A HEART-STOPPING pause, during which the toxic-gas-vent dampers whunked shut. Dan tensed, hunched, finger still on the switch. Wait … had he inserted the Fire Auth key? Yes, he had. The steel chain lay close to his hand. But was ALIS going to initiate? Or were they already too late?
The endless moment stretched.
Then a roar vibrated through the hull. “Bird one away,” Mills intoned. A pause, then a second roar. “… Bird two away. Firing complete.”
On the LSD two small bright symbols detached from the circle-and-cross of Savo Island’s own-ship. Morphing into blue semicircles, they headed rapidly inshore, leaping ahead with incredible speed from sweep to sweep of the Aegis spokes. They were already at full speed, almost four kilometers a second, as the dual-thrust motors of the first stage boosted them into exoatmospheric flight.
Dan blew out, with a strange sense of déjà vu. He’d dreamed this, years before, though he couldn’t recall exactly where. Which meant something, he wasn’t sure what. Maybe that time didn’t exist, or that it all existed at once …
He scrubbed his face, trying to deny fatigue. “Matt, get a message out. Short and sweet, but make it clear we stood by until we were certain the TPI was over a population center. Ten Block 4s remaining. Continuing on station, but fuel state critical.”
“Coffee? Just made a fresh pot.” Chief Zotcher set a mug by his elbow. The heavy Victory style, with the ship’s crest on one side and a sonar system logo on the other.
“Uh … thanks. But, Chief, I’d rather have you nailed to that screen. That emitter’s still out there. And there’s gotta be a sub attached to it.”
“We got our best young eyes on it, Captain.”
Dan forced himself to his feet and carried the mug over to the EW stack. He inspected the screen over the operator’s shoulder. “That Snoop Tray, day before yesterday … no, day before that. Nothing since?”
“Nothing radiating out there, Captain.”
“How about from shore?”
The EW petty officer said there was intense air activity over the Pakistani naval air base nearest them. “A major attack. Heavy jamming, AA radars, and the cryppies are reporting a lot of air-to-air chatter.”
Dan regarded it for a few seconds, then was drawn irresistibly back to the large-screen displays. He’d been away less than a minute, but the blue semicircles of Savo’s outgoing rounds were already closing in on the red caret-symbol of the target. He gripped the back of his chair, hardly daring to breathe. “Stand by for intercept,” said Wenck, words eerily uttered at the very same moment by Terranova, baritone and soprano, an ominous duet. “Stand by…”
The symbols met. Aegis’s lock-on brackets jerked, apparently snagging its own terminal vehicle momentarily instead of the target, then recentered. Dan leaned forward.
The radar return blurred, widening, elongating. A second later it began to pulse, then all at once glowed much more brightly.
“Intercept,” Wenck called from the Aegis console. “That winking is rotating debris. The debris is spreading … spreading out … ionization trail growing … it’s burning up.”
The radar return showed what Dan assumed was the smaller debris field left from the explosion of the Block 4’s warhead. Not a gigantic payload, but anything hitting at fifteen thousand miles an hour carried a punch. The Ghauri was single-stage. Its payload remained integral with the airframe, like the old V-2. Once it was destabilized, they could depend on the atmosphere and its own speed to tear it apart. As he watched, the speeding dart of their second round hit as well. The radar return expanded suddenly to five times its previous size, like a bursting firework. Then, slowly, faded.
“Payload detonation,” Wenck intoned. “Both Standards connected.”
The CIC crew rose at their consoles, cheering, clapping. The trail faded, widened, glittered, as the lock-on brackets began to hunt back and forth, uncertain what to lock onto. ALIS’s eagle eye continued to show ever-tinier pieces of debris, the blaze of ionization as they turned to metal gas. But there was no longer a central contact.
He stayed hunched forward, watching the last fading falling sparklings. Then blinked slowly. Even as the vent dampers clunked open, and the air-conditioning whooshed back on, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this it wasn’t over. Not at all.
It had only begun.
* * *
THE morning resumed. Longley brought up scrambled eggs and toast and limp too-pink ham, but Dan only picked at it, then set it aside to slide up and down the command table until it dove off during a bad roll. Savo set flight quarters, nosed around into the wind, and launched Red Hawk to relieve Mitscher’s SH-60. The ETs came down every half hour with updates from Mumbai news. And the high-side chat was still up, so he was getting DIA analysis, press releases, and reports on the UN’s efforts to arrange a cease-fire. But they weren’t getting anything from Pakistan, and Mumbai seemed limited to reporting bellicose statements rather than actual news.
Of course, in the middle of a war, no one knew what was happening. No news agency had reported on the Jodhpur missile, making him wonder if the Indians had even detected it. So far, there’d been no official notice.
