by David Poyer
And bearing down on them, burning down through the thickening air at a heat far beyond what even steel could stand, a weapon that would in seconds begin searching for its prey. If it got through, they could all die. If it hit the VLS. Or the gun magazines. They had a little steel and Kevlar around them, here in the command spaces. The magazines, a few inches of hardened armor plate. But neither would stop a projectile arriving at three miles a second. The thing wouldn’t even need an explosive charge. Like an antitank round, its velocity alone would be enough to drill through whatever it hit. If it was a heavy pyrophoric, like depleted uranium, it would spread flame and toxic smoke wherever it penetrated.
Not looking at what his hand was doing, Dan flicked up the red metal cover over the Fire Auth switch. Deep in its silicon blades of reason and memory, ALIS was computing the parameters that ensured the highest probability of kill. When he clicked the switch to Fire, the computers would fire at the instant P-sub-K peaked. At his elbow Staurulakis typed away, entering her own command in case the switch failed. A microsecond’s hesitation; then she clicked again, and the rightmost screen switched.
“Duckies deployed,” someone called behind him. “Standing by on chaff.”
The launchers would mortar out a dozen rounds at once, spaced to burst to both sides of, ahead of, and behind the ship, littering the sky with millions of tiny radar dipoles. They also carried pyrotechnics that burned fiercely in the same infrared spectra as the ship’s exhausts. But they didn’t burn long, and the dipoles needed time to bloom. They’d have to fire the chaff no more than twenty seconds before the enemy homer arrived.
Which meant … now. “Stand by on chaff. Pass that to Red Hawk, too, on chaff and flares. Stand by—”
“Terminal body separation,” Terranova called.
Dan jerked his gaze up. Blinked at the screen, unable to make sense of the blurring, vibrating images. Instead of a single radar return, grotesquely swollen with the ionization plume, the screen now showed two. As he blinked again the larger one subdivided. Now three blips pulsed, two brightening and dimming like pulsars, but unsynchronized; one strobed twice as fast as the other.
“Meteor Alfa’s breaking up,” Wenck called.
Dan pitched his voice across CIC. “Noblos! Is that a breakup, or just the warhead detaching from a second stage?”
The PhD’s voice came hesitantly, then gathered force. “I don’t read that as a warhead or a—or a decoy. See that brightening and dimming? That’s something tumbling over and over. Varying the cross section from our viewing angle. There—see—it’s disintegrating.”
“Ionization bloom,” called Terranova.
The rightmost screen jerked and zoomed back as more and more numerous fragments, each surrounded by a comet-halo and streaking trail of radar-reflecting gas, drew apart from one another. Now five or six, seven, were pulsing, each at its own rate, tumbling over and over as they fragmented under the g-forces of hypersonic reentry.
Meteor Alfa was burning up. “Whatever they cobbled together, it didn’t hold,” Cheryl murmured beside him. “Came apart in reentry.”
“Okay. A lucky break. Ready to kill Bravo now?”
The keyboard clicked; the brackets snapped into place around the second incomer. “Ready to fire on Meteor Bravo. One-round engagement. Followed by Meteor Charlie, also a one-round engagement.”
“Kill them both,” Dan said. He waited until he was sure the brackets changed color—he absolutely didn’t want to fire on any of the still-incoming debris—and flicked up the switch cover.
A long, heart-stopping pause, during which the toxic vent dampers clunked shut. The recirc ventilation wound down, and the steady rush of cold air ceased.
He was just starting to think Is it going to—when the roar came through the deckplates, the stringers, the hull, and the falling snow glared bright white in the camera display.
“Bird one away … Bird two away.”
On the center screen two small bright symbols left the own-ship circle-and-cross. They blinked into blue semicircles rapidly moving east. Dan eased a breath out, then pulled his mind back from the departing missiles and swept it out and around. “Cher, inform Higher we fired on two TBMs, launched from western Iraq with predicted points of impact within our defended area. That exhausts currently available inventory of Block 4s, but we’re working to bring the second pair back online.”
“The missile targeted on us? Mention that, too?”
