Phantom force the uss cu.., p.49
Phantom Force (The USS Cunningham Quintet Book 5), page 49
On the bridge, Amanda tapped her lip mike key. “Moon Pool, you are cleared to flood down and open the belly doors. Rig and arm all drop collars, Mark 48’s. Program for surface engagement.”
Anything and everything that could punch a hole or even make a dent in another ship’s hull would be pressed into play tonight.
Flag Plot, INS Teluk Surabaya
2300 Hours; Zone Time, November 20, 2008
Soon … Soon … Soon …
Soon they would be back in open water with a clear run to Jakarta. Ketalaman felt the knots in his stomach start to loosen. He had lost himself for a time but he was regaining himself, regaining his precious control.
He had acted hastily. Out of fear. Out of stupidity. He had been stampeded into a potentially disastrous action in taking his precious ships through this narrow bottleneck of a channel. But, thankfully, Kediri and the Americans had placed nothing there to contest him.
It would have been far better to meet the government fleet in open battle. It would have made him stronger in the eyes of his followers.
Fool!
They were losing faith. He could see it in the sideways glances cut at him in the low-lit compartment. He could see it in the way his officers clustered in whispering cryptic clusters. In the way their eyes went to his Chief of Staff and to the Commodore first when he, Ketalaman, gave a command.
He must rebuild his stature in the eyes of his men. And he must order the Commodore and the CoS killed upon arrival in Java. That would help.
His wounded hand closed tight around the blood-stained rock shard in his pocket, relishing the pain.
In the corner of the Flag Plot, the talker straightened and pressed his headset closer. “Surface contact report from the Pulau Raas! A large surface contact in the channel! Bearing one three five relative! Speed eighteen knots! Range five thousand meters relative! Closing rapidly!”
A quartermaster leaned over the channel chart and placed an unidentified contact marker off the bow of the minesweepers running ahead of the main force. The unspoken tension ramped up in the flag plot.
“Order the Pulau to close and challenge the contact,” Ketalaman said quietly.
“Yes sir.” The talker repeated his command to the radio room.
As the mountains. As … the … mountains!
Minutes crawled past. Ketalaman metered each breath, keeping them steady.
“Pulau Raas reports target is a large merchant ship, bulk-carrier type.”
The chartsmen replaced the unidentified contact marker with that for a merchantman.
“The captain of the Pulau Raas reports the merchantmen identifies itself as the Greek freighter Andronicus.”
The MV Galaxy Shenandoah
2312 Hours: Zone Time 2008
“Mr. Carstairs, have countermeasures deploy their antenna arrays. Stand by to commence radar-range scrambling.”
“Aye aye, ma’am.”
The islands that walled the channel could only be seen as traces on the navigational radar, could only be sensed as a differing quality in the darkness of the night. Off to port, the running lights of a small ship snapped on, blurred in the mist. The rebel fleet had been running blacked out – but, as they were sharing the tight channel with a “neutral” merchantmen, they were illuminating themselves for safety’s sake. Amanda thought it very obliging of them.
The lights began to pass astern. They were past the first picket line, inside the initial layer of rebel defense.
Amanda’s eyes flicked to the tactical display on the laptop clipped to the chart table. The positioning was looking favorable. For the last hour, she had been carefully gauging her approach to the enemy shipping column. Tracking them via the drone net, she had been varying her speed and approach angle to place each of the rebel convoy elements in exactly the correct position in relation to her deployed forces.
“Lee helm, make turns for twenty-two knots. War Power.”
“Aye aye, ma’am. All engines answering at War Power. Making turns for twenty-four knots.”
“CIC, this is the Captain. Advise all attack elements. Stand by to engage.”
“CIC acknowledging.” Elliot MacIntyre himself made the reply. “All attack elements standing by.”
“Electronic countermeasures, this is the Captain. Arm RBOC launchers. Commence range jamming. All emitters.”
*
Below the ridgeline on Sebangka Island, a long line of helicopters hovered in ground effect like a row of prancing cavalry chargers, the thunder of their rotors merging with the thunder in the skies. Taking advantage of the terrain, they were preparing a pop-up attack on the enemy convoy in the same way a flight of Army gunships might ambush a hostile armored column.
Cautiously, Vince Arkady increased power and hovered up to peer over the hill crest, careful to keep his radar return merged into the ground clutter. For several minutes he stayed there. The enemy combat force had steamed past his position. Cranking up his sighting systems to full gain, he could now make out the clustered silhouettes of the rebel group approaching the ambush point.
*
On the south side of the channel, Stone Quillain held a penlight in his teeth. It was his turn to feverishly thumb though the rain-slick waterproof pages of the pocket Jane’s. “Okay. That lead boy in the near column. That’s the dagger boat. He’s got the missiles. We want to kill him first.”
The rebel transport force had its outriders. The lighter, shallow-draft missile and gunboats were out on the column flanks, warily ready to absorb the first of any blow aimed at the convoy. Critical only in that they could complicate the attack on the primary targets, they had to be dealt with decisively.
