Nuke Zone

1

Fog streamed past the single-seat cockpit, cloaking the MiG-31 in a shroud of condensed moisture. Ukrainian Commander Yuri Kursk could barely make out the tendrils streaking past, writhing and weaving themselves together in an unholy white blanket that seemed to suck the warmth out of the cockpit. He shivered, as much from the stark realization that the mission was finally underway as from the chill insinuating itself through layers of flight suit and heavy undercoating to penetrate his bones.

He kept up his scan, glancing continually from the dimly lit green status indicators on the panel in front of him to the fog outside. Had it not been for the reassuring thrum of his two Perm/Soloviev D-30F6 turbofans, he could have believed that he was alone in the air, suspended motionless above the Black Sea.

He goosed the throttle slightly just to feel the change of vibration radiating through the fuselage. It was reassuring, a link with reality, a reminder that he was not some alien creature forever entombed in fog, but a warm-bodied, living human surrounded by the most advanced fighter ever built in Russia. It was all too easy to forget that, given the mechanical and robotic way he was treated by his superiors. These moments in flight–longer than moments this time–were his freedom, the payoff that made the hours of intricate political indoctrination, psychological testing, and continuous intrusive watchfulness of the Ukrainian Psychological Services all worthwhile. They might believe they owned his mind and body on land, but screaming through the darkness, he knew the truth.

The MiG-31 Foxhound was pure freedom in motion, an advanced strategic interceptor that had been intended to take the Soviet Union into the next century as its primary carrier-based aircraft. It stretched seventy-four feet from the tip of its Flashdance phased-array fire-control radar housed in the nose to the tips of its slightly canted vertical stabilizers. With a wingspan of forty-four feet, it possessed a vastly increased range over its predecessor fighter airframes. Carrying external fuel tanks and lightly loaded, it possessed an unrefueled range of almost 1800 nautical miles.

He’d need every inch of that too. While the Foxhound was capable of reaching Mach 2.35, its most economical cruising speed was Mach.85. If he were detected, forced to evade, or even to engage in real combat, his effective range would drop dramatically. As it was, he would be running on fumes by the time he returned to the Crimean Peninsula.

Just like the rest of Ukraine. He snorted, thinking how apt the analogy was, congratulating himself on his own wit. The remnant of the former Soviet Union had been out of fuel for years now, as loath as its current leaders were to admit that. But no amount of political denial could conceal the truth forever, just as his engines couldn’t run on wishes and hopes. He shifted slightly in the ejection seat, keeping the blood flowing, settling in for a long flight. No, as fiscally and politically bankrupt as his country might be, it wasn’t dead yet. It still could pull some surprises out of its ass from time to time.

Like this one.

The MiG-31 was proof of it. In addition to the advanced power plant, it possessed a host of subtle and deadly avionics carefully crafted by Ukrainian engineers working with pirated U.S. Stealth technology. Every inch of its thin fuselage was wired into the central counterdetections module. It was less a coating for the aircraft than an oddly shaped phased array of electromagnetic detectors and transponders. Capable of intercepting radar signals and generating out-of-phase canceling waves, the MiG-31 had the ability to virtually disappear from the scope of any radar operator within range. Additionally, the integrated suite of sensors and transponders could easily mimic the radar characteristics of a wide range of commercial–and nonthreatening–aircraft.

As it would shortly. The MiG-31 was currently flying in full stealth mode, and Yuri felt confident that none of the radar sites ringing the Black Sea had the slightest inkling that he was transiting through their area at Mach 1. Yuri intended to stay in this mode during his transit across the Black Sea as well as his overflight of Turkey.

After that, as soon as he was over the Aegean Sea, the invisible night marauder would assume the identity of a Turkish commercial air flight departing Istanbul for London. If all went according to plan, the Americans would merely think that their copy of the published Turkish commercial air flight schedule was in error. Yuri knew that that happened often enough for it not to be alarming to either USS La Salle, the Sixth Fleet command ship now loitering in the Greek Isles, or her Aegis cruiser escort, USS Shiloh.

He could have continued the entire flight in stealth mode, but to do so would defeat the entire purpose of the exercise. It was not only necessary that the United States be reminded who owned this portion of the world’s oceans, but that they also be convinced that the cause of their sudden disgrace was Turkey. By simulating the appropriate size, altitude, and IFF codes of a Turkish aircraft, Yuri would catch them completely off guard.

