by Dale Brown
Mack cursed as the aircraft steadily pulled away.
"Hawk One, I'm turning back south," said Dog.
"Yeah, OK," said Mack. He started to follow, then realized that if he kept his present heading he could catch the MiG when it made its own turn to follow the Megafortress. Sure enough, a few seconds later the Indian aircraft appeared at the top corner of his screen. He closed in, then just as the targeting bar turned red — indicating he had a shot — the computer warned that he was going to lose his connection. Mack fired anyway, putting two long bursts into the underside of the MiG's fuselage. There was no doubt that he got a hit this time — flames poured out of the aircraft. Mack jerked his stick back just in time to keep the link with the Wisconsin.
"Splash one MiG. Finally," he said. "And about time, if I do say so myself."
* * *
"One of those missiles is still coming for us, Colonel."
Dog pulled the Megafortress into a tight turn, trying to beam the guidance radar by flying parallel to the radar waves. The tactic didn't work this time; the missile continued to close. They threw chaff and sent a wave of electronic countermeasures into the air to scramble the missile's brains. Dog, sensing he was still being pursued, rolled the big plane onto its wing, dropping and twisting behind the fog created by the countermeasures. This finally did the trick; the missile sailed overhead, exploding a mile away.
"Action near the Chinese carrier," said T-Bone. "Air groups from the Shiva—they're coming north at a high rate of speed. Missiles being fired! Jesus — they're throwing everything at them!"
Dog went on the Dreamland Command line to warn Storm.
Aboard the Abner Read,
in the northern Arabian Sea
0523
"Multiple missile launches from the Shiva and other Indian ships," Eyes told Storm. "Dreamland aircraft Wisconsin reports Indian aircraft moving toward the Deng Xiaoping in apparent attack formation."
"Where are our shadows?"
"Still circling overhead."
"If they turn their weapons radars on, shoot them down." "We're ready, Captain."
Storm took his night vision binoculars and stepped out onto the flying bridge, scanning the air above, and then the horizon in the direction of the Chinese carrier sixty miles away.
Too far to see the results of the Indian attack. A pity, he thought. A real pity.
* * *
Starship rubbed his eyes furiously as he waited for Petty Officer Varitok to put the Werewolf into a hover so he could take over. The Tac Center, never a picture of calm, looked like a commodities exchange on steroids behind them. The Indians were launching dozens of missiles, and the Chinese were starting to respond.
"All yours, Airforce," said Varitok, leaping out of the seat. "You're right over the Sharkboat."
Starship pulled on his headset and dropped into the chair. There was a flash of red on the main screen. "Is that coming from the radar platform?"
Varitok looked at the screen. "Can't tell. It's ten miles east, two miles from shore."
Starship pushed the Werewolf forward, accelerating from zero to 200 knots in a matter of seconds. He saw a second flash, and realized the explosions were too high to be from the radar platform.
There were fighters nearby — a pair of Su-35s far overhead, and a MiG-29 at about ten thousand feet, fortunately heading north. A missile launched from a boat to the south, crossing within a half mile.
"Tac, it's getting ugly out here," Starship told Eyes. "You want Werewolf to continue this mission, or come back to the Abner Read?"
"Continue your mission until told not to."
"You got it."
* * *
Storm listened as Radar updated him on the Su-35s.
They'd begun to descend rapidly in the direction of the ship, but still had not activated the radars normally associated with air-to-ship missiles.
What were they doing? Sightseeing?
The hell they were.
"Eyes — take down those planes!" shouted Storm. "They're going to either switch their targeting radars on at the last minute or hit us with iron bombs."
"Aye aye, Captain, firing missiles."
Two Standard SM-2 AERs spit out of the vertical launch tubes. Storm tracked their flares as they arced upward.
Thirty seconds later the sky flashed white. A loud boom rent the air. Another flash. Boom! Bar-oom!
"Both planes hit," Eyes reported.
"Good work."
As Storm turned to go inside, the Phalanx close-in air defense gun on the starboard side of the ship began firing. Storm gripped the rail, and in the next moment the ocean erupted beneath him.
Dwarka Early Warning Radar Platform One
0523
Captain Sattari felt his heart pound as he ran up the stairs, a few steps behind the team's point man. Bullets flew down from above, but they were unaimed, falling into the nearby water. Sattari's chest heaved as he reached the landing. The other soldier had stopped to wait for him and the others.
"One more set of steps and we are at the main level," said the point man, repeating the brief Sattari himself had delivered before the mission. "There will be four men there, no more."
Sattari grunted, too winded to reply. He pulled up the grenade launcher while he caught his breath, making sure it was ready to fire.
Had the water ruined it? The only way to find out would be to use it.
Two more men reached the landing.
"Let us take them now," said Sattari, his wind back. He pushed to the nearby steps. By the time he got halfway up the flight, the others had run ahead of him, his age finally starting to tell.
Gunshots peppered the air as they reached the turn. Two of the men threw themselves down, answering with their own gunfire. The third — the point man who had just been leading Sattari upward — tumbled down, shot several times.
Sattari slid close to the railing and went up, stopping below the crouching men. Once again he checked the grenade launcher.
