First Strike c-19

by Keith Douglass

  After long silence, Yuri nodded. “It sounds somewhat promising,” he conceded. “However, there is so much detail that must be filled in.”

  “Oh, assuredly.” Korsov waved aside his objections. “Yet, in principle, it is a solid plan, yes?”

  “In principle.”

  By unspoken agreement, they moved on to other, more innocuous topics. The discussion ranged over world politics, the weather, sports, and women. Finally, as evening grew late, Yuri brought out his finest brandy. He poured each of them a glass, and lifted his own. “To our success.”

  “Our success,” Korsov echoed. He kept his expression warm and cordial as his thoughts raced ahead to the day that was hurtling toward them.

  My success. And, yes, if everything goes as planned, you will be a part of that. But, if not…

  But it if not, Yuri would be his scapegoat just as surely as his deputy was his.

  THREE

  The USS Seawolf

  In port, Bermuda

  0645 local (GMT-4)

  Ensign Kevin Forsythe was not having a good day. It wasn’t the weather. The forecast predicted a light breeze and blue skies. Soon, the wind would carry the scent of coconut oil, sand, and sea to the submarine from the beach.

  Nor was he ill. In fact, he had never felt quite as well as he did that day. Every nerve ending seemed to tingle, the wind was silk drawn across his skin. Every sense was highly attuned, reacting to the smallest changes in his environment.

  The source of Ensign Forsythe’s discomfort was that he was officer of the day during the Seawolf’s first full day in port in Bermuda. Intellectually, he understood it wasn’t anything personal. Someone had to stand duty, and it was simply his turn in the rotation. As the junior man in the wardroom, he had few favors to call in to compel a swap and absolutely no seniority. Therefore, when the list came down, he knew immediately he was stuck with it.

  However well he might understand that, it still sat hard. The last two months had been especially grueling, particularly since he was a recent graduate of the Navy nuclear training pipeline and not yet fully qualified on board Seawolf. When he was not on watch or working, he studied. No movies. No lingering in the wardroom to talk or play cards. No, he did what a good submarine officer was expected to do — indeed, was required to do: He studied. He pounded through massive volumes of engineering text, memorizing diagram after diagram. He toured the ship endlessly, diagramming her peculiarities, the location of her damage control equipment, tracing out her piping systems. Yes, it all had been covered in school, but, as every new officer learns, there is a vast difference between the national submarine on a chalkboard or simulator and an actual living, breathing, honest-to-God boat.

  So, given his schedule on board Seawolf, he thought that maybe, just maybe, he was a little more ready for liberty than absolutely anyone else on the boat.

  Not that anyone else felt that way. He hadn’t even bothered to mention it, knowing the sardonic looks and disgust he would garner from the other officers. After all, only he and Ensign Bacon were on their first patrol. The rest of them were veterans, had all done six months submerged on patrol in areas they couldn’t even talk about. The fact that Ensign Forsythe had been studying his little butt off for the last two months wasn’t even comparable. They had all been there, done that, and had little sympathy.

  Oh, sure, he would get his chance tomorrow, and the day after that. The submarine was in three-section duty, so he could expect liberty two out of every three days. Just like everyone else. But, somehow, that didn’t seem much of a consolation right now.

  To make matters worse, his immediate superior in the watch section, Lieutenant Commander Brian Cowlings, was no happier about having duty than Forsythe was. And, furthermore, Cowlings didn’t like him. Didn’t like him one little bit. So Forsythe anticipated that to work off his own frustrations, Lieutenant Commander Cowlings would probably spend a good deal of the next twenty-four hours chewing on Forsythe’s ass.

  Cowlings was an engineer, the chief engineer of the boat. He was one of the men Forsythe would have to convince that he was qualified in order to earn his submarine pin.

  Forsythe watched as the off-going duty section streamed down the wooden planked gangway connecting the submarine to the pier. Like rats deserting a sinking ship. It was still a few minutes before 0700 but every watch station had been turned over, every watchstander relieved by someone in Forsythe’s section.

