“NOW flight quarters, flight quarters. All hands man your flight quarters stations. Stand clear topside aft of frame 315. Flight quarters.”
The echoes of the 1MC died. Dan sprawled in his bridge chair, boots up, foul weather jacket zipped snug to the throat, gazing out over an uneasy sea. As Savo Island nosed around to face the wind she rose, then plummeted, picking up a deep creaking pitch. The air had turned chill again, and all was gray; charcoal clouds pressing down on a sea like a herd of stampeding elephants, ruffled with streaks of white foam like dust blown off their great heaving backs.
No mark on that ever-changing, ever-unchanging surface testified to it, but they were on station at last. A misshapen arc thirty miles north to south and slightly narrower east to west, centered west and south of Tel Aviv. He watched the rounded neon numerals of the Fathometer rise with each flicker: 998; 1010; 1023. Crossing the thousand-meter line. The navigator and the chief quartermaster, Van Gogh, were having a muted argument at the far end of the bridge. A petty officer murmured into his handheld next to Dan. He was there to relay word from the helicopter control station aft, an armored, fireproofed mini–control tower set to one side of the squared-off flight deck.
“Bridge, Helo Control. From the pilot: Can we come fifteen to twenty degrees left. He’s got turbulence across the deck. We’re just about at the wind limit.”
Dark eyes gave Dan a level look; a sleek head inclined. Crossing to stand beside him, Lieutenant (jg) Noah Pardees murmured, “Skipper, range is clear to port. Closest contact fifteen hundred yards and opening. No other threatening CPAs.”
Pardees, the deck department officer, was even taller than Dan, and so West Coast laid-back and so very meager he seemed barely to inhabit his coveralls. Dan nodded. “How about that fuel-pressure caution light? And will we still be within ship motion limitations if the wind increases?”
The petty officer said, “They say they got that addressed, Captain. The caution light. Green board, ready to fly. On ship motion: remember they go by their onboard gyros, not ship’s inclinometers.”
“Okay … I guess. If they’re happy. What about this rain? Looks as if it could close in.”
“Scattered showers. And no problem if the wind comes up another ten knots. After that, could get dicey.”
Pardees murmured languidly, “That’s not in the fleet weather prediction, sir.”
“Bridge, Helo Control: Request green deck.”
Dan resisted the impulse to get down from his chair and check the radar one last time. Pardees had his binoculars up, peering out to port. The junior officer of the deck, little apple-cheeked Gene Mytsalo, was out on the wing. He had to trust. Trust the weather prediction, the pilots’ judgment, the mechanics who’d repaired the fuel pump or pressure switch or whatever had triggered the caution light. He was the captain, not God. The OOD lowered the glasses and shot him a glance. He nodded.
“Helo Control, OOD: Deck is green,” Pardees said into his Hydra.
“Green, aye … stand by.”
Dan gripped the arms of his chair, then made himself relax back into it. Feign serenity, at least, if he couldn’t actually achieve it. He’d seen a helicopter explode once, on its approach to the deck. Not a Sea Hawk; one of the older aircraft, a Sea Sprite. A good bird, despite the accidents, but the Navy had retired them when it got rid of the last Knox-class frigates.
At last the rising roar from aft, shifting to starboard, testified to the launch. “Red Hawk 202 away,” the petty officer relayed.
Red Hawk was the squadron name, 202 the airframe number. The slate-gray minke bulk of the aircraft, tilted slightly forward, swept past, vibrating the heavy shatterproof windows. A ghostly smoke-trail spinnereted behind it, pressed down by rotorwash but not dispersed. It shrank slowly, outbound, then banked left and tracked across their bow, in and out of the low scud of clouds.
“Navigator recommends continuing left to course one seven zero, and reducing speed to ten knots to commence port leg.”
“Very well,” Pardees said, turning away. “Left fifteen degrees rudder. Come to course one seven zero. Engines ahead two thirds; indicate fifty-five rpm at eighty percent pitch for ten knots.”
The orders and responses came and went, ebbing in the endless litany that had never, probably, been interrupted since the Phoenicians had begun voyaging across this very sea. Dan squinted, followed the aircraft until it became a speck, winking into and out of existence, until he couldn’t be sure he was actually seeing it any longer or only imagining it. Then it was gone.
And Goodroe with it. The iced-down remains were headed back to the task group, which would do a preliminary investigation—they had an MD and a fairly sophisticated operating room aboard the carrier—then ship it onward, via Italy and Germany, back to the States. He hadn’t heard any rumors about bad luck. Maybe the superstitions of the sea were vanishing along with so many other taboos; women aboard ship, for one thing. More and more, life at sea reflected life ashore. But sometimes he wasn’t sure that was an improvement.
His reflection stared back from the slanted bulletproof glass. He shook his head and bent to the morning traffic.
He’d signed off on the arrival message at 0600, assuring both CentCom and EuCom, and the subordinate commanders in the chain, including Jen Roald, that Savo Island had taken station at Ballistic Missile Oparea Adamantine. Now he looked at a response to that message—or no, its originating date time group meant it had been drafted before. It was from CentCom, a frag order—a modification to a previously issued op plan. Instead of operating alone, commanding officer Savo Island would command Task Group 161, made up of his own ship and a Los Angeles–class nuclear submarine, USS Pittsburgh. The sub would join tomorrow. Which meant it was speeding toward them now.