Yuri eased the throttle back down to the economical Mach.85, then fished around in the upper-leg flight-suit pocket until his fingers closed around a foil-wrapped chocolate bar. He pulled it out, shucked off the protective covering, and bit greedily into it.

It was one of the true luxuries of being part of this elite strike force, being issued precious Swiss chocolate bars for in-flight meals.

One hundred miles off the coast of Greece, USS La Salle steamed slowly north. Forty miles ahead, the island of Samothrace was visible only on the SPS-10 radar that echoed its images to the bridge on the SPA-25G repeater.

The fog that had plagued her around midnight was slowly dissipating, responding to the gentle easterly wind that had sprung up around 0200. The massive vessel sliced easily through the sea state two swells, throwing off curling bow waves of churning white bubbles and aqua water. Overhead, the first few stars were starting to peek out through the clearing sky.

“How about some coffee, sir?”

The operations specialist extended the white disposable cup to the young black lieutenant. “I made it myself.”

“What, no latte? I’d expect better on the Sixth Fleet flagship.” The lieutenant smiled as his fingers curled around the white stippled surface.

Operations Specialist Third Class Matthew Carey grinned ruefully. “Some espresso would be damned fine about now, wouldn’t it? These mid-watches…” He shrugged.

Lieutenant (junior grade) Jules “Skeeter” Harmon took a sip from the steaming cup. He grimaced. “Better than most, bearing but a slight resemblance to JP5 this time.”

“We aim to please, Lieutenant. The customer’s always right, even if he is a TAO nugget hiding out from the carrier.”

Skeeter set the cup down on his TAO console with a little more force than necessary. “Damn it, Carey, I’m not hiding out! I told you before–some idiot in D.C. screwed my orders up. I’m supposed to be on Jefferson, not La Salle. Can I help it if they decided to leave me stashed here while they figure it out? Don’t you think I’d rather be on the bird farm than trapped on this gator?” He gestured around the Combat Direction Center, which was only half manned under peacetime steaming conditions. “Do you think any self-respecting aviator would want to be here?”

Carey grinned. “You’re here.”

“For another two weeks.” Skeeter kept one hand curled around the coffee cup just in case the ship lurched unexpectedly, a holdover habit from his midshipman cruise days aboard much smaller ships. “Besides, that gives Jefferson time to prepare, seeing as how I’m such a hotshot aviator. You know, I hate to embarrass the admiral by showing up before he’s ready for me.”

Carey stifled a snort. The lieutenant was a good guy, better than most of the black-shoe surface officers that inhabited the amphibious command-and-control ship. You could talk to him, and he didn’t get all bent out of shape over the small stuff, like the “shoes” did. That made the mid-watch hours more endurable, a fact for which every member of Watch Section Two aboard the Sixth Fleet flagship was grateful.

Still, there were times when Carey wondered whether the newly minted aviator had any idea of what he was getting into. Sure, he knew Skeeter had been through the training pipeline, and had already completed the required carrier qualifications while assigned to the RAG–the Replacement Air Group–that gave the nuggets their first practical look at the intricacies of landing on board their floating airfields. And from what he’d heard, Lieutenant Harmon was supposed to be one damned fine pilot.

Mess-decks intelligence–MDI–had it that he had graduated at the top of his class, both in basic and at the RAG. The enlisted troops liked him, about as much as they were prepared to like any junior officer who hadn’t yet proved his worth on a six-month cruise. Sometimes it was better not to get too attached to officers until you knew what they were really made of. How much of his own growing reputation did the lieutenant himself believe? Carey wondered. All of it? He shook his head, and his congenial expression clouded over. He hoped not. After two years in the Navy, Petty Officer Carey knew what Lieutenant Harmon had yet to learn–that the sea held surprises of its own for the men and women who sailed on her.

“I expect they’ll be glad to get you on board,” Carey said finally. “There’s bound to be some junior officers who are getting tired of pulling Alert 15 sitting on the flight deck.” He glanced slyly at the lieutenant j.g. “You’ll be the ‘George,’ won’t you, sir?”

Lieutenant Harmon frowned. “Yeah, and I’m not looking forward to it.”

