Ghost Fleet

by P. W. Singer, August Cole

  “I’m task force commander . . .” Simmons said, realizing what Anderson was saying.

  “Yes, sir,” said Anderson. “Longboard is yours. We’re in good hands, I know it.”

  The two of them went silent for a few seconds as the moment sank in, and then they turned to business.

  “With your permission, sir, I’d like to begin evacuating the America’s crew.”

  Simmons nodded even as he was trying to make up his mind.

  “I don’t like the idea of scuttling a ship still afloat,” Anderson continued, “but I like the idea of towing a forty-thousand-ton weight with an enemy fleet coming in behind us even less.”

  Simmons finally realized what Anderson assumed their next course of action would be.

  “We are not leaving behind either America or the Marines onshore,” said Simmons. “We will evacuate the wounded off the ship, but hold this line of position until our main fleet or the enemy’s arrives, whichever happens first.”

  Anderson shifted slightly sideways, as if he did not quite believe what he was seeing and hearing. His eyes squinted and his brow wrinkled in what Simmons recognized was an eloquent objection forming, the kind of argument they might have had back in the Chaffee’s wardroom when they were young officers. Then the look washed away, and Anderson nodded with an exaggerated bob of his head.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “We have to locate the enemy,” said Simmons. “It’s that simple. I’m ordering Orzel out on picket duty and deploying all our Fire Scouts to maximum range. And God help us if they don’t find what’s out there coming for us.”

  Vicinity of USS America, Pacific Ocean

  He’d been close to greatness, thought Denisov. And yet now here he was, wondering whether he should try to take off his flight boots for added buoyancy. He slowly kicked his legs, knowing he was too far offshore to do anything but drift until something ate him or one of the American ships in the near distance plucked him from the water.

  He lay back against the collar of his inflated life vest, watching the strange, thin, wedge-shaped American drones circle high overhead. They were now flying a combat air patrol against an airstrike that wouldn’t come. “I was it, you stupid abtomat, there’s no more!” he screamed. Mindless machines, but lethal; he had to give them that.

  A tingling at the back of his neck made him spin around. Seen from thousands of feet in the air, the Pacific looked inviting. But floating in it, he thought these waters were as dark and foreboding as his worst nightmare. Something was nearby, he could feel it.

  An enormous black shape slowly moved through the sea maybe thirty yards beneath him. It surfaced a few hundred feet away, puffed a blast of air, and then went back under. No shark could be that big. He sighed with relief. A humpback whale, perhaps, content to eat krill, not Russian pilots.

  He was alone for a little while longer. He was close enough to see the still-smoking USS America, and he was confident the little aircraft carrier had been the one his missile had hit. He watched the chiseled form of a massive destroyer pull alongside it; sailors appeared to be tethering the ships together. He recognized it as a Zumwalt-class ship and decided instead that had been the one his missile had hit; far better to have hit the more exotic creature with his last shot.

  With his eyes stinging from the salt and sun, Denisov watched the litters of wounded men and women being passed off the burning America via ziplines strung between the two vessels. The sailors were bound up like mummies as they traveled from their dying ship to another with an uncertain future.

  From the stern of the strange-looking ship, three small forms lifted off. When they formed up, he identified them as MQ-8 Fire Scout drones, scaled-down helicopters with pinched noses that looked like they had never made it out of aviation adolescence. Another two lifted off from the ship tethered to the other side of the America; some kind of cruiser or destroyer, he couldn’t tell.

  The drone helicopters paused in formation and then each set off in a different direction, looking like a foraging steel wasps. They flew low, hugging the waves. One of the Fire Scouts flew almost directly overhead, the drone oblivious to Denisov as the force of its rotor’s downdraft pushed him under the waves. At that moment, Denisov realized that maybe the Americans wouldn’t come for him.

