It felt good to be doing something at least, even if this wasn’t the most challenging flying he’d ever been called upon to attempt. The S-3’s mission was to range out beyond the screen of frigates and destroyers masking a battle group and crisscross the ocean in search of enemy submarines. The sonobuoys were the key to that. Each one was a floating module containing a sonar transducer and a radio. Once deployed, they sent out pulses of sound which were reflected back by obstacles — the sea bottom, whales, schools of fish, and the occasional submarine. The radios relayed the results of the sonar searches back to the Viking, where a crewman known as the Senso was responsible for translating the arcane data into an approximation of what was in a given stretch of ocean, and where.
The Senso had other tools at his command as well, from magnetic-anomaly detectors to electronic-surveillance gear that monitored radio traffic to FLIR, Forward-Looking Infrared Radar, which could detect the heat emissions of ships and subs lying at or near the surface. But the sonobuoys were the first and most important tool in the ongoing search for enemies lying beneath the waves.
Harrison slumped in his seat, looking completely relaxed. “What d’you think, Spock? Are we going to have anything to show our VIP this time out?”
From the rear compartment of the plane Lieutenant Commander Ralph Meade, the TACCO, gave a cautious answer over the ICS. He was a tall, spare man who bore more than a passing resemblance to the actor Leonard Nimoy, and that together with his precise, measured way of speaking had earned him his running name. “Hard to say, Skipper. SOSUS showed at least five subs filtering out in the past week, but there’s no telling if they’re still hanging around here or if they’ve moved on by now.”
That, Magruder thought bitterly, was the real problem with the sub-hunting business. The arcane art of ASW work was at least as much an art form as it was a science. Aircraft like the Viking had to fly long, complicated patrol patterns searching for enemy submarines because as yet no one had developed a reliable way to keep tabs on subs from a distance. The first line of defense was SOSUS — for Sonar Surveillance System — a line of permanent underwater microphones strung along the sea floor all the way across the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom) gap. The technicians in the SOSUS control center back in Norfolk swore they could detect any sub that tried to cross the line, but once a submarine had passed through the network of microphones there was no way to keep further tabs on them except through dedicated ASW ships, planes, and helicopters. Frigates like the Gridley, helicopters off Jefferson and her escorts, the two submarines attached to the battle group, even P-3C Orion aircraft out of Keflavik in Iceland, all played a part in the ongoing hunt for the weapon most carrier skippers feared above all others. But it was the Viking that was the real backbone of the whole effort.
Yet with everything they could set to hunting they still couldn’t cover all the bases. Too much ocean, not enough people. A losing proposition, if viewed strictly from the technical side of things.
But it was possible to improve the odds a little. The ASW coordinator back on the Jefferson did his best to think like a sub skipper and deploy sub-hunting assets where they would do the most good. And Meade, the TACCO, was supposed to do the same thing on a smaller scale from his station in the windowless rear cabin of the S-3. Looking for submarines was like a chess game, with a variety of standard moves and gambits, but in the long run it was up to the individual players to make things happen.
ASW work was often regarded as the forgotten stepchild of the carrier air wing, at least by the pilots who flew the more glamorous missions. But the close-knit fraternity who flew the Vikings and the Sea Stallion ASW helicopters regarded themselves as every bit as important as any other element in the Air Wing. From what Magruder had seen so far they were as much masters of their arcane art as any fighter pilot was of the mysteries of air combat maneuvering.
He didn’t envy them their jobs. Harrison was a pilot, but nothing like the glamorous men who flew the Tomcats or the Hornets or even the Intruders. The other two were more technicians than aviators, with Meade, as TACCO, trying to outguess veteran sub commanders.
Then there was AW/1 Mike Curtis, the Viking’s Senso for this run, and the only enlisted man aboard. It had always surprised Magruder that ratings served in the plane crews of the Vikings and the Hawkeyes. The popular stereotype, which even life in the Navy didn’t fully dispel, was of aviation as a game for officers only.
But the special skill it took to handle the electronics aboard a plane as complex as the Viking was a great leveler. The men in the Antisubmarine Warfare military-occupation-specialty category were the high-tech elite of the carrier crew. Though they were often scorned by their own kind, who claimed that the AW stood for “Aviation Weights”—naval slang referring to someone who didn’t carry his load of shipboard duties — they earned their special place in the carrier’s hierarchy. Men like Curtis went through two full years of specialty training to get their jobs, while the typical enlisted man learned his specialty in a few short months. Aboard their aircraft, Magruder had heard, there were few distinctions between AW ratings and the officers they flew with, and good AWs had little trouble earning commissions and rising to the TACCO position.
He wondered what sort of a man could fill the demanding job. Curtis had been quiet throughout the flight except for responses given strictly in the line of duty. Was he naturally withdrawn, or overawed by the presence of the Deputy CAG?
“Well, how about it, Curtis?” he asked. “Don’t I get a show? Or maybe you at least have some words of wisdom for the rookie?”
“I don’t get paid for philosophy, sir,” Curtis said over the ICS. “That’s for officers to do. Me, I just sit back here and play the most expensive goddamned video game anybody ever saw.”
He smiled at that. “And what’s the score?”
“I haven’t been beaten yet,” Curtis said. Then, softly, he went on. “But I’ve never had to hunt ‘em for real, you know, sir? I don’t know if that’s going to be the same.”
Magruder remembered the first time he’d flown in combat, back in Korea. All the flying time, all the Top Gun practice, still hadn’t prepared him for the realities of combat.
But the word from the Jefferson said Coyote’s squadron had already traded shots with the Russians. All too soon Curtis might have his chance to find out what a real sub hunt, a hunt to the death, was really like.
“It isn’t the same, Curtis,” he said softly. “It’s never the same.”
CHAPTER 11
“Well, Magruder, how’d you like your first day of sub-hunting?”
Tombstone studied Stramaglia’s bland expression carefully before answering. “It wasn’t … quite what I’d imagined, sir,” he said cautiously.
The Viking had set down on the flight deck an hour before, and Magruder’s legs were still stiff from too much time sitting in one position. At one point the TACCO, Meade, had offered to swap seats with him for a while, but he’d turned it down. Now he was regretting it.
“Boring as one of my Top Gun lectures, eh, Magruder?” Stramaglia asked with a lopsided smile. “Well, that can’t be helped. I want you out on at least one flight a day until I’m sure you know everything there is to know about ASW. Got it?”