Ashes of Victory

— 16 —

At the request of President Macklin, the Egyptian president had ordered the Suez Canal Authority to scramble and clear the waterway using Ardent Global, the leader in maritime salvage operations. Grown out the 2015 merger of two companies that had raised the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise ship that had struck a reef and sunk in 2012, Ardent was the go-to firm for massive salvage projects — especially one that had to get done in a matter of days, not weeks.

Within hours of the attack, Ardent had rushed in three Russian-built Mi-26 helicopters, the largest ultra-heavy lift helicopter in the world. A small army of welders had installed hard points onto various sections of the wreckage blocking the southern passage into the Gulf of Suez, which the Mi-26s then pulled up and deposited on the sandy shore. Fortunately, the sunken merchant vessel wasn’t the monster tanker blocking the northern passage, so by the morning of the first day after the attack, the job of clearing the canal was moving at a staggering pace.

The operation ran from dawn until dusk, and expectations were high that in twelve more hours, enough of the debris would be cleared to make way for the convoy.

Ninety miles to the northeast and less than forty miles from the border with Israel, by the shores of the Mediterranean near the city of el Arish, the luxury yacht Unbridled cruised a mile offshore from an abandoned Egyptian military base. Established in 1968, during the height of the War of Attrition between Israel and forces of the Egyptian Republic, the base had been finally discarded in the late 1990s. It was then slowly taken over by a flow of Sunni Muslim refugees from Iraq and Syria funded by Saudi Arabia. Since then, the refugee camp had developed into a thriving fishing village… as well as a breeding ground for extremist Muslim recruits.

Omar Al Saud stood on the forward observation deck on the top level of the thirty-million-dollar luxury yacht, watching through a pair of field binoculars. He ignored nearby yachts sailing past to gawk at the ultra-modern design of his 120-foot-long vessel, complete with helipad and Leonardo AW169 helicopter. Through the binoculars, the prince focused on the TEL trucks that had begun arriving from Cairo along El Qantra Shark-Al Arish Road overnight, under the cover of darkness — eighteen of them — taking over a hill just southwest of the encampment. Each truck carried two Qader medium-range anti-ship missiles developed by Iran. The Egyptian Army conducted exercises in the region from time to time as part of their strategy to keep Israeli forces on edge, so Al Saud hoped the TEL trucks, disguised as civilian vehicles parked almost a hundred miles from the canal, wouldn’t attract the attention of US aerial assets — at least not quickly enough to make a difference.

The Saudi prince frowned, wishing he had had more time to acquire twice as many of the missiles from the corrupt military minister in Cairo. Described by his Iranian contacts as the most powerful and precise cruise missile of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Al Saud wanted to overwhelm the carrier with them, but the latest update from his people watching the salvage operation indicated that the southern passage of the canal would be cleared within the next twelve hours. And besides, the longer he waited, the greater the chances of the Americans discovering his plot and leveling the site.

It is now or never, he thought, also wishing he could do this at night, but the Saudi prince did not want to risk Lincoln escaping the 160-mile range of the missile, nor did he want to expose the trucks, civilian-looking or not, to a full day of potential visual surveillance by the Americans.

Reaching for his satellite phone, Al Saud hit the speed dial and told the man who answered, “Now.”

He refocused the powerful Zeiss binoculars on the remote hill some six miles away in time to see the trucks’ operators pull back the gray canvases covering the rear of their vehicles. A moment later, the sequential flashes of thirty-six Qaders, each packing a five-hundred-pound warhead of high explosives, filled his view as the eighteen-foot-long weapons shot out of their individual launcher tubes. The volley of cruise missiles vanished over the horizon in the southwestern sky, skimming the desert sands. The missiles’ digital autopilots constantly queried and microcorrected their flight paths using high-precision GPS systems programmed with Lincoln’s coordinates.

Dropping the binoculars on a lounge chair, Al Saud walked to the stern helipad. Not wishing to be anywhere near the area when those missiles hit, he climbed aboard the Leonardo AW169 bound for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The AN/SPS-48E 3-D air search radar system picked up the tip of the threat from almost a hundred miles away. Its advanced algorithms separated the incoming missiles from the ground clutter.

“Vampires! Vampires! Sixteen! Heading two-one-zero. Range nine-eight miles. Speed four-five-zero knots. Impact in one-two minutes,” reported one of the Combat Fire Control operators sitting behind a console in the captain’s bridge.

Navy SEAL commander Jake Russo stood on the bridge next to Capt. Marvin Bennett as they snapped their heads around, looking at the young ensign in disbelief. “Sixteen?” asked Bennett.

“Yes, sir… wait… wait… it’s now twenty-one… no, change that… twenty-nine incoming… wait… it’s thirty-six. Confirmed. Thirty-six vampires.”

Oh, fuck me, Russo thought.

Bennett turned to his CFC operators manning the controls of the AN/SWY-2 Ship Defense Surface Missile System and with far more composure than Russo felt, ordered, “Map, track, and splash.”

The CFC technicians went to work, activating the port-side MK 144 Guided-Missile Launcher storing twenty-one missiles, as well as the RIM-7 anti-missile weapon system housing eight Sea Sparrows. Both of those missile systems, however, had an operational range of around ten miles, meaning all Bennett could do was track the vampires until they got within range.

A moment later, a call came in from Commander Harold Gorman, skipper of USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53), an Arleigh Burke — class guided-missile destroyer two miles north of Lincoln.

“Believe this shit, Marv?” Gorman hissed. “Damned Egyptians.”

