THE general quarters alarm rang on and on. Then cut off as abruptly as it had begun. Savo creaked like an aging carriage as she leaned into a slow turn.
Letting himself into CIC, Dan ran his gaze over the displays, the combat systems summary, the surface summary. On the far right, System Availability. Green across the board: SM-2s up, guns up, VLS, TLAM, Harpoon up, and Phalanx ready. But the weapons inventory was sobering. Savo had expended all her Harpoons. Her magazines held no more Sparrows, and only two Block 4 antimissile rounds. The seas were heavier tonight. The winds were increasing. The gun video showed the dead black of a night sea, the sparkle of stars. The forecastle camera was focused on the missing bow. The truncated, torn-up ground tackle was only just visible in the starlight.
On the rightmost display, the Aegis picture. As he sank into the command chair, tucking the worn blue plebe-issue bathrobe against the contact of bare skin with icy leather, a new constellation glittered at extreme range. Wenck and Terranova had their heads down at their console, palavering in low voices.
The callouts identified the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt battle group. The carrier. A cruiser. Three destroyers. And the replenishment ship that would refuel Savo before she and Curtis Wilbur headed back to Guam.
After that … it was out of his hands. For good, or ill.
“FDR’s three hundred miles away,” Singhe murmured, beside him. “Call sign of battle group commander is ‘Shangri-La.’ Ten, twelve hours out, if the seas don’t get any steeper, and they maintain speed.” From the strike officer, the familiar scent of sandalwood. From him, he was afraid, the reek of sleep, perspiration, and unwashed underwear.
“Okay, but why’d you sound GQ?”
“We received a launch cuing, Captain.”
“From where? All our satellites—”
“Not a satellite. From AWACS. Passed to us via the Slow Lead data link.”
“Dave got that set up? I never heard—”
Singhe blinked. “I believe he told you, yessir—”
Dan twisted in his seat, cutting her off. “Donnie? Chief Wenck?”
“Yessir, we’re lookin’ for it.” His and Terranova’s intent frowns, lit a jaundiced amber, hovered above the console.
“Where do they cue it to … okay, yeah.” He read the note, in Singhe’s handwriting, on a message log beside the red phone. The launch coordinates were far inland, in the Wuyi Mountains. Farther than he’d thought AWACS could reach. They must be at extreme altitude, max radiated power. Trying to fill the gap left by the loss of the satellites. Or else the allies had some other reconnaissance asset out there. Perhaps a high-altitude drone.
“Shifting to ALIS mode,” Wenck announced. “But it’s probably out of range.”
Dan took a last glance at the rightmost screen. “Put up the gun radar.”
Terranova’s soft voice: “All stations, Aegis control. Stand by … shift to BMD mode.”
The god’s-eye view vanished, succeeded, in the next blink of an eye, by the fanlike sector scan. The gun radar came up on the port display, providing at least a little local awareness. Dan felt naked without Stonecipher watching his back. But nothing threatened on either screen. Just the random freckle of terrain return from far inland. He flinched away as someone set coffee down next to him. When he looked up, it was Fang. The liaison’s shoulders sagged.
“Thanks, Chip. You bearing up?”
“Doing okay. Look like you need a jolt, Captain.”
Dan took a slug, monitoring the ALIS output on the rightmost display. The search beams clicked back and forth. The sea between Savo and the Chinese coast gave nothing back. The coastline came up clearly, outlined in honey yellow. Behind it, a variegated clutter of mountain return. To southward, a ghostly-faint return from northern Taiwan.
The display blanked, changed. “These coordinates,” Wenck announced at the same time the forward door creaked and someone else let himself in. Dan spared a quick glance. It was Dr. Noblos.
The man they’d just fingered as Savo’s resident rapist.
The scientist was in slacks and a homey-looking green cardigan sweater. His short white hair was brushed back. He leaned against the jamb with arms folded and chin up. “Those launch coordinates are out of your range,” he said, with an air of being glad to say so.
Dan said, “Can we get on it when it’s in range?”
“Doing that now, sir,” the Terror muttered.
The forward door creaked open again. Really, he had to get somebody to check out the hinges and seals. A noisy watertight door was one ready to fail. Savo was getting weary too. She deserved a spell in port. An overhaul.