  USS Zumwalt Ship Mission Center

  The tactical holograph still hadn’t come back on, so the fuzzy image was carried across the entire bank of monitors on the wall. Given how the holographic projectors seemed to get knocked offline in every fight, Simmons wondered why they even bothered with the finicky high-tech contraptions. The grainy image they were watching looked like one of those old low-resolution YouTube videos.

  “Sir, the task force is a mix of Chinese and Russian ships,” said the Zumwalt’s intelligence officer. “And ATHENA agrees, based on the EM signatures the Fire Scout is picking up.”

  The live image kept shaking as if somebody were swatting at the drone, but the shaking was only the drone’s autonomous-flight software keeping the rotorcraft as low as possible to the waves, dipping into the troughs between them for cover.

  “Freeze that for me,” said Simmons. The image on the screen locked, and the officer zoomed in on the superstructure of a large ship that the long-range camera had picked up on the upward ride of a wave.

  “What a beast. That’s gotta be the Zheng He.”

  “Yes, sir. Looks like it,” said the intelligence officer. He moved the still image of the massive Chinese capital ship off to one screen and resumed the live camera view. The video feed began to jiggle and shake, and the Fire Scout picked up speed, giving up its cover, as the wind shifted and the troughs of the waves grew shallow. It was a panic move, the robot’s algorithms having run out of good options to evade detection.

  The shaking image then showed a series of smoky trails lifting up from the task force and flying toward the camera.

  “Uh-oh” was all the intelligence officer could say before the image blanked out.

  Cortez spoke up, reading from his glasses, as Simmons watched the replay of the Fire Scout’s frantic final moments.

  “Between the visuals and SIGINT collection, ATHENA is reporting it as seven surface ships: three Sovremenny-class anti-surface destroyers, two Type Fifty-Four frigates, one Luyang-class guided missile destroyer, and a battle cruiser, most likely the Admiral Zheng He. They’re making twenty-five knots. They’re likely coming at us off a loose fix they got from the air attack.”

  Simmons took in the small amount of information he had and realized he needed to think like an admiral and consider the entire Longboard task force, not just his own ship.

  “But where are their carriers?” said Simmons out loud, mostly to himself.

  “No further information, sir,” said Cortez. “ATHENA can run some models to guess where they are, but it’ll essentially be throwing the same darts at the wall as we are.”

  “We’ll take what we can get. We need to hit that task force while we can. Release Puffin batteries,” said Simmons.

  Cortez barked out the orders. The lines linking them to America were fed out to give space between the two ships. Then the deck hatches for the Zumwalt’s vertical launch cells all flipped up simultaneously, revealing a line of dark openings, each twenty-eight inches wide. One after another, a series of thirteen-foot-long cruise missiles, eighty in total, popped out from the vertical launch cells, like untethered jack-in-the-boxes.

  Originally known as the Naval Strike Missile, the Puffin was a stealthy replacement for the old Penguin missile. Though it flew under the speed of sound, the Norwegian-designed missile could evade radar detection and had a range of more than 180 miles, which made it lethal, especially when fired in great numbers.

  The missiles seemed to hang in the air for an instant as their solid-fuel rocket boosters ignited, and then they arced off into the
sky. When their boosters burned out, they were jettisoned in a rain of metal that bombarded the water below. The missiles then raced through the sky powered by turbojet engines that took them at just over five hundred miles per hour to the general vicinity of the Fire Scout’s last known location. Each Puffin then began autonomously hunting, using its own imaging infrared seeker to match anything it saw against an onboard database of authorized targets.

  It was a ship’s wake that gave the enemy’s fleet away. A Puffin missile at the far end of the spread detected the faint V-shaped lines of white foam on the ocean surface and began to circle in the area. An FL-3000 Red Banner short-range air-defense missile rose up to knock it down, but not before the Puffin had shared its data with the rest of the flock and beckoned them to join in.

  One by one, the other missiles began to converge on the area. Three more Puffins were sacrificed to defensive missiles, establishing the perimeter of the task force’s defenses. The robotic swarm then circled, just out of range, with machine patience as more and more missiles joined. While they waited, though, the task force below fired off its own volley of cruise missiles at the Puffins’ point of departure.