Being the most junior officer in a squadron carried with it a host of collateral duties that took away from flying and sleeping time. Movie officer, welfare and recreation officer, and general all-around shitty-little-jobs officer–that was the domain of the George.

“I think they call it an opportunity to excel, an OTE,” Carey said, affecting the slight drawl that so many pilots used when airborne. Even aviators born in the northernmost sections of Maine sounded like Chuck Yeager over tactical, and the enlisted technicians who supported them picked up the habit.

Harmon shrugged. “They can load me up with all the collateral duties they want to, but I joined this man’s Navy to fly. And once they see me…” The aviator let his voice trail off and shot a significant look at the young operations specialist. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Now, sir, I didn’t-” Carey started to protest.

Skeeter cut him off with a lazy wave of his hand. “That’s all right. You haven’t flown with me. And neither have they.” He pointed at the large-screen display that dominated the forward part of the compartment. “VF-95 doesn’t know it yet, but I’m about to set a Tomcat record for most consecutive good traps on board. Mosquitoes don’t bolter–and neither do I,” he said, referring to the maneuver a carrier aircraft executed when it missed catching the wires on the aft of the flight deck.

“I’m sure they–what the hell?” Carey’s head snapped forward to stare at the large-screen display. “What’s that?”

Skeeter spun around in his swivel chair to face forward, and his fingers reached for the trackball to position his cursor over the new air contact flitting across the upper edge of his screen. His fingers fumbled for the right buttons, and finally the relevant tactical information appeared on the small screen at the side of his desk. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Damn, Carey–you’re gettin’ jumpy. Nothing but a commercial air flight.”

Carey shook his head, his frown deepening. “They’re not scheduled for one, sir. This is dead time–the ninety-minute gap when there’s not any civilian flights scheduled.” He took a quick look at the status display. “And it’s moving too fast.”

“Five hundred knots? That’s well within speed range of a commercial aircraft,” Skeeter countered. “Besides, IFF indicates it’s a commercial air flight.”

“Like I said, he’s not on my schedule. Besides, they’re usually at four hundred and fifty knots,” Carey said, “not five hundred. Why would he be going fifty knots faster than every other COMMAIR flight that out-chops Turkey?”

Skeeter shrugged. “Fast is good.”

“It’s out of parameters, Lieutenant,” Carey said stubbornly. “Recommend we designate it as a contact of interest and ask the cruiser what they think.”

“Might as well, seeing as how you’ve got a bug up your ass about it. Besides, it’ll give those shoes something to do besides play video games on that Spy I system. I’ll designate it as a contact of interest–if I can find the damned–ah, there it is.”

The display changed the symbology associated with the contact and sent the data out to the other ships over Link II, the tactical net that allowed the ships in the battle group to share information. “But the cruiser is net control. When she starts howling, you’re going to have to talk to them.”

“Be glad to. The track supervisor on Shiloh is an old shipmate of mine, and he’ll be thinking exactly the same thing.”

Skeeter glanced up at him. “Bet?”

“You got it, sir. Loser buys an espresso machine for the winner’s mess.”

Skeeter smacked his lips. “Can’t wait.”

Yuri extended the retractable infrared pod housed under the cockpit and stared at the display, Useless, as he’d suspected it would be. Still, the admiral had been quite adamant about conducting an IR search before activating his radar. Soviet tactics, Soviet thought processes. He sighed. Until they overcame this institutionalized mandate to control every small tactical detail on a mission, Ukrainian air would continue to be hampered. Especially on missions like this. What was the point of even trying the IR sensor in fog as dense as this?

None.

Moreover, the aircraft was already adequately configured to search for the Sixth Fleet flagship without revealing its own identity. The Flashdance radar had been meticulously modified to provide an alternate operational mode, one that closely simulated the ubiquitous Furuno surface-ship search radar found on most other world ships. At five hundred feet, he could easily be mistaken for any one of the thousands of tugs, fishing boats, or other commercial vessels that plied these waters. And the contrast between a radar blip emitting the characteristics of a Turkish commercial air flight and an electronic signature mimicking a civilian surface craft would undoubtedly add to the confusion. In theory, the flagship’s electronic-warfare Specialists would simply assume that the target-processing algorithm had inadvertently attached the electromagnetic signature to the wrong blip.

In theory, at least.

And really, all he needed was four minutes. Four minutes of precious time to close within range of the amphibious flagship, fire his weapon, and get the hell out of there.

