Overthrow: The War with China and North Korea

by David Poyer

  “Keep me advised.” She double-clicked her mike and returned her attention to her rapidly climbing missiles.

  But something about it nagged at her. From the south? There was nothing to the south. Only seven hundred miles of open sea, until the Kuriles. If it was a torpedo, or something like one, it would have to be incredibly long-ranged. She clicked to TF chat and warned her southernmost units, then back to the ASW circuit to activate Rimshot and stand by on bubble decoys and CATs.

  Something changed on her screen. She blinked, unable to pinpoint exactly what it had been.

  AALIS came up. “USV-16 dropped data link. Fails to respond to query.”

  Right, Cheryl thought. That contact, a blue half square a hundred and twenty miles to the south, had begun to blink. Its callout read NULL DATA.

  The USVs were autonomous Hunters, originally built as antisubmarine platforms, now mainly deployed as radar pickets. They were controlled from the ASW supervisor’s station. She clicked to that circuit. “ASW, CO. Why aren’t we hearing from Sixteen?”

  “Don’t know, Skipper. No response to query.”

  “Sonar reported propulsor noise from the bearing.”

  A hesitation. Then, “It’s possible. Could just be a data glitch, though. Everything we get from the Hunters comes via nano.”

  Meaning it went up to the circling microsatellites, then down again. “Any way we can confirm Sixteen’s still on station?”

  Mills, on the same circuit. “We could ask Chokai to request Global Hawk out of Misawa.”

  Terranova broke in. Unhurried. Calm. “Stand by for intercept, Meteor One.”

  Cheryl let it go for the moment and switched back to overhead. In the 3-D projection the trails described beautiful orange arches, like burning tracers. The Alliances had almost reached the lead projectile. It was in coast phase now, far above the troposphere. Trolleying along through space on a ballistic arc that would take it nearly halfway round the world.

  “Stand by … intercept.”

  The radar picture showed vibrating brackets nailed around a speeding comet. Not its real shape, she knew. Its radar shape still tailed remnants of gas, atmosphere, and ablation from its fiery ascent. The Alliance wasn’t on the screen.

  Then, suddenly, a silent explosion ripped apart the comet, sending parts spreading and tumbling. Still traveling at that incredible velocity, they would coast on through near-vacuum until gravity pulled them down again into the blanket of air that would sear them into gas, charred metal, micrometeorites too small even to identify, drifting down at last as a metallic, poisonous, violently radioactive dust, somewhere over Siberia.

  “Looks like a perfect intercept,” Cheryl observed, feeling a slight weight lift from her chest. One down. Seven to go. On the other hand, that meant she’d expended three precious and irreplaceable weapons when only one would have sufficed. “Make it two-round salvos going forward,” she ordered.

  Mills and AALIS rogered up. At the radar systems coordination station, Terranova had already shifted the picture to the next warhead.

  Then the surface warfare supervisor said, “Montesano reports explosion effects from bearing one five seven. Breaking-up noises.”

  “USS Guam, lost data,” AALIS announced.

  Terranova: “Meteor two, stand by for intercept.”

  Cheryl froze. What was happening? The explosion and breaking-up effects, on that bearing from the escort, pointed straight to Guam.

  Which meant … some as yet unclear but obviously dangerous threat was indeed approaching from the south. It had taken down the USV, one of her outermost sensors. And now, one of her escort submarines. The next unit in would be JNS Chokai, her southernmost ABM-capable unit.

  But the older destroyer was already locked on the third wave of DF-41s. With an earlier version of Aegis, and less capable radars, Chokai would be keyholed on the missile threat, the way the old Savo had been. Leaving her nearly blind to an approaching attack from under the sea.

  She was typing as fast as she could, putting the warning out on the command nanochat. “Matt, get Dagger in the air. Full ASW loadout. Vector them south. Find out what’s going on. Tell Fleet we’re under attack. Notify … Idaho. They’re closest. Give them a course to intercept. Zotcher’s best guess on the track. Tell them to close and take these things out. Whatever the fuck they are. But warn them to be careful.”

  But what was attacking them? Submarines, like the ones that had snuck in under cover of fishing boats, off Korea? No, they didn’t seem to be. Zotcher would have identified them.

  But then what?

