THE sun roared, sundering the sky. The sea shimmered flat in a burning summer heat. Already over a hundred degrees, and not yet 0800. Dan leaned over the splinter shield of the bridge wing, careful to keep his bare skin off broiling-hot steel. Looking down into a bright, deep blue, heart-stopping, sight-inviting, pulling the gaze and the mind down along the slanting shadows Savo Island cast like the beams of black searchlights. And here and there, every so often, a sea snake lifted its head, trailing a glittering V.
He was contemplating, once more, the advice Tim Simko had had for him, before Strike Group One had begun threading the strait. His actions off Pakistan were being viewed with disapproval in Washington.
“Grave disapproval, or so Fleet says,” Simko had told him, the two classmates alone in the in-port flag cabin, high in Vinson’s island. “But in view of the situation, I asked to hold on to you. There’s no one else I can slot in to command my only antiballistic missile unit. They can fight until the cows come home about whether you should’ve shot or not, but you’re still maintaining a 50 percent knock-down record. Which I gather is better than anyone back at Dahlgren expected.”
Dan had rubbed the back of his neck, where it usually hurt. Actually, where it almost always hurt, if he was honest about it. “Uh, that’s due more to my team than to me. I wouldn’t count on those numbers every time. But … you stonewalled them?”
Simko had grimaced. “Yeah. I stonewalled, Dan. And not just because you were a good midfield back at the Boat School, or because we have the same class number on our rings. I’ve absolutely got to have Savo at 4.0 readiness if the shit hits the fan. Anyway, if this situation goes hot, they’ll have a lot more on their plates at JCS than disciplining one trigger-happy officer.”
He’d sat forward, gripping his knees. “Trigger-happy, Tim? I took down those missiles to protect civilians. Just like it says to, in my ROEs.”
“Take it easy! I’m not saying I think that. Or even that it’s DoD. Just that certain elements, I gather on the congressional side, have a real hard-on for you.”
He’d known then exactly whom Simko meant. Who was behind the push for his disciplining and recall: Sandy Treherne. And probably others who hadn’t liked his response at the congressional hearing. The hard-liners. Like Ed Szerenci? Maybe. His old professor had always believed in overkill. “The last side to make the rubble jump will be the winner.” Had he really said that? Well, something a lot like it. “Tim, I heard you saying the administration expects the other side to back down. And those terms you mentioned—they sound like an ultimatum.”
“They do, don’t they.”
“I worked in the West Wing. I’ve seen the disconnects there, between what they wish they could do, what they eventually persuade themselves they can do, and what we can actually pull out of the fire for them. Just between us old Second Batt guys, how realistic is it that the Chinese will just … roll?”
Simko had just lowered his head. Not said anything. Until Dan had gotten the message, and stood. “Thanks, Tim. Guess I’d better catch that helo. Thanks for the vote of confidence. Savo will be there if you need her.”
Simko had risen too, and shaken his hand, and said he was confident she would be. And wished him well. But in a tone Dan wasn’t sure he liked. There’d been that ever-so-faint, yet unsettling, the-lights-are-going-out-all-over-the world ring to it.
Now he lifted his head, scalp baking in the burning sunlight, to survey distant clouds over islands that shimmered like fever dreams, with names from a Joseph Conrad tale. Pulau Mapur. Pulau Repong. Kepulauan Anambas. The morning sun slanting down to the east illuminated what looked like more of them, though these weren’t really there. Just mirages. Illusions. Quivering chromium islands afloat on molten, glittering gold.
The Sunda Sea. The Asiatic Fleet had died here. USS Houston and her aged cruisers and four-pipe destroyers, the cobbled-together ABDA command. Poorly prepared, badly led, outnumbered, outgunned, and outmaneuvered, they’d gone under in a hail of fire. So completely wiped out that even their fates had been matters of conjecture, until the few surviving POWs had emerged from the hell-camps at war’s end.
He looked back at ship after ship emerging between low, shockingly green islands. Destroyers, cruisers, and far behind them, like a thundercloud, the immense square bulk of the carrier. Specks glittered and swam around her; helicopters, searching the shallow seas as they negotiated the channel out. A submarine could lie doggo, hugging the bottom, to all intents and purposes part of it. Until it rose, and struck.
But so far, the screen had discovered nothing. Strike One had threaded the strait at full alert, but detected no threat. Now Savo’s Aegis, reaching out three hundred miles north and east, over one and a third million square miles of the South China Sea, outlined a watery prairie as empty as if they were the only navy that existed.
