weeks, the situation serious enough that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had ordered CBG-14 north from the tiny reprovisioning base on British-owned Diego Garcia to patrol the waters west of the subcontinent of India.
Such orders were typical enough for a U.S. carrier task force, charging the battle group with the protection of American lives and property.
Similar orders had taken Jefferson into Sattahip Bay two months earlier during an attempted coup in Thailand. There were thousands of American citizens in both Pakistan and India, everything from diplomats and their staffs to businessmen to guru-chasing remnants of the ‘60s at Goa and Kovalum, the “heepies” as native Indians called them. Jefferson’s presence in international waters was a warning to both governments that the United States could consider military options in order to protect U.S. citizens.
The special orders received four days earlier had diverted Jefferson and the five other vessels of CBG-14 to an imaginary circle on the Indian Ocean three hundred miles south of Karachi, and about one hundred miles southwest of India’s broad, fan-shaped Kathiawar Peninsula. Jefferson would reach that spot, informally labeled “Turban Station,” in another twenty hours. After that … well, then things would be up to the Indians and the Pakistanis, and to the new CO of Carrier Battle Group 14.
Fitzgerald made a face as he replaced his sunglasses. He still didn’t know what to make of Rear Admiral Charles Lee Vaughn.
On the forward deck, the Hornet was revving its engines to full afterburner, sending waves of heat shimmering above the deck. The white-jacketed Safety Officer was making his final check, signaling the Catapult Officer with an upraised hand.
“Amber light,” the voice of Pri-Fly said over the speaker behind Fitzgerald’s head. “Stand by. Stand by.”