The second squadron of fighters had just launched. Unable to get a head-on shot, their missile accuracy suffered somewhat. They killed thirty-four targets with forty-eight missiles. There had been a hundred fifty-seven targets plotted.
The third and fourth Tomcat squadrons arrived together and launched as a group. When their Phoenixes had been fully expended, nineteen targets were left. The two fighter squadrons moved in to engage the remaining targets with their cannon.
"Clipper Base, this is SAM Boss. We"re going to have some leakers. Recommend we start lighting up SAM radars."
"Roger, SAM Boss. Permission granted," answered the group tactical warfare coordinator.
NORTH ATLANTIC.
"I have air-search radars, bearing zero-three-seven," the Bear ESM officer noted. "They have detected us. Recommend we illuminate also." The Bear lit off its Big Bulge look-down radar.
USS NIMITZ.
"New radar contact. Designate Raid-2-"
"What?" snapped Baker. Next came a call from the fighters.
"Clipper Base, this is Slugger Lead. I have a visual on my target." The squadron commander was trying to examine the target on his long-range TV camera. When he spoke, the anguish in his voice was manifest. "Warning, warning, this is not a Badger. We"ve been shooting at Kelt missiles!"
"Raid-2 is seventy-three aircraft, bearing two-one-seven, range one-three-zero miles. We have a Big Bulge radar tracking the formation," said the CIC talker.
Toland cringed as the new contacts were plotted. "Admiral, we"ve been had."
The group tactical warfare officer was pale as he toggled his microphone. "Air Warning Red. Weapons free! Threat axis is two-one-seven. All s.h.i.+ps turn as necessary to unmask batteries."
The Tomcats had all been drawn off, leaving the formation practically naked. The only armed fighters over the formation were Foch"s eight Crusaders, long since retired from the American inventory. On a terse command from their carrier, they went to afterburner and rocketed southwest toward the Backfires. Too late.
The Bear already had a clear picture of the American formations. The Russians could not determine s.h.i.+p type, but they could tell large from small, and identify the missile cruiser Ticonderoga by her distinctive radar emissions. The carriers would be close to her. The Bear relayed the information to her consorts. A minute later, the seventy Backfire bombers launched their hundred forty AS-6 Kingfish missiles and turned north at full military power. The Kingfish was nothing like the Kelt. Powered by a liquid-fuel rocket engine, it accelerated to nine hundred knots and began its descent, its radar-homing head tracking on a pre-programmed target area ten miles wide. Every s.h.i.+p in the center of the formation had several missiles a.s.signed.
"Vampire, Vampire!" the CIC talker said aboard Ticonderoga. "We have numerous incoming missiles. Weapons free."
The group antiair warfare officer ordered the cruiser"s Aegis weapons system into full automatic mode. Tico had been built with this exact situation in mind. Her powerful radar/computer system immediately identified the incoming missiles as hostile and a.s.signed each a priority of destruction. The computer was completely on its own, free to fire on its electronic will at anything diagnosed as a threat. Numbers, symbols, and vectors paraded across the master tactical display. The fore and aft twin missile launchers trained out at the first targets and awaited the orders to fire. Aegis was state-of-the-art, the best SAM system yet devised, but it had one major weakness: Tico carried only ninety-six SM2 surface-to-air missiles; there were one hundred forty incoming Kingfish. The computer had not been programmed to think about that.
Aboard Nimitz, Toland could feel the carrier heeling into a radical turn, her engines advanced to flank speed, driving the ma.s.sive wars.h.i.+p at over thirty-five knots. Her nuclear-powered escorts, Virginia and California, were also tracking the Kingfish, their own missiles trained out on their launchers.
The Kingfish were at eight thousand feet, one hundred miles out, covering a mile every four seconds. Each had now selected a target, choosing the largest within their fields of view. Nimitz was the nearest large s.h.i.+p, with her missile-s.h.i.+p escorts to her north.