Yuri felt the adrenaline flooding his system, noticed the tingling in his fingertips and the light, giddy feeling of over-confidence it generated. It was an all-too-familiar sensation, one that he’d learned to ignore in Afghanistan while flying more primitive Soviet fighters.

He glanced over at the GPS–the Global Positioning System indicators–and watched the green luminescent digits slowly click over.

Based on the Ukrainians’ best intelligence and the Americans’ public announcements of their own deployment schedules, the flagship should be located within one hundred miles of a point immediately in front of him.

One hundred miles, Still a hell of a lot of ocean to search, and visual and infrared would certainly be useless today. He reached over and toggled on the radar, flipping the switch into the commercial-air-simulation position.

Even better than being part of his deception, the radar would actually work in this mode, providing a complete look-down/shoot-down picture of the water below him.

He eased back on the yoke, gaining altitude. Eight thousand feet, he decided. A brief foray up to that altitude to get a good, solid picture of what was around him, then pop back down out of counterdetection range.

With any luck at all, it would all be over in ten minutes.

A slight additional whine haunted the airframe as the radar spun up and came on-line. His heads-up display sprang to life with a speckling of green clutter that quickly resolved itself into the fuzzy-edged lozenges indicating radar contact.

There–it had to be La Salle. The large one loitered in deep water.

A smaller contact, probably Shiloh, was positioned twenty miles astern of the massive flagship. Yuri calculated the intercept, then dove back down to the deck for the concealment of sea clutter.

“Sir! You’ve gotta listen to me!” Carey’s voice was deeper, harder. “There’s something going on with this contact I don’t like.” He pointed to the automated status board.

Skeeter stared at the display and frowned. “The altitude–it’s not matching up, is it?”

“No, sir. And look at the EW–the electromagnetic-warfare signal–going with it. A Furuno.”

“That’s not right–not at that altitude. Unless it’s a fishing boat with-“

“Sir. With all due respect, you’re letting your conclusion drive your analysis.” Carey stabbed a finger at the display. “You’ve got a contact radiating commercial IFF, going too fast, displaying a radar it shouldn’t have, and now bouncing back and forth between five hundred feet and eight thousand.”

Carey’s voice took on an urgent note. “Sir, you’d better get the TAO in here. Now.”

“What if it’s just a commercial flight after all? Or a computer-processing glitch?” Skeeter replied uneasily. As a junior officer stashed on board the flagship, he’d been pressed into duty as the Combat Direction Center TAO only because the ship was in peacetime cruising mode. Nobody was expecting anything to go wrong, not in the familiar confines of the Aegean Sea and just off the coast of a friendly nation. Besides, the admiral’s Chief of Staff had expressed full confidence in Skeeter and told him it was an opportunity. “What does the Aegis say?”

A flicker of movement on the large-screen display drew their eyes toward it. The Aegis response was clear–the blip had been redesignated as an unknown, potentially hostile contact.

“I know Lieutenant Commander Boney,” Carey said. “If you call him and wake him up for no reason, he’s not going to be pissed. He expects it–hell, if he’d known you’d hesitate to do it, he wouldn’t have left you here alone on watch, sir!”

Skeeter reached for the telephone and punched in the four-digit code that would ring the TAO’s stateroom. He stared at Carey as the phone rang twice, then quickly briefed the Tactical Action Officer on the scenario.

Color drained from his face as he listened to the response. He slammed the receiver down and turned to Carey. “You and your counterpart on the cruiser better be right. Lieutenant Commander Boney’s on his way down here, and he told me to ring the captain.”

Carey nodded, immensely relieved. “Better safe than sorry, sir. Always.”

TFCC was one of the smallest compartments on board the supercarrier, but it was the fusion center for every sensor on every platform assigned to Carrier Battle Group 14. Radar, electromagnetic, and a variety of other sophisticated detection and countermeasures systems fed their electronic data into the processing center. Tiny waverings in the electromagnetic spectrum, fuzzy contacts that might have been sea clutter or actual contacts, were correlated with national sensor data from satellites and other top-secret assets to produce a chillingly accurate bird’s-eye view of the airspace and sea for five hundred miles around the carrier. A satellite data link with the Sixth Fleet flagship extended her range to well within the Aegean Sea.

