warning, transmitted through the water as a powerful chirp of sonar, might be sufficient to turn them away. But if necessary, he was to destroy potentially hostile subs before they could close with Jefferson or her escorts.
At prearranged times each day, Galveston was to rise to periscope depth.
Additional orders and updates of the tactical situation could be passed on to the attack sub then. At 1100 hours on the morning of March 26, Galveston’s radar mast broke the surface one hundred twenty miles northwest of the U.S.S. Jefferson. The situation update, together with Captain Fitzgerald’s new orders, were passed to the submarine via relay through a circling Hawkeye, and confirmed by satellite from Washington.
Minutes later, the radio mast vanished again, leaving scarcely a ripple to mark its passing.
At precisely 1125 hours, a series of round hatches set into the attack sub’s hull forward of her sail slid open. At a word from her commanding officer, a twenty-foot-long cigar shape rose from one of the tubes, expelled by a high-pressure blast of water.
The Tomahawk was a cruise missile developed in two different models, the TLAM (Tomahawk Land Attack Missile) and the TASM (Tomahawk AntiShip Missile). Originally designed to be fired from a submarine’s torpedo tubes, it was later discovered that each sub’s torpedo-carrying capacity was severely restricted by including Tomahawks on board. Beginning with the U.S.S. Providence, SS-N-719, all Los Angeles-class subs had fifteen vertical launch tubes, designed especially for Tomahawks, mounted within the bow casing between the sub’s inner and outer hulls, allowing them to carry full complements of both torpedoes and cruise missiles.
Triggered by a ten-foot lanyard connecting missile and launch tube, the solid-fuel rocket boost motor ignited in a cloud of gas bubbles and boiling water, driving the missile upward at a fifty-degree angle. The motor burned for seven seconds, long enough to punch through the surface and into the air. Then the booster fell away, wings deployed as the missile nosed over into horizontal flight only meters above the surface, and the missile’s air- breathing gas turbine switched on.
Within seconds, another Tomahawk broke the surface, then another and another. At Mach.7, the cruise missiles arrowed southeast toward their target.
Three hundred miles away, another, much larger submarine was watching the approaches to Bombay. Four hundred seventy feet long and sixty feet through the beam, it was one of a special class of nuclear-powered attack subs known to the West as Oscar.
The Oscar had originally been conceived as a platform for anticarrier operations. Its primary mission was to stalk American aircraft carrier battle groups. In time of war, the Oscars would be directed to participate in long- range missile bombardment of the U.S. carriers, coordinating their strikes with missile launches from surface ships and long-range bombers. The Oscar’s broad girth was made necessary by the cruise-missile launch tubes built into the hull on either side of the long, flat sail. Six square hatches on either side each covered two tubes. The sub carried a total of twenty-four SS-N-19 antiship missiles, high-speed, long-range weapons that could carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.
One after another, the sleek ship-killers burst from the waters above the submerged Oscar, discarded their empty boosters, and deployed the swept-back wings. Using information relayed to the Oscar from Soviet reconnaissance satellites orbiting overhead, the SS-N-19s began flying north, homing on the same targets as those already marked by the American Tomahawks.
“Today, Lieutenant, you are a hero for all of India,” Ramesh said. “Your triumph will be remembered always!”
Admiral Ramesh faced the young lieutenant. He was so young, so like Joshi, that for a moment he wanted to reach out and embrace the boy. But professional decorum, and Lieutenant Tahliani’s obvious embarrassment, held him back.
“I did my duty, Admiral,” the boy said. “We all only did our duty.”
Admiral Ramesh shook his head. “You’ve done more than your duty, Lieutenant,” he said softly. “You may well have won for us the victory we needed.”
Tahliani’s flight had been the stuff of legends, of the ancient Hindu epic legends. Decoying an American F-14 with one of his Sea Eagles, he’d then shot it down with a Magic AAM. He could have launched the rest of his antiship missiles then and fled, but the boy had known that the alerted American defenses would probably knock down the Sea Eagles long before they reached their targets.
Instead, he’d rounded up a few companions and set out on his long and fuel-costly detour around the American fleet, avoiding several U.S. pickets along the way. In a triumph of long-distance navigation and flying skill, he’d reached a point from which he and his men could launch their remaining missiles. Radio traffic between the Soviet and American vessels monitored from the shore indicated that the Russian carrier was now burning, incapacitated by at least one serious missile hit.
That strike, together with the damage done to an American command cruiser, had spelled victory for the Indian navy. Now there remained only one more task, The remaining carrier, the Americans’ Jefferson, was launching aircraft. It seemed likely that they were a strike force, that their targets were the airstrips and military bases that had launched the attack on the combined squadron.
If this last, desperate thrust by the enemy could be blunted, the Americans would have to admit defeat. The old dream of an Indian Ocean free of outside influences and under New Delhi’s firm political control would become reality at last.
A klaxon blared and Admiral Ramesh looked up. “Now hear this, now hear this,” rasped from the loudspeaker. “Prepare for missile attack.
Admiral Ramesh to the Flag Bridge, please. Admiral Ramesh.”
For Ramesh it was as though the pieces of a complex puzzle had suddenly snapped into place. He’d been expecting some form of retaliation by the Americans and Russians for the damage done to their forces. Still, when Tahliani had returned in triumph from his strike, when the news had come through from Naval Headquarters at Bombay that the land-based attack had overwhelmed the American defenses and hit their command ship, he’d allowed himself to believe that the enemy might cut their losses and retreat.
But that was not to be. This would not be a matter of raid and counterraid, but of two giants, battling to the death.
“Lieutenant,” he snapped. Tahliani drew himself to attention. “Your aircraft are being fueled and rearmed. On my authority, you are to get as many aircraft off the deck as possible. I don’t want the same thing happening to Viraat as happened to the Kremlin!”
“Yes, sir! Are we to fly the Sea Harriers ashore?”
Ramesh shook his head. “No, Lieutenant. I will have special instructions for you.” He reached out and grasped the young man’s arm.
“But for now, go! While you still can!”
Then he turned and raced for Viraat’s island.
Lieutenant Tahliani adjusted his helmet strap as he performed a cursory run-through of the checklist strapped to his thigh. Fuel okay … power on … stick controls okay … A deck officer was signaling. He saluted, glanced up at Viraat’s island, then adjusted the Sea Harrier’s exhaust ports, vectoring them for a rolling takeoff. One of the Sea Harrier’s many remarkable features was its short start-up time. He released the wheel brakes and was moving down the carrier’s deck toward the ski jump ramp within five minutes of the alert.
The latest reports indicated that two separate groups of antiship missiles were approaching the Indian fleet, one from the northwest, one from the southeast. Almost certainly both missile flights had been launched from enemy submarines in the area, though the northwestern group could possibly have come from the surface ships of the enemy fleet. The nearest missile was still twenty kilometers out. There was time yet.
The Sea Harrier vaulted from the ski jump and into the sky. Tahliani redirected the exhaust ports to full aft and climbed. Other Sea Harriers followed, gathering in an assembly area five kilometers southwest of the Viraat.
From the high perch of his cockpit, Tahliani had a splendid view of the Indian fleet, spread out from horizon to horizon beneath him. Viraat and the smaller carrier Vikrant were at the flotilla’s heart. Kalikata, one of the Indian Navy’s Kresta II cruisers newly purchased from the former Soviet Union, led the squadron ten kilometers ahead.
