First Strike

FOUR

Lab Rat shrugged down deeper in his parka. It was a cold morning, with a biting wind blowing out of the northeast. The sun was still below the horizon.

“This better be good,” he grumbled, shooting an aggrieved look at the senior chief. “May I remind you we’re supposed to be in Bermuda?”

The senior chief stole a look at his commander and suppressed a snort of laughter. The diminutive man had pulled out a ski mask and pulled it down over his chapped face. He looked like the world’s smallest ninja. “You said you wanted to see it, sir. Trust me, it’ll be worth freezing your ass off.” The senior chief’s voice was calm, with just a trace of anticipation in it.

“So, what happens now?”

Just then, the radio that the senior chief held crackled to life. It was connected to the control center of the testing facility, and Lab Rat recognized the voice as the senior controller he’d met the night before. The controller was a former Navy intelligence specialist, and a former shipmate of Senior Chief Armstrong.

“Observation teams, standby for launch. Five, four, three, two — we have a launch.”

“Look to the southeast, sir,” the senior chief said. “Red lights — it’s an old Talos missile, but they have it rigged with reflectors all over it as well as a few embedded red lights. The reflectors are for telemetry as well as visibility.”

Just then, Lab Rat saw it, a streak of red on the horizon. He lifted his binoculars to his eyes and tweaked them into focus. There it was, its outline just barely visible and backlit by the now-rising sun.

“What’s the range?” Lab Rat asked.

“The ship is eighty miles off the coast.”

Lab Rat grunted. It wasn’t entirely realistic, not for an antimissile test system. A real ballistic missile would be coming in at a far higher altitude, cruising exo-atmosphere before tipping over, breaking into multiple warheads, and heading for targets. But this wasn’t a demonstration of the final system. It was simply proof that the remaining technical issues having to do with the laser and the control system had been resolved.

“Commencing target acquisition,” the controller’s voice announced, his excitement coming through even over the crackling circuit. “Searching, searching — acquisition now!”

From somewhere to the north of them, a spike of blue-green laser shot up from the coast. It was a narrow beam, too bright for any natural light source, and its intensity washed out the breaking dawn. It speared into the dark sky, burning its image on their retinas, then, in a flash of motion too quick to follow, searched the sky in a quartering pattern. Within seconds, it found the missile and locked on to it. The red lights of the missile were barely visible in the brilliance.

“Target acquisition,” the voice announced. “Maintaining lock through transition.”

The missile was closer now, its outlines bathed in blue-green light rather than the rising sun. It was running almost parallel to them, its shape clearly visible. The laser stayed with it, seemingly locked on a few atoms at the very tip of the warhead.

“Sometimes this is enough,” the senior chief murmured, quiet awe in his voice. “The high-powered beam burns out electronics pretty fast. A soft kill, but that may not be good enough. Depending on the warhead, it can still do a lot of damage if it makes land.”

Lab Rat stared at the laser beam. He had heard rumors of testing in the desert, of lasers flickering among the remote mountains in Arizona and New Mexico, but he had had no idea that the system itself was so close to implementation. The technical problems alone in maintaining the focus over distance of the laser light, in generating sufficient power and in target discrimination, had been reported as overwhelming.

“Fire one,” the controller’s voice said. Immediately, from somewhere in the vicinity of the laser, he saw fire arc up from the ground. For a moment, it looked like some god was throwing thunderbolts, but Lab Rat quickly realized it was simply the fire and exhaust from the tail of a small antimissile missile. It shone pure gold and white, stark against the primary colors of the laser and the red-lighted target. It spewed white exhaust in its wake in a faintly spiral pattern that gradually tightened and settled into a straight line.

Unerringly, the missile followed the laser beam, running just to one side of it and correcting its course as it arced up. The symmetry of the entire evolution was completely stunning, and the combination of colors, the time of day, and biting cold gave the entire scene a surreal feeling.

