Sword of Shiva - Страница 39

This supersonic ‘sprint’ would give potential interceptors only seconds to identify the threat and react. Theoretically, the window of opportunity for defensive engagement would be too narrow for the target ship to exploit.

That theory was about to be tested.

USS Towers:

The drama played itself out on the tactical display screens in two acts, separated by both time and distance. To the southwest, the First Act had nearly resolved itself. Evasive maneuvering aside, the ship’s SM-3 missiles were shredding the inbound Bogies, which — Bowie was now certain — must be decoys.

The Second Act was playing out to the east. Forty hostile missile symbols had appeared, and were closing on the Midway at incredible speed.

Two elements of Combat Air Patrol were vectoring in to intercept the Vipers, but — like everyone else in the strike group — they’d been caught looking the wrong way. Even on afterburner, by the time the F/A-18s arrived on station, the engagement would be over.

The Midway had air defenses of her own: a pair of Rolling Airframe Missile launchers, a trio of Sea Sparrow missile launchers, and four Close-In Weapon Systems — the 20mm defensive Gatling guns known to the fleet as Phalanx. The carrier could protect herself against a reasonable number of subsonic cruise missiles. But the number of inbound Vipers was not at all reasonable, and they were moving at supersonic speeds.

The only thing between the carrier and destruction was the USS Frank W. Fenno, the Arliegh-Burke class guided missile destroyer assigned to the eastern perimeter of the strike group’s screen.

As Bowie and his CIC crew watched the tactical displays, the Fenno began launching clouds of SM-3 missiles. The friendly missile symbols overlapped and obscured each other for several seconds, and then they began to diverge as the interceptor missiles homed in on individual targets.

They were too many to count visually in the limited time before intercept, but the Aegis tracking software provided the total. Eighty missiles. The Frank W. Fenno was following a shoot-shoot-look-shoot doctrine. Fire two missiles at each incoming Viper, scan with radar to see how many have been destroyed, and then fire again at any Vipers that survived the first salvo.

Bowie’s first instinct was to call that a mistake, but maybe it wasn’t. He didn’t know the other destroyer’s exact weapons load out, but it probably wasn’t much different from what the Towers was carrying. The Fenno had something like ninety SM-3s aboard, give or take a few for minor variations in mission loads. Which meant that the Fenno’s skipper had just launched about ninety percent of his SAMs in his initial salvo. Ordinarily not the kind of choice that a smart destroyer captain would make. But the Vipers were coming in too fast. The Fenno wasn’t going to get off a second salvo. Whatever they missed the first time around, was going to hit the carrier.

Bowie slammed the Navy Red handset back into its cradle. “Goddamn it! Is there any way we can help the Fenno intercept those Vipers?”

The Tactical Action Officer shook his head. “Not a chance, Captain. Even if we had a clear field of fire, they’re too far away. By the time our birds get over there, it’ll be too late.”

“There’s nothing you can do right now,” Silva said softly.

Bowie turned, and she was standing at his elbow. He exhaled heavily. “I know. But I don’t have to like it.”

He turned his eyes back to the Aegis display screens. “Damn it!” he said. “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”

* * *

The engagement unfolded on the big displays. Two friendly missile symbols converged on a hostile missile symbol as the first of Fenno’s interceptors destroyed their assigned Viper. Then the interplay of tactical symbols seemed to shift into overdrive, red and blue icons stuttering, intersecting, vanishing, and rearranging themselves in indecipherable patterns.

When it was over, nine hostile missiles remained on the screen, streaking toward the bright blue circle that represented the American aircraft carrier.

USS Midway:

Admiral Zimmerman gripped the arms of his chair and watched the onrushing missile symbols on the large-screen tactical displays. He had already double-checked his seat belt. He had no intention of getting tossed around Flag Plot like a rag doll when those damned missiles hit.

He heard the muted growls of outbound RAMs and Sea Sparrows, punctuated several times by the harsh metallic zipper sound of the CIWS guns firing. Friendly missile symbols flickered briefly on the tactical displays, and hostile symbols winked out of existence. They were getting some of the Vipers. How many, he didn’t know, but there were two or three left on the screen when the first of the enemy missiles slammed into the starboard side of the superstructure.

