Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (16 page)

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.

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.”

“Pass it to ComFifth. Probably nothing, but they need to know if it’s some kind of local environment thing.”

Dan patted Terranova’s well-padded shoulder, cleared his throat, and pulled himself back to the problem at hand. He couldn’t just wait. On the other hand, he couldn’t pick a fight. He went over it all again in his head, hoping he wasn’t getting ready to really screw up, then grabbed the handset. “Red Hawk, Matador Actual.”