The antimissile missile winked out of existence. For a few microseconds, Lab Rat wondered if it had missed its target. Then a fiery explosion lit up the northern sky, a fireball of white and gold and black smoke, now illuminated by the sun coming over the horizon as well as the laser. The blue-green light played over the billowing clouds of black smoke and fire, as though it were hunting for any last remnants of the missile.

“Hard kill,” the controller’s voice announced with satisfaction. “All observation teams, return to base. Muster in conference room eleven for debrief.”

An expression of sheer joy lit the senior chief’s face. He stared up at the sky, his eyes transfixed and his face transformed. Finally, when he noticed Lab Rat staring, he turned back to his commander. “That’s what I was working on, sir. A lot of the targeting module is mine.”

“Is it deployable now?” he asked, unable to believe what he’d just seen. “If this works, it changes everything, doesn’t it?”

The senior chief nodded his agreement. “Oh, it will work. And, yes, sir, it does change everything. Now the question is: Do you want to be a part of this or not?”

Lab Rat’s mind reeled. If Brilliant Pebbles was deployed, there would be far less need for the nuclear arsenal the United States now maintained. He could see the submarine fleet standing down, ballistic missiles disarmed, and a flood of officers entering the job market. Maybe the senior chief was right — he should get in now, on the ground floor, before there was too much competition.

“It seems to me that they’ve got a ways to go, though,” Lab Rat said slowly, as he strode over the frost-encrusted ground, following the senior chief back to the humvee that would take them back to the compound. “The trajectory problems alone — we’ve discussed those. Head on it’s a tougher shot than on the beam. And tying this all in to the early warning systems, even into Cobra Dane and Cobra Judy — well, that will take some time.”

“It will. But can you imagine it, sir?” The senior chief’s voice was low, but filled with more intensity and passion than Lab Rat had ever heard before. “I grew up in the sixties, sir. I remember nuclear attack drills in elementary school, where we were supposed to get under our desks and put our hands over our heads. I remember the warning sirens. No, it never really came to that, but can you imagine never having to worry about that again? To be able to guarantee our continental safety and sovereignty? Sir, that’s worth fighting for.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

They walked in silence until they reached the humvee, and Senior Chief Armstrong slipped automatically into the driver’s seat. Lab Rat watched him for a moment, and a feeling of profound sadness swept over him. “You’ve made up your mind, have you?”

The senior chief looked uneasy. Finally, he nodded. “I think I have. It’s not that I don’t love the Navy, sir — I do, and working with you has been a real honor. But to be part of this”—he gestured, taking in the entire expanse of the horizon—“that would be something. I’ve got twenty-one years in — I can retire anytime.”

“Give it a few days’ thought,” Lab Rat urged.

The senior chief nodded. “I will. And, sir, you might give it some thought yourself.”

Elf put her Tomcat into a hard climb, then kicked in the afterburners. At the top of her climb, she rolled the Tomcat over, inverted, as she pulled out into level flight. Then she dropped the nose back down, kicked the afterburner off, and let gravity do its thing. She descended 5,000 feet in a hard dive, then gently pulled the Tomcat out at 7,000 feet. She followed up, just for the hell of it, with a couple of barrel rolls, then a hard break to the right.

Silence in the back seat. Elf sighed, glanced at her checklist and continued on to the next maneuver. The new skipper, Commander Gator Cummings, had welcomed her warmly when she’d reported to his stateroom with Lobo. He talked to her about his philosophy of combat, discussed her background with her, most of which he already knew, and then congratulated her again on making the transition from enlisted sailor to officer. “It won’t always be easy,” he warned. “There are people on the ship right now that will remember you from your plane captain days. And the whole fraternization thing — well, you’re the one ensign that I won’t have to explain that to, right?”

“Right, sir.”

“Well, then, check in with Safety and get your NATOPS quals taken care of. Unless Safety objects, ask Lobo to get you on the schedule for tomorrow. It’ll be a fam flight, your first hop. I’ll be your RIO and Bird Dog will be your wingman. He’ll put you through your paces, see what they’re teaching in the pipeline these days, and get you up to speed on all the local procedures.”