He’d steamed these tropic seas before. In the old Oliver Gaddis, when an order that hadn’t really been an order had sent him to find, and destroy, a ship most said didn’t exist—
“Captain?” The exec was rubbing her eyes and studying her ever-present BlackBerry.
“Cheryl. What’ve we got?”
“I’d like to put Amy on the watch bill. I know she’s not school-qualified, but she’s studied hard. And served six tricks under instruction, during the transit. She’s ready.”
Dan cleared his throat, searching for a reason why not, but couldn’t come up with one. At last he said that was all right. Staurulakis made a note. “Next, our urinanalysis quota—”
“Drop it,” Dan told her. “No more pee tests. Administrative requirements, reports, inspections—draw a line through them. Fully manned watches, essential maintenance, last-minute training. That’s all I want on tomorrow’s plan of the day.”
“Yessir. We got a response on those extra eductor fittings you wanted. None in the system.”
He grimaced. “Just great. Okay, a complete check of the firemain system. Isolation valves, auto and manual, and drill each of the repair parties on bridging them in case of rupture. Check all the jumpers—”
“Banca boat to port, Captain.” The JOOD, binoculars to his eyes.
One of the small craft native to these seas. Dan twisted, to make sure the remote operating console on the 25mms had it hooked up. The operator met his eye and winked. “Keep him outside a mile,” Dan told the OOD. “Warn him off with the loud hailer if he looks to be headed this way.” Then went back to discussing the schedule. “That’s what we want to drill. Damage control, dewatering, restoring power. And medical—get Dr. Schell to help Doc Grissett update our first aid and battle dressing training. With particular attention to burns. Everything else, we drop. From here on in, it’s real world.” The exec jotted again, then shifted to her Hydra.
“Bridge, CIC—Radio. Skipper there?”
He leaned to depress the 21MC lever. “Lenson.”
“Captain, flash message. Warning order from PaCom. Message board to the bridge, or will you take it on the LAN?”
“I’ll take it in CIC.” He sucked air and swung his legs down. What now? Staurulakis stepped aside, still on the Motorola, but shot him a worried frown as he brushed past.
* * *
IN Combat again, in the same worn chair. The same displays, the same flicker from the rightmost status board, which seemed to be slowly dying. Dan told Mills to have it checked out, and logged into the CO’s terminal.
The news wasn’t good. USS George Washington had hit not one but two mines coming out of Yokosuka, warping her shafts and shutting down one of her reactors. The carrier was experiencing power loss and was limited to five knots. No one had claimed responsibility, though it was easy to assume the mines had been submarine-laid. The Japanese were resweeping the channel.
The second flash described a civilian airliner crash on the main runway at Osan Air Base, effectively shutting down Seventh Air Force operations in South Korea.
The third raised U.S. readiness condition to DEFCON 3, with PaCom and CentCom at DEFCON 2, immediate readiness for nuclear war. He read this three times, incredulity deepening with each perusal. U.S. forces hadn’t gone to condition two since the Cuban missile crisis, when SAC had been placed on fifteen-minute standby.
The final flash was to Savo Island. Halfway through, he twisted in his chair. “Donnie. Chief Wenck!”
“Present!”
“You read this, Donnie?”
“The SAR? Just got through it, boss. Writing up the ack message. The Terror’s setting up the laptop.”
It was a satellite acquisition request, directing the SPY-1 to steer its beam to a given volume of space, setting up its sensor parameters … in essence, telling it where to look and what to look for. In this case, according to the tasking order, that “something” was nearly a hundred miles up and moving at an ungodly speed. He scanned down the rest of the message. “What’s the nomenclature on this? Let’s get Bill Noblos down here. We may need him on this one.”
“It’s in a low polar orbit. Period about ninety minutes.” Mills flipped pages in a red-covered pub titled Draft Tactics for Engaging Ballistic and Orbital Targets, then riffed on his keyboard. “NORAD catalog number 20404, for what it’s worth. And ephemeris data. But that doesn’t tell us what it is.”
Dan reread the order. Acquire, track, and prepare to engage. A polar-orbiting body, or technically speaking, a ninety-degree inclination orbit, moved north to south, or south to north, while the earth rotated beneath it. The item they were directed to look for circled the globe every hour and a half. So that over twenty-four hours, it crossed over, or at least within reasonable slant range of, every point on the planet.
The ideal orbit for a reconnaissance satellite, whether its sensors be cameras, radars, or something more sophisticated, like the far-infrared detectors of the Obsidian Glint early-launch warning satellites. “It’s a recon bird?” he asked anyone who cared to answer.