  Admiral Zheng He Bridge

  Admiral Wang now knew his gamble had been the right one; the instant that the garbled radio calls from Hawaii had burned through the Americans’ jamming, his staff had looked at him with new esteem. He truly was the equal of the ancient strategist with whom he had seemed to be conversing before them.

  Yet he also knew that the way history would remember this moment depended on all the powers and tools now beyond the realm of human plans. Even the great leaders of old could not have understood this era.

  “How many of our cruise missiles were we able to get off at their force?” he asked his aide.

  “Sixty-nine, sir,” said the aide, nervously looking at the gathering swarm of American missiles, blurs on the horizon, as they circled the task force. Then, seeming to make up their machine minds, the swarm of American missiles began to approach at sea-skimming level from all directions of the compass. The missiles operated in unison, all turning inward simultaneously, but each individual missile made small, slight hops up and down, randomized maneuvers designed to throw off targeting locks.

  “It should be sufficient,” said Wang calmly. “More than enough to make this our day in the end.”

  Another wave of Red Banner missiles was loosed at the Puffins, which were now coming within range, followed by the machine cannon opening fire. The Zheng He mounted three Type 1170 close-in defense systems, each with an eleven-barrel 30 mm machine cannon. But the cannon were now indistinguishable from one another, merging into a single tearing sound as all thirty-three gun barrels fired at once.

  Wang offered a look of calm and put his hand on his aide’s shoulder as if to reassure him, buying himself a few seconds to take in the scene.

  Three angry red fingers pointed out from the ship, followed by scores more. The tracer rounds from the other 30 mm gun systems throughout the fleet were visible even in the bright of day. The way the lines waved and weaved through the clouds of white smoke exhaust left by the defensive missiles reminded Wang of his grandchildren playing with flashlights in the dark. He didn’t need to monitor the count on the display screen to know its hard truth: not all of the enemy’s swarm could be shot down before they began diving toward their targets.

  The Puffins came in low, designed to detonate their 275-pound warheads just at the water line of the targets. A sickening series of booms began, one after another, in quick succession. Wang watched a pair of missiles disappear from sight as they slammed into the Huangshi, a Type 54A frigate, rupturing its bow with a fiery spout. The open bow filled with water as the ship plowed forward, its momentum ensuring its demise. As the bow went deeper into the waves, the frigate’s stern lifted, flashing its spinning props. Then the Huangshi’s steel hull shook from an internal explosion, likely a detonation in its engine room.

  “ ‘If one is not fully cognizant of the evils of waging war, he cannot be fully cognizant either of how to turn it to best account,’ ” he quoted Sun-Tzu aloud. No one heard him above the noise.

  His eyes caught a blur of movement, and then the entire Zheng He shuddered and the klaxons rang out. A damage-control display showed a strike in the far stern. He walked the bridge deck to assess, his view obscured by smoke. Then the wind shifted and blew the smoke in the other direction, revealing a ten-meter hole of twisted metal and a small fire burning in the deck below. Not sufficient to take them out of action.

  Wang turned away from the scene to see how the fleet’s other ships were faring. His role was to stay above it all, to maintain his wits while others let the moment consume them.

  As he panned his binoculars, the Admiral Ushakov, one of the massive Sovremenny-class destroyers the Russians had sent, was settling in the water, four open holes along the portside water line. It would not survive, he knew.

  But Wang also knew that its missile batteries were already empty, eight of the cruise missiles in the counterbarrage already on their way to the American fleet. He walked back to his ready room. The human decisions had been made; all he could do now was wait with composure.

  USS Zumwalt Ship Mission Center

  Simmons silently observed the video feed on one of the wall monitors displaying his father’s damage-control party rushing to apply what was essentially a bandage to the composite superstructure, covering up the missile impact point near the laser turret with epoxy. He knew what his father was thinking, that it was fortunate the stinging chemical binders were more powerful than whatever smells were wafting over from the sad stink of the America.

