Cauldron

CHAPTER 18 Thunderclap

Vice Admiral Jack Ward kept remembering an old movie, one of his favorites. In it, the heroes, searching for treasure in a ruined temple, had entered a room and unknowingly triggered a deadly trap. Suddenly the door slammed shut on them, walls on either side rumbled inward, and rows of poisoned, needle-sharp spikes popped out.

His ships were in a similar situation.

It was easier on film, of course. A native guide, separated from the party earlier, found them in the nick of time and disabled the trap’s mechanism — just as the intrepid, if clumsy, heroes were about to be ventilated.

Unfortunately he didn’t have any native guides right now. The door could close anytime, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Checking the computer-driven display down in the CIC wouldn’t help, either. The situation hadn’t changed in the last fifteen minutes, and if he hovered over them long enough, some of his nervousness might rub off on his staff. This was one time when he earned his admiral’s pay by trying to be the calm, laid-back “Old Man” of navy legend.

He leaned on the rail of the port bridge wing. In the fading light Kobbergrund’s flashing light marked the westernmost extension of Anholt Island, a shallow sandbar with only ten feet of water over it. Anholt itself lay just a few miles away, a dark mass already blending with the horizon.

The island marked the halfway point in their rapid trip northward through the Kattegat, a narrow body of water lying between Denmark and Sweden. The only ways in or out of the Kattegat were through exits to the north and south. His convoy was still three hours away from entering even the dubious safety of the Skagerrak.

Anholt was Danish territory, and he was sure there were observers watching with great interest as his ships steamed past. Although Denmark had declared itself neutral, the fact that Germany lay only a few short miles beyond meant he had to consider the island a hostile shore. At least Sweden was a true neutral, jealously guarding her own territorial waters and fiercely determined to avoid being drawn in on either side. Of course, that just meant only one wall of the trap had spikes.

Ward turned and paced the narrow confines of the bridge wing. Damn it, he needed sea room and deep water! The Baltic was bad enough, with shallow water and uneven salinity and lousy underwater acoustics. The Kattegat was worse — even smaller and shallower. With a water depth of twenty, sometimes only ten fathoms, you could forget towed arrays and long-range sonar detection. It was also a major shipping channel, so there were dozens of surface contacts to track and classify. The air picture was even more nightmarish. This close to Germany, enemy air bases practically sat in his back pocket, reducing warning time to nil. Right now his Task Group’s radars showed hundreds of air contacts. How many were hostile?

He couldn’t know, and hopefully wouldn’t until the American ultimatum to EurCon expired at midnight, GMT, just four hours away.

Damn Washington for issuing that twenty-four-hour ultimatum! Ward understood the reasons for it, and even approved of them — in a detached way. But it would have been nice if the politicians had checked with the Pentagon before making that demand. Some of their promises might be hard to keep.

When EurCon had fired its air-launched cruise missiles at Poland and the Czech Republic, Task Group 22.1 was not ready for a major sea battle. Three separate convoys, with two or three merchant ships apiece, were headed south for Gdansk, each loaded with essential military supplies, crude oil, or natural gas. To escort each convoy, Ward had been forced to spread his warships too thinly for comfort or sound defense. One or two frigates, destroyers, or cruisers were enough to show the flag. They weren’t enough to fend off a massive missile or torpedo attack.

The rest of Task Force 22 was spread even further afield, from the North Sea to the Atlantic. The admiral had elected to remain embarked on Leyte Gulf because the cruiser’s Aegis display systems allowed him to keep tabs on the entire region. At Washington’s urging, he had tried to keep arms and oil convoys moving through until the last possible moment. The fighting in Hungary was burning up supplies at a frightening pace. Poland and its partners needed the material aboard those ships right away, not when it was safe. Nevertheless, although no rational person could have anticipated EurCon’s apparent willingness to widen the Hungarian conflict into general war, Ward was beginning to believe he’d cut things a little too fine.

One convoy should reach Gdansk about 2300 hours, a full hour before he expected to clear Skagen, the cape at Denmark’s northernmost tip. Another was almost out of the Skagerrak, heading north up the Norwegian coast. It was already under carrier-based fighter cover. Unfortunately the four ships under his direct command, Leyte Gulf, the Perry-class frigate Simpson, and two merchantmen, were caught dead center in the bull’s-eye.

There was no way his two northernmost formations could reach Gdansk before the ultimatum expired. If the French and Germans refused to withdraw their forces from Hungary and started shooting, the two convoys would both still be hours away from safety. Even if they could fight their way to the Polish harbor, his warships would be exhausted, isolated, vulnerable, and difficult to resupply. Presented with that fact, he had made the difficult decision to have both groups turn tail and head back north at full speed.

Every move he made in the Baltic was under heavy EurCon surveillance. Since the war in Hungary erupted, all mock attacks on his ships had stopped, probably so the French and Germans could rest their forces and prepare their own plans. Instead, shore-based radars and patrol aircraft tracked his convoys. He wasn’t helpless, but he was in EurCon’s front yard, and they were holding all the high cards.