He sucked a breath. Maybe, just maybe, the Indians hadn’t detected it. If so, and it was a signal, intercepting it had been exactly the wrong thing to do. If one side thought it had sent a warning, and the other didn’t respond, what was the natural conclusion? That the warning had been brushed aside.
He shivered at the most chilling thought yet: that Savo’s presence, and his attempt to protect innocents, might lead to escalation.
But that was speculation. The one clear fact was that Indian armor had achieved a massive breakthrough. Eight battle groups, over a thousand tanks, had penetrated the Pakistani lines in both the north and the south, and the remaining Pak army was being enveloped. The Indians had speeded up their advances toward Multan and Sukkur. The BBC, which still had reporters in Karachi, reported a government source as saying the Indians’ lead elements were across the Indus and racing for the capital.
He wanted to put his head back, catch a few seconds’ rest, but instead called up a geo of Pakistan. He was no master of ground strategy, but this looked familiar. Two breakthroughs, near the country’s narrow waist. Once they reached the river, the forces could wheel toward each other. When they met, they’d seal the remnants of Pakistan’s forces between them and isolate the capital. Islamabad would have to sue for peace.
Cheryl was in the TAO seat, giving Mills and Branscombe a break. Dan knuckled his eyes, wishing he could massage his brain. Or put his head on a pillow. But if he was responsible, he wanted to be physically in the seat. He sighed and called up his traffic.
Routine, routine. One requested further data on his Iranians, and recommended that he isolate all three, instead of just Shah. He hesitated—the others hadn’t given the slightest trouble—then forwarded the message to Chief Toan, asking him to take the others into custody as well. It wouldn’t mean any additional manpower; they had to keep a guard on the breaker anyway. He had to get rid of them. Innocent, guilty, whatever, they had no business aboard. He scratched furiously at what felt like bugs burrowing under his scalp. And he hadn’t taken anything stronger than caffeine.
At 0900 GCCS came back up, all at once, pouring data over the leftmost LSD. “Freeze it and save, in case it goes down again,” Dan told the exec. Her manicured nails tapped keys as he studied it. Two great salients pointed west. The southernmost had almost reached the river. Another Indian air strike was returning from a Pak air base west of Sukkur. In ruins now, no doubt, runway cratered, hangars demolished, fuel burning, aircraft wrecked and shot up. He glanced to where Singhe sat, headphones to her ears, running a scenario for her strike team. The screenlight lit a downturned scowl.
He zoomed out, looking for anything from the ASW tracking and fire control system. The closest subs were a French unit in the Arabian Sea … and, sending his eyebrows up, two Chinese nuclear attack boats transiting the Malacca Strait westbound.
But what struck the eye was a vacancy. Most shipping, particularly tanker traffic to and from the oil-rich Gulf, stuck to a hundred-mile-wide bottleneck at nine degrees latitude, north of the Maldives and south of Cardamom, before going on to round the southern tip of India and then Sri Lanka. The whole time they’d been in the IO, ships had been spaced along this route. A few were still headed east, but only two now lay between the Lakshadweep Islands and Socotra, and six off the Horn of Africa. But when he looked at the course/speed readouts, two of those were headed south, not west—diverted to other destinations. The sole remaining vessels headed east were all Chinese-flagged.
“Sea-lanes are emptying,” Cheryl muttered, beside him. “In response to the Indo-Pak conflict?”
Dan reared back, speaking to the black-painted overhead. “That shouldn’t stop international energy traffic. And I don’t like the looks of those subs coming through Malacca. That’s one of the redlines the Indians always drew: a Chinese nuke in the IO, they go to full alert.” He rubbed his face. “Uh, I’ve had my head in this for the last twenty-four. How’s our crew doing? And we’re getting desperate on fuel. I don’t want to have to hoist our bedsheets and sail back, like that sub in the twenties. Never mind, I gotta get with CHENG on that. But how are we holding up otherwise?”
Staurulakis shook her head. “We’re keeping stations manned, but we’re losing our edge. People were tired going into condition three. Half of ’em are still recovering from the crud, then we dumped all those man-hours for steam-cleaning on them. We’re tasking the watchstanders, the ETs, and the Engineering people hard, and we can’t keep Red Hawk up four on and four off for long.”
“Right, Stafer’s got maintenance issues too.”
Staurulakis muttered, “I’m concerned about you, too, sir.”
“I’m all right. Never mind about me. Stick to the crew.”
“Well, then, they’re in a steep decline in operational readiness. And we still haven’t heard back if we’re actually still supposed to be here.” The exec picked at her lip, frowning; the skin around her eyes looked translucent, almost green. “You never saw anything about our taking down the Jodhpur strike?”
