Sword of Shiva - Страница 48

Silva tapped Bowie on the shoulder and pointed toward the screen. “Captain, we just got a hard kill on one of our surface targets.”

Bowie shifted his attention from the air-battle to the surface symbols, just as the Surface Warfare Coordinator was reporting the destruction of the enemy ship.

The captain gave Silva a nod. “You’ve got a quick eye.” He keyed his mike. “TAO — Captain. Shift all 5-inch gunfire to Surface Contact Zero One.”

On the screen, hostile and friendly missile symbols began merging. “TAO — Air. Splash three Vipers. We have five remaining inbounds.”

“TAO, aye. Break. EW — TAO. Launch chaff.”

The Electronic Warfare operator acknowledged the order. “Launch chaff, aye.”

His report was punctuated by a rapid series of muffled thumps. “Six away.”

Out in the darkness, a half dozen blunt-nosed projectiles rocketed out of the forward Super-RBOC launchers. The Super Rapid-Blooming Overboard Chaff canisters flew through the air to explode at pre-determined points, scattering metallic confetti and clouds of aluminum dust to attract the radar seekers of incoming weapons.

There was another rumble, as the Aegis computers fired another set of SM-3 interceptor missiles.

“TAO — Air. Ten birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted two-each on the remaining inbound Vipers.”

On the tactical display, the four SM-3 missiles that had been fired toward the Chinese fighter planes were now reaching their targets. One of the enemy aircraft flashed and vanished from the screen, replaced by a last-known-position marker.

“TAO — Air. Splash one Bogie. The remaining Bogies are turning south.”

The Tactical Action Officer nodded. “The SSN-27 is a heavy weapon. They might not be carrying more than two.”

“Maybe,” Bowie said. “But let’s not count on that.”

The ten outbound interceptor missiles merged with the five incoming Vipers. When the jumble of symbols sorted themselves out, three of the hostile missiles were still closing.

Bowie grimaced. “We’re always hearing about how tough it is to intercept the SSN-27, but Jesus… What does it take to shoot those damned things down? Kryptonite?”

One of the hostile missile symbols veered abruptly to the side, and then vanished.

“TAO — Air. One taker on chaff. No takers on jamming.”

The remaining two Vipers were practically touching the Towers symbol on the screen.

“TAO — Weapons Control. Two of the Vipers got through. They’ve kicked into terminal homing phase, and they’re too close to re-engage with missiles. Forward CIWS mount is engaging.”

The air throbbed with the staccato growl of the Close-In Weapon System as it sprayed a burst of 20mm tungsten rounds toward one of the incoming cruise missiles. There was a deafening boom as the Viper exploded just a few hundred yards away from the ship.

The CIWS mount spun toward the next target and began firing. It was almost in time.

SSN-27:

A half-second before impact, the nose section of the missile was hammered into fragments by a hail of tungsten penetrator rounds, shattering the radar seeker head and the guidance mechanism. If the weapon had been even fifty meters away from its target, the damage might have been enough to send it spiraling into the sea. But the SSN-27 was moving at more than twice the speed of sound, and the resulting inertia carried the blinded missile the last few meters to its destination.

The SSN-27 struck the port side of the American warship, about four meters below the main deck. All of the weapon’s sophisticated proximity sensors and influence triggers had been pulverized by CIWS, but the brute simplicity of the contact detonator had survived.

In the microsecond of contact, the mechanical force of the impact propagated down the length of the missile, compressing a simple cylindrical rod of nickel ferrite mounted at the core of a short magnetic coil. Through the physical principle of magnetostriction, the deformation of the nickel rod created a tiny but distinct magnetic pulse, which expanded over the windings of the coil, generating an electrical signal. This signal was calibrated to satisfy the triggering threshold of the primer mechanism buried in the missile’s warhead.

Two-hundred kilograms of Cyclotri-methylene Trinitramine flashed into a shaped cone of raw force that punched through the hull of the warship with the power of a runaway locomotive. Steel plating buckled like paper. Reinforced steel beams shrieked and gave way before the unstoppable onslaught of heat and atmospheric overpressure. A flaming torrent of shrapnel and destruction lanced deep into the heart of the ship through the widening hole.

