by Jeff Edwards
Whatever it was must be too small to see on radar, because the scopes on the bridge were clear of any incoming contacts, and the radar operators were not reporting anything out of the ordinary.
He lifted his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the darkened sky. He saw nothing up there but stars. Who could be doing this? The Indians? The Americans? But they were all gone. Defeated, and chased from the field of battle...
Through the open bridge wing door, Dong could hear the buzz of the telephone. That would be the captain, demanding a report on the source of the unidentified explosions.
The whistling noise was increasing in volume. Dong thought he caught a glimpse of something for a fraction of an instant—a blurred flicker of motion as some small dark shape arced down from the black face of the heavens.
And then he was blinded by an impossibly bright flash of light. His feet left the deck as the shockwave and shrapnel of the detonating shell tore into his body, hurling him back through the open doorway into the bridge.
There were reports coming over the speakers now, the excited voice of the radar Officer jabbering about the sudden appearance of four incoming missiles, all closing from different bearings. Shouted orders to defensive weapons systems.
But Dong Jie’s stunned ears were filled with the distant rhythm of his own pulse. Fast at first, but then slowing… Slowing…
He closed his eyes, and then opened them again. The view didn’t change. Whether his eyelids were open or shut, he could see nothing but the searing white afterimage of the explosion.
His brain didn’t register the chainsaw snarl of the Gatling guns spewing bursts of 30mm slugs into the night. He didn’t see the two fireballs erupt in the darkness as the twin streams of high-velocity bullets shredded two of the incoming missiles. He didn’t see the Gatling guns swing toward their next targets.
And he didn’t see the last of the American Harpoons slip in past the fusillade of defensive fire, and dart in for the kill.
USS Towers:
“TAO—Weapons Control. Harpoons on top, now!”
Bowie didn’t hesitate. “Go active on SPY!”
A few seconds later, the giant Aegis display screens began populating with hostile contact information: five hostile surface ship symbols, and four pairs of hostile aircraft symbols.
For a brief instant, sixteen friendly missile symbols were superimposed—in groups of four—on top of the symbols for the Chinese frigates and destroyers. Then the blue missile icons vanished from the display, leaving behind the symbols representing the enemy warships.
Commander Silva watched the Harpoon symbols wink out. How many of the missiles had gotten through, and how many had been destroyed before they could reach their targets? More importantly, how many of the Chinese carrier’s escort ships were still in the fight?
With the UAV gone, there was no way to get real-time battle-damage assessment. It might take several minutes to sort out which ships were capable of maneuvering and firing, and which were not. But the out-numbered American destroyers couldn’t wait around to find out.
“Keep hitting them with the gun,” Bowie said. ‘Five rounds, shift targets—five rounds, and shift back.”
Every three seconds, the big deck gun barked again, and another Vulcano round began its long flight toward one of the Luzhou class destroyers.
Somewhere on the far side of the Chinese aircraft carrier, the USS Donald Gerrard was dishing out similar punishment to the frigates on the western perimeter of the enemy formation.
So far, the attack had gone according to plan. The surprise had worked perfectly, but the cat was most definitely out of the bag now. With their SPY radars pumping several million watts of microwave power into the atmosphere, the Towers and the Gerrard had lost all semblance of stealth.
The enemy fighters knew where they were now. The time for skulking was over.
This was proven about ten seconds later, as the Air Warfare Supervisor’s voice came over the net. “TAO—Air. Four Bogies inbound. Two flights of two. Looks like the other four are going after the Gerrard!”
“TAO, aye. Stand by.”
The Tactical Action Officer looked toward Bowie. “Captain, request batteries released on hostile air contacts.”
Bowie nodded. “Granted.”
The Tactical Action Officer turned back toward his console and keyed his mike. “Weapons Control—TAO, you have batteries released. Engage and destroy all Bogies within our engagement envelope!”
On the Aegis display screen, two pairs of red hostile aircraft symbols were converging on the Towers.