“The Indians didn’t release that there was a strike. And I haven’t seen anything responding to our shoot-down report.”
Dan got on the Hydra for a discussion with Danenhower. The chief engineer reported soberly that they were already below 30 percent fuel. “We’re squeezing her tits down here, but the bridge keeps upping turns. What’s with that?”
“Probably just maintaining steerageway, Bart. Below five knots, every one of these heavy seas pushes the bow downwind. And we’re powering only one screw. That makes it even harder. Nothing else we can do? Shut down housekeeping?”
The CHENG said glumly that it wouldn’t make much difference. “Most of that comes off the waste heat boilers anyway. If we shut down the radars, though—”
“Not possible, Bart.”
“Then there’s not much more I can do. My question is, at what point do we turn and run for Al Hadd?”
Dan swapped quizzical glances with the exec. “Al Hadd … what’s Al Hadd?”
“The closest possible fuel point,” Danenhower said patiently. “There’s a commercial airfield there. They’ll have jet A1. It’s not milspec, but we can burn it. Four hundred and twenty nautical miles. If we leave now, we might make it before we suck the last tank dry.”
Dan clicked to acknowledge, catching Staurulakis’s pointed glance too. He hadn’t realized they were that close to bingo fuel. Which triggered a thought: “How about our helo gas? We can burn JP-5 in the LM-2500s, can’t we?”
Danenhower said sure, JP-5 was just an eight-cent-a-gallon-more-expensive version of Navy distillate, with a lower flash point. “But there’s not that much left of that, either. Maybe a day’s worth. After that, we’re gonna have to hang off the stern and kick our feet.”
Dan signed off. He was twisting his neck when a half-familiar voice said, “Is that giving you pain?”
“Hello, Doc. Old injury.”
Leo Schell squatted at his side, bringing his face close to Dan’s left elbow. In that position, with his voice lowered, it was impossible anyone else could hear the major’s murmur. “How’re you doing, Captain?”
“Still here, Doctor.”
“What I’m hearing makes me wonder.”
“Oh yeah?” Dan hitched up in his chair, suddenly angry. “What the fuck is it you’re hearing? That we’re parked in a war zone without clear orders? Exactly … what?”
A steadying hand on his arm. “Take it easy. Easy! When’s the last time you got any sleep?”
“I don’t know what business that is of yours. And who’s telling you I’m no longer fit to command?”
Schell tilted his head. “Actually … you’re the first to say anything remotely like that. Which is interesting, don’t you think?”
Dan gripped the desk edge. “Who’s feeding you this bullshit? Who’ve you been talking to?”
“I’d be breaking confidence to say.”
“And I’m ordering you to tell me.”
“I must refuse to do so, Captain. Remember, I’m not under your command.”
“Wrong, Major. Anyone on my ship’s under my command.”
“Listen to yourself.” Schell stood. Shifted a hand to Dan’s shoulder. “Some free medical advice? Don’t push yourself too hard. Or when your people really need you, you won’t be there for them.”
* * *
THE really bad news arrived that afternoon. Around lunchtime, the EWs reported increased radar and jamming, associated with a major Pakistani strike package out of the air base at Peshawar. Dan followed it southward. Over thirty aircraft. They avoided Indian interceptors forward-staged over the border, doglegged west, angled back east. Then crossed the battle lines south of Multan.
Twenty minutes later a Navy red flash message forwarded a CIA appreciation that “national sensor assets” had indicated detonation of three or possibly four kiloton-range nuclear devices in south central Pakistan.
“It’s started,” Mills murmured.
Dan blinked, coming out of a daze. Maybe Schell had a point. “Matt. Where are we? I mean, what’s our status?”
“In our oparea. Speed six. Course three-one-zero. Two Block 4As active and green. Aegis at 92 percent. Mitscher riding shotgun. Red Hawk in the air, currently to seaward monitoring sonobuoy laydown.”
“Uh-huh. Okay. The Iranians … where are they?”
Mills dropped his gaze. “Iranians, sir? You mean the prisoners, in the breaker?”
“No, no. Never mind. Just a little brain fart, for a minute. I meant Indians. Indians and Pakistanis.” He got up and paced, digging fingernails into eye sockets, from the gun fire control console aft to the tactical data coordinator station at the forward end of the compartment. The rubber-covered metal plates grated under his boots. Savo rolled, and something cracked far away, eased with a metallic moan, cracked again. Not more fractures, he hoped.
Sleep backed away a step. Was he being stupid? Cheryl was qualified to command. No man could stay alert forever. He could take an hour. Put his head down and close his eyes … He fought it back once more and grunted, “Why the hell did this have to start on our watch?”
