The Cruiser (34 page)

To intercept, it had to clear the tube no later than eight minutes after its target had launched. Thirty seconds had already ticked away.…

The Aegis display jerked, then jumped forward, as if they were falling toward the desert at some unimaginable velocity straight down from space. The effect was sickening, but he kept his gaze nailed to it, gripping his armrests, as they hurtled down, down.…

Toward an infinitesimal white dot. The “gate,” a rapidly throbbing bright green bracket, the automatic hook of the radar's acquisition function, curved in from the right. It overshot, corrected, locked on. It vibrated, but the white dot, growing inside the bracket, remained centered, as in a fighter plane's reflex gunsight, or as in some arcade game, where the meteor threatening your spaceship has to be blasted to bits with the photon torpedoes.

No photon torpedoes here. For all her technology,
Savo Island
wasn't the starship
Enterprise
. They might be at the cutting edge of technology, but it was a brittle, fragile blade.

Meanwhile the litany had gone on. When it paused he said more or less by rote, “Concur. Manually engage when track's established.”

A stir beside him. Staurulakis slid into Branscombe's seat. She tilted her head, fitting the headset to her ears, and began speaking urgently, cluing the bridge into what was going on. At the same time her fingers blurred on the keys. The leftmost screen, the TADIL feed, toggled off. In place of western Iraq she brought up the GCCS plot, zoomed down to central Israel. The right screen was still raw video from ALIS. “We actually need four screens for the TBM mission,” she murmured.

“Save that for the lessons learned,” Dan told her. Adding, but not aloud:
If we're around to file one
.

Yeah, that was all they needed to hear from the CO.

The alert-script buzzer went off, a little bit behind the action. “Profile plot, Meteor Alfa,” Terranova's soft voice announced. “Meteor” was the new proword for an incoming ballistic missile. “Elevation thirty thousand … forty thousand … fifty thousand. Very fast climb. Identified as hostile TBM. ID as hostile.” She called out lat and long on the launch point. Dan jotted it into his notebook as it came in, and checked it against the LPE from the TADIL.

And … they didn't match. “What the
fuck,
” he muttered.

He was about to ask for confirmation when the double note chimed again, and a foresense of doom oppressed him. “Second launch cuing,” Wenck said, and the same dire note was in his voice too.

Two launches, within seconds. One detected by whoever was out in the desert and relayed through the alert network; the second observed by the infrared plume generated by its booster, noted by the camera twenty-five thousand miles up.

Then the buzzer again, from the Terror's console. “Profile alert, Meteor Bravo…”

The soft chime again … then the buzzer. Yet a
third
. He didn't catch the source this time. Could the three reports be of the
same
launch, recorded by different sensors? No, then they'd have the same launch-point estimate. And the LPE was different for each. Only by a few miles—they were all coming from Al-Ansar—but with enough geoseparation, and different time markers, too. Clearly not the same event.

Three hostile missiles on the way. And just two antimissile rounds to take them on with.

“Meteor Charlie. System lock-on.”

“Coordinated launches,” Branscombe breathed. Dan didn't answer, or move; eyes narrowed, laptop forgotten, he was riveted on the rightmost screen.

Which jumped from one burning-white dot to the next in abrupt disorienting lurches. As Terranova, or maybe ALIS, switched attention from one contact to the next, the data beside each vibrating bracket laddered upward faster than the flickering numbers on a gas pump.

ALIS settled on the first missile. Its elevation callout, in angels, or thousands of feet, passed five hundred. That number kept climbing, but the white dot, gripped by the pulsating brackets, which up to now had seemed stationary relative to the ground return around it, began to drift. It oozed slowly, but with a steady increment of acceleration, to the left.

The display jerked, shifting to the second missile. Then the third.

A shuddering roar penetrated the armor around them. Dan tensed, then recognized it.

“Combat, Helo Control.”

He pressed the lever on the 21MC. “Go, Control.”

“Red Hawk wheels up. Request initial vector.”