There was another clap of thunder as the 5-inch gun pounded out another Vulcano round toward one of the enemy surface ships. The sound was instantly followed by the roar of launching missiles.
“TAO—Weapons Control. Four birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted one each on the inbound Bogies.”
The TAO was reaching for his mike button when another report broke over the net. “TAO—Air. Bogies are launching. I count eight missiles inbound.”
The Tactical Action Officer keyed into the circuit. “All Stations—TAO, we have in-bound Vipers! I say again, we have missiles in-bound! Weapons Control, shift to Aegis ready-auto. Set CIWS to auto-engage. Break. EW, stand by to launch chaff!”
The Electronics Warfare Technician’s response came a split-second later. “TAO—EW, standing by on chaff. I’m tracking eight active H-band seekers, consistent with SSN-27 Sizzlers. Request permission to initiate jamming.”
“EW—TAO. Permission granted. Jam at-will.”
A prolonged series of rumbles announced the launch of multiple SM-3 missiles, followed by the voice of the Air Warfare Supervisor. “TAO—Air. Sixteen birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted two-each on the inbound Vipers.”
The Aegis computers were following a shoot-shoot-look-shoot-shoot doctrine: fire two interceptor missiles at each incoming cruise missile, evaluate with radar to see which ones had been destroyed, and then fire two more missiles at any Vipers that survived the first salvo. Unless overridden by human intervention, Aegis would continue to follow this pattern until Towers expended fifty percent of her available SM-3 missiles. Then the computers would automatically throttle back to a shoot-look-shoot-shoot doctrine.
The Aegis display screen had become a bewildering swarm of cryptic red and blue icons. Silva’s eyes darted from symbol to symbol, trying to make sense of the rapidly-evolving tactical situation. The complexity of the battle picture had increased beyond the integration capacity of the human mind. The fight had shifted into the realm of man-machine symbiosis, where the human operators were completely dependent on the processing and correlation capabilities of the computers, and the computers were equally dependent on the humans for intuitive decisions and periodic flashes of tactical brilliance.
The left third of the display screen, corresponding to the western side of the Chinese battle group, was every bit as complex. The Gerrard was neck-deep in her own fight, and the missiles—both incoming and outgoing—were flying fast and furious.
Amidst the chaos of iconography, the red symbol for Surface Contact Zero Two flashed, and was replaced by a last-known-position marker. The warship had disappeared from radar. Either it had been sunk, or it had been blasted into pieces too small to present a radar return. Either way, it was gone.
Silva tapped Bowie on the shoulder and pointed toward the screen. “Captain, we just got a hard kill on one of our surface targets.”
Bowie shifted his attention from the air-battle to the surface symbols, just as the Surface Warfare Coordinator was reporting the destruction of the enemy ship.
The captain gave Silva a nod. “You’ve got a quick eye.” He keyed his mike. “TAO—Captain. Shift all 5-inch gunfire to Surface Contact Zero One.”
On the screen, hostile and friendly missile symbols began merging. “TAO—Air. Splash three Vipers. We have five remaining inbounds.”
“TAO, aye. Break. EW—TAO. Launch chaff.”
The
Electronic Warfare operator acknowledged the order. “Launch chaff, aye.”
His report was punctuated by a rapid series of muffled thumps. “Six away.”
Out in the darkness, a half dozen blunt-nosed projectiles rocketed out of the forward Super-RBOC launchers. The Super Rapid-Blooming Overboard Chaff canisters flew through the air to explode at pre-determined points, scattering metallic confetti and clouds of aluminum dust to attract the radar seekers of incoming weapons.
There was another rumble, as the Aegis computers fired another set of SM-3 interceptor missiles.
“TAO—Air. Ten birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted two-each on the remaining inbound Vipers.”
On the tactical display, the four SM-3 missiles that had been fired toward the Chinese fighter planes were now reaching their targets. One of the enemy aircraft flashed and vanished from the screen, replaced by a last-known-position marker.