“The fucker’s dead,” the ranger replied. He rested the camera-like laser rangefinder on a tree limb and squinted through the integral thermal sight, speaking into his lip mike. “Battery, stand by. Mission to fire.”
*
High in the Shenandoah’s upperworks, an antenna array lifted out of the cluster of exhaust pipes in the funnel structure. Unfolding flowerlike, the ECM dish aimed to cover the forward arc of the ship. Deep within the hold section, a skilled electronic warfare technician armed with several million dollars’ worth of sophisticated systemry inflicted an illusion upon the oncoming Indonesian warships.
As the Indonesian surface search radars painted the Shenandoah, each sweep was recorded, its frequency and wave characteristics analyzed, perfectly mimicked and then beamed back at its point of origin, delayed by a few milliseconds.
As the sweeps continued and their intervals were assessed, the ECM system began to predict the scans and project false returns a few milliseconds before the arrival of the actual radar beam.
Aboard the warships of the Indonesian combat formation, radar operators frowned and bent closer to their scopes. They were still detecting the large surface contact off their bows and they could get a bearing on it, but the range was blurring. It looked like a malfunction of some nature and the radar operators began to run systems diagnostics.
What they didn’t realize was that the radars aboard all three frigates were suffering from the same “malfunction” simultaneously.
*
“Captain, this is countermeasures. Range scrambling is up! We have no scan variance or frequency jump. They’re falling for it!”
“Very good, countermeasures. Keep it coming.” Amanda looked at the figures silhouetted in the instrument glow of the helm station. “Lee helm, all engines ahead full! War Power!”
“Aye aye, ma’am. All engines answering full. War power!”
“Helm, we’ll take the lead frigate. Special attack! Steer parallel approach heading. Hold target ten degrees off the starboard bow until attack commit. You have the ship!”
“Targeting lead frigate. Parallel approach heading. Steering ten off the bow and tracking!”
The deck beneath Amanda’s feet began to tremble under the augmented thrust of the propellers as the commando carrier gathered herself for her charge.
Ahead, Amanda could dimly make out the aligned running lights of the frigate group. She flicked her eyes to the tactical display before her. Range was now five miles and closing. Maybe six minutes to contact, given their combined closing speeds.
Another squall! she thought feverishly. Please give me just one more good rain squall!
“Bridge, we have a problem!” It was MacIntyre from the Combat Information Center.
“What is it, Elliot?”
“Harconan is gone! His guard just recovered consciousness in his cabin.”
“Damn!” Amanda spat. “I do not need this! All of our onboard security teams are tied down at weapons stations. Have Mr. Beltrain arm some of the damage control parties …”
A hand dropped on her shoulder. “Please don’t discommode yourself or your crew, Amanda. I’m right here.”
Amanda nearly sprang out of her skin. “Makara!”
“Of course,” the pirate replied amiably. “As I told our friend MacIntyre, this may be my only opportunity to witness a world class sea battle. My apologies to your Marine, but I simply couldn’t pass on the opportunity.”
He circled the chart table and stepped closer to the windscreen, enthralled with what he saw stretching out before him. “Amanda, she’s magnificent. Absolutely magnificent! A modern-day Q-ship! Why didn’t I ever think of something like this?”
“Amanda, what’s going on up there?” MacIntyre demanded over the intercom.
“Cancel the security sweep,” Amanda replied in disgust. “Harconan’s here on the bridge with me, sightseeing.”
MacIntyre muttered a curse. “I’ll be up there personally with a detail and a set of irons.”
A sudden downpour lashed the bridge windows and the lights of the oncoming Indonesian frigates faded out of visibility.
“Negative, Elliot. It’s too late! The cat’s out of the bag and we have more important things to worry about. Cut all deck and running lights!”
With each accelerating beat of her propellers, the Shenandoah was gaining speed and devouring distance. Amanda shot another glance at the tactical. “Range now three miles and closing rapidly. Advise all attack elements! Engagement imminent! Stand by to open fire!”
“This should prove most interesting,” Harconan said, strolling back to stand at her shoulder. “You’re taking us in to point blank range.”
“And I intend to get a lot closer,” she snapped back. “CIC, stand by to invert running lights.”
“What do you plan to do?” Harconan mused. “Ram him?”
“That’s the idea.”
“What?” It was Harconan’s turn to be taken by surprise. “You can’t be serious?”
“Why not? When I set the design parameters of this ship, it occurred to me that the ability to stage the occasional accidental collision at sea could prove useful. The ship we modeled the Shenandoah on was ice strengthened for Arctic operations, so we built the concept. This Shenandoah has a hull like an icebreaker. She’s double-framed and cross-braced and her bow plating is three inches thick, made out of DY-100 steel salvaged out of a nuclear sub hull.”
“Magnificent,” Harconan murmured. “Simply magnificent!”
*
On the bridge of the frigate Fatahillah, the skipper peered nervously into the night. Even with his night glasses he couldn’t pick up the lights of that damn bulk carrier in this murk.
“Radar, range and bearing on that freighter?”