Tico launched her first quartet of missiles as the targets reached a range of ninety-nine miles. The rockets exploded into the air, leaving a trail of pale gray smoke. They had barely cleared the launch rails when the mounts went vertical and swiveled to receive their reloads. The load-and-fire time was under eight seconds. The cruiser would average one missile fired every two seconds. Just over three minutes later, her missile magazines were empty. The cruiser emerged from the base of an enormous gray arch of smoke. Her only remaining defenses were her gun systems.
The SAMs raced in at their targets with a closing speed of over two thousand miles per hour, directed in by the reflected waves of the s.h.i.+p"s own fire-control radars. At a range of a hundred fifty yards from their targets, the warheads detonated. The Aegis system did quite well. Just over 60 percent of the targets were destroyed. There were now eighty-two incoming missiles targeted on a total of eight s.h.i.+ps.
Other missile-equipped s.h.i.+ps joined the fray. In several cases two or three missiles were sent for the same target, usually killing it. The number of incoming "vampires" dropped to seventy, then sixty, but the number was not dropping quickly enough. The ident.i.ty of the targets was now known to everyone. Powerful active jamming equipment came on. s.h.i.+ps began a radical series of maneuvers like some stylized dance, with scant attention paid to station-keeping. Collision at sea was now the least of anyone"s worries. When the Kingfish got to within twenty miles, every s.h.i.+p in the formation began to fire off chaff rockets, which filled the air with millions of aluminized Mylar fragments that fluttered on the air, creating dozens of new targets for the missiles to select from. Some of the Kingfish lost lock with their targets and started chasing Mylar ghosts. Two of them got lost, and selected new targets on the far side of the formation.
The radar picture on Nimitz suddenly was obscured. What had been discrete pips designating the positions of s.h.i.+ps in the formation became shapeless clouds. Only the missiles stayed constant: inverted V-shapes, with line vectors to designate direction and speed. The last wave of SAMs killed three more. The vampire count was down to forty-one. Toland counted five heading for Nimitz.
Topside, the final defensive weapons were now tracking the targets. These were the CIWS, 20mm Gatling guns, radar-equipped to explode incoming missiles at a range of under two thousand yards. Designed to operate in a fully automatic mode, the two after gun mounts on the carrier angled up and began to track the first pair of incoming Kingfish. The portside mount fired first, the six-barrel cannon making a sound like that of an enormous zipper. Its radar system tracked the target, and tracked the outgoing slugs, adjusting fire to make the two meet.
The leading Kingfish exploded eight hundred yards from Nimitz"s port quarter. The thousand kilograms of high explosive rocked the s.h.i.+p. Toland felt it, wondering if the s.h.i.+p had been hit. Around him, the CIC crewmen were concentrating frantically on their jobs. One target track vanished from the screen. Four left.
The next Kingfish approached the carrier"s bow and was blasted out of the sky by the forward CIWS, too close aboard. Fragments ripped across the carrier"s deck, killing a dozen exposed crewmen.
Number three was decoyed by a chaff cloud and ran straight into the sea half a mile behind the carrier. The warhead caused the carrier to vibrate and raised a column of water a thousand feet into the air.
The fourth and fifth missiles came in from aft, not a hundred yards apart. The after gun mount tracked on both, but couldn"t decide which to engage first. It went into Reset mode and petulantly didn"t engage any. The missiles. .h.i.t within a second of one another, one on the after port corner of the flight deck, the other on the number two arrestor wire.
Toland was thrown fifteen feet, and slammed against a radar console. Next he saw a wall of pink flame that washed briefly over him. Then came the noises. First the thunder of the explosion. Then the screams. The after CIC bulkhead was no longer there; instead there was a ma.s.s of flame. Men twenty feet away were ablaze, staggering and screaming before his eyes. Toland"s only thought was escape. He bolted for the watertight door. It opened miraculously under his hand and he ran to starboard. The s.h.i.+p"s fire-suppression systems were already on, showering everything with a curtain of salt.w.a.ter. His skin burned from it as he emerged, hair and uniform singed, to the flight deck catwalk. A sailor directed a water hose on him, nearly knocking him over the side.