“Sure. It’s a new capability, but obviously not quite operational yet. Too bad we didn’t get to see if the decoys worked on it.” He caught her wide-eyed glance and grinned. Keeping his palms flat, so she couldn’t see how shaky he was himself. “Just joking. Okay, let’s get around headed north, get back into our area. Fuel state on Red Hawk?”
“Half hour to bingo fuel, Captain.”
“EW: Any change on those threat emitters?”
“No change, Captain.… Stand by one.… Ku-band from Patriot. Patriot going active?… Lost track, freq shifting too fast to follow.”
He keyed combat systems maintenance central, but got no joy from the report on the after VLS. Savo rolled through the night, powerless against another attack. Surely these weren’t the only missiles the enemy had. But he too might be keeping something in reserve. A bargaining chip.
On the center screen the bright symbols of the outgoing missiles were still clicking east. The first was already almost to the red caret of the first reentering body. A chill trickled through him; the hairs erected at the back of his neck. But for that moment, in his mind, there existed only the digital world. Reflecting the universe not as it existed, nor as human beings knew it, but as machines alone perceived it: sheared of all meaning and all value. Only atoms, and the void.
“Stand by for intercept … stand by … now,” called Singhe, from her hover behind Terranova.
The callouts merged. Then the red brackets jerked, slewing crazily off Meteor Bravo into space. They hunted back and forth for a second or two before finding it again and locking on once more.
Beyond that, nothing happened. The nimbus of ionized gas kept growing. The incoming warhead was plunging fast now, deep into the terminal phase. The blocks of a city stretched below it, dimly limned ghosts in Aegis’s omniscient vision. That city lay helpless except for the twin beams, one Savo’s, the other the Patriot battery’s, that tracked the weapons meant for it. Dan clutched the arms of his seat. Had they waited too long? Had the two radars, locked on the same object, spoofed each other? Or had the Block 4 homer simply malfunctioned? A near miss, a close pass, wouldn’t be enough.
One side of the comet-nimbus began to swell. It grew, very slowly, while the other side shrank.
The whole glowing mass, reflecting Aegis’s beamed power as if it were one huge solid object, began to pulse. Slowly at first, then to a steadily accelerating beat.
“Launch from Ben Gurion,” Terranova called. The screen shifted, and the brackets searched before locking on to a new contact. Its callouts spun upward, the numbers blurring as it ascended at an incredible pace, far faster than either the Al-Husayns or Savo’s Standards. A Patriot, rocketing up in a last-ditch intercept. Dan opened his mouth to remind Terror to drop track, so as not to confuse their own missile, then remembered: The Standards were on their own; in the homing phase, they were full-active; their seekers could care less what their mother ship did, miles behind them.
The screen flickered again. When it steadied this time Bravo looked so different he had to check the callout to make sure of what he was looking at. With a huge silent burst of ionized gas, it had come apart into dozens of tumbling pieces, each surrounded by its own coruscating nimbus, each diverging from the original track. Like a fissioning nucleus, first wobbling as it went unstable, then splitting all at once into protons, neutrons, gamma particles, bursts of pure radiant energy.
The whoops and rebel yells from the consoles died away as the screen switched back and forth between Bravo, still disintegrating, to Meteor Charli
e, a few seconds away from intercept. Dan leaned back and passed a shaky hand over his hair. Two down. One to go. Could it be possible, they might meet this challenge? Thrust into action too soon, with patched software, marginally trained operators, and too little ordnance, could they actually succeed? He glanced at Staurulakis; she was rapt over the keyboard, frowning at the screens; the manicured fingernails rested on the keys, motionless.
He zoomed his attention back so the big picture opened out again. Lahav was lagging to the south. Opening the bearing in case, Dan fired again, and getting a better angle if one of those threatening shore radar sites unleashed an 802. This would be the perfect time, with his attention welded to the incoming warheads. He hoped the Syrians and Hezbollah continued to opt for caution over solidarity. The surface search radar showed nothing else within forty miles. The air search, too, showed vacant space. “Time to bingo, Red Hawk?” he called. At all costs, he had to be able to come to a recovery course; the only alternative would be to divert them to some shore airfield. But that would not be good. Even money whether the diplomats would let Savo’s SH-60 take off again.
