This helicopter, call sign Casino One-One, did not own the sky here; it shared it with its sister helicopter, Casino One-Two, which patrolled twenty-three miles to the west.
The role of both helos was submarine detection, classification, tracking, and ultimately, destruction. To achieve this aim, every few minutes Casino One-One descended to within five hundred feet of the surface, lowered an AN/AQS-22 airborne low-frequency sonar from an umbilical, and dipped it below the ocean surface. The active sonar signal searched the waters for the two submarines identified the evening before.
So far neither helo had turned up any contacts beyond the surface ships in the area, of which there were many.
Each time Casino One-One turned back to the east on its pattern, the two-man, one-woman crew could plainly see the rescue mission continuing in the waters closer to the Lithuanian coast. Four ships had been sunk in a three-hour period the previous evening, and seeing evidence of the slaughter that had taken place on the ocean surface the night before instilled in the flight crew of Casino One-One a special dedication to the mission at hand.
They lived on a surface ship, after all, and their home was coming this way.
The James Greer (DDG-102) had no role in the rescue-and-recovery mission of the four Lithuanian naval vessels; that was left to others. The guided missile destroyer was the most dangerous threat to the Russian subs in the water, so it, and its two MH-60 Romeos, would focus on detecting, controlling, and engaging the enemy.
There were some assumptions made in this search by the American warship. For one, Russia’s Baltic Fleet was known to have a Lada submarine, but it was currently undergoing repairs at the port of Kaliningrad. This meant the two advanced Kilo submarines, called Varshavyankas by the Russians, were the likely culprits of the five torpedo attacks of the previous two days.
Knowing the identities of the targets meant knowing their offensive and defensive capabilities. The Kilo fired Type 53–65 torpedoes, which had an effective range of 25,000 meters. This meant the two MH-60 Romeos had to dip the waters in a wide arc more than fifteen miles in front of its destroyer to ensure their ship was safe from lurking hunters.
At present the Greer was nearly twenty miles to the northwest of its two helicopters, so the MH-60 Romeos served as the vanguard with room to spare.
The James Greer itself had an impressive array of equipment to hunt for undersea threats.
A hull sonar, a multifunction towed array, as well as variable-depth sonar that could dip below the various thermal layers submarines use to hide. All systems were currently configured to passive so the James Greer did not give away its location to the enemy, but since the Romeos were using active sonar, there was little doubt the Kilos knew there was a new component to the surface warfare hunt for them, and they would react accordingly.
That meant either they would run, they would hide, or they would attack.
Casino One-One made another dip into the ocean, and again the sensor operator on board reported negative contact. The Romeos were getting closer to Russia’s waters off Kaliningrad, and the pilot of Casino One-One suspected the Kilos had bolted for the safety of their territory, but he didn’t let his guard down for a moment. A Kilo lurking below him could possibly hear his rotors, and either descend deeper and run away or surface and attack the Romeo. It was known that Russian Kilos carried SA-14 man-portable air-defense systems, shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles that could be launched by an operator standing in the conning tower.
The Kilos weren’t just a threat to surface ships. Casino One-One’s captain knew that his aircraft could fall prey to a Russian sub as well.
Commander Scott Hagen read his latest op orders from Sixth Fleet Command in Naples, and he blew out a long sigh. He’d have to classify the information as part good news, and part bad, but he told himself if nothing else it would light a fire under his butt, and the butts of his crew.
As if they needed more incentive for finding a pair of submarines that might just kill them.
The USS Normandy, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, and the USS Mustin, an Arleigh Burke — class guided missile destroyer one generation older than the James Greer, were at this moment racing to join up with a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship in the North Sea. Already with the amphibious assault ship were a San Antonio — class amphibious transport dock ship, and a Harpers Ferry — class dock landing ship. The five vessels would form into an amphibious ready group, and then sail together around the Jutland Peninsula, through the Øresund Strait between Denmark and Sweden, and then finally into the Baltic.
It would take them two and a half days to arrive in the waters around Lithuania, and Commander Hagen knew that while the arrival of the big cruiser and the potent guided missile destroyer would be a tremendous help in the approaching fight against Russia’s Baltic Fleet, the fact these two ships would be arriving just ahead of two thousand U.S. Marines on three other ships meant Hagen damn well needed to have these waters safe enough for an amphibious landing by the time the task force arrived.
And to that end he’d called for one of his junior officers. A knock at the door to his stateroom got his attention, and he looked up to see a fresh-faced lieutenant with blond hair and a nervous expression. Hagen had read the man’s file again this afternoon, and he knew the man was thirty, but to Hagen he looked like he could have been sixteen.
Now even the LTs are starting to look like kids, he said to himself. You’re getting old, Scott.
“Come on in, Weps. Take a seat.”
Lieutenant Damon Hart did as directed, sitting on the chair in front of his captain’s desk.
“I saw you in the CIC around midnight. You’ve been working all night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll keep this brief, and when I’m done with you I want you to get some chow and hit the rack. I need you ready when we get closer to Russian waters.”
“We’re going in after them, sir?”
“Not as of yet. But since they’ve been coming out after the Lithuanians, there’s no reason to think they’re going to stay in their territorial waters when we get close.”
“No, sir. But I can’t believe they’d really want to mess with us. Our torpedoes are better, we have air assets that can take them out at standoff range. I know their diesel boats are hard to find, but if they come out to play, even for just a second, we’ll annihilate them. They know this, so there’s no way they’d do that.”
“I like your optimism, but you need to dispel any reliance on logic here. I’m sure the captains of those Kilos know we have a better weapons platform than they do. But you don’t know what their orders are. For all we know, Moscow is on the horn with those Kilos right now demanding they make an undersea banzai charge right up our gut.”
The lieutenant nodded, chastened. Damon Hart was a graduate of the Navy’s new Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center, a Top Gun program for surface warfare officers chosen to be the best of the best, who were then given training to hone their skills to an even sharper point. Then they were sent back out into the fleet, with a mission to bring the level of naval combat up all over the Navy.
Hart’s actual job here on the James Greer was as a warfare tactics instructor. It was his job to make certain every surface warfare officer on the ship knew everything he needed to know about every enemy weapon, tactic, and procedure, as well as U.S. Navy doctrine for finding and destroying undersea threats.