"We've just lost Low Down and Bouncer," the CIC officer said. "They've routed an SH-3 for search and rescue."
"It'll have to be quick," Tombstone replied. "That water's damned cold."
He felt numb. He'd heard Lowe's exultant cry of "Splash one Fulcrum" over the tactical channel and hoped the kid might be able to shake the second MiG. Obviously, the Fulcrum had stuck with him.
This, Tombstone thought, was what had been bothering him a few days before, now made diamond hard. Lowe's RIO, Beth Harper, was the first of Jefferson's female aviators to get shot down in combat. Had she survived?
Could she survive, given that even in her survival suit and with her life raft she would live only minutes in the cold Arctic water?
And yet, Tombstone surprised himself with the agility with which his mind shifted to other things, more pressing things. The rest of the fighters from Jefferson and the Eisenhower continued in their one-sided struggle against superior numbers… and the Russian missiles were starting to leak through the middle defensive zone. There was an exclamation from several sailors at one of the consoles. Blakely, one of the Ike battle group's frigates, had just taken a missile amidships, a big one. Reports were coming in that the FFG was already heeling far over to port, furiously ablaze.
"I think the Russkis are trying to flank us," Frazier said. "We're having more leakers coming around from the northeast. God damn!"
The CICO's exclamation was in response to another report. A radar-homing missile had just struck the Gettysburg, the Eisenhower group's Aegis cruiser.
It would be minutes yet before a clear picture of the damage could be transmitted, longer still before it could be assessed.
"CAG?" A sailor handed a telephone to Tombstone. "CATCC."
Tombstone took the call from the carrier's air traffic control. Many of Jefferson's Tomcats were heading back now for rearming. He acknowledged the information and suggested that permission be secured from the Shiloh for air ops to go back on the air again.
Handing the receiver back to the sailor, he turned to Frazier.
"We're going to have to start taking aircraft aboard pretty quick," he said. "Wind's still from the northeast, so we won't need a course change, but we'll need to break radio silence for approach control."
"We'll be able to start recoverin' if those Russian Kingfishes don't burn our ass first." The CIC officer paused, listening to something over his headset. "Damn," he said. "Dickinson's playin' hero!"
At one end of the darkened CIC was a row of consoles manned by enlisted men, watched over by a chief petty officer. The consoles controlled Jefferson's CIWS.
"Chief Carangelo!" Frazier called. "Dickinson's about to pass close aboard to starboard. Make sure the starboard CIWS is on standby."
"Starboard CIWS on standby, aye, aye, sir."
"Better wait a sec on the recovery ops, CAG," he added. "We got trouble comin'in from starboard, big time, and we're gonna be kinda busy."
Any attacker that made it through the carrier group's three tactical zones had one final barrier to hurdle: the carrier's Phalanx CIWS, or Close-In Weapons System, computer directed Gatling guns firing depleted-uranium shells at the incredible rate of three thousand rounds per minute. With a maximum effective range of only 1,500 yards, CIWS, called "sea-whiz" by the men it protected, was definitely a last-ditch defense against any attackers that managed to penetrate to what counted for knife-fighting range in modern warfare.
The count of incoming missiles was still dwindling fast, but at the ten-mile mark, the beginning of Jefferson's inner defense zone, twenty-three remained in the air, still boring in on their target with deadly, single-minded purpose. With Jefferson's own radar shut off, the cruise missile threat would be scattered across a wide area, and many must be tracking the Shiloh. All such missiles, however, could be programmed to reach a given area through inertial guidance alone, and then begin searching with their own on-board radars for the largest target they could find.
A few of them were bound to spot the Jefferson.
Meanwhile, one of Jefferson's escorts, the guided-missile frigate Dickinson, had been providing close fire support from a position nearly half a mile astern of the carrier and to starboard. Now, however, as the enemy cruise missiles closed from starboard, Dickinson's skipper had ordered his ship to full speed ahead, racing up alongside the Jefferson in an attempt to block the incoming missiles.
