Fagan commented, "One thing that I still don't understand."
"What's that?" Hunter asked.
"How did that KILO know we were coming? He fired an ET-80 Alpha at us."
Hunter shook his head. The ET-80 Alpha was strictly an ASW torpedo. The KILO skipper was expecting a US submarine.
11 Jun 2000, 2145LT (1245Z)
“The time/distance problem just doesn’t work. The Engineer says that he needs twelve more hours before we get one main engine and then we are limited to twenty knots. If we work this out, from here to the rendezvous is twenty-five hundred nautical miles. With this timetable, we will make twenty-four miles good while we are fixing the bearing and then one hundred and twenty-four hours or five days and five hours to get there. That will be a full day after the SEALs arrive.” LCDR Jacobs completed his briefing as the assembled department heads pored over the large-scale chart laid out on the wardroom table. “That doesn’t even take into account time to come to periscope depth for comms or any delays. We’ll either have to delay or abort.”
Hunter directed his first team, “Unfortunately, neither of those options are possible. We have to get there and deliver those SEALs. Too much depends on it. Give me another option. Think outside the box.”
The room fell silent. No one had an answer.
They had come so far, accomplished so much, only to be stopped here. It didn't seem possible, but there didn't appear to be any alternative.
“Just a minute,” the normally quiet weapons officer jumped up. As the most junior and least experienced of the department heads, Jeff Miller was much more inclined to sit back and listen than to initiate any ideas outside of his departmental responsibilities.
“Eng, didn’t you say that the nearest bearing was in Pearl?”
“Yeah, that’s where it is. Doesn’t do us any good over four thousand five hundred miles away,” the exhausted Engineer shot back sarcastically.
“Just a minute, Eng. Give Jeff a chance. He may have something,” Fagan interjected.
Jeff Miller started out hesitantly, afraid that he would be laughed at or his idea rejected as too far fetched. “Remember that exchange duty I pulled with the Air Force after my junior officer sea tour? I flew as a watch officer on the Airborne National Command Post. You call it Kneecap after the acronym, ABNCP. One thing that we always tracked was the KC-10 tankers around the world. We always had the capability to set up a tanker grid across the Pacific on a one-hour notice.”
LT Miller continued, “Now, remember that squadron of F-15 Eagles that the Hawaiian Air National Guard maintains at Hickam? They maintain two birds on a ready fifteen for air defense. Suppose that we put a bearing in an F-15 and flew it to Guam. Have an F-14 from the NIMITZ meet it there. The F-14 does a hot turn around to the carrier. Then one of ESSEX’s OSPREYs brings it to us. If the fast flyers pour on the coal, shouldn’t take more than, say, six hours.”
“Weps, you’re a genius. If you weren’t so ugly, I’d kiss you,” Hunter shouted over his shoulder as he ran to the control room.
“Radio, Captain, get me Alpha Alpha on the horn.”
The reply was quick. “Captain, radio. Alpha Alpha is on the net. The watch officer is notifying the admiral. I have patched you through to the conn.”
“Alpha Alpha, this is SAN FRANCISCO, over” Hunter started over the red phone.
Admiral Smith answered, “SAN FRANCISCO this is Alpha Alpha. Jon, you just called me out of a full house in the staff poker game, so this had better be good.”
“Admiral, I probably just saved you from a big loss to your chief of staff. Remember, Captain Butler is an old submariner and we can’t be trusted.
"I have a problem and a solution, but I need some help,” Hunter continued as he briefed the battle group commander on Jeff Miller’s plan. The admiral signed off, saying that he would see what he could do, but clearly unconvinced that the huge multi-service bureaucracy could react that swiftly for one lone submarine, half way around the world.
11 Jun 2000, 0355LT (1455Z)
An hour later, an Hawaiian Air National Guard major briefed his flight of two F-15 Eagles. “I don’t know what the skinny is on this, but the general himself was just on the horn. We are flying those two boxes at max cruise to Guam. KC-10s are taking station 500 miles Southwest of French Frigate Shoals and a thousand miles West of Midway. We’re to take off ASAP, point West and go fast. ETA Guam, three hours. Sure must be something important in those boxes to turn us into FedEx. Saddle up, time to fly.”
At the same time, two F-14D Tomcats were thrown into night sky from the forward catapults on NIMITZ. They pointed their noses East-North-East and made maximum speed to rendezvous with the Westbound Eagles on Guam.
“NIMITZ control, this is tango bravo flight of two. Outbound zero-three-zero, angels four-five, mach one point two. Verify KC-10s on station, over”
“Tango bravo, NIMITZ control, roger. Blue suiters report filling stations available as briefed.”
The round trip with two refuelings each way took a little over six hours. The pilots and NFO’s didn’t even have the time to climb down out of their cramped cockpits into the tropical heat
