“Admiral! Look!” Harada gestured back the way the French warplane had come. A new jet, larger and with swing wings, came into view — higher up but closing rapidly. A Tornado. But whose? German or British?
The tan-colored “hemp” camouflage gave him his answer. It was an RAF interceptor!
The Tornado flashed past, turning to match the Mirage. For several seconds, the two jets kept turning and climbing — visibly slowing as their maneuvers bled airspeed and energy. Then, for one brief instant, they came nose-to-nose. Both fired and veered away, each pursued by a heat-seeking missile.
Ward tracked the Mirage as it twisted and turned, vainly trying to shake off the pursuing Sidewinder. Flares tumbled through the sky in its wake, each briefly brighter than the sun. None of them worked. The proximity-fused Sidewinder detonated only yards away, sending a hail of incendiary fragments slashing through the French jet’s fuel tanks.
The Mirage exploded. It arced across the sky as a rolling, tumbling ball of flame. Burning pieces of wreckage cascaded down across the rooftops and city streets below.
“Oh, Christ,” someone muttered behind him.
Ward turned and saw a stricken look on the Gazelle pilot’s face. The sandy-haired Englishman had been watching the RAF Tornado. It had been hit, too.
Trailing smoke, the British fighter turned south, wobbling from side to side. Orange and red flames licked under its fuselage. They were growing brighter as they fed on leaking fuel.
“Get out. Get: out.” The warrant officer’s hands balled into fists. “Come on, mate. Eject!”
But the Tornado crew stayed with their dying aircraft. They were nursing it toward the Thames, Ward realized, riding the burning plane down to make sure that it didn’t come down on top of houses full of women and children.
Ward and the others watched in silence until the Tornado vanished beyond the buildings lining the southern edge of Hyde Park.
Boston’s short, black-haired skipper was as Irish as his sub’s namesake city, and he had the temper to go with it. Right now Commander Pete Conroy fought to control his natural impatience, following orders that went against his instincts and years of training.
Boston and two other Los Angeles-class subs were hunting a French ballistic missile submarine, and they were doing it exactly the wrong way.
Boston was in the center of a line of three submarines, spaced three miles apart. He felt very vulnerable steering a straight course at five knots just below the thermocline, the sound-reflecting boundary between layers of warmer and colder water. These were French waters with French airspace overhead. Even though CINCCOMBFLT had promised fighter cover to drive off any enemy ASW aircraft on patrol, things could still go wrong. What if the Frogs escorted their Atlantiques with a strong fighter force of their own? The last thing Conroy wanted to hear was an air-dropped homing torpedo whining right up his sub’s ass.
Worse still, he and his crew probably wouldn’t find a damn thing. Commander in Chief, Combined Fleet’s staff had reason to believe that these waters were an SSBN patrol area. That was an educated guess they’d pulled together from several different things: French ASW patrol plane patterns, the water depth and conditions, and a few intelligence sources they wouldn’t even describe. Based on those clues, they were betting that one of France’s few ballistic missile submarines was close by — creeping along in silence, waiting for an order to launch her sixteen MIRVed warhead missiles.
The only problem was that SSBNs, “boomers,” don’t like to fight. Their whole mission depends on staying hidden. To accomplish that, they carry very sensitive sonars to let them detect a prowling enemy boat long before it can hear them. At the first whiff of an enemy ship or sub coming after them, SSBNs just quietly run away.
Conroy frowned. Although his Los Angeles-class SSN didn’t make much noise at five knots, it made a little, and that would probably be enough to give the hunt away.
Worse yet, there were three subs looking. In submarine warfare, there is no safety in numbers. Stealth and surprise are strength — not numerical superiority. Once he detected the first American sub, the Frenchman would probably spot the other two quickly. The SSN sweep probably covered one entire side of the enemy’s patrol zone, but that left the SSBN’s skipper plenty of room to run. If pushed hard enough, he’d even leave his patrol area.
No, Conroy, thought, he and Boston received the wrong end of this deal. Even if they did detect another sub, they would have to positively identify it before firing. With so many friendlies operating so close to one another, throwing torpedoes out against an unidentified contact was a good way to commit fratricide. For the same reason, all three American SSNs had to follow a precisely laid-out path…
“Conn, sonar. Contact bearing one three five, almost directly ahead of us.”
Conroy almost sprinted to the sonar shack, but controlled the impulse enough to slow to a fast walk. It only took seconds, in any case. Poking his head into the crowded space, he asked softly, “What’s it look like?”
The chief sonarman, standing behind the two seated operators, replied. “Single transient, sir. Loud and broadband. Depression angle says it’s deep.”
Conroy realized that the chief was letting him make his own evaluation. The description only fit one thing. “An explosion?”
“I concur, Captain.” The chief shrugged. “No way to tell who fired or what hit what, if it hit anything at all. Damn far off, though.”
Both operators sat up. One of them tapped his screen.
“Same thing again, Chief. Two of them this time, closely spaced. Torpedoes, most likely.”
Both Conroy and the chief studied the display, which showed two sudden, broad pulses of light. More explosions off in the distance. Somebody was dying out there. But who?
They could only wait and listen and hope.
Five minutes later, a new signal appeared on the sonar display. It was a coded sonar pulse, the kind sent out by a communications sonobuoy. Dropped by a friendly ASW aircraft, the transmission ordered all three SSNs to radio depth. It took several more minutes to carefully come up and signal they were in position.
The SSBN hunt was over. A controlling P-3 Orion passed the word. A fourth Los Angeles-class boat, Louisville, hunter to their hounds, had just sent a Le Triomphant-class missile sub to the bottom. While Boston and her companions came in from one side of the French patrol area, Louisville had crept in from the other direction — almost drifting with the current more than using her single screw for propulsion.
Once inside the patrol area, she had positioned herself along the SSBN’s most likely escape route.
When the French boat moved to avoid Boston and its companions, it had become slightly more detectable itself. That was when it had fallen prey to Louisville.
Only one of the first two torpedoes it fired had hit, but a second salvo finished the wounded boat. Sixteen missiles carrying ninety-six 150-kiloton nuclear warheads were lost to the French cause. So were 135 crewmen.
The Orion’s brief report was followed by new orders. They were going hunting for the second French boomer reported at sea. Any celebration would have to wait until they returned to port. Damn Louisville’s luck, Conroy thought. Maybe he would get his chance for a kill next time.