Eagle Station

by Dale Brown

  “Through SBIRS?” Nadia asked.

  He nodded. SBIRS, the Space-Based Infrared System, was a network of five missile launch and tracking satellites positioned more than twenty-two thousand miles above the earth in geosynchronous orbit. From the Mars One space station in low Earth orbit, Russia’s plasma rail gun hadn’t had the range to hit them, so they were some of the few surviving U.S. military spy satellites. That was fortunate since the SBIRS network was a key component in the U.S. early warning system—with sensors able to detect significant heat signatures like rocket launches, large explosions, major wildfires, and even plane crashes anywhere around the globe.

  Without waiting any longer, Brad opened his connection to the destroyer’s bridge. “Captain, this is McLanahan. Space Command confirms four separate PRC launches. Missiles are evaluated as DF-26s and they’re heading our way. Estimated time to impact is five minutes, thirty seconds.”

  “Very well,” Dvorsky said. Her voice sounded tight. China’s intermediate-range DF-26 ballistic missiles were ship killers, capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads with enormous striking power. Intelligence reports she’d read claimed they couldn’t score hits against warships smaller than aircraft carriers. But those claims were a lot less comforting with real missiles racing toward her two destroyers at fifteen thousand miles per hour. “Should we take evasive action?”

  “No, ma’am,” Brad replied. “Recommend you hold this course and speed. We’ve got this.” He muted the connection again and crossed his fingers below his console. “At least I hope so.”

  Nadia smiled at him. “Have a little faith. Everything is proceeding as we have foreseen.” She pushed a com icon on her own central display. “Shadow Two-Nine Bravo, this is Bait Eight-Five. Four DF-26 IRBMs inbound to this location. You are up and at bat.”

  Shadow Two-Nine Bravo, over the South China Sea

  That Same Time

  Two hundred nautical miles southeast of the Paracel Islands, a large, black blended-wing aircraft rolled into a slow turn toward the northwest. To a layman’s eye, it looked a lot like a bigger version of the SR-71 Blackbird, only with four huge engines mounted below its highly swept delta wing instead of two, and a fifth engine atop its aft fuselage. In order to avoid detection by China’s air search radars, the Scion-operated S-29B Shadow spaceplane had been flying a fuel-conserving racetrack pattern at low altitude, a little more than five hundred feet above the sea.

  “. . . You are up and at bat.”

  “Copy that, Bait Eight-Five. We’re heading out now,” Hunter “Boomer” Noble promised. He glanced quickly across the cockpit at his copilot. “Good grief. Now Brad’s got Nadia—Nadia ‘I can break you in half with my little finger’ Rozek!—using baseball jargon?”

  Liz Gallagher, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and B-2 bomber pilot, smiled back at him. “Fair’s fair, Boomer. McLanahan’s picked up a bunch of Polish swearwords from her, right?”

  “Well, yeah,” Boomer allowed absently, refocusing his attention on his head-up display. As the steering cue provided by their navigation system slid right and then stabilized, his gloved left hand tweaked a sidestick controller a scooch, bringing the big spaceplane out of its slow right bank. His right hand settled on a bank of engine throttles set in the center console between the S-29B’s two forward seats. “Are we configured for supersonic flight?”

  “All checklists are complete,” Gallagher said, watching her displays closely. The spaceplane’s advanced computers had just finished running through their automated programs. A slew of graphic indicators flashed green and stayed lit. “All engines and other systems are go.”

  “Roger that,” Boomer said. He keyed the intercom to the aft cabin, where the S-29’s three other crewmen—a data-link specialist, offensive systems officer, and defensive systems officer—sat at their stations. “Buckle up, boys and girls. And stand by on all weapons and sensors. This mission just went hot.”

  As terse acknowledgments flooded through his headset, he advanced all five throttles. Instantly, the growling roar of the S-29’s LPDRS (Laser Pulse Detonation Rocket System) triple-hybrid engines deepened. These remarkable “leopard” engines could transform from air-breathing supersonic turbofans to hypersonic scramjets to reusable rockets, and they were powerful enough to send the Shadow into Earth orbit.