  AALIS’s voice brought her back to her own mission. “Meteor two, stand by…” The brackets stayed steady. A flash, in the corner of the radar picture. But the cometlike cone did not disintegrate. It burned steadily, a cold candleflame of gas and ablating coatings fifty miles up, its trajectory gradually bending toward the horizontal.

  “Intercept round one failed. Second round arrives in three seconds … two … one.”

  Again, the silent burst, the spinning debris, the gradual emptying out of the field of view.

  And once more, the switch to yet another target. Third of the first salvo of three DF-41s. The last of the weapons Cheryl had assigned to Savo Island. To the south, Ashikara would take the next three missiles under fire. And Chokai, the last two.

  Unfortunately, each reentry body they failed to intercept would dispense up to ten other warheads. Even one would carry unimaginable destruction. And she couldn’t help wondering what was coming the other way. Would StratCom retaliate, even if, as seemed likely, this was some kind of last-ditch launch by a rogue commander? Hundreds of American missiles could be in the air right now. From submarines, silos, alert bombers … the full weight of a strategic counterstrike.

  She shuddered. Truly, the world might end today.

  But all she could do was stand and fight.

  AALIS said, “Meteor three, stand by for intercept.”

  “Sonar, CO: High-speed flow noises closing from the south. Two separate sources. Cross-bearings give speeds of sixty-plus knots. Advanced propulsion system. Not screws per se. Maybe propulsors.”

  Sixty-knots-plus propulsors? All she could come up with was some kind of high-speed autonomous weapon, half midget submarine, half torpedo. But Intel had warned of nothing like that in the enemy order of battle.

  She hit her throat mike, but her eyes stayed riveted to the radar picture. The steady glow of the still ascending dispenser bus. “Copy, Chief. Is that what took out Guam?”

  “Sounded like it, CO. And … headed our way.”

  She chat-alerted Chokai, but wasn’t sure what antitorpedo measures the older destroyer carried. And the Japanese unit couldn’t be diverted from its ABM mission. It would have to fire when the incomers were close to the ship, since the Standards didn’t have the range of the Alliances. The reason she’d assigned Chokai last … She toggled back to radar and searched the interior of Asia for additional cueing. Thank God, she didn’t see any. Maybe the eight they’d already picked up would be all.

  “Captain?” Dave Branscombe, her ops officer. “We’re getting video from nano. Guam’s last reported position.”

  She clicked on it. A disturbed area of the sea. A spreading carpet of yellow and cream, flames guttering here and there on the gray waves. Smoke obscured it, then blew past. Already the seas were gentling, the slick drifting apart. She zoomed in, hoping for survivors. But couldn’t see any. “Oh my God,” she muttered.

  In a horrifying déjà vu, she flashed back to the exercise off Hawaii again. This was all too much like it. She was bending all her attention to fending off an overt attack, while a dagger was being plunged into her back.

  Only this was real, not an exercise. Not a game.

  “Meteor three, stand by,” AALIS said. Cheryl switched to the radar picture again. Waited, breathless once more, as the system counted down. “Two . . One … intercept.”

  The speeding contact, still trailing ionized gas, didn’t
waver. “Failure to intercept,” AALIS announced, as if they couldn’t see that for themselves. Followed, almost in the same sentence, by, “Round two, KKV failure to separate.”

  “And then there was one,” Mills breathed, beside her. Cheryl watched the wavering comet. The glowing cone was shrinking as it left the remnants of atmosphere behind. Cooling as it ascended too, presenting a smaller target to the secondary IR homing function of the Alliance’s seeker head. The lock-on brackets quivered around it.

  “TAO, Sonar: Incoming sonar contacts on constant bearing. Decreasing range. Estimate speed seventy knots … wait one … rocket effects. Rocket effects, in the water, bearing one seven six. Consistent with supercavitating projectile.” A tension-filled voice in the background. “Alerting Montesano on ASW net.”

  A glance at the overhead view gave her the chills. Yeah. USS Montesano was on that bearing. One of her frigates. She clicked to TF ASW and went out voice. “Thunderbolts, this is Tangler. Flash. Rimshot on! Confirm.”

  “Thunderbolts” was Montesano. If the incoming weapon was magnetically guided, the active magnetic-signature-management system could displace its apparent location, even trigger premature detonation. The answer came back at once, the voice sounding startled. “Tangler, Thunderbolts: Confirm Rimshot activated.”

