by David Poyer
“Payload detonation,” Wenck intoned. “Both Standards connected.”
The CIC crew rose at their consoles, cheering, clapping. The trail faded, widened, glittered, as the lock-on brackets began to hunt back and forth, uncertain what to lock onto. ALIS’s eagle eye continued to show ever-tinier pieces of debris, the blaze of ionization as they turned to metal gas. But there was no longer a central contact.
He stayed hunched forward, watching the last fading falling sparklings. Then blinked slowly. Even as the vent dampers clunked open, and the air-conditioning whooshed back on, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this it wasn’t over. Not at all.
It had only begun.
* * *
THE morning resumed. Longley brought up scrambled eggs and toast and limp too-pink ham, but Dan only picked at it, then set it aside to slide up and down the command table until it dove off during a bad roll. Savo set flight quarters, nosed around into the wind, and launched Red Hawk to relieve Mitscher’s SH-60. The ETs came down every half hour with updates from Mumbai news. And the high-side chat was still up, so he was getting DIA analysis, press releases, and reports on the UN’s efforts to arrange a cease-fire. But they weren’t getting anything from Pakistan, and Mumbai seemed limited to reporting bellicose statements rather than actual news.
Of course, in the middle of a war, no one knew what was happening. No news agency had reported on the Jodhpur missile, making him wonder if the Indians had even detected it. So far, there’d been no official notice.
He sucked a breath. Maybe, just maybe, the Indians hadn’t detected it. If so, and it was a signal, intercepting it had been exactly the wrong thing to do. If one side thought it had sent a warning, and the other didn’t respond, what was the natural conclusion? That the warning had been brushed aside.
He shivered at the most chilling thought yet: that Savo’s presence, and his attempt to protect innocents, might lead to escalation.
But that was speculation. The one clear fact was that Indian armor had achieved a massive breakthrough. Eight battle groups, over a thousand tanks, had penetrated the Pakistani lines in both the north and the south, and the remaining Pak army was being enveloped. The Indians had speeded up their advances toward Multan and Sukkur. The BBC, which still had reporters in Karachi, reported a government source as saying the Indians’ lead elements were across the Indus and racing for the capital.
He wanted to put his head back, catch a few seconds’ rest, but instead called up a geo of Pakistan. He was no master of ground strategy, but this looked familiar. Two breakthroughs, near the country’s narrow waist. Once they reached the river, the forces could wheel toward each other. When they met, they’d seal the remnants of Pakistan’s forces between them and isolate the capital. Islamabad would have to sue for peace.
Cheryl was in the TAO seat, giving Mills and Branscombe a break. Dan knuckled his eyes, wishing he could massage his brain. Or put his head on a pillow. But if he was responsible, he wanted to be physically in the seat. He sighed and called up his traffic.
Routine, routine. One requested further data on his Iranians, and recommended that he isolate all three, instead of just Shah. He hesitated—the others hadn’t given the slightest trouble—then forwarded the message to Chief Toan, asking him to take the others into custody as well. It wouldn’t mean any additional manpower; they had to keep a guard on the breaker anyway. He had to get rid of them. Innocent, guilty, whatever, they had no business aboard. He scratched furiously at what felt like bugs burrowing under his scalp. And he hadn’t taken anything stronger than caffeine.
At 0900 GCCS came back up, all at once, pouring data over the leftmost LSD. “Freeze it and save, in case it goes down again,” Dan told the exec. Her manicured nails tapped keys as he studied it. Two great salients pointed west. The southernmost had almost reached the river. Another Indian air strike was returning from a Pak air base west of Sukkur. In ruins now, no doubt, runway cratered, hangars demolished, fuel burning, aircraft wrecked and shot up. He glanced to where Singhe sat, headphones to her ears, running a scenario for her strike team. The screenlight lit a downturned scowl.
He zoomed out, looking for anything from the ASW tracking and fire control system. The closest subs were a French unit in the Arabian Sea … and, sending his eyebrows up, two Chinese nuclear attack boats transiting the Malacca Strait westbound.
