“He was clear when you fired, Tombstone. He was. The only thing you hit was his aircraft. What happens to him now is not your fault.”
MiG 102
1602 local (GMT-4)
Even in the violent rush of ejection, Korsov knew vaguely what was happening. The sound of the rockets, the hard punch of the ejection seat, the fiery blast of the rocket that shot him clear of the airframe. As soon as he ejected, the force of the rocket spun him around until he was facing the other MiG. He saw the helm of the pilot in the front seat and he saw the tail number. One part of his mind registered astonishment. It was the same MiG he’d seen in Chechnya.
He saw the bright flash of the tracers, and cried out in fear, his voice lost in the tumbling air stream around him. Surely he wasn’t strafing him! And then he realized that he’d ejected just as the pilot fired. No, he wasn’t strafing Korsov. He was only shooting at the aircraft.
Why was he continuing to tumble through the air? By now the chute should have opened, should have started braking his mad disoriented fall through the air. Any second now — any second now — and then he saw it.
Overhead, the stark white collapsed fabric of his parachute. Although the shots had missed him, they had severed the lines connecting his parachute to his harness.
With a cry, he slapped the release button, and let the chute fall away from him, He deployed the secondary chute, jerked hard, and shouted at the violent deceleration, at the pain of the straps grinding into his crotch. Above him, the secondary chute was filling with air and slowing his descent.
The ocean was rushing up to the him. Fast, he was going too fast — but it was still survivable. Yes, he might break a leg, might sustain other injuries — but this was survivable. He would survive, just as Russia had survived. And would survive.
MiG 101
1603 local (GMT-4)
“His secondary deployed,” Tombstone shouted. “He lost the primary, but the backup was okay.”
“Wonderful, I supposed that means I have to call SAR to come get him,” Greene said sarcastically. “That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? He tries to shoot us down and we pull him out of the water.”
“It’s going to be tough to call SAR with our radios out,” Tombstone pointed out. “We’ll have to wait until we’re back on board the Jefferson. Maybe he’s got a hand-held dialed to air distress.”
“Another exciting experience, but no longer a first. We’ve already landed a MiG on an aircraft carrier, haven’t we?”
“I got half a mind to set down in Bermuda, swap seats, and let you try it,” Tombstone shot back. “Show some respect for your elders.”
Greene laughed and Tombstone knew that the pilot would be all right.
“So I suppose he’s got a life raft?” Greene asked.
“At least a flotation device. There’s probably a life raft in the ejection seat pan, just like ours.”
“He better hope so. Pretty warm water out here…” Greene didn’t have to finish the thought. Warm water meant an abundance of kelp and microscopic animals and plants that were at the bottom of the food chain. It also meant that you’d find the small fish that fed on them, and the larger fish that fed on them, and so on up the food chain to the ultimate predator in the ocean — the sharks. While warm water would not kill a man with hypothermia, it was home to sharks.
“He’ll see the raft as he goes in,” Tombstone said. “Swim over to it and wait it out.” But, both of them knew that a life raft was no absolute protection against sharks. “That AGI he was heading for is still too far away to pick him up before we can get back to the ship and send the SAR out.”
“It’s going to be a bit tricky getting back to the Jefferson anyway, with no radios,” Greene pointed out. “To them we’ll be just another MiG that they missed somehow.”
“The Hawkeye is keeping track of us,” Tombstone said. “At least, I hope they are.”
“Yeah. Let’s hope so.”
Tombstone put the MiG into a gentle bank and headed back toward the carrier.
South of Bermuda
1605 local (GMT-4)
Korsov hit the water feet first at thirty miles an hour. He hit so hard that at first he thought he’d broken his left leg, but that quickly became the least of his concerns. He punched down through the water, the dark closing over him as he descended until he floated alone in black water.
His training took over. He pulled his knife and cut the risers to his parachute. He kicked away from them and watched the bubbles for moment. They were rising, indicating the way up. He followed them, kicking harder, forcing protesting muscles to propel him upward. His lungs burned and some part of his brain was insisting he must breathe, must breathe, that he could breathe water if he really put his mind to it. He resisted, forcing himself up. Finally, when he thought he could stand it no longer, he broke the surface.
He gulped down great quantities of air, flushing his lungs of the carbon dioxide. A small wave splashed in his face. He choked, then started breathing again.
The life raft — he saw it off in the distance, and he figured he could probably make it. The AGI would probably pick him up before he could even reach it, but he had to try. He turned in the water, oriented on it, and started to swim.
Just then, something touched his shin. It molded itself to him and surged over him to wrap around his lower legs.
Blind panic descended. Visions of giant sea creatures and tentacled monsters out of his wild nightmares overcame him. He screamed, beating the water, trying to kick his legs and escape, but it continued enveloping, now up to his waist. He cut at it with his knife, but the nightmare wrapped around his hand. He jerked back, dropping the knife as he did. It disappeared into the blackness below almost immediately.
With one arm pinned against his side and both legs immobilized, Korsov sank lower in the water. Another wave washed over his head. He choked, and tried to cry out, gulping down more salt water. Panic overcame his reason and he screamed, twisting and fighting against the demon. It tightened around him and covered his face, plastering itself against his mouth and nose.