“We did all we could,” Mills said, watching him with an expression Dan didn’t much like. “Hey, Skipper, you okay? You look … tired. Sure you don’t want to take a break? I can handle it here.”
“Sure you can. I know. I just can’t be out of the loop right now.”
“Yes sir.” The operations officer returned his attention to his terminal.
Wenck, at his elbow, pushed a lined tablet toward him. “Don’t fucking poke me with that,” Dan snapped. “What is it?”
“Just took it down. Mumbai television. You might want to look.”
He scanned it with irritated apathy, then bewilderment. The Indian minister of defense had released the information that a ballistic missile had been fired at the city of Jodhpur. It had disintegrated during descent, but enough radioactive debris had been recovered to make clear it had carried a nuclear warhead. The Indian government had announced this to make clear that their actions henceforth would be undertaken in retribution.
“Zero kudos to us for shooting it down,” Wenck observed.
“A lot gets overlooked in war, Donnie,” Dan told him. “And to be fair, they might not even know it was us. But this isn’t good. They’re saying the gloves are off. From here on, anything goes. And it’s interesting they’re withholding the news about the Pakistani nuclear strike on their armored forces.”
Terranova called over her console, “Ya think it really was a nuke that we shot down? Sir?”
“Dunno, Terror. But that’s what the Indians are saying.”
Another ET came through the door from forward. Wenck bent to listen, then turned to Dan. “They’re putting that out now. On Mumbai news. Three air bursts, over the 33rd Armored Division. No numbers yet, but heavy casualties.”
Dan sagged into the chair, the realization hitting at last through the fatigue and apathy. It had started. The first theater nuclear war. Not in Europe, the way everyone had expected during the Cold War, or even on the Korean Peninsula, but on the subcontinent.
After all, not unlike the war that had started in the Balkans, with the assassination of an Austrian archduke.
* * *
HE was still trying to take it in when the cuing signal chimed. Mills read off from his screen, “‘Defense Support Program Sat detected launch bloom, Thar Desert.’”
“Cuing, Obsidian Glint,” Terranova called. “Suspected launch.”
On the LSD, she steered the beam to the location the satellite had just downloaded. It clicked back and forth, searching desert, then quivered as the brackets snapped on, snagging the dot that had suddenly materialized at the center. “Pefect fucking handoff,” Wenck muttered. “Doesn’t get any sweeter than that.”
Terranova stated, “Profile plot, Meteor Bravo. Matches alert script. Matches cuing. Altitude, angels fifty. Correlates with Indian Agni medium-range ballistic missile. In boost phase. Designate hostile?”
Dan nodded. “Make it so.” He picked up the red phone again. Tried it. Then hit the worn lever of the 21MC. “Radio, Combat. Why isn’t the satcomm syncing?”
“You heard it, right? It almost syncs, at first. But then there’s like a microsecond delay that cuts in. That scrambles the rest of the transmission?”
“Okay, so where’s the problem? Can you retune?”
The voice turned patronizing. “It’s not a tuning issue, Captain. It’s like there’s an extra bit in the transmission somehow? Anyway, it’s not on our end. Sir.”
“I’ve got to talk to Fleet. There’s no way to get through?”
“Not on a covered circuit. We checked with Mitscher. Their RTs can’t break it either. Which means it’s on the transmitting end, or somewhere in between.”
Dan double-clicked off, and caught a worried glance from Mills. “Captain … you planning to take this one, too?”
He didn’t answer right away. Squinted up at the LSD. But a silhouette loomed between him and the displays. A tall, angular, birdlike silhouette.
Dr. Noblos’s. The Johns Hopkins rider was professorial in slacks and a white shirt with a knitted vest. He leaned over the console. “You’re blocking my view, Bill,” Dan said.
“I understand the Indians are saying that was a nuke you shot down, Captain.”
“Can we have this discussion later? Right now we have a cuing incoming.”
Noblos half turned, to stare at the geo plot, then the Aegis picture. “Out of our geometry,” he observed dismissively.
“You can tell that by one look at the screen?”
“Of course. It’s perfectly obvious.”
“Captain?” Mills, beside him, looking anxious. “I need an order.”
Dan studied the screens. From where he sat, true, it didn’t look good. The Thar Desert, western India, was far inland. Too soon to tell what the target was, with the missile still in the boost phase, but it would have to be aimed either west or north.
“Complete the setup,” Dan told the TAO. Mills bent to the mike, passing commands to the bridge, then to Mitscher. Dan half turned in his seat. Shouted across the compartment, “Sonar? One last check. No contacts?”
Rit Carpenter, over the 21MC. “Clear scope here, Skipper.”
Mills was still speaking. “Launch-warning bell aft and forward.”
Dan reached into the neck of his coveralls and fitted the firing key once more. “This will be a two-round salvo.”