But what struck the eye was a vacancy. Most shipping, particularly tanker traffic to and from the oil-rich Gulf, stuck to a hundred-mile-wide bottleneck at nine degrees latitude, north of the Maldives and south of Cardamom, before going on to round the southern tip of India and then Sri Lanka. The whole time they’d been in the IO, ships had been spaced along this route. A few were still headed east, but only two now lay between the Lakshadweep Islands and Socotra, and six off the Horn of Africa. But when he looked at the course/speed readouts, two of those were headed south, not west—diverted to other destinations. The sole remaining vessels headed east were all Chinese-flagged.
“Sea-lanes are emptying,” Cheryl muttered, beside him. “In response to the Indo-Pak conflict?”
Dan reared back, speaking to the black-painted overhead. “That shouldn’t stop international energy traffic. And I don’t like the looks of those subs coming through Malacca. That’s one of the redlines the Indians always drew: a Chinese nuke in the IO, they go to full alert.” He rubbed his face. “Uh, I’ve had my head in this for the last twenty-four. How’s our crew doing? And we’re getting desperate on fuel. I don’t want to have to hoist our bedsheets and sail back, like that sub in the twenties. Never mind, I gotta get with CHENG on that. But how are we holding up otherwise?”
Staurulakis shook her head. “We’re keeping stations manned, but we’re losing our edge. People were tired going into condition three. Half of ’em are still recovering from the crud, then we dumped all those man-hours for steam-cleaning on them. We’re tasking the watchstanders, the ETs, and the Engineering people hard, and we can’t keep Red Hawk up four on and four off for long.”
“Right, Stafer’s got maintenance issues too.”
Staurulakis muttered, “I’m concerned about you, too, sir.”
“I’m all right. Never mind about me. Stick to the crew.”
“Well, then, they’re in a steep decline in operational readiness. And we still haven’t heard back if we’re actually still supposed to be here.” The exec picked at her lip, frowning; the skin around her eyes looked translucent, almost green. “You never saw anything about our taking down the Jodhpur strike?”
“The Indians didn’t release that there was a strike. And I haven’t seen anything responding to our shoot-down report.”
Dan got on the Hydra for a discussion with Danenhower. The chief engineer reported soberly that they were already below 30 percent fuel. “We’re squeezing her tits down here, but the bridge keeps upping turns. What’s with that?”
“Probably just maintaining steerageway, Bart. Below five knots, every one of these heavy seas pushes the bow downwind. And we’re powering only one screw. That makes it even harder. Nothing else we can do? Shut down housekeeping?”
The CHENG said glumly that it wouldn’t make much difference. “Most of that comes off the waste heat boilers anyway. If we shut down the radars, though—”
“Not possible, Bart.”
“Then there’s not much more I can do. My question is, at what point do we turn and run for Al Hadd?”
Dan swapped quizzical glances with the exec. “Al Hadd … what’s Al Hadd?”
“The closest possible fuel point,” Danenhower said patiently. “There’s a commercial airfield there. They’ll have jet A1. It’s not milspec, but we can burn it. Four hundred and twenty nautical miles. If we leave now, we might make it before we suck the last tank dry.”
Dan clicked to acknowledge, catching Staurulakis’s pointed glance too. He hadn’t realized they were that close to bingo fuel. Which triggered a thought: “How about our helo gas? We can burn JP-5 in the LM-2500s,
can’t we?”
Danenhower said sure, JP-5 was just an eight-cent-a-gallon-more-expensive version of Navy distillate, with a lower flash point. “But there’s not that much left of that, either. Maybe a day’s worth. After that, we’re gonna have to hang off the stern and kick our feet.”
Dan signed off. He was twisting his neck when a half-familiar voice said, “Is that giving you pain?”
“Hello, Doc. Old injury.”
Leo Schell squatted at his side, bringing his face close to Dan’s left elbow. In that position, with his voice lowered, it was impossible anyone else could hear the major’s murmur. “How’re you doing, Captain?”
“Still here, Doctor.”
“What I’m hearing makes me wonder.”
“Oh yeah?” Dan hitched up in his chair, suddenly angry. “What the fuck is it you’re hearing? That we’re parked in a war zone without clear orders? Exactly … what?”