A slight figure in blue coveralls slipped in. Noiselessly, it drifted to a corner opposite the scientist. Chief Toan, the “sheriff.” Keeping an eye on Noblos, as directed.
Dan shifted his attention back to the situation at hand. “Good on ya, Terror. Amy, any way we can get updates on the track via—”
“On it, Captain. Those go to ALIS automatically as they’re generated. This is just a slower data link than satcomm used to give us.”
“Understood.” He stared up at the screen, hands flat on the desk. Waiting for their cued target to come over the horizon, to where the radar could grab it.
“There it is,” Terranova murmured at the same moment Wenck said, “Locking on. Jeez. Like a bat outta hell.”
The brackets vibrated around a small, fast-moving white dot just off the coast. It clicked forward with each sweep, as if escapement-loaded. Headed toward Taiwan, but the altitude and speed from the swiftly climbing readouts told him, even in the absence yet of a predicted impact point, that it wasn’t aimed at the island itself. “Missile lock-on, designate contact Meteor Juliet. Going way too fast, too high, for Taipei,” Wenck called.
Singhe murmured, “Not coming our way, either. Azimuth’s too far south.”
Dan blew out and relaxed in his chair. Exchanged a relieved nod with Fang. “So … where is it aimed?”
Singhe typed, then studied her screen. “Someplace to the east. We’ll know in a couple of minutes. Once ALIS generates aim point.”
“Impact point. Not aim point. They’re different, Amy. Intent versus result. You hardly ever hit exactly where you aim.”
“Thank you, Captain. Correction noted.” She jotted something on her notepad.
Captain Fang lifted a headphone from one ear. “I have speed and altitude data from our Patriot battery. By voice.”
“Good. Can they take it?”
“No. They can track, feed us data, but they are out of missiles, Dan. As I told you? They were all expended countering the attacks.”
Why did everyone keep telling him they’d already told him things? Obviously, a conspiracy. To gaslight him. Or else he was missing stuff. He grunted, “Uh-huh, understand. Anybody got an ID?”
Terranova said, head down, “Seems to be a two-stager … we saw separation … but still, a pretty big return … could be a DF-21.”
“Intermediate range. Solid-fuel, two-stage, road-transported,” Chief Wenck added.
Dan leaned back and stretched, frowning. It was clearer with each second that the missile, still gaining altitude as it arched over the west coast of Taiwan, wasn’t headed for that island. But if not, where? Or was it just a threat, a demonstration, on the order of “your antimissile capabilities are exhausted; Taipei is helpless now”?
Noblos, bending next to him. “You haven’t figured it out yet, have you, Captain?”
Dan snapped, “If you have, Doctor, please enlighten us.”
The scientist leaned forward, over his shoulder, and tapped Dan’s keyboard. The screen jumped back.
Dan stared, his spine going rigid. The display jumped again, zooming away. Showing the missile’s extended track.
Pointed almost due east.
Three hundred miles to the southeast of Savo, four hundred miles east of Taiwan.
At the battle group. And even as he watched, an IPP blinked into existence on the rightmost display. An oval, outlined in blinking yellow. Quivering at the edges, like some invertebrate alien life-form not yet decided on its shape as ALIS calculated and recalculated ten times a second.
Centered over the far-flung circular formation of the oncoming carrier and its screening units.
“Pass to FDR, pass to Fleet, pass to PaCom. Flash red. Incoming ballistic missile, type unknown, possible DF-21.” But next to him, Singhe was already typing. He unsocketed his handset, waited for the red light, and went out on high-frequency Fleet Warning. “Shangri-La and all stations this net, Shangri-La and all stations this net: Flash, flash, flash. From Ringmaster. Ballistic-missile launch, targeted roughly 21 degrees, 46 minutes north, 123 degrees, 40 minutes east. Premliminary IPP, location Shangri-La. ETA one-one minutes. Flash. Flash.”
He repeated it, then signed off without waiting for acknowledgment. Swung to yell across the compartment, “Donnie, can we take it?”
“It’s a crossing engagement,” Noblos observed. “You’d be wasting your ordnance.”
