by James Rosone
Captain King gave the admiral a pensive look that said it was a gamble. While the Thomas Gates was a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, she had also been pulled out of mothballs and given a hasty upgrade to make her seaworthy. There were a lot of concerns about her targeting computer’s ability to properly slave and integrate the air-defense weapons of the fleet’s destroyers and frigates. In normal times, none of them would have questioned this decision. They would have had a system in place where the cruiser would have taken over and immediately engaged the enemy threats with the fleet’s missiles.
Admiral Lindal made eye contact with King. He must have seen her nervous look, but he straightened up. “Permission granted,” he ordered. “Have the Gates take control of the air-defense systems immediately. Tell Captain Tappal he’d better take those threats out.”
Captain King felt nervous, but she gritted her teeth and went about her job.
“I wish I had as much optimism as Lindal,” she thought. Then she realized that the admiral had known Captain Tappal for a long time and most likely trusted him to report any potential problems before now.
She turned to her air boss. “Captain Adel, is there any possible way we can get some aircraft in the air? I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of missiles being thrown at us soon.”
The CAG looked at her for a second and then at the weather screen and readings. “I’d advise against it, Captain, but I’ll ask for volunteers. Are you thinking of a Growler flight?”
“Yes, I want to get as many of our Growlers in the air as possible. I know the weather’s terrible, but my gut says there’s at least one or two Oscars out there that are about to make life tough for us. With the Queen Elizabeth and the Charles de Gaulle sitting still while they assess their damage, I want to make sure we have some electronic countermeasure assets airborne.”
No sooner had she finished her sentence than the lieutenant commander who oversaw their air-defense system shouted again. “Vampires, Vampires!”
She turned to look at the radar display. As she watched, she saw the original six anti-ship missiles headed toward the fleet suddenly turn into forty new contacts. Before she had any time to figure out what had happened, a second wave of twenty missiles appeared from a new heading and suddenly split into sixty missiles, further throwing her off.
“What the hell is happening, Commander Lipton? How are these missiles multiplying?” Captain King asked, confused.
“They aren’t multiplying,” answered Lipton. “They’re projecting decoys to throw off our defenses.” The irritation in his voice showed just how angry he was at the Russians for employing this new trick.
Minutes went by as they observed the fleet’s missile interceptors start to converge on the enemy threats. One by one, the enemy missile count was starting to go down, though they were still getting close to the fleet. The British and French warships now joined the fray, firing the next round of interceptors. Once the enemy missiles reached forty kilometers from the fleet, they increased speed as they headed in for the kill. The targeting computers were still struggling with determining which missiles were ghosts and which ones were in fact missiles, so interceptors were being launched at each contact, just to make sure.
As the enemy remaining missiles zoomed into the last layer of defense, a new set of missile contacts showed up on the screen.
“Those must be more ghost contacts. There’s no way an enemy missile could travel that fast,” Captain King thought. Her eyes grew wider as the targeting data showed that the new threats were traveling at speeds of Mach 5.2. At that rate, they would close the distance between them very rapidly.
She turned to face her watch commander. “Where are these missiles coming from? And tell me that’s not their true speed,” she demanded.
Commander Lipton didn’t say anything.
Admiral Lindal picked up a receiver near him. “Tappal?” he confirmed. After the slightest of pauses, he yelled, “Tell me those missiles aren’t traveling at Mach 5.2!”
Captain King saw Admiral Lindal hit the speaker button so everyone could hear the answer.
There was no response on the other end for a few seconds, but everyone could hear a fair bit of shouting and loud voices in the background. “Those speeds are accurate, Admiral.,” Tappal finally said. “They appear to have come from the Bear Island vicinity, or at least that’s our best guess. I didn’t think the Russians had deployed them yet, but these must be the new Zircon missiles. They can travel at speeds in excess of Mach 5 and carry a 2,500-pound warhead.”
Captain King suddenly felt nauseous.
“Tell me you can shoot them down or have a plan to deal with them,” demanded the admiral.
“The two Growlers you guys just launched, we’re going to try and see if they can jam the missiles until they hit our defensive perimeter,” said Captain Tappal. He paused. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Admiral, we’ll get one shot at taking them before they come in range of our point defenses. Once they enter that zone, I’m not confident our systems will swat them down. I’d prepare the fleet to absorb some hits, Sir.” His voice sounded bleak.
Admiral Lindal sighed. “Do what you can,” he answered. “Hopefully, this is the only barrage they have.”
Just as Captain King thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, the initial wave of hypersonic cruise missiles was suddenly joined by a second, and then a third wave that were rapidly closing the distance between them.
Turning to the watch commander, the admiral asked, “Did we sustain any hits from the first barrage of missiles?”
Commander Lipton replied, “A couple. One of the frigates took a direct hit. The ship is still afloat, though she has a serious fire to her aft section. Two of the destroyers were hit. None fatally. I’m more concerned by this new set of missiles. I don’t think we’ve ever encountered something like this. I have no idea if we’re going to be able to shoot them down.”