Fire Control Technician Third Class Frank Pellet was scared to death.
It wasn't the battle. The drift of colored lights, the remote buzz of voices from the speakers, the chirp and warble of various consoles of data-linked electronics did not feel like what he had imagined combat to be.
He knew there were cruise missiles out there, inbound, but that information seemed curiously second-hand, remote, even unimportant.
No, Pellet was scared because of what had happened last night.
The fact that FCT3 Pellet was homosexual had nothing to do with his skills as a sailor. He'd been in the Navy for almost three years now, had learned his job well, and had consistently pulled in marks of 3.6, 3.8, and even 4.0 on his quarterly fitness reports.
He was under a hell of a lot of stress, though. The official ban against gays in the military had been lifted a good many years ago, but Pellet and tens of thousands of others like him continued to keep their sexual preferences hidden, or tried to, especially aboard ship. The Jeff wasn't bad as Navy ships went ― not like the Belleau Wood or a few others he'd heard about ― but in any assembly of thousands of people there were always a few who detested gays no matter what the brass or the Navy Department or the White House itself had to say.
He'd done his best to keep his secret. He'd approached none of his shipmates, never made a pass, kept his eyes to himself in the showers, and generally tried to maintain a low profile.
Of course, that meant he also hadn't made many friends. When the Jefferson had been laid up in Norfolk, he'd quartered aboard but gone ashore three nights out of four. Usually, he hadn't gone with his shipmates, though, because they'd often ended their drinking binges with a visit to one or another of Norfolk's whorehouses, and he found the very idea of doing that with some girl, well, disgusting. One memorable night, he'd been practically shanghaied into going with some of the other weapons techs and gunner's mates.
Unable to get out of it, he'd ended up paying the woman to let him sit with her in the room and just… talk. He'd told her everything and she'd been understanding and really nice about it. Afterward, she'd even endorsed his sexual prowess in front of the guys, telling them what a stud he was and how he'd done her until she could hardly walk.
That incident should have made things safer for him, but despite what she'd said, the story that he was gay had been spreading through the carrier like wildfire. Some straight, he was pretty sure, must have followed him one night when he'd donned his civies, taken liberty, and headed into town and the Pink Slipper. That was a notorious gay bar, and his secret would sure as hell be out if he'd been seen going in there. Or maybe that whore had told the truth to one of his shipmates.
Last night, though, his secret had been blown for good, and now he was just waiting for the ax to fall.
Damn it all! He'd been so careful not to give himself away by making a pass at someone or being too friendly, but he'd not thought that being careful meant he had to stay celibate! Jefferson's small gay community had a pretty closely knit organization aboard, what was still sometimes called a "daisy chain" by the straights. Its members met whenever possible and used an elaborate ritual of code phrases and passwords to screen possible new members when they came aboard. The relief, the sheer joy just of knowing that there were others like him in this floating city was indescribable. Harold was one of his favorites. He'd had good sex with him on a number of occasions.
Last night, though, they'd met at their usual place, in a linen storage locker down on First Deck. Pellet had taken his pants off, but the two of them hadn't been doing anything, not really, when there'd been a rattling at the compartment door… and then the door had flown open and a first class boatswain's mate named Arbogast had walked in on them.
It had been awful. Turning sharply, Harold had slammed Pellet across the compartment with a sudden, backhanded smash. "You faggot!" he'd bellowed, and then he'd advanced on Pellet like an avenging fury, fists clenched, face screwed up in hideous, black-cloud rage.
Arbogast had restrained him, telling him to settle down. Harold had claimed that Pellet had made a pass at him, which seemed pretty silly afterward. Pellet, after all, stood five-seven and weighed 148, while Harold was over six feet tall and as powerful as a body builder.