  Since the submarine had gotten in late last night, the off-going duty section had stood watch from around midnight until 0700. After Forsythe had double-checked everything in his division — he was the auxiliaries officer — gone over his duty roster again, worked out a few small problems connecting to shore services, it was well after 0200. He had contemplated heading ashore for a couple of quick beers and coming back to the submarine and getting up an hour later to assume the watch, but immediately realized that that would be a bad idea. Standing your first in-port duty while still blotto from the night before was no way to impress anyone, and he was quite certain that Lieutenant Commander Cowlings would not only smell the stale beer on his breath but would also be able to peer deep inside his soul and realize just how unworthy a submarine officer Ensign Forsythe was.

  “Ready for colors?” a voice behind him asked. “If you don’t check, it will go wrong.”

  A submariner’s motto. Check, recheck, and triple-check. Because when you were a couple of thousand feet below the surface of the sea, it was highly probable that anything that went wrong would kill you. Professional paranoia was part of being a submariner.

  Forsythe turned and snapped off a smart salute to Lieutenant Commander Cowlings. “Yes, sir. Just went over the roster and verified that everyone is on board. They all know their assignments, we checked with harbor local for the correct time, and there are no special holidays or days of mourning to observe.”

  “Where’s the flag?” Cowlings waited. Forsythe’s blood ran cold.

  The flag. Dammit, the flag! Where the hell is it? The boatswain’s mate would know, but where was the boatswain’s mate? Does anyone in the duty section know where it is?

  Cowlings smiled slightly. “It’s considered highly inappropriate to hold morning colors without an American flag, Ensign. Now, unless you want to get your boys together and start coloring a tablecloth, I suggest you find it. You have—” Cowlings glanced at his watch—“fifteen minutes.”

  Fifteen minutes. The submarine was crammed with nooks and crannies, and the first place that the Ensign thought to look was the boatswain’s mate’s locker. But the locker would be secured, accessible only to the boatswain’s mate of the watch or someone with a master key. And Lieutenant Commander Cowlings had the master keys.

  “Sir, if I might have the master keys, I can—”

  Cowlings pulled the keys out of his pocket and dangled them enticingly in front of Forsythe. “You mean these?”

  Forsythe reached for them, but Cowlings pulled them back, keeping them just slightly out of his reach. A red flush spread up his face, burning over his cheek bones.

  Just what the hell is this? He knows I need them to get in the locker — he’s determined to make me look stupid in front of the captain, I just know it. Somebody ashore will be sure to tell the skipper that colors didn’t go down right, and the captain will blame me.

  But Cowlings is the command duty officer. It will look just as bad for him, because he’s responsible for my performance.

  “Fourteen minutes, Lieutenant. And counting.” Cowlings waited.

  A test. This is a test of some sort. The realization dawned in his mind with a blinding flash. I’m supposed realize something, supposed to understand what I need to do. The smile on Cowling’s face changed slightly as he saw the junior officer consider the problem from a new angle.

  He doesn’t expect me to be bounding around the deck, trying to grab the keys from him. That’s horseplay, not allowed on watch. Besides, it would look undignified, and an officer is supposed to
— that’s it. An officer.

  Forsythe turned to Chief Petty Officer Billdown, the chief of the watch, who was standing slightly behind him. “Chief?”

  “Yes, Ensign?” Forsythe could tell by the chief’s tone of voice that he’s been expecting it, and he detected a note of approval.

  “Chief, please locate the American flag and assemble the color guard.”

  “Right away, Ensign.” Forsythe watched him go, resenting the trick that Cowlings had played on him, but knowing he would remember the lesson well.

  Cowlings nodded. “Good job. They still teach that story about the new army officer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Forsythe knew the story well. A group of army lieutenants was tasked with putting up a standard issue field tent. None of them had ever done so before, and the results, as they issued a series of highly confusing and explicit orders to their troops, were ludicrous. The troops had been told beforehand to obey every order precisely as it was given.

