Gordon Kent - Damage Control

Against his own inclination, Guppy leaned forward to look at the screen on his armrest.

“See? That’s the air-search radar on one of the Indian picket ships.” Soleck put his cursor over one of the signals so that Guppy could see it.

“You don’t know that.”

Soleck exhaled in frustration. “Yeah, Gup, I do. So would you if you learned your radar parameters. That’s not one of ours, and it’s too much in the air-search freq to be anything but one of theirs. Civilian ships don’t mount antennas like that, right? See the sweep? And anyway, that’s Owl Screech, a Russian targeting radar on one of their Russian-built ships.”

“And you just know all that.”

“Yeah. I also know that we’re off our altitude by a long shot and starting a long turn to the right because the copilot isn’t really paying attention.”

Guppy swung his eyes to the instruments and the plane snapped to attention. “You—”

Soleck thought Yeah, I’m being unfair. Whatever. He ran the cursor over the battle group and looked. He could read some low-power emissions from the flight deck, guys talking to the tower for launch at radio freqs. In full EMCON, they wouldn’t do even that. Otherwise, the battle group was pretty invisible. Looked tight. He kept widening his search ring, keeping one eye on his nugget’s flying and one ear on the launch of their strike package. He could hear the air boss berating 706, the other S-3, which had some kind of mechanical failure while in tension.

He got distracted by air-search radar off to the south, followed almost immediately by a targeting radar. His stomach fluttered. He understood as soon as he got a second cut. That would be Fort Klock, probably engaging the first Indian strikes. Cool. Soleck liked to see what was going on, and he liked to figure things out. He intended to be an admiral himself, one day.

“706 is ready to launch,” Guppy said.

Soleck decided not to tell Guppy that he could listen to the radio, too. He got another cut way to the north, up near the Lakshadweep Islands, very weak. He played with it a little, got a second cut. The parameters were way up in the comms range and looked naggingly familiar.

Alpha Whiskey came up on the air command freq and passed a vector to an F-18 just launching. Soleck smiled when he heard Chris Donitz responding in his Minnesota voice. Donitz—“Donuts” to everybody who flew—had just made lieutenant-commander. Donitz was being told to intercept a couple of Indian Jaguars. Old aircraft, no match for the F-18, Soleck thought, probably simulating missiles. Get ‘em, Donuts!

“Where the hell is Al Craik?” Rafe barked at his flag lieutenant.

“Nothing on any of our freqs. Nothing on satcom. It’s like the whole of Mahe has gone off the air.”

“Fuck me.” Rafe realized that he had uttered the words and regretted them. Admirals were encouraged to avoid the foul language so normal at every other level. Hank flashed him a smile, as if he was glad that Rafe was still one of the boys.

“Skipper?” a sailor behind the captain said. “CAG on two. He has a plane missing.”

Rafe looked at Hank while he took the call. “Yeah,” was all he said, and a few seconds later “yeah” again. Then, to Rafe, “AG 702 hasn’t been up on link or radar for ten minutes and CAG is worried.” AG 702 was the S-3 that Rafe had allowed to go out early.

“Stevens is lying low out there.” Rafe was staring at the mess around cat three. “He’s in EMCON, too.”

“Yeah,” said Hank.

“Tell CAG that once the E-2 is airborne, we’ll get a squeak out of 702.”

“Yeah.” The captain murmured into his headset. “He says thanks.”

Rafe thought that the CAG was a nervous ninny who had been promoted above his level of competence, but he kept that view strictly to himself. So far, the worst thing about being a battle group commander was finding that many of the people he liked as drinking buddies were not up to the challenges of big command. Right now, for example, he was ready to kill Alan Craik, whose silence was ruining his day.

“Alpha Whiskey for you, sir.”

“Admiral, 203 is a minute from intercept with those goblins and they won’t respond to radio calls. 203 wants to know how you want to play it.”

This was the gray area where exercise and reality and pride and pilot envy could all get messed up. Rafe didn’t want the Indians to even have an argument that their “missiles” had hit his ship. He worried, too, that the Indian “missiles” would turn back into airplanes when they spotted 203 and prompt an engagement that would waste fuel. He wanted them to admit that they were exercise-dead—and stay that way.

“Tell 203 to get them up on exercise guard and tell them they’re dead from surface-to-air-missiles back before their launch point. If they ignore him, he’s to engage.”

Even while he spoke, the S-3 on catapult three rolled forward into the shuttle at long last, dipped her nose as she went under tension, and leaped like a fat old cat into the air. That S-3 had cost his ship five minutes of launch time, and he could imagine the mayhem it had wreaked down in Air Ops, with pilots aloft clamoring for gas and pilots on the deck eager to launch. He was hot even in the air-conditioned comfort of the flag bridge. Rafe looked at the flag JOTS repeater and waved to one of his staff. “Can you raise Commander Craik on the JOTS?” Even if all of Mahe was down, Al’s JOTS should still function. Why isn’t he thinking this shit? Rafe thought irritably. He took a swallow of coffee. Cold. Ugh.

On the screen of the JOTS, Rafe saw 203 intercept the two Indian Jaguars. One of them turned away at once and headed back for the coast, changing his flight speed and course as prescribed in the exercise book to show that he was exercise-dead. Score one for the good guys.

But the other kept coming.

“Goblin Two will not respond to calls and is inbound toward the missile engagement zone,” Alpha Whiskey said.

The ship’s captain called from his big chair on the port side. “I want to turn to starboard to unmask my aft CIWS.” The Close-In Weapons System was a cannon capable of incredible bursts of very accurate fire to hit missiles at close range.

Rafe wanted to ignore the “dead” Jaguar and continue the launch of aircraft, but he understood that exercises were to train everybody and that ship handling mattered, too. Faced with real missiles, the captain would try to get every defense system on target. Broadside on, just like the age of Nelson.

“Do it.”

Hank leaned over his mike. “Execute,” he said.

Instantly the noise of the ship changed and she rolled to starboard as her helm was put over. It was one of the fastest turns he’d experienced on a carrier.

Madje caught his eye and pointed at the JOTS, shaking his head. “Mahe master terminal is off the air,” he said.

Rafe felt a little chill in his gut.

The ship leaned harder to starboard. The whole deck was vibrating. Rafe saw Hank’s grin, realized that Hank had planned this maneuver and was on the ball. It was well executed, too, and he saw the helmsman beaming.

Good for them, he thought. Glad I let him. Somewhere in the back of his mind where he kept score, Hank Rogers got a little plus sign on a future fitrep.

Down a level, the air boss was putting the whole deck on hold as they heeled sharply. He’d had less than a minute’s warning about what the captain intended. The flight deck was still jammed, but the respite was giving the spotters time to get the second alert five up to cat two and the E-2 command plane up to cat three, despite the cant to the deck.