“That’d be my guess.” Noblos settled into a seat on the far side of the CIC officer. He wore civilian slacks, a Savo Island light blue nylon running jacket, and a soft wool cap. “In a low polar orbit? Probably synthetic aperture radars, for ocean recon. Like our Lacrosse series.”
Mills added, “But all we actually have is object number and orbital parameters.”
“Could be some kind of comm relay,” Wenck put in.
“Doubtful,” said Noblos. “They put those in a synchronous orbit, so they’re always over the same spot.”
Dan lifted his eyebrows. Was it really possible they were being asked to acquire a satellite? “Uh, how long to acquisition? Until it’s overhead?”
Wenck said patiently, “By then it’s too late to do anything about it. We gotta hop on it the second it pops over the horizon, clears atmospheric lensing effects.”
“All right, and how long is that?”
“That’s gonna be”—Wenck peered past Terranova—“two minutes, fifteen seconds.”
Dan sat back, reviewing the order. It was to acquire and, yes, “prepare to engage.” The SPY-1 output was focused into a narrow, coherent beam by the phased arrays. The octagonal antenna faces were made up of dozens of radiating elements. Since waves from nearby sources interfered with each other, shifting the phase of the signals pointed the beams left, right, up, and down, within certain stops imposed by the physics of interference phenomena. To detect something as small, as fast, and as far away as their target, the beam had to be both extremely narrow and aimed exacty where it would appear. Like trying to track a fastball with a laser pointer … you had to start with the laser on the ball the moment it left the pitcher’s hand.
He twisted in his seat, fighting the urge to go over and kibitz. “Donnie, Terror, we set to acquire?”
“Not yet, Captain.” Wenck was busy on the Dell laptop that connected to the Aegis console by a cable, an arrangement that had always struck Dan as absurdly ad hoc. But, hey, off the shelf was popular … regardless of whether it was milspec, shock-hardened, or EMP-protected. The chief frowned at his screen. “Getting an error message. Fuck.”
“What kind of error message?” Dan asked him.
“Delta AM on the array face. Hot weather like this, you get thermal distortion on the edges of the array faces.”
“You can tune for that,” Noblos observed. “Apply a bias correction factor. Haven’t you been doing that?” He dragged his stool noisily to the console, where he was soon deep in the weeds with Wenck, Terranova, and the assistant SPY-1 petty officer.
Dan knitted his fingers, getting apprehensive. At the tremendous speed this thing was moving, much faster than the suborbital projectiles they’d engaged to date, they had to take it head-on. Otherwise the Block 4 just wasn’t fast enough; its target would zip past unharmed as the seeker fell back into the thermosphere, ablated, and burned.
But he couldn’t, not with two minutes to set up. They might acquire, but they couldn’t fire on this first pass. Ninety minutes from now was the soonest they’d be set, when it came around again.
“And … there it is,” Noblos announced drily. “Be sure to log that correction. That’s the tweak you need when the array gets unevenly heated. We saw a lot of that at the test site in Kwaj.”
“Target acquired. Designate…” The petty officer’s voice trailed off. There was no proword for “satellite.” “Uh, Satellite Alfa.”
Wenck muttered, “Man, this thing is struttin’. Look at that range gate. Five miles a second. That’s … eighteen thousand miles an hour. And the cross section fluctuates, fuck’s with that?”
“Maybe rotating,” Terranova suggested.
“A recon bird, rotating? Probably just the antennas changing their angle to us.”
No one said anything for several seconds, as Wenck or maybe Terranova turned up the audio on the signal going out. For some reason the unsteady, low-frequency rattle sounded eerie today. “Okay,” Wenck muttered. “Noodge the range gate a little more … got it. No, wait, lost it … lock on. Intermittent. This thing’s really fucking small. And it’s way out there, slant range four hundred miles … out of engagement range on this pass, anyway.”
“Put it on the screen,” Mills said.
It came up, not video but the range gate brackets, vibrating as usual, clamped around the contact, and the data readouts flickering, and at the bottom of the display a blank black area that Dan guessed was the sea horizon. He leaned back again.
Object 02-4064 was a recon bird. Most likely Chinese. It made sense to take it out, if a war was starting. But no one had ever shot down another country’s satellite. Only their own, falling out of orbit, or in tests of the few antisatellite interceptors that had ever existed. Reaching out to this one was going to be at the very outside envelope of Block 4’s and Aegis’s capabilities. In a sense, it was astonishing he could even consider trying.
