Dan nodded, flicked up the red cover over the Permission switch, and clicked it to On. “Batteries released.”
A distant roar signaled departure of the first Harpoon. A moment later the second left. The third. Then the fourth. They came up on the screen, swiftly departing, with the next clicking rotation of the SPY-1 beam. It would be a short-range engagement, no more than twenty thousand yards. “Anybody we miss, designate to guns,” he told Mills. The five-inches would reach out fifteen thousand yards, with seventy-pound shells proximity-fuzed to burst above the oncoming boats.
“Vampire, Vampire, Vampire!” the EW petty officer yelled. “Missile in the air, X-band emitter, correlates with Sackcloth antiship missile… Vampire number two, in the air.”
Two weapons were headed their way. One from the southern group, the other, with farther to travel, from the north. The NATO reporting name “Sackcloth” was the C-801, the version before the 802. So the Pasdaran had inherited the older missiles.
Sharp bangs echoed through the superstructure as the chaff mortars went off. Someone nudged him; held out a flash hood, gloves, goggles. Dan almost pushed them away, then took them, pulling the heavy fabric over his head. If jamming failed, if the chaff and flares and rubber duckies didn’t decoy it, that missile was coming through the side. He donned the goggles, too, but left the gloves off, to be able to address his keyboard.
On the display, twin carets pulsed red, clicking toward the blue cross of Own Ship with each sweep. “Take with Standard?” Mills asked. Dan shook his head. Their EW team should be able to cope with the earlier-version seeker heads.
“What the fuck is he doing?” Mills breathed, beside him.
Dan glanced back up at the screen, to see the TAO’s pointer highlighting the readout for Red Hawk. The SH-60B was in a tight turn to port, down at two hundred feet. “What’s he doing?” Mills breathed again.
“Vampire, Vampire, Vampire. Two more incoming. Tracks—”
Aegis classified threats and assigned weapons without human intervention. Dan didn’t see any need to interfere with the watch team as they ran the intercepts. To Mills he said, “I’m not sure.” He clicked to the helo coordination net to hear Wilker say, “Tell the Old Man—”
“The Old Man’s on the line.”
“Uh, yessir. Danger close. Madman, Madman. Smoke away. Mark, on top.”
“Streaming the Nixie,” Mills said, beside him. The antitorpedo noisemaker. Not totally dependable, but better than nothing.
Dan sat frozen as the screen showed the first C-801 curving to port, away from Savo and Mitscher. Savo’s electronic warfare team had hijacked its guidance, spoofed it to think they were where they weren’t. But the helo, on its way in from the west to attack the southern gaggle, had just detected a magnetic anomaly in the sea beneath. Dan had gone over the chart carefully before the engagement, looking specifically for wrecks, and there weren’t any marked. At the same time, another part of his brain noted that several boats were organizing out of the gaggle into what looked like a wheeling movement. Even in the absence of communications, someone was trying to coordinate a preplanned attack.
But rehearsing it in drills was nothing like executing it under fire, with your comms jammed, missiles headed at you, and five-inch shells going off overhead in instantaneous blooms of black high-explosive smoke that boomed shock waves across the water like the crack of doom.
“This is Red Hawk. Prosecute, or attack? Over.”
He decided. “Attack as ordered. Stay high. Take out the ones turning south. If they turn north, let ’em go.” He clicked to the Sonar channel. “Zotcher. Copy that datum from Red Hawk?”
Instead he got Rit Carpenter. “On it, Skipper. Designate Goblin Alfa. But we got nothing there. If it’s a sub, he’s doggo on the bottom.”
When he looked at the screen again the semicircle that denoted Red Hawk was passing just to the south of the gaggle, low, at two hundred knots… close to never-exceed speed. Spitting out those sixty-pound homing Hellfires. The contact ahead displayed as a possible submarine. If Savo kept on the course he’d planned, north of Sirri Island, she’d pass within range of its torpedoes. If it was a sub. But if he turned to slide south of Sirri, he’d be in among the rigs and pipelines of the Fateh oil field.
“Red Hawk reports: Eight Hellfires expended. Four detonations, one secondary, lots of smoke. Winchester, Winchester. “Which meant, all ordnance expended.
“Sir, do you need me anymore?” the Persian beside him asked, very politely.
Dan flinched; he’d forgotten Kaghazchi was there. “Um, you can stand by… but stay in CIC, please. — Very well,” he said into the helo net. “Clear to the east, but stand by to light off jamming and spoofing as required. Fuel state?”
“Bingo fuel time twenty.”
Christ, he’d have to recover them soon. He’d boxed his enemy in, but now he was getting boxed himself. And time was running out. He was processing this, with the still-turning missile boats next in line, when Mills breathed, “Bandits.”
When Dan looked up there they were: three, then four tracks just winked into existence above the mainland. The callouts went up: Su-24s. Not the latest and greatest jets, but more than adequate to threaten surface ships. The top cover F/A-18s could deal with four, but if their numbers kept building, the situation might turn dire.
“Matador, this is Anvil. Stand by… Salvo. Taking second assault wave. Over.”
“Roger, out,” Dan muttered. Mitscher was taking on a new wave of boats, but to judge by their ragged intervals, and the fact that several were lagging the leaders, the warrior spirit was flagging. One boat was already fleeing, heading north across the transit lane. If the F-18s let it go, as he’d directed, there’d be more.
Mills was blinking at him. “What’cha think, Matt?” Dan asked him. “Something in your eye?”
“The IIRN bases its Kilos outside the Gulf. The navy and the Pasdaran don’t exercise together, according to a brief I heard. Not a lot of mutual trust.”
“Uh-huh. I heard that too. So our contact’s probably not a Kilo.”
“I’d say, doubtful. But the Guard operates those minisubs.”
“I don’t think it’s a sub at all,” Dan said. “There’s all kinds of metal under the water here. Pipelines. Abandoned drilling structures. Wrecks, from Operation Praying Mantis — we hit the Iranians before, right about here.” He clicked to the ASW circuit. “Rit, Dan. Anything yet on that possub? Goblin Alfa?”
“Not a peep, amigo. I’d let you know.”
Dan let the “amigo” go by. For now. “Can you ping him?”
“Tried, but it’s too shallow to get an active return. Suspect shadow zones, too. Like I said, shallow as shit.”
“At only eight thousand yards?”
“Like I said, Cap’n—”
He clicked off, as the screen showed Mitscher’s Harpoons mowing the oncoming boats down one after the other. Savo’s five-inches were slamming away. So far nothing had gotten into range of the 25s or the Phalanx. Dan had expected to expend several Standards, but so far his electronics were proving a better shield.
An antiship missile had to be smarter than the average weapon. It navigated not to a fixed geographic point, like a cruise missile, but to an area where the target was expected to be. It then had to pick a maneuvering warship out of the sea return and surface clutter, select the real target out of perhaps several ships in range, calculate the most survivable approach geometry, and home in. At any point, it could be foxed. Sea-skimmers were particularly vulnerable to having their radar altimeters pulse-doubled, which aimed them into the sea at six hundred miles an hour… fatal to the missile, but to no one else.