Noblos frowned. “Why waste rounds? Launch point’s two hundred miles away. And it’ll be a stern chase. Ten to one, it’ll never catch up.”
“I’m aware of that, Doctor. Which is why I have to fire early, before pitchover.”
Noblos reached across the console to squeeze his shoulder. “Refer to your rules of engagement, Captain. If your P-sub-K’s below point two, you don’t need to fire. And if you shoot before pitchover and IPP identification—”
Dan pushed the hand off, catching, as he did so, a whiff of something minty, aftershave or mouthwash. He lifted his head, trying to pierce the fog of fatigue and uncertainty, and the aftermath of infection, to penetrate to the core of what was right to do. Maybe it wasn’t doctrine. Maybe it wasn’t even possible.
But he had to try.
He’d defended it at a congressional hearing. Risked his career on it.
But he still wasn’t sure it was right.
He had to balance not just capability, but intentions. And beyond even that, anticipate the most distant ramifications of his decisions. He’d shot down a missile from one side. Didn’t he owe the same responsibility to the other?
“Matt, help me out,” he muttered. “Take it down? I’m wondering about the message we’re sending if we don’t.”
“We don’t have the aim point yet, sir. If it’s on a military target set, we should let it go.”
“You heard Dr. Noblos. By the time we know, it’ll be too late.”
“You’ve been reading the news from home, Lenson,” Noblos said, bending close, like a confiding sorn. “Every round’s going to be irreplaceable. Don’t waste them. Not on some kind of political statement.”
The Terror’s voice: “Commencing pitchover.” And on the screen, the brackets quivering, quivering, then starting to move.
Headed north. Dan glanced at Mills, but got only a dropped gaze.
It was up to him.
But why should that be a surprise?
He was the captain.
“Ah, fuck it,” he muttered. He snagged the clear plastic cover of the switch with a thumbnail. Flicked it up, and snapped the toggle to Fire.
* * *
ONCE again, that agonizingly stretched-out pause. The dampers whunking shut. The ventilation easing to a stop, leaving harsh, tormented-sounding breathing. His own.
A roar built forward. Singhe sang out, “Bird one away … standing by … bird two away.” The symbology winked into existence on the display. “Two birds, dual-thrust ignition, seekers activated, on their way.”
On the center screen, the Indian missile, Meteor Bravo, was into pitchover and starting to track north. No, northwest by north. Mills grimaced. “Headed away, Skipper. Target’s someplace up around Islamabad.”
“I told you the geometry would be disadvantageous,” Noblos pontificated. “Didn’t I?”
“Yeah, Doctor. You did.” Dan quelled the impulse to reach across, grab that stupid knitted vest, and punch the shit out of him. “What I’m wondering is, why everyone has an opinion on what I ought to do. Who exactly’s in charge here?”
The moment the words were out, he realized they were a mistake. The horrified glances from Mills, Wenck, and the CIC officer were testimony to that. “Sorry, didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he amended, passing a shaky hand over his forehead. “Guess I’m burning a short fuze here.”
Noblos said loftily, “I’d like it recorded that I officially recommended against this launch.”
“You’re not in the chain of command, Doctor. But sure, we’ll document it.” Dan lifted his head. “Get that down in the CIC log.”
From the pure hatred in the scientist’s eyes, he’d mortally offended him. Well, too fucking bad. He had other fish to fry … and other birds to follow.
Like the ones on the screen. They’d dropped their boosters and were now propelled by the Block 4’s extended-range motor. Nearing four miles a second and still accelerating, they jumped forward across southern Pakistan with each ten-hertz rescan. The steering-control sections were still receiving midcourse guidance from ALIS, fed automatically unless overridden by Terranova. Once they were out of the atmosphere, the last finned stage would be jettisoned, and the warheads, guided now by their terminal homers, would fly on. Each warhead was propelled in the exoatmospheric phase by a small sustainer engine, then maneuvered to collision in the final milliseconds by infrared sensors coupled to gas generators and reaction nozzles spaced around the airframe.
“Stage-two burnout,” Wenck announced. “Commencing terminal homing.”
Onscreen the target was still boosting, perhaps by its own second stage, headed northwest. The blue semicircles of Savo’s missiles were closing from astern, but more and more slowly as their quarry accelerated. Dan coughed and coughed, trying to suck air past the obstruction in his throat. His inhaler … in his cabin. He clutched the desk, panting. “Do we have an IPP yet?” he grunted. “Get it up on the screen. Now!”
“ALIS is calculating,” Terranova said. “She seems a little slow … Coming up now.”
The area of uncertainty was a quivering blob far inland. Past where the last, frozen frame from GCCS had placed the northernmost Indian spearhead. Dan squinted. “Where … what’s the nearest city? Can you read that?”
