Protect And Defend

chapter 33
U.S.S. VIRGINIA, GULF OF OMAN

Captain Pete Halberg was a prime candidate for an ulcer. The forty-five-year-old graduate of Annapolis never lost his temper. Not with his wife, not with his six kids, and never with his crew. He internalized stress by shoving it down into the pit of his stomach, where he fed it with black coffee. Usually ten cups a day or more. His only saving grace was the twenty minutes he put in on the heavy bag in the bowels of his sub's engine room. That and the bottle of Tums antacid tablets that he went through every week. On this particular morning the pucker factor on the bridge was running high.

Command of any submarine was an intensely stressful, yet rewarding job. Commanding one of America 's newest fast attack submarines was in a league all by itself. The United States Navy had entrusted Halberg with the two-billion-dollar technological marvel and given him 134 submariners to lead. The cruise had been fairly routine up until two days prior when they'd received a flash message from Submarine Task Force Commander or CTF 54. Their orders were to leave the Dwight D. Eisenhower Strike Group, which was on patrol in the Persian Gulf, and proceed to the Gulf of Oman, where Halberg and his crew were to locate and track one of Iran 's three Kilo-class subs that had left port in a hurry.

Shortly after midnight they'd followed a Liberian supertanker filled with crude through the Strait of Hormuz and entered the deeper waters of the Gulf of Oman. At 377 feet the U.S.S. Virginia was seventeen feet longer than the depth of the main shipping channel. There wasn't a sub in the world, other than her sister ships, that could come even close to her capabilities, but she had her limits. Halberg and his entire crew had breathed a collective sigh of relief when they reached the deeper water of the Gulf of Oman. The Virginia 's strength lay in her stealth, firepower, and speed. To use those, however, she needed room to maneuver. If the Persian Gulf was a six-lane divided highway on a dry sunny day, the Strait of Hormuz was a narrow dark alley on a dark rainy night. Twenty-seven miles at the narrowest point, it was dotted with islands and packed with shipping traffic. Most of its supertankers were nearly 1,000 feet long. The currents were quick and once outside the main shipping channel there were countless uncharted wrecks.

Based on the information provided by CTF 54, Halberg and his executive officer, Dennis Strilzuk, agreed on the most likely location of the Kilo. They set up a patrol grid and then Halberg turned over the command duty officer watch to the exec so he could grab a few hours of sleep. Four hours later he woke up refreshed and returned to the bridge. Traveling at five knots on an easterly heading, the lightweight wide-aperture array picked up the Kilo running at the same speed in the opposite direction, parallel to the Iranian coast.

It was a predictable maneuver that they had seen the Iranians use dozens of times. They would run their subs out of their base in Bandar Abbas in broad daylight for all the world to see and then transit through the strait on the surface. Once clear of the shipping channel they'd dive and then put the pedal to the metal. Usually, just north of Muscat, Oman, they would decrease speed to five knots and begin a series of lazy figure eights to make sure no American subs were trailing them. Then they would slowly work their way north and skirt the Iranian coastline just inside territorial waters, looking for an American warship they could fall in behind and tail back through the strait.

When Halberg arrived in control, Strilzuk explained what was going on.

"About thirty minutes ago, he broke for international water and started running the race track right here on the shelf." Strilzuk pointed to a location on the chart that showed where the Gulf of Oman stepped its way up from a depth of 1,000 meters to 100 meters. The location was right on the doorstep of the Strait of Hormuz.

Halberg sipped his coffee. "That doesn't make any sense."

"No, it doesn't. Why go to all that effort to disappear and then start beating your chest?"

"Unless you want to be found," Halberg mused.

"That's what I was thinking." Strilzuk handed the skipper a printed message from CTF 54. "This came in about an hour ago."

Halberg scanned the message without the aid of glasses. With his oldest child already in college, he was very proud of the fact that he didn't need reading specs. According to the message the Iranian naval base at Bandar Abbas was a beehive of activity. Her two remaining Kilo subs, the Tareq and Noor, had rushed out of port in the middle of the night along with four of their minisubs.

Strilzuk pointed to the nearest color monitor and said, "These satellite photos were taken at zero four hundred. Every frigate in the harbor is glowing. They're getting ready to put their entire navy to sea."

Halberg looked down at the plotting table. The old paper charts had been replaced by a flat computer screen that provided real-time tactical information. With the aid of a complex navigation system, the display showed the exact location of the Virginia , the Iranian Kilo they were shadowing, and virtually every other ship in the Gulf of Oman. Halberg pressed a button and the screen changed magnification to show the tactical situation in the Persian Gulf. Two of the six Iranian subs were already missing. The other four were all headed northwest toward the Eisenhower strike group. Halberg assumed the missing subs were also headed in that direction. He'd been patrolling these waters on and off for nearly twenty years, and this was as aggressive as he'd ever seen the Iranians.

Halberg changed the plotting screen back to his immediate area of responsibility. He looked at the location of the Iranian Kilo that they had identified as the Yunes, the most modern of their subs. She appeared to be guarding the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

"Why don't you grab some sleep," Halberg said to Strilzuk. "I'll start the next watch early."

"You sure?"

"Positive." Halberg settled into his chair in the Command and Control Center and asked for a cup of coffee. As he studied the battlefield layout on the array of screens in the CACC, he got the feeling that this was not going to be another boring day at sea.