Elf groaned. Sure, she knew that she’d have to have a few check rides, but she had expected somebody from the safety department to do it. That it would be her new executive officer had not occurred to her.

“Something wrong, Ensign?” Gator asked.

“No, sir. Not at all.” She stood, and started to leave.

Gator held out his hand. “Welcome aboard again, Ensign. It’s good to see you again, and I’m extremely impressed with what you’ve accomplished. I’ve looked at your transcripts from the Naval Academy — outstanding, simply outstanding. If you’ve got half the smarts in the air that you’ve got on the ground, you’re going to be a real asset.”

“Count on it, sir,” she shot back. A grin broke out on her face. “And it’s a real treat to be back here, especially with you and the XO.”

After that introduction and her first meeting with Bird Dog in the ready room, she expected a casual approach to check flight. But from the moment they commenced a preflight brief in the ready room, quizzing her on the rules for avoiding incidents with the Russian task force to the north, through the preflight checklist and the start-up checklist, then right on through the cat shot, both men have been… well, cold wouldn’t be exactly the right word, but there was certainly none of the easiness she’d expected. She was acutely aware of both Bird Dog and Gator watching every move. Even Bird Dog’s RIO seemed to be taking notes, and he was only four months ahead of her.

But that was four months of experience that she didn’t have. Yet.

The preflight had gone well, as had her taxi to the catapult. Once on the catapult, she felt the butterflies start. After all, it wasn’t like she had all that many launches under her belt.

The flight deck technician gave her the final hand signal to check her control surfaces. When he saw everything cycle as required, he snapped off a sharp salute. Already full power, she returned the salute. The catapult officer dropped to the deck and pointed forward.

A hammer slammed her in the back. The Tomcat raced down the catapult and seconds later she was airborne.

Behind her, she heard Gator give a sigh of relief. She didn’t take it personally — RIOs were like that. The most common fatal error on a cat shot wasn’t anything she had control over — it was a soft cat, insufficient steam power at the shuttle that would result in the aircraft failing to attain takeoff speed and dribbling off the end of the deck. If they were to launch under insufficient steam pressure, she would have only microseconds to punch them out, and even that was fraught with dangers. In a low altitude ejection, there was a serious risk that their chutes would fail to open, that they would be ejected onto the flight deck, or that the chute would open, drag her under the ship, and become entangled in one of the ship’s four propellers.

Elf put the Tomcat into a hard turn, banking away from the Jefferson. As she came around the ship, sun glinted off her superstructure and off the gentle swells. The cruiser and frigates were standing well off, more than 10,000 yards away.

As she ascended, Elf’s radar picked up a close formation of ships to the north. At this range, the radar blips were so close together that it was almost impossible to make out individual contacts. It was the Russian task force, still staying well clear of the Jefferson but now only one hundred miles to the north. She noted they were steaming southwest.

For the next twenty minutes after launch, it was as though Gator was conducting an accelerated review of everything she had learned in the last eighteen months. They went from basic flight maneuvers to formation flying, then aerobatics. Finally, when he was satisfied that she knew the performance characteristics of the aircraft, he said, “Bird Dog, you’re now a MiG. Get lost.” With that, he flipped off the input to her heads-up display, or HUD.

Bird Dog peeled off. She tried to watch where he went, but he wheeled around behind her, and Gator ordered her to maintain straight and level flight. Twenty seconds later, her HUD snapped back on and Gator said, “Okay, kid. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

She quickly surveyed the contacts on her screen, and immediately pinpointed the one that was likely to be Bird Dog. It was outside commercial air patterns and routes, and it was behind and above her.

“Talk to me, Elf,” Gator ordered. “I want to hear what you’re thinking as well as see what you’re doing.”

“That’s probably him,” she said, designating the radar lozenge she believed was Bird Dog’s aircraft as a possible hostile contact. The symbol changed, indicating her assignment. “He’s breaking for a mode four, although that could be a Brit in the area as well.” Mode four was the classified, encrypted portion of IFF, or international friend or foe. If aircraft or a surface ship radiated mode four, it was proof positive that it had the correct friendly gear loaded with the correct daily crypto codes.

