“I’ll be in Combat,” he told the pilothouse at large. As the door slammed behind him the boatswain announced, “Captain’s off the bridge.” Then the 1MC, also in Nuckols’s voice but much louder, said all over the ship, “Flight quarters, flight quarters! All hands man your flight quarters stations. Remove all covers topside. The smoking lamp is out on all weather decks. Muster the crash and salvage team with the team leader in the helo hangar. Now flight quarters.”
Combat was frigid, as usual. But this time, anticipating hours in the chair, he’d brought his foul-weather jacket and a pair of uniform gloves. Donnie Wenck waved; Petty Officer Terranova barely glanced up from her SPY-1 console. The rest of the stations were manned, and a murmuration of voices and a rattle of keyboards underlay the constant hiss of the ventilation.
He settled into his seat with a sigh, booted up, and ran through the priority traffic while keeping half an eye on Red Hawk’s launch, clicking to follow comms with the helo through his headset. Aegis was already tracking eighty contacts in the strait area, but he wanted the SH-60B out ahead. The Seahawk had night vision, onboard electronic eavesdropping, and a data link, extending his radar, and ESM horizon, and giving him the option of visual checks on any contacts that seemed threatening. He gave permission for a green deck.
“Helo away,” announced the 1MC. “All hands secure from flight quarters.”
“Clear, coming to zero zero zero,” “Strafer” Wilker drawled, reporting to the air control supervisor eight consoles behind Dan. “Man, it’s just paved with fuckin’ ships out here.” “Storm” Differey was the copilot, with two crewmen. Four souls he had to remember, if things got dicey. “Okay, got a little trouble here… red light on number one DLA.” Wilker and the controller discussed it, concluding that since the forward data link antenna had just gone tango uniform, Strafer would have to keep the nose pointed away from the ship for the data link to work at ranges over thirty miles.
Dan filed that away too. The helo also had some strike capability, with machine guns and laser-guided Hellfires, but it would be dangerous to pit it against anything with a real air defense. Dan planned to keep him in the air for three hours, recover for refuel and rest, and have him aloft again as they approached the IRGC exercise area.
A silent Longley placed a covered tray and carafe on the table. Dan acknowledged with a nod, focusing now on the large-screen displays. The F-18s were just outside Iranian territorial waters, angling west at five hundred knots. Loitering speed, for them. He was noting the commercial air corridors, prominently displayed on the LSDs, when two threat symbols lit. Wilker called in, the display locating him over the entrance to the Knuckle. “Two gatekeepers hanging out here. Look like Combattante fast attack. I’m gonna moon you so you can—”
Dan cut in: “Red Hawk, this is Matador Actual. Don’t let your data link positioning affect your tactics. Just make voice reports. Over.”
La Combattantes, or Kama/Sina — class missile patrol boats, were regular Iranian Navy units. They were fast, displaced about three hundred tons, and were armed with automatic guns and antiship missiles. But they were deficient in sensors and not data-linked. A threat at close range, but with the fighters streaking overhead, Dan figured, they’d stand clear. At least while he and Mitscher went in. Coming out, with magazines depleted, maybe damaged and low on fuel, might be a different story. So far, he didn’t have a port of call inside the Gulf. Manama was apparently leaving that up in the air, seeing which way the cat would jump.
To his right at the command desk was the general quarters TAO, Matt Mills, in the seat Cheryl had used to occupy. Now, as exec, she’d be Dan’s alternate, and supervise on the bridge. Past him Wenck was at the OS chief’s station. Donnie could turn in his chair and talk to the Terror, at the Aegis console behind him. Dan’s antisubmarine staff was behind him to his left; his surface strike team, headed by Amy Singhe, directly behind; to his right, the air control people and his electronic warfare sensor operators.
All in all, almost thirty people in CIC and four more in Sonar, next door through the traditional black canvas curtain.
Dan pulled the napkin off the tray. French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon. He made himself take ten bites, chew, and swallow, to keep the blood sugar up.
Over the next hour they closed the Knuckle. Traffic was light going in, but outgoing was bumper to bumper, ships spaced every mile. Red Hawk gave the Combattantes a wide berth, then orbited over the great sweeping bend in the waterway, relaying back radar that showed small boats maneuvering deeper in the strait. Dan and Mills discussed the enemy order of battle, trying to work out who was where. Dan kept Mitscher and Savo in the middle of the incoming lane, so no one could accuse them of violating territorial boundaries.
Electronic warfare data started coming in, both from Red Hawk and from Savo’s and Mitscher’s own eavesdropping. Aegis correlated them with radar and cross-bearings to show where the Pasdaran was gathering. C-802 batteries were lighting up on Larak Island, and on the Iranian mainland behind it.
Chin propped on his fists, Dan mused on the murky history of the C-802. The missile had originally been a Chinese design, but the Iranians had reverse-engineered it with North Korean help. They were near-supersonic sea-skimmers with a pop-up maneuver at the end of their flight profiles. Dangerous, but his EW team had trained for hundreds of hours to jam them. And when they’d faced Syrian 802s in the Med, Wenck and Dr. Noblos had come up with a way to hijack the missiles’ link to their launching point, and reprogram their targeting. “Backseat Driver” had proven its worth off Israel. And if jamming, spoofing, and chaff didn’t work, he could shoot them down.
But if they overwhelmed him, in dozens stagger-fired from different locations to converge with a single time-on-target…
Lounging in his seat, shivering, he wondered if Savo had been sent in as a deliberate provocation. After all, they’d nearly sunk an Iranian frigate last winter. And Dan personally had tangled with Iran several times.
Or was that paranoia, megalomania, persecution complex? Surely no one cared.
On the other hand, it could be just enough to convince the other side they were being deliberately goaded.
As he’d expected, the Combattantes stood off as the U.S. warships passed. Red Hawk reported that the small contacts spaced along the northern boundary of the international strait were dhows. Dan suspected these were transmitting targeting data to the missile batteries, which remained locked on. Wenck asked if they should do some decoying drills, but Dan put a foot down. This was no time for simulations. The potential for misunderstanding, or simple fuckup, was too great. He maintained a steady twenty knots, covering ground while not burning too much fuel.
Unfortunately, after the task group had passed, the missile boats drifted south, then fell in astern, following them in. Staying in their wake, but maintaining a standoff of about ten miles.
If they were the gatekeepers, the gates were swinging shut.
By the time the clock above the LSDs read 0700 he was exiting the Knuckle, passing south of Larak Island with four antiship missile radars locked on Savo Island. The exterior cameras were picturing a gentling sea, a blood-scarlet, cloudy horizon beneath the risen sun, when Lieutenant Singhe leaned on the back of Dan’s chair. “Sir. A word.”