Tomahawk (50 page)

He didn't have a ready answer for that, mainly because he was remembering his own recovery of T207 at Prim-
rose. Then he remembered: the operational missile wouldn't land soft. If it crashed, it would plow into the ground at three or four hundred miles an hour, along with a thousand-pound warhead fuzed to detonate at impact. If anybody could reconstruct it after that, they were magicians.

But it was too late now; Auer was coming down the spiral ladder. He stopped at the bottom and added, “Leave a copy of your slides with the J-Three office. Again, thanks for the presentation.”

“Well, that was a pretty obvious waste of time,” Dan told Grady when he got back to the third floor.

The liaison considered that, rubbing his glasses with a tissue. “I was listening. Down on the floor. I'm not so sure about that.”

“You heard him turn me off, sir. And they didn't ask me to the planning meeting.”

“He asked for a copy of the brief.”

“A pat on the head.”

“Maybe. But would you do something for me? Draw me up a description of your attack plan. Make it a point-paper format. As long as you're here, I have some people I'd like you to show it to.”

31

 

 

 

“Marching in chains through the streets of Tripoli? Is that the scenario we're sweating here?”

“It happened in Hanoi,” said another aviator. An 0-6, he could have flown in Vietnam. Dan couldn't see his ribbons under the flight jacket. But he seemed receptive, and Dan looked at him, avoiding the hostile faces his own age, as he went on with the briefing.

Gaeta, Italy. He'd flown in in the rear seat of a T-34 at 0600. A pretty little town on the west coast of Italy that was the homeport for Commander, Sixth Fleet, the admiral in charge of all Navy forces in the Mediterranean.

It was three days after his briefing to Auer, and he'd been refining the plan since, interspersed with calls to Crystal City on the secure phone. At Grady's urging, he'd called the planning people in Norfolk, too, alerting them a mission might be coming down. They wanted op orders, tasking messages. He told them he didn't have those yet, but said if they wanted to be ready when the checkered flag came down, they'd better start digging out data now.

Now he stood in the flag plot aboard USS
Cochrane,
a
Charles Addams-class
guided-missile destroyer. The only one who could generate that tasking message was the tactical commander, COMSIXTHFLT. Whose staff officers sat listening now, some frowning, others with their jaws on their fists. This was the strike planning group for Operation Prime Needle. The trouble was, they were fighter jocks, attack pilots. They weren't enthusiastic about handing their jobs to a missile.

But the man who counted sat opposite him. Admiral Kidder's operations chief was diminutive and intellectual-looking, with a Polaris five-patrol pin on the breast of his blues. He didn't speak often, but when he did, the others remained silent after he stopped, as if giving themselves time to make sure they understood exactly what he'd meant before they responded.

He came to the end of his remarks—he'd been speaking all this time, while the rest of it parallel-processed through the back of his skull—and snapped off the projector. The pilots stirred. “Those are my recommendations. Any questions?”

The ops chief sat immobile. The pilots glanced at him, then leaned forward to drill in. Missile dependability, optical and infrared visibility, reattack requirements, penetration percentages against a fully activated, technologically sophisticated air defense. After the face-off at Patch, he was able to field most of them. Through it he watched the older flier. He didn't ask questions, just let the younger men quiz him. Finally, there was silence again.

The ops chief said, “Captain Friedman?”

The 0-6 cleared his throat. “I was remembering the Thanh Hoa bridge.”

“I thought you might be.”

“Seven hundred sorties, and all those guys we lost. We kept thinking, if we just had the balls to get in close enough … but it wasn't a question of balls.”

“Could this be the same sort of situation?”

“There's only one way to find out if something like this is going to work.”

“Which mission? Air defense suppression?”

“Absolutely.”

“Special missions?” This was shorthand for the chemical plant.

“Probably not. If those targets have absolutely got to be covered, we're better off putting air over them.”

“Our Air Force friends seem to be having doubts.” The N-3 waited, then added in that low-key way, “Or we could hit them ourselves. Second day, after we carry out the suppression mission.”

“The numbers look bad on that, sir.”

The ops chief turned to Dan, the first time he'd spoken directly to him. “I believe you should see Admiral Kidder.”

“I'm ready to do that, sir.” “

Have you reviewed our strike plan?” “M

Captain Grady showed it to me at Patch, sir.” “

That one's pretty much overtaken by events by now. Neal, how about going over our current thinking with him? Take him up to see the admiral at twelve-forty-five.”

Friedman took him deeper into the ship, into the intel spaces. Locks snicked shut behind them.

This was a different world behind the “green door.” It belonged to the 1400s, the intelligence specialists. Even Friedman was an intruder, as the jaygee who fell in as their escort made plain. The aviator took him down a passageway and into a small briefing room. When they were settled and green fiberglass mugs of coffee steamed in front of them, Friedman said, “How much you know. about the LADC?”

“Not even what it is.”

“Libyan Air Defense Command. Grady didn't brief you on this?”

“Some. Not in depth.”

Dan took a slug of coffee as the first slide came up: the by-now-familiar wedge shape of Libya. An irregular border on the west was bounded by Tunisia and Algeria. To the east was Egypt; to the south, a pie slice deep into the Sahara. The spatter of cities and military installations showed that most of the population was clustered along the Mediterranean coast.

“First off, what we're facing here is the most sophisticated air defense any air force has ever tried to penetrate. Khaddafi takes this seriously. The LADC is damn near as big as his air force and navy combined.” Friedman went through the chain of command. “HQ's outside Tripoli, at what used to be Wheelus Air Force Base. The three air defense regions—RADs—are Tripoli, Benghazi, and Tobruk.