His biggest problem was the lack of support. Warships operating alone could rarely handle every threat imaginable — one lucky hit by an enemy attacker, or an unlucky malfunction, could cripple even the most powerful ship. Two or three ships can cover each other, combining strengths and canceling out weaknesses. But they’re still limited to whatever ammunition they have on board, to their own sensors, and to their own helicopters. Add replenishment ships and you gained a more powerful group that could fight a battle, rearm, and fight again. Tossing in an aircraft carrier created a powerful formation that could detect its enemies hundreds of miles further out — and fight under a protective umbrella of fighters and attack jets.

His nearest carrier, though, was George Washington, far away in the North Sea. A “bird farm” needed sea room, both for launching and recovering aircraft and to hide from enemy attack. Carriers were too valuable to risk in confined waters. Georgie’s aircraft wouldn’t be able to help him here — not at first anyway. As part of their declared neutrality, the Danes had closed their airspace to all armed planes. If and when the shooting started, that wouldn’t mean much. He doubted that the small Danish Air Force would do much to stop either side from overflying its territory. Nobody expected the armed forces of the tiny neutral country to commit suicide for the sake of a principle. So his carrier’s interceptors and attack aircraft should have a free hand. But that could very easily be too late to save his isolated ships and tired men.

And they were tired.

Once the President announced his ultimatum, the admiral had set Condition II in all units under his control. Condition I was general quarters — full battle readiness. In Condition II, half the crew manned their general-quarters stations, while the rest tried to eat, catch up on sleep, and perform the most vital maintenance tasks. You could keep it up for a lot longer than general quarters, but “port and starboard” was still hard on sailors.

Fighting a yawn himself, Ward turned to look aft at the two merchants, trailing in Leyte Gulf’s wake. He groaned inside.

Dallas Star was a tanker, loaded with jet fuel. Tartu was a container ship, carrying Patriot missiles, radar parts, and tank ammunition, all desperately needed in Poland and to the south. It still galled him to fail — to turn tail and run. But the percentages were against any other course, and the cargoes aboard two merchant ships would never reach port if they were lying on the bottom of the Baltic.

When he looked away from the ships he was supposed to protect, the sun had vanished — its passage marked only by a fading red glow in the west. The Kattegat’s choppy waters were slowly blending with the darkening sky and darkened land to either side. Stars were already visible, pale against the eastern horizon. There would be a quarter-moon tonight and clear weather.

Blacked out, his ships would soon be invisible, but only to the naked eye. Shore-based and airborne radars tracked him, and his own ships’ radars were all lit off, searching for the first signs of impending trouble.

A tall, angular officer leaned out through the open portside bridge door. Even with night falling, Ward could recognize the worried face of Captain Jerry Shapiro, his chief of staff. “Sir, we’re getting a message from the Poles.” His tone made it clear the news was serious.

Stepping into the cruiser’s enclosed bridge, Ward heard an accented voice crackling over the radio speaker. “… listing badly. Tugs are coming, but I don’t think we can save her.”

Shapiro nodded toward the speaker. “There’s been an explosion on board Canyon. Probably a mine. No known submarines in the area.”

Ward’s chest tightened.

Canyon was a container ship loaded with air-to-air missiles, computers, and spare parts. A battery of self-propelled artillery was strapped to her deck as well. Part of the southernmost convoy, she had been under Polish naval escort, and only a few hours from safety. Her two American protectors had broken off earlier. Free of the slower merchant ships, the Kidd-class destroyer Scott and the Ferry-class frigate Aubrey Fitch were racing north at thirty-plus knots.

The voice continued. “… continuing sonar search. No contacts yet. We think this is a mine attack. Recommend you take extra precautions as well.”

As Leyte Gulf’s radio talker acknowledged and signed off, Ward thought it was past time for simple precautions. He turned to the cruiser’s commanding officer. “Put the ship at general quarters, Captain.” He had instructions for Shapiro as well. “Relay that order to the rest of the force, and pass the information on to CINCLANTFLT. Flash priority, Jerry.”

The sharp, blaring sound of Leyte’s klaxon followed Ward down to the CIC.

The electronics-packed space was filled with quiet, purposeful activity. With half the crew already at their general-quarters stations, much of the bustle associated with going to battle stations was missing. Men wearing headsets hunched over glowing screens and consoles, speaking quietly over radio and intercom circuits.

Ward slipped into his chair, followed moments later by Leyte Gulf’s skipper, sitting on his right.

The command display directly in front of him showed a map of the Kattegat and every known air, sea, and submarine unit in the immediate area. One to the left covered the entire Baltic. The electronic displays gave the impression of omniscience, of having a godlike “eye in the sky.” It was a false impression, the admiral often reminded himself. Small circles and boxes and triangles marked friendly, unknown, and known EurCon contacts.

As he studied the screen, Shapiro approached. “CINCLANTFLT has the word, Admiral. They wanted to know if we were going to change our plans. I said no.”

“Good work, Jerry.” A good chief of staff knew the commander’s intentions and could often speak for him, especially when their course of action was this clear. No, Ward thought, if he had any Last Best Moves, he would have already used them.

One thing, though. “Call Scott and Fitch.

Have them run for the Polish coast. There’s no way they’ll get out of the Baltic in time.” He paused, then explained. “I think the balloon’s going to go up real soon now.”

