The classic strategy against overwhelming forces was to defeat them in detail. Use maneuver and cunning to isolate a portion, wipe that fraction out with superior firepower, then move on to the next engagement with an improved force ratio. Napoleon had used that tactic to perfection.
But two huge ships couldn’t outmaneuver high-powered speedboats and hovercraft skimming over the calm strait. They’d be surrounded, like a wagon train circled by Plains Indians. Then, on signal, all the boats would turn in to attack.
His gaze fastened to the Weapons Inventory screen above the Aegis display. The numbers weren’t tactically satisfying. Even assuming one kill for one shot, and engaging eleven targets per minute, that would leave more than enough boats to overwhelm them… Or, wait… he’d forgotten Mitscher. The destroyer was data-linked and tactically merged with Savo, was for all intents and purposes the same ship, only with double redundancy on sensors and weapons. And he had the F-18s overhead, two low, four more stacked above them, mainly in case the few Iranian jets still operational decided to get into the act, but also on call to help suppress a mass attack.
Okay, things weren’t totally dark. But he couldn’t assume the other side had the same Big Picture, were operating as information-rich as NATO or U.S. forces. Certainly not once Savo and the EA-6B twenty thousand feet up started jamming them. After the Iranian radars blanked, they’d be limited to line of sight, and dust and haze plus comm jamming would make even visual targeting and own-force coordination difficult. He clicked to the air controller’s circuit and asked for each flight of fighter/attacks to make a low pass through the Pasdaran exercise area. And to keep on doing that, to give the impression of endless streams of F-18s screaming in.
“Captain?” Van Gogh, brandishing a rolled-up chart. “You said to keep you posted. See these islands to port? The big one’s Bozorg. The small one past that, Kuchek. Once we pass those, we’re in their op area.”
Dan checked the paper chart against the nav screen, matching longitude first, then latitude. If shots started flying, he had to be absolutely certain they were in the international straits. That would be the first thing the Iranians would accuse him of — violating territorial waters. “Okay, that’s consistent with what I have on the verticals, Chief. Thanks for backing me up.”
“We really gonna call them on this?”
“Absolutely.” Dan wondered why he was even asking.
“So you want this guy now, right?”
The navigator stepped aside. Behind him was SK3 Kaghazchi, the ship’s go-to for translation. Dan murmured, “Hey, Bozorgmehr,” and, after a moment, pointed to the unit commander’s chair. What the hell.
The emigre slid into it, smiling. He was mustached, dark-skinned, in his mid-thirties; his long, closely shaven skull gleamed in the overhead light. Dan was never sure how far to trust him — storekeepers didn’t undergo the toughest clearance requirements — but he had a deep, authoritative bass that sounded like Allah himself on the radio. Dan picked up the Navy Red handset. Time to pimp everybody. Especially Mitscher. “Matador actual for Anvil actual. Over.”
“This is Anvil actual.” Stony’s voice, all right. He must have been sitting by the handset.
“See those small boats ahead? I make sixty of them, in two waves. Over.”
“Copy, concur. I hold them.”
“I’m having the Hornets sweep ahead of us. My intentions are to close up so we can put more fire on target if we have to. Also it’ll make things easier for the air. So move in on me. Interlocked defense.”
“Got it. How close you want me, what direction?”
“Five hundred yards. On a bearing of”—he hesitated—“due north.”
“Coming to station. Over,” Stonecipher said.
“Mitscher’s turning to starboard,” Mills muttered.
Dan signed off and nodded. The enemy had already split his forces, about two-thirds of the boats to the landward of the channel, the other third to port, south of the oncoming Americans.
Time to let them know what he expected, and what would happen if they didn’t comply. He gave Kaghazchi his instructions, making sure the guy understood what he wanted to communicate. Five miles’ standoff. No illumination by fire-control radars. A clear warning he’d open fire if any surface craft closed in. “Tell ’em we want innocent transit, as defined by international law. Let us through, stand clear, and no one has to die for his country.”
The bushy eyebrows lifted, but Kaghazchi nodded. They went over the phrasing, then Dan called Radio and warned them to start taping. He switched to International Call and passed the storekeeper the handset.
As the Persian intoned the warning, Dan concentrated on the twenty miles ahead. The pips to starboard had divided again. That made three groups now, two to starboard, one to port. Like a gauntlet the Americans would have to run.
Now he had to step back. There was always a temptation to fulfill a scenario, to make reality square with what you expected. Like it or not, now he just had to wait. Ceding the initiative, but that was how it had to be.
“Any response?” he asked. The translator shrugged and waggled his head. Dan took that for a no, and reached for the red phone.
“Anvil, this is Matador. Copy us going out to them on VHF?”
“Loud and clear. Over.”
“We’re not hearing anything back. You?”
“Nada. Weapons tight here. Over.”
“Concur,” he said. “But stand by for tactical maneuvering. Matador out.”
He drew a slow breath, running it all through his mind again. Someday computers would do all this. Evaluate, plan, then maneuver ships in battle. Someday soon, most likely.
But not just yet.
Above all, he wasn’t going to the mat with these guys. If they wanted a battle, they’d have it. But on his terms. Only a fool fought a fair fight.
Donnie Wenck leaned over. “Something you wanna see. We don’t have it on the screen, because it ain’t painting regular—”
“What is it, Donnie? I mean, Chief? I’m kind of busy here—”
“Just come over and look.”
At the SPY console he peered over Terranova’s shoulder for several seconds before he saw what she was pointing at. The merest flicker. It didn’t register with every sweep. Sometimes several beams swept past before it painted again, like a luminescent jelly, deep underwater. Only this, if it was there, was way up there.
“How high is this?” he muttered.
“When it paints, I get around seventy thousand feet,” the Terror murmured.
“Holy shit. What the hell is it?”
“A UFO.” Wenck smirked.
“You shitting me?”
“Well, maybe some kind of upper-atmosphere disturbance? There’s something called a ‘sprite,’ but they’re associated with major lightning storms. The course and speed… hard to calculate, and it drifts this way and that, but overall, seems to be about two-two-zero.”
“How fast?”
“Hard to calculate, like I said… sixty knots?”
Two-two-zero was close to their own course out of the Knuckle. Was it following them? Tracking Savo Island through the strait? That seemed unlikely. Seventy thousand feet was where the high-altitude recon birds lived, the U-2, the SR-71. And they were fast burners. That high, that slow, what could it be? “A rogue weather balloon, or some kind of upper-atmosphere physics experiment, is all we could come up with,” Wenck said. “Anyway, figured you oughta know.”