“Twenty-five minutes to bingo fuel, sir.”
Singhe’s velvety voice came again, over the creak of steel in a seaway. “There’s the Patriot, targeted on Meteor Charlie. Looks like intercept … now.”
CIC went silent again as the screen showed no change in the contact. None Dan saw anyway. Singhe said, after a pause, “Stand by for Block 4A intercept, Meteor Charlie … stand by.… Mark. Intercept.”
“Shit,” somebody murmured.
The rocketing comet, wrapped in its blurring shroud of ionized gas, just kept growing. It didn’t wobble, or lurch, or split apart.
“I believe we have a miss,” Noblos said, too loud.
“Petty Officer Terranova? Chief Wenck?”
“Don’t see terminal effects, sir.”
Dan sucked a deep breath. Nothing more he could do. “Patriot?”
“Ku-band still radiating.”
“They’re not refiring?”
The rightmost screen was suddenly empty. The last bracket winked out. The amber spokes clicked back and forth over an empty sky.
“Meteor Charlie off the radar,” Terranova said, voice falling. Staurulakis shook herself and began typing again. Dan massaged his cheeks. The bristly stubble felt greasy. How long had he been here? It felt like days. And why was it getting warmer? Oh yeah—he’d secured the ventilation. He told the TAO, “Okay, Cher, get Red Hawk back aboard. Come to optimal recovery course, regardless of the array angle—nothing we can do now anyway. Tell Lahav firing is complete. Remain at Condition III, but we can relax Circle William now.”
Her fingers lifted. “Aye, sir. What shall I report to CTF?”
“What happened. What else? One reentry body breakup in terminal phase, one successful intercept, one miss.” He shoved himself to his feet. “Going to take a leak. Stay on it, we’re not done with this yet.”
But instead of making for the little head just outside CIC, he went up a deck and let himself into his sea cabin. Splashed water on his face, bent over the stainless sink. Considered vomiting into it, but didn’t quite need to.
Eyes closed, he sagged into the bulkhead. Gripping an exposed pipe, he pounded his head lightly against it. The blows felt good. “Why couldn’t we have hit them both?” he muttered. “Was that too much to ask?”
But a 50 percent kill rate was as much as they could have expected, given the Block 4’s record. Even a bit better. If he’d been able to throw a four-missile salvo …
But excuses didn’t matter. He should have gotten them all.
An hour later, he was still in CIC, drinking his millionth cup of Sonar coffee, when the news came in. A high-explosive warhead had hit a shelter in a suburb of Tel Aviv. They were still digging out bodies, but the first estimates were 190 dead.
17
UNDER gray but now snowless skies, Savo rolled south again. The seas surged in, crests breaking into white patches that heaved here and there across the empty sea.
Dan sprawled in his command chair, boots propped on a binocular box as a spatter of rain blew across the windows and was instantly smeared by the wipers. A clipboard lay checked off on his lap, but he hadn’t handed it back yet to the messenger, who was chatting in a murmur with BM2 Nuckols. The bridge team seemed subdued this morning. Over two hundred dead was the latest report. Civilians. Women. Children. Blasted apart and suffocated in a bunker under Hayarkon Park, a suburb north of the city center.
Yeah, he knew … he hadn’t killed them. Someone else had designed, and built, and launched the uprated Scud called the Al-Husayn. But Savo hadn’t prevented it. You could give reasons why. But the ultimate responsibility was his.
And now and then he wondered, because he too had designed missiles, and tested them, and more than once launched them: Was this really how human beings were destined to live? What curse of Cain, what original sin, had been laid against them, to condemn them not just to kill each other, but to revel in doing so?
He knew by now there wasn’t any answer. Through each century Mars still marched, wrecking economies, empires, and individual lives by the millions.
Rid yourself of all illusion. That’s what one of his old teachers had said.
Men’s hearts, it seemed, were not going to change.
“Done with that, sir?”
“Yeah.” He waggled his head, sketched a routing on the topmost sheet, and scribbled his initials.