  “Shkvals?” Mills said, beside her. She couldn’t see him through the helmet. “But they were only at sixty knots before. And Shkvals don’t have ranges that long.”

  “Agreed, it’s something new. Maybe a conventional propulsor first stage, for long range. Then a hydro-reactive jet final stage to sprint in in to the target.” That was why the Hunter hadn’t transmitted any warning. Once the final stage was on its way, even the countermeasure torpedoes were useless, too slow, their warheads too small.

  She clicked to the ASW circuit and quizzed Zotcher and the ASW officer. But the sonar analysis didn’t match any Chinese weapon, and the Japanese arrays confirmed they hadn’t detected any unidentified submarines to the southward.

  “Tangler, this is Thunderbolts … heavy detonation close aboard. Intense shock. Engines offline. Damage report to follow.”

  She sighed, light-headed with relief. “Close aboard” … but not an actual hit. Okay, Shkvals … they traveled at almost two hundred knots, with a super-cavitating nose plate to tear a hole in the sea. And if the warheads were the same as the older models … shaped charges to burn through side armor. Then pyrophoric rods to tear through the hull, bursting into unquenchable flame on contact with air, water, or fuel. Even now, decades after the first models had been revealed, the Allies had nothing like it. Originally Russian technology, but proliferated now to all the Opposed Powers. Chinese? Iranian? Unlikely out here. But they could be North Korean, controlled by some bottom-hugging last-ditch survivor.

  Or were they Russian? Approaching from the south, but Vladivostok lay in that general direction too. Timed to coincide with the onslaught of the Chinese ICBMs, to reduce her ability to respond?

  Right now that didn’t really matter. “Get all units around to the reciprocal. Open the range as much as we can.” She searched her mind for something, anything, else to do. “Get the other units’ helicopters out there. Sonobuoys. And run Mark 54s down the bearings. Maybe they can pick these things up. We’ve got to kill them before they fire the second stages.”

  “Worth a try,” Mills muttered, typing rapidly.

  “Meteor three, third intercept,” AALIS said. “Three. Two. One. Intercept.”

  Her lips moved in a silent curse. She stared at the speeding comet, now shrunken almost to a pinpoint.

  “Failure to intercept,” AALIS said, with a note almost of regret. “Round three, target too high for intercept maneuver. Initiate Alliance self-destruct.”

  Mount Shiomi: to Tangler

  Taking tracks 0039, 0040 with Standard

  Tangler: to Mount Shiomi

  Expend rounds ASAP and retire to north best speed. Deploy antitorpedo countermeasures immediately

  She shoved herself back from the desk, panting as she snatched off the helmet. The black-ceilinged Citadel seemed impenetrably dark. Sweat ran down her neck. “We missed it. Fuck. Fuck!”

  Mills laid comforting, or maybe restraining, fingers on her arm. “Fat lady hasn’t sung yet, skipper. MDA has track. It’s being passed to Fort Greely. They’ll knock it down.”

  “God, I hope so,” she muttered, but didn’t like the odds. The ground-based interceptors didn’t have a good test record, and had never engaged against a real threat.

  Mount Shiomi: to Tangler

  Missiles away. Increasing speed to flank. Countermeasures deployed

  She felt slightly better. Maybe they could get out of the woods. Her task force, at least. Then she remembered Guam. No survivors. All dead. USV-16, gone, but at least it had been unmanned. Montesano, out of action, no casualty report yet.

  They’d taken a hammering. But from whom? “Where’s our helo? Is he there yet?”

  “Vectoring to an intercept point. Full loadout, sonobuoys and fish.”

  She toggled to the ASW screen. They had a solid plot on the remaining intruder. The task force’s northward turn, and increase in speed, were giving them more time to respond. Shkvals only had ranges of about six miles, so keeping the threat at arm’s length would protect the rest of the task force.

  Four minutes later, Dagger reported dropping on a sonobuoy contact. Then, seconds later, a massive, rumbling detonation.

  Cheryl tried to think, but stringing coherent ideas together was like slogging through mud. Her neck felt sticky. Probably bleeding, where she’d clawed it. Her arms itched. She put her head in her hands, and concentrated on neither passing out nor throwing up.