“Sir, it’ll be at least an hour before they’re in range of Polish air cover.”

Ward sighed. “I know that, Jerry, but Gdansk is the closest friendly territory. Tell them to run like hell. Tell them to burn out their engines.”

Shapiro left in a hurry. Ward pondered all the information laid out in front of him. There was one vital fact missing. How long did he have before EurCon tried to hammer his convoy? He couldn’t attack on his own — not without orders from above. Besides, he really didn’t want to. Every minute of peace brought his ships half a mile closer to safety.

By now word of the attack on Canyon would have flashed up the chain from commander in chief, Atlantic Fleet, to commander in chief, Atlantic, to the National Command Authority — a fancy name for the President. Modem communications would put his message in the President’s lap in minutes. But how long would it take to get a decision back down the chain of command?

“Don’t just sit here, Jack,” he muttered to himself. Although the American ultimatum hadn’t yet expired, somebody somewhere had started shooting. For all practical purposes, he was already in a battle. “Don’t let the enemy make the first move.”

All right, think. So far EurCon had hit one container ship. Where were the planes, missiles, and submarines that should be barreling in on this convoy?

Leyte Gulf was too valuable a target to be ignored or bypassed, even if its firepower made it a tough target. Just the political value of taking out one of the U.S. Navy’s Aegis cruisers early in a war would make the attempt worthwhile.

Making piecemeal attacks, though, was worse than foolish. If the French and Germans really were going to war right now, they’d already given him precious time to alert his forces, to warn Washington, and to do all the things you really don’t want an enemy to do.

Ward frowned. No matter what the Poles said, he didn’t believe Canyon had struck a mine. Mines were very precise creatures. Any mines laid by EurCon forces would be equipped with timers ready to activate them in concert with a set-piece surprise attack. Instead, he was willing to bet that some German or French sub skipper had seen Canyon, a little ahead of schedule, plowing past him. Knowing that the merchant’s supplies were vital, the man had opted to send her to the bottom rather than let such a fat prize get away.

He nodded. That hypothesis fit the facts.

So somebody had jumped the gun. If that was the case, EurCon’s senior commanders would be almost as flummoxed as he was. Once a decision came down from Paris and Berlin, they would move quickly enough, but they weren’t ready to launch a massive strike — not just yet. And that meant he had a few precious minutes to make some final crucial preparations.

Ward started at the top — reacting to what he believed to be the most immediate threat. A submarine had attacked his southernmost convoy. Well, submarines were also the best way to sink an Aegis cruiser, especially one steaming in restricted waters and crappy sonar conditions.

He punched keys on the pad to his left. The image on his primary display shifted as numbers and curved lines, representing depths and bottom contours, glowed to life. The screen also showed his own group’s planned track. It ran slightly east of straight north.

At twenty-two knots, an hour’s travel would put them abreast of the Groves Flak and Fladen banks, two shallow spots on the seafloor that would make perfect hiding places for small diesel submarines. And the already narrow channel narrowed even further near there. That was bad. Very bad.

Ward called his helicopter coordinator on the intercom. “Mike, I want somebody up checking both those two banks for lurkers. Stick to a passive search only for now. If there are French or German subs up there, let’s see if we can find them without tipping anybody off.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

He listened as the lieutenant quickly issued orders to launch one helicopter each from Leyte Gulf and Simpson.

Working in tandem, the two SH-60 Seahawks would sweep back and forth across the areas he’d tagged, using their MADs and dropping dozens of LOFAR sonobuoys to hunt for EurCon subs lying doggo. The only trouble was that he still wasn’t sure what he could do if they actually found any. Under the existing rules of engagement, he could only fire if fired upon. The Kattegat wasn’t wide enough to enforce a declared exclusion zone.

While listening to the radio chatter in his headset, he checked the display more closely.

Simpson’s other helicopter, 401, was out on surface search duty — patrolling to the south. He issued another order. “Get 401 down as soon as the other birds are off. I want her refueled and rearmed for ASW. I think we’ll need her.”

Symbols crawled across the screen as his units responded to their new instructions. The minutes passed slowly while Ward ran through his limited options over and over again. Waiting like this was the hardest part of any naval commander’s job. In battle, supersonic missile speeds left very little time for thought — and no time at all for worry.

Shapiro came up and stood quietly behind Ward’s chair, waiting. His news wasn’t urgent, then. The admiral took another moment to examine the display before swiveling around.

“Washington says stand by. No changes to the rules of engagement.” The chief of staff saw Ward’s reaction and added, “Admiral Macmillan said to shoot when you have to, and he’d sort it out later.”

Ward sighed. It was nice to have CINCLANT’s support, but now was the moment to strike, while EurCon was still trying to —

“Sir!” The lieutenant coordinating his helicopters broke in, his voice climbing rapidly. “401 reports several streaks of light moving from west to east, heading straight for us!”

Too late. We’ve missed our chance, Ward realized. EurCon had decided to throw the first punch.

Lieutenant (jg.) Bill Alvarez, piloting Seahawk 401, looked over at his sensor operator in shock. Lieutenant Tom Calhoun was on his fifth cruise. He had over five hundred hours in Seahawks. This was Alvarez’s first deployment, and things were moving a little too fast for him. “What will Leyte do?”

