Northern Fury- H-Hour

by Bart Gauvin

  A moment later, Funk heard a call from NORAD announce, “All stations, be advised, the BMEWS system reports no, I repeat no ICBM launches from the Soviet Union or anywhere else at this time.” BMEWS was the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, a network of sensors that watched the Soviet Union and the likely patrol areas of Soviet ballistic missile submarines for signs of missile launches. The fact that these sensors currently showed no signs of an attack was at least some small measure of good news. If the Soviets were keeping their ICBMs in their silos, maybe it won’t be Armageddon after all, thought Funk, just a war. Just a slower way to end the world.

  The next message from NORAD smashed whatever optimism the first message had garnered. “Be advised, cruise missile attacks are in progress all along both coasts. We currently have reports of missiles in the air off New York, Charleston, Savannah, Miami, Los Angeles, and Seattle.”

  Darkstar was partnered this morning with a pair of New York Air National Guard F-16A fighters, callsigns Jackpot Two-One and Two-Two, flying from Francis Gabreski Air National Guard Base in eastern Long Island. Funk quickly directed two more F-16s on the ground at Gabreski into the air and vectored the airborne Jackpot flight towards the most clustered groups of missiles. The fighters would never be able to get them all, Funk realized, despair creeping back in. If the missiles were nuclear, even one leaker would be catastrophic beyond imagination.

  The pilots of Jackpot Flight were tired. They’d been rousted from their beds at zero-two-thirty that morning and summoned to their home base at Hancock Field in Syracuse. Between getting to the airfield, sitting through their DEFCON Four mission briefing, flying down to Gabreski, and then flying what had been, until this moment, a boring dawn patrol over the Atlantic Ocean, the two pilots had been doing well just to stay awake in their cockpits. The DEFCON One warning a few minutes ago caused them to perk up, but neither man really believed that anything was going to happen. Not here. All the action was in Europe.

  Now those illusions lay shattered, and neither pilot was having any trouble staying awake. The two F-16s dove on afterburner in opposite directions to intercept missiles streaking towards the coast. Each fighter carried two medium-range AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided missiles as well as two short-range AIM-9 heat-seekers, which in theory gave each fighter the ability to down at least four of the incoming vampires though neither pilot would have enough time to accomplish this. All they could do was thin out the enemy weapons as much as possible.

  Jackpot Two-One fired first. He locked his radar onto the first of two missiles. Announcing, “Fox One!” as he squeezed the trigger on his sidestick, he loosed a Sparrow missile at a ninety-degree angle from the target, a dozen miles distant. The AIM-7 shot away, and the pilot watched its thin smoke trail curve to the right as it homed in on the larger Russian missile skimming the gray-blue wavetops ahead. Thirty seconds later, the pilot felt some satisfaction when he saw the small detonation of his missile followed a millisecond later by the much larger explosion of the Russian weapon.

  “Splash one!” The pilot was already locking his radar onto the second missile, but here was where the disadvantages of the semi-active radar homing—SARH—seeker of the Sparrow began to tell. The missile required the launching aircraft to “paint” the target with its own radar to provide the missile’s seeker a return to home in on. Thus, he could only engage one target at a time, as he could only get a radar “lock” on one object at a time. So even though his current targets didn’t maneuver or shoot back, Jackpot Two-One still required time to destroy each missile in succession, and time was something the supersonic vampires would not provide the American fliers. Two-One launched his second Sparrow, this time at a much closer range, and watched his missile streak seven miles and then explode, sending shards of shrapnel into a second Shipwreck missile.

  Only one more missile remained within easy range. Two-One dove towards it, trying to get his shorter ranged, heat-seeking Sidewinder to lock onto the target when suddenly the Russian missile intersected with a medium sized cargo ship that seemed to rise up ahead out of nowhere. The pilot in his single-minded focus hadn’t even noticed it. For a split second the ship seemed to absorb the aptly-named Shipwreck. Then the freighter’s deck heaved as smoke and fire shot out from every opening in the ship’s center.