He remembered how impressed he’d been, back at the start of his career, at how far out the old Reynolds Ryan’s dual-purpose five-inch 38s could reach. Now their eighteen-thousand-yard range seemed laughable, primeval …
… No, goddamn it. He pinched his cheek painfully, catching a doubtful glance from the CIC officer. He’d gotten maybe four hours a night, going through the Singapore Strait, alert for air strikes or the lurking submarine, maybe a sub-laid mine. What had he been thinking about … oh yeah. That no one had ever shot down another country’s satellite. Would it be an act of war? Did anyone even bother to declare war anymore? Maybe the whole idea was passé, like dueling.
Okay, time to let everybody know what was going on. He picked up the red phone and waited for the sync. The comm problem, whatever it had been, had gone away, or been fixed; anyway, the circuit didn’t squeal, just synced smoothly. The tasking message had come from Pacific Command, but Strike One and Fleet would be monitoring too, and logging the conversation for history. Alert for any more Dan Lenson screwups … He said slowly and clearly, “PaCom, this is Savo Island, over.” On covered nets, there was usually no need to use call signs, though sometimes you did, depending on what the SOP directed.
A hiss, a crackle. “Savo, this is PaCom. Over.”
“Savo Island Actual. In respect of your order to track and prep to engage NORAD catalog 20404, low polar orbital object 02-4064. Over.”
“This is PaCom. Go ahead. Over.”
“This is Savo. We have lock-on at this time. Over.”
“This is PaCom. Cleared for autonomous engagement. Intercept and terminate. Over.”
Dan swallowed. “Um … This is Savo Island. Unable to comply at this time. We have radar track and lock-on, but due to range and speed limitations, the target is too far east and too far above the horizon to engage. The next opportunity will be on its next orbit, ninety minutes from now.”
“This is PaCom. Copy all. Interrogative: Can you intercept and terminate at that time?”
Dan cupped the handset, keeping his finger off the Sync button. “Donnie, before I answer him, homer on the Block 4’s infrared, right? Is it even gonna home on an ice-cold satellite?”
“It’s not purely infrared, Captain. That’s just part of the decoy-penetration algorithm.”
“So that’s a yes, it’ll radar-home?”
“Hey, I ain’t guaranteeing it’s gonna do shit,” Wenck muttered.
“What’s that, Chief?”
“Nothing, sir. But you also gotta … gotta remember, this thing’s moving in longitude, too. Like, the earth turns under it. So it’s not gonna pop above the horizon at the same place as before.”
“Wenck, I’m on the phone to PaCom. Are we gonna be able to knock this thing down or not?”
Wenck turned those blue blue eyes to Dan without seeming to see him. As if a million calculations were streaming past behind them. He didn’t answer for a second. Then said, “Sir, I don’t know. Gonna be damn close, all I can say. A diagonal speed vector along with the crossing geometry. And if there’s any maneuvering juice at all on that thing, any smarts built in so it can dodge once it knows somebody’s trying to hit it, the answer’s definitely gonna be no.”
Dan blinked, still holding the phone. Met Noblos’s lifted eyebrows, folded arms, his half smirk. As if their failure would prove, in some way, his own superiority. But he had to put that aside. For now. “Bill, what’s your call? Can we knock this thing down?”
“Savo, this is PaCom. Over.”
He didn’t answer, waiting for the civilian physicist. Who at last drawled, “Well, now that I’ve got it tuned for your technicians, Captain … it might be within the outer edge of the engagement envelope. Theoretically. If everything worked perfectly. But I’d have to say … the odds are against you.”
That seemed to be all they were was going to get. He pressed Transmit. “PaCom, Savo. Our intercept capabilities against satellites are … marginal. How badly do you want this guy taken out? That will impact salvo size and any refires needed. Over.”
“This is PaCom. We need it taken down. ASAP. On its next orbit, if at all possible. Expend what ordnance is necessary. Over.”
Dan exchanged glances with Mills. The TAO was frowning, pointing up at the weapons inventory board. “This is Savo. Two issues. First: This is a Chinese satellite, correct? We had not understood here that hostilities had gone hot. Interrogative tasking. Over.”
The distant voice turned hard. “Far above your pay grade, Captain. But for your information, an Air Force Rivet Joint recon plane is missing east of Hainan Island. We suspect shootdown. Execute your orders. Over.”
Okay, that was clear enough. “This is Savo. Roger on execution. However, important to make clear we have only eight, I say again, numeral eight, TBMD birds remaining. Interrogative: Will there be resupply? Interrogative: How many should I commit to this mission? Over.”