  “Sir, we’ve got sixty-plus targets incoming,” said the radar officer. “Flight profile of cruise missiles. Arrival within two minutes.”

  On another monitor, Simmons watched as a wounded sailor in a litter being carried across the void between the two hulls started to scream and wave his arms. The litter stopped and then reversed direction, pulled back toward the America. He couldn’t blame them. They knew what was coming for all of them, and he would have wanted to end his days on his own ship too.

  The Port Royal tossed lines and began to pull away from the America at flank speed.

  “Detach lines from the America?” asked Cortez

  “No, we’re staying here. America can’t take another hit; that’s our job now,” said Simmons. “That’s why I placed our damaged side on the interior.”

  The screen showed the Port Royal firing a long series of SM-3 missiles and then disappearing behind a cloud of brown smoke from its own weapons fire.

  “Captain, she fired off her entire magazine,” said the Zumwalt’s tactical action officer. “First intercept in twenty-five seconds.”

  “We’re back where we started, it seems,” said Simmons to Cortez. The XO knew he was referring to the attack they’d weathered together at Pearl Harbor.

  “Maybe they need to put us on different ships next time, sir,” said Cortez, offering a smile.

  “I’ll make sure of it,” said Simmons. “You’ll get your own ship after this.”

  “Splash seven bogeys,” said the radar officer, narrating the Port Royal’s progress in whittling down the enemy cruise missiles. As he spoke, he made gentle waving movements with his right arm, using a cuff on his forearm to switch between the system’s radar bands to cover all the incoming data.

  As the enemy’s missiles advanced closer, the various assault ships in range fired off medium- and short-range Seasparrow and Rolling Airframe missiles in hopes of plinking more of the cruise missiles.

  “Eleven enemy missiles left,” the radar officer reported.

  “ATHENA, full autonomous mode! Authorization Simmons, four, seven, Romeo, tango, delta,” said Simmons.

  The smallest weapons became the most important once again. On the Port Royal, the revolvi
ng 20 mm Gatling guns of the ship’s close-in weapons system added the metallic roar of a chainsaw biting into metal.

  On the Zumwalt, the undamaged laser-point defense turret fired steadily. The twin Metal Storm guns tracked the incoming missiles and fired another wall of bullets into their path. They pivoted, reactivated, and again fired off thousands of rounds in the time it took to clap your hands once.

  “Metal Storm magazines emptied. We’re out,” said the weapons officer. “Five incoming missiles left: two at us, two at Port Royal, and one’s split off for the San Antonio,” he said, indicating the closest of the amphibious ships they’d been trying to screen.

  “We could get your dad out on deck and have him throw up a screen of foul language,” said Cortez.

  Simmons looked at Cortez, taking in his relaxed demeanor. The XO became more poised as the situation worsened. Simmons realized that Cortez was the kind of officer he himself had always wanted to be.

  He reached out and gripped the young officer’s artificial arm. “It’s been an honor.”

  North of Oahu, Pacific Ocean

  Roscoe Coltan cursed at his raft for the hundredth time as it nearly swamped when he tried to get on his knees for a better view of the ships. He recognized the big one that looked like a jagged piece of metal as the Zumwalt, the fleet’s ugly duckling, he’d heard. It was tied up next to a mini–aircraft carrier that poured smoke into the air.

  In the distance there was the shriek of engines coming in low: cruise missiles. A flash of light as a Gatling gun of some kind fired from one of the other ships, an Aegis destroyer of some sort. Then the water all around him burst into hundreds of ripples. He didn’t know whether to cheer the weapons on or curse them until one of the missiles exploded.

  “Splash one, assholes!” Roscoe cheered.

  He stared at the silent Zumwalt, willing the ship to offer up some defense. “C’mon, brothers, do something!”