Screaming and red in the face, Harold had threatened to put him on report… for sexual harassment, no less. Arbogast had threatened to put them both on report for fighting. Stunned, Pellet had made his way back to his quarters, tried to sleep, and failed. If gays were no longer banned in the military, gay behavior was, just as it was against regs for Navy men and women to have sex with each other. He could get captain's mast… or a court-martial and a BCD. Damn it all, he liked the Navy! He didn't want to get thrown out!
But worst of all was the terrible, sick-in-the-stomach knowledge that Harold Reidel, his lover, had betrayed him.
"Pellet! Wake up, goddamn it!" Chief Carangelo was standing several feet behind him, bellowing in his ear.
"Uh… yeah, Chief."
"I said CIWS to standby, damn it! Move your ass!"
"Yes, Chief!" His hand snapped out, grabbing the knob marked CIWS #1, twisting it hard from STBY to AUTO.
He didn't catch his mistake for another two tragic seconds.
The Phalanx CIWS is controlled by an extraordinarily sophisticated computer, one able to read the radar returns from a target that may be approaching at better than three times the speed of sound and the radar returns from the weapon's own bullets departing at one thousand feet per second, computing gun angle, direction, and trajectory to bring the two together. A completely self-contained system, the Phalanx can operate independently of any outside control, a necessity in modern warfare since computers and high-speed weapons can appear, close, and strike before a human could react. Phalanx is capable of opening fire within two seconds of acquiring a target.
But it is also vital for humans to maintain control of their high-tech war toys ― the so-called "man in the loop" so often discussed in any debate over computer-controlled weapons.
Phalanx has two operational settings. On standby, it cannot fire without a direct command from a human operator in the ship's CIC; on automatic, it is controlled entirely by its computer, tracking and firing on any radar contact in range that it perceives as a threat.
The U.S.S. Dickinson was an Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFG, a guided-missile frigate. Four hundred forty-five feet long, with a full-load displacement of 3,650 tons, Perry-class frigates had originally been designed as merchant escorts charged with defending America's sea lines of communication, or SLOC. After budgetary cutbacks in other shipbuilding programs, however, they'd found an uncomfortable niche as replacement destroyers, providing ASW and anti-air protection for convoys, task forces, amphibious forces, and carrier battle groups. Lightly armed, lightly armored, and with only a single shaft driven by two gas turbines, Perry FFGs had struggled valiantly to fill their new budget-conscious roles. Four were currently assigned to CBG-14.
Detecting the cruise missiles coming in from the southeast on his vessel's SPS-49 air-search array, Dickinson's skipper, Commander Randolph Conde, had ordered flank speed, sending the frigate lunging ahead some 1,200 yards off Jefferson's starboard side. By putting Dickinson between the missiles and the Jefferson, by "standing into harm's way" in the grandest tradition of the U.S. Navy, Conde hoped both to shield his vastly larger consort from sea-skimming missiles and to add his anti-air assets to the carrier's defense against any pop-up targets.
Dickinson had already begun loosing her Standard RIM-66C missiles at any targets within their range of about ninety miles and had scored several kills.
When the nearest oncoming cruise missile was within twelve miles, Dickinson's single Mark 75 gun, mounted amidships on the ship's superstructure, began banging away, hurling 76mm rounds at the rapidly approaching target at the rate of eighty-five per minute. Her single Phalanx CIWS, mounted aft atop her helicopter hangar, was set on standby and was ready to fire if a missile penetrated to within one mile.
As Dickinson passed less than eight tenths of a mile off Jefferson's starboard beam, Pellet, in the carrier's CIC, accidentally switched his CIWS from standby to auto. Under computer control, the six-barreled Gatling gun slewed sharply, tracking the frigate… then classified it as a friendly surface vessel.
An instant later, as three more missiles penetrated the CBG's ten-mile inner defense zone, Dickinson's skipper gave the order to fire the frigate's super-RBOC launchers.
Rapid-blooming off-board chaff, fired from tubes mounted on the superstructure just aft of the bridge, was packed into cylindrical cartridges.
Each was four feet long and designed to arc high into the air before exploding for maximum dispersal of their radar-confusing payloads.
