by David Poyer
“Sanandaj, sir. In the west.” He had an astonishingly deep voice, almost an operatic bass. Good, they’d sound authoritative as hell going out over ship-to-ship.
“And what exactly do you speak? I know several languages are current in Iran—”
“Farsi, that is my father’s language. And some Urdu as well. From my mother.”
“I see. Well, I know you’re in Supply, but consider yourself under the commander’s orders now. Convey what she tells you, but use your head. I’d rather avoid a confrontation than have to win one.”
“I understand, Captain. I will attempt to do that.”
Ammermann said, “Are you sure about this, Dan?”
“My ROEs are pretty clear in this situation,” Dan told him mildly. “So’s the LOAC.”
LOAC was the law of armed conflict. The staffer started to expostulate further, but Dan waved him to silence and leaned back, listening as their warning went out, first in English, then in the staccato notes of Farsi. It sounded familiar to him from repeated deployments in the Gulf, though he knew only “hello” and “thank you” himself. He doubted words would have much effect if whoever was commanding the task group had orders to clobber him, or somehow thought this would be a good time to try. But in this case, for once, as he’d told Ammermann, his rules were clear. He had the right to defend his ship in the face of attack, imminent attack, or demonstrated hostile intent. The maneuver he was seeing constituted that. But first he had to issue a warning. “If they don’t cease illuminating and don’t open the range, I’m taking Alborz out with Harpoon,” he told Staurulakis.
“Warning shot, sir?”
“Not at this range. If we have to hit, hit hard.”
“Copy that, sir. Three-round engagement?”
“Set it up. Make sure Pittsburgh gets that word.” He coughed and ran his gaze over the displays again. A cup clanked down next to his elbow. He sucked the black scalding liquid down almost in one breath. Hot and thick, the strong dark blood the Navy ran on. As long as they had fuel, ordnance, and coffee, they could stay on station forever. For whatever reason, adrenaline, caffeine, the confrontation with Almarshadi, the abruptly cut-off note of the GQ alarm, all the displays glared more brightly. His brain seemed to have shifted into high gear.
When Ammermann cleared his throat Dan remembered him. “Uh, Adam, find yourself a seat if you want. Chief? Chief Slaughenhaupt? Need a helmet here. And flash gear.”
“On it, sir.”
“Are you serious?” Ammermann gaped. “I thought this was armored—”
“Just wear it, Adam.”
“Uh … okay. Can I smoke now?” He had the pack out already, was tapping a cig out with trembling amber-stained fingers.
“No. So, no joy from Jerusalem?”
“Tel Aviv. I told you, Ed’s calling Sharon.”
Dan bet it wouldn’t be “Ed” if the junior staffer were face-to-face with Dr. Edward Szerenci. The guy had been nothing to trifle with even back when he’d been a professor in defense analysis at George Washington, moonlighting from the War College. Szerenci was a hard-liner, a numbers man, dealing in megadeaths as coolly as Dr. Strangelove.
Dan was opening his mouth with some sort of joke about Szerenci when a chime sounded from over by the Aegis console. The same high insistent note as once before. All speech in CIC ceased. Someone had turned on audio from the SPY-1: a familiar crackle, like popping popcorn. The beam going out, five times a second.
“Sir, we have cuing from Obsidian Glint,” Donnie Wenck called. “Suspected launch.”
Next to Dan, Staurulakis riffed the keyboard, bringing up the radar output on the large-screen display. The spokelike beam yawed, then switchbladed back toward the coast. The Terror was shifting to the location the satellite had just downloaded to them. It locked into its new position and clicked back and forth, the spectral amber fans tracing ancient mountains like a blind man fingering a face. They all stared up, skin sallow and corpselike in the nectarine light.
Dan squinted. “I don’t see anything.”
Then he did.
A white dot had blinked on in the center of the screen. The hook darted in and snagged it. A callout flickered on. Terranova said, loud enough so everyone could hear, “Profile plot, Meteor Echo: altitude, angels thirty. Climbing at angels five per second.” Already well into boost phase, then. Possibly even post–first stage separation.
“Matches alert script on the Jericho,” Wenck called. The symbology was already a red caret, but he added, “Designate hostile?”
Dan nodded. “Designate hostile.”
“That’s an Israeli missile?” Ammermann murmured.
“Correct,” Staurulakis snapped when Dan didn’t answer.
