Combat Read online

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  To the memory of the seventeen sailors who

  lost their lives on the USS Cole

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  INTRODUCTION

  AL-JIHAD

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  LEADERSHIP MATERIAL

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  March 1991

  GLOSSARY

  LASH-UP

  One - Unexpected Losses

  San Diego, California September 16, 2010

  National Military Command Center, The Pentagon September 17

  Gongga Shan Mountain Launch Complex, Xichuan Province, Southern China September 23

  Skyhook One Seven, Over the South China Sea September 23

  USS Nebraska (SSBN—739), On Patrol September 24

  INN News September 24

  San Diego, California September 24

  Two - Suggestions

  National Military Command Center, The Pentagon September 25

  INN News, September 25

  China Lake Naval Weapons Center, California September 26

  Crystal Square 3, Arlington, Virginia September 27

  U.S. Navy Space Warfare Command, San Diego, California September 27

  Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, The Pentagon, September 28

  Three - Indecision

  Office of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force September 30

  Gongga Shan Mountain, Xichuan Province, China September 30

  INN News September 30

  United Flight 1191, En Route to Washington. D.C. September 30

  Office of the Chief Of Staff Of the Air Force, The Pentagon September 30

  National Military Command Center, The Pentagon September 30

  INN Early News, London October 1

  Office of the Chief Of Staff of the Air Force. The Pentagon, October 1

  National Military Command Center, The Pentagon October 1

  Four - Skunk Works

  Andrews Air Force Base, Waghington, D.C. October 1

  Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Near San Diego October 2

  October 3

  Coronado Hotel, San Diego, California October 4

  Space Forces Headquarters October 5

  Space Forces Headquarters October 5 0430

  Space Force Headquarters October 1

  Space Force Headquarters October 13

  Five - Exposure

  INN News October 26

  Gongga Shan Mountain October 28

  Space Force Headquarters, Miramar November 5

  INN News November 11

  Space Force Headquarters, Miramar November 15

  Six - Assembly

  Gongga Shan Launch Site November 17

  Kunming Air Base, Xichuan Province November 18

  National Military Command Center, The Pentagon November 19

  Space Force Headquarters, Miramar November 21

  INN News, November 23

  Seven - Deadline

  Xichuan Space Center, China November 23

  Space Force Headquarters November 25

  National Military Command Center November 26

  USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) in the South China Sea November 27

  Space Force Headquarters, Miramar November 29

  Space Force Headquarters, Miramar December 1

  INN News December 1 2200

  Space Force Headquarters, Miramar December 1 2215

  Battle Center, Space Force Headquarters December 2 0200

  Eight - Arrival

  Gongga Shan December 2

  Miramar Marine Corps Air Station 0400

  Space Force Headquarters, Miramar 0400

  Space Forces Battle Center, Miramar, California 0415

  Space Forces Launch Center, Miramar, California 0430

  Runway 15, Miramar Marine Corps Air Station 0530

  INN News 0532

  Space Forces Battle Center, Miramar, California 0532

  Gongga Shan, December 1 0540

  Space Force Battle Center, Miramar 0552

  Gongga Shan 0605

  Defender 0605

  Gongga Shan 0610

  Battle Center 0615

  Defender 0620

  Gongga Shan 0635

  Battle Center 0635

  Defender 0645

  Gongga Shan 0120

  Defender

  Battle Center

  CAV

  The Western Sahara 300 Km North-Northwest of Timbuktu 1454 Hours, Zone Time; October 28, 2021

  The South Face of the El Khnachich Range Three-quarters of a Mile West of the Taoudenni Caravan Road 2335 Hours, Zone Time; October 28, 2021

  45 Miles Southeast of the El Khnachich Range 0421 Hours, Zone Time; October 29, 2021

  GLOSSARY

  CYBERKNIGHTS

  One - combat.com

  Two - Virtual Heroes

  Three - www.quest

  Four - The Pit

  Five - Hack Attack

  FLIGHT OF ENDEAVOUR

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  BREAKING POINT

  Spring Xiamen, Fujian Province People’s Republic of China

  Two Months later The White House

  Three Days Later CVN George Washington

  1920 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  1930 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  1940 Local George Washington

  2015 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  2020 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  2050 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  United Nations Security Council

  0405 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  0410 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  0445 Local Taiwan

  0520 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  Taiwan in Country

  East Fleet Headquarters Ningbo

  Taipei

  YAK 38 Forger A Tail Number 13/13

  1920 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  1945 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport

