Joint Task Force #1: Liberia Read online

“Course and speed?”

  “One-two-zero at fourteen knots, sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  They had passed the hundred-mile marker off the North Carolina coast an hour ago. He would keep the designation for his group of warships as an amphibious task force until the carrier arrived; then he would transition to a carrier battle group. Already, his mind was planning the strategy for their evacuation of Americans.

  They had been at sea for over twenty-four hours. Off the coastal shelf, Dick had ordered the amphibious task force to a great circle route that would bring them off the coast of Monrovia in another four or five days. He leaned against the port bridge wing, the ships in the formation easily visible in the clear summer skies of the Atlantic. And not another ship nor land in sight all the way to the horizon. No one but a sailor could appreciate the view. He took a deep breath and tightened his lips, watching this broad spectrum of Navy power. No one who had never served at sea, and he meant no one, could ever understand the honor of commanding such power, and the pride of serving alongside America’s best.

  He stuck his head inside the bridge. “Officer of the Deck, what other traffic do we have in the area?”

  The lieutenant commander commanding the bridge leaned over the radar repeater and looked through the rubber eyepiece that shielded the surface radarscope from the glare of daylight. Almost immediately, the gangly officer turned his head toward Admiral Holman. “Surface radar shows nothing within detection range but United States Navy warships, Admiral.” When Admiral Holman turned away, the lieutenant commander reached up and wiped around his eyes, looked at his fingers, saw nothing, and returned to his duties. He was damn well going to catch that son of a bitch who’d put black shoe polish on the rubber eyepiece that covered the radar repeater.

  Dick grinned. “Damn! Couldn’t ask for a better report, Commander.” What a great Navy Day! If he could go faster than fourteen knots, it would make it even better.

  The speed of convoys and battle groups were limited to that of the slowest ship. Kind of like walking with an older relative. He had two ships slowing them down. He could sprint toward Liberia and leave them behind. He might have to do that, depending on circumstances. The oiler USNS Mispellion and the auxiliary ship USNS Concord were older vessels. Shoot! The Mispellion was post-Korean War era. She should be someone’s razor blade already; instead, she kept plugging along with the Navy. Concord wasn’t much younger. It had been commissioned in the late sixties of the previous century. Probably sea rust was the only thing holding both of them together. Decades ago, both ships had been active-duty U.S. Navy warships. Now, they were members of Military Sealift Command, hence their nomenclature as USNS—United States Naval Ship—instead of USS—United States Ship. USNS meant merchant navy manned it, while USS meant it was a warship.

  While Congress had been gracious in supporting the Navy in keeping its maritime teeth, it had done little to replace the logistics teeth needed to keep the maritime force forward-deployed for longer than a few days. With the growing involvement of America in Indonesia, fighting radical Islamic terrorists who had overthrown a slightly less radical government, the more modern auxiliary fleet ships had been allocated to Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet. They were supporting a four-carrier battle group half a world away. Dick wondered briefly which of the carriers the Joint Chiefs of Staff would divert from current operations to support this emergent evacuation mission in West Africa.

  He recalled that in the 1990’s, when the Mediterranean Amphibious Task Force had been sent from the United States Sixth Fleet to do a similar operation when the Congo went to shit in a handbasket.

  Holman took a sip from his cup of strong lukewarm coffee sitting on the shelf of the bridge wing. Then he lifted his binoculars. He could probably do the job with the forces he had, but having a true, large deck carrier like his old ship, the USS Stennis, was something that sealed superiority in battle. Stennis—a great warship—was in the eastern Mediterranean supporting the U.S. Sixth Fleet. The Palestinian-Israeli crisis, more a continuum moving from one crisis into another, had heated again with Hamas throwing suicide bombers almost daily into Israeli life. One day, America would step back, nod quietly, and Israel would stomp ass across this new nation of Palestine and wipe it from the face of the earth.