“And mode three?” Gator prompted.

“Can’t use it, sir. In a real situation, they’d have it turned off anyway.” Mode three indicated the type and nationality of a contact, but mode three could be changed inside the cockpit.

“Okay. So what are your plans, assuming you’re right?” Gator asked.

The answer rolled out of her mouth easily, although both knew that translating knowledge into the actual practice was a horse of a different color. “The MiG’s performance characteristics make it tighter on turns, so I’ll want to avoid overshooting him. The Tomcat has a superior power-to-wing ratio, making me better in climbs. Right now, he’s above me, so I’m going to want to break out and climb, and then try to come into position behind him?”

“But he can turn tighter than you can,” Gator said. “What makes you think you can get in behind him?”

“I probably can’t in two dimensions — or, at least, it’s difficult to do in a one-on-one. If I had a wingman, that would be a different story. So, I can’t work in two dimensions, I have to work in three. That means I either have to break behind him, going head-on while I climb, or try to gain altitude quickly before he can turn in behind me.”

“Let’s see you do it.”

Elf slammed the throttles forward into afterburner, clicking past the detente. The Tomcat responded immediately, slamming her back against her ejection seat. She heard a grunt of protest from Gator in the back.

“Damn pilots. You’re all alike,” Gator said, forcing the words out against the G forces.

Both she and Bird Dog had been heading in a general southerly direction. As the afterburner kicked in, she started climbing, banking around in an eastern direction as she did so. She rolled the Tomcat slightly to keep him in visual range. “Watch him, RIO,” she said calmly. “Tell me the second he starts turning.”

“Turning now,” Gator answered.

The acceleration was building now, and Elf eased off slightly on her rate of ascent. The powerful Tomcat would put more vertical distance between the two of them, and she needed the time to move to position. In an out-and-out run for the money, the MiG could keep up.

At the same time, she had to trade some horizontal distance to increase her vertical distance. She watched her heads-up display, noting that Bird Dog was descending slightly, intending to slip in behind her at exactly the right moment.

“He’s got a lock on you,” Gator said. He then favored her with his own imitation of the ESM warning buzzer.

“Chaff, flares” she said. She rolled the Tomcat hard to the right, clearing the area as chaff and flares spit out from the belly of the fuselage.

She heard Gator swearing behind her again. “Damn, it’s bad enough I have to put up with it from Bird Dog. Could you give me a little warning at least, the next time you try to pull a maneuver like that?”

“Warning,” she said calmly, and snapped the Tomcat back into a hard turn. She’d seen on her heads-up display that Bird Dog was now boring straight in on her, intending to take a second shot. She hit the afterburners again, accelerating their rate of closure to well over 1,000 miles an hour. And increasing.

“AMRAAM,” she said crisply. “Your dot, Gator.”

“My dot,” Gator acknowledged, “Fox three,” simulating the firing of the all-purpose, long-range, antiair missile. “I would remind you that there are briefed rules of engagement for this exercise that are—”

“Warning,” Elf said again, interrupting him. She dropped the Tomcat nose-down sharply, increasing the clearance between the two aircraft, then pulled back hard to start ascending again, flashing in behind Bird Dog. “Golf, golf,” she said, announcing that she had just taken shot with her nose cannon. “I see flames.”

“You do not,” Gator snapped. “What you see is a missile incoming—”

“Warning,” she said, interrupting him again. “Your dot, RIO — Sidewinder.”

“Fox one,” he acknowledged as she snapped the Tomcat into another series of hard turns and radical changes in altitude, simulating shaking off an enemy missile lock. “It’s still got you, Elf,” Gator warned. “Still coming, still coming—”

Elf jammed the afterburners on, pitching the aircraft’s nose straight up and heading for the sun. She rolled the Tomcat over just as she reached the apex of the climb, and stared down through the canopy at Bird Dog, now below her. She made another hard right turn, coming in behind and slightly above Bird Dog. “Golf, golf,” she announced again.