Minutes ticked by as they watched the Growlers use their ECM jammers on the missiles in an effort to help confuse and blind them from the hundreds of interceptors heading toward them. When the first wave of interceptors converged on the hypersonic missiles, they scored a number of hits, but of the forty missiles in the first wave, thirty-two continued on. Then the second wave of interceptors converged, and another ten more missiles were destroyed. At this point, the Zircons were traveling so fast that they were on the fleet before a third wave of interceptors could be fired, and it was now up to the point defense systems to do their job.
Dozens upon dozens of RIM-116 and ESSM missiles from the carriers, destroyers, and frigates joined the fray, adding hundreds of additional interceptors, all trying to stop the hypersonic threats from hitting the fleet. Fractions of a second later, the Phalanx CIWS guns joined in.
“Brace for impact!” yelled someone in the CIC. Seconds later, the ship shook violently, throwing several sailors to the ground who were not strapped in. A thunderous boom reverberated throughout the ship.
“Damage report!” yelled Captain King.
Before anyone could respond to her, the CIWS opened fire a second time. The next wave of hypersonic missiles had already begun to arrive.
“Brace for impact!” someone else yelled.
Thud!
The ship lurched as another missile hit their carrier. The lights flickered off briefly, creating a moment of panic before they switched back on.
Captain King had been thrown the floor and hit something on her way down that temporarily knocked the wind out of her. She watched Admiral Lindal help himself back up from the deck and walked over to one of the action officers. “What’s the status of the fleet?” he asked.
From her perch on the floor, King could clearly see the look of fear written on the young lieutenant’s face.
“This is probably his first time being shot at,” she realized. It was an unnerving experience, one she wished they were not going through right now.
The lieutenant examined his computer scree
n, which was being refreshed with the status of each ship in the fleet. Although she couldn’t see very much from the floor, Captain King did note that there were several names highlighted in red and many more in yellow.
The young lieutenant answered, “Three ships have been destroyed, Sir. I’m showing fifteen more with damage. We’ll get the actual damage report on how bad they are soon.”
“What about the carriers? How many were hit?” Admiral Lindal demanded.
One of the petty officers tried to use the external cameras to see if they could spot any of the carriers and see if they had any visible damage. “Sir,” he said, “while the winds from the storm have died down the past hour, the rain is still heavy. There’s enough of a mist that it’s difficult to get any clean images. From what I can see, there are a lot of fires in all directions around us.”
“Satellites are back up!” yelled one of the petty officers manning the air-defense system. Bad weather had been interfering with their reception for several hours.
Captain King finally managed to catch her breath and went about the task of getting a damage assessment of the ship. However, she also kept her ears open to overhear what was going on at Admiral Lindal’s end. She managed to pick up that the enemy ships were making best speed to the coastline, and heard Lindal order, “Send a message out to the fleet to engage the enemy ships with our Tomahawks. I want those ships destroyed.”
A few moments later, Admiral Lindal walked over to join her. “Captain, satellites are back up. We’ve identified the location of the enemy fleet. Can you get your birds in the air to finish them off?” he asked.
Captain King looked at the admiral and shook her head. “We’re a no for further flight operations, Admiral. One of those missiles hit the hangar deck. We’ve also got one of the catapults down right now, and the port-side elevator is out. More reports are coming in now, and it looks like we took a lot of damage to the aircraft down there as well.”
“This isn’t good. How many casualties?” he asked.
King tried to stay strong and keep her composure as she responded, “No idea just yet, but it’s going to be high, Sir.”
Captain Adel interrupted them. “Ma’am, I’ve got four F/A-18s that were already on the flight deck before the attack. We can launch them now if you want,” he said.
She nodded, and the CAG ordered the fighters launched. They’d link up with the others that had already been able get airborne and go after whatever Russian ships remained after the Tomahawks did their job.
*******
Admiral Lindal thanked Captain King and then moved over to his action officers. “Have the Tomahawks launched yet?” he asked.
Chief Morris looked up at him. “The Ramage and Cole are launching their missiles now. However, Sir, the Laboon was sunk, and so were the Carney and the Gonzalez.”
“My God, that was sixty percent of our Tomahawk capability,” Admiral Lindal thought. He suddenly realized just how many sailors had perished at sea. He shook himself—there wasn’t time to dwell on it. He could mourn the dead later.
Changing subjects, Lindal ordered, “Give me the battle damage assessment of the fleet.”
A senior chief spoke up. “Sir, the Charles de Gaulle is gone. She was nearly dead in the water when the hypersonic missiles converged on the fleet, so she had no way of being able to maneuver. She took nine direct hits, several to her magazine rooms. Once her missiles and bombs started to go off, she completely blew up. I don’t know how, but both the Italian and Spanish carriers sustained only minor damage from the first cruise missile attack by the Russian subs. They are moving to try and conduct search and rescue operations of the ships that have been sunk.”
Admiral Lindal shook his head. This was not good.
