Clark eased into the chair next to him. “The Hawkeyes are having a rough time of it, Admiral.”
Pratt’s eyes shot up to the board that displayed the air battle taking place four hundred miles to the east, well to the south of Crete. Colored symbols representing friendly forces were minimal. “Status?” He struck a match to light the stub of cigar between his teeth.
“Our Hawkeyes picked them up as they passed over Bulgaria and commenced jamming, just in case they decided to fire a few early shots to keep us off guard. But it wasn’t too long after that the Hawkeyes got caught in a pincer between MiGs coming down from the north and some fighters that I guess were sent up by Kharkov. That’s one I guess we didn’t expect. Anyway, our fighters arrived on station a few moments after it all started. Our boys hadn’t been able to do much about fighting back. All they could do was jam and evade, and you know how well they can do that.”
“Cut the shit, Commander. How many did we lose?”
“Two of them, sir. They were apparently too close together. We were listening to the net and the controllers were vectoring our Tomcats in when they went off the air.”
Pratt interrupted. “That’s max range for the Tomcats. They should be in closer.” The cigar remained unlit. He tore off his last match.
“We still have recon aircraft out there, Admiral.” It was Clark’s turn, his first since Pratt had come aboard. “I gave the orders for them to haul ass out of there, sir, because we wouldn’t have had any Hawkeyes left if—”
Pratt extended his hands in a gesture of acceptance. “Okay. Okay. No need to outdo my act. I would have done the same thing. Those Russian fighters didn’t have much time on station either, did they?”
“Very little. It was pretty quick, I guess — old-fashioned dogfight for a second. We lost two, claim four of theirs downed, though I think our men in the rear seat tend to exaggerate. But they accomplished what we sent them out for. The other Hawkeyes got away, and we still have a pretty good air picture as a result.”
“Very good, you mean,” Pratt mused. “That’s what I was looking for before.” Now he slapped his pocket, looking for more matches.
“They’ve tried barrage-jamming our picture, but we’re restationed so that LINK is working properly now.” LINK was the process by which the recon aircraft were able to transmit the tactical picture back to Kennedy and Yorktown. It also allowed the controllers in the Hawkeyes to vector the fighters to a target or even to take full control of the craft from the pilot.
“We’ve been able to take about five or six Backfires out of the picture, but, Christ, they just keep coming, one flight after another.”
“That’s the idea. Simple mathematics. It doesn’t matter to Moscow how many planes they lose or how many missiles we knock out as long as enough of them get through. They never designed the goddamn things for perfection. If half-a-dozen missiles break through on us for every fifty they put up there, I’ll bet they’d call that a successful attack.”
Clark pointed at one of the boards. “It looks very successful then, sir.” He handed Pratt a pack of matches.
The attack was successful indeed. The red enemy symbols on the board, each representing a Backfire bomber closing in on their force, were numerous, merging into a single red blob in some sectors. And converging on the intercept point a little over a hundred miles from the battle group were the Hornet fighters, the last source of long-range defense before Pratt’s battle group would have to undertake its own defense.
Pratt viewed the situation dispassionately. The perimeter was already over — the pickets had done their job and now it was up to Nelson. He saw that Nelson’s ASW forces had now come under attack. Their success would be measured in a matter of minutes. If their tactics were successful, the Soviet submarines would neither be able to control the cruise missiles nor launch an attack of their own on the battle group.
The Soviet cruise missiles would be launched shortly. Then it would become an electronic war — missile versus missile, countermeasures versus countermeasures, men versus black boxes. Clark had seen that electronic countermeasures had been instituted before Pratt entered plot. Each ship in the battle group constantly radiated signals that would confuse the incoming missiles, fool the enemy radar into thinking that there were more ships than really existed, that small ships were really carriers, that the carrier was a series of small targets. But Pratt knew there would be more missiles than targets. There were men in those aircraft and submarines who understood American battle group dispositions well enough to know where the carrier was located and which ship was an AEGIS cruiser.
ABOARD U.S.S. YORKTOWN WITH THE KENNEDY BATTLE GROUP
Tom Carleton made a tour of Yorktown after his shower. Since she was secured for action, the PA system was used whenever a hatch was opened to another compartment to allow entry. This served two purposes — many men actually had the opportunity to shake their new commanding officer’s hand before they went into battle, and nothing could have done more for morale than to see the captain apparently as confident as if they were about to take an extended liberty.
By the time Carleton was seated at his station in CIC, his appearance was no different than when he left. He was one of those men who could put on a freshly pressed, custom-fitted uniform and ten minutes later appear as if he’d slept in it. His slacks were rumpled, the buttons on his shirt strained over his more-than-ample belly, and his belt had once again eased itself below his midsection. He was definitely not material for recruiting posters. But nothing in his outward appearance could have adversely affected the crew of Yorktown. He understood what sailors respected and what they reacted to — and they were on his side.
The computer could have told Carleton how long it would take for the two opposing forces to meet. Kharkov and her escorts were a little over two hundred miles to the east.
Both groups were making about twenty-five knots, closing in at more than fifty miles each hour. In four hours, they would be on top of each other. In two hours or less, though they would not yet be in sight of each other, they would be within shipboard missile range.
The proximity of the opposing surface forces to each other would have meant a great deal in the early stages, if they had been the main elements. However, there were submarines capable of moving much faster than the ships on the surface that could alter the situation at any moment. Some of the subs had not been detected since the satellite-intelligence capability had been lost. The overwhelming influence in the modern theater of war was the air-to-surface missiles. At any time now, they could be on their way with some probability of a hit. As each second passed, the odds increased that the initial missiles of the salvo would be launched.
The link with perimeter aircraft disclosed a large number of Soviet aircraft breaking through the barrier. The picture was revealed clearly on both Yorktown and Kennedy. Though Pratt and Carleton were in direct contact, their responsibilities differed considerably. The Admiral was in charge of overall strategy. Carleton was to coordinate the defense of Kennedy’s battle group.