“Open up, my friend.” Calhoun’s eyes never left his instrument console. “Turn port, new course three three zero, speed seventy knots. Take us down.” Even though Alvarez was the pilot, Calhoun was the mission commander. He had the sensor displays, and the experience to know what he was looking at. Alvarez, like any other helicopter pilot, was kept busy enough just keeping the Seahawk in the air.

Wheeling the big machine to the left, Alvarez juggled his cyclic stick, collective, and throttle, smoothly losing altitude and slowing until Seahawk 401 clattered only thirty feet above the Kattegat’s dark waters.

As Alvarez maneuvered, Calhoun amplified his initial report. “Negative radar contact on vampires. Visual and FLIR only. Estimate ten plus, low altitude. Negative ESM.”

EurCon’s stealth missile technologies were getting another battlefield test — a successful one. The Seahawk’s APS-124 radar wasn’t powerful enough to spot the incoming missiles against all the clutter created by the Kattegat’s short, choppy waves.

Calhoun broke radio contact with Leyte Gulf.

“They’ll find out the rest for themselves. We’ve done our bit for Uncle Sam, we’re on our own time now. Turn port again, new course two two five.”

Automatically Alvarez complied. He was trained to obey orders immediately, and Calhoun’s orders were eminently sensible. The planes that had launched those missiles at the convoy could still be somewhere close by. And the best way to avoid attracting their unwanted attention was to throttle the Seahawk’s engines back, lay low, and pretend to be nothing more than night air. Throttling back would also conserve fuel — giving them up to an extra hour of flying time. With their parent ship under attack, it might be a long while before 401 could land. Just as important, the new course kept them well clear of both Leyte Gulf and Simpson.

Neither man wanted to be shot down by their own side in all the confusion.

Repeated flashes shattered the darkness off to the right. He automatically closed one eye trying to preserve his night vision.

Leyte Gulf carried over a hundred antiaircraft missiles, loaded in vertical launchers fore and aft. She was firing from both launchers.

A blinding flare signaled the first launches. For a moment, the ship’s bulky shape was outlined in a flickering orange-red light. Then rocket exhaust covered her bow and stern in billowing smoke clouds, lit from within.

The first pair of SAMs leapt up out of the roiling smoke clouds, their own smoke trails also glowing. Even from twenty miles away, their exhausts looked like giant-sized highway warning flares soaring high overhead, almost too bright to look at. It was a spectacular and frightening sight.

A second later, with the first two missiles already high overhead and starting to arc over, a second pair thundered out of the expanding clouds. Then another pair and yet another roared skyward, until the cruiser, moving through the water, had built a towering arch of missile smoke trails.

Looking aft, Alvarez waited for their own ship to launch. Nothing. “Where’s Simpson!”

Calhoun shook his head. “She doesn’t have a fancy radar like the Aegis.” He sucked in his breath a little, figuring. “Against stealth missiles, it’s going to be close. There,” he said finally. “She’s firing now.”

A new pair of fiery streaks leapt up from the horizon and leveled out, seemingly headed straight toward them. After a few seconds, Simpson’s missiles started drifting to the right, then flashed past their starboard side.

Leyte Gulf’s SAMs, now invisible, started to reach the incoming EurCon missiles. In the dark middle distance, well off to starboard, flashes suddenly erupted, burning away the night in blinding white pulses as proximity-fused warheads went off. But the flashes marched closer as the waves of enemy missiles bored in.

Then it happened.

An enormous explosion lit the sea between the two American warships. An image flashed against the darkness, so quickly and so blindingly bright that Alvarez realized what he had seen only after the flash faded. He’d seen a merchant ship’s hull, dark against a brilliant white and yellow and orange light that backlit but also enveloped its victim.

Blinking away the dazzling afterimages, Alvarez scanned the horizon. A dull orange glow remained. On the FLIR, the gray-white image of the merchant ship, warm against the cold sea, grew whiter and whiter toward the bow until the display shimmered and sparkled with the heat of the flames. A ship was on fire. Oh, God. He felt chilled to the bone, despite the sweat staining his flight suit.

“Turn right, new course two seven zero,” Calhoun ordered. “I’m going to take a peek with the radar.”

Turning, Alvarez carefully watched the altimeter. He could almost hear the waves outside and feel the mass of the water below him. Helicopters were nimble, but this close to the surface, he wouldn’t get a second chance to correct any mistakes.

Calhoun hunched over his multifunction display. His shoulders stiffened and he keyed his radio mike. “Echo Five, this is 401. Ten contacts, five zero miles, at three zero zero, speed six zero zero. Negative ESM.”

There were enemy aircraft out there, still closing on the embattled convoy with their own radars shut down.

Calhoun quickly flicked a switch. “Radar off. Turn us to zero three zero, now!” The urgency in his voice almost spun the helicopter by itself. “Increase speed a little.”

Alvarez steadied on the new course — nudging his collective forward until they were up to a hundred knots. While Calhoun anxiously scanned the sky to the northwest, they were too close to the sea for him to do much more than watch his flight instruments. The few glances he could spare were for the battle out ahead of them now.

More glowing sparks streaked low over the water toward the convoy — coming from the south now. Jesus, they were being hit from two sides.

