propellant, and high explosive dropped clear of the Intruder’s wing. “Harpoon
one away.”
“Reset. Go!”
“Firing two! And three … and four!”
One after another, the Harpoon missiles fell free and ignited, following
one another on arrowing plumes of smoke toward the north. Sluf rolled the A6
to starboard and cut in the afterburners. With a shuddering roar, the
Intruder swung toward the south. The SA-N-6 had a range of about thirty
miles. In one minute, the Intruder could cover eight miles, the Russian
anti-air missile thirty. It was a race between a slow plane with a big head
start, and a fast missile with limited fuel.
The Intruder won the race, breaking the enemy’s radar contact at about
the same time that the SA-N-6 fell into the sea some hundreds of yards astern.
And by that time, the Soviets who’d fired that missile had other things
to worry about.
0808 hours Zulu (0908 hours Zone)
USSR Battle Cruiser Kirov
The Norwegian Sea
The attack was the third in as many minutes, and Captain First Rank
Yevgenni Vashirin had ordered the Kirov to move ahead of the Soyuz to better
shield the carrier.
The Americans were firing cruise missiles–Harpoons–launching them from
extreme range in groups of four, some bearing on the cruiser, others locking
onto the Soyuz. Kirov had enjoyed good success so far. The SA-N-6 could be
used with fair effect against cruise missiles. Three Harpoons had already
been knocked out of the sky.
In the next few minutes, eleven more were destroyed at close range, close
enough that Vashirin and the other officers on the bridge could see the
flashes and hear the thumping detonations as the incoming Harpoons were
engaged with point-defense SA-N-6 missiles and Gatling guns. Kirov mounted
eight AK630s, six-barreled cannons similar to the Americans’ CIWS, the turrets
squat and ribbed instead of tall and smoothly rounded. As the missiles came
into range, the barrels spun with shrill whines, each gun spewing
radar-corrected rounds toward the tiny, fast-moving targets fifty a second.
One Harpoon after another hit that wall of hurtling metal and exploded.
But there were too many targets, too little time. The attacking
Intruders had hoped to lock onto the Soyuz, but the Kirov had been closer, a
readier target for his AN/APQ158 tracking radar through the heavy jamming.
The first missile was damaged by a near miss by an SAN9 and fell into the sea.
The second approached to within two hundred meters before an AK630 whipped
around and put a burst through warhead and engine, detonating it in a fiery
splash. The third and fourth Harpoons closed the gap toward the Kirov,
weaving low across the surface of the water until the last possible moment,
when their on-board computers sent them popping high into the air to give them
a better angle of attack on their target. Then, as the AK630s slewed wildly,
trying to reacquire targets suddenly lost, the Harpoons began their final
dive.
The cruise missile first plunged into Kirov’s towering, pyramidal
superstructure, striking just below and behind the bridge. Tearing through
bulkheads, the warhead plunged deep into the ship before detonating in the
officers’ wardroom, a savage blast that nearly tore the bridge away and
knocked out its primary fire control.
The second, by luck alone, arced into the forward deck, smashing through
the neatly spaced array of twenty hatches set just forward of the bridge.
Those tubes were the vertical launchers for SS-N-19 missiles, huge
antiship missiles, each with a range of three hundred miles, that were the
Kirov’s principal standoff armament. The Harpoon explosion triggered a
second, far larger blast as the high-explosive warhead on an SS-N-19
detonated. That explosion, in turn, triggered another … and another. Blast
after blast sent shudders through the stricken cruiser’s hull, as smoke boiled
into the sky above the blazing wreckage.
Ten miles astern, Admiral Khenkin aboard the Soyuz saw the flame-shot
pillar of cloud rising from the southern horizon and, moments later, felt the
massive, successive thuds of the explosions transmitted through the air like
thunder.
He knew then that Kirov was doomed.
CHAPTER 14
Sunday, 22 June
0856 hours Zulu (0956 hours Zone)
Tomcat 200
Marshall Stack off Romsdalfjord