“This is PaCom. I say for the last time: expend what is necessary. Report results ASAP. PaCom out.”
He blew out, resocketed the handset, and exchanged astonished looks with Mills. “Okay, that clarifies things.”
“They really want this thing off the board.”
“If it’s synthetic aperture radar, it can track forces anywhere in the Pacific, and pass targeting on our battle groups.”
“But if we do, it legitimizes their shooting down our satellites too,” Noblos put in. “Which they definitely can. A multistage solid-fuel kinetic-kill vehicle from Xichang Satellite Launch Center—”
Wenck said, “But they already shot down our recon plane, right? I’d say, it’s game on, and we’re ten points behind.”
Dan glanced at his watch. “Like the man says: above our pay grades. All right, eighty-two minutes until it comes around again. We’ve got an orbital plotting function in GCCS, right? Get that up where we can see it. Also, dig out what exactly this thing is, and get the EWs tuned in if it’s radiating. Donnie, if we shoot a two-round salvo, will we have time to refire? Or have to wait until the orbit after that? Sounds like this is getting urgent.”
But Wenck was shaking his head. “We can’t refire on the next orbit, Dan—I mean, Captain. Each pass, the track moves west, remember? Or the earth rotates out from under it … whichever way you want to put it. If we miss on this go-round, we’re not gonna see this thing again until tomorrow.”
Dan blew out again. Right; with a period of ninety minutes, that would be about … twenty-two degrees of longitude with each pass, or, here near the equator—
“Fifteen hundred miles,” Wenck supplied, apparently doing the same calculation, but faster. “Way out of range. So this coming up is gonna be our one whack at this piñata.”
Which also explained why PaCom had been so insistent that they fire now. They were isolating the battlefield; taking down the sensors the other side needed to fight an over-the-horizon battle. Just as Simko had predicted.
But he was the guy with his butt in the crack, squeezed between astrophysics, operational necessity, and emptying magazines. He felt for the Fire key, on its steel chain around his neck with his Academy-issue dog tags. “TAO, set up for three-round engagement. Pass what’s going on to the battle group commander. Give somebody else the air defense mission. Do we need to steam west, Donnie? Will that improve our geometry?”
He glanced at the geo plot, overlaid now with the green curved lines of the satellite track function. They didn’t have a hell of a lot of sea room before slamming into the Malay Peninsula, but he could run in that direction for eighty-two minutes.
“Thirty or forty miles is not going to make a difference,” Noblos sniffed.
“But it can’t hurt. Let’s come to two-seven-zero and kick her up to flank. Prepare for three-round engagement.” He stood, stretching the pain out of his back and neck, staring at the GCCS. Taking in the whole vast bowl of the China Sea, and the increasing number of air and sea contacts up to the north, off the coast.
So both sides trudged toward war. Like sleepwalkers …
* * *
AN hour later, they were fully manned. Two watch sections, including Cheryl and Amarpeet, crowded CIC. Dan wanted them all in on this. Not just for training, but so they could say they’d been here when it started—the first offensive step of the war that now seemed unavoidable, though chat kept reporting UN efforts to avert it. No further news on George Washington, but another civilian airliner had attempted an approach, to Yokota Air Base. A Japanese F-16 had brought it down short of the runway, unfortunately into a heavily populated part of Tokyo.
The customary litany of warning bells, dampers being shut, main decks being sealed, streamed past but barely registered. He leaned on one elbow, wondering if he should fire three missiles or four. Four would cut his inventory in half. But PaCom had made it clear this thing had to come down. Finally he told Mills to make it a three-round salvo. “I know it’s not doctrine, but let’s just shoot, shoot, shoot. Then look, and maybe shoot again. Maybe.”
“The numbers aren’t there, Captain,” Noblos put in. “You could go with two. Or even one, and save the taxpayers from throwing away more money. I don’t believe you have decent P-sub-K on any of them.”
Dan waved Longley and a sandwich off, then relented. He picked at chips and a pickle in between scrolling down intel updates. Japan had just announced mobilization, and the Diet had approved conscription, for the first time since World War II. The Republic of Korea was already mobilized, and Seoul, only a few miles from the DMZ, was being evacuated.
He shivered, recalling the eerie wail of the sirens there during the weekly drills. Both halves of that divided country had been on a near-war footing since the armistice. Now they were preparing for a rematch.
He’d read through OPLAN 5081. He had to keep reminding himself that GCCS wasn’t always accurate. But it looked like the first stage, positioning forces behind Taiwan and in blocking positions in the passages out of the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, was almost complete.