The admiral was thrown against his seatbelt so hard that he felt like someone had pounded him in the stomach with a Louisville slugger. The lighting flickered, but the power seemed to be holding, at least in Flag Plot.

His ears rang and his eyes didn’t want to focus properly. He could smell smoke, and he could hear someone shouting what sounded like orders, but the words didn’t make any sense to him.

He lifted his head and his eyes found the big tactical screens. Four of them were dark, but the screen on the far right still showed the weaving ballet of colorful icons. An odd red emblem bore straight for the heart of a bright blue circle.

The symbols touched, and the admiral felt himself thrown violently against his seatbelt again.

The lights went out.

CHAPTER 44

WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM

WASHINGTON, DC

MONDAY; 01 DECEMBER

9:48 AM EST

President Wainright flipped open the blue-jacketed folder and began to scan the top page of the briefing package it contained. After skimming the material for nearly two minutes, he looked up. “Okay, I’ve seen the charts and figures. Now, I want somebody to translate it into English for me.”

He closed the folder and dropped it on the table. “How bad is it?”

Admiral Casey, the Chief of Naval Operations, stood up. “It’s not good, Mr. President.”

He pointed a remote toward the wall-sized Situation Room display screen. The presidential seal was replaced by a series of still pictures of the aircraft carrier, USS Midway. The ship was listing fifteen or twenty degrees to starboard, and several of the images showed smoke billowing from a hole in the superstructure and another (larger) hole in the lower hull. Close-up photos of the two damaged areas had apparently been taken at a later time, after the fires had been extinguished.

“We’re looking at the impact points of two anti-ship cruise missiles,” the CNO said. “Based on flight profiles, electronic emissions, and battle damage assessment, we believe that both missiles were Chinese air-launched variants of the SSN-27 Sizzler.”

The display screen sequenced through a dozen more close-up images, taken from a variety of angles. From this range, the impact points looked like craters. The edges of the blast holes were blackened and irregular, the steel and aluminum structures of the enormous ship broken, charred, and twisted into ragged shapes of chaos.

Admiral Casey halted the march of images with another flick of the remote. The screen showed a medium distance shot of the wounded ship, apparently taken from a helicopter. The angle of the carrier’s list seemed to be even more evident than in the earlier shots.

“As you can see,” the admiral said, “one of the missiles impacted right at the waterline, causing damage above and below the water, and opening the hull to major flooding. This has resulted in a pronounced list to starboard, which was further increased by firefighting water pumped in to extinguish the fires.”

The CNO laid the remote on the conference table. “Given the severity of the damage, personnel casualties have been relatively light. Six dead, and nineteen injured. Three of the wounded are in critical condition, and some or all of them may not make it.”

The president sighed heavily. “How much do we know about the attack?”

The Secretary of Defense closed her own briefing folder and stood up. “Well, Mr. President — not to put too fine a point on it — we got suckered.”

She reached for the remote, and Admiral Casey handed it to her.

SECDEF thumbed several buttons, and the image of the damaged aircraft carrier was replaced by a map of the Bay of Bengal. The blue iconic silhouettes of three Navy destroyers formed a loose triangle, with the silhouette of an aircraft carrier at the center.

“The raid took place in two waves,” the Secretary of Defense said. “The first wave was detected at approximately 1728 hours, that is 5:28 PM local time.”

She keyed the remote, and a cluster of red aircraft shapes appeared to the left and slightly below the strike group. “Twenty jet aircraft, inbound from the southwest. We don’t know exactly which kind of hardware was used, but it seems likely that the entire wave consisted of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, equipped with advanced electronic deception systems. We suspect they were launched from the Chinese carrier, but that’s only an assumption at this point. They were able to closely simulate a group of Chinese J-10 aircraft. And, due to their angle of approach and radar characteristics, they were misidentified as an actual raid against the Midway.”