A steadying hand on his arm. “Take it easy. Easy! When’s the last time you got any sleep?”
“I don’t know what business that is of yours. And who’s telling you I’m no longer fit to command?”
Schell tilted his head. “Actually … you’re the first to say anything remotely like that. Which is interesting, don’t you think?”
Dan gripped the desk edge. “Who’s feeding you this bullshit? Who’ve you been talking to?”
“I’d be breaking confidence to say.”
“And I’m ordering you to tell me.”
“I must refuse to do so, Captain. Remember, I’m not under your command.”
“Wrong, Major. Anyone on my ship’s under my command.”
“Listen to yourself.” Schell stood. Shifted a hand to Dan’s shoulder. “Some free medical advice? Don’t push yourself too hard. Or when your people really need you, you won’t be there for them.”
* * *
THE really bad news arrived that afternoon. Around lunchtime, the EWs reported increased radar and jamming, associated with a major Pakistani strike package out of the air base at Peshawar. Dan followed it southward. Over thirty aircraft. They avoided Indian interceptors forward-staged over the border, doglegged west, angled back east. Then crossed the battle lines south of Multan.
Twenty minutes later a Navy red flash message forwarded a CIA appreciation that “national sensor assets” had indicated detonation of three or possibly four kiloton-range nuclear devices in south central Pakistan.
“It’s started,” Mills murmured.
Dan blinked, coming out of a daze. Maybe Schell had a point. “Matt. Where are we? I mean, what’s our status?”
“In our oparea. Speed six. Course three-one-zero. Two Block 4As active and green. Aegis at 92 percent. Mitscher riding shotgun. Red Hawk in the air, currently to seaward monitoring sonobuoy laydown.”
“Uh-huh. Okay. The Iranians … where are they?”
Mills dropped his gaze. “Iranians, sir? You mean the prisoners, in the breaker?”
“No, no. Never mind. Just a little brain fart, for a minute. I meant Indians. Indians and Pakistanis.” He got up and paced, digging fingernails into eye sockets, from the gun fire control console aft to the tactical data coordinator station at the forward end of the compartment. The rubber-covered metal plates grated under his boots. Savo rolled, and something cracked far away, eased with a metallic moan, cracked again. Not more fractures, he hoped.
Sleep backed away a step. Was he being stupid? Cheryl was qualified to command. No man could stay alert forever. He could take an hour. Put his head down and close his eyes … He fought it back once more and grunted, “Why the hell did this have to start on our watch?”
“We did all we could,” Mills said, watching him with an expression Dan didn’t much like. “Hey, Skipper, you okay? You look … tired. Sure you don’t want to take a break? I can handle it here.”
“Sure you can. I know. I just can’t be out of the loop right now.”
“Yes sir.” The operations officer returned his attention to his terminal.
Wenck, at his elbow, pushed a lined tablet toward him. “Don’t fucking poke me with that,” Dan snapped. “What is it?”
“Just took it down. Mumbai television. You might want to look.”
He scanned it with irritated apathy, then bewilderment. The Indian minister of defense had released the information that a ballistic missile had been fired at the city of Jodhpur. It had disintegrated during descent, but enough radioactive debris had been recovered to make clear it had carried a nuclear warhead. The Indian government had announced this to make clear that their actions henceforth would be undertaken in retribution.
“Zero kudos to us for shooting it down,” Wenck observed.
“A lot gets overlooked in war, Donnie,” Dan told him. “And to be fair, they might not even know it was us. But this isn’t good. They’re saying the gloves are off. From here on, anything goes. And it’s interesting they’re withholding the news about the Pakistani nuclear strike on their armored forces.”
Terranova called over her console, “Ya think it really was a nuke that we shot down? Sir?”
“Dunno, Terror. But that’s what the Indians are saying.”
Another ET came through the door from forward. Wenck bent to listen, then turned to Dan. “They’re putting that out now. On Mumbai news. Three air bursts, over the 33rd Armored Division. No numbers yet, but heavy casualties.”
