“Let me look, sir.”
Floros followed the Hydra’s commander to a display table where icons showed the sea of Greek and Turkish war machines in a dance around Lesbos.
“Find out what they’re doing,” Floros said.
The commander picked up a phone and gathered information from an officer inside his ship who was in communication with the helicopters.
“They’re prosecuting a possible submerged target.”
“Have all surface combatants begin anti-submarine defensive maneuvers immediately. Bring all ships to general quarters.”
As the Hydra rolled out of its first turn designed to complicate the targeting of a hostile torpedo, a sailor handed Floros a helmet. The chinstrap irritated his neck as he donned it. Red lights pulsated, and an alarm blared while another sailor dogged shut the watertight door to the bridge.
“Confirmed, sir,” the Hydra’s commander said. “It’s a submarine. We have two helicopters over it. Its position is on the display now.”
“Very well,” Floros said.
“The pilot is requesting orders, sir. He wants to know if he should drop a torpedo.”
Floros glared at the display and noticed the undersea vessel inside Greece’s expanded national boundary and within torpedo strike range of the oil rig and two of his ships, including the Hydra. The crisis he feared and foresaw had reached him, and he sought a humane solution.
“Denied. Track it, blast it with active sonar, and drive it out of our waters. All assets are ordered to keep vigilant for the sounds of a torpedo launch from the submarine.”
“You said your orders were to engage any combatant within our waters or air, sir.”
“My orders are to engage, yes,” Floros said. “But engaging doesn’t require destroying. Once a helicopter has a submarine, it’s like a lion’s jaws. With two helicopters engaged, it won’t get away. Be patient.”
“We may not be able to hear an incoming torpedo.”
“It won’t fire,” Floros said. “Not while our helicopters remain a deterrent.”
“If the submarine escapes our helicopters?”
“It won’t. Not as long as they’re flying over it.”
Floros reflected upon his own words.
“And let’s make sure they remain flying over it. Have the Ritsos take station on the helicopters to protect them.”
Through the bridge windows, Floros saw darkness crawl over the island of Lesbos. The silhouette of the missile boat, Ritsos, became a spec backlit by the island’s shore life.
Then an animated voice issued from a loudspeaker and filled the frigate’s bridge.
“Bridge, operations center. I hold a surface combatant breaking away from the Turkish surface fleet and heading towards Lesbos.”
A task force of Turkish surface combatants patrolled the outskirts of the extended twelve-mile boundary off the Greek island’s southern coast. Floros had excused the short-lived challenges when a Turkish combatant would slip a hundred yards inside Greek waters and slip back out again.
But a solitary ship aimed itself on a trajectory that implied enduring defiance, and he noted its velocity vector on the tactical display taking it within gun range of the helicopters that hovered over the Turk’s submerged vessel.
“Which ship is it?” he asked.
“The frigate Yavuz, sir.”
“Their oldest and least capable ship. It’s not a threat. It’s a test of our resolve.”
“Which we’ll fail if we look weak by ignoring it or fail if we respond too harshly by destroying it.”
Floros agreed and felt trapped between restraint and his prime minister’s orders to engage challenging forces. He forced his mind to generate an answer.
“We’ll do neither,” he said. “Patch me through to the commanding officer of the Kanaris.”
He grabbed a secure phone from its cradle and spoke to the old frigate’s captain.
“Have all your guns ready but keep them pointed forward. You’re going to take station on the Yavuz, turn yourself into an unavoidable tugboat, and force it off course by pushing its bow.”
“Shall I give it a warning shot across its bow, sir?”
“Negative. It’s an old ship, but it has the largest cannon out here. Keep this to a contest of seamanship and gross tonnage. Don’t invite a gun fight.”
The lights in the bridge shifted from white to soft red as the dusk settled into night. Floros lifted night vision optics to his face and saw the greenish outline of the Turkish frigate slicing across the horizon.
“Perhaps we should be ready to lend gunfire support,” the Hydra’s commander said.
“Right,” Floros said. “Energize all gunfire control radars and maneuver to within range of your ship’s cannon against the Yavuz.”
The Hydra rolled out of the turn as the Turkish frigate slid forward across the bridge windows.
“We’re chasing the Yavuz but cannot intercept it at its present speed,” the Hydra’s commander said. “It would run into the island before we could. However, the Kanaris will take station on the Yavuz in twelve minutes.”
“Very well,” Floros said. “Hail the Yavuz, inform it that its presence in our waters is an act of war, and order it to leave Greek waters immediately.”
The translator spoke into his handset but received no response. He repeated himself to no avail.
Minutes later, the commander of the Kanaris rang Floros.
“Task force commander,” he said.
“Sir, I’m getting no response from my hails to the Yavuz, but I have a visual. It’s only five miles away now.”
“What do you see?” Floros asked. “Running lights? Guns being aimed? Anything?”
“It’s actually got its running lights on per international laws, and the deck lights are illuminated, too. All its guns and fire control radars are secured. It’s making no attempt to hide or provoke me.”
“Other than by steaming at flank speed in our waters.”
“No, sir, it just slowed to ten knots.”
Floros glanced at the chart.
“That’s because it’s approaching the six-mile boundary that the Turks have always honored.”
“I’ll reach the intercept point eight miles from our coast.”
“Good. Turn back the Yavuz the second you can.”
Through his optics, Floros watched the frigates collide on a glancing angle as the Greek vessel nudged the Turkish warship off course. The laws of physics precluded one ship overpowering another of comparable size, and the battle become a test of wills.
Seven miles from the Lesbos coast, the Turkish combatant relented and reversed course.
“Well done, commander,” Floros said. “Stay two hundred yards off its port flank until it’s outside our twelve-mile boundary.”
Declaring the encounter a draw in his mind as the Turkish frigate returned to international waters, Floros reflected upon how he might address a future similar challenge, but his mind remained an overworked morass.
“That could have gone far worse,” the Hydra’s commander said. “But it’s hardly a victory.”
“No, it’s not. But it’s over, and we’d be better positioned elsewhere now. Make flank speed towards our helicopters to assist them in prosecuting the submarine.”
“Understood, sir. They’re approaching international waters as the submarine retreats.”