He flipped pages to the Early Bird, the daily Pentagon news summary. He’d asked Radio to print it out each day, and to forward it to Almarshadi to excerpt for the crew. Iraq had threatened again that if the U.S. attacked, the war would spread. This was getting to be old news. He’d heard it before, during the Gulf War. But as it turned out, it hadn’t been a bluff. Not then. He and a small team of Marines had only barely managed to abort mass destruction in the final minutes, deep beneath Baghdad.
He shook that memory off and read on. China was claiming several islands that up to then had been considered Philippine territory. A three-star Army general had been indicted for contract fraud. Two more Navy COs had been relieved. The reasons weren’t released, but he guessed sexual harassment or misconduct, since no collisions or groundings were mentioned. Terror attacks in northwestern India had killed seventy-five and wounded hundreds. The terrorists had been identified as Pakistani nationals, with an al-Qaeda–affiliated group in Waziristan. India had promised retaliation—
The bridge J-phone went off. Mytsalo flourished the handset. “Captain. Mr. Danenhower.”
The chief engineer wanted to know how long they’d be at this speed. “I’d like to water-wash one of the turbines, sir.”
“How long will you have it down?”
“Two hours to cool, maybe an hour to do the washdown and checks. Three hours?”
Dan searched the horizon. “We’re out here by our lonesomes, Bart. Be poking around this track for a while, I imagine. Do your maintenance. Leave one engine on each shaft.” He squinted across the pilothouse to see Pardees listening. He hoisted his eyebrows; the Californian nodded casually. “I notified the OOD. Go ahead.”
“Will do, Skipper.”
He hung up and leaned back again. Revisiting once more just why they were out here, and what he could expect.
Was it a bluff? Their presence here argued someone thought it wasn’t. The Iraqis had been under international sanction. But no one knew how far their military rebuilding had progressed. The administration thought they possessed weapons of mass destruction. That, after all, was the rationale for the attack. You could argue the ethics of preemptive war if you wanted, but he didn’t feel like it. As far as he and Savo were concerned, their mission was clear. Difficult … but clear.
He reread an article excerpted from Foreign Affairs. It pointed out that this invasion aimed to do something no government had ever tried before: destroy a regime that possessed weapons of mass destruction. In 1945, of course, only the United States had actually developed nuclear weapons. In the two cases since, where countries with WMDs had engaged in hostilities, both had been only skirmishes: China versus the Soviet Union along the Ussuri River, and India and Pakistan over Kargil. Both had been limited, and in neither case had a regime’s existence been threatened, as Saddam’s would be following a Coalition victory.
He frowned. If the administration feared whatever WMDs Iraq supposedly possessed enough to attack it, presumably its enemy would have no scruples about using these weapons when actually attacked.
Put that way, it made eminent sense to have Savo Island on guard.
He only hoped precautions were in place to protect the continental U.S., too.
“Good morning, sir.” Almarshadi, looking hangdog, as if he had to muster all his courage to speak at all. Dan returned the exec’s salute and accepted the papers he offered. He wished he could buck the XO up, give him whatever it was the guy was missing. The morning reports were summarized recaps of equipment status, what was broken and repair-time estimates. He flipped through, asked a couple of questions, then focused on the DSOT.
The Daily Systems Operability Test was a series of checks the computers ran on the missiles stowed beneath the hinged hatches of the vertical launch system. For a short period each day they were awakened and quizzed. The module they lived in was locked and sealed; no one entered alone, or without an officer present and a “screamer,” a CO2 detector, on his belt.
He’d looked into both the forward and aft modules during his initial inspection. The entryway was doored with heavy fireproof steel. The interior of the “cell” had two levels, with spidery metal catwalks between the missiles themselves. Dim and claustrophobic, it smelled of metal and rubber—unlike the gun magazines, with their heavy odors of alcohol and powder. The narrow gratings, so insubstantial one could look down past one’s boots to the bottom of the cell far below, labyrinthed banks of metal canisters packed so closely a fat man would have had to turn sideways to slide through. Harpoon, Standard, Tomahawk, Asroc, nestled in eight-celled miscegenation, their somnolent brains wired with black rubber-coated data and power cables. Those umbilicals were a primary point of failure. If their connections came loose, human beings lost comms with the missiles. And without comms, the proper firing permissions, they wouldn’t, of course, launch.
Failure to launch, when an enemy missile was coming in … he didn’t like to think about that. But the chief gunner’s mate had assured him the connections were tight. And any discontinuity or intermittent would show up on the daily tests. He hoped.
“It looks good. All rounds check out,” the XO offered.
Dan glanced at him, looked around: the same gray sky, the same featureless sea. “Okay, but what’s this? The SBC system?”
Almarshadi brightened. “That’s the space-based calibration system. See, we use Aegis to track space junk to calibrate the sensors.”
“And it’s down?”
“Not completely, but the signal rate return isn’t up to par. They’re checking it out.”
“And how about this … this flow rate sensor in the chill water system? I didn’t see that under engineering. It’s under Aegis too.”