"All right," he said, crawling next to them. "Wait until I fire."
If only he could have one of the black robes who'd questioned his courage with him now — he would use him as a shield.
When the rattle of the automatic guns above started to die, Sattari leapt to his feet, raised the launcher and fired.
Aboard the Levitow,
over the northern Arabian Sea
0525
Breanna checked their position again. They were not quite ten minutes from their patrol area. The Indian aircraft carrier Shiva was forty miles to the northeast.
"All hell's breaking loose up there," said Stewart. "Multiple missile firings from the Shiva and their task group."
"Plot a course to the EEMWB launch point," said Breanna. "I'm going to turn east. There's no sense going through the middle of this."
"But we haven't gotten the order yet."
"I want to be in a position to respond if we do. Long-range radars off," added Breanna, adopting the mission plan. "Prepare to penetrate hostile territory."
"Roger that."
"Dreamland Levitow to Hawk Three and Four—we're changing course and descending. Stay with me."
Aboard the Abner Read,
in the northern Arabian Sea
0525
Storm flew against the side of the littoral destroyer's superstructure, slamming back and recoiling onto the deck. He slid on the gridwork, grappling for a handhold to keep from falling into the sea.
The Abner Read lurched away from the explosion — and then back toward it. Storm's legs shot over the edge of the flying bridge as his fingers dug into the grating. He got enough of a hold to get to his knees before he lost his grip and slid as the ship bobbed violently, rolling him toward the portal that led back inside to the bridge. He caught the side of the opening with his wrist, slid his hand there for a grip and, finally, with the boat still rocking violently, managed to push his right knee up under him and throw himself inside the ship.
He only got t
wo-thirds of the way in, but it was far enough to grab hold of one of the legs of the instrument console. He clutched it as tightly as he could, squeezing with all of his might. Then he pulled himself upward, smacking his head on the shelf as he did.
"Captain!" yelled one of the men on the bridge. He too was on his knees.
Dazed, Storm struggled to his feet.
"Damage Control, report," he said. "Damage—"
Storm put his hand to his face; his headset was gone.
One of his men grabbed him, steadying him on his feet. It was Petty Officer Varitok, the Werewolf pilot he'd ordered replaced.
"You all right, Captain?"
"Yes, I'm fine. Get me the backup headset. In my cabin — go."
Storm went to the holographic display, activating the damage control view. One of the compartments on the starboard side had been breached.
It was too soon to tell how bad the damage was, but al ready the automatic damage control system had cordoned off the area. Even if the compartment was a total loss, the ship would not sink.
His heart pounding in his chest, Storm turned his attention to the helmsman, who was still at his post. "Keep us steady, Helm," he said. Then he clapped the man on the back. "Damn good job, son. Damn good job."
"Are you all right, sir?"
"I'm sure I look worse than I feel," said Storm. He wiped his face again, and discovered that what he'd assumed was seawater was actually blood.
"Captain!" yelled Varitok, returning with the headset. "Your face. You're bleeding."
"It never looked that good to begin with," said Storm, pulling on the headset. "Eyes — if any other aircraft get within ten miles of us, shoot them down."
Dwarka Early Warning Radar Platform One
0525
The grenade seemed to fly in slow motion from Captain Sattari's launcher, spinning in the direction of a low wall of sandbags. Sattari saw everything that was happening, not merely on the platform, but in the ocean and the world around him: the ships and airplanes charging into war, the missiles that the Indians would fire against the Pakistanis, the Chinese weapons that would retaliate. He saw himself standing at the center of it all.
He turned his attention to the area in front of him. Two men with rifles leaned over the sandbags above. Bullets spewed from their weapons — he could see each one as it flew from the barrel, a dark cylinder coming for him. The Russian-made RPG-7 grenade he'd fired flew toward them, nudging against the top of the uppermost sandbag protecting the enemy's position. Deflected slightly, it continued over the bag toward an upright grating behind the position.
The bullets stopped coming toward him. The grenade halted in midair. It was the greatest moment of his life, an instant that filled him with a sensation that went beyond pleasure: an infinite grandeur, a knowledge that he had fulfilled the wish God had for him when he was created.
Then light cracked open the sky, and the world returned to its chaotic tumble. The grenade exploded directly behind the Indian soldiers guarding the station, and the platform jolted with the explosion. Sattari found himself facedown on the metal steps, his breath taken away by the shock. By the time he managed to fill his lungs, the others had run up to the landing and finished the wounded Indians off. Dazed, Sattari followed without completely comprehending what was going on. His men ran past him to set their charges.
"Helicopter!" yelled someone.
The word cleared Sattari's head.
"Quickly! Set the explosives and back to the Parvanehs," he shouted. "Go!"
Aboard the Abner Read,
in the northern Arabian Sea
0525
The Abner Read rocked so violently that Starship was yanked half off his seat. He grabbed the handhold at the side of the station, gripping it as the vessel shuddered from the effects of an explosion somewhere nearby. If he'd been a little sleepy before, he was wide awake now.
Bracing himself against the seat with his legs, Starship let go of the handhold and put his hands back on the Werewolf controls. The aircraft was programmed to drop its speed and glide into a hover when pressure was suddenly removed from the controls; Starship reasserted control gingerly, picking up speed and increasing his altitude as he hunted for the radar rig.