  They’d shoot him if he voiced his opinion about giving war a chance. Sometimes, he truly believed war was the best path to peace. Shoot! It might be the only option. War resolved political gambits. If conducted quickly and properly, a quick war might actually save lives in the end. Might even restore a good quality of life to the people who survived. He took another puff on the Cuban cigar. As much as he thought about how to solve the crises of the world, Holman didn’t believe war should be the first option out of the diplomatic bag. It should be the last option. It should be the last card played. Not just throwing that ace on the table when you need it. Once played, though, war should be left alone until the game is done. Leave it to the professionals. They might screw up, but it was their lives they were playing with.

  “A great sight, isn’t it?” Upmann asked, interrupting Dick’s thoughts.

  Lowering the binoculars, Rear Admiral Dick Holman replied, “You don’t truly realize the might of the United States Navy until you are standing in the center of a battle group surrounded by firepower that no other force on earth can match. Remember the immediate months after September 11th. It was American aircraft carriers who carried the war initially to the enemy.”

  “It does let me sleep at night; especially when I’m at sea in the center of one of these battle groups.” Upmann took a deep breath. “Smell that salt air.”

  A cloud of exhaust fumes swirled up from the flight deck over the bridge wing before dissipating into the atmosphere. Upmann coughed. “Of course, aircraft really mess it up.”

  Dick lowered his binoculars as they wiped the sting from their eyes. He waved the cigar at Leo good-naturedly. “Don’t give me that, Leo. I already know surface-warfare officers never sleep. Naval Research Laboratories did a survey once. They sealed a surface-warfare officer in a room with nothing but a bunk, a desk, a sheet of paper, and a pen. Within twenty-four hours, he had developed a watch bill and assigned a work schedule for himself.”

  “What a horrible thing to say, Admiral,” Leo mocked, placing his palm against his chest. “Almost makes me wish I wasn’t handing this to you to approve.”

  Dick reached forward and took the folder from Leo. “What is it? A leave chit?”

  “It’s the underway duty-watch-officer bill for your staff. I had a few moments after breakfast this morning, sat down with our Operations Officer, and between the two of us we ginned this up.”

  “Buford Green? Our dyed-in-the-wool Rebel from the City of Homes, as he likes to call Newnan, Georgia? Let me see if I got this straight, Leo. Two surface-warfare officers, one sheet of paper—”

  “Two pens.”

  “—drinking coffee and developing work schedules. Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” Dick grinned as he handed it back without opening it. “Leo, that’s your job. You and Buford decide the duty roster.” He took a puff, and winked when Leo moved to one side so the smoke blew past him. “Besides, Leo, if you do the roster and do everything else I expect of a Chief of Staff, then when things go wrong, which they will, then I can turn somberly toward you and say, ‘Chief of Staff, what in the hell were you thinking?’ Or, ‘I would never have approved that if I had known!’” Holman paused and waved the cigar a couple of times. “Plus, it’s good for morale.”

  “Whose? Yours or mine?”

  “Why, mine, of course.”

  Leo tucked the folder under his arm and grinned, “Admiral, with all due respect, sir, I only offered this to you to prove a point what all good ‘black shoes’ know.”

  Dick’s eyebrows bunched. “What point is that?”

  “That airedales—brown shoes—can’t read.”

  Dick’s mouth dropped in mocked indignation. “Chief of Staff,
I’m appalled that a black shoe—a surface-warfare officer—would even think we aviators need to read. As long as there are pictures, charts, maps, and bombs, who needs words?”

  Leo saluted the shorter officer. “Yes, sir. That is exactly what I meant to say. With the admiral’s permission, I will drop this off at operations and have them disseminate it and then meet you at dinner, sir.”

  The sound of AV-8 engines revving up for the hardest launch of any fighter aircraft drowned out Holman’s reply. The Marine Corps ground-support fighter aircraft on the USS Belleau Wood crawled forward along the flight deck, picking up speed, until it sped up the small jump ramp at the bow of the amphibious carrier. Then it seemed to leap into the air, quickly aloft, its engines screaming as they rotated from vertical to horizontal, and the Harrier started a rapid ascent, zooming upward toward its assigned altitude.

  “Those aircraft must really make the pucker factor go up,” Leo shouted over the noise.

