“It wouldn’t be good,” Seaton replied.
“Then how about we take our Aegis ships and put them close to the likely targets?”
“Well, sir, the system’s not certified for ballistic targets yet, and we haven’t really run a test, and—”
“Is it better than nothing?” the SecDef asked, cutting him off.
“A little, I suppose.”
“Then let’s make that happen, and make it happen right now.”
Seaton straightened up. “Aye aye, sir.”
“Gettysburg first. Have her load up what missiles she needs, and bring her right here,” Bretano ordered.
“I’ll call SACLANT right now.”
It was the strangest damned thing, Gregory thought. This ship—not an especially big ship, smaller than the one he and Candi had taken a cruise on the previous winter, but still an oceangoing ship—was in an elevator. That’s what a floating dry dock was. They were flooding it now, to make it go down, back into the water to see if the new propeller worked. Sailors who worked on the dry dock were watching from their perches on—whatever the hell you called the walls of the damned thing.
“Weird, ain’t it, sir?”
Gregory smelled the smoke. It had to be Senior Chief Leek. He turned. It was.
“Never seen this sort of thing before.”
“Nobody does real often, ‘cept’n those guys over there who operate this thing. Did you take the chance to walk under the ship?”
“Walk under ten thousand tons of metal?” Gregory responded. “I don’t think so.”
“You was a soldier, wasn’t you?”
“Told you, didn’t I? West Point, jump school, ranger school, back when I was young and foolish.”
“Well, Doc, it’s no big deal. Kinda interesting to see how she’s put together, ‘specially the sonar dome up forward. If I wasn’t a radar guy, I probably woulda been a sonar guy, ‘cept there’s nothing for them to do anymore.”
Gregory looked down. Water was creeping across the gray metal floor—deck? he wondered—of the dry dock.
“Attention on deck!” a voice called. Sailors turned and saluted, including Chief Leek.
It was Captain Bob Blandy, Gettysburg’s CO. Gregory had met him only once, and then just to say hello.
“Dr. Gregory.”
“Captain.” They shook hands.
“How’s your project been going?”
“Well, the simulations look good. I’d like to try it against a live target.”
“You got sent to us by the SecDef?”
“Not exactly, but he called me in from California to look at the technical aspects of the problem. I worked for him when he was head of TRW.”
“You’re an SDI guy, right?”
“That and SAMs, yes, sir. Other things. I’m one of the world’s experts on adaptive optics, from my SDI days.”
“What’s that?” Captain Blandy asked.
“The rubber mirror, we called it. You use computer-controlled actuators to warp the mirror to compensate for atmospheric distortions. The idea was to use that to focus the energy beam from a free-electron laser. But it didn’t work out. The rubber mirror worked just fine, but for some reason we never figured out, the damned lasers didn’t scale up the way we hoped they would. Didn’t come up to the power requirements to smoke a missile body.” Gregory looked down in the dry dock again. It certainly took its time, but they probably didn’t want to drop anything this valuable. “I wasn’t directly involved in that, but I kibitzed some. It turned out to be a monster of a technical problem. We just kept bashing our heads against the wall until we got tired of the squishy sound.”
“I know mechanical engineering, some electrical, but not the high-energy stuff. So, what do you think of our Aegis system?”
“I love the radar. Just like the Cobra Dane the Air Force has up at Shemya in the Aleutians. A little more advanced, even. You could probably bounce a signal off the moon if you wanted to.”
“That’s a little out of our range gate,” Blandy observed. “Chief Leek here been taking good care of you?”
“When he leaves the Navy, we might have a place for him at TRW. We’re part of the ongoing SAM project.”
“And Lieutenant Olson, too?” the skipper asked.
“He’s a very bright young officer, Captain. I can think of a lot of companies who might want him.” If Gregory had a fault, it was being too truthful.
“I ought to say something to discourage you from that, but—”
“Cap’n!” A sailor came up. “Flash-traffic from SACLANT, sir.” He handed over a clipboard. Captain Blandy signed the acknowledgment sheet and took the message. His eyes focused very closely.
“Do you know if the SecDef knows what you’re up to?”
“Yes, Captain, he does. I just spoke to Tony a few minutes ago.”
