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