“Peshawar.” Mills cleared his throat and repeated, a little louder, “Peshawar. Where the Pak air strike launched from.”
“That makes sense.” A scent of sandalwood, and Singhe’s soft tones, hardened now. “They took two separate nuclear attacks before deciding to hit back.”
It wasn’t quite that clear-cut, Dan thought, but didn’t say. “Lieutenant, I need you back on your console.”
“The strike team’s ready, Captain. If you have a package for us?”
“I’d just like you in your seat,” Dan told her, and got a smoldering scowl back. She turned on her heel and stalked away.
When he looked back, the three symbols were only a short distance apart on the display. They hung there, pulsating, red and blue. Speeding across the face of the earth, a hundred-plus miles up, at nearly orbital velocity. Across the broad fertile plain of the ancient Indus, where Darius and Alexander, Chandragupta Maurya and the British Raj, had marched and conquered. The earth seemed to turn perceptibly beneath them. Speeding stars, as fast as meteorites. Locked now onto their target, mere miles ahead.
Their lead Standard flickered.
It slowed. The callout beside it flickered and began to drop.
Terranova said quietly, “Terminal guidance burnout. Shall I send destruct order?”
“I told you so,” Noblos observed.
Dan took a slow, deep breath. “Maybe you were right, Doctor. Technically. But that’s not all I have to take into account. Terror, Donnie, if we hit the abort button on the first bird, will that decoy the second?”
“Number two’s starting to lose velocity too, Dan. I mean, Captain.”
When he lifted his gaze again, it was true; the callouts for the second bird were flickering downward as well. Both his missiles were falling back into the atmosphere. At the speed they were traveling, atmospheric friction would probably cook off their high-explosive warheads, but he couldn’t count on that. “All right. Send the destruct order.”
The lead symbol winked out first, followed within seconds by the other. By which time the red caret of Meteor Bravo was a hundred miles ahead of them, still on its way north. The area of uncertainty around its target had shrunk to seven miles across, centered west of Peshawar. Where, Dan assumed, the air base lay. He picked up the satcomm and just for form’s sake tried again to report in to CentCom. Again, he got the start of a sync, then a deafening squeal before the transmission cut off. “What in the hell is wrong with our fucking comms?” he muttered, half to himself, half to Mills.
Savo rolled so hard, binders and pencils began to slide, picking up speed to vault off desks and consoles. The air-conditioning came back on in a sighing rush. He plucked sweat-soaked coveralls away from his sweat-soaked skivvy shirt, extracted the Fire key from the lock, and looped the chain around his neck again.
A moment of blackness. He came to with his head on the command desk, a foul taste in his mouth, and someone shaking his shoulder. It was Dr. Schell. “Turn over your seat. Or I’ll inform my reporting senior, copy to yours, that in my judgment, the CO of USS Savo Island is unable to continue in command.”
Cheryl Staurulakis was staring at him over the doctor’s shoulder, her own face etched with fatigue and worry and something very like horror.
Weary.
So unutterably weary.
It was done. For better or worse.
The results remained to be seen.
* * *
HE lay in his at-sea cabin, alternately dozing and calling the exec, the bridge, and Radio for updates. Over the next hours, news trickled in. Not via the message traffic, and not via GCCS, which had gone down again, but eavesdropped from news programs and shortwave BBC broadcasts.
The airfield and much of the city of Peshawar had been destroyed by a nuclear detonation.
Pakistan, its forces still reeling back despite the kiloton-range airbursts over the southern Indian spearhead, and now with a city burning behind them, blamed the United States for taking sides.
The Chinese ambassador to the UN had announced that units of the People’s Liberation Army were moving into Bhutan, on India’s northern border. India, in turn, had announced a blockade of all Chinese merchant traffic through the Indian Ocean.
The ship lurched and swayed, carrying him, high in the superstructure, in great swoops that pressed him against the bunkstraps. Gray light levered through the porthole. The second hand on the bulkhead-mounted captain’s chronometer jerked, paused, jerked ahead. He looked up from the clipboard, past the radioman, at the copy of Tuchman on his bookshelf. It sounded so familiar. The names had changed. That was all.
At last he couldn’t stand it any longer. He got up and pulled on the same smelly coveralls. Climbed to the pilothouse, clinging grimly to the handrail as the ship rolled around him like some funhouse ride. “Captain’s on the bridge,” the boatswain’s mate shouted.