“We only have two Block 4s left,” Singhe murmured.
“That’s FDR it’s targeted on, Amy. Remember, intel said they were deploying on an anticarrier weapon.” He pushed back and joined Wenck and Noblos as they huddled behind Terranova at the console. The chief looked worried. “Can we take it?” Dan asked again.
“Wait one … trying to get you an answer on that, Skipper. But the numbers aren’t good.”
Dan waited. Then, putting his revulsion aside, faced Noblos. “Doctor, we need your advice here.”
The bristly eyebrows lifted. “Really? I don’t see why. If you plan to throw your rounds away.”
Dan tried for patience. He gritted his teeth. “How to maximize our probability of kill. If we take this guy on. Anything we can do?”
“Oh. Absolutely.” The physicist nodded, all too smugly.
“Then what?”
“Be three hundred miles south of here.” The physicist smiled. “Short of that, all I can say is, remember, the Block 4 is a terminal-phase interceptor. It’s not designed for midcourse, in-space interception at the velocity and altitude this thing’s traveling at. If you shoot too soon, the sustainer will burn out before it gets up there.”
Noblos lifted his gaze to the overhead. “Your optimal intercept point will be the product of its closest slant-range point of approach to you. And long enough after it starts its descent so the terminal body still has enough fuel to maneuver to a collision. You can plot the vectors. A three-dimensional solution … On second thought, better let ALIS do that. Once your target crosses 125 degrees longitude, it’ll be traveling away from you. Converting from a crossing engagement to a tail chase. In which case, it will actually be moving faster than your own warhead.”
“I could have told you that, Dan,” Donnie Wenck said. His cheeks were flushed; his hair was pawed into a roostertail. “We don’t need this asshole to explain the obvious.”
“This, from the technician who doesn’t know how to tune for temperature differences across the array face.” Noblos smiled sadly, and shook his head. “Fools,” he whispered, just loud enough to be heard.
Dan slid between them, figuring Wenck was just hot enough to throw a punch. Not that he didn’t feel like it too, but … “Leave it. Leave it! Yeah, we’re just the button monkeys, Doctor. Help us out. Show us how it’s done.”
Noblos cleared his throat. With a superior smile, he leaned in to type rapidly on Terranova’s keyboard. His left hand came to rest on her shoulder. She looked up, and her eyes widened. Dan tensed, began to grab for it, but the hand removed itself to enter another command.
Noblos straightened. “There. They’ll still miss, but it’s the best you’re going to do.”
“Donnie. Terror. Does that look good to you?” As they nodded he called across the slanting space, “Amy, did FDR roger on our flash?”
“Yes sir. They rogered up. Asked if we could intercept.”
Terranova murmured, “ALIS is giving a probability of kill of less than ten percent.”
“Thanks, Terror.—Tell ’em we’re trying, but the odds are against it. Do what they can. It’s”—he eyed the screen—“eight minutes out. Prepare to engage.”
Singhe muttered, “Fire authorized?”
“Not just yet, Amy. Goddamn it, don’t hurry me!”
He regretted the outburst at once, but set it aside as the CIC officer laid a red-bindered book atop the console. Pointed to a subhead. “It’s probably just a warning shot,” the officer muttered.
“I’d say so too,” Singhe called across the compartment. “Just firing over our bow. They’d never dare…?”
Dan was inclined to agree, but couldn’t shake an ominous feeling. Zhang had threatened to take on anyone who intervened. Savo shuddered; she was slewing around, coming to a better launch bearing, a compromise between a course to clear the booster smoke and one that would smooth out her roll in these rougher seas. Theoretically, a Standard could exit its cell at up to a 15-degree angle. But the more nearly vertical, the less chance of a glitch or hang-up.
The salvo alarm began to ring, a steady drone far aft. “Now set material condition Circle William throughout the ship,” the 1MC announced. The vent dampers clunked closed, cutting off the air intakes from the exhaust plume, which seethed with toxic chemicals. The firing litany began.
