Debt of Honor

  That was the signal for a general melee. The tactical situation had been clear, and then became less so as the Japanese fighters also went to maximum speed to close the Americans, hoping to duck under the Phoenix launch to launch their own fire-and-forget missiles. It was a move that required exquisite timing, which was hard to do without expert quarterbacking from a command-and-control aircraft, for which they had not waited.

  It hadn’t been possible to train Navy personnel to do it quickly enough, though a party of sailors did hold the wings up as the trained Army ground crewmen attached them to hardpoints on the side of the first Comanche. Then the fuel hoses were snaked to the openings, and the ship’s pumps were switched on, filling all the tanks as rapidly as possible. Another Navy crewman tossed Richter a phone on the end of an ordinary wire.

  “How did it go, Army?” Dutch Claggett asked.

  “Kinda exciting. Y’all got some coffee, like hot maybe?”

  “On the way, soldier.” Claggett made the necessary call to the galley.

  “Who was that chopper from?” Richter asked, looking back at the fueling operations.

  “We had to take out a ’can about an hour ago. He was in the way. I guess the helo was from him. Ready to copy your destination?”

  “Not Wake?”

  “Negative. There’s a carrier waiting for you at twenty-five north, one-fifty east. Say again, two-five north, one-five-zero east.”

  The warrant officer repeated the coordinates back twice, getting an additional confirmation. A whole carrier to land on? Damn, Richter thought. “Roger that, and thank you, sir.”

  “Thanks for splashing the helo, INDY.”

  A Navy crewman stepped up and banged on the side of the aircraft, giving a thumbs-up sign. He also handed over a Tennessee ball cap. Then Richter saw that the breast pocket on his shirt had a bulge in it. Most impolitely, he reached down and plucked out the half-pack of cigarettes. The sailor laughed over the noise and tossed a lighter to go along with it.

  “Stand clear!” Richter shouted. The deck crewmen retreated, but then another man jumped out of the hatch with a thermos bottle, which was passed up. With that, the canopy came down and Richter started his engines back up. Barely a minute later, the Comanche lifted off, making room for -Two as his lead aircraft took an orbit position over the sub. Thirty seconds after that, the pilot was sipping coffee. It was different from the Army brew, far more civilized. A little Hennessey, he thought, and it would be about perfect.

  “Sandy, look north!” his backseater said as -Two came down on the deck of the submarine.

  Six Eagles fell to the first volley of missiles, with two more damaged and withdrawing, the AWACS controllers said. Sanchez couldn’t see, as he was heading away from the advancing enemy fighters, the Tomcats making room now for the Hornets. It was working. The Japanese were pursuing, coming away from their island at high-power settings, driving the Americans away, or so they thought. His threat receiver said that there were enemy missiles in the air now, but they were American-designed missiles, and he knew what they could do.

  “What’s that?” Oreza wondered.

  Just a shadow at first. The airfield lights were still on for some reason or other, and they saw a single white streak crossing the end of Kobler’s runway. It banked sharply over the threshold and tracked down the center of the single strip. Then it changed shape, the nose blowing off, and small objects sprinkling down on the concrete. A few exploded. The rest just disappeared, too small to see unless they were moving. Then came another, and another, all doing the same thing, except for one that headed straight for the tower, and blew the top right off of it, and along with it, the fighter wing’s radios.

  Farther south, the commercial airfield was also lit up still, four 747s sitting at the terminal or elsewhere on the ramp. Nothing seemed to approach the airport. To their east, several more missile launches lit up the Patriot battery, but they’d shot off their first load of missiles, and the crews now had to erect additional box launchers, then connect them to the command van, and that took time. They were getting kills, but not enough.

  “Not going for the SAMs,” Chavez noted, thinking that they really ought to be under cover for all this, but ... but nobody else was, as though this were some sort of glorious Fourth of July display.

  “Avoiding civilian areas, Ding,” Clark replied.

  “Nice trick. By the way, what’s this Kelly stuff?”