“Yessir, that part of the chill water system cools the signal processor.”
Dan hitched himself erect in the chair. “Another cooling problem? I thought we checked all those systems out.”
“The hose connections, yes sir, we did. This is a flow sensor. Different issue.”
“Have we got people on it?”
“Yessir, the HTs. I’ll go down right after this, check on progress.”
Dan went down the list, not really reassured. Between software problems, the less-than-great Aegis team performance against their benchmarks, and the reduced redundancy because of the fire, he was less than confident Savo Island was fit for her mission, if called on to execute. No skipper wanted to fumble the ball. But failure in this case wouldn’t be like blowing an exercise. If he couldn’t goalie, civilians would die. “Have you talked to Dr. Noblos about our intercept team performance?”
“Uh, no sir. I know he’s been under the weather—”
“For how long now? I’d like to get our heads together. How about 09? In the unit commander’s cabin. I’d like the FCs and strike team there too. Let’s take this whole thing through the cleaners.”
Almarshadi said he’d set it up. Dan hesitated, still looking off to where he’d thought for a moment he’d seen a dash of white, like a periscope feather, breaking the surface. The sonar was still crying out every few seconds, but after their performance in the exercise he had less confidence in their ability to detect any subsurface threat. Still—and this lifted his spirits—having Pittsburgh around would give them more protection. Yeah, whoever had organized that, he was grateful.
“Okay, let’s get to it,” he told Almarshadi. He looked around one more time; at a gray sea, a spatter of rain that crackled across the windows. The boatswain went around turning on the wipers.
With a last glance at the lowering sky, he went below.
* * *
HE winced. The earsplitting shrill of the boatswain’s whistle had caught him in his cabin, logging on to high-side chat. “Now set the BMD watch,” the 1MC crackled. “Now set the BMD watch.” He hesitated, then closed the log-in and powered his terminal down. Pulled his foul-weather jacket off the hook where he’d hung it after coming down from the bridge. Stuck his pisscutter cap in the pocket, slid down two ladders, and cranked open the door to Combat.
All four large-screen displays were lit. The icy-aired, darkened space creaked as it pitched. Voices murmured as the first watch section took their seats.
Cheryl Staurulakis had drawn up a rubric for how they’d view graphic information for the antiballistic-missile mission. The surface plot, surrounding the ship close in, was up on the leftmost display. The air picture glowed in the center, reaching out three hundred miles into Syria, western Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Cyprus, that queerly shrunken simulacrum of the continental U.S., glittered to the north. A glance told him commercial air traffic was way down. “Business as usual” was coming to an end.
The rightmost display reproduced the outputs on the Aegis consoles. He watched the by now familiar above-the-horizon search beams clicking around. They passed over the flat sea without return, probed a clearly delineated coastline, then etched an eldritch green strewing of mountains. The elongated, depressed shadow of the Dead Sea curled like a fava bean. Past that glowed more mountains. Then the splotches disappeared; the beams flew straight, searching out over the featureless desert. An abyss from whence nothing returned, not even the strobing blips of commercial aircraft. Mordor.
He ran his attention over the displays, checking weapons inventory, combat systems summary, surface summary. On the far right, the summary of summaries, the System Availability. It was green across the board: SM-2s up, guns up, VLS, TLAM, Harpoon up, Phalanx up. A pip throbbed on the leftmost screen. Red Wolf 202, on its way back from the task force. “ETA on the helo, Matt?” he asked Mills, in the TAO’s seat.
“Estimate feet dry time five-zero.”
About twenty minutes. Dan sat watching for a few seconds more, then logged in to the high-side chat room for the task force. Most of the chatter seemed to be coming from the screen units. Only now and then did the carrier come up.
DCK CIC: showers coming your way
DYO CIC: haul over all hatch hoods
DCK CIC: ;)
PBG TAO: DYO pls lk at track 8934—see anything suspicious about that
DYO TAO: no looks like com air. Do you not have squawk??
TMN AO: let us know if you want a cap vector
A far cry from the clatter of signal lamps, the flutter of flags as they went up a hoist. He toggled among rooms; the task force, Sixth Fleet, then found what looked very much like the strike groups for Iraq. How different this was from the previous isolation at sea. Oddly enough, though, neither CentCom nor EuCom seemed to be up on chat.
Mills leaned over. “Permission to go into mode, sir.”
“Do it.”
Terranova’s all-too-youthful voice in his headphones. “All stations, Aegis control. Stand by for BMD mode … shift to BMD mode.”
Dan sucked air and sat up.
Wenck and Noblos and Staurulakis had all told him, and it made sense in terms of system resources. But seeing it suddenly bottleneck down on-screen was much more sobering.
Although the left two screens stayed the same, in a blink-fraction of a second the rightmost—Aegis’s view of the world—suddenly keyholed. From 360 degrees, they now had a cone of awareness maybe 5 degrees in width. Brawny as the SPY-1 was, the theater ballistic defense mission sucked down so much power that over 90 percent of the screen had just gone blank. Only a shade still echoed from the north-south mountain chain, fading as distance increased from the searchlight beam. He felt as if he’d been struck blind. “I don’t like this,” he murmured to Mills. “We’re losing all our long-range surveillance.”