And then there came chaos and death.

CHAPTER 52

USS TOWERS (DDG-103)

BAY OF BENGAL

WEDNESDAY; 03 DECEMBER

0029 hours (12:29 AM)

TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’

There was a strangely-eternal moment when everything seemed to be playing out in slow motion. Silva could hear the Officer of the Deck’s voice over the ship’s 1-MC speakers, instructing the crew to brace for shock. Someone was requesting an update on the status of the remaining Viper. On the Aegis display screen, the red shape of a hostile missile symbol could be seen merging with the blue circle that represented USS Towers.

Silva was standing next to Captain Bowie, a few feet behind the Tactical Action Officer’s chair, and there wasn’t much within easy reach to grab on to.

Bowie took a grip on a crossbeam above his head, and Silva turned toward a stanchion to her right: a steel support column that ran from the deck to the overhead. She got her hands wrapped around the pole, lowered her head, and bent her knees slightly — trying to mimic the brace-for-shock posture that every Sailor learns, but few expect to ever actually need.

And then the long second ended, and the passage of time jumped from its impossibly languorous stupor, to the speed of sheer pandemonium.

The shockwave tore through Combat Information Center like a hurricane, and the air was suddenly filled with flying debris, body parts, and the screams of the injured and the dying. Every loose article in the compartment, every grease pencil, and clipboard, and coffee mug was instantly airborne, and accelerating away from the point of impact with the speed of the expanding wave front.

The SLQ-32 stations in the EW Module and the radar consoles in tracker alley absorbed and deflected some of the force of the blast. Several of the consoles were ripped from their mounts, display screens exploding into showers of glass, the fragments driving deep into the faces and bodies of the human operators.

Silva’s grip was jerked away from the stanchion. She was thrown against a status board hard enough to crack the shatterproof window of Plexiglas. The impact knocked all breath out of her, and the side of her head smacked into the metal frame of the status board. She crumpled to the deck in a senseless heap.

Cooling water sprayed from ruptured pipes, and severed electrical cables arced and shorted, tripping circuit breakers. The overhead lighting went out, and the next half-second of carnage and confusion took place in total darkness.

Then the battle lanterns kicked on, illuminating the devastated compartment in the dim red glow of battery-powered emergency lighting.

The giant Aegis display screens were dark. Red and amber tattletales blinked fitfully on most of the remaining consoles, signaling various degrees of physical and electronic damage.

Silva lay on her back, watching the strange interplay of lights and shadows on the overhead — the glow of the battle lanterns, muted and twisted by tendrils of smoke from the explosion, the pulsing flicker of warning lights, and the dimly-perceived silhouettes of people stumbling around in the semi-darkness. The air was heavy with the acrid odor of burnt chemicals, melted electrical insulation, and scorched flesh.

It seemed likely that fires were burning somewhere nearby, but the possibility didn’t seem very important to Silva’s addled brain. At some point, she realized that the lower left sleeve of her coveralls was smoldering. The fabric was supposed to be flame-retardant, and apparently it was. Otherwise, her sleeve would probably be blazing merrily right now.

It gradually dawned on her that she was supposed to get up off the deck. There were things she needed to be doing. She just couldn’t remember what they were.

Her ears were still ringing from the blast, but she could hear frantic voices coming from the overhead speakers. Reports. Damage inquiries. Requests for orders. No one seemed to be paying attention to any of them.

Her head lolled to the left, and she found herself looking at a man lying on his side, in a spreading pool of blood. His face was familiar. She had seen him somewhere. Maybe she had met him, or something…

No. That wasn’t right. She knew him. It was Bowie. Captain Bowie.

That single coherent thought — that simple and basic act of identification — became the spark that restarted Silva’s conscious mind. She began to take in and process information again. The world slid back into focus, and with it came pain, in her head, her ribs, and her left wrist. More bruises than she could count, and she was bleeding from the area of her left temple, but nothing seemed to be broken.

She tried to lever herself up to a sitting position, and immediately revised her assessment as a wave of stomach-churning pain radiated from her left arm. Okay, maybe the wrist was broken.