“Harry,” Bennett said. “It’s going to be close. I only have close-in weapon systems.”

“We’ll thin the herd for you.”

John Paul Jones had one sixty-one-cell and one twenty-nine-cell MK 41 Vertical Launching Systems housing an array of different missiles. The assortment included BGM-109 Tomahawks, RUM-139 anti-submarine missiles, RIM-174 Standard ERAM missiles with a range of more than 150 miles, and the new-generation RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles with an operational range of twenty-seven miles. And all that meant it could remove some of the threat before it reached the kill zone of the carrier’s close-in weapon defense systems.

But Russo still silently cursed his current predicament as Pacheco’s words echoed in his head. The carrier strike group and its various onboard defense weapons systems had been designed to operate in concentric circles, with the aircraft carrier in the center. Missiles fired at the battle group at sea would be dealt with by the escorting destroyers and frigates encircling the carrier — the reason Lincoln only carried close-in defense systems to handle anything that happened to get through the onslaught of the outer shields.

But we’re stuck in a line, Russo thought as the CFC operator reported the missiles at sixty miles away. Like a sitting fucking duck.

The impotence of his current position made him crazy, but he, personally, had no options and no job to do here. Even if a Stinger could bring down one of the missiles, he didn’t have one, and by the time he could get his hands on one of those brought on board after the attack on Truman, it would already be too late. So he did the only thing he could do: stand next to Bennett over the radar station staring at the array of dots rapidly closing in on the carrier.

And all aimed at us, he thought, trying very hard to put out of his mind what would happen if just one of those missiles made it through their defenses.

“Three-six vampires,” reported the operator. “Heading two-one-zero. Range— Way to go, Jones!”

Eight dots appeared on the bottom of the radar screen as the destroyer released its load of ERAMs, dashing at Mach 3.5 toward the threat. In less than a minute, the volley tore into the front end of the incoming missiles.

“Three-zero vampires,” reported the operator. “Heading two-one-zero. Range three-niner miles. Speed four-five-zero knots. First impact in zero-four minutes, thirty-eight seconds.”

“Eight missiles, six hits,” Bennett said, frowning. Russo felt a rising panic in his chest at his utter lack of control of the events rapidly unfolding in front of him.

Fifteen more dots lit up on the lower left side of the console as Jones next released its load of Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missiles.

With a combined closing speed of over a thousand miles per hour, the volley of ESSMs bridged the gap in under a minute, their dual-mode X-band seekers locked to individual targets tracked by Jones’s Sewaco/Active Phased Array Radar, providing target illumination all the way to impact.

The ESSMs stabbed the vampire cluster, and an instant later nine of the incoming missiles vanished from radar.

“Two-one vampires. Heading two-one-zero. Range two-niner miles. Speed four-five-zero knots. First impact in zero-two minutes, forty-one seconds.”

“Dammit,” Bennett cursed. Russo frowned at the kill ratio of the ESSMs and the ERAMs. But so many detonations so close together created enough debris to confuse the radar system, especially while skimming the ground.

Another barrage of ESSMs shot off from a guided-missile cruiser two miles south, at the front of the stranded convoy, and Russo watched as they took out seven more missiles.

“One-four vampires. Bearing two-one-zero. Range one-four miles. Speed four-five-zero knots. First impact in one minute, ten seconds.”

In an impressive display of close-in defensive power, Lincoln released its load of Sea Sparrows and RAMs in under thirty seconds — a combined twenty-nine missiles blazing head-on to intercept.

“One-four vampires. Bearing two-one-zero. Range zero-nine miles. Speed four-five-zero knots. First impact in four-niner seconds.”

C’mon, Russo thought, gazing out with binoculars as the contrails shot off across the desert, rushing over shallow sand dunes as they collided with the incoming wave of vampires.

Even at a distance of several miles, it was a sight to see as the horizon ignited with flashes resembling distant lighting, followed by clapping thunder.

“Three vampires. Bearing two-one-zero. Range zero-four miles. Speed four-five-zero knots. First impact in twenty seconds!”

Russo could see the three missiles that had broken through, their contrails clearly visible right over the sand.

The single port-side Phalanx close-in weapon system six-barrel 20 mm Gatling gun sprang to life the moment the vampires reached its two-mile kill zone. Nicknamed “R2-D2 with a hard-on” because of its profile, the squat gun system vomited rounds at the rate of 4,500 per minute, painting a wall of armor-piercing tungsten rounds in front of the closest missile, which detonated in a ball of fire and shrapnel just over a mile from Lincoln’s bow. Rapidly switching targets, the Phalanx shot another volley of rounds in front of the next missile, detonating it less than four thousand feet from the ship, the blast rattling the windows of the captain’s bridge.

“Brace for impact!” shouted Bennett as the CWIS engaged the final vampire at a distance of two thousand feet, its tungsten penetrator rounds catching it at a twenty-degree angle, damaging its guidance system before piercing the warhead.

The blast, less than eight hundred feet away, shook the entire island superstructure. The fireball blocked the view from all port-side windows before flaming debris drizzled harmlessly across the flight deck.

As Bennett called the Pentagon and Russo stared at the smoke and flames in disbelief that they had actually survived the attack, the SEAL commander noticed people entering the bridge. He turned to the large bulkhead, where he spotted, over the heads of the bridge personnel busily clicking away at their stations, Lt. Gustavo Pacheco flanked by his operators.

His second in command just stood there, crossed his arms, and mouthed, What the fuck?