  Taipei

  2120 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  Keelung

  2305 Local SSN 21 Seawolf

  2310 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  2320 Local On The Surface

  2329 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  2332 Local SSN 21 Seewolf

  2335 Local SSN 404 Hekou

  2336 Local
SSN 21 Seawolf

  2340 Local SSN 405 Hekou

  Two Weeks Later United Nations General Assembly

  INSIDE JOB

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  SKYHAWKS FOREVER

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  One - The Boat

  Two - Scooter

  Three - As Good As It Gets

  Four - Gonna Wash That Man …

  Five - Thumbs-Down

  Six - Post Mortem

  Seven - Slaying Dragons

  Eight - Dead Eyes

  Nine - Manly Man Night

  Ten - Almost Human

  Eleven - Things Unsaid

  Twelve - Who Needs Oxygen?

  Thirteen - The Truest Test

  Founeen - Questions

  Fifteen - Answers

  Sixteen - Half-Truths and White Lies

  Seventeen - One of Our Carriers Is Missing

  Eighteen - Ready Deck

  Nineteen - Face of a Stranger

  Twenty - Been There, Done That

  Twenty-one - The Oscar Sierra Factor

  Twenty-two - An All-Up Round

  Twenty-three - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

  Twenty-four - Bogies

  Twenty-five - Bandits

  Twenty-six - Gomer One

  Twenty-seven - Light to Moderate

  Twenty-eight - Two V One V One

  Twenty-nine - Last One Back

  Thirty - Shakeout

  Thirty-one - Scooter Flight

  THERE IS NO WAR IN MELNICA

  Copyright Page

  INTRODUCTION

  The milieu of armed conflict has been a fertile setting for storytellers since the dawn of the written word, and probably before. The Iliad by Homer was a thousand years old before someone finally wrote down that oral epic of the Trojan War, freezing its form forever.

  Since then war stories have been one of the main themes of fiction in Western cultures: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoi was set during the Napoleonic Wars, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage was set during the American Civil War, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque was perhaps the great classic of World War I. Arguably the premier war novel of the twentieth century, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, was set in the Spanish Civil War.

  World War II caused an explosion of great war novels. Some of my favorites are The Naked and the Dead, The Thin Red Line, War and Remembrance, From Here to Eternity, The War Lover, and Das Boot.

  The Korean conflict also produced a bunch, including my favorite, The Bridges at Toko-Ri by James Michener, but Vietnam changed the literary landscape. According to conventional wisdom in the publishing industry, after that war the reading public lost interest in war stories. Without a doubt the publishers did.

  In 1984 the world changed. The U.S. Naval Institute Press, the Naval Academy’s academic publisher, broke with its ninety-plus years of tradition and published a novel, The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy.

  This book by an independent insurance agent who had never served in the armed forces sold slowly at first, then became a huge best-seller when the reading public found it and began selling it to each other by word of mouth. It didn’t hurt that President Ronald Reagan was photographed with a copy.

  As it happened, in 1985 I was looking for a publisher for a Vietnam flying story I had written. After the novel was rejected by every publisher in New York, I saw Hunt in a bookstore, so I sent my novel to the Naval Institute Press. To my delight the house accepted it and published it in 1986 as Flight of the Intruder. Like Hunt, it too became a big best-seller.

  Success ruined the Naval Institute. Wracked by internal politics, the staff refused to publish Clancy’s and my subsequent novels. (We had no trouble selling these books in New York, thank you!) The house did not publish another novel for years, and when they did, best-seller sales eluded them.

  Literary critics had an explanation for the interest of the post-Vietnam public in war stories. These novels, they said, were something new. I don’t know who coined the term “technothriller” (back then newspapers always used quotes and hyphenated it) but the term stuck.

  Trying to define the new term, the critics concluded that these war stories used modern technology in ways that no one ever had. How wrong they were.

  Clancy’s inspiration for The Hunt for Red October was an attempted defection of a crew of a Soviet surface warship in the Baltic. The crew mutinied and attempted to sail their ship to Finland. The attempt went awry and the ringleaders were summarily executed by the communists, who always took offense when anyone tried to leave the workers’ paradises.

  What if, Clancy asked himself, the crew of a nuclear-powered submarine tried to defect? The game would be more interesting then. Clancy’s model for the type of story he wanted to write was Edward L. Beach’s Run Silent, Run Deep, a World War II submarine story salted with authentic technical detail that was critical to the development of the characters and plot of the story.

