Their condition, in truth, was hopeless. A single large hole can be stopped, flooding boundaries established, pumps started. When every deck, every bulkhead is riddled, none of those things can be done and the ship is doomed. Naval architects call it progressive flooding. The Vigilante pilots called it a kill.
F4H-3 Phantom II “Tisiphone “
Colonel Brim was furious. He was certain one of the Vigilante crews had given him the finger as they had streaked past his heavily-loaded Phantoms. If he’d been flying clean, he’d have had their measure. But, the F4H carried its load externally and that made the difference.
Suddenly he forgot his pique. Covering the sea in front of him was the remains of a fleet. The Caliphate FACs were dead in the water, still, almost motionless. A couple were starting to burn, fuel line probably severed, or something. It didn’t matter, they were all settling, liven as he watched, one rolled over, its bows pointed up at the sky and it sank stern first. It was strange, eerie, a ghostly sight in the moonlight. The twelve F4Hs circled the scene, watching the slow extinction of the enemy force.
Out of the corner of his eye, Brim saw one craft start to move. Perhaps it had been on the extreme edge of one of the coverage patterns, perhaps it had been lucky that a freak shift in the random distribution of bomblets had let it live. Perhaps one of the CBUs had malfunctioned. From the radio reports, a lot of things this night hadn’t worked very well.
Brim rolled Tisiphone over and angled down into a long dive towards the slow-moving FAC. The previous engagement, he’d been left out of the kill and it wasn’t going to happen this time. He lined up his rocket sight and let fly. The KAC-M’s luck hadn’t lasted, it vanished under the barrage of rockets. Amidst the sea of explosions, Brim saw the craft explode in the hail of rockets and sink.
“Jeez” his RIO whispered at the graveyard beneath the circling aircraft. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
Brim looked down again. Already, there were fewer boats left on the surface and the rest had little time to live. “Nope. But what sort of idiot tries to suggest an overgrown speedboat can be used as a warship? Damned fools. Don’t these people ever think?”
USS ‘Thomas Jefferson “ CC-3.
The threat board was empty. US Casualties. Nil. Enemy casualties: Everybody. Admiral Mahan sighed. The US Navy had just fought its first modern naval battle. It had found out that its prized new missiles, the surface-to-air ones on the ships and the air-to-air missiles on the aircraft, had proved far less effective than thought. Yet, despite everything that had gone wrong, it had won.
CHAPTER NINE: AFTERMATH
Cabinet Conference Room, The White House, Washington DC
His confirmation hearings in front of the senate were going well, with a little luck his appointment would be confirmed by the end of the day. Clark Clifford would be taking over from him at State, Dean Rusk wondered if Clark would be getting one of the marvelously efficient Executive Assistants the Contractors seemed so adept at finding. Speaking of Executive Assistants, why was Naamah sitting in the seat allocated to the Attorney-General?
“Thank you for coming Dean. Confirmation Hearing going well?”
“Yes thank you Mister President. The Chairman tells me the vote will be taken shortly and the appointment ratified by the end of business today.”
LBJ nodded sagely. He’d had some key figures over for drinks the night before and gently reminded them that he really wanted this appointment to go through quickly. Between the drinks and the crude jokes, he’d intimated that he knew where the bodies were buried. Literally and metaphorically.
“That’s great Dean. We have a problem though. Ramsey didn’t submit his resignation so it looks like I am going to have to fire him. Pd hoped to avoid that. The problem is, he’s vanished.
The Washington City Police Department and Secret Service are looking for him, he was last seen in his old office. I hope he hasn’t been foolish. Anyway, since we don’t seem to have an Attorney-General right now, I’ve asked Miss Naarnah to sit in on this meeting to provide any information we need from the Attorney-General’s office. She has no executive authority of course and will not participate in making decisions.”
Rusk nodded and took the seat next to her. The seat reserved for the Secretary of Defense. As he did, he noticed a scent, different from the smell of sweat and cigarettes that usually tainted the air here. Light, floral, and with hint of... sulfur? “I hope you don’t mind me saying so, Miss Naamah, but your perfume is a very pleasant change for this room.
“Why thank you, Mister Rusk, please call me Naamah, not Miss Naamah. I haven’t missed much in my life. The perfume’s Diabolique, by Yves St Laurent. The French may have their problems but they still make the finest perfumes in the world. Mister Rusk, have you got your sh....... got your stuff together about what happened last night?”
“Inanna was up all night collating it for me.” Rusk shook his head. The one thing everybody in politics wanted most was to be given one of the highest offices of state. The one thing they wanted least was to get it in the middle of a major crisis.
The President tapped lightly on the table. “Gentlemen, now everybody is here, doubtless you have all been following the fighting that broke out in the Eastern Mediterranean last night. Secretary Rusk. If you would provide us with an accurate summary of events?”
“Mister President. Last night US forces in the Mediterranean launched a rescue effort aimed at bringing out the crew of the SAC bomber that was shot down over the Gaza area yesterday. I am pleased to advise you that the operation was successful, the aircrew were located and extracted and are now safely on their way to the United States for debriefing.”
There was a patter around the conference room as the assembled Cabinet applauded.
“However, simultaneous with the successful rescue, Caliphate forces launched a coordinated sea and missile attack on our ships offshore. That attack was met by aircraft deployed from the aircraft carrier Shiloh. Again, I am pleased to advise you that the attack was repelled at no cost to us. A total of at least twelve long-range anti-ship missiles were shot down and at least twelve, possibly as many as eighteen, Djinn class fast attack craft sunk. Caliphate loss of life was heavy, we believe up to 300 of their sailors may have been killed. The action raised a number of issues over the performance of some of our weapons. I will detail those later.
“On a less happy note, we had inserted a small blocking force on the coast, between the Caliphate base area at Gaza. That force was attacked by a Caliphate unit, in battalion strength, and roughly handled. Although the Marines held their beach-head and repelled the attack, they suffered severely. Casualties are presently believed to be twenty five dead and thirty six wounded out of a total of 258 effectives. We have taken some prisoners during the action.
“Mister President they are Germans. We believe they are part of Model’s forces, the ones that escaped from Russia five years ago. Our intelligence indicates that those forces have been constituted as a sort of elite guard controlled directly by The Caliphate ruling council. The fact that such forces appear to have been concentrated at Gaza should be deeply disturbing to us.”
“If I may ask a question Mister President” LBJ nodded, Treasury Secretary Fowler continued. “Dean, was the attack on our ships and men a response to our rescue effort?”