“Yes sir. But we still have the gunlaying radar, and our surface search radar.”
Great, they were back to 1945. If a swarm of kamikazes attacked, they’d be peachy. A Syrian MiG-29 or Su-24, though … he could be clobbered from behind before they knew what hit them. He fidgeted in his seat, then got up and went over to Chief Wenck, at the console. “Donnie, there’s no middle ground? We’re just about totally fucking blind everywhere but where you’re looking.”
Wenck blew a lock of too-long blond hair off his forehead. He didn’t look disturbed. “Wussywug.”
“What?”
“What you see is what you get, sir. Only so much wattage to go out, so much processing power in the blades. We got Sea Whiz looking, right?”
“Yeah. And the gun. But everything else is shut down.”
“What you see,” the tech said again, a shrug in his voice.
Big help. Dan took another deep breath and sighed it out. Shit, oh dear.
“Flight quarters, flight quarters,” the 1MC announced as he was pulling on his jacket. Followed a moment later by the air-side controller calling out, “Helo control reports: Red Wolf 202 inbound, four souls onboard.”
It took a moment before this registered. He swung on his heel and stalked to the far side of the space, where the air picture consoles kept track of, among other things, their own helicopter. “I heard four souls,” he asked the petty officer, who removed one of his headphones politely.
“Yessir, Captain. That’s what the pilot reported.”
“There were three outbound. Pilot, ATO, sensor operator. And … well, three live souls. Why’s it four coming back?”
“I dunno, sir. I asked, but didn’t get an answer.”
“Tell them it’s me asking this time.”
“Helo in final approach,” the 1MC announced.
“Uh, I’d wait a couple minutes, sir, if it’s okay with you,” the controller said. “He’s got a lot on his plate right now. The pilot, I mean.”
“Sure. As soon as he’s got both wheels on deck.”
When Dan got back to his seat he realized he’d left his classified chat screen up. He’d been only a few steps away, but he logged off quickly, before anyone could notice. Then examined the rightmost display again. Damn. That eye could see so far, but only in such a narrow slice; all else was obscurity. Like the Norse god—Heimdall, Hendall, something like that—who could see a hundred leagues and hear the grass growing. Guarding the gates of Asgard, waiting to announce the battle that would end the world with a blast of his horn. Funny, how whenever any religion contemplated the End of Days, there was always a horn involved. Looking back at the Aegis display, he couldn’t shake his apprehension, as if something bad had to be lurking in that huge pie of unsearched space.
“Helo on deck. Secure from flight quarters. Now commence XO’s messing and berthing inspection.”
The helo control petty officer. “Sir, pilot on the horn for you. Click to thirteen.”
Dan fitted the headset on again, adjusted warm plastic, snapped to 13. To hear a voice he didn’t recognize. A young-sounding, eager male voice, with maybe a touch of somewhere in New England. “Captain? Is that you?”
“Yeah, this is Lenson. Who’s this?”
“Adam Ammermann, Captain.”
He blinked and massaged his forehead. Then checked the dial, wondering if he’d wandered in on some other frequency. “I’m sorry. Am I on the line with Red Hawk 202?”
“We’re shutting down, sir. Please secure that,” someone said in the background, maybe the copilot; and the voice said, “I’ve got to get off, I’ll be there shortly.”
Dan stared at the handset, then slowly put it down.
* * *
A tall, round-cheeked man with a slash of dark hair above an oval, open face swung down out of the chopper. He wore a Mae West over a blue blazer with a white button-down oxford shirt and a maroon tie with a repetitive pattern of small red … seals? His smile lit up the flight deck as he bounded toward Dan, palm outstretched, lurching as the deck tilted. “Captain Lennon? Dan Lennon?”
“The name’s Lenson.” Dan freed his hand as soon as he reasonably could and waved toward the hangar. “Let’s get clear of the flight deck, okay?”
“Right, right, Lenson. Adam Ammermann. Just call me Adam, please. Or, my friends call me Jars.”
Inside the hangar the maintenance crew stared. Dan led the guy out of the way as the hangar door clanged and began powering upward. Jars? “Look, Mr.… Ammermann, there’s obviously been some mix-up. This is a U.S. Navy warship. I assume you’re a reporter, or—”
“Oh, no.” Ammermann’s wide innocent face fell. He needed a shave. “They told me they’d notified you—you’d know I was coming. They didn’t? Look, I—”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Dan interrupted. It might not be the guy’s fault, but he didn’t have time for the press. He got the Hydra off his belt. “Bridge, this is the CO, back at the hangar. I need the master-at-arms here, right now. —Sir, I don’t mean to be unwelcoming, but we’re not exactly open to drop-ins. So I’m going to ask you to stand by here until we can get this aircraft refueled, and then—”
But Ammermann had drawn a paper from the blazer and was holding it out. Dan accepted it reluctantly. The letterhead was familiar: dark blue serifed font under the impressed seal. He looked up reluctantly to a forthright grin, teeth so perfect they had to have undergone long-term orthodontia, so white they must be capped. Only the five o’clock shadow marred the impression, and a whiff of sweat mixed with cologne. “The White House.”