  “My real name,” the senior officer observed.

  “John, how many of the bastards did you kill?” Oreza wanted to know.

  “Huh?” Chavez asked.

  “Back when we were both children, your boss here did a little private hunting, drug dealers, as I recall.”

  “It never happened, Portagee. Honest.” John shook his head and grinned. “Well, not that anybody can prove,” he added. “I really am dead, you know?”

  “In that case you got the right set of initials for the new name, man.” Oreza paused. “Now what?”

  “Beats me, pal.” Oreza wasn’t cleared for his new orders, and he didn’t know that they were possible anyway. A few seconds later it occurred to someone to switch off the remaining electrical power on the south end of the island.

  Mutsu’s helicopter had announced the presence of a submarine on the surface, but nothing more. That had caused Kongo to launch her Seahawk, now coming south. Two P-3C Orion antisub aircraft were approaching as well, but the helicopter would get in first, carrying two torpedoes. That aircraft was coming in at two hundred feet, without its look-down radar on, but with flashing strobes that looked very bright in Richter’s headset.

  “Sure is busy here,” Richter said. He was at five hundred feet, with a new target just on the horizon. “PIT CREW, this is INDY LEAD, we have another chopper in the neighborhood.”

  “Splash him!”

  “Copy that.” Richter increased speed for his intercept. The Navy didn’t have any problems making decisions. The closure speed guaranteed a rapid intercept. Richter selected STINGER and fired at five miles. Whoever it was, he didn’t expect hostile aircraft in the area, and the cold water under him made a fine contrast background for the heat-seeking missile. The Seahawk spun in, leaving Richter to wonder if there might be survivors. But he didn’t have the ability to perform a rescue, and didn’t close in to see. -Two was up now, and took the protective orbit position, allowing the leader to turn for the rendezvous. He gave the submarine a low saluting pass and headed off. He had neither the fuel nor the time to linger.

  “You realize we’re an aircraft carrier?” Ken Shaw asked, watching the deck crew finishing up refueling for the third and last visitor. “We scored kills and everything.”

  “Just so we live long enough to be a submarine again,” Claggett replied tensely. As he watched, the canopy came down and the crewmen started securing topside. Two minutes later his deck was nearly clear. One of his chiefs tossed extraneous gear over the side, waved to the sail, and disappeared down the capsule hatch.

  “Clear the bridge!” Claggett ordered. He took one last look around before keying the microphone one last time. “Take her down.”

  “We don’t have a straight board yet,” the Chief of the Boat objected in the attack center.

  “You heard the man,” the officer of the deck snapped back. With that command the vents were opened and the main ballast tanks flooded. The topside bridge hatch changed a second later from a circle to a dash, and Claggett appeared a moment later, closing the bottom-end hatch to the bridge, making a straight board.

  “Rigged for dive. Get us out of here!”

  “That’s a submarine,” the Lieutenant said. “Diving—venting his tanks.”

  “Range?”

  “I have to go active for that,” the sonar officer warned.

  “Then do it!” Ugaki hissed.

  “What are those flashes?” the copilot wondered. They were just over the horizon to the left of their flight path, no telling the distance, but however far away they were, th
ey were bright, and one turned into a streak that cometed down into the sea. More streaks erupted in the darkness, lines of yellow-white going mainly right-to-left. That made it clear. “Oh.”

  “Saipan Approach, this is JAL Seven-Oh-Two, two hundred miles out. What is happening, over?” There was no reply.

  “Return to Narita?” the copilot asked.

  “No! No, we will not do that!” Torajiro Sato replied.