  Jackpot Two-One pulled up on his stick and flashed over the stricken cargo ship now sitting in the center of a halo of white, heaving water. These missiles aren’t aimed at the City, he realized, only a little relieved. They’re targeting the shipping around the harbor!

  “Darkstar, this is Jackpot Two-One,” he called quickly, “I just saw one of the vampires blow away a ship. I say again, the vampire I was engaging just struck a ship, over.”

  The technicians on Darkstar watched as the missiles merged with slow-moving, ship-sized blips, resulting in momentary pulses on their radar screen. Two-One’s report provided confirmation.

  “Call NORAD,” said the lieutenant colonel. “Let them know that the attack does not, repeat, does not, appear to be nuclear. Make sure they understand that it looks like the targets are ships.”

  Funk’s thoughts turned to the burning and sinking ships beginning to multiply around the rectangular patch of Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island and east of New Jersey. “Get a warning out on all maritime frequencies about those missiles! Get Coast Guard on the horn they’ve a long day ahead of them.”

  CHAPTER 68

  0903 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1303 Zulu

  Aboard USCGC Dallas (WHEC 716), New York Bight, forty-five miles east of Monmouth, New Jersey

  THE OCEAN-GOING HAMILTON-CLASS cutter Dallas was just drawing parallel to the Finnish-flagged, Algerian-registered, Soviet-operated trawler SSV Kursagraf. The cutter’s helicopter had already been up circling the trawler for half an hour, though the intelligence ship hadn’t yet responded to any calls. The Dallas, her sleek lines resplendent in the white and red Coast Guard paint scheme, provided a striking contrast to the squat, ungainly-looking Kursagraf, which did a better job of imitating a porcupine than an ocean-going vessel, what with the forest of antennae that sprouted from bow to stern. With direction from Sandy Hook to use “whatever force necessary” to halt the Kursagraf, the crew of the Dallas had just put a shot from their deck gun across the trawler’s bow and were now training the gun, as well as several machineguns, on its bridge. A boarding party were pulling away from the cutter when the missile warning from Darkstar arrived.

  “What did he just say?” asked the cutter’s skipper.

  “I think he just said we have missiles inbound, sir,” answered a watch officer, the bewilderment in his voice matching the look on his captain’s face.

  “Radar!” called the captain, his volume rising with urgency, “what have you got on the scope?”

  “Just starting to pick something up now, Skipper,” responded the chief in charge of the cutter’s radars. “Two contacts I think. Hard to tell in the chop. They’re real low. Approaching from bearing nine-five-zero relative. Range is eight miles and closing fast!”

  The captain snatched up the hand-mic for his ship’s public address circuit, the 1MC, and announced, “All hands, battle stations air! Threat to the east! Warm up the Phalanx!” Then to his helmsman he ordered, “hard to starboard, all ahead flank. Try to put us on the west side of that trawler.” We might have just enough time, he thought. Dallas surged forward on the propulsion of her two powerful engines, the cutter’s bow angling from left to right across the trawler’s stern.

  “Range on the vampires now four miles, sir,” called the radar officer.

  “Battery release on the Phalanx!” ordered the skipper.

  The Phalanx, what the skipper had always thought of as an oversized R2D2 ever since he’d see the Star Wars films due to its radar housing, sitting above a black rotary cannon, homed in on the incoming Shipwreck missiles. In seconds the range to the missiles
dropped to three miles, then two. The Phalanx’s fire control computer, working autonomously to help its twenty-millimeter shells occupy the same moment of space and time as the incoming missiles, judged the time right to let loose a ripping seventy-five round-per-second burst.

  The cutter was just passing behind Kursagraf as the Phalanx fired. In that moment the radar picked up the antennae forest atop the intelligence trawler, causing the targeting computer to mistake the unexpected interference for a more proximate target. The cutter’s skipper saw the cannon slew wildly as it continued to fire. He watched the stream of white tracers and shells rake into the Kursagraf, in the process devouring many of the antennae occupying the rear of the trawler.