Once Strike One joined up with its Australian contingent, it would neutralize and bypass the Spratly Islands, off the Vietnamese coast. The Vietnam People’s Navy would occupy and hold behind them. They’d claimed the Spratlys for centuries, and only lost them to the Chinese in 1988; he suspected their repossession would be Hanoi’s reward for joining the allies. Strike One could then continue north to seize or at least neutralize the Paracels.
At that point, an iron ring of sensors and weapons would encircle the Middle Kingdom. The allied advance would stop there, hold whatever counteroffensive the Chinese could mount, and contemplate the next step. If one would be necessary; the administration seemed to assume the blockade would force war termination, in and of itself.
Just as the British had thought, in 1914, that their naval blockade would force Germany to the peace table. He shook his head, comparing the GCCS display to the deployment chart in the op order. Everything seemed to be moving into place, except for the hole south of Kyushu where the Washington battle group should’ve been. Losing the carrier’s airborne sensors and ASW aircraft left a huge gap in the defenses.
“SAR complete.”
“Stand by for sunup … counting down … five … four … three … two … one.”
“Satellite Alfa above the horizon. Still in atmospheric distortion … Target acquired.” Terranova’s soft, determined voice. “Stand by … lock-on, Satellite Alfa.”
Dan got up and stalked through CIC, back to the electronic warfare stacks. Put his hands on the operator’s shoulders from behind, and studied the green flicker of the SLQ-32. “What have we got?”
“I’m not picking up anything, Captain.” The tech explained that if it was an ocean recon bird, it would be putting out power in the X band, giving its radar a resolution of about a meter. “That’d be adequate to pick up aircraft. Even something the size of a tank. If it’s a comm relay, we’d copy that, too. But—”
“But what?” Dan glanced back to the command desk.
“We’re not picking up shit, sir. Maybe a very faint, intermittent transponder emission. That’s all.”
“Captain,” Mills called. Dan wheeled and jogged back.
They had track again. The same tiny contact as before, creeping above the artificially generated black cutout of the radar horizon. Cupped by the vibrating brackets of the Aegis lock-on. “Permission to engage?” Mills murmured.
Dan nodded. It didn’t matter what it was. Their orders were clear. “Released.” He flicked up the red cover and hit the Fire Auth switch.
Next to him, Mills murmured, “Confirm, batteries released for three-round engagement. Shifting to auto mode.”
Out of the corner of his eye Dan noted Mills lifting his hands from the keyboard, like a pianist finishing a demanding piece. Wenck and Noblos had set the no-fire threshold to .1, one-tenth. If ALIS calculated a lesser probability of kill, she wouldn’t fire. A hush the space of a drawn breath stilled the compartment. His gaze darted to the ordnance status board, to the surface radar picture, to the GCCS; then flicked back to the Aegis display.
The bellow of the rocket motor sounded muffled, more distant this time than usual. For a second he wondered if it was some sort of misfire or abort. Then Mills reached for the joystick, and pivoted the camera on the aft missile deck.
The picture came up center screen. A solid white wall whirled, thinned, illuminated from above; then blew off, gradually revealing a calm green sea. Then it was blotted out by a harsh illumination so brilliant the camera blanked, before opening its eye again to more smoke. “Bird one away,” Terranova announced. “Bird two away … bird three away. Rounds complete from after magazine.”
Mills joysticked the camera to follow pinpoints of flame until they winked out of sight. “Stand by for refire. Select and authorize missiles eleven and twelve in forward magazine.”
They’d agreed on a shoot-shoot-shoot sequence, with three in the first salvo, then a look, with two missiles prepared for a refire. Dan doubted they’d have time for a second salvo, fast as this thing was traveling, but if PaCom needed it shot down, Savo wouldn’t fail for lack of trying. As to what would happen after that … he put that aside. The fog of war was shrouding the whole Pacific.
“Twenty seconds to intercept,” Noblos announced.
On the right-hand screen, the white dot crept steadily higher. The horizon was out of sight now, below the beam. The brackets pulsed, not so much vibrating as swelling and then shrinking. Probably a reaction to the varying reflectivity they’d noted on the first orbit. Terranova had posited it might be rotating, presenting different faces of an irregular body. But why would a recon satellite rotate? There had to be some other explanation.
Unless this wasn’t a recon satellite …
“Stand by for intercept … now.”
The white dot suddenly novaed. It wobbled, pulsating much more wildly, brightening and dimming. The brackets slewed back, slipped off, steered back on. But their grip seemed less certain. Off-center. “What’s that mean?” Dan called. “Donnie? Bill?”