"Fire in CIC!" Toland gasped.
"What the h.e.l.l ain"t!" the sailor screamed.
Toland fell to his knees and looked outboard. Foch had been to their north, he remembered. Now there was a pillar of smoke. As he watched, the last Kingfish was detonated a hundred feet over Saratoga"s flight deck. The carrier seemed undamaged. Three miles away, Ticonderoga"s after superstructure was shredded and ablaze from a rocket that had blown up within yards of her. On the horizon a ball of flame announced the destruction of yet another-my G.o.d, Toland thought, might that be Saipan? She had two thousand Marines aboard . . .
"Get forward, you dumba.s.s!" a firefighter yelled at him. Another man emerged to the catwalk.
"Toland, you all right?" It was Captain Svenson, his s.h.i.+rt torn away and his chest bleeding from a half-dozen cuts.
"Yes, sir," Bob answered.
"Get to the bridge. Tell "em to put the wind on the starboard beam. Move!" Svenson jumped up onto the flight deck.
Toland did likewise, racing forward. The deck was awash in firefighting foam, slippery as oil. Toland ran recklessly, falling hard on the deck before he reached the carrier"s island. He was in the pilothouse in under a minute.
"Captain says put the wind on the starboard beam!" Toland said.
"It is on the f.u.c.king beam!" the executive officer snapped back. The bridge deck was covered with broken gla.s.s. "How"s the skipper?"
"Alive. He"s aft with the fire."
"And who the h.e.l.l are you?" the XO demanded.
"Toland, group intel. I was in CIC."
"Then you"re one lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d. That second bird hit fifty yards from you. Captain got out? Anyone else?"
"I don"t know. Burning like h.e.l.l."
"Looks like you caught part of it, Commander."
Bob"s face felt as if he"d shaved with a piece of gla.s.s. His eyebrows crumpled to his touch. "Flashburns, I guess. I"ll be okay. What do you want me to do?"
The XO pointed to Toland"s water wings. "Can you conn the s.h.i.+p? Okay, do it. Nothing left to run into anyway. I"m going aft to take charge of the fire. Communications are out, radar"s out, but the engines are okay and the hull"s in good shape. Mr. Bice has the deck. Mr. Toland has the conn," XO announced as he left.
Toland hadn"t conned anything bigger than a Boston Whaler in over ten years, and now he had a damaged carrier. He took a pair of binoculars and looked around to see what s.h.i.+ps were nearby. What he saw chilled him.
Saratoga was the only s.h.i.+p that looked intact, but on second glance her radar mast was askew. Foch was lower in the water than she ought to have been, and ablaze from bow to stem.
"Where"s Saipan?"
"Blew up like a f.u.c.king firework," Commander Bice replied. "Holy Jesus, there were twenty-five hundred men aboard! Tico took one close aboard. Foch took three hits, looks like she"s gone. Two frigates and a destroyer gone, too-just f.u.c.king gone, man! Who f.u.c.ked up? You were in CIC, right? Who f.u.c.ked up?"
The eight French Crusaders were just making contact with the Backfires. The Russian bombers were on afterburner and were nearly as fast as the fighters. The carrier pilots had all heard their s.h.i.+p go off the air and were consumed with rage at what had happened, no longer the cool professionals who drove fighters off s.h.i.+ps. Only ten Backfires were within their reach. They got six of them with their missiles and damaged two more before they had to break off.
USS Caron, the senior undamaged s.h.i.+p, tracked the Russians on her radar, calling Britain for fighters to intercept them on the trip home. But the Russians had antic.i.p.ated this, and detoured far west of the British Isles, meeting their tankers four hundred miles west of Norway.
Already the Russians were evaluating the results of their mission. The first major battle of modern carriers and missile-armed bombers had been won and lost. Both sides knew which was which.