“Bearing zero three five off the starboard bow, angle off increasing. Range indefinite.”
“Indefinite? What do you mean indefinite?”
“We have the bearing but the range keeps breaking up. We seem to have a scope malfunction, sir. Conducting diagnostic now. Target should be out at about three miles.”
Should be? About? This was a ship handler’s nightmare! Blundering about in sloppy weather with a squadron in column behind him and a Greek freighter standing on towards him and all with a dicky radar.
“Damn it, Radar. Get me a range on that merchant ship!”
By the international maritime Rules of the Road, the bulk carrier should be passing safely to starboard of him, but who could say what a crazy freighter captain might do?
By common sense, he should also reduce speed until the plot clarified, but he couldn’t do that without first contacting the task force flag and throwing the whole column into disarray.
This couldn’t possibly get worse.
“Radar, where the hell is that range?”
“I’m sorry, captain, but we’re still getting inconsistent ranging in the forward arcs of both the surface search and navigational radars.”
Both systems? But how could both systems possibly malfunctioning in exactly the same way at exactly the same time?
*
“Helmsman, now!” Amanda cried. “Turn in on him! Hard over! Set collision bearing!’
The brass wheel spun and glinted in the binnacle light. “Helm is hard over, Captain! Target ship is now bearing zero off the bow!”
They were about to unleash one of the most ancient and devastating of all naval attacks.
“CIC, this is the bridge. Invert the running lights! Sound collision alarm! Stand by to ram!”
*
“Ship off the starboard bow! Bearing zero four five!” one of the Fatahillah’s lookouts yelled.
Through the water-streaked bridge windscreen, a pair of red and green ship’s running lights that had suddenly become clear.
Something was wrong, the frigate’s captain thought feverishly. By the International Maritime Rules of the Road, the merchantman would be showing a red running light to port and a green to starboard.
But by her lights, the bulk carrier had suddenly turned away from the task force and out of the channel and was steaming hard for the northern coast of Lingga Island.
The frigate’s commander lifted his night glasses. “Have the Radio Room hail that …”
His binoculars centered. He could make out a shape between those lights now, an angular outline. But it wasn’t a ship’s stern as it should be. It was a bow.
The sanity of the Fatahillah’s captain trembled. The bulk carrier’s running lights were reversed. It wasn’t steaming away; it was bearing down on them!
“All engines ahead emergency!” The scream tore from his throat. “Hard left rudder!”
The bow could be seen without night glasses now, an enormous axeblade of steel with a foaming bow wave at its cutwater, towering over the side of the frigate. Someone on the frigate’s bridge was yanking frantically on the lever of the ship’s siren. The Fatahillah herself was screaming in terror.
And in response, the bow of the onrushing ship was turning as well.
Turning in …
Towards them!
*
Amanda keyed the I-MC circuit. “All hands, brace for impact! Hang on!”
She had been involved in an accidental collision at sea before – but never a deliberate one. She felt an arm close around her waist as Harconan got a grip on both her and the chart table. Then steel impacted steel.
There was a thunderclap and an insane shriek of tearing metal. A dazzling double fan of molten sparks sprayed half a thousand feet into the air. Amanda had expected the bow of the Shenandoah to lift as she drove up and over the Indonesian frigate, but it didn’t work that way. The Commando carrier displaced sixty-six thousand tons, the frigate less than two thousand. It was a rhinoceros running down a sheep.
There was a tooth-rattling shock, a long shudder, and the Shenandoah simply sailed through the smaller vessel, her underwater propeller guards shoving the two sundered halves of the frigate aside.
Looking to port, Amanda caught a momentary glimpse of the frigate’s stern section, as if she were seeing an engineering cutaway. The compartments and passageways were torn open but still internally illuminated. Maimed and struggling crewmen could be seen toppling into the sea.
Then the inrushing waters must have killed the power systems. All went dark and the Shenandoah was driving clear.
“All elements open fire!” Amanda yelled into her headset. “Commence! Commence! Commence!”
*
On the nameless channel island, Stone Quillain yelled into his lip mike. “Battery, fire the mission!”
“On the way!” the reply rang back.
Four 120mm mortar shells were released, each sliding down the throat of its tube to strike the firing pin at the bottom. Propulsive charges exploded and the shells screamed on their way, tracking on their high ballistic trajectories.
One of the strengths of the trench mortar is in its disproportionate firepower. As it is a low pressure, low velocity weapon, less of its throw weight needs to be put into its shell casing and more into the explosive charge it carries. Thus, a mortar shell can be more powerful than the equivalent round fired from a cannon or howitzer.
The shells being fired this night by the Sea Demon battery were British-made Merlin anti-tank rounds. Their infra-red precision guidance system took up a percentage of space within the shell casing – but, as they pitched over the peak of their arcs and homed on the exhaust stack glow of the missile boat Rencong, they still packed a hellish punch.
Yet another advantage of the mortar is that it can be fired with great rapidity. A good mortar crew can have three rounds in the air before the first round hits its target. And the Army mortar men of the Sea Demon force were excellent.