It was impossible to see details at this range, but the patterns of light told the story. He knew what it had to look like, with missiles flashing in. He also knew what the men on those ships were doing, hunched over their displays, sweating, each man doing his assigned job and fearing the first mistake. Any mistake, even the smallest, could bring death and failure for them all.

Simpson and Leyte Gulf were both firing now, launching SAM after SAM in an almost continuous stream.

“There! Ten o’clock, Bill!”

Alvarez snapped his head over to the left and followed Calhoun’s arm. A narrow arrowhead shape, silhouetted against the night sky, passed quickly from left to right. Turning on the Seahawk’s radar, even for that brief instant, had been like waving a red flag in front of a maddened bull. Now they were being hunted. The enemy pilot must have run down their radar bearing. He had to be searching for them with his bare eyes. Radar couldn’t pick them out this close to the surface.

Calhoun slewed the helicopter’s thermal imaging sensor, its FLIR, over, and they were rewarded with the black-and-white image of a French Mirage screaming low over the water — flying hundreds of knots faster than they were.

Both men held their breath. If the enemy pilot spotted them, they were goners. Then, after a thirty-second eternity, the predator banked left and headed north. He was giving up, going after more profitable or more visible targets.

Alvarez looked back at the formation. New missile flashes were backlighting smoke trails made by previous launches. Only a few of the SAMs appeared to be headed in their direction. Some went to the west or south, and some even seemed to be headed straight north. Was the EurCon strike force attacking from that direction, too? In addition to the SAMs, rapid-fire, rhythmic flashes from both ships showed that their guns and Phalanx systems were in action as well. The enemy missiles and aircraft had punched through the convoy’s outer defenses.

On this course, the helicopter was closing the formation rapidly. One of the cargo ships was clearly visible, enveloped in flame and thickening black smoke. Suddenly and irrationally, Alvarez wished for a weapon — some sort of missile or gun, any sort of missile or gun. He wanted to chase down that enemy fighter they’d seen and splash the bastard.

A ripple of light, almost a sheet of flame, to the north caught his eye. The EurCon aircraft they’d spotted earlier were firing a new salvo of air-to-surface missiles.

Using binoculars, Calhoun studied the display for a moment, then radioed in another warning. Breaking contact with Leyte Gulf, he said, “All right, Bill. New course three five zero. And slow us down again.”

Alvarez complied, now almost unmindful of the water below. Out the helicopter’s right window, the formation was hidden in a mass of smoke. Flickering lights inside the cloud showed when missiles or guns fired. The burning ship had drifted outside the smoke, dead in the water.

A bigger, brighter flash near where Simpson should be alarmed him for a moment, but Calhoun, listening in on the radio circuit, announced, “Got one with the Phalanx!”

The frigate’s automated, six-barrel Galling gun had knocked down a EurCon missile just a few hundred yards from impact.

Calhoun heard another report passed over the radio and paused, listening intently. When he spoke again, his voice was somber.

“Tartu’s burning.”

More glowing lights streaked low across the sky. The next missile wave had arrived. Alvarez couldn’t see the displays, but knew the American warships’ defenses were already pressed to the limit.

“Change course. Due north.”

He followed Calhoun’s order without thinking, keeping his eyes riveted on the formation.

The smoke cloud now hid the ships completely. Inside, explosions rippled like chain lightning, but he couldn’t see any detail at all. Calhoun, studying the Seahawk’s ESM display, could tell part of the story.

“Simpson’s Mk92 radar is gone,” he announced quietly.

Shit. If Simpson’s missile fire control radar was off the line, she’d been hit, and worse, the hit made her vulnerable to the next wave.

“How about using the radar?” Alvarez asked.

Calhoun shook his head. “Negative. It won’t tell us if she’s a hulk or just dinged. Don’t sweat it yet, Bill. Might be nothing but a scratch.”

Both men knew he was lying. Any hit on a frigate-sized ship by a modem antiship missile would wreak havoc — killing dozens of men in a searing, shrapnel-laced blast, dozens of their friends and shipmates. The older, more experienced Calhoun was doing his best to steady his younger, greener pilot, and maybe himself as well.

More flashes lit the cloud’s interior. Large flashes. Missile impacts. Before they had time to make sense out of the pattern, the still-burning Tartu vanished in a giant white fireball. Alvarez glanced at a digital clock on the Seahawk’s instrument panel, instinctively marking the instant the big container ship died.

“Tartu was loaded with Patriots,” Alvarez said shakily. He crossed himself in horror.

“Yeah.” Calhoun nodded, but kept his eyes on the displays, trying to wring more data out of them.

A sound came over the water, barely audible over the helicopter’s engines. Alvarez had braced himself for a shock wave, but at fifteen miles all that was left of Tartu’s death was a low rumble.

The sea and sky were dark again — lit only by the strange, flickering glow of ships on fire.

Calhoun straightened as he received new instructions from the Aegis cruiser’s helo coordinator. He keyed his mike. “Three zero minutes. Understood. Roger.” He turned to his pilot. “They think the attack’s over — at least for right now. Take us up to two hundred feet and head for Tartu’s last reported position. We’re supposed to search for survivors, then go to Leyte Gulf for an in-flight refuel.”

