Johnnie studied the JTIDS picture on her TID. The two AEW birds were circling in a long, racetrack pattern at about twenty thousand feet and forty miles out. Either these two crews had yet to detect their Tomcat, or else there were other fighters in the area masked in the valleys of the coastal mountain range. Or, there was a SAM trap.
“Fastball, this bothers me. Something’s not right.” She glanced out her right then left side.
“Come on, Rat. We’ve got two sitting ducks straight ahead and you want to play war college tactician. I’m going to get me a Tomcat. Get some balls, girl. Switch to Phoenix!”
“Will you listen to me! Look at those guys. They’re just waiting. I’m telling you, we aren’t alone!” She waited for a response that never came.
“Phoenix selected, your dot.”
“Fox Three on the westbound Tomcat, angels two-zero at twenty-five.” The AIM-54C dropped momentarily, then raced ahead toward its victim.
“As soon as it’s active, we’re bugging,” Rat called.
Fastball’s fixation on the departing Phoenix was short-lived. Suddenly, his RWR chirped and showed two AIM-7 Sparrow missiles inbound off his port wing. “Rat, incoming. At our nine o’clock.” He jerked his Tomcat into the missiles, then angled them back on his right side, trying to force the missile’s gimbal to the extreme and break the radar’s lock.
Johnnie flipped the switch, sending the signal for the Phoenix to go active. “Counter measures,” she called. “Pumping chaff!”
One of the Sparrows shot over the canopy, failing to detonate.
“Geez that was close!”
A second exploded into one the chaff clouds.
“Two more! I’ve got two more! Three o’clock. Break right!”
Fastball broke into the missile and yanked his Tomcat down, just as the third Sparrow homed onto another chaff cloud. He brought his nose up, looking in the direction of the last missile.
“Where are they?” Johnnie’s head spun from side to side. “Where are they?”
“Phantom! Eleven o’clock. Heading across… he’s turning away!” The Iranian F-4E pulled a hard left slice turn, putting its hot pipes in Fastball’s face. He snaked around, angling his Tomcat for the kill.
“Switching to heat.”
“Watch for the second one. There’s always a second one!” Morrow swung out wide to the right then used his rudders to swing his tail around. His Sidewinders screamed at him, locking on the red-orange plumes of the Phantom’s J79 engines. “Tone! Fox Two!” He loosed a Sidewinder.
The F-4E exploded in a ball of fire, temporarily blinding the Tomcat crew. The fire lit the sky for miles as the debris cascaded to the ground. There was no way that there could have been a shot. It happened so fast.
“I’ve got two. He’s at our six.” Johnnie called. She was cranked around to her left, holding the turn bar with her right hand. “Swinging out to our right.” She flipped around.
Morrow pulled up and tried to angle back.
“He’s slowing. Must be GCI.” The F-4s lacked night gear and were undoubtedly being guided by a ground controller or the Tomcats. “Dive… burner out. Get below the mountains.”
Fastball reluctantly complied, tugging his throttles into idle and nosing over toward the desert below.
A flash appeared from the Phantom’s left wing.
“Launch! Break right!” She popped a string of flares. The maneuver jerked her to one side, throwing her against the cockpit instruments.
The Sidewinder raced harmlessly past the Tomcat after one of the flares. She was damned glad these were older modeled Ps.
“We’re pulling away. He’s losing us. Come right… overshoot! There… at our eleven. Forty degrees high.”
Fastball jerked his nose up and shoved into afterburner, powering toward the confused Phantom with a vengeance. “Make it count!” he cried, punching his last heat-seeker at the twin plumes.
“Splash one Phantom!”
Johnnie looked away, then refocused her eyes on her radar. It took a second, but she noticed that one of the Tomcats that had been circling to the east was gone.
“Fastball, we got one of the F-14s!
TWENTY-FIVE
“That’s the last of them, sir.” The captain breathed a sigh of relief as the sonarman made his report that the last mine had been deployed. With each one now tethered to the bottom with a weight and mooring cable, he was free to leave the area and return to port.
The mines he had deployed across the Straits were not the most advanced models available in the world. They were activated by both contact and magnetic influence. They possessed no capability, as many more advanced models did, of distinguishing between large ships and small ships. Nor did they have a “counter” that would tell them to detonate on the fourth or fifth target they encountered, nor did they have the acoustic classification capabilities and processors that would have told them the difference between the U.S. Carrier and any other large ship.
But their disadvantages were outweighed by the fact that that they were cheap, plentiful, and that the submarine had the technology to accurately deploy them. And, of courses, they were exceptionally effective.
The captain consulted his chart, then said, “Come left to course 350. Five knots. What is the weather predicted for tonight?”
The navigator spoke up. “Partly cloudy, with a three quarter moon.”
The captain grimaced. Far from ideal conditions. When the submarine came shallow to snorkel, she would prefer a completely black night. Rain was also good, as it helped mask the submarine’s profile while shallow.
Still, it was not as though they would have to do this many times. One day at most, and they’d be back in home port. Certainly, a submarine was more vulnerable tied to a pier than submerged and underway, but despite his chosen profession, the captain had always viewed sailing beneath the surface of water as slightly unnatural. For a submariner, he was not as comfortable under water as he should’ve been. As his counterparts were.
Perhaps that was the result of having spent most of his career in shallow water. Maybe the ability to transit in the deeps, to know that he was acoustically and magnetically undetectable, would have given him a greater sense of security. But here in the Gulf, in the shallow, hot water, he had all the disadvantages of a submarine and none of the advantages.
On impulse, he pushed the bitch box button and contacted the chief engineer. “If we had to, could we make port without recharging?”
“Yes. But I wouldn’t want to chance it, Captain. We’d be dangerously low on battery charge, down to reserves. And if anything went wrong, we would have no reserves to maneuver.”
It was as he thought. Well, the decision would not have to be made now. He could reserve for later tonight, perhaps picking a moment when clouds were thick overhead to obscure visibility. But it was good to know that if he had to, he could get home without recharging.
And was five knots the right speed? Perhaps slow to two or three. Battery endurance was logarithmically proportional to speed, and he’d use far less than half of the same battery power at three knots than he would at five. He weighed that against the lure of being back on solid land and decided to stay at five knots. Allah willing, they would be home by the next morning.
