Defensively, we are still able to weather at least two strong attacks, he thought. But now comes the danger zone, when our long range defensive missiles begin to run low. Now we must return to home port to replenish. How many missiles will be waiting there for us? I was told to expect the trains to arrive on the 20th. Will there be enough for one more round of this stubborn duel? They have not hurt me, and I cannot hurt them, yet we wrestle with one another nonetheless.
That said, our very presence here is a victory on one level. We are a fleet in being, still a threat, but when the missile trains no longer come to Karachi, what then? We will become a paper tiger. That said, and for the moment, I still rule the Gulf of Oman. They have not been able to enter, and as long as I can keep them ay bay, I fulfill some strategic purpose here. I shield the southern coast of Iran, and access to the Persian Gulf that would expose them even further. We are still a viable force.
He wondered, does this set the template of what will happen later? Is this the shadow of the war that will eventually come to the South China Sea, the East China Sea? There we will be much stronger, and with all that remains of the air force behind us. We will resist, that is certain, and therefore this war is far from over. They have made gains, and yes, we have seen our shortcomings, but we are not defeated—not by a long road. It was then that a junior officer came to hand the Admiral the latest intelligence briefing.
It was news of Wu Jinlong….
Aboard Roosevelt, Captain James Simpson an order he did not expect, though it wasn’t all that surprising. He was to transfer existing ordnance to Independence, then move immediately to Salaha to replenish his carrier there. That was not uncommon when two carriers were on the beat, or when one was relieving another on regular rotations. It allowed a single carrier to stay operational, and also made it easier in port with only one big flattop to service at any one time.
So the order went down to begin emptying out the magazines of the most common ordnance used in battle, and vertical replenishment operations began, with the helicopters loading up and ferrying the ordnance over to Independence. Only select weapons would move. As Independence had zeroed out its allocation of the LRASM, they sent all 36 they had remaining, along with all 172 GBU-53’s, and 60 SLAM-ER’s. To these they added 50 AIM-12D’s, and that topped off the Independence on the most vital weapons to enable her to stand the watch while Roosevelt went home to Salaha.
Looking at the status of the escorts, Holmes noted that his CG-21 Class cruiser Portland had exhausted all its SAM’s, so it was a good idea to detach that ship and get it replenished in port. Simpson agreed to take on the impoverished cruiser with his strike Group, and he sent the Ticonderoga Class Vicksburg over to Holmes, which still had 66 ESSM’ under the hood. These changes made, the two ships winked at one another and parted company, with the Roosevelt breaking off to the west and Independence carrying on due east.
Now Captain Holmes had to decide whether to plan and mount another strike on the retreating Chinese ships before they could reach port. He and his XO Cooper were chewing the fat over that one.
“We’ve got ‘em on the run now sir. They won’t be weaker. Once they get into Karachi, they’ll rearm and come out like a tiger again.”
“That’s a good point, but at the moment, Roosevelt is 435 miles from Salaha. At 25 knots, they won’t get there until sunrise tomorrow, and then they’ll be all day replenishing on the 21st—maybe even into the 22nd before they can come out to fight again. Yes, if we throw now, we might get some hits, but how many? We just topped off the tank, but we still don’t have any SM-6 left, nor does Roosevelt.”
“We could break off and make a rendezvous with Asgard, sir.”
Cooper was referring to a replenishment and supply convoy out of Diego Garcia, which was the other big supply depot, 1600+ miles to the southeast. The US logistics chain was pulling ordnance and supplies from the west coast ports, and then moving them to Pearl Harbor. From there, some went to Japan, but the lion’s share was being sent to Darwin, and then a good chunk of that continued on to Diego Garcia. Other convoys reached Diego by moving from Atlantic ports around the Cape of Good Hope. After that, Convoy Asgard would sea ferry the ordnance north to Salaha, but as the USN had made underway replenishment a standard drill for the last several decades, it was possible for the Independence group to pick over the stores now on the water headed for Salaha, and get first dibs on the missiles they needed.
“ I think that will be the order,” said the Captain. “If Roosevelt was going to be with us, I’d attack, but as we’re standing the watch alone for the next two to three days, we’ll play it safe and gird ourselves for the next round. But we can’t sit out here and shadow box with these guys indefinitely. We’re going to have to land punches and hurt them soon.”
“We’ll get at them, sir,” said Cooper, always the optimist.
“Good enough,” said Holmes. “Any news on the Black Dragon?”
“New Jersey? She’s coming north, sir, and with the rest of what the British had at Singapore.”
“What about Grant and Sherman?”
“Grant is pretty beat up, sir. She’ll need a week or more at Mumbai, but Sherman is ready there.”
“Then let’s get Sherman out to sea. Order her to meet up with the New Jersey.”
“Will do, sir. Say, Captain… What was the story on that British F-35 that we took on a while back?”
“It went on its merry way days ago—ferried back to the Gulf of Aden.”
“But what was he doing out there, sir? Wasn’t he a thousand miles from his carrier?”
“That he was, and the man had quite a tale to tell. Says he was out on point with his flight and went forward to investigate some persistent radar contacts. Word from the British is that he then vanished from all their radar screens, and they went so far as to report him MIA. Then he just turns up again, hours later.”
“How do you figure it, sir? How could he be out there that long? He’d run out of fuel.”
“Well, this is where it gets strange, Mister Cooper, so keep this under your cap. This man, Campbell was his name, said he was only out of contact on the network about 20 minutes until he picked us up on radar and vectored our way.”
“Twenty minutes? Strange, sir. That doesn’t jive with what the Brits said.”
“Damn right, but that was the easy part. The man says he lost contact with all friendlies, but then his systems started picking up a lot of unknown contacts, and a good number were vectoring in on his position.”
“He never identified any of them, sir?”
“Nope. But it got real spooky. They were silently closing on his position, and from multiple compass headings.”
“Air contacts?”
“Yes, and surface contacts too.”
“But sir… We were out there, and had a Hawkeye up as usual. Those contacts they investigated were all ghosts—probably just radar bounce from the Chinese fleet, which was north of that position at the time. We saw nothing else at all.”
“That’s what we all thought, mister Cooper, but he says something took a pot shot at him. A surface contact put a missile out after him, and he had to evade. Right in the middle of that, he felt his plane shudder and thought he was hit, but then seconds later his whole screen lit up again, and he saw us out there. Said he was never so glad to see some friendlies in his life. The man was real spooked. You could see it in his face.”