Dan stood swaying as the deck slanted beneath his feet. He pressed his eyelids together and knuckled his eyeballs. Behind them fireworks bloomed. Coruscating scarlet and viridian shapes pulsated, migrating across the blackness of his visual field. Like the ionization trails that the warhead, traveling five or six miles a second, would shortly grow as it began its plunge, drilling down toward its target.
Time was running out. He tried to go over it again, to make sure he was right. Noblos said it was a waste. And they were his last two rounds. Despite his fatigue, his growing confusion, lack of sleep, he had to do this right.
Meteor Juliet, whatever payload it carried, whatever message it was meant to convey, was nearing midphase. The data callouts registered the unvarying speed consistent with ballistic flight. Coasting in a huge parabola, most of which lay outside Earth’s atmosphere. His Standards would be trying to intercept it there, before reentry. But despite its terrific speed, there was no friction heating in the vacuum of space. The missile was infrared-dim, though seeing it from the side, its radar cross section should make it visible to the seeker head.
Another plus: ALIS indicated a solid lock-on. Since Standards began their flights depending on commands from the launching ship, both rounds should go out boresighted on the target. Or, rather, that patch of imagined space ahead of it, where it should be when their courses met, far above the last wisps of air.
And yet a third reason for optimism: the upper stage would still be in one piece. Once reentry began, temperature would build. The warhead’s ablative sheathing would char off. The ionization plume would blur the radar return. At some point, also, the burnt-out engines would break apart into tumbling, burning debris. Sometimes releasing decoys, too.
If only the Patriot battery south of Taipei had had a couple of rounds left. They’d been in prime geometry for a boost-phase intercept.
On the very thin plus side, he didn’t have to worry about interference from another antimissile radar.
On this hand, on the other hand. But it didn’t really matter, did it? This was what a U.S. Navy cruiser was built for. Protecting the carrier. This time, though, he wasn’t being asked to throw his ship under the bus. Just expend his last rounds. However marginal their chances.
Singhe called, “One-minute warning. Fire gate selection. Launchers in ‘operate.’ Two-round salvo. Warning alarm sounded. Deselect all safeties and interlocks. Stand by to fire. On CO’s command.”
Dan crossed back to his desk. Bending past Fang, who was speaking urgently in Chinese on his net, he flicked up the cover over the Fire Auth switch. Even as it was tracking, ALIS was busily computing the probabilities of kill. He set his finger firmly on the switch, and snapped it to FIRE.
The bellow vibrated the stringers, the deckplates. A brilliant sun ignited on the previously black camera display, lighting the fantail, illuminating Savo’s wake, whipped-cream white against a heaving midnight sea. “Bird one away,” the combat systems coordinator announced. Another roar and rattle succeded it. “Bird two away.”
“That’s it,” Singhe breathed. “We’re shit out of Block 4s.”
Dan bent over the desk, watching the Aegis picture. Two symbols had departed Savo’s blue-circle-and-cross, heading south. He unsocketed the red phone again. “All stations this net, this is Ringmaster. Break. I have taken incoming missile with my last two Block 4 Standards. P-sub-K below ten percent. IPP remains centered over FDR strike group. Impact in six minutes. Over.”
When a hollow voice acknowledged, he signed off. Snapped to Singhe, “Make a separate report. Magazines empty except for antiair rounds and land-attack Tomahawk. No fish left. Full loadout of gun rounds remains. Increasing air activity over the mainland, north of Taiwan. Fuel state nearing critical. Awaiting orders.”
He lifted his gaze to meet Noblos’s. The scientist was leaning against the door again, his habitual station, elbows cupped in palms. He gave back a lazy, insolent smirk. Glanced at Terranova. Then back at Dan, still smiling.
Dan straightened, suddenly ignited with rage. Shit! Was this asshole laughing at him? Had he discovered the missing DVDs? The missing blade? Did he know they knew?
No. He couldn’t. Not yet. Noblos thought he was above suspicion. And, thanks to his equivocal status aboard, exempt from the Uniform Code. In international waters. Beyond prosecution.
But … fuck that! Dan gripped the back of his chair. He wouldn’t give up until, somehow, the guy paid for what he’d done. To Terranova. To his other victim, Celestina Colón. For the fear and distrust he’d spread between men and women. And not least, for his violation of Dan’s trust, and the duty and respect every sailor owed his shipmates.