“Any news on Simpson?” Alvarez asked.

“Yeah. She’s hit bad. At least one fire. Maybe more.” The sensor operator saved the worst news, at least from their perspective, for last. “And she’s got a foul deck. It’ll be a half hour before they even know if they can clear it. Leyte’s hit, too — fore and aft.” His businesslike tone and the work at hand pushed away the questions they had about their friends and their ships.

Alvarez pushed his throttle forward and pointed the helo’s nose toward the drifting, burning wreck. Maybe her crew had abandoned ship before the final blast, or maybe someone had been blown clear. Even as he hoped for survivors, Alvarez knew it was probably wishful thinking.

Clattering low over the choppy Kattegat at seventy knots, they quickly closed in on the battered convoy. Just five miles from Tartu they flew over the first sign that the battle hadn’t been wholly one-sided. There below, the waterlogged wreckage of an enemy fighter bobbed lazily up and down as waves sloshed over its mangled fuselage. Tangled shrouds and a ripped parachute canopy trailed backward from the aircraft’s submerged cockpit. Its ejection system must have gone off on impact.

Calhoun swung the Seahawk’s FLIR up to cover the sinking merchant ship. He found the burning hulk and steadied the black-and-white image in the center of the screen.

They both gasped. The container ship’s clean lines were gone.

Tartu’s deck was twisted and torn open in places. Fires burned everywhere, flashing to superheated steam as seawater hit them. A huge hole gaped in her side, just as though some sea monster had taken a bite out of her. The freighter was down by the stern and listing heavily to port — visibly rolling further and further over as the Kattegat poured in through her shattered hull.

“Jesus, Tom. She’s going down real soon,” Alvarez volunteered. They roared low over the doomed merchantman, bucketing up and down in the hot air currents rising from her fires. He spun the Seahawk around in a tight turn, headed back west.

Calhoun nodded. “Let’s make one more pass to see if anyone’s still on board. After that, we’ll do an expanding search…”

Suddenly a brilliant, searing white flash filled the whole right side of the cockpit window. For half a second, Alvarez thought they had been hit by something, but the helicopter’s engine sound didn’t waver.

Momentarily blinded, he heard Calhoun yell, “It’s Simpson!”

Simpson had been struck by three missiles, the first an ARMAT antiradar missile, one of four fired at the frigate. Detonating a hundred feet directly overhead, it had sprayed the ship with high-velocity fragments, shredding her radars and killing or wounding the few crewmen on her weather decks.

The second wave of aircraft had fired antiship missiles. While Simpson was not the primary target of the attack, pressure on her increased the chances of the other attackers getting through. Four ANL supersonic missiles, hugging the water, streaked toward the frigate. The crippled ship, unable to launch her surface-to-air missiles without her fire control radar, had fired a cloud of shells from her 76mm gun at them, but none of the shell bursts came close enough to knock the ANLs and their armored warheads into the sea.

In the last seconds, chaff blossomed from launchers on either side of the ship. Only the bursting charges were visible in the darkness, but to guidance radars the air over the ship was suddenly filled with bright, reflective targets, larger and more attractive than the ship below them.

With the incoming missiles only hundreds of meters away, Simpson’s Phalanx radar-guided rotary cannon had fired one tearing burst, then another, and a third, finally clipping one of the ANLs. In an eyeblink, the missile spiraled into the sea and exploded — close enough to shower the ship with seawater.

The other three missiles were too close for the Phalanx to engage. One, seduced by the chaff, flew harmlessly past, searching for the ephemeral target created by the silvered plastic.

But the two remaining missiles, already locked onto Simpson by the time the chaff deployed, had stayed on target. Moving at just under the speed of sound, both slammed into the frigate, one forward of her bridge near the Standard missile launcher, the other in the middle of her superstructure, right above engineering.

The sheer force of the two missiles’ impact had heeled her over, throwing everyone aboard to the deck. Their warheads, delay-fused so that they would only explode after they penetrated the skin of the ship, went off together. Each carried 360 pounds of explosive, surrounded by a shell of incendiary zirconium. This metal case, shattered and then ignited by the detonation, turned into hundreds of lethal fragments, driving through the ship. Wherever a fragment passed, it left a trail of flame. Only a few of the frigate’s vital compartments, protected by Kevlar armor, were proof against the deadly projectiles. Elsewhere, scores of men were killed by the blast, by secondary fragments, or in the fires that followed.

Simpson’s captain had known his ship was doomed the instant the fireballs blossomed. Even as choking, toxic smoke filled the bridge, he ordered Abandon Ship, then did his best to get anyone he could find over the side.

By the time Alvarez and Calhoun arrived at Tartu, only thirty or so of their shipmates had received the order and recovered enough to go over the side. Even the bitterly cold waters of the Baltic were a welcome relief from the blazing inferno that was once a warship. They struggled and swam away as best they could, their onetime home now an enemy.

Simpson’s end came suddenly and violently when the fires on board the stricken frigate finally reached her missile and gun magazines. She disintegrated in the blink of an eye — torn apart by a rippling series of smaller explosions too close together in time and space to be distinguished as separate blasts. When the frigate’s shattered hulk slid beneath the Kattegat minutes later, she carried more than three-quarters of her 215-man crew with her.