“White House staff. Right.”
“You’re what … military?”
“Oh, no. You were military staff, right? Dr. Szerenci said you were.”
“You know Edward Szerenci? The national security adviser?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve met him several times. At least.”
The master-at-arms, out of breath. “You wanted me, Skipper?”
“Yeah. Just stand by a minute, Chief. —This letter doesn’t say anything about Savo Island, uh, Adam.”
“That was in the message. You didn’t get a message?”
Dan blew out. “Let me check. Meanwhile just stand by, all right? Go back aft, back there, out of the way.”
The crew chief. “We refueling, sir? Or putting her in the barn?”
“Just stand by. —Chief, escort Mr. Ammermann to the ready room.” He turned away, tried to shield his ears from the noise, and failed. He slammed the starboard door behind him and stalked forward along the main deck, until the engine whine receded enough so that he could get through on the Motorola. He asked Radio if there were any messages about an incoming political visitor, an Adam Ammermann.
“When would it have come in, Captain?”
“I don’t know. Can’t you do a global search or something?”
The radioman came back within sixty seconds. “Nothing under that name, sir.”
Dan pivoted on his heel.
Back in the hangar he nodded to the civilian, but spoke to the chief. “Chief, there’s obviously been some mix-up. Mr. Ammermann here must have been slated to go somewhere else. Somehow, the carrier put him on our helo. We’ve got a maintenance hold on the bird, so I’m going to place him in your custody until we figure out where he’s supposed to go and how we can help him on his way. That okay, sir? Sorry about this, but this kind of stuff does occasionally happen. In the Navy, like everywhere else.”
But Ammermann said earnestly, “Sure, but this is Savo Island, right? And you’re Lennon—I mean, Lenson? This is where I’m supposed to be.”
Dan studied him again. He didn’t look like anyone who ought to be drifting around the fleet. Or maybe, just like one of the young profs you occasionally saw in the College Afloat program. “What exactly are you supposed to be doing here, Adam?”
“Jars. Please. The message explains it. But since you don’t have that yet, well—I’m your liaison.”
The MAA looked from one of them to the other. “Liaison with who?” Dan asked.
“With you. Office of Public Liaison. I’ve got an ID.”
Dan scratched his chest as he examined it. He vaguely remembered Public Liaison from when he’d worked in the West Wing. They were fervent and ambitious but inexperienced and sometimes too full of themselves, and the military staffers had tried to avoid them whenever possible, especially since they tended to look down on anyone in uniform. Or at least they had during the previous administration.
“You’re absolutely sure it was Savo Island? Well, if you knew my name … Look, I’ll stash you in a stateroom until we figure this out. Okay? But until we do, I’m going to ask you to stay there. Don’t leave that cabin. We have a lot of high-voltage equipment and this is an industrial environment. We’re busy and we’re on a … Anyway, I just want you to stay put for the time being, okay?”
Ammermann said sure, absolutely, whatever Dan said. A crewman hustled over carrying an expensive-looking leather suitcase and a hanging bag. Dan drew Chief Toan aside. “Take him to the unit commander’s suite, and put somebody you trust on the door. I don’t want this dude wandering around. We still don’t really know who he is.”
“Gotcha, sir.”
“Be courteous. Get him coffee, put a movie on for him, but don’t let him roam unescorted. In fact, don’t let him out of the stateroom.” The chief nodded, and Dan forced an Official Smile at Ammermann, who was standing by his luggage. The staffer kept glancing from the suitcase to the chief. Only when it was perfectly obvious that no one else was going to pick it up did he make a little quirk of the mouth and bend for it. As he did so pens and a smart phone fell out of his jacket, bouncing away over the nonskid. The crew chief was on it in an instant, yelling, “FOD alert! Get this shit off the deck, ASAP!” and slamming a boot down on the phone as Ammermann winced and plastic cracked.
Dan almost smiled. But not quite. Then he was out of there, mind snapping to the next item on the day’s agenda.
* * *
THEY assembled in his in-port stateroom. Longley had coffee and doughnuts ready and Dan gestured everyone—Noblos and Wenck and Mills, Singhe and Terranova and Staurulakis, the major players in his Aegis team—to seats. Dr. Noblos looked worn and held a handkerchief to his nose; he sniffled. Terranova smiled down at the table with that inwardness, that passivity, he’d noted before, and grabbed for a doughnut. Wenck was humming to himself, some inaudible ditty that bounced his head back and forth as he plugged in a power supply and set up a notebook. Not for the first time, Dan wondered if there might be a touch of autism, Asperger’s or something like that, there. Mills blinked into space. He’d just come off watch and looked as if his head were still in Combat. Staurulakis sat pale, calm, composed, compact, ready for anything. While Singhe, perfectly pressed, perfectly coiffed, smiled at him, deep brown eyes seeming to convey more than any whisper could. Sandalwood perfume drifted across the table. The strike officer wasn’t really part of the TBMD team. But maybe the more brainpower they poured on this, the better.
He cleared his throat. “All right, I asked everyone here to iron out any hard spots now that the watch is set in ABM mode. I guess I’ll ask Chief Wenck … or, maybe better, Dr. Noblos to start the recap.”
