“Yes, sir, we’ll be on station off GITMO in twelve hours. I need to refuel though—”
McGovern cut him off. “Roland, these Backfires took off from Murmansk. They are ship killers with frickin’ Kh-22 missiles. They are a threat to you, and I want you in the open until we figure this shit out. Stay put for now. Do you have a submarine?”
“Yes, sir. Actually, he’s under the direct control of SOUTHCOM at the moment, intel collection.”
Meyerkopf heard another sigh as McGovern answered. “So you don’t have a submarine. I’m going to contact SOUTHCOM and place him in a window to launch TLAMs into Venezuela if we need it. We think they’re involved in this, and we’re watching to see where the Russians land.”
“My staff can help with that, sir.”
“Good, we may need you.”
Meyerkopf changed the subject. “General, I do need to refuel if we are spinning up, and my oiler is over 200 miles away. I won’t be ready to go until morning unless we can close GITMO and rendezvous earlier with him.” Meyerkopf waited several seconds for an answer.
“Yes, by all means, refuel your ships, Admiral. Make it happen, but stay out of sight and out of range. Fly the damn captives to GITMO. We have our best people there. And make sure your people are connected at the hip with mine. SOUTHCOM is going to grab hold of you real soon, so stand the fuck by and monitor what NORTHCOM is doing with these bombers. Report to me when you are ready for tasking. Out here.”
Meyerkopf cradled the receiver, unable to look at Browne. Both men were embarrassed, conscious of the fact the curt and sarcastic responses from McGovern had been just this side of a dressing down. Meyerkopf had absorbed worse in his career and reflected that he, himself, had delivered worse over the years. He would hold back on the salvo he was preparing for his people.
“Okay… First, find a spot for us to refuel that meets JIATF SOUTH’s requirements, and get the oiler down here at flank speed. Get that to Ops and the bridge ASAP. Job One.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Matson and Sanders, and you, in the war room. Twenty minutes.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
CHAPTER 34
Coral Sea rose and fell in the gentle swells of the dark Caribbean. Ninety feet to her right, the oiler USNS Patuxent maintained steady course and a speed of 15 knots as she refueled Coral Sea’s aviation fuel bunkers from two large, black hoses. Alongside since midnight, the ships had been linked together for over two hours, and had at least two more to go. On the other side of Patuxent, the guided missile cruiser Gettysburg also took on fuel for her marine gas turbine engines. The bridge teams made one-half degree course corrections and added and reduced revolutions of their screws to maintain position on the oiler, over 150,000 tons of ship “flying formation” on each other on an easterly heading.
While Captain Sanders monitored his conning officers from the carrier’s auxiliary conning station on the starboard side of the bridge, watch team members in NORTHCOM and SOUTHCOM, due to the previous day’s activities, were watching the Atlantic Ocean with heightened interest. The Bear was a pathfinder and signals intelligence collector for the four Backfires that flew close along the U.S. coast before they split up near the Bahamas. Washington was stunned by the complexity of the operation and admired its execution. That the Russians had avoided detection through the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap was impressive, but refueling the big bombers down low in the North Atlantic clag, using the probe and drogue method, was even more so. In a coordinated manner, they had climbed to 38,000 feet, blasting right through the middle of the trans-Atlantic air corridor as they transited southwest along North America. Canadian and American interceptors, having to maintain escort on two groups, had had their hands full all day rendezvousing with the intruders and handing them off from sector to sector.
Near Andros Island, the trailing bombers had diverted to Havana, and the Florida Air Guard F-15’s had stayed with them almost to the 12-mile limit of Cuba. The lead Backfires were met by another tanker. This one launched out of Havana but cancelled in air, despite its filed flight plan to Moscow, to rendezvous with the thirsty Tu-22M’s. The tanker dragged them along the Bahamas chain before ducking through the Mona Passage and into the Caribbean. All three aircraft then landed in Caracas. The whole operation was an impressive display of planning and execution. It seemed as if the Russians had kicked over an ant hill, and the Americans were left to scurry about in their attempts to figure out how to react.
Not long after Meyerkopf and McGovern ended their conversation, Venezuelan secret police ambushed the American Chargé d’Affaires on his way home from the embassy. They held him and his personal security force overnight and charged him with espionage. For the benefit of the cameras, the secret police dressed all of them in striped prison jumpsuits, and the humiliating affront to American sovereignty and honor made world news. If Daniel Garcia and the cartels had wanted to draw American forces off the sea and air drug trade, and to call attention, instead, to American movements in the region, they had succeeded.
Unrelated to the Russian bomber flights and the diplomatic kerfuffle, the assembly of two Cuban Army brigades on the perimeter of Guantanamo drew SOUTHCOM’s full attention. This barren and arid outpost, only 32 square miles on Cuba’s southeastern coast, was home to the infamous illegal combatant detention facility. The outpost was a valuable logistics hub with its deep-water harbor and airstrip. Compared to Cuban troops massing along GITMO, the State Department’s concern in Venezuela was a sideshow. A battalion of Marines, who were outnumbered in this situation, defended GITMO, and SOUTHCOM asked for a Special Marine Air Ground Task Force to help. The Fleet Marine Force Atlantic and the Navy began, in haste, to assemble the task force.
A night owl by nature, Meyerkopf was too keyed up to sleep and stood in the dark on his flag bridge as he observed the replenishment ships. He knew he hadn’t been at his best with McGovern that afternoon, but reading the message traffic about the Russian and Cuban activities filled him with excitement. Washington had to be asking where the nearest carrier was, and he knew the answer: Coral Sea, with Roland Meyerkopf commanding the strike group.
America’s backyard, the Caribbean, was heating up, and SOUTHCOM, that sleepy backwater in Miami where guys went to retire, was running the show. He wondered if General Freeman’s staff could handle this. It had been years since SOUTHCOM had had a carrier to play with down here. Would they know what they were doing?
In contrast, Meyerkopf’s strike group was a frontline force, combat experienced from months in the Middle East. No doubt, they would receive rudder orders from Washington and Admiral Peterson at Fleet Forces. Except for the GITMO operations, this theater was an air/sea theater, and right now Meyerkopf was the only game in town.
The sodium vapor lights on the island bathed the flight deck in an eerie yellow glow, and red lights on Patuxent and Gettysburg next to her provided her night-adapted crews with enough illumination to work. On the horizon he saw the white lights of some shipping vessels, and starlight revealed cumulus clouds floating above them. All of this was new to Meyerkopf, and he admitted to himself that, because it wasn’t second nature, McGovern had him at a disadvantage — and McGovern was a Marine infantryman by trade!