“Belay your reports,” Dan said, cutting Mytsalo off. The ensign looked barely able to keep his feet. His face seemed longer, leaner, shadowed by stubble. He clung to the radar repeater as if without it he would fall to the deck. The quartermaster, the phone talkers, the helmsman, all looked haggard in the hoary light. And outside, the gray steep waves rolled past under a gray sky. Dan staggered to the captain’s chair, then lacked the force to haul himself up into it. He clung, blinking, brain empty yet still reverberating, like a too-often-rung bell. He coughed into a fist and sucked air.
The 21MC lit at his elbow. “Pilothouse, Radio: Cap’n up there?”
Mytsalo pressed the lever. “This is the OOD. He’s listening.”
“Captain? We got a jury-rigged hookup on satcomm. Not sure what’s wrong with the regular circuit, but we got the maintenance freq to sync. CentCom duty officer’s trying to call you.”
“Got it,” Dan told the ensign. He clicked the red phone on and waited for the beep. “Savo Island Actual. Over.”
“This is CentCom duty officer. Where are you right now, Captain?”
Dan enunciated clearly and slowly, so as not to have to repeat himself. “This is Savo Actual. I am on assigned station, Ballistic Missile OpArea Endive, off the Pak-Indian border. Over.”
“This is CentCom. What are you still doing there? GCCS has you en route to rejoin the task force.”
He blinked. Most commanders knew GCCS wasn’t exactly real world, but some—especially some with stars on their shoulders—seemed to think that if it showed up on the screen it was right there, right now. Even though with the recurrent glitches over the past twenty-four hours, they should trust it even less. But more worrisome than that was why they might think he was somewhere else. “Uh, this is Savo. No, we’re in our assigned oparea. Have you been getting our intel reports? We had to launch on two ballistic missiles. Intercepting strikes. Over.”
A squeal like grinding brakes with worn-out pads. Then “—getting them. But the intel function’s not worth the risk. Over.”
“This is Savo. You’re desyncing. Can you enlighten me as to commander’s intent? Over.”
“This is CentCom. You’re breaking up on this end, too. How copy? Over.”
“Savo, copy that, over.”
“This is CentCom. We’re backing away from the Indo-Pak confrontation. Letting it burn out. That’s a national-level decision. In light of developments elsewhere. How copy? Over.”
Dan grabbed for a handhold as Savo corkscrewed like an old, cunning bronc. Stared out at a massive sea as the bow lifted, then plowed deep, blasting loose a long veil of wavering spray that dimpled the rolling pools on the forecastle like a heavy downpour. Letting it “burn out”? With China invading Bhutan, an Indian ally? Or were those the “developments elsewhere”? “Uh … copy that. Backing away. Over.”
“You should be headed south to meet up with Strike One to fuel. Then you’ll be detached for further duty. At least, that’s the plan so far. Could change. You heard, about the Indian blockade announcement?”
“This is Savo. Affirmative.”
“The latest on that. Hasn’t hit the open media yet. But the Chinese announced they’re not recognizing it. Over.”
Dan hesitated, then clicked Transmit. “This is Savo. Not sure I got that right. Not ‘recognizing’ it? Over.”
“That a blockade is illegal under international law. So they’ll break it, quote, by any means necessary, unquote.” A pause, during which the sync hissed, then, “Zhang says he’s only supporting Pakistan, but … Any means necessary. So, you can understand—a lot of our plans are in flux right now.” A pause. “How copy? Over.”
He took a deep breath, fighting a sense of doom. Most of China’s energy, oil and liquefied natural gas, moved through the Indian Ocean. The Indians had threatened to sever that pipeline. And the Chinese had just announced they’d fight to defend it. “Savo. Copy all. Do you know where they intend to send us? Over.”
“This is CentCom. It is possible satcomm has been compromised. Minimize transmissions on this net. Over.”
Dan lowered the handset, shocked. If voice satellite communications were no longer secure, all fleet comms were endangered. He wanted to ask why they suspected compromise, but the other wouldn’t say, even if he knew. Not on a no-longer-trustworthy circuit. “This is Savo. Roger all, but we have no orders to leave oparea. Over.”
“This is CentCom. Check message traffic and comply ASAP. Minimize voice comms. We’re also seeing crashes on GCCS and the SIPRNET. Check your redundancy. Request confirmation via another channel if you receive orders that seem doubtful. Confirm. Over.”
Dan’s mouth was suddenly dry. The Navy ran on communications as much as on distillate fuel. If something, no, someone, was corrupting encrypted voice and GCCS, and even SIPRNET was no longer secure, the effect would be devastating. He muttered, “This is Savo Actual. I confirm. Over.”
“This is CentCom, roger, out.”
He reclipped the handset and met Mytsalo’s gaze. The ensign looked shaken. “Did you copy all that, Max?”
“I—I think so. That’s not good. Sir.”
“No, it isn’t.” Dan blinked past him, then remembered what he hadn’t seen when he’d looked out over the forecastle. “Where’s Mitscher?”