The physicist coughed. He said in a hoarse voice, “I assume you’re calling this to check our timelines and geometry?”
“Maybe start with an overview, Doctor.”
Noblos smiled tightly. “I’ll make it as … simple as I can, then.
“Savo Island’s mission is to maintain station once hostilities begin, in surveillance and track mode, ready to intercept any ballistic missile fired within a radius of three hundred miles. The obvious enemy is Iraq, the extended-range Scud they call the Al-Husayn, though Iran’s also on the threat axis and within range. If the firing point is from western Iraq, we’ll have a near zero angle of attack on the incoming missile from here.
“We’ll probably acquire either via handoff from AWACS or cuing from Obsidian Glint. Aegis will develop a track, compute intercept trajectory, and initialize. We have a limited inventory. Four Block 4A Theater Defense rounds. The missile will perform a built-in system test, match parameters, and fire itself. This must occur no later than eight minutes after the target launch.”
The scientist coughed. “After firing and in flight, the SM-2 establishes communication with the ship. The booster will burn out, and separate. The solid-fuel dual-thrust motor will ignite. Aegis keeps transmitting midcourse guidance through the third-stage motor burn, taking the warhead above the atmosphere. The kill vehicle will apogee three hundred twenty-five kilometers up at approximately fifteen thousand miles an hour. Terminal long-wave infrared guidance will take it to final impact.
“If, that is, all goes as planned.” Noblos blinked bloodshot orbs at the overhead. “Limiting factors are the low round loadout, marginal crew training, marginal software function, and limited backup amplifier and power-out equipment. I have to be honest. The best possible outcome would be if we never have to fire. Because I don’t think you’re ready to detect, track, and discriminate well enough to achieve mission success.”
Dan said as evenly as he could, “Thanks for the recap, Doctor, and for keeping it … comprehensible. Matt, what can you add?”
Mills spoke through his hands, which were clamped over his face. “Well, Dr. Noblos has pointed out most of the hard spots. But the cooling system and the calibration are question marks too. I have more confidence in Donnie and the Terror’s tracking team than the Doc seems to. But the geometry’s going to govern everything, and it’s the one variable we can maybe get some more traction on. So I printed this out.”
He passed out pages, and Dan studied his copy. A map of the Levantine, with a blurry infinity or sideways figure-eight pattern overlaid between the east Med and western Iraq. The left lobe of the lazy eight was much smaller than the right.
Mills said, “Over here to the left is our assigned box. You can see we have a pretty small footprint to jockey around in. We’re going to have to watch the intel very closely. If we get launch indications farther south in Iraq”—he rocked his fingers in a seesaw—“we’ll want to move north. And vice versa. The more we can minimize the sideways velocity vectors, the bigger the error basket we give ourselves.”
“Bigger, or smaller?” Dan asked. “I’m not sure I—”
Staurulakis said, “Think of it as a funnel, Skipper. The narrow end’s what we have to get the missile into. That’s the error basket. The kill vehicle has its own little steering thrusters, once the infrared seeker locks on. That’s the open end of the funnel. But there’s only a limited amount of maneuverability after burnout.”
Mills added, “Don’t forget, it’s going two miles a second by then. We have to get our bird into that funnel, as Cheryl calls it, so the seeker can track and discriminate for a hit-to-kill. The closer to a nose-on meeting we can manage, the bigger that basket will be, and the better chance we’ll hit it.”
Dan said, “Okay, let’s assume we hit the, uh, the error basket. What’s P-sub-K after that? Probability of kill?”
Noblos took that one. “For the warhead itself, if it gets out there and is positioned right, and the target’s within its maneuverability envelope, P-sub-K will be around .8. Or so. But that’s to impact. Actual PK on an incoming warhead also depends on what kind of target we get, unitary or separating. If the airframe detaches from the warhead, for example, as reentry starts, you get two targets and possibly other debris as well. There’s some discrimination built into the seeker, but it’s not foolproof.”
“Overall?” Dan asked quietly.
“Probably about .5.”
He sucked air. Even odds were not so good when you had only four missiles. They could look, shoot, look, shoot, but at a closing rate of fifteen thousand miles an hour they’d have no time for a second try. “Can we fire two-round salvos?”
“Depends on the geometry.” Noblos’s grin was diabolical, until he grabbed a napkin and sneezed.
Nobody else said anything, and after a moment Dan nodded to Wenck. “Okay, Donnie, you’re coming in at this pretty much from the outside. What’re you seeing that we’ve all missed?”
The newly minted chief had been riffing on his keyboard all through the discussion. Now he rotated it to display a chart of the eastern Med. A sea-tinted teardrop faced its blunt end toward Damascus. The tapered tail extended far to the west, almost to Greece. He drawled, “A little different take on what Mr. Mills just presented. This blue patch is our defended area, against a missile from western Iraq.” He pivoted the screen so all could see in turn.
“According to that, most of the area we can defend is behind us,” Dan said.
“Right, but there’s nothing we can do about that. It’s just the way the intercept geometry works. Actually our optimal location would be about a hundred miles inland. But it means two things. First, we have a real narrow footprint we can launch from, to have much chance of making an intercept. Second, we’ve got to push that footprint in as close to shore as possible. The closer in, the better we can cover our defended area. However, we have to stay fairly far north, too. Unfortunately—”
“That puts us very close to Syrian waters,” Staurulakis finished.