  With that scenario in mind, Clancy set out to write a submarine adventure that would be accurate in every detail. Never mind that he had never set foot on a nuclear submarine or spent a day in uniform—his inquiring mind and thirst for knowledge made him an extraordinary researcher. His fascination with war games and active, fertile imagination made him a first-class storyteller.

  Unlike Clancy, I did no research whatsoever when writing Flight of the Intruder. I had flown A-6 Intruder bombers in Vietnam from the deck of the USS Enterprise and wrote from memory. I had been trying to write a flying novel since 1973 and had worn out two typewriters in the process. By 1984 I had figured out a plot for my flying tale, so after a divorce I got serious about writing and completed a first draft of the novel in five months.

  My inspiration for the type of story I wanted to write was two books by Ernest K. Gann. Fate Is the Hunter was a true collection of flying stories from the late 1930s and 1940s, and was, I thought, extraordinary in its inclusion of a wealth of detail about the craft of flying an airplane. Gann also used this device for his novels, the best of which is probably The High and the Mighty, a story about a piston-engined airliner that has an emergency while flying between Hawaii and San Francisco.

  Gann used technical details to create the setting and as plot devices that moved the stories along. By educating the reader about what it is a pilot does, he gave his stories an emotional impact that conventional storytellers could not achieve. In essence, he put you in the cockpit and took you flying. That, I thought, was an extraordinary achievement and one I wanted to emulate.

  Fortunately, the technology that Clancy and I were writing about was state-of-the-art-nuclear-powered submarines and precision all-weather attack jets—and this played to the reading public’s long-standing love affair with scientific discoveries and new technology. In the nineteenth century Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and H. G. Wells gave birth to science fiction. The technology at the heart of their stories played on the public’s fascination with the man-made wonders of that age—the submarine, the flying machines that were the object of intense research and experimentation, though they had yet to get off the ground, and the myriad of uses that inventors were finding for electricity, to name just a few.

  Today’s public is still enchanted by the promise of scientific research and technology. Computers, rockets, missiles, precision munitions, lasers, fiber optics, wireless networks, reconnaissance satellites, winged airplanes that take off and land vertically, network-centric warfare—advances in every technical field are constantly recreating the world in which we live.

  The marriage of high tech and war stories is a natural.

  The line between the modern military action-adventure and science fiction is blurry, indistinct, and becoming more so with every passing day. Storytellers often set technothrillers in the near future and dress up the technology accordingly, toss in little inventions of their own here and there, and in general, try subtly to wow their rea
ders by use of a little of that science fiction “what might be” magic. When it’s properly done, only a technically expert reader will be able to tell when the writer has crossed the line from the real to the unreal; and that’s the fun of it. On the other hand, stories set in space or on other planets or thousands of years in the future are clearly science fiction, even though armed conflict is involved.

  In this collection you will find ten never-before-published technothriller novellas by accomplished writers, a category in which I immodestly include myself. I hope you like them.

  STEPHEN COONTS

  AL-JIHAD

  BY STEPHEN COONTS

  One

  Julie Giraud was crazy as hell. I knew that for an absolute fact, so I was contemplating what a real damned fool I was to get mixed up in her crazy scheme when I drove the Humvee and trailer into the belly of the V-22 Osprey and tied them down.

  I quickly checked the stuff in the Humvee’s trailer, made sure it was secure, then walked out of the Osprey and across the dark concrete ramp. Lights shining down from the peak of the hangar reflected in puddles of rainwater. The rain had stopped just at dusk, an hour or so ago.

  I was the only human in sight amid the tiltrotor Ospreys parked on that vast mat. They looked like medium-sized transports except that they had an engine on each wingtip, and the engines were pointed straight up. Atop each engine was a thirty-eight-foot, three-bladed rotor. The engines were mounted on swivels that allowed them to be tilted from the vertical to the horizontal, giving the Ospreys the ability to take off and land like helicopters and then fly along in winged flight like the turboprop transports they really were.

  I stopped by the door into the hangar and looked around again, just to make sure, then I opened the door and went inside.

  The corridor was lit, but empty. My footsteps made a dull noise on the tile floor. I took the second right, into a ready room.

  The duty officer was standing by the desk strapping a belt and holster to her waist. She was wearing a flight suit and black flying boots. Her dark hair was pulled back into a bun. She glanced at me. “Ready?”

  “Where are all the security guards?”

  “Watching a training film. They thought it was unusual to send everyone, but I insisted.”

  “I sure as hell hope they don’t get suspicious.”

  She picked up her flight bag, took a last look around, and glanced at her watch. Then she grinned at me. “Let’s go get ’em.”