  “Wouldn’t catch me flying them. Give me the thrust of a strong aircraft carrier catapult trying to rip the skin off my face as it throws a well-armed F-14 Tomcat wrapped around me from zero to two hundred miles an hour in six seconds. I want to feel the power between my legs when I hit the end of the flight deck, just after that brief period of weightlessness when the jet engines take over and whip you into the skies. Now, that’s reliability and confidence.”

  “On the other hand, Admiral. If that Harrier pilot has a problem, he or she can sit the aircraft down anywhere and most likely walk away from it.”

  Dick Holman nodded. “I would say, Leo, the main difference between a Harrier having a problem on launch and an F- 14 Tomcat experiencing difficulties is that the Harrier pilot has a slightly longer time to pray.

  “Different subject, Leo,” Dick said before his Chief of Staff could reply. “The carrier. Have we heard anything from CINCLANT Fleet as to when the carrier is going to show up?” Dick asked, referring to the four-star admiral in Norfolk, Virginia, who was Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.

  The smell of burned jet-fuel exhaust drifted over the bridge wing, stinging their eyes slightly before the wind swept it across the signal bridge overhead and out to sea on the starboard side.

  “Nothing yet, sir. Commander, U.S. Second Fleet, in Norfolk has been ordered by CINCLANT Fleet to work the issue, but between us, sir, I don’t have a ‘warm-fuzzy’ we’ll have a carrier by the time we reach Liberia. So far, Joint Chiefs of Staff haven’t directed them to release a carrier, so everything that CINCLANT Fleet and Second Fleet are doing may be for naught.”

  “That’s not good news, but if we don’t, then we’d better hope all we have to do is evacuate American and allied citizens.”

  “Means we’ll remain a battle group rather than transitioning to an amphibious task force. We can expect European Command to designate us as a joint task force once we inchop their area of operations.”

  “Ah, what a shame!” replied Dick, smiling as he drew out the exclamation. “Means I will have to stand tall and accept that mantle of leadership they are going to toss my way.” The appearance of an aircraft carrier usually meant the embarkation of a senior flag officer, and nearly every flag officer in the Navy was senior to Dick Holman. Christ! He was still a lonely one-star admiral, and it had been two years since the Navy had bitten its lip and bestowed the coveted silver five-pointed star on his collars. Holman still had enough friends in the Pentagon to know the physical-fitness mafia had shoved their hands into their chests and wrenched their hearts out when he had been selected. Personally, he had never thought that being able to run fast was a good leadership trait.

  Without a carrier, the amphibious formation would remain a battle group. He would remain Senior Officer Present—SOP. When warships massed together for a specific mission, they were assigned certain nominative titles; a carrier battle group being the most powerful. The amphibious task force he commanded was the one that projected power ashore. It did it in the form of United States Marines.

  From the other side of the USS Belleau Wood, the DD-21- class destroyer USS Stribling appeared, taking station about five hundred yards behind the amphibious carrier. It would be the plane guard for air operations. Its primary mission would be to pick up pilots if they ejected during the launch phase. They also pulled from the drink the odd sailor who every now and again was blown overboard. Helicopters hovered off the port side of the Belleau Wood, nearer the USS Boxer than its parent ship, to assist if an aircraft went into the drink. Nothing stopped aircraft carrier operations except a massive catastrophe, of which Dick Holman preferred not to think. He recalled the film of the USS Forrestal fire off Vietnam in the sixties, and the collision of the cruiser USS Belknap with the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in the seventies. Carriers were built for survival. That survival depended on the damage-control skills of their crew, and many times their lives.

  He leaned against the railing of the bridge wing, bracing himself with his elbows. Through the bridge across the far starboard side, he watched the USS Spruance—the first of the DD-963-class destroyers and the oldest destroyer still on active duty—move into position off the port side of the USS Nassau. The Spruance had a reputation for making every commitment and putting itself in harm’s way so many times that this caused it to be regarded as an old warship fighting to mark its end of Naval service with combat action rather than scattered across America as razor blades. Up ahead, near the horizon, the Aegis Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Hue City sailed. Its air-to-air-warfare capability was able to project destruction hundreds of miles ahead to protect the battle group from air attack. Not that in this era of the twenty-first century he expected any air attacks. The last great superpower that had that capability was the now-dead Soviet Union. Only America and its allies had aircraft carriers today, though the People’s Republic of China was building a couple.