  Pressed into his seat by rapid acceleration, Hunter Noble gently pulled back on his stick. Climbing higher, the big black spaceplane streaked northwest at ever-increasing speed.

  Aboard USS McCampbell

  A Short Time Later

  “Bridge, Combat, new tracking data received from SBIRS. All four warheads have separated from their boost vehicles. Speed now Mach twenty. Estimated time to impact one hundred twenty seconds.”

  “Combat, Bridge. Very well.” Commander Amanda Dvorsky stood motionless, fighting down the useless urge to rush out onto the bridge wing and stare up into the clear blue sky. Those incoming DF-26 warheads were still close to five hundred nautical miles downrange and well above the atmosphere. And for all the good the surface-to-air missiles nestled in McCampbell and Mustin’s vertical launch tubes could do right now, those Chinese warheads might as well have been on the moon. Her two destroyers were armed with shorter-ranged and slower SM-2 Standard Missiles, not the upgraded, antiballistic missile-capable SM-3s deployed aboard newer Arleigh Burke destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers.

  Another call from the Combat Information Center blared over the speakers. “Bridge, Combat! Friendly air contact bearing one-six-five degrees at angels three. Speed is Mach three and increasing. Positive IFF. Range sixty-four nautical miles and closing.”

  Dvorsky nodded. That must be the mystery aircraft the Scion special action unit had said was on its way. Whatever it was, it was moving like a bat out of hell for a manned aircraft . . . but even Mach three, nearly two thousand knots, was still as slow as an arthritic tortoise compared to the speed of those incoming missiles. “Combat, Bridge, understood. Weapons tight, acknowledge.”

  “Bridge, Combat, weapons tight, aye,” the CIC repeated. The apprehension in his voice was real and apparent to everyone on the circuit.

  “Get me Mustin,” she told the boatswain’s mate, took the handset he offered, and issued the same order. With that Scion aircraft moving into their engagement zone, she didn’t want to risk a “blue-on-blue” friendly fire incident.

  “McCampbell, this is Mustin, weapons tight, aye,” she heard Mike Hayward, her fellow destroyer captain, confirm.

  One side of Dvorsky’s mouth twitched upward for just a fraction of a second. She could almost swear that she had heard Hayward’s teeth grinding together over the VHF circuit. After their top secret briefing for this mission, Mustin’s commanding officer hadn’t bothered hiding his deep-seated reluctance to entrust the safety of his ship to “a bunch of fucking private-enterprise spooks and their crackerjack high-tech gizmos.”

  To be honest, it was a feeling she shared—only partially alleviated by the willingness of those same Scion operatives to put their own lives on the line. Mentally, she crossed her fingers. Right now, the lives of everyone aboard her two destroyers, more than 760 officers and enlisted sailors, depended entirely on a handful of civilians, some of whom weren’t even American citizens. That was not a situation guaranteed to make any serving U.S. military officer comfortable.

  “Bridge, Combat, we’ve got those inbound warheads on our own radar!” she heard her operations officer report urgently from the CIC. “Bearing three-five-four degrees. Altitude fifty-nine miles. Range is three-four-zero nautical miles. Inbounds are slowing a bit as they reenter the atmosphere. Time to impact now one hundred ten seconds.” There was a moment of appalled silence. And then, “Ma’am, those warheads are inside the upper atmosphere and maneuvering at hypersonic speeds! They’re zeroing in on our track.”

  Dvorsky felt her pulse kick into even higher gear as adrenaline flooded her system. She swallowed hard against the sudden taste of bile. All
along, this was what she had feared most. Images of DF-26 IRBMs had shown four finlike control surfaces around their nose sections. Now it was clear those weren’t just for show. Coupled with inertial guidance systems, their own onboard radars, and data links to China’s reconnaissance satellites, the four enemy warheads headed her way were far more accurate than earlier U.S. intelligence analysis had suggested. Instead of a CEP, circular error probable, measured in hundreds of feet—making a miss against a smaller moving target like a destroyer far more likely than a hit—the DF-26s were true precision weapons.