He was watching the horizontal velocity on the callout. So far, it was nearly zero. But wouldn’t this be the best time to take it? Nearly a dead-on angle? The P-sub-K numbers in the tests had dropped fast with a negative velocity vector. He eyed the screens again, and decided. It would put her stern to the Iranians, but Savo’s close-in stingers, her canister-mounted Harpoons, were canted up back aft.
He hit the worn lever on the 21MC. “Bridge, come to course zero nine zero. Speed fifteen. Set Circle William. Launch-warning bell aft.” He snapped the dial to Helo Control. “To Red Hawk: Reposition to the north. Stand by on flares and jamming. Remain alert for 802s from northwest, west, and northeast.” Two seats away, Slaughenhaupt was readying the ship for self-defense with chaff and decoys.
Dan groped into the neckline of his coveralls and came up with the firing key. “Cher? Take Meteor Echo. Two-round salvo.”
Ammermann reached for his arm. “Captain! This is crazy. You can’t do this.”
“It’s what my orders specify, Adam.”
“Not taking out a friendly missile!”
Dan turned his head. Sweat sparkled on the staffer’s bulging brow. A lock of dark hair hung over his forehead. He looked more frightened than when an Iraqi Al-Husayn had had them boresighted. “Adam,” he murmured, “there’s no such thing as a ‘friendly’ ballistic missile. Not when it’s targeted at a city.”
Beside him Staurulakis was continuing the litany, gaze welded to her screen, chanting like an acolyte in a liturgy as the responses came back. “Launchers to operate mode.… Set up to take Meteor Echo … two-round salvo. I say again, two-round salvo. Sound warning alarm aft. Deselect safeties and interlocks. Stand by to fire. On CO’s command.”
“You can’t mean to actually…” Ammermann’s outrage-swollen visage hung in front of him, then turned away. He straightened and raised his voice, addressing the others. “Listen to me! I’m countermanding that order! You—you people can’t let him! Don’t you understand what he’s doing?”
Amy Singhe, behind them. “Sir? Shall I call the master-at-arms again?”
Dan shook his head, very slightly, gaze averted. He was holding back, reviewing exactly what he was doing and why. He was going to use up the last two shots in his locker, taking down the Israeli counterstrike against an enemy that had struck first, and struck grievously. Nearly two hundred dead. Women and children.
No. He was executing his orders. Priority Three: Offensive missiles targeted against civilian populations.
He couldn’t say he was sure this was the right course of action. He really wasn’t.
But that was why there was a captain. To make the decisions that had to be made, under whatever conditions of stress and uncertainty, deep in the murky swamp of war and politics.
Then paying the piper, if that decision turned out to have been the wrong one.
He spared a quick glance around, trying to read body language. It was rare anyone openly contradicted a skipper, but if he was too far off track, that could give you a clue. Staurulakis, Slaughenhaupt, Singhe, Wenck, Terranova, Kaghazchi, were all looking at him, but their expressions varied. Some looked horrified; others, inspired. Donnie Wenck was smiling, blue eyes crazy, mashing down a cowlick of spiky blond hair. Go for it, Skipper, he mouthed.
�
��Don’t,” groaned Ammermann. “I’m warning you—”
“To hell with it,” Dan whispered under his breath. He fitted the key. Hooked a nail under the clear plastic cover of the switch, flicked it up, and snapped the toggle to the Fire position.
* * *
ONCE again, that agonizingly stretched-out pause, no more than three seconds, but seemingly without end. The vent dampers whunked shut. The ventilation sighed to a stop, and Savo moaned and popped as she rolled, the turbines thrumming through the steel and rubber beneath his feet like distant war drums.
A thunder from aft. Brightness like a welding arc burned on the cameras. “Bird one away. Stand by … bird two away.”
The bright symbols left Savo’s circle-and-cross, quickly blinking into blue semicircles as they tracked east. Dan said, “TAO, inform Iron Sky we’ve fired our last two TBM-capable rounds against a presumed Jericho launched from northern Israel. Add that we’re now engaging two Iranian surface units executing an attack profile. Warnings were issued.” His gaze nailed the Iranian-American, who stood holding a mike near the Aegis console. “That’s right, isn’t it, Petty Officer Kaghazchi? We warned them, on bridge-to-bridge?”
“Baleh, agha … yes sir. But they never answered, Captain.”