Dickinson's port-side launcher fired three chaff canisters toward the Jefferson. The carrier's number-one CIWS, mounted to starboard on the flight deck, outboard of the island and just below and abaft of the bridge, detected the chaff containers and reacted with superhuman speed… exactly as it had been designed to react.
The Phalanx's six barrels, spinning with a high-pitched whine, slewed to the right, then fired, the burst sounding more like the scream of a chain saw than the firing of a gun. The first few rounds missed, but the gun, still tracking cartridge and bullets, corrected the aim in a fraction of a second, tearing the chaff container in two. The CIWS then slewed left, tracking a second cylinder as it approached the Jefferson, firing once… then again.
At that moment, the mistake had been detected in Jefferson's CIC, and the selector switch hastily set back to standby mode. The Phalanx abruptly fell silent with a dwindling moan… but the damage had already been done.
Dickinson had been squarely in the line of fire.
A similar incident had occurred during the Gulf War, when the FFG Jarret accidentally fired into the battleship Missouri. That time, there'd been no casualties and minimal damage. This time, however, the frigate was on the receiving end of the friendly fire. Each CIWS round was a depleted-uranium penetrator two and a half times denser than steel, shrouded in a discarding nylon sabot that imparted a stabilizing spin to the projectile. Fifty of those rounds, the salvo fired by Jefferson's Phalanx in just one second, smashed into Dickinson's port side, slashing through her superstructure like bullets through paper.
The frigate's vital spaces were protected by anti-fragmentation armor ― six millimeters of steel over her engineering compartments, nineteen millimeters of aluminum over her magazines, and nineteen millimeters of Kevlar over her command and electronics spaces ― but much of the ship was virtually unarmored. Four sailors were cut down in her galley by hurtling splinters of aluminum and uranium, and another was killed in a crew's quarters' head. Six rounds penetrated the helicopter hangar aft, punching through thin aluminum and tearing into the SH-2F helicopter parked there. Avgas in the helo's tanks spewed into the compartment; fumes came in contact with severed electrical leads…
The explosion tore the hangar wide open, vomiting a column of orange flame and oil-black smoke boiling hundreds of feet into the air. Flames and blast killed seven more men and wounded twenty-five; Dickinson's Phalanx was ripped from its mounting and hurled eighty feet aft into the sea. Wreckage spilled across the fantail helo deck as flames engulfed the aft part of the superstructure.
The U.S.S. Dickinson wallowed heavily as the fire began to go out of control.
Jefferson's CIC fell dead silent for one stunned instant. To Tombstone, it felt as though someone had thrown a switch, cutting every sound in the compartment. The chief at the CIWS console broke the spell an instant after he'd snapped the Phalanx selector back to standby.
"Pellet!" he barked. "You're relieved! Get the hell out of there!"
"Chief, I-"
"Out, mister! You're confined to quarters until further notice! Newell!
Get in there! You have CIWS One!"
"Dickinson's falling off abeam," Frazier snapped, staring at a television monitor that showed the burning frigate. "Let's get on those missiles!"
The FFG's missile launcher and main gun had both stopped firing when the helicopter hangar exploded. As Dickinson dropped astern, Jefferson's starboard-side defenses opened up with renewed fury. Sea Sparrow missiles burst from their boxy eight-tube mounts in clouds of smoke and sprayed shards of plastic packing material. One after another, the Sea Sparrows arced low across the water, homing on incoming cruise missiles as they passed the ten-mile mark. Moments later, a bright blue flash lit the eastern horizon…
then another.
Several men in Jefferson's CIC cheered, but discipline returned almost at once. On the main screen display repeated from Shiloh, eleven missiles had crossed the ten-mile point. Even here, deep in Jefferson's CIC, the thud-whoosh of Sea Sparrows sprinting toward the horizon could be felt as a faint trembling in the deck, transmitted through the carrier's hull.
Watching the gathering force of the avalanche, Tombstone found he was holding his breath.