The message was from Commander, Sixth Fleet. At long last, U.S.-Israeli missile defense coordination at the tactical level had been authorized. It outlined protocol for direct communications with the Israeli Army unit responsible for the Patriot battery at Ben Gurion, with the two Air Defense Forces Arrow batteries to north and south, and with the IADF ballistic missile command and control center, code-named Citron Tree. An addendum laid out a schedule to work out procedures for deconflicting the two nations’ missile-defense networks. Dan fanned himself with it, wondering why it always had to take a disaster to make things change. Then cleared his throat. “Get that to Lieutenant Branscombe. We need to set those voice channels up as soon as possible.”
“Think the chief’s already on it, Captain, but I’ll make sure he gets that word.”
Dan shifted in the chair. He’d gotten three hours’ sleep that morning, but felt ragged and woozy. Plus, he still had that nagging cough. CIC remained in Condition III TBMD. The bodies in the seats had changed, but Aegis was still scanning the skies.
“Captain?” Quincoches, looking haggard. Dan returned his salute. The chief’s coveralls were rumpled, as if slept in. But Quincoches didn’t look as if he’d slept. “We’re back up, aft.”
“Aft VLS is up again? That’s good news, Chief. But I gotta tell you, I’d have been a lot happier to get it last night.”
“I know, sir. We had to splice cables, not enough spares—then test—and it turned out, we had to request wiring data from the contractor—”
“I know.” Dan held up a palm. “I take it back. Your guys did everything they could. It was just shitty luck.”
Quincoches looked out to the sea that slid by, uncaring, bleak, wintry. Reddened lids squeezed slowly closed. When he rubbed them his fingertips left sooty stains. “D’you think … we could’ve saved them? In the shelter. If we’d given you two more rounds when you needed them—”
“Chief. No.” Dan gripped his elbow. “The other side killed them. Not us. And the Army and Marines are going to iron their laundry. If there’s anyone at fault here, it’s me.” He rubbed his own eye sockets. “Should I come down and talk to your guys?”
“I don’t think you’ve got to do that, sir. Not necessary. I’ll tell them what you said.”
“Okay then.” He started to squeeze the FC chief’s elbow again, then thought better of it. Nobody really liked a touchy-feely skipper. “That’s good, that we have those last two Block 4s back. We may still need them.”
Quincoches nod
ded. He inclined his head once more and left.
Dan pulled out his Hydra, noting Lahav on the horizon. The corvette had sidled gradually nearer after dawn, and rode now two miles off, paralleling Savo’s course, turning when she turned, but leaving the scanning and firing bearing clear to land. Should he call Marom? See if they needed to coordinate defenses? He couldn’t think of anything they could be doing better. Leave well enough alone. But it was reassuring, knowing they were on the same side.
Especially since the Alborz task group—the Iranian surface force—was nearing their position. Pittsburgh was trailing, occasionally forwarding a report. He coughed into a fist, eyeing the radar. They weren’t in range yet, but soon. Maybe that was something to discuss with Marom, since he had no idea what the Iranians intended. Their very presence had to be considered a threat. Maybe he should ask Ammermann about it. But he felt angry even thinking about talking to that guy. Fuck him. Let him stew.
He made a couple more Hydra calls. He and Danenhower discussed their fuel state. The engineer was pleased with their consumption rate at this reduced speed. He was using the down time on the other turbines to catch up on deferred maintenance.
Dan was about to sign off when the boatswain called, “XO’s on the bridge.”
Almarshadi was stone-faced. Dan returned his salute, still on the Hydra, and said to Danenhower, “Bart, XO just came on the bridge. It’s good you’re getting ahead on maintenance, but I want to keep our damage-control teams at peak performance. Can you get with him, set up a drill for this afternoon?”
“Sure, Skipper. Anything special?”
He thought about the incoming surface group; of the Syrian batteries that still, on and off, were illuminating from the coast. “Drill missile hits forward, midships, and aft. I don’t want anybody wondering what to do if we take a shot in the gut. —Fahad, I’m asking him to set up a drill—”