“TAO—Air. Splash one Bogie. The remaining Bogies are turning south.”
The Tactical Action Officer nodded. “The SSN-27 is a heavy weapon. They might not be carrying more than two.”
“Maybe,” Bowie said. “But let’s not count on that.”
The ten outbound interceptor missiles merged with the five incoming Vipers. When the jumble of symbols sorted themselves out, three of the hostile missiles were still closing.
Bowie grimaced. “We’re always hearing about how tough it is to intercept the SSN-27, but Jesus… What does it take to shoot those damned things down? Kryptonite?”
One of the hostile missile symbols veered abruptly to the side, and then vanished.
“TAO—Air. One taker on chaff. No takers on jamming.”
The remaining two Vipers were practically touching the Towers symbol on the screen.
“TAO—Weapons Control. Two of the Vipers got through. They’ve kicked into terminal homing phase, and they’re too close to re-engage with missiles. Forward CIWS mount is engaging.”
The air throbbed with the staccato growl of the Close-In Weapon System as it sprayed a burst of 20mm tungsten rounds toward one of the incoming cruise missiles. There was a deafening boom as the Viper exploded just a few hundred yards away from the ship.
The CIWS mount spun toward the next target and began firing. It was almost in time.
SSN-27:
A half-second before impact, the nose section of the missile was hammered into fragments by a hail of tungsten penetrator rounds, shattering the radar seeker head and the guidance mechanism. If the weapon had been even fifty meters away from its target, the damage might have been enough to send it spiraling into the sea. But the SSN-27 was moving at more than twice the speed of sound, and the resulting inertia carried the blinded missile the last few meters to its destination.
The SSN-27 struck the port side of the American warship, about four meters below the main deck. All of the weapon’s sophisticated proximity sensors and influence triggers had been pulverized by CIWS, but the brute simplicity of the contact detonator had survived.
In the microsecond of contact, the mechanical force of the impact propagated down the length of the missile, compressing a simple cylindrical rod of nickel ferrite mounted at the core of a short magnetic coil. Through the physical principle of magnetostriction, the deformation of the nickel rod created a tiny but distinct magnetic pulse, which expanded over the windings of the coil, generating an electrical signal. This signal was calibrated to satisfy the triggering threshold of the primer mechanism buried in the missile’s warhead.
Two-hundred kilograms of Cyclotri-methylene Trinitramine flashed into a shaped cone of raw force that punched through the hull of the warship with the power of a runaway locomotive. Steel plating buckled like paper. Reinforced steel beams shrieked and gave way before the unstoppable onslaught of heat and atmospheric overpressure. A flaming torrent of shrapnel and destruction lanced deep into the heart of the ship through the widening hole.
And then there came chaos and death.
CHAPTER 52
USS TOWERS (DDG-103)
BAY OF BENGAL
WEDNESDAY; 03 DECEMBER
0029 hours (12:29 AM)
TIME ZONE +6 ‘FOXTROT’
There was a strangely-eternal moment when everything seemed to be playing out in slow motion. Silva could hear the Officer of the Deck’s voice over the ship’s 1-MC speakers, instructing the crew to brace for shock. Someone was requesting an update on the status of the remaining Viper. On the Aegis display screen, the red shape of a hostile missile symbol could be seen merging with the blue circle that represented USS Towers.
Silva was standing next to Captain Bowie, a few feet behind the Tactical Action Officer’s chair, and there wasn’t much within easy reach to grab on to.
Bowie took a grip on a crossbeam above his head, and Silva turned toward a stanchion to her right: a steel support column that ran from the deck to the overhead. She got her hands wrapped around the pole, lowered her head, and bent her knees slightly—trying to mimic the brace-for-shock posture that every Sailor learns, but few expect to ever actually need.
And then the long second ended, and the passage of time jumped from its impossibly languorous stupor, to the speed of sheer pandemonium.