The compartment was dimly lit, red lights glowing softly from the overhead while a giant blue large-screen display covered the far end. Two tactical consoles were positioned in front of the screen, each with its own automated status board, keyboard, trackball, and associated communications circuitry. The Flag Tactical Operations Officer occupied the right-hand one, while his assistant sat in the left. Both wore headsets linking them to the command circuit, and a dial-up switch in front of them allowed them to change to other circuits as necessary.

At the moment, both were studying the large-screen display. Just seconds before, the “unknown, possibly hostile” designation had flashed before them as the Aegis cruiser had revised her opinion on the identity of the air contact. Lieutenant Commander “Gator” Cummings, an F-14 Radar Intercept Officer, or RIO, slewed his cursor over to capture the offending blip. His status display indicated the contact had been designated a COI (contact of interest) by La Salle, now loitering two hundred miles to the northeast.

“Raw video,” he muttered. “That’s what I’d rather see than this. If I could see just exactly what the radar is painting, I’d know-“

“Just what you know now,” his assistant finished tartly. “Gator, you RIOs always believe you’ve got the only calibrated set of eyeballs in this Navy. Don’t you figure those operations specialists on the cruiser know their jobs?”

“Sure they do, but I know mine even better.”

“Well. What do you want to do about it?”

Gator stared at the symbology on the tactical screen. It was tracking southwest, headed directly toward the Sixth Fleet flagship. Behind it, a shadow trace indicated its previous path. From its track history, it appeared to have left Ankara and been detected as it went feet-wet off the coast. “Could be a commercial air–time’s wrong, but it might be a charter flight.” He changed his mind as soon as he said the words. “Or something else.”

The other officer, an E2C Hawkeye pilot, nodded. “I don’t like this.”

“Anything from Intel?” Gator asked.

“Let’s find out.” The pilot picked up the telephone and punched the numbers. He spoke a few short sentences in the receiver, then hung up. “Commander Busby’s on his way down right now. He sounded worried.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

Gator picked up the Batphone located to his right. “Get the Alert 30 Tomcats rolling. I’ll brief the admiral.”

One hundred miles. It’s time. Still, he hesitated.

Why?

Was it the enormity of the act he was about to commit? Or simply lingering doubts about the viability of the entire operation?

He shook his head, pushing the questions that had plagued him for the last five months away. There was more to this plan, more than he’d ever been told or would ever know. It was the old Soviet way–that he know only the small portion that was required for the successful execution of his mission, not the broader strategic implications. He took a deep breath, focused on the radar screen, and toggled the weapons-select switch on his stick. Not that it made much difference–he carried only one missile, and an odd variant at that.

He punched the button on top of the stick, releasing the weapon from its hard-point station on his right wing. The MiG heeled, suddenly unbalanced by the loss of six hundred pounds of–of what?

As he broke off from the approach and heeled back in a tight turn toward Turkey, he felt the question grow more insistent in his mind. What had he just fired?

And why?

Minutes after the TAO’s wake-up call, the flight deck was teeming with a rainbow of jerseys. Two decks down, the Alert 30 Tomcat crews waiting in their Ready Room were slipping into their ejection harnesses, double-checking kneeboard data, and trying to figure out why the hell they were scrambling.

The yellow-shirted flight-deck control personnel swarmed over the Alert 30 Tomcats, conducting final preflight checks and readying the aircraft for their crews. Inside the carrier, the duty tower crew stampeded up eight decks to Pri-Fly, the glassed-in control tower on the inboard side of the island. CAG, although his presence was technically not required in the tower, rousted himself out of his rack and hastily tossed on his yellow jersey over his khaki pants.

In TFCC, an atmosphere of controlled chaos was developing. Admiral Edward Everett “Batman” Wayne, commander of Carrier Battle Group 14, strode into TFCC. The admiral’s cabin was located on the same deck, just thirty feet away.

“Good morning, Admiral,” Gator said crisply. He followed his greeting with a concise summary of the contact’s track history. “I’m having them spin up the Alert 30 aircraft–just to be on the safe side. If it is trouble, though, we’re going to be too late to do any good.”

Admiral Wayne nodded. “Good thinking. Better safe than sorry. We’re too near our old hot zones to take anything for granted at this point.”

Batman stifled a yawn as he slipped into his elevated brown command chair. “What does Sixth Fleet think it is?”