“Transmitting loud and clear,” Slaughenhaupt said. “Confirmed with Radio. They heard us, all right.”
“Good, Chief. Thanks for the backstop.”
“No problem, sir.”
Terranova chanted, “Stand by for Block 4 intercept, Meteor Echo.… Stand by.…”
“Seeker profile on X-band!” the EW operator yelled, and Dan winced. “Bearing … bearing two six four. Seeker correlates with C-802 terminal radar seeker. Designate Goblin Alfa.”
He nodded. What he’d half expected, and would have preempted, given thirty more seconds. But the other side had thrown the first punch, after all. Muffled thuds came from outside. In the cameras, smoke trails smeared the sky, tipped with flame-hot pinpoints. “Chaff away,” someone reported. “Duckies deployed.”
Dan put his hand between Staurulakis’s thin delicate shoulder blades. The cotton of her coveralls was damp and hot. “Take ’em, Cher.”
“Stand by on Harpoon. Three-round engagement, target Alborz, salvo fire, batteries released.”
“Stand by for intercept on Meteor Echo … now,” called Wenck.
Dan jerked his gaze up to the display as the blue and the red callouts merged. The brackets locked on the hurtling missile. Jerked, tracked back. Then hunted back and forth, as if unclear what they were supposed to be looking for. They slewed away, then hunted again, at the same moment as a roar rattled the deckplates and the helo-deck cameras went the off-white of booster smoke.
“Radar return getting mushy … may be body separation—”
“Sir, we can’t wait on this incoming—”
He tore his gaze away. Blinked. “Got it, Cher. Secure from TBMD mode! Shift SPY-1 to self-defense. Sea Whiz released. Standard released. Take incoming Goblin with birds.”
“Self-defense mode, aye. Salvo alarm, aft and forward.” She sounded relieved, and a wave of commands and responses moved away down the consoles, along with buckling and adjustments as flash gear got tightened.
The picture on the rightmost vertical screen blinked. Then the pie wedge, the closed fan, suddenly spread, opening like the Argus-eyed tail of a peacock. The amber traces probed outward, 360 degrees, clicking deliberately yet with wonderful rapidity all around the horizon. Shorelines and islands, contacts and callouts, sprang up. Savo’s awareness was suddenly total, a godlike gaze of perfect knowledge within a three-hundred-mile radius. Some contacts were red and blinking, others amber, yet others green. Two were the red vertical carets of hostile missiles, jumping rapidly inward at near-supersonic velocities. With the next sweep, another popped up, this one closing from the east.
But, that suddenly, he could see. He could fight. It felt like being underwater, wound tightly in heavy chains, and feeling them fall away. As the helo controller reported Red Hawk dumping chaff and flares, Dan cycled the Fire Auth switch, leaving it in the up position. Called back to Singhe’s team, “Strike, stand by for TLAM mission. Salvo of four. Where we marked those truck-mounted launchers.” He reached for his helmet, and found himself face-to-face with Ammermann.
“That was a stupid move,” the staffer said in a low voice. “And believe me, you’ll pay for it.”
Dan felt for the lever and reclined his seat. Cleared his throat. “You do actually understand what’s going on, Adam? Right?”
“Oh yeah, I do. You just shot down—”
“No. Forget that. What I mean is, we’ve got mail. Three inbound antiship missiles. An 802 from the Syrian coast. Two 801s, the ship-to-ship version, from seaward. Over a thousand pounds of high-energy armor-penetrating warheads on the way, at .8 mach, fifteen feet above the water. The first one, roughly two minutes out.” He lifted his eyebrows. “So maybe I won’t have to worry about justifying myself. Or paying for anything.”
A commanding officer got a lot of practice masking his emotions. But the staffer obviously hadn’t. His mouth sagged; he looked terrified. Dan himself felt tense, yet eager, even vengeful, here at the end. When it would all come down to whether all their shit worked, and how fast he could make decisions. Not to mention how deep their magazines would prove, compared to those who’d just declared themselves America’s enemy.
He gave Ammermann one last tight smile, and patted his arm. Said, teeth bared in mock politeness, “Excuse me, Jars. Right now, I seem to have a battle to fight.”