“Stand by for intercept, salvo one,” the Terror muttered. “Stand by … now.”
They stared up at the screen.
The brackets, blue for own-ship missile, red for target warhead, nearly merged.
Nearly. But the blue bracket seemed to lag.
Then fell behind, altitude callouts dropping. Slowly at first, then quickly.
“Maneuvering burnout,” Wenck murmured, just loud enough to carry.
Noblos sniggered. Dan clenched his fists, but said nothing. Not yet.
ALIS’s lock-on faltered. The brackets winked off, then back on. They jittered before locking on again. A nimbus of ionized gas was forming, a ghostly halo circling the now-plunging warhead. “Juliet, starting terminal phase,” Terranova called.
The second set of brackets, where Aegis was tracking Savo’s other round, paced the speeding target for long seconds. The distance between them narrowed. Then held steady.
Then it, too, began to fall behind.
“Told you so,” Noblos said cheerfully. “Another five million down the drain.”
“I heard you, Bill,” Dan said. “I had to try.”
“Hey, it’s only money. And now you all get to go home! I understand. Believe me.” He chuckled. Waved a hand. Turned away, and undogged the forward door, before Dan could respond. The heavy steel protested as it came open, then thunked closed behind him. He didn’t bother to operate the dogging bar. Chief Wenck stepped over and, in one swift, violent chopping shove, sealed it behind the civilian.
“Permission to self-destroy,” Terranova said in a resigned voice.
Dan hesitated, wondering if it was necessary. If they shouldn’t just let the terminal stage drop, vanish, into the wastes of the far Pacific. Then nodded. It was just conceivable it might endanger some lone fishing vessel. “Granted, Terror. Self-destruct.”
“Mark, Meteor Juliet time on top,” Amarpeet Singhe said in a subdued voice.
The Aegis display flickered, then blanked. They blinked up at a Blue Screen of Death. “What just happened?” Dan said.
Wenck muttered, “Not sure … suddenly lost power out. Maybe that hinky driver-predriver blew. Shifting to backup.”
“Let’s get out of BMD mode. Go to normal air,” Dan ordered. He wanted a look around.
The screen came back on, but took several seconds to repopulate. The air activity over the mainland came up again, if possible, denser than before. It was concentrated opposite Okinawa now. Two U.S. F-15s were orbiting out in the strait, between Okinawa and Socotra Rock. Which, he recalled, the Chinese had just occupied.
“TAO, Radio.” The 21MC on the command desk.
“Go.”
“This is Radio. Dropped comms with Shangri-La.”
“This is the captain. What did you lose? Data link? Slow Lead?”
“All comms, Cap’n. Tried to reestablish on voice coordination. They’re not answering up.”
Dan told them to keep trying. He was double-clicking off when another station came up. “CIC, Bridge.”
“TAO, go,” Singhe said into the remote in front of her. Glancing at Dan.
“Something funny up here … lookouts report a flash way out on the horizon. Bearing relative zero three zero. Still kind of a fading glow out there.”
Dan glanced at the heading indicator, and converted the bearings in his head. To the southeast. The sun? He checked his Seiko. Too early. Their own self-destructing Standards? Not that small an explosion, that far away. “Bring up the aft camera.”
It came up almost at once. The horizon was clearly visible, jagged with the growing seas. But it shouldn’t be visible at all at this time of night. As they watched, the sky faded, very slowly, until all was dark again.
“What the hell,” Wenck muttered, “was that?”
Fang breathed, “It can’t be. Zhang’s mad. Insane.”
Dan gripped the edge of the command desk, breathing hard. Trying to keep it together. He clicked the Send lever again. “Radio, Captain. Any contact with the battle group yet?”
“Nothing heard, Skipper.”
“Keep trying. All circuits. Keep me advised.”
The Aegis screen jumped back, zoomed out. A patch of return shimmered. An elongated blob, where there’d been distinct contacts. Where six ships had steamed … “Ionization effects, bearing and range consistent with strike group,” the Terror pronounced tonelessly.
No one else said anything. Until Dan said, “Make a voice report. Navy red flash. Nuclear detonation report. You know the drill.”