“They’re not talking yet, Admiral,” Gator answered. “Based on the traffic and Link data, they’re treating this as a threat.”

Batman shook his head. “They’ve got the Aegis with them. An aggressive little bastard, from the looks of his contact designations. I like that in a cruiser. If this contact makes trouble, the Aegis ought to be able to deal with it.”

“Shiloh has a sharp crew,” Gator agreed. “I suppose I could have let them handle it alone, but-“

Batman waved off his suggestion. “Always better to have more firepower than not enough. It’s probably just a civilian aircraft off track with a misassociation of the electromagnetic signal. Still, you did the right thing.”

Gator nodded, slightly relieved in spite of himself to find out that the admiral agreed.

Batman turned to the Intelligence Officer lurking in one corner of TFCC. “Anything to add?”

“No, sir.” Commander “Lab Rat” Busby looked slightly chagrined. “Nothing. But the absence of data doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about–just that we don’t know about it if there is.”

Batman studied Busby for a moment. A strong officer, a superb intelligence specialist. But if ever an officer had an appropriate call sign, it was Commander Busby. Large blue eyes behind steel-rimmed frames, close-clipped blond hair so light as to be invisible, pink complexion–whoever had hung that name on him in his first assignment had nailed him cold appearance-wise. But the aggressive, scalpel-sharp mind housed beneath his unprepossessing exterior belied the meek nickname.

“Better safe than sorry,” Batman said. He turned back to Gator. “Tell the Air Boss to get those Tomcats up now.

The fog enveloped him again, closing around the canopy like a welcoming blanket. Stealth technology might hide him from radars, but the enveloping low clouds made him feel safe, as well as preventing visual contact.

As soon as he’d started executing his hard turn toward Turkey, Yuri had slammed the throttles full forward on the Foxhound, kicking the light aircraft up to Mach 2.3. They’d factored it in, this mad dash for home, during the initial mission calculations. He should have enough fuel–just barely.

Thirty miles behind him, the missile he’d just launched was still heading for the La Salle. He watched the digital time counter on his console, counting down until detonation. His mission planner had been specific about run time and distance at launch. Moreover, he’d harped incessantly on the necessity for executing as much of the mission as possible at a bare five hundred feet above the hungry sea below him. Yuri had wondered about it at the time, wondered even more now, but was not about to disobey his orders.

One more hour and he’d be back over the Crimean Peninsula, having made a circuitous route again over Turkey cloaked in his stealth technology.

One hour, if nothing went wrong.

“Oh, Jesus, we’ve got separation. Missile separation.”

The operations specialist’s voice went high and wavering, then dropped immediately back down into a more controlled register. “TAO, incoming Vampire.”

The young lieutenant on watch felt the blood draining out of his face.

How had the situation gone to shit so quickly?

Sure, he’d designated the contact unknown and possibly hostile, but that was standard target-identification protocol. You don’t know what it is, something looks odd about it, you call it a possible hostile. It was the Aegis way. The captain had sounded drowsily satisfied when he’d reported it to him, evidently rousing from a sound sleep.

What in the hell–?

The symbology for target-fire-control designation popped into being on his screen, and he slewed his chair around to stare at the weapons technician manning the fire-control console. It was happening fast, too fast. There wasn’t time to-“Sir, sir! Request weapons-free authorization.”

The voice of the chief manning the weapons fire-control console was firm. “Lieutenant, I need permission now to make certain we have enough range to catch it.”

A cold calm settled over the young lieutenant. This was it, the moment he’d trained for, the moment they’d memorized and anticipated and dreaded in equal proportions. This was why he was the Tactical Action Officer–the captain trusted his judgment enough to give him complete control of the awesome weapons inventory that his ship carried. If he froze now, it would be more than a black mark on his fitness report.

“Weapons free.”

One small part of his mind was pleased to note that his voice sounded steady and professional.

Seconds later, the cruiser shuddered as an SM2 surface-to-air missile exploded out of the vertical-launch-system tube and arced away from the cruiser. The noise was overwhelming, almost drowning out the insistent bonging of the General Quarters alarm. The TAO could hear people moving around CDC, the General Quarters crew pounding down the passageways and into the compartment located on the third deck of the ship, taking in the tactical situation at a glance and starting turnover with their on-watch counterparts.