  The last second lieutenant watched the others carefully. When his turn came, he turned to his sergeant, and said, “Sergeant, have the men put up the tent.” The tent went up in minutes. The moral was that any task could be accomplished much faster and more accurately by doing what an officer was supposed to do: using the chain of command to get the most out of the talents and skills of the men assigned to him.

  “Sinks in better with an actual lesson.” Cowlings tossed him the master keys. “I’ll observe colors with you, then I’ll be in my stateroom. Call me if you need me.”

  They stood side by side as the national anthem rang out and the flag soared quickly to the top of the flag pole. As he listened to the music that never failed to set something aquiver inside of him, Forsythe suppressed a grin. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad duty day after all.

  FOUR

  Northern Maine

  Omicron Testing Facility

  0600 local (GMT-5)

  Lab Rat shrugged down deeper in his parka. It was a cold morning, with a biting wind blowing out of the northeast. The sun was still below the horizon.

  “This better be good,” he grumbled, shooting an aggrieved look at the senior chief. “May I remind you we’re supposed to be in Bermuda?”

  The senior chief stole a look at his commander and suppressed a snort of laughter. The diminutive man had pulled out a ski mask and pulled it down over his chapped face. He looked like the world’s smallest ninja. “You said you wanted to see it, sir. Trust me, it’ll be worth freezing your ass off.” The senior chief’s voice was calm, with just a trace of anticipation in it.

  “So, what happens now?”

  Just then, the radio that the senior chief held crackled to life. It was connected to the control center of the testing facility, and Lab Rat recognized the voice as the senior controller he’d met the night before. The controller was a former Navy intelligence specialist, and a former shipmate of Senior Chief Armstrong.

  “Observation teams, standby for launch. Five, four, three, two — we have a launch.”

  “Look to the southeast, sir,” the senior chief said. “Red lights — it’s an old Talos missile, but they have it rigged with reflectors all over it as well as a few embedded red lights. The reflectors are for telemetry as well as visibility.”

  Just then, Lab Rat saw it, a streak of red on the horizon. He lifted his binoculars to his eyes and tweaked them into focus. There it was, its outline just barely visible and backlit by the now-rising sun.

  “What’s the range?” Lab Rat asked.

  “The ship is eighty miles off the coast.”

  Lab Rat grunted. It wasn’t entirely realistic, not for an antimissile test system. A real ballistic missile would be coming in at a far higher altitude, cruising exo-atmosphere before tipping over, breaking into multiple warheads, and heading for targets. But this wasn’t a demonstration of the final system. It was simply proof that the remaining technical issues having to do with the laser and the control system had been resolved.

  “Commencing target acquisition,” the controller’s voice announced, his excitement coming through even over the crackling circuit. “Searching, searching — acquisition now!”

  From somewhere to the north of them, a spike of blue-green laser shot up from the coast. It was a narrow beam, too bright for any natural light source, and its intensity washed out the breaking dawn. It speared into the dark sky, burning its image on their retinas, then, in a flash of motion too quick to follow, searched the sky in a quartering pattern. Within seconds, it found the missile and locked on to it. The red lights of the missile were barely visible in the brilliance.

  “Target acquisition,” the voice announced. “Maintaining lock through transition.”

  The missile was closer now, its outlines bathed in blue-green light rather than the rising sun. It was running almost parallel to them, its shape clearly visible. The laser stayed with it, seemingly locked on a few atoms at the very tip of the warhead.

  “Sometimes this is enough,” the senior chief murmured, quiet awe in his voice. “The high-powered beam burns out electronics pretty fast. A soft kill, but that may not be good enough. Depending on the warhead, it can still do a lot of damage if it makes land.”

  Lab Rat stared at the laser beam. He had heard rumors of testing in the desert, of lasers flickering among the remote mountains in Arizona and New Mexico, but he had had no idea that the system itself was so close to implementation. The technical problems alone in maintaining the focus over distance of the laser light, in generating sufficient power and in target discrimination, had been reported as overwhelming.