He saw it three miles away, five degrees south. The platform looked like a squat oil drilling rig with thin derricks jutting from the top. He spotted pinpricks of light as he approached — tracers. A white flash swallowed the gunfire, then blackness returned.
"Action on the radar platform," he told Eyes. "I have three vessels on the surface, at the north end."
People were yelling behind him. If Eyes answered, Star-ship couldn't hear. He dipped the Werewolf in the direction of the vessels. From two miles off they looked like speedboats or pleasure cruisers very low in the water.
"I think I have the midget submarines," he told Eyes. "Werewolf to Tac — I have the submarines in view, north of the tower, on the surface."
He steadied the aircraft and switched his main view from infrared to light-enhanced mode, which gave a sharper digital photo. He was still too far to get a good shot, and began moving forward slowly, filling the frame with one of the vessels at maximum zoom. He took the photo, creating and storing an image in standard, low resolution.jpg format; then he moved in to get a close-up of what looked to be the sub's conning tower.
When he backed the zoom off, Starship saw small boats in the water. Before he could figure out if they were leaving or returning, the screen went white at the right side. Star-ship jammed the Werewolf controls to race away from the explosion, though he knew he was already too late.
NSC Situation Room
1934, 14 January 1998
(0534, 15 January, Karachi)
Things ratcheted up so quickly it seemed to Jed that a hidden fast forward switch had been thrown. One moment the screens with information from the U.S. intelligence agencies were mostly blank or filled with log entries indicating "nothing new." Then bulletins and updates began scrolling onto the screens in rapid succession.
Jed grabbed the direct line to the NSC Advisor before it finished its first ring; he had paged Freeman via his Blackberry a few minutes before.
"It looks like the Indians are launching an all-out attack on the Chinese and Pakistani ships in the northern Arabian Sea," Jed told his boss. "One of their radar platforms has been attacked. Pakistani aircraft are being vectored to meet Indian flights near the border. One of our Megafortresses has been shot at."
"Are they OK?"
"Yes. I think the attack on the platform may have started things off, but it's hard to sort it out," Jed added.
"That's immaterial right now, Jed. What's the status of the Indian nuclear units?"
"They're one step below launch."
"Is the Dreamland mission still viable?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'm on my way back. I'll alert the President. He may arrive before I do. Hang in there, Jed." Barclay put down the phone.
"Indian missile site at Bhatinda has just gone to launch warning," said Jordan, reading from the NSA screen.
"Warning? Do we have that area on satellite?"
"There," said the image interpreter, pointing to the display. "They're getting ready to launch."
Jed reached for the button to key into the Dreamland communications network.
"Launch in Pakistan!" yelled Jordan. "My God, they're really going to try and end the world!"
IX
End Game
Aboard the Wisconsin,
over the northern Arabian Sea
15 January 1998
0538
Clear of the Indian fighters and their missiles, Dog began climbing over the water, trying to sort out exactly what was going on. More than a dozen missiles had been launched at the Chinese aircraft carrier, which was beginning to respond with anticruise missiles. The Dreamland circuit buzzed.
"Colonel, we have a missile launch," said Jed Barclay, his words running together. "Go to End Game. I will stay on the
line and update you."
"Bastian acknowledges, End Game is authorized," said the colonel calmly. "I need the status of Chinese aircraft carrier Deng Xiaoping"
"Tai-shan order has not been given. Repeat, Tai-shan has not been given."
That meant that the electronic "ferret" satellite had not yet picked up the order authorizing the launch of the nuclear-equipped aircraft. But that wasn't enough.
"Jed, I need to know specifically that those aircraft are not on the hangar deck," said Dog.
"I am looking at the U-2 image now. Neither plane is on deck."
"Then I'm proceeding with End Game," said Dog. "Acknowledged," said Jed.
Dog hit the preset under the screen; Tommy Chu, the pi lot of Dreamland Fisher, appeared on the screen.
"Tommy, End Game has been authorized. Wisconsin and Levitow will proceed overland. I want you to take up station and be prepared to deal with the Deng Xiaopings planes if the Chinese order Tai-shan to proceed."
"Fisher acknowledges. Colonel, I'm roughly ten minutes from the radar platform on my present course. Should I go ahead with the drop or not?"
"I don't want you taking unnecessary risks. Tai-shan is higher priority."
"Understood, Colonel. But my best course at this point to avoid both aircraft carrier groups will take me right past the platform. And frankly, I think I'd do better without the man-pods on my wings."
"Have Danny check with Captain Gale on the Abner Read and find out the status of the Sharkboat he sent. Danny's not to proceed without coordination from the Sharkboat, and approval from Gale. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"If it looks too risky, call it off. Drop the pods near the Abner Read. If Danny gives you grief, refer him to me." "You got it, Colonel."
"Bastian out." Dog hit the preset to connect with Levitow. Breanna's face appeared on the screen.
"End Game has been authorized," he told her. "What's your position?"
"We're approaching the Indian coast, thirty miles north of Mumbai. We'll go from here."