He heard the cacophony, but it didn’t register. His eyes, his mind, his entire being was fixed on the blue symbol arcing away from his ship and toward the incoming missile. “Fire two,” he ordered.

Aside from a few whispered oaths, TFCC was silent. Batman stared at the SM2 missile symbology with its long blue speed leader pointing out in front of it. The incoming missile carried the same symbol with the same long speed leader, but was colored in red. The tips of the two speed leaders were already intersecting, as though they were some obscene beginning to a game of tic-tac-toe.

“Flight line manned and ready,” Gator said quietly. “Estimate five minutes until Tomcat launch.”

“Make it three minutes,” Batman answered. “I think we’re going to need them.”

The Sunburn missile inbound on the USS La Salle was a one-of-a-kind variant. Its internal mechanisms and warhead were adapted from a sea-launched version of one of the United States Navy’s most dangerous threats–a tactical nuclear warhead. While American technology was more than adequate to supply such a weapon to U.S. forces, American doctrine forbade its use, even though Ukrainian combat doctrine specifically dictated the use of tactical nuclear weapons at the earliest possible point in any decisive battle.

Traveling at just under Mach 3, the missile tracked along a line of bearing dictated by its maneuvering circuits. After one minute of flight, its final-approach radar activated, illuminated the water below it, and spotted its target off on the horizon. It made two minor course corrections at its current altitude before descending to two thousand feet and continuing on its trajectory.

Had Yuri Kursk known what tactics were embedded in the pathways of the warhead’s electronic-control mechanism, he would have had even more reason to be concerned about his mission. Not for the strike on the American battle group, but for his own odds of escaping unscathed.

Thirty miles from the USS La Salle, the missile detonated. The warhead’s explosion punched through the steel alloy casing, the intense heat of the burgeoning nuclear explosion vaporizing the metal into a thin layer of molecules that would ride outward on the fireball’s leading wave.

The after part of the missile disintegrated microseconds later. There were no intact portions of it to form the deadly shrapnel that accompanies most missile detonations, but it was not necessary. Even thirty miles from the carrier, the missile was close enough to inflict the damage intended.

The EMP–electromagnetic pulse–was far more destructive to the ships in the vicinity than the relatively small blast effect the missile produced. It killed silently, without warning, and its target was not the human beings inhabiting USS La Salle, nor the structural elements of the ship, but the delicate electronics housed within.

The starboard lookout had just begun his slow, methodical track toward the bow of the ship when the missile exploded. His involuntary reflexes took over–his eyelids slammed shut, and a piercing scream ripped from his throat. He dropped the binoculars from his eyes and plastered his hands over his face. Pain lanced through his eyes and back into his brain, a thin silver needle of agony. He dropped to his knees, not feeling the impact of soft tissue on the hard metal deck. He could hear the screams of the others on the bridge faintly, as though coming from a long distance away. But the pain, the all-encompassing pain, ate every shred of reality other than the lancing agony boiling in his brain. He rolled over onto his side and curled up on the bridge wing, still screaming. His eyes were wide open, tears flooding down his face, and completely unseeing. The nuclear flash had blinded him.

“Holy shit, it–what the hell?” Skeeter’s question transformed itself into a shout as the screen in front of him lit up with an unholy brilliance. Something on the port side of the compartment snapped out an angry, electrical sound.

Every light in the compartment except for the emergency battle lanterns went dark. Skeeter jumped up, ripped the headset off his ears, and took one step back. There was only one type of missile that would cause that type of damage to a modern battleship without a concussive explosion that would have rocked the deck that was so steady under his feet. Only one.

A tactical nuclear explosion.

The ship was oddly quiet, the all-pervasive electronic hum that normally permeated every compartment silenced permanently. From the corridor outside, he could hear feet pounding down the passageways as sailors raced for their damage-control positions, their General Quarters stations, and the myriad other underway positions that the ship assumed when it was fighting for its life.

In a few minutes, they would all know what Skeeter knew–that USS La Salle was no longer a Navy combat vessel but merely a silent, dead hulk.

“They got it!” Gator crowed. He turned to face the admiral. “Right smack on. That Aegis must have-“

He broke the sentence off as he studied the admiral’s face.

The admiral had the microphone for the command circuit in his hand and was doggedly, quietly, and desperately calling up Shiloh and La Salle.