  Which meant that she and everyone else aboard the USS McCampbell and USS Mustin were probably well and truly screwed . . . unless the Scion team’s equipment worked as advertised. Those warheads were coming in much too fast for her SM-2 missiles to successfully engage. Nor was last-second, evasive maneuvering likely to save her ships. With the kinetic energy imparted by such high speeds and a blast effect of up to four thousand pounds of high explosive, four times the amount carried by a Tomahawk cruise missile, even a near-miss could easily rip one of her destroyers in half.

  Scion Special Action Unit

  That Same Time

  “Warning. Warning. Time to impact is forty seconds,” the threat analysis computer reported without emotion.

  Brad McLanahan forced himself to ignore its persistent alerts. Right now, his task was to make sure his sensors captured every possible piece of data on those incoming DF-26 warheads for later analysis by Scion and Sky Masters technical experts. Since this was the first time China’s most advanced ship-killing ballistic missiles had been fired in earnest, his team was being handed a golden opportunity to ferret out their real operational characteristics under combat conditions.

  Yeah, it’s all good right up to the point we screw up, his subconscious nagged. “Not going to let that happen,” he muttered to himself.

  “Thirty seconds. Two warheads targeted on McCampbell. Two aimed at Mustin,” the computer said. “Closing speed now Mach ten. Range fifty-five nautical miles. Altitude one hundred thousand feet.”

  Four windows blinked open on his right-hand multifunction display. The long-range automated cameras they’d mounted at various points on the destroyer’s superstructure had zoomed in on the enemy warheads as they slashed through the sky. At this distance and altitude, they were only visible as wavering orange blobs superheated by friction as they ripped deeper into the atmosphere. Streamers of ionized gas curled behind them.

  Brad whistled under his breath. “Jesus, those things must be pulling twenty-plus G’s when they maneuver.”

  “Excellent engineering,” Nadia agreed coolly from beside him. From her tone, she could have been commenting on the weather. But then he felt her warm hand slide into his. “I am crossing my fingers now, too, Brad.”

  “Trzymam kciuki,” he echoed, using the Polish equivalent of the English idiom for good luck. Smooth move, McLanahan, he told himself. Find the woman of your dreams, persuade her to marry you, and then haul her into deadly danger. Even knowing that she would never have stood for being left out of this operation didn’t make that seem any smarter.

  Their threat computer broke in again. “Ten seconds to impact. Range eighteen nautical miles.”

  Okay, Boomer, now would be a really good time to show up, Brad thought, feeling his stomach muscles tighten. This was suddenly a binary equation. Either their plan worked perfectly . . . or they were dead.

  Shadow Two-Nine Bravo

  That Same Time

  Through the spaceplane’s forward cockpit canopy, Hunter Noble saw the two U.S. Navy destroyers, haze gray against the brilliant blue sea, transform from distant, indistinct blurred shapes to close-up, razor-sharp silhouettes bristling with weapons and antennas. And then they were gone, vanishing far astern as the S-29B flashed overhead at more than three thousand miles per hour.

  High above them, he spotted four glowing specks of light ripping south across the sky with incredible speed.

  “Emitters locked on!” Paul Jacobs, the Shadow’s defensive systems officer, shouted over the intercom. “Firing!”

  Weirdly, there was no sound over the roar of their engines. No added vibration. No evidence aboard the spaceplane that anything had just happened.

  But instantly all four DF-26 warheads veered off course, corkscrewing wildly across the sky in widening spirals until they slammed headlong into the sea miles away from the American warships. Huge geysers of churning foam and superheated steam erupted from the center of each impact point, rising hundreds of feet into the air before plunging harmlessly back down into the roiled waters.

  “Nailed ’em!” Boomer heard Jacobs crow.

  The Chinese weapons had just been zapped by the S-29B’s four retractable microwave emitter pods—two set near its wing tips, one atop the forward fuselage, and one mounted under the aft fuselage. Operating autonomously, in an engagement that lasted only milliseconds, the Shadow’s defensive systems had sent directed bursts of high-energy microwaves sleeting through the DF-26 warheads, frying their electronics and flight controls, and sending them tumbling out of control.

  “Good kills, Paul!” Boomer confirmed. Smiling now, he keyed his mike. “Bait Eight-Five, this is Shadow Two-Nine Bravo. Splash four. Repeat, splash four.”