  What the skipper didn’t know was that with the destruction of the antennae, the fuzzy news broadcast occupying the screen of hundreds of thousands of television sets around coastal New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut suddenly disappeared. Unfortunately, this was the only positive result of the mis-targeted Phalanx system, which never managed to re-engage the oncoming missiles. Only two slugs ever connected with the lead missile, and these failed to destroy it. The two Shipwrecks struck with enormous violence.

  The missiles had been fired blindly and now struck blindly. The lead Shipwreck plowed into the Kursagraf, the huge missile crashing through bulkhead after bulkhead, ripping the small ship apart as it did so. Of small consolation for the crew was the fact that their countrymen’s missile malfunctioned, failing to detonate its huge warhead due to the damage caused by the Phalanx’s rounds. Instead of obliterating the small ship, the skipper from the Dallagraf, exiting into the sea on the trawler’s far side, leaving the small ship on fire and rapidly taking on water through jagged holes in both of its flanks.

  Dallas was less fortunate. In a flash the second weapon struck the fantail, burrowing into the cutter’s stern before detonating its warhead. The rear third of the Dallas blew apart under the force of over three quarters of a ton of high explosive. The blast wave washed over the bridge, shattering every one of the plate windows and knocking the captain and crew flat.

  After the roaring in the skipper’s ears began to die away he opened his eyes to see the deck in front of his face covered with broken glass and blood. Disoriented he grasped the ship’s wheel and shakily pulled himself up. Others were stirring, some groaning, others feeling with bloody hands at wounds.

  The captain grabbed at his dangling hand-mic, succeeding on his second try. He depressed the speak button and rasped, “Damage control. Report.” There was no response. After a second call yielded a similar result, the captain staggered out of the bridge and looked rearwards where he saw mangled wreckage engulfed in orange flames and black smoke. Worse, though, was what he felt beneath his feet. Dallas was settling rapidly by the stern. The captain made a snap decision, knowing then that his command wouldn’t remain afloat much longer.

  Staggering back into the shattered bridge, he ordered his stunned crew, “Give the order, all hands abandon ship!” He let that hang and then with the same immediacy said, “See if we can get a radio working to let Sandy Hook know what’s happened.”

  CHAPTER 69

  0907 EST, Sunday 13 February 1994

  1307 Zulu

  US Coast Guard Sandy Hook Station, Ft. Hancock, New Jersey

  “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY!” blared the radio in the watch center. “This is the African Ruby, we’ve had an explosion—”

  The radio distress calls from panicked civilian crewmembers echoed around the Sandy Hook watch center like repeating hammer blows.

  “Mayday, mayday! This is the Valley Road. We’re declaring an emergency!”

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Nasico Navigator!”

  The number of burning and sinking ships now stood at nine, each with its own tale of woe. We have thirteen souls on board…I don’t know where three of my people are…We are abandoning ship…Casualties…casualties…casualties…

  Commander Ingalls knew that the first mission of the Coast Guard was search and rescue, but this! How am I supposed to handle all of this? It was just so far beyond anything they had ever anticipated. Then: “Sandy Hook, Sandy Hook, this is Coast Guard Six-Five-Four-Three, over,” squawked the speaker. That was the callsign for the Dallas’ helicopter.

  “Go ahead, Four-Three,” the rescue officer answered, his tone was tense but wary. He wasn’t ready for any more bad news but, as a realist, he braced himself.

  “Sandy Hook, I am airborne and surveying by sight,” called the helicopter crew, “Dallas just took a missile and is going down fast by the stern. Rafts deployed, RHIBs conducting immediate rescue, boats in the water. That Russki intel trawler looks like it got hit too, not as bad, but it’s also sinking. Appears to be about fifteen crew, no lifeboat apparent. They are abandoning ship. Several of the people on deck are, well,” a pause and a cough, “I think they’re trying to surrender to me. Request instructions, over.”

  Stunned, Ingalls called out, “How many people aboard Dallas?”

  “Log says one-hundred-sixty-two,” someone answered.