“We think each RAD has two S A-two missile brigades,
three or four SA-three, two to four SA-six or -eight. Then there're radar companies and antiaircraft batteries. The exception is SA-fives; they protect the airfields and we figure they're under direct control of headquarters at Wheelus. The coverage overlaps. If the brigade structure follows Soviet practice, they've got—well, I won't go down to the number of launchers per battalion, but it's heavy coverage. The numbers add up to over a hundred batteries of SA types and three brigades of Crotales.

“Who's running all of them? Not just Libyans. There are East Germans, Poles, Czechs, and Russians. Some British and French personnel there, too.

“Okay, what are their weak points? We don't have much intelligence, but there's some interesting stuff. This next shot was taken by a Blackbird out of Mildenhall.”

Dan peered at the slide. Even he could see the missiles, laid out on the sand, shadows stark beneath them. “No camouflage?”

“No, but notice anything else funny?”

“No—other than that they're lined up, they look unprotected.”

“Right, there's no shade. Soviet missile guidance systems are real sensitive to high temperatures. We did three separate photos over a week, and these guys were sitting there every time we went over. Conclusion one: They have a lot of spare missiles. Conclusion two: They don't take good care of them.” Friedman handed the slide back to the jaygee. “Other vulnerabilities: The Libyan pilots don't fly at night. Also, dark of the moon would make it real hard for all those gun batteries to aim visually. Put those together and we've got a night mission. That goes good with our rules of engagement, too: Most of your civilians are going to be off the streets at night, especially around two, three in the morning.”

“What are the rules of engagement?”

“Stringent. No plane goes unless all its systems are at a hundred percent. All targets have to be militarily significant. Collateral damage minimized.”

‘Collateral damage' was the euphemism for noncombatant casualties. Dan said, “Okay. What else?”

“The SA missiles have a limiting envelope of one hundred
and fifty meters. If we can get below that their radars can't see us. We'll have EA-Six-B jammers in the air early and F-eighteens and A-sevens to do air defense suppression.” Friedman sat back and wiped his hand through his hair. “I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say this one scares me. I flew downtown over Hanoi, and that was bad. This is a much heavier, newer, more capable air defense network. We can lose a lot of guys if we dick up.”

“Which is why you thought I could help.”

“I sure as hell hope you can. Because when we go up to see the vice admiral, I'm gonna recommend we bet some pilots' lives on your new toy here.”

He felt apprehensive about it all morning, which was odd, considering he'd briefed higher-ranking officers than Kidder at Patch. But Vice Admiral Kidder was different. He was Navy, for one thing, and no matter how joint you got, a general just didn't have the impact on his nervous system an admiral did. Kidder also had a reputation for being hard-nosed, demanding, and irascible. First seating in the wardroom was full, so he went down to the mess decks for a bite before the brief.

They were hot and crowded and noisy. Men in dungarees and coveralls stained with paint and grease gave him incurious glances as he dropped his tray on the table; then .went back to bitching about the watch bill. He dug into the overcooked, greasy chow. One said, “So Cudjoe, he goes up to this butt-ugly whore and starts giving her shit. And she speaks pretty good English, and she's giving him shit right back. So finally, he says, ‘Hey, all I want is a little pussy.' And she says, ‘Hell, so do I;
mine's
as big as a bucket.'“

Dan grinned. Sailors. They'd never change.

At 1240, he was standing with Friedman on the bridge wing, looking out over the placid Med toward the distant tan buildings of Gaeta, when an aide touched his arm and said, “Admiral will see you.”

Kidder was bullet-headed, with bushy eyebrows and hairy hands. He sprawled in the padded leather chair, his worktable covered with message folders and document files. He didn't greet Dan or say anything welcoming
when Friedman said, “Sir, this is the rep from JCM.” He just grunted and kept reading. Dan waited, stealing a glance down at the water. It looked inviting. If he got a spare hour, maybe he could borrow fins, a mask, take a quick dip.

Still reading and without looking up, Kidder said, “What's EUCOM think about including Tomahawk in this strike?”

“Hard for me to tell, sir. General Stahl originally asked Admiral Niles to send me out to … uh, consult. But General Auer wasn't very enthusiastic when I briefed him.”

Kidder leaned back and locked his hands behind his head. “I've been reading about this thing for a while now. All the crashes. My impression was it's nowhere near ready to deploy.”

“It's deployed, sir. You've got them aboard your six eighty-eights and
New Jersey.”

“I also know some of those canisters are empty. Can you take on Sidi Garib?”

“We can do a better job there than aircraft, sir.”

“Give me the downside. Tell me why I shouldn't use your new toy.”

He swallowed, realizing how cleverly Kidder had turned him into the devil's advocate. But maybe it was good; he could off-load some of his own doubt. “Well, it's fresh out of development. We're gonna get some failures. But we can overtarget to allow for that. One of Auer's staffers was afraid a bird would soft-land and compromise the technology. I think that's unlikely, though.”

“How's it compare to air strikes?”

“Well, sir.. .there's less flexibility. You don't have the choice of ordnance, and you can't alter your tactics when you get to the target. And you're not going to get any damage assessment.” He hesitated. “Aside from that, I can't think of any other arguments against.”

“Arguments for?”

“You don't risk the plane or the pilot, and you
get
better surprise due to the low radar cross-section.”

“Collateral damage?”

“No more likely than with air strikes.”

“We screw up and hit a hospital, the world press'll have us on a plate.”

“You're right, sir. They will.” Beside him, Friedman flinched, but he thought, The hell with it. The guy asked me.