20
AN hour after dawn the lookouts reported black smoke far to the west. Dan made up on it cautiously, electronic ears pricked, studying what gradually rose into view over the sawtoothed horizon with gun cameras at full magnification. He kept calling, on international distress, bridge to bridge. And on what intel said was an Iranian navy freq like the old USN Fleet Common. No answer. Not a peep. The other attacker, the missile boat, had disappeared from radar. Pittsburgh’s periscope check had found scattered debris, nothing more. He asked her to clear to the south and stand by, just in case.
The battle proper, last night, had lasted for no more than twenty minutes. A close-in, all-out knife fight that at its height had forced him to switch Aegis into full-auto self-preservation mode. At near-supersonic speeds, with multiple incoming threats, human beings could no longer react swiftly enough to fight.
Gradually, decade by decade, war—like manufacturing—was becoming the province of the robot.
However, people were still doing the dying. He hove to a mile off and studied the hulk for a long time through his 7x50s, bracing his elbows on the varnish of the bridge coaming. The wind remained keenly cold, but the sky was brighter, if still overcast. Only an occasional flake of snow blew past. The situation brought back uncomfortable memories. Of another ship, in the South China Sea, doomed and sinking. Of oil-smeared, helpless arms raised for help; of desperate voices pleading, far away on the wind.
He shivered. And then came another, even deeper memory, nearly three decades back now: of the disastrous night a superannuated destroyer had died in the Irish Sea, when he himself had had to jump into a raging ocean; and no one had come to their rescue.
No. He wasn’t going to steam away again.
Mytsalo cleared his throat beside him. Under the helmet, chest bulky with flak jacket, the ensign didn’t look as pink-cheeked and boyish as at the start of their cruise. He was thinner, his cheeks sunken. Dan met his eyes, and didn’t like the haunting in them. God willing, he’d not impose on this boy what had been imposed on him.
He’d reported to Jen Roald on high-side chat around 0400. She’d made supportive noises, but so far, everyone above her was silent. No reaction yet. No official comment at all. Though he’d made sure to info absolutely everyone he could think of. They wouldn’t be able to reproach him for an attempted cover-up, at any rate.
He sucked a breath, let it out. In the face of w
hat they looked out on, it seemed petty to worry about whether he’d be left in command, or summarily relieved. But still. “What you got, Max?”
“Captain, Radio’s picking up something on one-fifty-six five. Channel Ten.”
Dan took the offered handset. Looked across again to where the gray ship rolled, inky smoke still streaming up from aft, then thinning to a brazen haze against the lightening sky as it blew away downwind. He told the officer of the deck, “Man the portside thirties and fifties. No—both port and starboard. Sea Whiz in local control. But keep weapons tight.”
The frigate’s mast and antennas were wrecks, bent, twisted, scorched. Cables swung to a slow roll. Fragment-gashes gleamed here and there, and all the windows in her pilothouse were broken. At least one missile had guided in for a mission kill on her sensors. The other, or others, must’ve impacted farther aft. Including, Dan was pretty sure, at least one of the four 802s fired from Syria, but spoofed away from Savo and redirected by some electronic sleight-of-hand Donnie Wenck had explained twice, but Dan still didn’t fully understand. As they drifted downwind the changing angle was gradually revealing the Iranian’s stern. It looked as if she’d caught a missile there, too. An explosion had caved in the helo pad, and the hangar was still burning, streaming up that oily black smoke that towered like a beacon above the sea-horizon. Threatening whatever fuel storage they had back there, no doubt.
Which explained, of course, both the lack of comms, and being dead in the water. But he didn’t see anyone fighting the fire, or really any activity at all. Lying doggo? Playing dead, to sucker him in close? He didn’t like to think in those terms, but he and this ship had encountered each other before. And he’d come close to dying then.
He angled the radio to his lips. “INS Alborz, this is USS Savo Island, Savo Island. Off your starboard beam. Over.” He snapped to the OOD, “Petty Officer Kaghazchi to the bridge, please.”
The blast of Nuckols’s pipe over the 1MC. “Now Petty Officer Kaghazchi, lay to the pilothouse. On the double.”
Dan moved a few feet forward to give the M60 crew room. The gunner dropped the wing 7.62 onto its mount with a thunk. His assistant snapped open the loading gate and draped a belt of cartridges into it. The gunner racked the bolt and swiveled the muzzle to cover the slowly nearing, ominously deserted wreck as Dan depressed the transmit button again. “INS Alborz, INS Alborz. This is USS Savo Island, Savo Island. Over.”