bit more cautious about sea ghosts.”
“Just because you were right that time doesn’t mean you’re right every
time.”
During the Spratly Islands, the first clue that China was behind the
aggressions had come from Gator’s sighting of two intermittent contacts on
radar. At the time, Bird Dog had voiced his opinion loudly that Gator had
been drinking too much coffee, and was making radar contacts out of sea
clutter. When an island five thousand feet below them had disintegrated
into a massive cloud of tank fragments, bodies, and bamboo building
materials, Bird Dog had been forced to admit that his RIO was right.
“Let’s circle this area for a while, see if we pick anything else up,”
Gator said, his voice holding no trace of animosity. “I know what you
think about sea ghosts, but this wasn’t one of them.”
“Okay, let me call Mother and tell her what we’re up to. Damnit,
Gator, we’re going to end up tanking again if we stay out here much
longer.”
“You might want to consider doing it earlier than you need to,” Gator
said, tension creeping into his voice.
“Why? You holding out on me?”
“No. It’s just that I don’t want to be running short on fuel if
something unexpected comes up. You know the old saying–better safe than
sorry?”
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to rub it in.”
Bird Dog made the call to the carrier and told the operations
specialist on the other end what they’d seen. Or rather, what they’d not
seen. The OS sounded dubious, and dropped off-line for a moment to confer
with the tactical action officer (TAO).
While Bird Dog was waiting for an answer, Gator gave off a sharp yelp
from the backseat. “Look! And you talk about sea clutter!”
Bird Dog put the Tomcat into a tight left-hand turn and studied the
ocean below. A glossy black shape was lurking just below the surface, a
huge man-made leviathan. “Holy shit,” he said softly. “Jesus, Gator, what
is it with you and submarines? There are probably no more than two or
three Russian submarines deployed in this whole ocean, and you get me
marking on top of the only one within two thousand miles.”
He could hear the smugness in Gator’s voice as the RIO replied, “Guess
I’m just good.”
“Or lucky.”
The tactical channel was now chattering with demands for information,
directions to maintain contact, and anxious queries about their fuel status
from the OS. Finally, a familiar voice cut through the chatter.
“Tomcat Two-oh-one, say identity and classification of submarine.”
The slight Texas twang was all Bird Dog needed to hear.
“I don’t know, Admiral–wait, let me drop down a little.” Bird Dog
shoved the control yoke forward, and started down toward the surface of the
ocean. He arrested their descent at two thousand feet above the ocean,
continuing to circle over the contact to get a better look at it.
“An Oscar,” Gator said softly. “That’s the only thing of that size
that would be out here.”
“You sure? It could be a Typhoon at that size.”
“No.” Gator’s voice held a note of finality. “I can see enough of
the sail structure from here to make the call. That’s an Oscar, no doubt
about it.”
Bird Dog relayed the information back to Mother, and then felt a
slight chill as the implications started to settle in.
The Oscar was the latest cruise missile ship in the Russian inventory.
It had one, and only one, primary mission in life–killing American
aircraft carriers. The building program had begun at Shipyard Number 402,
located at Severodyinsk, in 1982, during the height of the Cold War. The
Oscar I and the later Oscar II were the largest submarines to be built by
any nation, except for the Soviet Typhoon ballistic missile boat and the
U.S. Trident SSBN.
The Oscar carried the SS-N-19 Shipwreck antiship missile, with either
a conventional or nuclear warhead. With a range of greater than three
hundred nautical miles and a speed of Mach 2.5, the five-thousand-kilogram
missile was a deadly threat to any surface ship. The Oscar could receive
targeting information from most Soviet tactical aircraft, as well as
satellite downlink positioning. Both of those assets permitted it to fire