“Shoot. I mean — guess I shouldn’t say that just now.”
She didn’t crack the slightest smile. Just leaned in, dropping her voice. “You wanted us to spin up Tomahawks on every C-802 battery we identified. How about a warning shot?”
This was a surprise. Savo could do limited land-attack mission planning onboard. But he couldn’t “spin up,” or prelaunch program, a TLAM without Fifth Fleet authorization. Still, he had ordered Mills and Singhe to do engagement planning. “Uh… you’re not really spinning up, are you?”
“Well, no. Just building the missions.”
“That’s better. But, you’re proposing a first strike? On the Iranian mainland? I don’t think so, Amy.”
“They’re illuminating us in firing mode. That’s a hostile act, according to our rules of engagement.”
Dan cleared his throat. “There’s something you have to learn about ROEs, Amy. There’s the ‘ought to be’ and ‘what they say it is,’ and then there’s ‘how it’s interpreted.’ And after all that, there’s ‘what we do anyway.’”
“I’m beginning to see that, sir.”
“But regardless of any and all of the above, I’m not out here to kick off a war.”
“Sir, with all due respect, that’s idiotic. As soon as we detect one launch, we should pull the trigger on every site we have localized.”
Dan tensed, suddenly angry. Idiotic? “I’m not disagreeing with you, Amy, but I don’t have that authority. I could release an overwater strike, on a surface unit. But a strike on the mainland, no way. I appreciate your aggressiveness, but you need to stand down. And reread your battle orders.”
She was frowning, those luxuriant eyebrows knitted. Seemed about to say something more, but Dan spoke first. “Let me make something clear, Lieutenant.”
“Yes sir. Listening.”
“We’re not out here alone. Us and Mitscher. Along with our Tomahawks, we have over a hundred more dialed in from the battle group, on every airstrip, tank farm, naval base, and barracks along the coast. Two wings of strike aircraft on fifteen-minute alert, and B-52s out of Diego Garcia behind that. We’re just the cheese on the mousetrap, see? If the Iranians feel like taking a bite, they’ll regret it.” He hesitated, eyeing the long strip of Qeshm. Not for the first time, he imagined how easily the Marines could take the whole island and, with two miles of water between it and the mainland, wall Iran itself off from the strait.
That would mean all-out war, of course. But it might come to that, if both sides kept pushing chips into the pot.
She nodded slowly. “But do they know that?”
“Believe me, they do. This is a ritual dance, Amy. Like bees do, to send a message. It’s complicated. If anybody gets the steps wrong, things can go south fast. But all we have to do is steam in and then steam out. This is a freedom-of-navigation operation. A transit passage. And nothing more. So we’re not going to initiate anything that could be portrayed as an aggressive action. Understand?”
She hesitated, then nodded again. Straightened, and went back to her station, leaving a quick glance of dark eyes and the scent of sandalwood.
Cheryl Staurulakis came in at 0900. Dan got up and stretched. “XO, I’m going up to the bridge, have a look around. Let me know if anything starts.”
“Yessir.”
He stopped in his cabin and took a leak. Glanced out the little forward-facing porthole at a flat, dusty, light-filled sea. Still shivering; even with the foul-weather jacket, CIC had been freezing. At least on the bridge, it would be warm.
The pilothouse was so quiet he could hear the chronometer ticking over the nav table. Everyone had flash gear ready: hood, gloves, goggles, gas masks buckled to thighs. He paced from the starboard side, where Iran was visible as a low, sere coastline, to port. Where four tankers spaced out toward the west, growing smaller and smaller, like old photos of the Great White Fleet. The sea had smoothed, though the monsoon wind still blew. The sky was still overcast, but now with a queer reddish tinge to the slate, from all the refineries, plus the ever-present sand.
He nodded to the 25mm remote console operators. Wondering if what he’d told Singhe was totally true. About this being a message… that was clear enough. But the part about everyone knowing the steps… that was less self-evident. Especially when the Revolutionary Guard were involved. They were known to act independently of the regular navy, and sometimes, even, of the political leadership.
His Hydra beeped. “Captain,” he snapped.
“Sir, Weps here. Got a train issue glitch in Mount 22… the port CIWS.”
“What’s up?”
“Not sure yet. Failure in the train mechanism, or possibly the card that controls it.”
Dan tried to keep his voice level. If a C-802 popped over the horizon, near supersonic at twenty feet above the water, and jamming and decoys failed, the Sea Whiz was the last card he could play before seeing what three hundred pounds of armor-piercing high explosive did to an aluminum superstructure. “This is a bad time for gremlins, Ollie.”
“Realize that, sir. Got the first team up there doing fault isolation now.”
“Get it fixed. Report back.” He snapped off, realized everyone on the bridge was watching, and tried to look unconcerned.
But it wasn’t easy.
Back in Combat, he juggled a too-hot paper cup at the electronic warfare stacks, reducing the blood content in his coffee stream. The leading EW petty officer was plotting each jammer and fire-control radar that brushed its fingers over them. A golden opportunity to refine the Iranian order of battle. In the intelligence sense, his mission was already a success. The jamming was annoying, but the petty officer assured him it wouldn’t affect their ability to detect launches.
Hoping he was right, Dan strolled to the command seat again. Staurulakis glanced up, looking haggard, hair straggling out of her ponytail. As well she might; she and Dan were standing watch and watch, and the exec had too much to do on her off-hours to waste them sleeping.
“We’re past the Knuckle,” she murmured. “No hostile action yet, but numbers are still building. Think it’s just a bluff?”
Dan stared at the large-screen display, which showed a steady increase in small contacts along the Iranian coast. The exec muttered, “They have to know what we did to their frigate. I wonder if that’s hurt their confidence in their great new missiles.”
“They have more than just 802s,” Dan said. “They’ve got that rocket torpedo. The Shkval-K. And mines. But I worry about all these small craft.”
Staurulakis eyed the screen. “Over two hundred of them… a lot North Korean built… with multiple rocket launchers, missiles, and torpedoes. Plus, yeah, mines, if we let them get in front of us. We don’t have a great detection rate on those.”
“I’ll take it. Thanks, Cheryl.” Dan resumed the command seat, warm where her bottom had just left it, and zoomed in. He keyboarded and moused, pulling out data. Four of the faster contacts might be hovercraft, but as he did the arithmetic his fingers slowed. Sixty contacts out there. Impossible to say which classes without a visual ID from the helo, but he wasn’t sending Red Hawk in among scores of small boats, every one of which probably had Misagh shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles.
If they swarmed him… A Pentagon war game two years before had free-played just that tactic, with horrendous results. He didn’t plan to repeat the mistakes the Blue commander had made. The most essential lesson was that, like a fight in a dark alley, he had to keep the enemy at arm’s length, where better U.S. sensors, data, and long-range weapons could attrite their numbers. In other words, keep them inside his kill zone, while he stayed outside theirs.