The shockwave tore through Combat Information Center like a hurricane, and the air was suddenly filled with flying debris, body parts, and the screams of the injured and the dying. Every loose article in the compartment, every grease pencil, and clipboard, and coffee mug was instantly airborne, and accelerating away from the point of impact with the speed of the expanding wave front.
The SLQ-32 stations in the EW Module and the radar consoles in tracker alley absorbed and deflected some of the force of the blast. Several of the consoles were ripped from their mounts, display screens exploding into showers of glass, the fragments driving deep into the faces and bodies of the human operators.
Silva’s grip was jerked away from the stanchion. She was thrown against a status board hard enough to crack the shatterproof window of Plexiglas. The impact knocked all breath out of her, and the side of her head smacked into the metal frame of the status board. She crumpled to the deck in a senseless heap.
Cooling water sprayed from ruptured pipes, and severed electrical cables arced and shorted, tripping circuit breakers. The overhead lighting went out, and the next half-second of carnage and confusion took place in total darkness.
Then the battle lanterns kicked on, illuminating the devastated compartment in the dim red glow of battery-powered emergency lighting.
The giant Aegis display screens were dark. Red and amber tattletales blinked fitfully on most of the remaining consoles, signaling various degrees of physical and electronic damage.
Silva lay on her back, watching the strange interplay of lights and shadows on the overhead—the glow of the battle lanterns, muted and twisted by tendrils of smoke from the explosion, the pulsing flicker of warning lights, and the dimly-perceived silhouettes of people stumbling around in the semi-darkness. The air was heavy with the acrid odor of burnt chemicals, melted electrical insulation, and scorched flesh.
It seemed likely that fires were burning somewhere nearby, but the possibility didn’t seem very important to Silva’s addled brain. At some point, she realized that the lower left sleeve of her coveralls was smoldering. The fabric was supposed to be flame-retardant, and apparently it was. Otherwise, her sleeve would probably be blazing merrily right now.
It gradually dawned on her that she was supposed to get up off the deck. There were things she needed to be doing. She just couldn’t remember what they were.
Her ears were still ringing from the blast, but she could hear frantic voices coming from the overhead speakers. Reports. Damage inquiries. Requests for orders. No one seemed to be paying attention to any of them.
Her head lolled to the left, and she found herself looking at a man lying on his side, in a spreading pool of blood. His face was familiar. She had seen him somewhere. Maybe she had met him, or something...
No. That wasn’t right. She knew him. It was Bowie. Captain Bowie.
That single coherent thought—that simple and basic act of identification—became the spark that restarted Silva’s conscious mind. She began to take in and process information again. The world slid back into focus, and with it came pain, in her head, her ribs, and her left wrist. More bruises than she could count, and she was bleeding from the area of her left temple, but nothing seemed to be broken.
She tried to lever herself up to a sitting position, and immediately revised her assessment as a wave of stomach-churning pain radiated from her left arm. Okay, maybe the wrist was broken.
Silva rolled to her right, coming up on her knees and her good right arm. There were fires burning near the port side of CIC, and that area of the compartment was hazy with smoke. As Silva watched, three or four Sailors converged on the flames with CO2 fire extinguishers, smothering the blaze with white clouds of carbon dioxide gas.
Silva was steeling herself to get to her feet when a flicker of motion caught her eye. Bowie was motioning to her, the index finger of his right beckoning feebly.
She got a better look at him. The deck matting around him was slick with dark liquid. His left hand was pulled in tight to his chest, palm pressing flat against a spot near his sternum. The fabric of his coveralls was peppered with small ragged holes, and—judging from the blood that coursed between his fingers—there was a much larger hole under his hand.
His eyes were locked on Silva’s. She could tell that, even under the weak red glow of the battle lanterns.
She scuttled over to him as quickly as she could, knees slipping on the slick deck matting. When she was close enough, she reached out with her good hand, and tried to help him maintain pressure on the chest wound.
She tried to call out, but her voice seemed to stick in her throat. She swallowed, and tried again. “Corpsman! I need a corpsman over here!”