The fire on Nimitz was out within an hour. With no aircraft aboard, there were few combustibles about, and the s.h.i.+p"s firefighting abilities equaled that of a large city. Toland brought her back to an easterly course. Saratoga was recovering aircraft, refueling them, and sending all but the fighters to the beach. Three frigates and a destroyer lingered to recover survivors, as the large s.h.i.+ps turned back toward Europe.
"All ahead full," Svenson ordered from his seat on the bridge. "Toland, you all right?"
"No complaints." No point in it, the s.h.i.+p"s hospital was more than full with hundreds of major injury cases. There was no count of the dead yet, and Toland didn"t want to think about that.
"You were right," the captain said, his voice angry and subdued. "You were right. They made it too easy and we fell for it."
"There"ll be another day, Captain."
"You"re G.o.dd.a.m.ned right there will! We"re heading for Southampton. See if the Brits can fix anything this big. My regulars are still busy aft. Think you can handle the conn a little longer?"
"Yes, sir."
Nimitz and her nuclear escorts bent on full speed, nearly forty knots, and rapidly left the formation behind. A reckless move, racing too fast for antisubmarine patrols, but a submarine would have to move quickly indeed to catch them.
21.
Nordic Hammer
HILL 152, ICELAND.
"I know that was a fighter, and there had to be more than one," Edwards said. It was raining again, probably for the last time. The clouds to the southwest were breaking up, and there was a hint of clear sky on the horizon. Edwards just sat there in his helmet and poncho, staring into the distance.
"I suppose you"re right, sir," Smith replied. The sergeant was nervous. They"d been on this hilltop for almost twenty-four hours, a long time to be stationary in hostile country. The best time to move out would have been during the rain showers, when visibility was cut to a few hundred yards. Soon the sky might be clear again, and it wouldn"t get dark again for quite a while. As it was, they sat on their hilltop in camouflage ponchos that kept them partly dry and wholly miserable.
There was a heavy shower north of them that prevented their seeing Reykjavik, and they could barely make out Hafnarfjrdur to the west, which worried the sergeant, who wanted to know what Ivan was up to. What if they detected Edwards"s satellite radio and began to triangulate on it? What if there were patrols out?
"Lieutenant?"
"Yeah, Sarge?"
"We got those phone lines on one side of us, and those power lines on the other-"
"You want to blow some up?" Edwards smiled.
"No, sir, but Ivan is going to start patrolling them soon, and this ain"t a very good place for us to make contact."
"We"re supposed to observe and report, Sarge," Edwards said without conviction.
"Yes, sir."
Edwards checked his watch. It was 1955Z. Doghouse might want to talk with them, though they hadn"t called in to him yet. Edwards broke the radio out of the pack again, a.s.sembled the pistol-grip antenna, and donned his headset. At 1959 he switched on and tracked in on the satellite carrier wave.
"Doghouse calling Beagle. Doghouse calling Beagle. Do you copy? Over."
"Well, how about that." He toggled the Transmit switch. "Roger, we"re here, Doghouse."
"Anything new to report?"
"Negative, unless you want to know about the rain. Visibility is down. We can"t see very much."
The communications watch officer at Doghouse looked at a weather map. So it really was raining there. He hadn"t been able to convince his boss that Beagle could be trusted. Edwards had answered the questions that the counterintelligence guys had come up with. They"d even had a voice-stress a.n.a.lyzer handy to check the tapes of his answers. The needle had pegged on the last answer about his girlfriend. That hadn"t been faked. Copies of the relevant parts of his personnel package had been faxed to them. Upper fifth of his cla.s.s at Colorado Springs. Good in math and engineering studies, did extremely well in his postgraduation studies in meteorology. His eyesight had worsened slightly during his tenure at Colorado Springs, becoming just bad enough to keep him from flying. Regarded as quiet and shy, but evidently well liked by his cla.s.smates. Not a warrior type, the psychological profile said. How long would the kid last?
KEFLAVIK, ICELAND.