  Somewhere in there—it all got fuzzy, liquid, for a couple of minutes—Chokai reported one successful intercept and one miss.

  So yet another bus of ten warheads was on its way to the US.

  Terranova patted her back, voice gentle. “Skipper? Skipper? Your neck is bleedin’. Y’okay, ma’am? That was rough.”

  Cheryl uncovered her face. Tried to control the quiver in her larynx. “Yeah, Terror. Pretty … fucking … rough.”

  “What were those things? Where’d they come from?”

  “We’ll have to find out, Beth.” Not exactly regulation, to call enlisted by their first names. But just now such formulas seemed too petty to care about. Yeah, where had they come from? The North Koreans? They seemed too advanced. Might have been the Chinese. Sure.

  But who would benefit most from literally torpedoing the Allied defenses? Who would gain, at the end of the day, from triggering an all-out nuclear exchange between China and the United States?

  She could think of only one player.

  But then, why had Sharkov called to warn them?

  It made no sense, but she could cogitate on it later. Right now … She shook off the dizziness like a boxer recovering from a hard blow. “Confirm MDA has track on our leakers. Keep a sharp eye on that launch site for more. I want more sonobuoy barriers to the south. Remain on station, Condition One. I need a damage report from Thunderbolts. And start a search for survivors, beginning with that last datum for Guam. We aren’t out of the woods yet. Let’s stay alert, God damn it.”

  She couldn’t keep the anger from her tone. The disappointment. The shock. She scratched furiously between her fingers, then sucked at them. It might not be over. It might only be starting. She tasted salt blood, but didn’t care. And at the same time she was frightened. So very frightened.

  Eddie.

  God.

  God.

  All the people.

  I wish I’d done that better.

  23

  Seattle, Washington

  NAN was walking across the campus when the sirens began. Short, staccato bursts, not the long-drawn-out wailing you heard in disaster movies. They’d drilled it over and over since the war had started. Archipelago had prepared, as much as anyone could.

  Her phone chined. The text re
ad MISSILE ATTACK. NOT A DRILL. TAKE IMMEDIATE SHELTER.

  Nan glanced around, to see others in the quad dropping racquets, jumping up from benches, sprinting across the drought-stricken carpet of lawn. Dr. Jhingan hurried toward the concrete bunker that had been built beneath the carousel. Nan hesitated, torn between it and her assigned shelter beneath the biochemistry wing. Then pivoted midstep, and sprinted for the carousel. It was still playing that jaunty, incongruously merry tune, still revolving, though the painted horses bobbed and galloped with empty saddles.

  Fifty feet down, a narrow, echoing concrete stairwell opened into long windowless rooms. She followed the crowd, and lost sight of Jhingan. The floors were raw unpolished concrete. The walls were painted brown up to chest level and pale green above that. The ceiling was reinforced with heavy cast-in beams. Yellow-tinted LEDs were spaced along the walls. They didn’t really give enough light to see by, which added to the sense of claustrophobia as more and more scientists, technicians, administrators, and janitors crowded down the stairs. Save for one groundskeeper, who was calling on the Mother of God loudly and eloquently in Spanish, they were unwontedly quiet. Many looked annoyed, as if irritated to be interrupted at their desks and lab benches.

  She checked her phone again, but got only NO SERVICE. Of course, this deep underground … She spotted a gap on a bench between two very large women and wedged her butt into it. They gave way grudgingly.

  “So, where you from?” a dark-skinned woman with severely plucked black eyebrows asked.

  “Medical,” Nan said.

  “I’m from Neural Networks,” the woman said, tapping her nametag. Frederica, it read.

  “Attention please, everyone.” A slender, white-coated black woman who wore the pale pink badge of Administration turned a control on the wall. The lights brightened somewhat, though it was still dim. “I’m your shelter manager, people. Please listen up.”

  Her voice echoed as she began reading from a laminated summary. “Welcome to Site 23, a FEMA and Washington State Civil Defense Program Class II protective area. This is not a long-term shelter. It is a blast-resistant safe room, to protect against active shooters, terrorist events, and other emergencies. The current emergency is”—she faltered, looked around—“the current emergency is unclear. But the alarm sirens have sounded, so you’re in the right place.