Pratt loved to call himself an old salt, a grizzled old man of the sea ready for retirement after one more tour. But in reality, he was anything but that. That’s why Washington had sent him to Kennedy, and that was why they let him take Nelson and Carleton and why they let Pratt choose their ships.
The Russians were experimenting with innovative submarine tactics. Pratt saw what those new tactics were for. When he went to Washington, senior admirals shook their heads. That was not the way they saw the scenario, nor the way they wanted to see it. Pratt went back to Newport and ran his ideas through the computer. The results confirmed that the Russians could do what he projected. The computer also agreed with Pratt on how they might be stopped.
“How’re the others doing?” Carleton asked.
“We’re halfway there. The base at Svalbard has been damaged. We can see that by satellite, but we don’t know how badly. The British have been chasing every sub near there and seem to be holding them off, and I think our own attack subs have set up a barrier to stop anything that gets by our CAPTORS. We already have convoys coming across the North Atlantic that have a chance of making it now.”
“And Bernie?” Nelson asked.
“Not a word, Nellie. Satellites have picked up some Soviet movement in the mountains across from that base he was after, but we don’t have anything else for sure. The Brits are looking out for him.”
“Cobb?”
“He got in and somehow got out with his man. Only Henry could manage that. Saratoga forwarded just one message that said they were still in the Black Sea. Admiral Turner also said something about his man picking up Cobb, the Russian, and some woman in an evening dress.”
“That means it couldn’t be anyone else but Hank,” Carleton remarked, shifting his frame on the couch. “Now it’s our turn.”
“Saratoga’s group will catch it first. We may learn something from that. I just hope to hell they can recover Cobb and Keradin and get them here. Then that only leaves us.”
“And the soft underbelly,” finished Nelson.
“The soft underbelly,” Pratt echoed to himself. He went over to the bulkhead and flipped a switch. Background light glowed softly through a plastic covering. On its surface were blown-up prints of film from recon satellites. Their appearance reminded Nelson of X-rays in a doctor’s office — though the body in question was the Mediterranean. One set involved satellite photographs of the surface. Each island, each group of naval ships, even small fishing boats were delineated accurately. Photo interpreters had neatly identified each item on each photo.
The second set was of more interest. It contained infrared readings of what was under the surface of the Mediterranean. Like X-ray cameras, infrared satellites actually looked within the body of the ocean for telltale signatures of submarines. Not all could be located, but enough had been detected to show where the Russian wolf packs were located. Unless they were on active patrol, they tended to congregate either near land or the surface to facilitate communications.
“Leave anything to the imagination?” asked Pratt.
“I can’t imagine why there would be the slightest possibility of us losing if we know so much, except…” Carleton let that pass. They each knew that the Russians could provide almost the exact same intelligence on their own forces.
It still came down to three things: if Bernie Ryng had been successful and the Russians were cut off from the North Atlantic, if Cobb came out with General Keradin and was able to deliver him in one piece, and if Pratt’s battle group could control the Med, then the Soviets might pull back to their own borders, or at least halt their advance. It sounded very simple considered in that regard; it was extremely complex from the point of view of the three men in Pratt’s office aboard Kennedy.
WITH A U.S. NAVAL PICKET FORCE
Later that day, the ordeal of Admiral Pratt’s battle group began two hundred miles to the east of Kennedy and about one hundred miles north of the Libyan port of Benghazi. It was here that the guided-missile frigate Oliver Hazard Perry was assigned as a picket. She was one of the ships intended as a primary submarine barrier and to provide early warning — if U.S. Hawkeye recon aircraft were knocked out. Perry’s basic task in early warning was to engage any Soviet submarine that was intended to take over and direct guidance of air-launched Soviet cruise missiles as they closed their targets.
Perry clearly understood there were enemy submarines in the vicinity. She was the southern element of a four-ship picket squadron, steaming at loose intervals of ten miles, the space between them covered by their own ASW helicopters.
The first indication the little ship had that she was under attack was from her own radar. An object suddenly appeared on her screen, about twenty miles distant on her port bow, traveling at high speed. It was a missile breaking the surface! Launched by a submerged submarine, it appeared sporadically on radar as it flew close to the surface.
Perry’s captain instantly ordered his chaff canisters fired in an effort to throw the missile guidance off course. A second missile painted on the radar scope from a separate location. Another submarine!
Her captain understood his odds of steaming alone. He had no antimissile defense other than decoys, or a lucky shot from his one gun mount. His last-ditch effort would be to shoot the missiles down with his Phalanx close-in weapons system. This was a Gatling-type gun atop the hangar that spewed three thousand rounds per minute automatically at an incoming missile. But its range was less than a mile — seconds in the world of missiles. Phalanx would continue firing until its radar informed its computer there was no more missile — or it would keep firing until impact.
Perry’s captain turned her stern to the incoming missiles; it would open Phalanx for unobstructed fire. The chaff canisters were reloaded and fired again.
Perry waited. Her crew waited. Her captain waited.
The first missile went awry, the guidance system unable to pinpoint the target. The second missile was more persistent. The ship’s single gun mount automatically fired in the direction of the missile — a futile gesture. At fifteen hundred yards, Phalanx opened fire with an incredible racket. A steady stream of bullets raced out, directed by a radar system locked on to the missile.
The noise was so ear shattering, so undeviating, that any member of Perry’s crew within eye contact stopped what he was doing. If the missile was shot down, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If the missile impacted, it didn’t matter anyway.
At approximately thirty to forty yards distant, the bullets from the Gatling gun exploded the missile’s warhead with a tremendous blast. Fragments sprayed Perry’s stern, hangar deck, and upper deck, cutting down any man who had stopped to watch. Metal chunks tore into the after one-third of the ship. As Perry reeled from the detonation astern, the radar on Phalanx lost its target. Automatically, it ceased fire, mechanically returning to its original position even as metal fragments glanced off its small radome.