CARRIER 6: COUNTDOWN By Keith Douglass

hangar aft, punching through thin aluminum and tearing into the SH-2F

helicopter parked there. Avgas in the helo’s tanks spewed into the

compartment; fumes came in contact with severed electrical leads …

The explosion tore the hangar wide open, vomiting a column of orange

flame and oil-black smoke boiling hundreds of feet into the air. Flames

and blast killed seven more men and wounded twenty-five; Dickinson’s

Phalanx was ripped from its mounting and hurled eighty feet aft into the

sea. Wreckage spilled across the fantail helo deck as flames engulfed

the aft part of the superstructure.

The U.S.S. Dickinson wallowed heavily as the fire began to go out of

control.

0746 hours

Combat Information Center

U.S.S. Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson’s CIC fell dead silent for one stunned instant. To Tombstone,

it felt as though someone had thrown a switch, cutting every sound in

the compartment. The chief at the CIWS console broke the spell an

instant after he’d snapped the Phalanx selector back to standby.

“Pellet!” he barked. “You’re relieved! Get the hell out of there!”

“Chief, I-”

“Out, mister! You’re confined to quarters until further notice!

Newell!

Get in there! You have CIWS One!”

“Dickinson’s falling off abeam,” Frazier snapped, staring at a

television monitor that showed the burning frigate. “Let’s get on those

missiles!”

The FFG’s missile launcher and main gun had both stopped firing when the

helicopter hangar exploded. As Dickinson dropped astern, Jefferson’s

starboard-side defenses opened up with renewed fury. Sea Sparrow

missiles burst from their boxy eight-tube mounts in clouds of smoke and

sprayed shards of plastic packing material. One after another, the Sea

Sparrows arced low across the water, homing on incoming cruise missiles

as they passed the ten-mile mark. Moments later, a bright blue flash

lit the eastern horizon …

then another.

Several men in Jefferson’s CIC cheered, but discipline returned almost

at once. On the main screen display repeated from Shiloh, eleven

missiles had crossed the ten-mile point. Even here, deep in Jefferson’s

CIC, the thud-whoosh of Sea Sparrows sprinting toward the horizon could

be felt as a faint trembling in the deck, transmitted through the

carrier’s hull.

Watching the gathering force of the avalanche, Tombstone found he was

holding his breath.

CHAPTER 13

Friday, 13 March

0747 hours (Zulu +2)

Off North Cape

Two AS-6 Kingfish missiles streaked low across the water toward

Jefferson’s forward quarter. The carrier’s number-one CIWS, released by

the man in CIC, tracked on the nearer Kingfish and opened fire, sending

a brief burst, correcting the angle of fire, then firing again. Nine

hundred yards off Jefferson’s starboard quarter, the missile’s one-ton

warhead detonated with a savage bang that scattered glittering metallic

fragments across three thousand square feet of sea, lashing the water to

white frenzy.

The second missile flashed across the intervening space in an instant;

the CIWS slewed to meet it, fired, and uranium penetrators slashed into

its body. Liquid fuel burst into flame, and the missile, tumbling now

and furiously ablaze, hurtled low across Jefferson’s flight deck, scant

yards above a row of A-6 Intruders parked with wings folded along the

starboard side. Deck personnel engaged in launching a Hornet and a

KA-6D tanker off the bow catapults dropped flat; for one agonized

moment, it appeared that the burning wreckage was going to slam into the

tanker loaded with over 2 1,000 pounds of jet fuel.

Then the burning Kingfish had passed, hurtling into the sea off

Jefferson’s port beam, striking the water with a thunderous detonation

that sent a geysering white pillar hundreds of feet into the air,

lashing the flight deck with spray.

Flight deck operations continued without letup. Minutes later, the

fully laden tanker slammed off Jefferson’s catapult, climbing aloft to

rendezvous with those of the carrier’s Tomcats that were returning now

low on fuel.

Meanwhile, with the immediate threat from enemy missiles ended, the

carrier’s air traffic control center went back on the air.

0752 hours

Tomcat 201

Over the Barents Sea

“Dickinson’s been hit,” Cat reported over the Tomcat’s ICS. “Sounds

like she’s got a fire on her helo deck.”

“Too damned many Russian leakers,” Coyote replied. Glancing out his

canopy to his left, he saw a black smudge against the horizon and knew

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