Ward watched the half-circles creep closer and closer to what was left of his formation. The little computer-displayed symbols, each with a line pointing straight at his ship, represented F-14 Tomcats from George Washington.

To Jack Ward, they might as well have been angels.

Even though the Aegis cruiser could only make twenty knots, a night’s travel had brought them 150 miles closer to the powerful carrier.

He grimaced. He’d have to call this battle a draw. EurCon had sunk two of his four ships and damaged a third, but they’d been trying for a knockout blow — trying to make the most of their early advantage in catching Task Force 22 strung out across the Baltic. Their own losses had been heavy. He knew there were a lot of French and German aircraft that hadn’t made it home.

Ward thought about all the sea battles he’d read about and studied. He’d fought before, in the Persian Gulf, and he and his colleagues had greedily devoured the lessons to be learned from it and every other modern conflict. But the Gulf had been nothing like this.

Nothing could have prepared him for the speed, the violence, and the confusion of last night’s battle. He’d been scared, so scared that he’d almost been afraid to act, lest he do something wrong. He’d seen the same look on the officers and men as well, and only the fear of letting them down had kept him thinking, and fighting, until his fears had been drowned by his actions.

He coughed, a long, dry spasm that left him gasping for air. The smoke had gotten pretty thick last night. He was sure some of that junk was still in his lungs. Add fatigue, no food, and the pain caused by losing both Simpson and Tartu, and he became very grateful for the support provided by his command chair.

He hated to admit it, but if the Tomcats hadn’t arrived when they did, he and the rest of his force could very easily have been on the bottom of the Baltic. As it was, Leyte Gulf was hurt. A missile hit close to her bridge had rocked the CIC, damaged one face of the SPY-1 radar, and wrecked her forward missile launcher. Ward silently thanked God the launcher had been nearly empty when they took the hit.

The second missile had been even worse, starting a fire in Leyte’s engineering spaces that killed twelve men and damn near finished her. Only good damage control had stopped the flames from spreading.

So here they were. He was short on missiles, running on half engines, and overcrowded with his own wounded and a few, badly burned survivors plucked from the water near where Simpson and the Tartu had gone down. One of his helicopters, another survivor from the frigate, was camping out on Dallas Star’s helipad. He was still two hundred miles from the relative safety of George Washington’s formation. Beyond that, he knew, Leyte Gulf had a longer trip to the yards for badly needed repairs.

In the meantime, though, she was still a fleet unit. Most of her weapons systems still worked, and the all-important SPY-1 radar and Aegis computers were back on the line. She could still fight.

“We’re ready, Admiral.”

Captain Ralph Gunston, Leyte Gulf’s skipper, had taken over as Ward’s chief of staff. Jerry Shapiro was in sick bay with a broken leg and a chest full of missile fragments. Gunston looked more like a marine than a ship’s captain, stocky with a blond crew cut.

“No signs of damage?”

“We found a few rattled circuit boards, but everything’s been checked, and we’ve reloaded all the target packs, just as you ordered.”

“Very well, Captain. We’ll launch on schedule.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Ward stood up slowly, leaning heavily on his chair for support at first. It took him a while to climb one level to the bridge and step out onto the bridge wing, but he wanted to be there when the cruiser showed these French and German bastards her teeth.

The fresh air on the bridge wing woke him up. Their own course and speed turned a cool breeze into a chilling gale. It was already slackening as Leyte Gulf slowed and turned. Even though the wind was within tolerances, Ward didn’t want anything risked. Not for this.

Deep inside the ship’s superstructure, Gunston issued the final orders.

An amplified voice declared, “Now hear this. All hands on the weather decks, remain clear of the fantail.” It was the third, and last, warning — really only a formality. Ward heard a shrill beep, beep over the speakers before all sounds merged in a single, deafening roll of thunder.

It was different, being outside when a missile was fired.

Leyte Gulf’s launchers had roared last night, but, with the ship at general quarters, the CIC had been tightly sealed. And Ward had been too busy thinking about other things to pay much attention to the noise. Things like fending off the sudden, surprise attacks that seemed to come from every compass point. Like the men who had been dying. The men he’d hoped to keep safe.

Now he had time to watch. Every ten seconds, a twenty-one-foot-long, finned gray shape thundered into the clear blue sky above the Aegis cruiser’s fantail, riding high on a pillar of fire before turning and heading south. Twenty Tomahawk missiles, his entire load, were carrying the fight to EurCon’s north German airfields. It would exact a small measure of vengeance for his murdered men and lost ships.

The last Tomahawk roared off, skimming southward past a long thick pall of white exhaust smoke curling behind Leyte Gulf.

Ward stepped back inside. His body cried out for sleep, but he had work to do and priority signals to send. The paybacks had just started.

Brigadier General Howard Noonan, USAF, occupied the watch officer’s desk — overlooking a room filled with row after row of consoles crowded with control keyboards, communications gear, and display screens. Soft, subdued lighting and the quiet, ever-present hum of air-conditioning created the illusion of a calm, restful working environment. Space ops center duty officers and noncoms sat in comfortable chairs behind each console, monitoring space surveillance data flowing in from radar and optical telescope networks scattered around the globe, in low earth orbit, and in geosynchronous orbit.