“Not sure.”
“Could we have a hit?”
“More likely a near miss,” Noblos called back. He didn’t sound excited, or even involved. Once more Dan wondered why the guy seemed so pessimistic about the system he himself had helped engineer. He really ought to have inquired more closely into the relationships among the Missile Defense Agency, the Navy Advanced Projects Office, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Commander, Operational Test and Evaluation Force, and Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. All had taken part in the design of the Block 4 and the thrust-vector-control booster. He’d met some of the monsters that lurked in the Navy’s development labyrinth, back when he’d worked with Tomahawk. Not everyone wanted a new program to succeed. But he couldn’t believe Noblos actually wanted them to fail. More likely negativity was just part of his personality.
“Second round intercepts … now.”
The radar return pulsed, but didn’t strobe this time. Actually, Dan couldn’t see any effect. “Are we calling that a miss?”
The EW operator called, “Transponder ceased emitting.”
The CIC officer walked back, and returned. “The signal was intermittent, but he was hearing it. Then it stopped.”
“Stand by for impact, shot three … now.”
The blip smeared across the screen, so sudden and bright the watchers flinched. When the trace dimmed, it left only the by-now-familiar returns of spinning debris. The shrapnel from their TBM shootdowns had been incandescent hot. This chaotic, random flicker expanded across the screen like galaxies in a cooling, aging universe. “Direct hit,” Wenck said.
“Concur,” muttered Mills laconically.
“Good job, everyone. I really wasn’t sure we were going to make that basket. Report it on covered voice.” Dan leaned back, cradling aching kidneys with both hands.
Mills resocketed the red phone. “Strike One says Bravo Zulu on the shootdown. Savo Island, return to formation. Launch helo and sanitize Sector Hotel before the strike group passes through it.”
“Anything from PaCom?”
“They acknowledged.” Mills hesitated.
“What else?”
“Nothing, sir. They acknowledged the report. Asked how many rounds were expended. I told them, three.”
“Very well. Make it so,” Dan said. “Bravo Zulu” meant “well done.” But the lack of any comment from PaCom was less reassuring. Oh, well. They probably had more on their minds than patting Savo’s back. Though it would’ve been nice to have something to pass on to the team, over and above his own congratulations.
The ear-piercing shreik of the boatswain’s pipe made him plug his ears. “Now secure from condition three TBMD. Set condition three wartime steaming. Now flight quarters, flight quarters. All hands man your flight quarters stations for launch of Red Hawk 202. Stand clear topside aft of frame 315. Smoking lamp is out throughout the ship. Now flight quarters.”
* * *
STRIKE One scrubbed that evening’s exercises, and set EMCONs, emission controls, which restricted both radars and communications. Savo ran silent, except for her sonars. They were headed north as quietly as possible, then. He guessed taking down Object 20404 had been intended to help cover their advance. The Chinese had to know they were out here, but without a more exact localization, the battle group would be impossible to target. Red Hawk was out again after refueling and crew rest, taking turns with Hawes’s helo “sanitizing” the intended track for submarine threats.
He was sitting at the coffee table in the wardroom that night, holding a copy of Undersea Technology but not looking at it, just sitting blankly staring at the big Tom Freeman painting of the Battle of Savo Island, when Staurulakis plumped down next to him. “Hate to interrupt, Captain.”
He sighed. “What is it, XO?” Then, seeing “Sheriff” Toan behind her, he put the magazine aside.
Leaning in, the exec told him one of the female petty officers had reported she’d been raped. “She was on the way to her berthing area when the overhead lights in the passageway went off. Someone grabbed her from behind, pressed a pointed object to her neck, and steered her into an equipment room.” Staurulakis paused, then added, “He made her undress, and raped her. He’s gone all the way now.”
“Oh, no,” Dan said. “So, it wasn’t Shah, or the other Iranians. Is she okay? I mean, not is she okay, but he didn’t wound her, did he? This knife—”
“Superficial cuts. But she’s in shock. Grissett and Dr. Schell are treating her. Hermelinda’s there too.” Staurulakis looked at the magazine, and turned it facedown on the table. Added, softly, “It was the Terror.”
For a second he didn’t understand. Then, to his horror, did. “You mean, Beth … Petty Officer Terranova?” She nodded. “My God, I…” He abandoned the sentence. There was nothing adequate to say. “I’ll come right down.”