  It was a tribute to his professionalism that rage didn’t quite overcome his training. He’d already dodged two missiles to this point, and Major Shiro Sato did not panic despite the ill-luck that had befallen his wingman. His radar showed more than twenty targets, just out of missile range, and though some others of his squadron mates had fired their AMRAAMs, he wouldn’t until he had a better chance. He also showed multiple radars tracking his aircraft, but there was no helping that. He jerked his Eagle around the sky, taking hard turns and heavy gees as he closed on burner. What had begun as an organized battle was now a wild melee, with individual fighters entirely on their own, like samurai in the darkness. He turned north now, selecting the nearest blips. The IFF systems automatically interrogated them, and the answer was not what he expected. With that Sato triggered off his fire-and-forget missiles, then turned back sharply to the south. It wasn’t at all what he’d hoped for, not a fair fight, skill against skill in a clear sky. This had been a chaotic encounter in darkness, and he simply didn’t know who had won or lost. He had to turn and run now. Courage was one thing, but the Americans had drawn them out so that he scarcely had the fuel remaining for his home field. He’d never know if his missiles had scored. Damn.

  He increased power one last time, going to burner to disengage, angling right to keep clear of the fighters advancing in from the south. Those were the planes from Guam, probably. He wished them luck.

  “TURKEY, this is TURKEY LEAD. Disengage now. I say again, disengage now!” Sanchez was well behind the action now, wishing that he were in his Hornet instead of the larger Tomcat. Acknowledgments came in, and though he’d lost a few aircraft, and though the battle had not been entirely to his liking, he knew that it had been a success. He headed north to clear the area, checking his fuel state. Then he saw strobe lights at his ten o’clock and turned further to investigate.

  “Jesus, Bud, it’s an airliner,” his radar-intercept officer said. “JAL markings.” That was obvious from the stylized red crane on the high tailfin.

  “Better warn him off.” Sanchez turned on his own strobes and closed from the portside. “JAL 747, JAL 747, this is U.S. Navy aircraft to your portside.”

  “Who are you?” the voice asked over the guard frequency.

  “We are a U.S. Navy aircraft. Be advised there is a battle going on here. I suggest you reverse course and head back home. Over.”

  “I don’t have the fuel for that.”

  “Then you can bingo to Iwo Jima. There’s a field there, but watch out for the radio tower southwest of the strip, over.”

  “Thank you,” was the terse reply. “I will continue on my flight plan. Out.”

  “Dumbass.” Sanchez didn’t put on the air, though his backseater fully agreed. In a real war they would have just shot him down, but this wasn’t a real war, or so some people had decided. Sanchez would never know the magnitude of his error.

  “Captain, that is very dangerous!”

  “Iwo Jima is not lighted. We’ll approach from the west and stay clear,” Captain Sato said, unmoved by all that he’d heard. He altered course to the west, and the copilot kept his peace on the matter.

  “Active sonar to starboard, bearing zero-one-zero, low-frequency, probably a sub.” And that was not good news.

  “Snapshot!” Claggett ordered at once. He’d drilled his crew mercilessly on this scenario, and the boomers did have the best torpedomen in the fleet.

  “Setting up on tube four,” the weapons petty officer answered. On command, the torpedo was activated. “Flooding four. Tube four is flooded. Weapon is hot.”

  “Initial course zero-one-zero,” the weapons officer said, checking the plot, which didn’t reveal much. “Cut the wires, set to go active at one thousand!”

  “Set!”

  “Match and shoot!” Claggett ordered.

  “Fire four, four away!” The sailor nearly broke the firing handle.

  “Range four thousand meters,” the sonar officer reported. “Large submerged target, beam aspect. Transient—he’s launched!”

  “So can we. Fire one, fire two!” Ugaki shouted. “Left full rudder,” he added the moment the second tube was clear. “Ahead flank!”

  “Torpedo in the water. Two torpedoes in the water, bearing zero-one-zero. Ping-and-listen, the torpedoes are in search mode!” sonar reported.

  “Oh, shit. We’ve been here before,” Shaw noted, recalling an awful experience on USS Maine. The Army officer aboard and his senior sergeant had just come into the attack center to thank the Captain for his part in the helicopter mission. They stopped cold on the portside, looking around and seeing the tension in the compartment.

  “Six-inch room, launch decoy, now!”