Dan sagged into the chair, the realization hitting at last through the fatigue and apathy. It had started. The first theater nuclear war. Not in Europe, the way everyone had expected during the Cold War, or even on the Korean Peninsula, but on the subcontinent.
After all, not unlike the war that had started in the Balkans, with the assassination of an Austrian archduke.
* * *
HE was still trying to take it in when the cuing signal chimed. Mills read off from his screen, “‘Defense Support Program Sat detected launch bloom, Thar Desert.’”
“Cuing, Obsidian Glint,” Terranova called. “Suspected launch.”
On the LSD, she steered the beam to the location the satellite had just downloaded. It clicked back and forth, searching desert, then quivered as the brackets snapped on, snagging the dot that had suddenly materialized at the center. “Pefect fucking handoff,” Wenck muttered. “Doesn’t get any sweeter than that.”
Terranova stated, “Profile plot, Meteor Bravo. Matches alert script. Matches cuing. Altitude, angels fifty. Correlates with Indian Agni medium-range ballistic missile. In boost phase. Designate hostile?”
Dan nodded. “Make it so.” He picked up the red phone again. Tried it. Then hit the worn lever of the 21MC. “Radio, Combat. Why isn’t the satcomm syncing?”
“You heard it, right? It almost syncs, at first. But then there’s like a microsecond delay that cuts in. That scrambles the rest of the transmission?”
“Okay, so where’s the problem? Can you retune?”
The voice turned patronizing. “It’s not a tuning issue, Captain. It’s like there’s an extra bit in the transmission somehow? Anyway, it’s not on our end. Sir.”
“I’ve got to talk to Fleet. There’s no way to get through?”
“Not on a covered circuit. We checked with Mitscher. Their RTs can’t break it either. Which means it’s on the transmitting end, or somewhere in between.”
Dan double-clicked off, and caught a worried glance from Mills. “Captain … you planning to take this one, too?”
He didn’t answer right away. Squinted up at the LSD. But a silhouette loomed between him and the displays. A tall, angular, birdlike silhouette.
Dr. Noblos’s. The Johns Hopkins rider was professorial in slacks and a white shirt with a knitted vest. He leaned over the console. “You’re blocking my view, Bill,” Dan said.
“I understand the Indians are saying that was a nuke you shot down, Captain.”
“Can we have this discussion later? Right now we have a cuing incoming.”
Noblos half turned, to stare at the g
eo plot, then the Aegis picture. “Out of our geometry,” he observed dismissively.
“You can tell that by one look at the screen?”
“Of course. It’s perfectly obvious.”
“Captain?” Mills, beside him, looking anxious. “I need an order.”
Dan studied the screens. From where he sat, true, it didn’t look good. The Thar Desert, western India, was far inland. Too soon to tell what the target was, with the missile still in the boost phase, but it would have to be aimed either west or north.
“Complete the setup,” Dan told the TAO. Mills bent to the mike, passing commands to the bridge, then to Mitscher. Dan half turned in his seat. Shouted across the compartment, “Sonar? One last check. No contacts?”
Rit Carpenter, over the 21MC. “Clear scope here, Skipper.”
Mills was still speaking. “Launch-warning bell aft and forward.”
Dan reached into the neck of his coveralls and fitted the firing key once more. “This will be a two-round salvo.”
Noblos frowned. “Why waste rounds? Launch point’s two hundred miles away. And it’ll be a stern chase. Ten to one, it’ll never catch up.”
“I’m aware of that, Doctor. Which is why I have to fire early, before pitchover.”
Noblos reached across the console to squeeze his shoulder. “Refer to your rules of engagement, Captain. If your P-sub-K’s below point two, you don’t need to fire. And if you shoot before pitchover and IPP identification—”
Dan pushed the hand off, catching, as he did so, a whiff of something minty, aftershave or mouthwash. He lifted his head, trying to pierce the fog of fatigue and uncertainty, and the aftermath of infection, to penetrate to the core of what was right to do. Maybe it wasn’t doctrine. Maybe it wasn’t even possible.
But he had to try.
He’d defended it at a congressional hearing. Risked his career on it.