  Ingalls paused. A maritime disaster of epic proportion was unfolding, and he had just lost the larger and more capable of the two cutters that could respond to the emergency. The rescuers would need rescuing. He reached over and grabbed the radio microphone on his desk and called to the helicopter, “Four-Three, what’s your fuel status? Are you armed, over?”

  “Unarmed. I can give forty-eight minutes on station,” answered the helo pilot. “I’ll plan to refuel at the Port Authority. Also, I have no rescue swimmer onboard. We left in a hurry, over.” The helicopter crew clearly had no intention of rescuing anyone but their shipmates.

  The watch commander took a moment to steady himself. All hell was breaking loose around the city, between the terrorist attacks, those weird television broadcasts, and now this massive missile strike on shipping outside the harbor. This was the start of World War Three. He needed to get control of what he could get control of and start doing what he could to save those people, some of them his people, out in the waters of the Atlantic on this frigid February morning.

  “Okay,” Ingalls’ raised voice commanding silence in the watch center. Once he had it, mostly, he said, “We’re starting this rescue operation right now. All hell is breaking loose back in the City and out there in the harbor, and this watch center,” he pointed an emphatic finger at the floor for emphasis, “is going to be the command post that puts thing back together.” Ingalls started issuing rapid-fire orders to his subordinates in turn. “Ops, start prioritizing wrecks by number of souls and proximity to rescue assets. Air, get on the horn to Gabreski. We need our birds in the air ten minutes ago!” A pair of Coast Guard C-130 Hercules rescue aircraft along with a pair of rescue helicopters were stationed at the Long Island air base. “The Hercs can drop bundles to the more distant wrecks. Tell them I want one to do a flyover of the Dallas…”

  The pilot of Jackpot Two-Two was vectoring onto a group of six missiles heading toward Providence, Rhode Island, with the lead two vampires on a slightly different vector than the other four.

  Deciding to split his fire between the two groups and engage at maximum range with his Sparrow missiles, he managed to kill the lead target in each group. He then started a turning dive onto the surviving Shipwrecks, but misjudged his speed and only managed to bring his nose onto the very last missile as it flashed by beneath him. A snapshot with a Sidewinder caught and exploded this trail weapon, but now he was flying too slowly to have any hope of catching the surviving three. Jackpot Two-Two’s fourth air-to-air missile hung uselessly on his left wingtip.

  Pulling slightly back on his sidestick to gain some altitude, he looked out over the gray water to see what these particular missiles were aiming for, and looking beyond the missile he saw in the distance the silhouettes of two ships. One of them looked to him like it bore the distinctive white and red paint scheme
of a Coast Guard vessel. The other ship was huge. Black hull, white superstructure, red smoke stack, oh my God.

  Dead ahead was the Cunard Line ocean liner RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, sailing twenty miles southeast of Montauk and inbound to New York City after a leisurely and luxurious Atlantic crossing. The small US Coast Guard cutter was keeping pace half a mile behind. Jackpot Two-Two screamed over the unfolding disaster, craning his neck to look down in horror as the first missile obliterated the Coast Guard cutter, which vanished in the center of an ugly dark gray cloud with an expanding ball of red-orange flame at its core. Tearing his eyes away from the patch of ocean where the cutter had been and turning his attention back to the massive cruise liner, the pilot watched helplessly as the next Shipwreck missile flew into the hull of the proud ship, exploding a millisecond later.

  Then his horror redoubled as second weapon ploughed into the cruise liner’s stern. Exploding one after another, the two eruptions wreathed the ocean liner in an ugly cloud of black smoke, white heaving water, and wisps of steam.

  The pilot circled back at an altitude of three thousand feet. Realizing that the missile chase on afterburner had eaten into his fuel reserves, he related what he was seeing to Darkstar as he turned for home. Coming around to the west he could see the broad sweep of New York Bay. The entire gray patch of ocean was dotted with pyres of oily black smoke.

  Ingalls was beginning to feel that they were making a start in rationalizing the unfolding disaster, making it at least feel manageable. Then the floor fell out.

  The air officer interrupted, “Sir, call from Darkstar.” The man was pale. “I think we lost another cutter, sir.”