Gator stared at the speaker as though trying to make it answer.

The normal background electronic hum was noticeably louder, and spiked with violent electronic peaks. Electrons chittered all over the electromagnetic spectrum, violently roiling in the aftermath of the weapon.

“Admiral?” Gator said finally, a note of uncertainty in his voice. “I thought the Aegis shot it down.”

Batman replaced the handset in its metal bracket holder. “I don’t think so.”

A look of deep agony settled on his face. “No, I don’t think they got it at all. Every communications circuit we’ve got is blanked out by full-spectrum electromagnetic distortion. There’s only one kind of weapon that does that. And I never thought I’d see it used. It hasn’t been–not since Hiroshima.”

The fog was thicker at the boundary between land and sea, obscuring the Naval Aviation base and the two long runways that ran east to west along the northern portion. Yuri vectored in along the tactical radial, switching to approach-control frequency as he entered controlled airspace.

At the same time, he secured the stealth gear. His superiors had decided to continue normal activities on the base, and at this hour of the morning the first routine training flights were already cluttering the approaches.

He heard several startled exclamations over the ground-control frequency as he popped into being on their radar scopes, but there were no suspicious inquiries or demands for explanations. He smiled slightly, imagining the consternation that the Psychological Services officer–the new term for a zampolit–would be causing in the control tower.

He requested approach instructions and received priority clearance into base, as he knew he would. Five minutes later, the Foxhound alighted gracefully on the tarmac and rolled smoothly to a stop.

Yuri paused for a moment, his engines still turning, at the far end of the runway. Even on the ground, he still had the sensation of freedom, and these were the last few moments of it before he returned to the control of his superiors.

The mission–he mentally ran through his actions and decided that the entire evolution had been executed exactly according to instructions. Even if it hadn’t been, he would have reported it as such–there would be no excuses, could be none. Finally satisfied with his version of the events, he took one last, long deep breath of the purified and filtered air circulating in the cockpit, tasting the oddly sterile flavor of it. Then, using his nose-wheel steering gear, he executed a precision turn toward the flight center and the group of men waiting there.

“There was nothing else you could have done, sir,” OS3 Carey insisted. “Nothing.”

Skeeter stared at the clutter arrayed on the table. The last hour had been an inquisition, a demanding professional look at every second of time from the moment he detected the incoming aircraft to the attack. The admiral’s questions had been pointed and direct, the Chief of Staff openly accusatory. Maybe that was not what the admiral had intended, but it certainly sounded like it if you were the individual doing the answering.

In the end, the admiral had concluded that his performance at TAO had been inadequate, and had ordered the COS to place a letter of reprimand in his service jacket.

Not good enough. He hadn’t made the grade.

Paper charts and tracing paper cluttered the table in front of him, and the entire control of the flag battle group had shifted to ancient methods men had used for centuries to sail these waters. They were moving in closer to the coast of Greece, waiting for instructions on their next port call for repairs. Work crews scampered over the superstructure, trying desperately to resurrect any bit of combat capability left in the shattered gear. Deep in the bowels of the ship, some of the spare electronic components had survived, and the engineering officer and combat-systems officer had said they thought they might be able to jury-rig a rudimentary Furuno radar and one radio circuit in the clear. Secure, encrypted communications were out of the question. The radio components were stored too far above the waterline to have survived.

Shiloh was in better shape. The Aegis cruiser had been specially hardened to withstand EMP, and most of her vital combat circuitry was located well below the waterline. According to the helo that had ferried her XO over ten minutes earlier, she’d have to replace some exterior antennas, but would probably be fully operational within a matter of hours.

Shiloh would be coordinating the medical evacuation of the flash-blinded lookouts and other casualties, including the bridge watch-standers from both ships, as soon as she could raise Jefferson to provide a helo.

“I should have…” Skeeter’s voice trailed off, uncertain and wavering. He stared down at the paper, the lines delineating the Aegean Islands and surrounding waters blurring as his eyes drifted out of focus, clouded with tears. “I should have-” he tried again, searching within himself for an adequate definition of how he’d failed the ship.

“You couldn’t have.” Carey was emphatic. “He stayed outside of our engagement zone, and there was enough ambiguity in the situation that anyone might have made the same decisions. You did your best.”

Skeeter finally looked up at him. “It wasn’t good enough.”