Charles Taylor - First Salvo

Dave Pratt felt the searing heat from the cigar butt clenched between his fingers. “Just what the hell do you mean, ‘business as usual,’ Commander Clark?” The heavy brows were knotted.

“What I mean, Admiral, is that they do this every day. At least as long as I’ve been out here, they have.” The response was tentative, sensing a mistake had been made.

“We are in Condition Two. What that means is that at any time we are one second from Condition One, which means that those bastards will already have launched missiles, which means that, unless we have been on our toes, you will have the opportunity to count the seconds until you are either atomized or blown into little pieces.” The cigar had burned its way down to his flesh. He could feel the finger blistering. “If you or—” he turned to glare at each of the officers in the room, “—or anyone else ever uses the term ‘business as usual’ again, you’ve just earned a trip back to the States. And,” he added menacingly, “you can’t imagine the fitness report that would follow if I survived what you all screwed up.”

Commander Arthur Clark’s eyes were fixed on the cigar in Admiral Pratt’s fingers. As it smoldered next to the flesh, Clark was sure the man would toss the stub in a butt kit. When he saw the skin color, then blister, he knew that things were definitely never going to be the same again aboard Kennedy.

Dave Pratt had been in his sea cabin when the initial warnings came over the voice radio. The Hawkeyes, flying patrol two hundred miles out, had picked up a Soviet flight closing on an attack profile. The Russians were utilizing satellite data to home in on the U.S. force and their target-acquisition radar was already in the search mode. At the same time, a transmission to four Soviet attack submarines had been intercepted; it ordered the Russian subs to close in a new formation, observed just recently for the first time during exercises in the North Atlantic. Their target seemed likely to be Pratt’s battle group.

Dave Pratt knew the Russian forces wouldn’t come this way — or they shouldn’t. That would compromise the shock attack that would be their main objective, a blitzkrieg-like lunge into central Europe. And when it started at sea, the skies would be saturated with the first salvo of Soviet missiles. This was an exercise, but Pratt was appalled that there was even one individual left aboard the carrier who could accept this as business as usual. The Russians would never be so complacent. They were using every minute to practice, taking every opportunity to see how the American battle group would respond. And when the exercise became the real thing, their approach would be exactly as they were doing now.

Casually, Pratt pulled one more drag from the remainder of his cigar, then tossed it away. As he passed through the hatch into his sea cabin, he called over his shoulder, “Report when the entire group is ready. I will treat this exactly as if it was the attack.”

“If they make similar moves toward our fighters again, sir—”

Pratt cut off the questions. “That is considered an overt act in my book. Blow them out of the air.” He restrained himself from slamming the door as he departed.

He sat down at the desk in his sea cabin, staring at the bulkhead, his fingers drumming a solemn cadence on the metal surface. Out of habit, and perhaps with a dollop of nostalgia, he listened for the telltale sounds, the announcements coming over the ship’s loudspeaker, the drumming of feet on the ladders, the sounds of engines warming up on the flight deck, but now such events were found only in the movies.

His sea cabin was deep in the interior of the huge island that was the giant carrier. It was one deck above the combat-information center of the ship, and right next to his flag plot. They were insulated against sound, against practically anything but a nuclear blast.

Dave Pratt stared hard at Alice’s photo on his desk, the adrenaline of anger subsiding. Like his, her hair was graying, but hers did so gracefully. His had simply changed to a steel-gray color that matched his military personality. Alice was a lady, pure and simple, born to be a Navy wife, willing to be both mother and father to the kids. Pratt rubbed his eyes for a moment. Oh, how he wished he could have sent her off to the country away from Washington!

What he wanted more than anything else, as he forced himself to turn away from her picture, was to see how the command center would function. He was treating this as the real thing, and the Russians were too, and he intended to take them as far as they wanted to go without allowing them the slightest advantage. When they flew home to their debriefing session, he wanted them to report that the American battle group met them head-on and was just aching for a fight.

The buzz of the sound-powered phone interrupted his thoughts. “Admiral Pratt,” he answered. He listened for a moment, then asked, “Who has air defense?” He was told that the Yorktown ’s AEGIS system was now controlling the air defense for the battle group. Each ship’s computer would be tied into the master, which could then assign targets, even control their firing if necessary. He was also told that O’Bannon had taken over the antisubmarine net. Pratt made a note to see about changing that to Hancock. He’d feel better if Nellie was coordinating it. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he concluded, returning the phone to its cradle.

His little scene with the men minutes before had turned the trick, Pratt decided. These guys were professional, well educated. They just needed a kick in the ass. They’d been through so many exercises in the past few months that the recent intelligence reports just hadn’t sunk in. They thought they were to react when that first shot was fired, but he expected them to act faster, perhaps to squeeze off their own first shot just a split second more quickly. Anything that would give him the upper hand over the superior Russian numbers was what he was looking for. After that, he felt he could handle it. There were more of them, but he had the advantage when it came to equipment and manpower. Since Pratt knew time was short, the most vital gift he could give this battle group was his knowledge of what was about to happen — and his confidence.

He reviewed the organization in his mind once more, just to be sure that he could apply the notes originated at the Naval War College months before. He knew how he wanted to fight the group against each type of attack — air-to-surface missile, surface-to-surface missile, and submarine — and how to respond to one of them or all together. Most important of all, he had no doubt how he would coordinate the electronic warfare. That, he had decided, would determine the victor — electronic warfare, the magic of the black box.

Now he would see exactly how his staff reacted — both to the Russians and to his demands. He tilted his cap rakishly over one eye, once again the recruiting-poster admiral, and headed for the ship’s nerve center.

His command post in the darkened, red-lit center was a well-padded swivel chair surrounded by a half-moon of electronic displays. In addition to a comprehensive picture of the Med, there was a display each for the air, subsurface, and surface scenes. It was easier to comprehend once your mind adapted to the futuristic environment. There was one color for your side, a separate one for the other. The shapes of the electronic images designated various ships and aircraft. Courses, speeds, heights, depths, distances, even time-to-impact-after-firing appeared beside the images or above the display boards. Continuous printouts of tactical information flowed from IBM machines in front of them. The computer could respond to almost any question put to it, but the inquiry had to be accurate, for it often concerned objects closing the force at supersonic speeds. AEGIS took command when man’s decision-making could no longer keep up with the weapons he had designed.