Had he given them a green deck? Maybe he had. “Between us and the coast. Execute skimmer barrier. Get vectors from your controller. We're busy here.” He signed off, then hit the lever again and said rapidly, “Pass to Strafer, I want him to conserve fuel. I may not be able to come to a recovery course for a while.”

They rogered and he exhaled. At least one minute gone of their allotted eight. Maybe more. But he didn't feel quite as blind with the helo between them and the shore. The SH-60's armament was useless against a sea-skimming C-802. But the onboard radar would give a heads-up, and the aircraft could provide decoy coverage. Actually, he had more confidence in the decoys than in anything else, though Sea Whiz, their last-ditch defense, was a robust system. The last barrier any missile had to make it through was its nearly solid storm of 20mm depleted-uranium slugs, fired so fast it sounded like a continuous note from a very loud bass viol.

But more important just now: the three ballistic missiles on the way, with only two rounds in his magazines. He pushed sweat off his forehead. His calf muscles were knotting painfully, and he stretched out a leg and flexed it.

Slaughenhaupt leaned across and said past Staurulakis, “Captain?
Lahav
's changing station.”

“What's that, Chief?”

“Dropping back. Still maintaining five miles, but looks like she's repositioning.”

What the hell? “Which way?”

“South.”

“Okay, keep me informed.” Dan reared back, but couldn't see over the consoles between him and the electronic-warfare stacks. “And Cheryl, make sure we have the first team back there. This'd be a great time to clobber us from behind.”

A stir in the rear of CIC; someone clunked the door shut and dogged it. At that moment Ammermann hitched his chair forward. “What's going on? Are you shooting them down?”

“Silence,” Dan snapped, then realized the old powder-magazine command—to freeze in place and shut up—wouldn't carry much meaning for the civilian. “No time to explain. Keep quiet, or leave.”

The right screen jumped second to second among the three rising missiles. The elevation numbers on the first, Alfa, were still ratcheting upward, but the rate of climb was slackening. At the same time, though, it was gathering velocity westward. Converting the awesome speed accumulated in ascent into horizontal swiftness. Bent, by gravity's rainbow—Pynchon's phrase—into a ballistic arc. The others, lagging by a few seconds, had not yet reached that phase of flight.

A cunning tactic. Multiple incomers would saturate any defense, not just his own, but Israel's. He remembered his computer, but didn't have time to type. He had to be the consciousness above the action, keeping it all in his head.
Savo
was nearing the south limit of her patrol box. He'd have to choose. Either turn back, risking the loss of his targets while reorienting the locked-on radars; or increase his launch angle, and reduce probability of kill. All the while keeping in mind the threat from shore; the souls in Red Hawk, hurtling through utter darkness, over rough seas, fighting gusts and snow; and the Israeli frigate close aboard, engaged in some puzzling maneuver of her own device.

He clicked the notebook closed and set it aside.

“Getting a better IPP on Alfa,” Staurulakis murmured. Dan shifted his attention to the center screen, and caught his breath.

The predicted point of impact was still altering shape with successive recomputation. But with each recalculation, the oblate oval was contracting. He'd expected it to center on their defended area. But it wasn't even over land, much less over Tel Aviv.

The shrinking circle of the first predicted impact point was twenty miles out at sea.

Right over the blue plus-sign-in-a-circle that meant
own ship
.

16

Point Amphitrite

“
COMING
right down our throat,” Wenck said. He'd come over to stand behind Dan.

“Uh-huh. Any last-minute ideas?”

“Just one, Captain. Remember, Block 4's a terminal-phase interceptor. We shoot too soon, the sustainer'll flame out before it gets there. Or lack the juice to maneuver?”

“You're saying, whites of their eyes.”

Wenck looked puzzled, then nodded. “Yeah. Whites of their eyes.”

Slaughenhaupt passed it on in a murmur over the voice circuit. Great, it'd be all over the ship in minutes. A few feet away Ammermann, looking scared, had taken out a BlackBerry and was busily clicking something into it.

Okay, it was as good a battle cry as any.

