CARRIER 3: ARMAGEDDON MODE

“Affirmative, Homeplate,” the leader of the second BAR-CAP element, Lieutenant “Nightmare” Marinaro, echoed. “BARCAP Two copies.”

The electronic quality of the communications gear added to the timbre of die various voices, giving them an oddly detached character. Some voices sounded calm and professional, others flat or expressionless. As the aviators became caught up in the heat of battle or the chase, they tended to lose the prowords and the measured cadences of their training, to shout as though trying to make themselves heard, to become profane or vulgar.

v The tensions in the sky east of the carrier were raw, Tombstone could tell, and he found the waiting more and more intolerable as the minutes dragged by.

He glanced at the clock on the bulkhead. Zero seven forty-two. The missiles were seconds away now.

188 Ketth Doughss

“Right,” Fitzgerald’s voice announced from CIC. “Point defense on automatic. Fire control ready?”

“Fire control tracking,” Barnes’s voice replied. “Nearest target now at six miles and closing …”

“Pass the word,” Fitzgerald said. “To all ships that can bear. Commence fire!”

0742 hours, 26 March Tlie Arabian Sea

The Styx missiles had begun their flight close together, but their launch programming and slight differences of altitude and speed had caused them to drift apart, a deliberate strategy to scatter the defenders’ attention and to hit the target from as many directions as possible. Several of the attacking missiles were being directed toward target points well past the Jefferson, so that when their terminal guidance systems engaged, they would begin searching for their target from the ship’s far side.

By the time the first Sea Sparrow shrieked away from the launcher on Jefferson’s starboard side forward of the island, seven Styx missiles out of the original sixteen were approaching the American carrier from as many different directions, at distances ranging from six miles to twelve.

Guided by the carrier’s fire-control radar, a second missile launched seconds later . . . then a third. Contrails drew white traceries into the western sky as missile sought missile in a fast-paced electronic game of hide-and-seek, a game that unfolded far too rapidly for humans to follow it.

Then the sky exploded into flame.

A Sea Sparrow launched from the Jefferson rocketed into an oncoming Styx, detonating in a fireball that sent pellet-sized fragments slamming into the water for a hundred yards around. The proximity fuze on a second Sea Sparrow warhead touched off when the missile was several yards behind the Styx. The explosion sprayed the SSM with shrapnel, punching holes in wings and fuselage, but the sturdily built SS-N-2 continued to fly, smoke trailing now from the exhaust bell of its turbojet.

Another Sea Sparrow scored a hit, the explosion visible from

ARMAGEDDON MODE

189

Jefferson’s deck as a brief, sharp flash on the horizon. There were five leakers still closing . . . then four . . .

Jefferson mounted three CIWS Mark 15 Phalanxes. Their cartoon-character names had been inspired by the robotic heroes of a ’70s SF movie: Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Huey was mounted alongside Jefferson’s island, set outboard and facing to starboard. Dewey was aft, set on the port side of the fantail gallery beneadi the flight deck ramp. Louie was on the port side forward, mounted on a faring flush with Jefferson’s hull midway between flight deck and waterline.

All three Phalanx weapons came to life as the Styx missiles entered the carrier’s point defense zone. On the Jefferson’s stern, Dewey’s erect white silo spun under totally automatic control, swiveling to face the nearest of the approaching threats. The six barrels extending from the gray metal box beneath the silo whirled furiously, the discharge sounding like the whine of a high-speed motor. Within two seconds of a target entering its electronic domain, it had tracked, fired, tracked, and fired again.

Painted by J-band pulse-doppler radar, the Styx plunged headlong into a cloud of depleted uranium projectiles. Metal shredded, the missile’s alloy hull punctured in a dozen places. The turbojet engine tore free from its mountings, the stubby portside wing was ripped away like paper.

Before the shattered missile hit the waves, Dewey had already swung left to engage another target . . . and then another.

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