Captain Randle’s assessment of the surrounding forces was interrupted by a flashing message on Captain Sites’s console. Sites pulled up the message. A new OPORD. The four aircraft carriers were being combined into a single task force and had been directed to destroy all Russian units in the Indian Ocean theater of operations — all air, surface, and submerged combatants. More detailed orders would be forthcoming.
Randle picked up the 1-MC microphone and directed all department heads to meet him in the Wardroom. Before he left CDC, he examined the neutral forces in the area, which was the original source of his concern; it would be problematic if they joined the battle on the wrong side. India had two operational aircraft carriers and sixteen surface combatants, with the two carriers normally deployed on opposite sides of the country. However, both carrier strike groups were now operating off India’s west coast, not far from Truman and Reagan. Compounding the matter, India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier, undergoing sea trials, had joined them.
Randle repeated his Operations Officer’s assessment. “This could be a problem.”
65
USS MICHIGAN
Captain Murray Wilson turned slowly on the periscope in the darkness, monitoring the surface traffic. Michigan was in the Aegean Sea at the mouth of the Dardanelles, preparing for its journey through the Turkish Straits. It would be a long, tense transit, with the thirty-eight-mile-long Dardanelles narrowing to just over a thousand yards in some spots. Once into the Sea of Marmara, Michigan would complete its journey by transiting the Bosphorus, a seventeen-mile-long channel only half as wide as the Dardanelles.
When Wilson received his new orders a few days earlier, he hadn’t been surprised. The Turkish Straits, connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, have been of strategic importance for millennia, dating back to the Trojan War, fought near the Aegean entrance. During the twenty-first century, it served as a crucial international waterway for countries bordering the Black Sea.
Michigan’s trip wouldn’t be easy. Russian submarines transiting the straits did so on the surface, but that was a luxury Michigan couldn’t afford. At the northern end of the Bosphorus, four Russian frigates patrolled. That meant Michigan would transit submerged. However, even at periscope depth, there were several spots along the way that were too shallow, and Michigan would have to alter course into the southbound channel while passing Kadıköy İnciburnu and Aşiyan Point.
Compounding the potential for discovery were the one-thousand-plus east — west crossings each day, transporting 1.5 million inhabitants across the Bosphorus on intercity ferries and shuttle boats. The nighttime transit up the straits would minimize the risk of discovery, but not eliminate it.
Wilson turned slowly on the periscope, looking for a merchant that would suit his needs. With so many waterborne contacts nearby, Sonar was overwhelmed sorting things out, and Wilson’s eyeball was a better sensor at times like this. Finally, he spotted the desired contact: a two-hundred-thousand-ton Suezmax class tanker. Michigan would travel closely behind, its periscope hopefully obscured by the ship’s wake.
“Helm, right twenty degrees rudder, ahead two-thirds.”
Michigan turned slowly to the right, falling in behind the northbound tanker.
66
USS HARRY S. TRUMAN
Captain David Randle stood on the Bridge, one level beneath Primary Flight Control in the aircraft carrier’s Island superstructure, as Truman surged northwest into the darkness. Fifty feet below, the first four F/A-18 Super Hornets, their engine exhausts glowing red, eased toward their catapults. Along the sides of the carrier, additional Super Hornets were being raised to the Flight Deck from the hangar bays. As the twenty aircraft in Truman’s first cycle prepared for launch, Randle knew the Reagan, Bush, and Eisenhower air wings were doing the same.
Lieutenant Commander Bill Houston pulled back on the throttles, slowing his Super Hornet as it approached the starboard bow catapult. In the darkness, he followed the Shooter’s directions, his yellow flashlights guiding Houston’s jet forward. The Shooter raised his right arm, then dropped it suddenly. Houston responded by dropping the fighter’s launch bar, which rolled into the CAT One shuttle hook as the aircraft lurched to a halt. The Shooter raised both hands in the air and Houston matched his motion, raising both hands to within view inside the cockpit, giving the Shooter assurance that Houston’s hands were off all controls. The Shooter pointed his flashlight to a red-shirted Ordie — an Aviation Ordnanceman — who stepped beneath the Super Hornet, arming each missile.
A signal from the Shooter told Houston his weapons were armed and it was time to go to full power. He pushed the throttles forward until they hit the détente, spooling his twin General Electric turbofan engines up to full Military Power. He then exercised the aircraft’s control surfaces, moving the control stick to all four corners as he alternately pressed both rudder pedals. Black-and-white-shirted Troubleshooters verified the Super Hornet’s control surfaces were functioning properly and there were no oil or fuel leaks.
Satisfied his aircraft was functioning properly, Houston returned the thumbs-up and the Shooter lifted his arm skyward, then back down to a horizontal position, directing Houston to kick in the afterburners. Houston’s Super Hornet was heavy tonight, with ordnance attached to every pylon; tonight’s takeoff required extra thrust. Houston pushed the throttles past the détente to engage the afterburners, then turned toward the Shooter and saluted, the glow from his cockpit instruments illuminating his hand as it went to his helmet.
The Shooter returned the salute, then bent down and touched the Flight Deck, giving the signal to the operator in the Catapult Control Station. Houston pushed his head firmly against the headrest of his seat and took his hands off the controls, and a second later CAT One fired with the usual spine-jarring jolt. Houston felt his stomach lifting into his chest as the Super Hornet dropped when it left the carrier’s deck, then he took control of his aircraft, accelerating upward. His seat pressed into him as he ascended to twelve thousand feet, where he settled into a holding pattern while Truman finished launching its first cycle.
67
FURY 21
High above southeastern Turkey, Air Force Major Mike Peck checked the map on the multifunction display of his B-1B Lancer long-range bomber, call sign Fury 21. Seated beside him in the four-person cockpit was his co-pilot, while behind them sat the DSO and OSO — Defensive Systems Operator and Offensive Systems Operator. Also behind Peck was a second B-1B from the U.S. Air Force’s 9th Bomb Squadron, headed to the same target. Sixteen other Lancers had similar assignments, with their flight paths and speed coordinated such that all eighteen Lancers commenced their attacks simultaneously.
As his B-1B bomber approached the Iranian border, Peck adjusted his wings to full sweep, pulling them back to a fifteen-degree angle, then dropped in altitude and increased speed to just under Mach 1. As the ground rushed up to meet his aircraft, he engaged the ground-hugging, terrain-following mode of his AN/APQ-64 radar, and the B-1B leveled off, skimming across the landscape just above treetop height in an effort to avoid detection by Iranian radars and Russian anti-aircraft missile batteries.