The screens kept changing. He wanted to tell Cher to slow down, but there were only three screens and she had to channel-surf to keep up. The ALIS feed kept flickering too, switching among the trio of incomers now entering exoatmospheric flight. Meteor Alfa was streaking westward now. The impact prediction twitched off
Savo Island
's symbol, but then crept back. The oval kept shrinking, contracting, but stayed centered on them.

He murmured, “What's the plan, Cher?”

“Recommend we take out Alfa, sir. Two-round salvo.”

“What about the other two?”

“Their IPP's not us.” She toggled and he saw this was true. The second and third ovals were taking shape, vibrating like stranded jellyfish and sort of shaped like them too. The two follow-on warheads would impact well inland.

“They're targeted on our defended assets.”

“Yessir. But self-defense comes first.”

Something about “self-defense” reminded him they weren't alone out here. “Get that word to
Pittsburgh
. He'll probably be okay, but he doesn't want to be at 'scope depth right now.”

“And
Lahav
?”

“I'll call him.” He dialed to Channel 16, bridge to bridge. “
Lahav,
this is
Savo Island
.”

The response took only seconds. “Lahav.
Over
.”

“For your information, I am taking three incoming theater ballistic missiles under fire. Two are targeted on your capital city. The other's aimed at me. I'll be trying to shake it, but it's possible it may decoy onto you. So be warned, and please stand clear while I'm firing. Confirm. Over.”

“
This is
Lahav.
I understand. Should I clear to the east? Over.”

“This is
Savo
. Negative, that won't make much difference before it's here.”

Another voice, stronger: Marom's. The Israeli skipper must have been on the bridge, or in the corvette's CIC
. “Copy your launch warning. Thank you for the heads-up. I will continue to guard you.”

Dan exchanged an eyebrows-up with Staurulakis and Slaughenhaupt. “
Continue
to guard you.” Would've been nice if he'd made his mission clear earlier. “Roger, out.”

The hiss of ether, then Marom again. “Savo,
this is
Lahav.
Thank you for protecting our country. Out.
”

He socketed the phone, oppressed by the sense of time ticking away, of weapons that would in minutes drill down through the fringes of mesosphere sixty miles up. He reviewed the problem. He'd have to decide very soon now.

Boost phase was over. The lead missile was entering midphase, coasting in that great arc outside the atmosphere. Outside, so despite its terrific speed there was no friction heating. This was the hardest part of its flight during which to maintain track. It was nearly head-on, so not only was it infrared-dim, but its radar cross section was at a minimum.

Thus far, though, ALIS seemed to have a solid grip, to judge from the callouts, which were now registering a high but unvarying speed consistent with ballistic flight. That velocity would remain constant across the crest of the exoatmospheric arc, then build again as it plunged.

Entering the terminal phase, when the gravity-accelerated delivery vehicle hit those first air molecules. Along with a heat signature, the warhead would grow an ionization trail as its ablative sheathing charred away. The cross section didn't grow much, but the electrically charged ionization plume bounced a radar signal too—actually a bigger one than the warhead at its heart. As with the Scud attacks back during Desert Storm, the challenge then became to discriminate between the payload proper and any debris or decoys reentering along with it.

Since his Block 4s were terminal-phase homers, he had to engage then. At that point—ticking rapidly closer, as the delivery vehicle nosed over, ninety miles above Jordan—his decision time would shrink from minutes to seconds, and not many of those.

Along with that, he had to keep in mind the other systems presumably locked on the incomers as well. The battery at Ben Gurion, for one. Israel's other ABM defense, the Arrow, he knew very little about. A midphase interceptor, though. By the time he had to make his call, he shouldn't have to worry about it.

He'd have to watch for the Patriot launch, though.
Savo
and the Israeli army battery might be firing nearly simultaneously. That was another terminal homer, and it was closer to the enemy.
Savo
would be shooting over its shoulder.

Which would not be good for either's P-sub-K. He called, “EW: Sing out if you see a Ku-band homer from that Patriot site.”