  He shook his head. Things had changed so much for a young man such as himself who’d joined the Navy when the Russian Bear was the only enemy and America the only superpower capable of facing it.

  “Leo, before you go, what is the latest on the situation in Liberia? Have we heard from Lieutenant General Thomaston this afternoon?”

  Leo stopped halfway through the hatch, turned, and shook his head. “No, sir. If we had, you would have known. But I can have our intelligence officer, Captain Mary Davidson, come up and brief you if you would like. . . .”

  Holman pushed away from the railing, paused, and then shook his head. “No, Mary has her hands full trying to develop a disposition of forces in Liberia and identifying target priorities for us. I just wondered if you had heard anything since we saw her at lunch.”

  Leo shook his head. “Not too much. Did see a special-category message that came in through intel channels that said the Liberian Army had disappeared.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Doesn’t surprise me. Those that didn’t change allegiance from Liberia to the Islamic radicals have melted into the rain forests, jungles, and mountains of Liberia. They’ll miraculously reappear when the danger has passed.”

  “Just what we need. An army afraid to fight.”

  “Wouldn’t know if they’re afraid. I would think in a country where changes of government are violent, weak military institutions, such as the one in Liberia, keep down out of sight until the fog has lifted and the new terrain is visible.”

  “How about the situation at Kingsville?”

  “Nothing new since this morning. Last word we had was Thomaston was waiting for us. As Mary said, barricades have been erected across the roads leading into and out of the town. Imagery analysis shows several groups, believed to be roving patrols, sent out by Thomaston. Seems to me that Thomaston is doing everything he can to give himself early warning if the rebels move toward them.”

  Holman grunted. “It is not a case of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’ Abu Alhaul, this unknown leader of this resurrected ring of global terrorism, is not going to let an opportunity to overrun an American expatriate community pass him b
y. Wherever this asshole is, he knows he has a few days before we can be in the area. Four, maybe five, days in which to wreak havoc with his warped doctrines against America wherever and whenever he can.” Holman took another puff on the stub of the cigar and then tossed it overboard.

  “We could always do what we did in Afghanistan and in Egypt,” offered Leo.

  Holman shook his head. “Both places were wide-open spaces. We drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan because of Naval airpower, Army spec-ops, Air Force bombers and tankers, and the presence of an organic opposition military force. Reopening the Suez Canal when the Islamic Republic of Egypt closed it to Western shipping was a little harder because Egypt had a functioning armed forces that stood their ground and fought. The difference with Egypt was we had to land heavy armor to defeat its ground force. The good news is the new government of moderate Muslims seem to be making headway in forging an Islamic nation that wants to join the twenty-first century. Just like Iraq.”

  “Ironic in a way, isn’t it?”

  “How’s that?”

  “No matter how patriotic and how benevolent religious fanatics are, once they take over a government, if the people don’t worship God the way they want, then they tend to kill them. It doesn’t take long before you realize that zealotry in any religion is worse than zealotry in government.”

  Holman chuckled. “Leo, don’t hold back. Tell me what you really think,” he said, his laugh stopping. “Don’t let others hear you say that. You’d be the number one devil on religious programs throughout America.” He reached over and slapped Leo on the shoulder. “You go drop off that watch bill that you surface warriors worked so diligently to produce. I’ll meet you in my in-port cabin when you’re done.”

  The noise of a Harrier fighter passing overhead drowned out Leo’s reply as the Chief of Staff departed the bridge wing.

  Admiral Holman looked up, shielding his eyes from the setting sun as the Marine Corps fighter aircraft came into view, turned east, and took off ahead of the battle group. At least, the surface commander was getting some maritime reconnaissance accomplished. He had six of the Marine Corps fighters. Should be more than enough for handling Liberia.