Wenck nodded. “Yes ma’am. The closer inshore we get, the bigger the hoop on that basket we’re trying to hit. But you’re right.”
The operations officer murmured, “The Syrians are trying to figure out which way to jump in this war anyway. We probably don’t want to be their excuse to jump the wrong way.”
“Hey, if they do, we’ll just lick their shit too,” Wenck put in.
Dan winced—it was an unfortunate choice of words—and glanced at him. “Donnie, that’s good. Clarifies the problem. Anything else? Any way we can make things easier for our tracking team? Give them some kind of advantage?” He made sure not to look at Terranova as he said this.
Wenck blinked and pushed his cowlick back. “Hey, everybody seems to think there’s a bunch of dummies on that console. It’s not Beth’s fault. This is a new system. New software. But the training package is all old shit; all she got was the beta development notes. Wanna know why? Some dickhead in the missile-development agency cut their funds off. They need billions for some supersmart kinetic-energy warhead, so they cut all the funding for training. The Terror here, she had to make half of it up herself.”
Noblos started to object, spluttering; Dan held up a palm. “Okay, okay! Maybe a little less finger-pointing and more listening here? We have a lot of constraints and not much wiggle room. Two things worry me, and they’re related. What Cheryl pointed out—Syria considers the area where we’d most like to be, to successfully intercept, as its territorial waters. Allied to that is ship self-defense. Petty Officer Terranova told me, but it didn’t really hit home until today, how vulnerable we are in BMD mode.”
Mills said, “We’re really almost blind against other threats.”
Dan nodded. “Right; such as antiship missiles fired from Syria. Or by Hamas or Hezbollah, from Lebanon. Intel says they might have some Iranian C-802s.”
Staurulakis murmured, “C-band search radar. Seventy-five-mile range. Sea skimmer; possible midcourse correction via data link; radar terminal homing.”
Dan said, “Mount one of those on a truck, and that could be a real headache, if we’re not looking right at southeast Beirut when they launch. We need to be ready to either jam it, decoy it, or shoot it down.”
Wenck looked up with that dreamy stare he got sometimes. “What?” Dan asked him.
“If it’s got a data link, maybe we could convince it it’s off course. Send it someplace we aren’t.”
“Spoof it? Good, look into that. And we haven’t even mentioned the problem with the Patriot battery at Ben Gurion.”
“Plus there’s Israel’s own ABM system,” Noblos said.
“Right … Arrow. If both Aegis and Patriot lock onto an incoming missile, and Arrow, too, we could all jam each other up good.” Dan told the table at large, “I’ve kicked that one up to the commodore, but we still don’t have any coordination with the Israel Defense Forces.”
A sharp double rap; they all looked toward the door. “Come in,” Dan called. It opened on the chief radioman, carrying a clipboard. He grinned uncomfortably. “Just a sec,” Dan said. “I want to finish my train of thought here.”
“Captain, this is the message you wanted.”
Dan frowned; what message had he “wanted”? Unless it was a personal from Blair. But he’d cut off e-mail to the crew; he could hardly stay in contact himself. Unless something had happened at home. “Just a sec,” he muttered. Then went on, turning back to their expectant expressions. “So, serious challenges. I want us to concentrate on those two things. One, how do we defend ourselves while Aegis is focused on looking inland—Matt, Cheryl, see what the two of you can work out. Two, how do we minimize interference with the Israelis, both Patriot and Arrow. Donnie, you and Bill work that issue.”
“Freq-hop at the lower end of their spectrum, maybe,” the chief said.
“Look into it. I need a recommendation. Petty Officer Terranova, brief me on your watch setup and any way we can destress your watchstanders. We could be out here awhile. I want them to be able to sleep. They’ve got to be fresh when they’re in front of that screen. The rest of the ship’s here to support them, so I don’t want them pulled off for any other duties.” He started to slap the table, but caught himself.
Noblos rose first and made for the door. The comm chief brushed past him and came toward Dan, holding out the clipboard. “The message you were looking for, sir,” he said again, not meeting Dan’s eye. “Sent late yesterday. Marked routine. So it didn’t actually come in until just now.”
Dan ran his eye down the headers, to the text.
PARA 2 (C): WH STAFFER ADAM ALONSO AMMERMANN ENRTE USS SAVO ISLAND. PURPOSE: SHIP VISIT AND LIAISON WITH CTG 161 IRO CURRENT OPERATIONS. NO HONORS. SAVO ISLAND PROVIDE BERTHING/MESSING 0-7 EQUIVALENT.
He lifted the Hydra to his mouth. “Chief Toan, CO here. —Hey, Matt, can you stand by a second?”
“Sure, sir.” Mills halted by the door.
“CMA here, sir. Over.”
“Mr. Ammermann. In the in-port commander’s stateroom?”
“Yes sir. With one of my boys on the door. Just like you said.”
“Okay, good. Tell him—tell Mr. Ammermann his clearance message came through. Take the guard off, and tell him he’s welcome in the wardroom for evening meal. But we’re going to have to talk about access, and so on.”
