anxious queries about their fuel status from the OS. Finally, a familiar voice cut through the chatter.
“Tomcat Two-oh-one, say identity and classification of submarine.” The slight Texas twang was all Bird Dog needed to hear.
“I don’t know, Admiral — wait, let me drop down a little.” Bird Dog shoved the control yoke forward, and started down toward the surface of the ocean. He arrested their descent at two thousand feet above the ocean, continuing to circle over the contact to get a better look at it.
“An Oscar,” Gator said softly. “That’s the only thing of that size that would be out here.”
“You sure? It could be a Typhoon at that size.”
“No.” Gator’s voice held a note of finality. “I can see enough of the sail structure from here to make the call. That’s an Oscar, no doubt about it.”
Bird Dog relayed the information back to Mother, and then felt a slight chill as the implications started to settle in.
The Oscar was the latest cruise missile ship in the Russian inventory. It had one, and only one, primary mission in life — killing American aircraft carriers. The building program had begun at Shipyard Number 402, located at Severodyinsk, in 1982, during the height of the Cold War. The Oscar I and the later Oscar II were the largest submarines to be built by any nation, except for the Soviet Typhoon ballistic missile boat and the U.S. Trident SSBN.
The Oscar carried the SS-N-19 Shipwreck antiship missile, with either a conventional or nuclear warhead. With a range of greater than three hundred nautical miles and a speed of Mach 2.5, the five-thousand-kilogram missile was a deadly threat to any surface ship. The Oscar could receive targeting information from most Soviet tactical aircraft, as well as satellite downlink positioning. Both of those assets permitted it to fire at surface ships well outside its own sensor range. In addition to the Shipwreck, the Oscar carried the SS-N-15 and S-16 torpedoes. Although hard data was scarce, her 533mm torpedoes were reputed to be capable of speeds up to forty-five knots, transporting a high-explosive or nuclear warhead of 1,250 pounds on a straight run, or in acoustic homing mode. Supposedly, one of those torpedoes exploding under the keel of a carrier would be sufficient to break the carrier’s back.
“How far away from the carrier is she?” Bird Dog asked. He winced, hearing the slight tremor in his voice.
Gator’s voice was dark and somber. “Four hundred miles, right now. But with her speeds, there’s nothing to say she couldn’t close that to within Shipwreck range within one day.”
“You’d better tell the Admiral. I think he’s going to be real interested in this.”
Rear Admiral Edward Everett Wayne, “Batman” to his fellow aviators, swore quietly as he listened to the RIO’s report. An Oscar. Great. Just when every asset in the United States Navy had been lulled into a peaceful sense of security because of the demise of the Soviet Union, an Oscar turns up. What the hell were the Intelligence people thinking? And why hadn’t he had any warning at all about this possibility?
He stared at the large blue video screen that dominated the forward bulkhead of Tactical Flag Command Center (TFCC). Judging from the relative geometry, the carrier battle group would be safe from the Oscar for at least another day, maybe more, depending on what course she followed.
“Get some Vikings in the air. Now,” he snapped. “It’s time we got some work out of them.”
“I imagine they’ll be happy about that,” his chief of staff, Captain Jim Craig, remarked. “Their CO was telling me he’s getting damned tired of ferrying mail back and forth for us. To have a real submarine problem, as nasty as it may be, that’s meat and potatoes for the S-3 Viking ASW aircraft.”
Batman nodded sharply. “It’s the kind of opportunity I don’t want to have on this cruise. I told Tombstone I’d keep his people safe.”
The TAO, seated at his console two feet in front of Batman, swiveled his chair around and looked at the admiral. “Sir, we need to get that Tomcat some more gas if she’s going to mark on top while we prep the S-3s. He’s got enough gas to stay on station for another hour and still make it back safely, but-“
Batman cut him off. “Good thinking. Better to have too much gas than too little. The first situation you can fix — the second you can’t. Make it happen.”
The TAO turned back to his console and talked with his counterpart located in the Combat Direction Center (CDC), fifty feet forward on the ship. After a hurried conversation, he toggled the circuit off and turned to the OS manning the plastic status board located on the right side of the TFCC. “Put down Seven-oh-one and Seven-oh-two for the next two events. Seven-oh-three and Seven-eleven will be in Alert Fifteen. And we’re launching another tanker now, now, now.” Without waiting to see if the OS had caught it all, he turned back to his console.
“An Oscar. What does that suggest to you?” Batman asked his COS.
Captain Craig looked thoughtful. With thirty years as surface ship officer in the Navy, four at-sea commands under his belt, and an advanced degree in ASW systems from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, he had forgotten more about submarines than Batman had ever known. “Nothing good. She could make us real unhappy characters by just staying within weapons release range.”
“And that Bear-J up around Adak doesn’t make me breathe any easier. Based on that, I think we have to assume that the Oscar has detailed targeting information on the entire battle group.” Batman turned back to the screen. “And is in contact with Russia’s military command. The question is, why? Is this just another one of those political statements, or something worse?”
Captain Craig shook his head, a weary expression crossing his face. “And I thought we’d seen the last of these games. Figured I’d make one last deployment, then think about retiring. It’s starting to sound like I might want to put that off some.”
Batman clapped him on the shoulder. “Better now than ten years from now,” he said. “The Navy needs us Cold Warriors — after all we saw, we’re the only ones with the right suspiciously paranoid mind-set to detect the first signs of trouble.”
The COS shot him an amused look. “Do I detect a lack of confidence on the admiral’s part in our superb intelligence network?”
Batman snorted. “Hell, they couldn’t even tell us when the Wall in Germany was going to come down, and every last one of them missed the breakup of the Soviet Union. Given that, what do you think the odds are that they detect a reunited commonwealth on the move again?”
“I wish to God I didn’t agree with you, Admiral. But I do.” The chief of staff stared forward at the screen watching the arcane symbology that represented the battle group, her aircraft and escorts, steaming west just south of the Aleutian chain. “And I hope to hell both of us are wrong.”
“You think she knows we’re here?” Bird Dog asked.
“Probably,” Gator answered. “At this low of an altitude, we’re putting a helluva lot of noise into the ocean. I thought I saw an ESM antenna pop up there a little while ago. Either way, I think we can count on her knowing we’re here.”
“Well, there’s not much she can do about that, is there?”
“I don’t think so.” Bird Dog’s voice sounded doubtful. “But after the Spratlys, with those surface-to-air missiles on that submarine, I’m not feeling so safe and secure orbiting over a submarine anymore.”
Bird Dog swore quietly to himself, wishing he’d paid more attention to the last intelligence brief. Did the Oscar carry a surface-to-air missile? And if so, what was the range? “How about we move on up to four thousand feet?” he asked. “Just give us a little safety room.”
“No objection from back here. I think I’ll still be able to follow her — from that altitude. I’ll let you know.”
Bird Dog tapped the throttles forward slightly and put the Tomcat into a slow, graceful spiral upward. He glanced overhead and saw the heavy, thick bottoms of the clouds looming above him. “Three thousand, maybe,” he said, hazarding a guess. “I’ll throttle back so you can keep a visual on her.”
At 2,800 feet, just below the bottom of the clouds, Bird Dog leveled the Tomcat out. Gator informed him that he still had a clear, if slightly fuzzy, visual on the massive black hull sliding through the water.
“Who would’ve thought we would have been able to see her?” Bird Dog said. “That doesn’t make any sense. I mean, the whole purpose of a submarine is to remain hidden. Doesn’t she know that the water is so clear up here
