Joint Task Force #1: Liberia (13 page)

CHAPTER 4

DICK HOLMAN EASED THE HAVANA CIGAR OUT OF HIS
mouth, turned his head toward Captain Upmann, and inadvertently blew the smoke into the wind. The wind immediately wrapped the smoke around his face.
Damn, that burns
. He shut his eyes for a second until the wind blew it away, before taking his handkerchief and wiping the moisture away.

He ignored the chuckles from Captain Leo Upmann. The man just didn’t appreciate a good cigar, but what could you expect from a surface-warfare officer—a person who lived to be at sea, sailing in harm’s way, looking for a battle against another Navy on the high seas. Something that, as far as Holman was concerned, would never happen in the twenty-first century. After all, America ruled the seas, but it still had those Navy officers who would love nothing better than to stand on the bow with their swords drawn, waiting to hop aboard an enemy warship and engage them
mano-a-mano. Now, us aviators we’ve got it right. Mount those swords in a framed display, hang ’em over a fireplace, and invite the girls back.
It was a whole lot less dangerous and a hell of a lot more fun. A person could get hurt playing with swords.

Off the starboard side of the USS
Boxer
, about five nautical miles—ten thousand yards—sailed the USS
Belleau Wood
,
LHA-3. Dick squinted as he peered through the open bridge at the USS
Nassau
, LHA-4, sailing off the port side. He hoped those helicopters jumping between the ships took a few photographs of this battle group. It had to be impressive. When was the last time the Navy had a three-amphibious-carrier battle group or a three-amphibious-carrier amphibious task force? Talk about versatility! Talk about tongue twisters!

The last time he’d asked the navigator for formation details, she’d held the
Nassau
fourteen thousand yards—that was seven miles—off port side. The two
Tarawa
-class amphibious helicopter assault ships were old, but within their 820-foot- long hulls, Dick had the resources of 3,500 Marines if he needed them. Kind of like having a hornet’s nest waiting for someone to hit it.

The USS
Boxer
, LHD-4, on the other hand, was a newer-class amphibious warship at 888 feet, with 1,200 Marines embarked.
Shit! When whatever aircraft carrier showed up, I could own Liberia in a week.
Dick grinned and took another puff on his hand-rolled Havana.
Best thing we ever did was lifting the Cuban embargo when old Fidel had his stroke
. If that bearded terrorist had been able to speak, he would have had another one when the new Cuban government opened the country to democratic reforms and pegged the peso to the dollar. As long as they didn’t change how they make cigars, he could give a damn about their government.
Shit! Ain’t life grand!

On the flight deck of the USS
Belleau Wood,
a Harrier taxied toward the bow of the ship. A second Harrier, its cockpit down and locked, waited behind the first. He glanced at the Ops Schedule—daylight landing qualifications. That would be the Marine “
newbies
” getting their sea legs or some of the veterans requalifying. Landing on a bouncing deck that never stopped moving horizontally and vertically was hard enough. When you added seas that caused these huge ships to roll, it really made the landings exciting—
butt-cheek-gripping.
He recalled some of his own aircraft-carrier qualification flights, and aircraft carriers were a lot larger than the amphibious ships he commanded. He recalled a couple of landings when he was a
junior officer where, if he’d had teeth in his butt, he’d have chewed a hole through the seat.

He tossed the clipboard back on the shelf beneath the ledge and glanced at his watch. Just about time for dinner.

“Navigator!” Dick shouted into the bridge.

“Yes, sir, Admiral,” the young female lieutenant replied.

“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.