All duty stations faced an enormous, wall-sized computer-generated display showing the world and man-made objects in orbit around it. Although the men and women working in the operations center routinely tracked nearly six thousand objects, right now the main screen showed only a few specific satellites that were of extraordinary interest. Bright lines showed the predicted orbital path for each satellite, and small vector arrows showed their current, plotted positions.

Noonan, a trim, dapper man, nodded gravely to himself — satisfied by what he could see. As a young man he’d been fascinated by outer space and the possibility of space travel. As a young officer he’d narrowly missed qualifying for astronaut training. He’d taken the setback in stride and buckled down to do his best for the country. Now, at forty-five, he commanded the world’s most advanced space defense force.

After years spent in research and development and after bitter congressional funding battles, the first elements of the G-PALS system were in orbit and operational. G-PALS stood for “Global Protection Against Limited Strikes.”

One of the red phone symbols on his computer monitor flashed. He had an incoming call — direct from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Finally.

Noonan tapped the appropriate key on his board, noted the lights verifying that he was receiving scrambled audio and video communication, and punched the receive control on his console.

A familiar face appeared on his monitor. General Galloway, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, looked tired. He’d been locked up in a nonstop National Security Council meeting since the first reports of EurCon attacks on U.S. and British shipping began pouring in.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’ll make this short and sweet, Howard. The President has approved your plan. ‘Blackout’ is a go. When can you initiate?”

“Right away, sir. My people finished rewriting and testing the necessary sections of battle management code about an hour ago.”

Reid nodded, pleased. Then he turned deadly serious. “Take ’em out for us, Howard. We’re going to need every edge we can get.”

“Yes sir. You can count on it.” Noonan had seen the navy’s preliminary casualty estimates. The French and Germans had pretty clearly won the war’s opening round. He planned to help them lose the second.

Five minutes later, Noonan sat with his headset on, ready and alert. A blank inset box on the main display screen suddenly filled with a jumbled string of numbers and letters. They were receiving a system release authorization code from the President. Almost as soon as the code appeared, it vanished — replaced by a blinking notification in large, bold letters: LAUNCH ENABLED.

Noonan switched to the G-PALS command circuit. “You ready, Zack?”

The colonel manning the space defense system duty station answered immediately. “Yes, sir. My boards confirm selective release authorization.”

“Good.” Noonan swept his eyes over his own monitor and the main display one last time for a final check on weapons status and target positions. Everything looked set. He sat up straighter. “Okay, Colonel, let’s do it. Commence firing.”

Four hundred miles above the blue-green, white-flecked earth, a cloud of fifty tiny bullet-shaped interceptors orbited together — circling the globe at seventeen thousand miles an hour.

Each “Brilliant Pebble” was barely three feet long, a foot in diameter, and weighed just a little more than one hundred pounds. Inside the casing, advanced microminiaturization techniques packed enormous computing power into a few tiny silicon chips. Each fist-sized supercomputer drew its tracking data from a nose-mounted, miniaturized television camera equipped with a wide-angle, fish-eye lens. Maneuvering rockets and their propellant filled the rest of the remaining space.

The order relayed through the G-PALS command net activated five of the interceptors, triggering a new engagement program uploaded less than sixty minutes before. Minute clouds of vapor puffed into space as maneuvering thrusters fired in a preset sequence. Slowly, inexorably, the five Brilliant Pebbles drifted out of the main cloud — moving into a new orbit. Seeker heads that had been focused on the earth below were now locked on an empty point several hundred miles above the surface.

A tiny shape appeared there, rising quite suddenly above the earth’s curvature and closing rapidly. Sunlight sparkled off solar panels deployed on either side of a two-ton, box-shaped satellite. HELIOS was a French military reconnaissance platform. Its sophisticated cameras could take detailed pictures of objects smaller than a baseball bat — even from orbit.

It was dawn over Eastern Europe, and the low sun would make the long shadows so loved by photo interpreters.

With their prey in sight, the tracking and guidance systems aboard each Brilliant Pebble went into high gear. On-board supercomputers took the images supplied by their TV cameras, matched them against an approved target set, and cycled into attack mode.

More vapor puffed into space as each Brilliant Pebble’s main motor fired. All five darted forward, racing toward the oncoming photo recon satellite. They covered the distance in sixty-eight seconds.

The HELIOS satellite vanished in a single, blinding flash — hit head-on by an interceptor at a relative speed of more than thirty thousand miles an hour. Millions of metal fragments spread over dozens of square miles. Two Brilliant Pebbles a microsecond behind the first plunged right into the heart of the expanding debris cloud and disintegrated. The last two missed by somewhat wider margins and plunged toward the atmosphere, where they would burn up harmlessly.

Deep within the G-PALS constellation, five more Brilliant Pebbles went active. A new shape rose above the distant horizon — a new target. The Franco-German Radar SAR satellite came rushing toward its own destruction. Within an hour, every French and German reconnaissance platform in low earth orbit met that same fate.

Even as its first tank columns rumbled toward the Polish frontier, EurCon’s sophisticated orbital “eyes” had been blinded.