On Encino, neither the officers nor men knew anything about the instructions given to Crowley and his crew. Now they received orders to turn about and head for home, the submersed “blue”-crewed six-month patrol ending. Upon return to Bangor, through the Juan de Fuca choke point, the sub’s “gold” crew would take over after food, lockers, and vertical launch tubes were restocked.
McCain’s sixteen planes — eight Super Hornets, four A-6E Intruders, and four Tomcats — selected for the mission against the “high-value fixed land target” of Penghu were about to attack. Each surface-to-land missile contained a GPS receiver/processor able to pinpoint the big 1,366-pound missile’s position to within fifty-two feet. And each missile’s erasable programmable read-only memory had received four missions from the pre-launch loader: three possible missions for Penghu, a fourth or alternative target being the PLA-occupied Kinmen Island, a hundred miles west of Penghu.
In Chipper Armstrong’s Super Hornet, Evans had already selected the first of the three Penghu programs—1.35 minutes before impact the imaging infrared seeker would be activated, each missile’s infrared seeker head “fan-scanning” through 180 degrees and back again in ninety-one seconds. Should anything happen to Chipper’s plane or any other of McCain’s birds, “Mother,” the E-2C Hawkeye, could take over control of the missiles via Hawkeye’s “pancake,” or rotodome. And via McCain’s Super Hornet and Intruder pilot and bombardier/navigator crews, the “standoff” missile’s five-hundred-pound blast fragment warhead had been programmed for “instantaneous” rather than “delayed” fuse.
McCain’s “Hit Parade,” as the crew of just over five thousand called the strike force of Hornets, Intruders, and Tomcats, were under strict instructions — namely for the benefit of the “nuggets,” the rookie aviators — that the SLAMs must be careful of “fratricide,” by which they meant the destruction of a SLAM by either the explosion or debris of the missile fired just ahead of it impacting. The rippled fire of Tomahawks from Johnny Rorke’s Encino had prevented “too fast a rain,” as missile instructors often stressed, because of the time between each launch.
Chipper was scheduled to be first to push the button, the other SLAMs to be fired at fifteen-second intervals, the Hit Parade’s launch points well beyond the range of anything PLA’s air-to-air missile batteries might have hurriedly put into place on Penghu.
It would be hit and run, McCain’s planes returning to the safety of the carrier battle group’s protective screen, for whom there would never again be a “Bizarro” incident. Any bogeys or friendly marked plane approaching the CVBG would be assumed hostiles. And unless proved otherwise by radio-recognized “friend or foe” code, they would be shot down.
“Weapons free” authority was confirmed by Chipper Armstrong’s six “range known” homing antiradar missiles, fired by Tomcats getting close in at ten miles. Low in the protective sea clutter at ten miles, the missiles homed in on either side-lobe or more direct “back” radiation, to take out whatever early warning radars the PLA might have managed to erect on the island. Although these half-dozen eight-hundred-pound missiles, streaking through the now typhoon-swept sky at Mach 2, were burning low-smoke solid propellant, their vapor trails — two of them crisscrossing — were plainly visible to the crews of McCain, the two Aegis cruisers, and the battle group’s destroyers and frigates. Only the CVBG’s forward and rear subs were unable to witness the HARM attack, the kind of antiradar onslaught that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s early warning network in April 2003.
Any concern Mother’s electronics crew might have had about an unintended crisscross of two HARMs quickly evaporated as all six antiradar missiles struck their respective targets, the thousands of tiny steel cubes in their warheads swarming the radars’ sensitive antennae.
Penghu, now “electronically blind,” had no effective defense against the ensuing onslaught of sixteen SLAMs, Penghu’s runway so badly pitted by the SLAMs’ cratering sub munitions that on SATPIX it looked like a moonscape.
There was collateral damage, but as with the CIA’s post-9/11 attitude, aboard McCain there was “Before Iraq” and “After Iraq.” After the civilian shields Saddam had used to smother targets, which had cost so many American men and women their lives, the phrase “collateral damage” no longer evoked undue alarm in the administration. Similarly, there had been a hardening of hearts among the Australian, British, American, and Polish soldiers of the 2003 coalition, and deep suspicions of white flags.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Resting in Petrel’s dry lab, lazily watching the fog clear as the ship slowly limped back toward Port Angeles, her bow and bow thrusters in critical shape, Aussie, Sal, and Choir were struck by the general’s refusal to feel relieved. Even though Marte Price, following up on the initial and incorrect CNN report, had made it abundantly clear that it was not the hydrofoils who were instrumental in the terrorist sub’s destruction but Freeman’s “brave, heroic team,” and Petrel’s gutsy captain and crew, Freeman was still frowning as he walked about the ship, unable to relax.
“So what if some folks still believe the first news reports and haven’t heard Marte’s follow-up?” mused Sal. “The general knows what went down.”
“Yeah,” joined in Choir. “There’ll be a White House reception, medals galore, that’s what it’ll be, lads,’cept for Aussie here and his BIGS.”
“BIGS?” said Aussie, who was as familiar as his comrades with most military acronyms. “What in hell is BIGS?”
“Aussie’s big grenade screw-up!”
“You little Welsh squirt,” Aussie said. “I ought to bash your head in.”
Sal chortled.
“You too, you Brooklyn bastard!” said Aussie. “I incapacitated the damn thing. It couldn’t move.” Aussie saw Freeman passing by the lab doorway as he headed along the passageway out to the deck. Hoping to bring him out of his mood, Aussie called out, “Isn’t that right, General?”
Freeman paused, the frown creasing his forehead so severely that Aussie felt like saying, as his mother used to when he grimaced sourly over homework assignments, “If you don’t get rid of that scowl, you’ll stay that way.” Young Aussie used to frequently check himself in the mirror.
“What’s that?” asked the general, stopping, but so preoccupied that he hadn’t heard.
“I was just telling these two no-hopers here that it was me who stopped the sub long enough to—”
“Yes, yes,” Freeman said, disappearing from the doorway as he strode away.
Aussie waited several seconds, then looked at Sal and Choir. “What a friggin’ rain face! Never seen ’im so down.”
Sal put his finger to his lips and jerked his thumb toward the stern deck where, having turned sharply on reaching the deck, Freeman had bent down, pulling back the blanket from the terrorist with the badly bruised neck. Once again he irritably threw the blanket back over the man’s face, stood up and walked slowly away.