  “Fire one,” the controller’s voice said. Immediately, from somewhere in the vicinity of the laser, he saw fire arc up from the ground. For a moment, it looked like some god was throwing thunderbolts, but Lab Rat quickly realized it was simply the fire and exhaust from the tail of a small antimissile missile. It shone pure gold and white, stark against the primary colors of the laser and the red-lighted target. It spewed white exhaust in its wake in a faintly spiral pattern that gradually tightened and settled into a straight line.

  Unerringly, the missile followed the laser beam, running just to one side of it and correcting its course as it arced up. The symmetry of the entire evolution was completely stunning, and the combination of colors, the time of day, and biting cold gave the entire scene a surreal feeling.

  The antimissile missile winked out of existence. For a few microseconds, Lab Rat wondered if it had missed its target. Then a fiery explosion lit up the northern sky, a fireball of white and gold and black smoke, now illuminated by the sun coming over the horizon as well as the laser. The blue-green light played over the billowing clouds of black smoke and fire, as though it were hunting for any last remnants of the missile.

  “Hard kill,” the controller’s voice announced with satisfaction. “All observation teams, return to base. Muster in conference room eleven for debrief.”

  An expression of sheer joy lit the senior chief’s face. He stared up at the sky, his eyes transfixed and his face transformed. Finally, when he noticed Lab Rat staring, he turned back to his commander. “That’s what I was working on, sir. A lot of the targeting module is mine.”

  “Is it deployable now?” he asked, unable to believe what he’d just seen. “If this works, it changes everything, doesn’t it?”

  The senior chief nodded his agreement. “Oh, it will work. And, yes, sir, it does change everything. Now the question is: Do you want to be a part of this or not?”

  Lab Rat’s mind reeled. If Brilliant Pebbles was deployed, there would be far less need for the nuclear arsenal the United States now maintained. He could see the submarine fleet standing down, ballistic missiles disarmed, and a flood of officers entering the job market. Maybe the senior chief was right — he should get in now, on the ground floor, before there was too much competition.

  “It seems to me that they’ve got a ways to go, though,” Lab Rat said slowly, as he strode over the frost-encrusted g
round, following the senior chief back to the humvee that would take them back to the compound. “The trajectory problems alone — we’ve discussed those. Head on it’s a tougher shot than on the beam. And tying this all in to the early warning systems, even into Cobra Dane and Cobra Judy — well, that will take some time.”

  “It will. But can you imagine it, sir?” The senior chief’s voice was low, but filled with more intensity and passion than Lab Rat had ever heard before. “I grew up in the sixties, sir. I remember nuclear attack drills in elementary school, where we were supposed to get under our desks and put our hands over our heads. I remember the warning sirens. No, it never really came to that, but can you imagine never having to worry about that again? To be able to guarantee our continental safety and sovereignty? Sir, that’s worth fighting for.”

  “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  They walked in silence until they reached the humvee, and Senior Chief Armstrong slipped automatically into the driver’s seat. Lab Rat watched him for a moment, and a feeling of profound sadness swept over him. “You’ve made up your mind, have you?”

  The senior chief looked uneasy. Finally, he nodded. “I think I have. It’s not that I don’t love the Navy, sir — I do, and working with you has been a real honor. But to be part of this”—he gestured, taking in the entire expanse of the horizon—“that would be something. I’ve got twenty-one years in — I can retire anytime.”

  “Give it a few days’ thought,” Lab Rat urged.

  The senior chief nodded. “I will. And, sir, you might give it some thought yourself.”

  Tomcat 103

  300 miles northeast of Bermuda

  1100 local (GMT-4)

  Elf put her Tomcat into a hard climb, then kicked in the afterburners. At the top of her climb, she rolled the Tomcat over, inverted, as she pulled out into level flight. Then she dropped the nose back down, kicked the afterburner off, and let gravity do its thing. She descended 5,000 feet in a hard dive, then gently pulled the Tomcat out at 7,000 feet. She followed up, just for the hell of it, with a couple of barrel rolls, then a hard break to the right.