As his consciousness faded and he began sinking, he realized it was his parachute shroud.
TWENTY-TWO
USS Seawolf
1605 local (GMT-4)
Forsythe came to slowly, aware that something was wrong, feeling a growing sense of dread but unable to figure out exactly what it was. At first, he was aware only that he was cold and uncomfortable, and his arm was bent at an awkward angle under him.
We were running from the torpedo. Three torpedoes. There was a Yankee — am I hit? I was running, and there was—
He remembered the sound, Seawolf’s tumbling through water, and nothing else. It was dark, too dark, only red lights illuminating angles in the control room. He rolled over onto his back, and tried to push himself up into a sitting position. White hot pain shot through his right hip, forcing a groan through his lips.
Emergency lighting — what the hell?
“Welcome back, sir.” The chief crouched down on the deck next him and placed a restraining hand on one shoulder. “Don’t move too fast, sir. I think you broke something in your right leg, or maybe just dislocated something. I don’t know for sure.”
“Where are we?” Forsythe asked, barely able to force words on past the white hot pain engulfing his leg.
“Just where you left us, sir. The torpedoes hit the transport. You surfaced just long enough to get a look at it, then you passed out.” The chief paused, considering him carefully. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt nothing to lie quiet for awhile, sir, so I took us down to the bottom and parked us. The men, they were worn out. Needed a couple of engineers, that’s all that’s awake right now. The rest of them are alseep on station.”
“Help me up.” Forsythe let his weight rest on the chief’s shoulders, as the chief dead lifted him to his feet. He could put no weight on his right leg, and for a moment he considered asking for the doctor. But, when he looked back to the place w
here the doctor had been handcuffed to a water pipe, there was no one there.
The chief saw his look and shrugged. “He took a pretty hard hit, sir. He came to, but he was fried. He’s under the chart table.”
Next to the flag? The synchronicity struck Forsythe as odd. “I’ve had about enough of his medical care anyway,” Forsythe said. “How is the ship?”
“As best I can tell, she’s structurally sound. No leaks, and everything seems to work. We lost the sonar dome — came down a little rougher than I wanted — but we’re not going to have any trouble getting out of here, sir.
“Who knows we’re here?” Forsythe asked.
“Second Fleet, SouthCom. ELF has been ringing off the hook, but I figured it could wait. At least we know it’s all quiet overhead.”
“Anything happening?”
The chief shook his head. “Quiet as a tomb.”
“How long was I out?”
“About three hours.”
“Show me the ELF messages.”
The chief handed him a sheaf of papers and stood by silently while the ensign read them. Forsythe thumbed through them quickly, then stopped and reread a second one. He looked up, his face wondering. “We can surface any time now. You read this. Why haven’t you already taken her up?”
“Captain’s prerogative,” the chief said quietly. “I could have tried, but the crew wouldn’t have stood for it. She’s ready to surface, Captain. On your command.”
Forsythe stood, still feeling shaky but better than he had before. His leg would bear some weight, if not all of it.
My last few moments as captain. He shot a glance of gratitude at the chief. His relief was standing by overhead, but he’d damn sure prefer to leave his own ship under his own power.
My last command — for a while. Maybe some day, maybe when I’m a full commander and have about a million years in the Navy, I’ll command another submarine. But it’ll never be like this. Never.
“Chief, surface the ship,” Forsythe ordered.
TWENTY-THREE
Northern Maine
Omicron Testing Facility
1406 local (GMT-5)
Senior Chief Armstrong was unbuckling his flight harness before the helicopter even settled down on the concrete pad just to the west of the main facility. It was a small helo of the type normally used on the fishing boat. Not the best choice, not in this weather, but it had been immediately available and willing to help.
Armstrong ducked, although the rotors were still turning well over his head. It was an instinctive move, one that few could resist. He ran across the concrete apron and to the waiting delegation. Bill Carter grabbed him by the arm. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
Armstrong nodded. “If this works, I don’t think you’ll have any problem getting full operational funding for the prototype.” He shouted to be heard over the noise of the helicopter. It was already lifting off and heading away, headed back to Brunswick.
“Will it work?” Carter’s gaze searched his face, his eyes anxious. His face was drawn, intense, evidence that the realization of just how high the stakes were had finally hit him. This was more than an operational test or a first cut on next year’s budget — this was the real thing.
“It better,” Armstrong said. “God willing, we won’t have to use it — but if we need it, it better work.”
The two jogged the few hundred feet separating the landing area from the main operations building, and Armstrong shucked his heavy outer gear as he waited for the guard to admit them into the security area. Beside him, Carter was babbling on about something, about the test, the latest specs, but Armstrong wasn’t listening. It was as ready as Omicron could make it, and now Lady Luck came into play.
And that was the real bitch of it, he thought, as the door opened and admitted them. No matter how much you trained, how well you engineered something, there was always an element of luck in everything. Even in warfare. Clauswitz had called it the fog of war, but Armstrong knew better. It was luck, either good or bad.