  “Launching now.” There was slight noise a second later, just a jolt of compressed air.

  “We have a MOSS set up?” Claggett asked, even though he’d given orders for exactly that.

  “Tube two, sir,” the weapons tech replied.

  “Warm it up.”

  “Done, sir.”

  “Okay.” Commander Claggett allowed himself a deep breath and time to think. He didn’t have much, but he had some. How smart was that Japanese fish? Tennessee was doing ten knots, not having had rudder or speed orders after submerging, and was at three hundred feet of keel depth. Okay.

  “Six-inch room, set up a spread of three canisters to launch on my command.”

  “Standing by, sir.”

  “Weps, set the MOSS for three hundred feet, circling as tight as you can at this depth. Make it active as soon as it clears the tube.”

  “Stand by ... set. Tube is flooded.”

  “Launch.”

  “MOSS away, sir.”

  “Six-inch room, launch now!”

  Tennessee shuddered again, with three decoys ejected into the sea along with the torpedo-based lure. The approaching torpedo now had a very attractive false target to track.

  “Surface the ship! Emergency surface!”

  “Emergency surface, aye,” the chief of the boat replied, reaching himself for the air manifold. “Full rise on the planes!”

  “Full rise, aye!” the helmsman repeated, pulling back on his control yoke.

  “Conn, sonar, the inbound torpedoes are still in ping-and-listen. Our outbound unit is now on continuous pinging. It has a sniff.”

  “Their fish is like an early -48, troops,” Claggett said calmly. His demeanor was a lie, and he knew that, but the crew might not. “Remember the three rules of a -48. It has to be a valid target, it has to be over eight hundred yards, and it has to have a bearing rate. Helm, all stop.”

  “All stop, aye. Sir, engine room answers all stop.”

  “Very well, we’ll let her coast up now,” the Captain said, out of things to say now. He looked over at the Army people and winked. They looked rather pale. Well, that was one advantage of being black, wasn’t it? Claggett thought.

  Tennessee took a thirty-degree up-angle, killing a lot of her forward speed as she rose and tumbling several people to the deck, it came so abruptly. Claggett held on to the red-and-white periscope-control wheel to steady himself.

  “Depth?”

  “Breaking the surface now, sir!” the COB reported. A second later came a rush of exterior noise, and then the submarine crashed sickeningly back down.

  “Rig for ultraquiet.”

  The shaft was stopped now. Tennessee wallowed on the surface while three hundred feet down and half a mile aft, the MOSS was circling in and out of the decoy bubbles. He’d done all that he could do. A crewman reached into his pocket for a smoke, t
hen realized that he’d lost his pack topside.

  “Our unit is in acquisition!” sonar reported.

  “Come right!” Ugaki said, trying to be calm and succeeding, but the American torpedo had run straight through the decoy field ... just as his had done, he remembered. He looked around his control room. The faces were on him, just as they had been the other time, but this time the other boat had shot first despite his advantage, and he only needed a look at the plot to see that he’d never know if his second submarine attack had succeeded or not.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to his crew, and a few heads had time to nod at his final, sincere apology to them.

  “Hit!” sonar called next.

  “Thank you, Sonar,” Claggett acknowledged.

  “The enemy fish are circling below us, sir ... they seem to be ... yeah, they’re chasing into the decoy ... we’re getting some pings, but ...”

  “But the early -48s didn’t track stationary surface targets, Chief,” Claggett said quietly. The two men might have been the only people breathing aboard. Well, maybe Ken Shaw, who was standing at the weapons panel. It only made things worse that you couldn’t hear the ultrasonic noise of a torpedo sonar.

  “The damned things run forever.”

  “Yep.” Claggett nodded. “Raise the ESM,” he added as an afterthought. The sensor mast went up at once, and people cringed at the noise.

  “Uh, Captain, there’s an airborne radar bearing three-five-one.”

  “Strength?”

  “Low but increasing. Probably a P-3, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  It was too much for the Army officer. “We just sit still?”