danger.
She wondered whether the story she would report could ever begin to
match the horror of the reality.
She took a deep breath. “Get my cameraman.”
1530 Local (+5 GMT) USS Arsenal “Incoming signal,” the operations
specialist snapped. He kept his eyes glued on the screen and repeated
the information over the secondary channel. “Captain, it’s a firing
order.”
Seated in his tactical action officer chair, the captain stared at the
display in front of him. It shivered, shifted, then resolved itself
into a mirror image of the display in front of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. A red pip targeting indicator popped into view next to the
missile site the carrier SEALs had found.
“Helluva thing, not having control over your own missiles,” the chief
petty officer of the watch said, his voice tight with disgust. “We’re
no better than a goddamned bunch of monkeys to them.”
The captain turned. “Let’s keep that quiet. Chief. We’ve done our
job, getting weapons into the firing basket. If Washington wants to
control the weaponeering themselves, we’ll let them. It’s not like we
have a choice.”
The chief pursed his lips and scowled. “Helluva way to run a war.”
“Weather deck secure,” the OOD reported over the bitch box. “Standing
by to enable launching circuits.”
“Enable the circuits,” the captain echoed, nodding at the tactical
action officer.
The TAO nodded, reached across the console, and gave his key one quick
twist to the right. The captain did the same on his console. He sat
back in his chair, sighed, and waited for the shot.
Moments later, he felt the dark rumble start down in the bowels of the
ship, creep its way up the girders and strakes that made up the hull,
and vibrate underneath his feet. The ship was ready; he could tell
even without the weapons status indicators flashing warnings in front
of him. The first shot fired by the Arsenal in anger, and it wouldn’t
even be at his command.
Suddenly, the hatches centered in the video camera popped open. Within
seconds, a ripple of Tomahawk cruise missiles heaved themselves out of
their vertical launch slots, seemed to hesitate above the deck in
midair, then blasted the nonskid with fire. They gained altitude
quickly after that, the noise and smoke from their propulsion systems
blackening the deck and obscuring the picture on the camera.
Even deep inside Combat, he could hear the missiles scream away from
the ship and toward their target.
“That’s it, folks,” he announced as the noise finally faded.
“Weapons away.”
He saw the crew glance around at each other, puzzled looks on their
faces. They’d all come from different ships, had been used to the
routine of firing missiles, acquiring bomb damage assessments, and
firing again. Many of them had served on the potent Aegis ships,
working in Combat with a vast array of weapons under their direct
control.
There was something unnatural about this, giving up control of their
very essence to someone they couldn’t see, touch, or even be certain
existed.
Yet, this was the very mission for which the Arsenal ship had been
constructed. The captain stood and walked back out on the bridge to
reclaim his coffee cup. As much as he might understand that, he didn’t
have to like it.
1532 Local (+5 GMT) Fuentes Naval Base A thin, high-pitched whine cut
through the air like a buzz saw, at first barely audible, then quickly
increasing in pitch and volume until it dominated the entire world.
Pamela shrank back against the cement wall, panic overriding her
trained reporter instincts, desperately wishing that she were anywhere
in the world other than at ground zero for this attack. How many times
had she been near military actions?
Hunkering under bushes, darting around ruined buildings, following
other freedom fighters on perilous missions against opposing forces
whose ideologies seemed not too much different from that of the men she
watched kill their relatives. Yet, never under any other combat
conditions had she felt she was in imminent danger of dying. Why, oh
why had she let her ego, her determination to get the best story before
anyone else, lead her into this situation?
A Mach 2 missile gives its intended recipients barely enough time to