He knew every person inside the facility, with the exception of one radar console operator, and introductions were quickly made. Armstrong took the supervisor’s seat, donned his headset, and leaned back to wait. Someone put a cup of coffee in his hand and his fingers closed around it reflexively, his gaze fixed on the screen.
In front of him, three large screen displays conveyed a variety of information. In the middle were real time detections from their own radar, the status bar across the bottom indicating the status of the laser targeting system. To the right, the system status and weapon status of each component was displayed, the numbers of the latest self-test results constantly shifting as a system continually self-tested. To the far left, the screen displayed the data link of the U.S. Navy. Right now, they were receiving via satellite the feed from the Jefferson’s data system.
Armstrong felt the sense of dislocation. The screen on the left showed just what he had been looking at not sixteen hours ago, with the exception of the ships moving around within their assigned boxes. And here he was, thousands of miles away, wearing jeans instead of his uniform, looking at the same picture.
The screen on the far right indicated that there had been no problems thus far, and that the information was streaming in a timely fashion. Now, it was a matter of waiting.
It happened without warning or fanfare. One moment a screen was basically as he had last seen it, and the next moment a cluster of symbols popped up around the island of Bermuda. Simultaneously, the speaker tuned to the battle group, high frequency tactical channel relayed voice communications from the scene.
The E-2 Hawkeye’s report came close on the heels of the first radar imagery. “Missile launch, we have missile launch. Number: ten. Classification: unknown. Initial trajectory indicates ballistic flight profile.” Seconds later, the Air Force AWACs chimed in with its own assessment, adding, “Confirm classification as medium-range ballistic missiles. Cheyenne reports probable targets are D.C. and Norfolk.”
Armstrong’s blood ran cold. Washington and Norfolk — he had spent too much time in both places not to be able to imagine just how a missile detonation would affect each one of them.
Perhaps three seconds elapsed from the initial launch detection until the time the first shot was fired. In rapid succession, the Aegis cruiser rippled off wave after wave of her antiair missiles, the ship clearly operating in full auto. Even the fast frigate attached to the battle group added her missiles to the flurry, although she could not fire at the same rate or with the same accuracy and range as the others.
One by one, the missile symbols disappeared from the screen. The Aegis kept count, the TAO transmitting the current number of kills over tactical, his voice growing stronger as he numbered off each one.
But he stopped at eight, there was silence on the net, and then another missile went down.
“Nine?” the TAO said. “All stations, that is not a confirmed scale — it wasn’t our missile. Perhaps an equipment malfunction or failure on the missile itself. But, for whatever reason, it has departed controlled flight and is now heading for the ocean.”
“I don’t care what the cause, I’ll take it,” Coyote said over the circuit. “Interrogative your intentions with the last one?”
“Jefferson, Lake Champlain. Sir, we’ve sent four more birds after it, but we’re in a tail chase. It doesn’t look good.”
A long silence. Finally, Coyote spoke. “Recommendations?”
Still the silence continued. Coyote scowled. “All stations, all units, listen up. I’m authorized to disclose the following information to you.” Armstrong’s blood pumped faster. Here it came, the first indication to the rest of the fleet, other than Lab Rat, exactly what was about to happen. Or, he amended, what he hoped was about to happen.
“On the coast of the continental United States,” Coyote said, clearly reading from a prepared statement, “there is a new facility that possesses some capabilities — and don’t ask, as I can�
�t tell you any more than that — that may be able to intercept the remaining missile. Time of flight to the United States is four minutes. We should know around then whether or not it worked. And, may I add a personal note to someone I know is listening: Senior Chief Armstrong, kick some ass. That is all.”
A grim smile crossed Armstrong’s face as Coyote’s voice stopped. Kick some ass, indeed. “Well, Admiral,” he said out loud, ignoring the startled looks from the civilians around him, “I’ll do my best. You can damned well count on that — I’ll do my best.”
The four minutes ticked by impossibly slow. Armstrong drummed his fingers on the cold console, then noticed that that made everyone else nervous. He leaned back, and tried to project an air of calm, competent confidence. “Could I get some more coffee?” he asked Carter. “One sugar this time, please.” He passed the plastic cup to Carter.
The tension in the control room abated slightly. Then Armstrong spoke. “Okay, folks. We trained for this, we know what to do. We’re tuned up, tweaked out, and, like the admiral said, ready to kick some ass. So, let’s do it!”
“Oooo-rah!” one of the technicians shouted, betraying his Marine Corps background. The others chimed in with various expressions of enthusiasm.
Finally, the radar sweep picked up the contact exactly where he expected it on the center screen. At first it was no more than a few pixels in size, and then the picture wavered and steadied into a hard contact. A speed leader stretched out before it, indicating a speed in excess of Mach 4.
“Commencing acquisition,” the man at the acquisition console said. His voice cracked initially, then immediately steadied down into his normal calm tenor. “All sensors nominal, scanning — scanning — Central, I have a lock. Repeat, I have a lock.”
“Very well,” Armstrong said. “Recommendation for range gate?”
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