The senior chief continued his report. “The Queen Elizabeth appears to have taken seven hits. I’m honestly not sure if she’s going to make it. She’s almost completely ablaze, though the rain does appear to be helping to tamper down the fires. Who knows, maybe the cruddy weather might actually save the ship by putting out some of the fires. The Kitty Hawk is going down. She hasn’t sunk yet, but she’s burning out of control. I spoke with someone from their CIC a few minutes ago, and he said the captain had given the order to abandon ship. They took a hit to engineering, and they were already having problems with two of their boilers. When the missiles arrived, one of them hit just at the waterline in the engineering section. Aside from the blast tearing the place up, once the icy waters hit the boiler room, everything exploded. It blew the aft and lower section of the ship wide open.”
As if to add emphasis to what he was saying, the senior chief pulled up a camera feed that showed the Kitty Hawk. Admiral Lindal crossed his arms in frustration. Not only was a good portion of the Kitty Hawk on fire, but the aft section of the ship was sinking—nearly the entire bow of the ship was raised out of the water.
“How about the Kennedy?” asked Lindal.
“No damage,” said the senior chief. “I don’t know how, but they didn’t take a single a hit.” He paused a moment. “Sir, I know this doesn’t bring any of our guys back, but the Russians fired 120 of those hypersonic missiles at us. Only 46 of them actually scored hits. Without the Growlers we launched prior to the attack and some seriously fancy shooting by the Gates, the Brits, and French destroyers, this could have been a bloodbath. Plus, none of the troop transports or amphibious assault ships sustained any damage.”
Admiral Lindal grunted and uncrossed his arms. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it, Senior. You guys did a good job through all of this.”
Lindal patted the senior chief on the shoulder, then walked over to the workstation he had been occupying and sat down for a second. He needed to collect his thoughts before he phoned back to higher headquarters to let them know what had happened.
He rested his head on his hands. “It’s going to take a while to scoop up the survivors,” he thought. However, he realized that at the end of the day, despite the loss of ships, they would still be able to carry on with their original mission. This war was going to end, and the troops they were escorting were going to make it happen.
Winter Warfare
Moscow, Russia
Looking outside his office window, Petrov saw that the snowfall that had started out as a light dusting that morning was starting to pick up pace into a full-blown winter storm.
“It’s beautiful watching the snow drift down like this across the city,” he thought, almost nostalgically. He allowed himself a couple of minutes to just let go of the world around him. For a moment he forgot the weight of the war, which was beginning to become like a millstone around his neck.
That burden had become a constant drone in his mind as of late. The Americans had again rejected Minister Kozlov’s latest peace proposal, further limiting Russia’s options to end this war on his terms. This new American president was hellbent on finishing the work his predecessor had started.
The nagging thoughts came back. “We were so certain that the elimination of President Gates would lead to a cooler-headed president,” he groaned to himself. He had been absolutely convinced that Foss would see reason and end the war to stem the threat of a major nuclear conflict. “Well, if the Americans believe I will simply surrender power and my country, they have another thing coming,” he thought as he clenched his fist. Russia still possessed over five thousand nuclear weapons, and he was not afraid to use them given the right conditions.
After looking at the report from yesterday’s naval battle in the Barents Sea, Petrov had begun to think very hard about authorizing the release of a tactical nuclear strike against the Allied naval task force before it reached his shores. The sinking of three Allied aircraft carriers was nothing short of spectacular, but more than half of the new hypersonic missiles were jammed and unable to hit their targets. He was still irate that the engineers had been wrong in their assessment that the new Zircon missiles would not be susceptible to jamming.
“Had all of those mi
ssiles hit their targets, the Allied fleet would have been defeated,” he mourned.
His senior leadership had conflicting opinions about what to do next. Admiral Anatoly Petrukhin, the Head of the Navy, had requested permission to hit the Allied fleet with several nuclear weapons before they offloaded their troops, but General Egorkin had objected strongly to this idea, even offering his resignation if he authorized the strike. Egorkin’s logic had been very simple—if the Russians used these weapons against the Allied fleet, the Allies would use them against his ground forces. With no Russian Navy left to speak of, it would be his forces that would bear the retaliation.
“Egorkin does have a point,” Petrov thought as he continued his inner conflict about what to do next. The Russian Army still held on to Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia. If several of their formations were nuked, it could cause the entire front line to collapse.
Knock, knock, knock.
Petrov turned away from the window and the falling snow and saw his aide standing near the doorway, letting him know that it was time to head over to the morning meeting. He grunted slightly as he got up from his chair, beginning to feel every bit his sixty-two years of age.
He followed his aide down the hallway until they entered the briefing room. Everyone in attendance snapped to attention. He signaled for them to take their seats as he made his way to the center of the table.
He nodded first toward his admiral; he thought he’d let him lead off with the morning brief. Petrukhin obliged. “Mr. President, last night, the Allied fleet in the Barents Sea hit our naval facility in and around Murmansk with 160 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Our missile defense system was able to shoot down 54 of the missiles. Unfortunately, most of the naval facility has been rendered useless and destroyed. We had thought the Allies would leave them intact, hoping to secure them with a ground invasion—we had expected to battle them on land and had planned accordingly. Once they destroyed the facility, we noticed the fleet was not slowing down to take up positions offshore. Rather, the fleet continued at top speed, and it now appears the Allied fleet is actually heading into the White Sea. This is a guess, but we believe the fleet is going to land their ground forces at Severodvinsk and will then move on Arkhangelsk.”