“What the hell did you tell him?”
Gregory shrugged. “Not much, just that the project was coming along nicely.”
“Uh-huh. Chief Leek, how’s your hardware?”
“Everything’s a hundred percent on line, Cap’n. We got a job, sir?” the senior chief asked.
“Looks like it. Dr. Gregory, if you will excuse me, I have to see my officers. Chief, we’re going to be getting under way soon. If any of your troops are on the beach, call ’em back. Spread the word.”
“Aye aye, sir.” He saluted as Captain Blandy hustled back forward. “What’s that all about?”
“Beats me, Chief.”
“What do I do? Getting under way?” Gregory asked.
“Got your toothbrush? If not, you can buy one in the ship’s store. Excuse me, Doc, I have to do a quick muster.” Leek tossed his cigarette over the side and went the same way that the captain had.
And there was precisely nothing for Gregory to do. There was no way for him to leave the ship, except to jump down into the flooding floating dry dock, and that didn’t look like a viable option. So, he headed back into the superstructure and found the ship’s store open. There he bought a toothbrush.
Bondarenko spent the next three hours with Major General Sinyavskiy, going over approach routes and fire plans.
“They have fire-finder radar, Yuriy, and their counter-battery rockets have a long reach.”
“Can we expect any help from the Americans?”
“I’m working on that. We have superb reconnaissance information from their moviestar drones.”
“I need the location of their artillery. If we can take that away from them, it makes my job much easier.”
“Tolkunov!” the theater commander yelled. It was loud enough that his intelligence coordinator came running.
“Yes, Comrade General!”
“Vladimir Konstantinovich, we’ll be making our stand here,” Bondarenko said, pointing to a red line on the map. “I want minute-to-minute information of the approaching Chinese formations—especially their artillery.”
“I can do that. Give me ten minutes.” And the G-2 disappeared back out to where the Dark Star terminal was. Then his boss thought about it.
“Come on, Yuriy, you have to see this.”
“General,” Major Tucker said by way of greeting. Then he saw a second one. “General,” he said again.
“This is General Sinyavskiy. He commands Two-Six-Five. Would you please show him the advancing Chinese?” It wasn’t a question or a request, just phrased politely because Tucker was a foreigner.
“Okay, it’s right here, sir, we’ve got it all on videotape. Their leading reconnaissance elements are … here, and their leading main-force units are right here.”
“Fuck,” Sinyavskiy observed in Russian. “Is this MAGIC?”
“No, this is—” Bondarenko switched languages. “Which unit is this, Major?”
“Grace Kelly again, sir. To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant, Hitchcock movie that one was. The sun’ll be down in another hour or so and we’ll be getting it all on the thermal-imaging systems. Anyway, here’s their leading battalion, all look like their Type-90 tanks. They’re keeping good formation discipline, and they just refueled about an hour ago, so, figure they’re good for another two hundred or so kilometers before they stop again.”
“Their artillery?”
“Lagging behind, sir, except for this tracked unit here.” Tucker played with the mouse some and brought up another picture.
“Gennady Iosifovich, how can we fail with such information?” the division commander asked.
“Yuriy, remember when we thought about attacking the Americans?”
“Madness. The Chinks can’t see this drone?” Sinyavskiy asked, somewhat incredulously.
“It’s stealthy, as they call it, invisible on radar.”
“Nichevo.”
“Sir, I have a direct line to our headquarters at Zhigansk. If you guys are going to make a stand, what do you want from us?’ Tucker asked. “I can forward your request to General Wallace.”
“I have thirty Su-25 attack bombers and also fifty Su-24 fighter bombers standing by, plus two hundred Mi-24 helicopters.” Getting the last in theater had been agonizingly slow, but finally they were here, and they were the Ace of Diamonds Bondarenko had facedown on the card table. He hadn’t let so much as one approach the area of operations yet, but they were two hundred kilometers away, fueled and armed, their flight crews flying to practice their airmanship and shooting live weapons as rehearsal—for some, the first live weapons they’d ever shot.
“That’s going to be a surprise for good old Joe,” Tucker observed with a whistle. “Where’d you hide them, sir? Hell, General, I didn’t know they were around.”