“Off the port quarter, sir. In a squall.”
Right, they were still in the monsoon season. Which explained the everlasting overcast, the eternal wind. And the never-ending seas, stiff and jagged, breaking and toppling as they cannonballed past.
“Captain?”
The radioman chief this time, instead of the messenger. But the same clipboard. Dan swallowed sudden nausea. Now what? He took it reluctantly. Ran his eye down it, disbelieving, then stared at the last line.
CO USS SAVO ISLAND REPORT NONRESPONSE TO ORDERS, REF A. INTERROGATIVE WHY SAVO TASK GROUP NOT EN ROUTE TASK FORCE POSIT. REPLY ASAP VIA MULTIPLE COMM PATHS.
He snapped, “What the hell’s this about? What’s Ref A?”
The radioman chief’s Adam’s apple pumped. “Captain, we have no record of that date time group.”
“I don’t understand. No record?”
“No sir. I mean, that’s right, sir. We never received a message with that date time group.”
This was baffling. Higher was referencing a message that, so far as Savo’s always-competent communicators were concerned, didn’t exist. “Did you check with Mitscher? Do they hold it?”
“Yessir, first thing. They don’t have it either. We requested a retransmit. Still waiting for that.”
Dan stood turning it over in a foggy, slow brain. A voice transmission that said, “Don’t trust voice messages.” That expected him to leave station, citing a broadcast message that didn’t seem to exist, or that, at least, they’d never gotten. Then a message reproaching him for being on station, and referencing a previous message that he didn’t hold. He muttered doggedly, “There’s got to be a record. A way you can check what you have and haven’t received.”
The chief consulted his wrist, which Dan saw wore two watches. “That’s the daily date time group summary message, Captain. Comes in at midnight Zulu. We’re in Echo.”
“Okay, but we can request a retransmit, can’t we? Since we have the date time group of the missing message … the one they referenced. Have you done that?”
The chief looked ill at ease. “Soon as it came in, Captain. I, uh, I already told you we did that. Asked for a retransmit. Which we’re waiting for.”
“Okay, sorry. You did. But this isn’t reassuring, that messages seem to be slipping past us. I don’t want to get down in your pants, but could we be out of timing? Missing parts of the scrambled broadcast?”
The chief seemed to be starting to protest, then quelled himself. “That used to happen, yessir. With the old KW-37s. They got out of timing. But with the 46s, it’s pretty much impossible.”
“So what’s wrong?”
The ITman hesitated. “I’m just not sure, sir.”
“Well, get to the bottom of it! Our satellite voice comms are degrading, Chief. We have to be able to depend on broadcast.”
The chief said yes sir, waited a moment, then saluted and turned away. Leaving Dan leaning on his chair, still too weak to get up into it.
So he checked the nav console. Took a range and bearing to the nearest land. A queerly shaped, low-lying peninsula poked out toward them, shaped like a flaccid, drooping penis. It didn’t seem to have a name, at least that the software knew.
The own-ship symbol glowed at the inner edge of his oparea, which the console was displaying outlined in yellow. The area he should have already left behind. All right, if he was supposed to rejoin the task group … He recalled the last GCCS picture, estimated a course. “Officer of the deck.”
“Yessir, Captain.” Mytsalo straightened. “OOD, aye.”
“Come to one-nine-zero. Tell Main Control, secure low-fuel-consumption maneuvering regime. When they’re ready, increase to fifteen knots.” He slewed the cursor, guesstimated their time to rendezvous at the most economical speed. “And have Mr. Danenhower contact me.” He’d need to make sure he actually had enough fuel to get there, maneuver, wait in line, and get a drink off the tanker. A lot of our plans are in flux right now. “Pass that to TAO. Secure from condition three ABM. Set condition three self-defense. Have Sonar continue maintaining a sharp watch. And let Mitscher know, so she can follow us around. I’ll call their CO in a minute, bring him up to speed.”
He sagged into the console, coughing from deep in his chest while the bullnose dipped, rolled, and precessed around to the new course. Maybe Higher was right. Nothing more for USS Savo Island to do here. In his eagerness to help, he might even have made things worse. Helped trigger what the world had hoped never to see: a nuclear war.
He’d tried his best. But hadn’t all the diplomats, generals, kings, and prime ministers done theirs, too? In August of 1914.
The leaden seas surged in. The cruiser headed into them, pitching until sharp crackles and bangs crepitated aft, ghostlike and unsettling. Far off on a shrouded horizon the silhouette of a Burke-class destroyer, Mitscher, mirrored their turn.
Leaving it all behind. But taking it along, too.
Well, he had his orders. Let it burn out.
He only hoped it would.