“What is it with you guys and guns!” Gator shouted. “I can’t tell you how it pisses me off that you and Bird Dog keep trying to get me killed.”

“You’re still alive,” she snapped. “And if you don’t like the way I fly, you got options.”

The comforting roar of the Tomcat was the only sound in the cockpit. Reality came crashing in on Elf. She had just told her new commanding officer that if he didn’t like the way she flew, he was welcome to take his chances by ejecting. This was not the way to pass a check ride.

The silence dragged on, and Elf tried desperately to think of something to say. Should she apologize? Under normal circumstances, she and RIO would be fighting the aircraft together. But in the end, even with a more senior RIO, she was the pilot.

“Stop the clock, stop the exercise,” Gator said finally, his voice showing no trace of his earlier emotion. “Bird Dog, we’ll join on you for a return to the carrier.”

Elf turned and vectored in on Bird Dog, dropping neatly into position off his right wing, and following him back to the boat. She waited as he made his approach, snagging the three wire neatly. Then she turned in on final, shutting all of her concerns about the previous engagement out of her consciousness. Landing on a carrier was a good deal more dangerous than getting shot at with pretend missiles, and this was no time to be wondering about what Gator thought. There would be plenty of time to hash that out later.

“Two zero three, call the ball,” she heard Pri-Fly say.

“Roger,” she acknowledged. Just as she said it, she saw the green flash of the Fresnel lens to the left of the stern. “Two zero three, ball.”

“Two zero three, LSO,” a new voice chimed in. “Say needles.”

“Needles show high and right,” she said, referring to the crosshair indicators that showed whether or not she was on flight path. Her needles showed she was off the glide path slightly.

“Two zero three, I understand high and right. Roger, concur, fly needles.” LSO’s voice changed from a bored rote recitation to a more friendly tone. “Okay, Elf, let’s get you back on board.”

The landing was almost anticlimactic. Elf made small corrections to her course and attitude, slamming down on the deck to catch the three wire. Not a perfect landing, not like Bird Dog’s had been. But, still, a pretty damned good effort for a first approach on a new boat, she thought.

There was not a word from the back seat.

After she’d followed the plane captain’s directions to her spot, she said “Commencing preshutdown checklist.” She announced it crisply, her voice betraying no hint of her nerves. “Are you ready, sir?”

“Yes, go ahead.” As she ran through the checklist, Gator made the necessary responses, his voice distant and detached. Finally, she shut down the engines and popped the canopy and came down the boarding ladder. She dropped lightly to the deck, flexing her knees as she landed. Bird Dog and his RIO were waiting for her. Gator followed slowly, his knees cracking as he landed.

“Little eager with those guns,” Bird Dog said. She saw a scowl on his face.

“It seemed like the best option at the time, sir,” she said formally.

“Well, there are a few points we might go over,” Bird Dog said. Then, as though suddenly remembering his place, he took a step back and glanced over at Gator.

“Well, thank you,” Gator snapped. “Awful thoughtful of you, XO, to allow me to express my opinion.”

“Ah, sir, come on, I didn’t—”

Gator waved him into silence. He turned and fixed Elf with a glare. All her worries and fears she’d put aside during the trap came crashing back down in on her. Was it possible she could be stripped of her wings after only one landing — even if she hadn’t crashed? “Sir, I just want to say…” she began, suddenly frantically trying to find a way to salvage her career as a naval aviator. How could she tell her parents that she’d been shitcanned after only one trap?

“Shut the fuck up,” Gator snarled. He turned to Bird Dog. “She’s just as bad as you were at her age. If not worse.” With that, he turned sharply and stalked off.

A broad grin broke out on Bird Dog’s face. He held out his hand, smacked it hard palm-to-palm against hers. “High five, Elf!”

“But—” she began.

Bird Dog cut her off. “What, you were worried? Hell, coming from a RIO — my old RIO, that old fusspot Gator in particular — that’s about the highest compliment you can get. Come on, I’ll buy you some popcorn. We’ll talk about MiGs and guns. I got a little experience with both of ’em.”