CARRIER 3: ARMAGEDDON MODE

Seconds after launch, the Magic air-to-air missile hit Mach 3.

0801 hours, 26 March Tomcat 201

“Launch! Launch!” Dixie cried. “On our six, Army! Comin’ fast!”

“Flares!” He heard no tone from a radar lock-on and assumed the missile must be IR-guided. He rolled hard to port, hearing the thump-thump-thump from astern as Dixie deployed flares in an attempt to confuse the missile. Trading altitude for speed, he let the Tomcat plummet toward the sea from sixteen thousand feet. …

0801 hours, 26 March Over the Arabian Sea

The nitrogen-cooled PbS seeker head was not fooled. At Mach 3, the Magic AAM slid past the Tomcat’s tail pipes. With less than a meter’s separation, the twenty-seven-pound warhead was detonated by an IR proximity fuze.

There was a flash, and chunks of nut- and bolt-sized metal sprayed across the F-14’s engine housings. One piece slashed

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through the starboard engine compressor assembly, smashing the fan mechanism and sending pieces of turbine blade whirling through the engine’s guts like shrapnel. A fuel line from the wing tank was severed. JP-5 sprayed across hot engine surfaces. . . .

The explosion was a searing flash that scattered chunks of burning debris across the sky. Trailing flame, what was left of Tomcat 201’s fuselage tumbled end for end in a long and spectacular funeral pyre toward the blue-gray sea.

0802 hours, 26 March

CIC, U.S.S. Tftomas Jefferson

“Missile incoming!” Barnes yelled, rising in his seat. “Goddamn it, where’s point defense . . . !”

The Sea Eagle launched minutes before had entered Jefferson’s innermost defensive zone. Computers, radars, and high-tech electronics were supposed to bring the carrier’s Phalanx guns to bear automatically . . . but they did not.

It took an agonizing twenty seconds for the Sea Eagle to cross that final two-mile stretch to the Jefferson.

Someone had switched Jefferson’s point defense system off so that the carrier could launch aircraft without shooting down its own planes as they cleared the flight deck. By mistake, both the Sea Sparrow and Phalanx systems had been shut down rather than being put into hold. It took long, wasted seconds to realize what the problem was and correct it.

By that time the Sea Eagle was half a mile from the carrier’s starboard bow, five seconds away.

Switches were thrown, the system brought back on line. On the starboard side of the island, the Phalanx gun dubbed Huey come to life, its J-band radar reaching out and acquiring a target within its range. Two seconds to acquire and track . . .

The target was almost too close to reach by the time Huey’s silo slewed around and the Vulcan cannon fired its first shot, sharp burst. The stream of ultra-dense slugs reached past the speeding missile, missing. Huey’s computer, following radar returns from both missile and rounds, corrected, shifted aim. . . .

Too late! The Sea Eagle struck Jefferson in the hull on her

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starboard side forward, halfway between her waterline and the flight deck, well forward of her Number One elevator.

The five-hundred-pound warhead punched through the outer hull and several bulkheads before exploding.

The ship lurched hard, knocking men on the flight deck to their knees, sending several men on the catwalk just above where the missile struck hurtling out and down into the sea. The clanging of an alarm bell cut above the yells and confusion. “Now hear this, now hear this! Damage control parties lay forward to the chain locker.”

There was a gaping hole in the ship’s side, and smoke was beginning to boil from the carrier and across the surface of the sea.

0802 hours, 26 March

CATCC, U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

In CATCC on the 04 deck, Tombstone had felt the deck shudder through his feet, but the impact was no more than a gentle rumble, like a far-off boom of thunder more felt than heard.

But he knew at once that something was wrong. It takes a fairly powerful kick to make something the size of an aircraft carrier shudder. The call over the 1-MC a moment later for damage control parties to lay forward confirmed it.

“We’ve lost one,” CAG said.

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