He remembered more now about Public Liaison. They’d been mainly young campaign workers, or sons or daughters of major donors and political confidants. After a short orientation, the White House chief of staff, or at least someone in that office, sent them out to embed in various federal agencies. They weren’t actually appointees, since they weren’t subject to the confirmation process. He wasn’t even sure they were paid. You could see them as sort of political commissars, but that might be taking them more seriously than they warranted.
* * *
Minutes later he was in the unit commander’s suite pouring coffee for Ammermann, who’d taken off his tie and was half-reclining on the settee reading the message. When he looked up Dan said, “Apparently somebody made an error, sent it routine. and it got delayed en route. That happens sometimes, when there’s a lot of traffic. I apologize.”
“A lot of message traffic? Why’s that?”
Dan started to explain, then hesitated. Could he really not know? And if he didn’t … “Look, that says you’re on your way, but it doesn’t give me a clearance level. And we’re … pretty busy right now, meeting our operational commitments. What exactly is it I can do for you, Jars?”
The staffer’s expression went earnest again, the way it had been on the flight deck. He threw the clipboard aside. “Apology accepted, Captain. I’m not the kind of guy who stands on ceremony. But it’s not what you can do for me. I’m here to help you. Direct liaison between you and the White House.”
“Um, correct me if I’m wrong, but my chain of command goes up through the CNO. Then the Joint Chiefs, since Goldwater-Nichols, anyway. Then to the SecDef.”
Ammermann nodded eagerly, as if Dan had just made his main point for him. “And that takes how long? Ages, right? And this is an important mission, as I understand it.”
Dan said carefully, “What exactly do you understand about our mission, Adam?”
“You’re here as our first ballistic missile defense deployment. To protect Israel when the war goes hot.”
Dan noted the when, not if. “No chance of a settlement? I was reading about some kind of ultimatum.”
The staffer shrugged. “We’re giving him forty-eight hours to leave, but he’s not going to. We’re going to liberate the Iraqi people, and destroy Ba’athism forever. It won’t take long. Their generals are already reaching out to us.” He took out a pack of Salems and a black Zippo. Offered them. “You smoke?”
Dan shook his head. “Outside the skin of the ship, please. Most of our smokers go up in the breakers. That’s forward, port and starboard on the main deck.”
Ammermann looked at the pack, clicked the cover on and off the lighter a couple of times, but at last set them aside. “I have some news you might find useful, Captain. About this war we have to fight. Iraq has an uprated missile. Two days ago, DIA told seventy-five senators in closed session that Iraq can attack the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. with biological or chemical weapons.”
As Dan poured himself the last dregs of warm coffee a darkness like an advancing thunderhead shaded his mood. Remembering the bioweapons his team had found during the Signal Mirror mission. Most of that team hadn’t come home. Of those who had, some had died from the virulent strain of smallpox Dr. Fayzah al-Syori had weaponized. If the Iraqis had regenerated stocks of that virus, and built even one missile with intercontinental range … He didn’t want to imagine the consequences. Still … “Just having a supposedly uprated missile doesn’t mean a weapon’s operational.”
“We don’t want to take that chance. I know you’re married to a member of the former administration, Captain. And you served in the White House under Bob De Bari. Your sympathies may not be with this political team. But you have to believe we’ve got the best interests of the country in mind.”
Dan rubbed the old scar on his ear. A souvenir of Saddam’s Mukhbarat. He couldn’t argue with that; if any regime could be trusted with such a weapon, Iraq’s brutal and reckless dictatorship wasn’t it. But he wasn’t convinced he needed “help”—which usually translated to questions, objections, guidance, and second-guessing—from the political side. “If that’s true, what’re we doing here? We should be on station off Atlantic City.”
“Because that’s not your mission, Captain. We have that taken care of.” Ammermann leaned back, put the cigarette in his mouth, but didn’t light it. He smiled.
A brief silence, interrupted by a beep from Dan’s Hydra. The bridge reported a crossing contact. Electronic intelligence identified it as a merchant. Dan told the OOD to maintain course, but to slow and let the other ship pass ahead. He signed off and met Ammermann’s gaze again. “So you’re my liaison. With the president, you say.”
“Exactly right, Captain. Whatever you need, I’m here to help.”
“Well, I’ll have one of my people get with you about some spare parts. At the moment, though, that’s the only thing I can think of you can help with. Also, Adam, we just don’t have a lot of room, or excess personnel to escort you around. Or, to be frank, the command attention—from me personally—that I’m certain you deserve. I’m going to berth you in here. This is where the commodore stays when he’s aboard … or she. It’s the best accommodation I have. But I’m going to ask permission to offload you back to the task force, or to a safe location ashore, at the first opportunity.”
Ammermann cocked his head, still smiling. “You’re the captain. The way it was explained to me—well, the president himself, if he was aboard, you’d still give the orders.”
“Okay then. Let me know if you need anything else.” Dan got up. Ammermann jumped to his feet too, held out a hand. Dan had to shake it. Only as he was closing the door did he catch the soft rasp of the cigarette lighter behind him. And the soft breath of a relaxed exhalation.