  “Copy that, Shadow,” Nadia Rozek replied. Her voice sounded only slightly strained. “Well done.”

  Boomer’s smile widened. “All part of the service package, Eight-Five. Need anything else today?”

  “Negative, Shadow,” she said. “We will take it from here.”

  “Roger, Eight-Five,” Boomer acknowledged. “See you back home in a few days.” He tugged his stick slightly to the right, rolling the big spaceplane into a shallow, curving turn around to the east. Then, climbing steeply, the S-29B streaked away—heading for the upper reaches of the stratosphere, where its engines could transition to scramjet mode and kick it to full hypersonic speed.

  Four

  PLA Navy Command Post, Yŏngxīng Dăo (Eternal Prosperity Island)

  That Same Time

  Navy Captain Commandant Yang Zhi glared at the pictures transmitted by his Silver Eagle drone. The two American warships steamed on unscathed, still heading north as though nothing had happened. The waves emanating from each DF-26 warhead’s distant impact point rippled past those ships without doing more than rocking them a few degrees from side to side.

  His secure phone buzzed. “Yang here.” He straightened up to his full height as he listened to the staccato orders barked out from Beijing. When the furious voice fell silent, he nodded rapidly. “Yes, Comrade Admiral. It will be done!”

  Yang hung up and turned to his chief of staff. “That was Admiral Cao. This American interference with our missile test was a hostile act. We are authorized to engage and sink those destroyers without further warning.” He eyed the other man. “Your recommendation?”

  Liu’s brow furrowed in thought, but only for a moment. “I recommend that we attack using our YJ-62 anti-ship cruise missiles, Comrade Captain,” he said confidently. “The Americans are only twenty kilometers offshore. That is practically point-blank range for our weapons. By the time the enemy detects our missiles in flight, their close-in defenses, jammers, and decoys will have little or no time to react.”

  Yang nodded. Liu’s thoughts matched his own. His island garrison had two full batteries of YJ-62 missiles—each equipped with four launch vehicles carrying three missiles. Attacking each enemy destroyer with a full salvo of twelve sea-skimming missiles should guarantee at least three or four hits, and probably more. And each of those cruise missiles carried a 210-kilogram, semi-armor-piercing warhead. Even a single hit could send an Arleigh Burke–class vessel straight to the bottom . . . or leave it a burning cripple that could easily be finished off later.

  His teeth flashed in a quick predatory smile. “Let it be so, Commander. Order both coastal defense batteries to open fire at once. We’ll hit the Americans before they finish congratulating themselves on avo
iding our last attack.”

  Scion Special Action Unit, Aboard USS McCampbell

  That Same Time

  “Warning. Emissions from the enemy’s land-based Type 366 radars indicate transition to fire control mode,” Brad McLanahan’s threat analysis computer announced.

  He frowned. “These bastards aren’t giving up.”

  “Would you?” Nadia Rozek asked.

  “Probably not,” he admitted. “Okay, it’s showtime. Cue SPEAR.”

  Nadia’s fingers danced across her touch-screen displays as she brought their ALQ-293 Self-Protection Electronically Agile Reaction system online. Like most of their advanced equipment, including the S-29 Shadow spaceplane, SPEAR was the product of Sky Masters Aerospace—easily the world’s most innovative aviation, electronics, and weapons design company. When it was active, SPEAR transmitted precisely tailored signals on the same frequencies used by enemy radars. Altering the timing of the pulses sent back to those radars enabled the system to trick them into believing their targets were somewhere else entirely. And for this mission, Sky Masters technicians had integrated SPEAR with McCampbell’s incredibly powerful AN/SPY-1 phased-array radar—massively increasing both its speed and accuracy and the range of frequencies it could cover.

  Her eyes widened in delight as she realized the full range of capabilities now at her fingertips. Operating the basic SPEAR system was like being a highly gifted musical soloist as she single-handedly fought for the attention of an audience. But this merger with the destroyer’s enormous radar was like conducting an entire symphony orchestra made up of the world’s finest musicians—effortlessly wrapping thousands of listeners in an intricate cocoon of sound and rhythm.