“If you don’t mind, Captain, better to give her some privacy. It might just be the shock speaking. But let’s let the medical people handle this for now. Get her calmed down, gather the evidence—”
The wardroom door banged open. Amy Singhe, cheeks livid. She stalked toward them between the tables, fists clenched. “I told you this would happen, Commander!” she shouted at Staurulakis. “I told you we weren’t safe aboard this fucking ship.”
Staurulakis bolted to her feet. She was smaller-boned than Singhe, but not much shorter. “Not here, Lieutenant. And watch your language.”
Singhe looked past her at Dan. “You’re telling him? Nothing changes. The chiefs still treat the women like peons. They still get groped, down in the working spaces. They come to me, not the command. Because the command does nothing. This has been on the way for a long time. And now it’s here.”
Another slammed-open door; Chief Tausengelt’s leathery visage was stormy. He rolled in fast, only to be whirled on by a furious Lieutenant Singhe. “Here he is. Tell the captain what you said, Master Chief.”
“All I said was—”
Singhe curled her lip. “All he said was, ‘She shouldn’t have been alone.” That ‘they all deserve it.’ Tell him!” She was almost screaming, jabbing a finger in the old chief’s face.
“You heard me wrong, sir. I mean, ma’am. That’s not exactly what I—”
“Amy,” the XO said warningly. “Better cool it. Lieutenant.”
Dan was on his feet. “We are not doing this here! My cabin, now!” This was getting out of hand. “We don’t have time to split the crew up over this. We’re headed for a hostile coast, coming in range of enemy air. We could be in action at any time.”
“You think the crew’s not already split, sir? That the chiefs can do no wrong? As if they don’t know who’s doing this. And maybe, even, shielding him?”
Dan kept from shouting, but not by much. “You’re really disappointing me, Lieutenant. Are you alleging some kind of conspiracy? That some people know who the fondler, I mean, the rapist, is, and aren’t sharing that with the command?”
Singhe just shook her head and looked away, folding her arms. “I’ll save it for the NCIS. That’s our only chance to get the maggots out in the sunlight.” She glanced at him, dark eyes both angry and, somehow, pitying. “It was part of the command climate, before you arrived. But now it’s taking place on your ship. Sorry if the fallout hurts you. I tried to tell you. But you wouldn’t listen. So now it’s all going to hit the fan.”
She wheeled and stalked out. Tausengelt grabbed Dan’s elbow. “That bitch … I mean, the lieutenant … she’s gone over the edge, Captain. I swear to you, if any of the chiefs knew anything about this, we’d have the guy in irons. We know this shit is tearing the ship apart. Taking it to the NCIS isn’t going to help.”
Another woman had come in: Petty Officer Redmond, hair up in braids; one of Terranova’s friends, Dan recalled. Deathly pale, she met no one’s eyes. “Sir? Ma’am? I heard, I heard that Terror—”
“Just a moment, Redmond. Only one thing will help,” Cheryl Staurulakis said. “Finding out who did it. Until then, everybody’s a suspect. And we don’t have any choice about calling in the NCIS. They’d have been here already if we hadn’t been in wartime steaming, with ship-to-ship transfers limited to operational necessity.”
Dan barely restrained himself from covering his face with his hands. “Shut up, all of you!” he shouted. They went quiet instantly, turning shocked faces to him. “Now listen up. I’m going down to see Terranova. Exec, draft a message to the carrier, requesting they send their agent at the first possible opportunity.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Master Chief, we’re locking down. Everyone who doesn’t need a knife in the performance of his work, turn it in to the chief master-at-arms. I don’t care what the regs say, I want all knives turned in, all lockers searched for compromising materials. All unmanned spaces will be locked when not in use. Passageways outside berthing spaces will be random-patrolled by the master-at-arms force.”
“Got it, Captain.”
“Have Dr. Schell see me as soon as he’s done treating his patient. Any other measures to prevent this happening again that you can think of, bring them to me, and I’ll approve them.” He stared at the stony faces, their sidelong glares, and despaired. How could he fight his ship, when the lead Aegis petty officer had just been raped? Take Savo into battle, with the chiefs and the female officers at loggerheads? While some faceless evil slithered among them, anonymous, unknown, corrupting morale and trust?
For a moment, he contemplated just giving up. But that was futile. No one else could fill his shoes. Perhaps Singhe was right. Maybe he hadn’t listened closely enough. Been proactive enough. Whatever had happened, he was to blame.
He was the captain.
He looked at their faces again, at Staurulakis’s rapidly blinking eyes, the old chief’s leathery careful nonexpression, the female petty officer’s trembling outrage, the master-at-arms’ dropped gaze. Cleared his throat. “Now go. And let’s try hard not to make this even worse than it is.”