The gray mass of the U.S.S. Jefferson appeared on the horizon, swelling rapidly as Batman and Malibu hurtled toward it. He eased back on the stick, pulling the F-14 into a climb.
That missile had come far too close to the Jeff for comfort.
“Hit!” a technician announced. One of Army’s missiles had just tagged another Styx. “Splash five …”
“Ninety-nine aircraft, this is Homeplate,” CAG said, using the code meaning all planes in the air. “Break off attack on incoming missiles.
Repeat, break off! CIC says to leave something for the boys at home.”
Tombstone watched the radar blips identified as Jefferson’s Tomcats. The missile wave had pulled them all in tight, clustering around the Jefferson as they tried to deal with the Styx missiles one-on-one. That kind of clumping would play havoc with the carrier’s ability to defend herself. It was better for Tomcats to veer off and leave the Jefferson room to swing.
“Roger, Homeplate,” Army’s voice said. “BARCAP One copies.”
“Affirmative, Homeplate,” the leader of the second BARCAP element, Lieutenant “Nightmare” Marinaro, echoed. “BARCAP Two copies.”
The electronic quality of the communications gear added to the timbre of the various voices, giving them an oddly detached character. Some voices sounded calm and professional, others flat or expressionless. As the aviators became caught up in the heat of battle or the chase, they tended to lose the pro words and the measured cadences of their training, to shout as though trying to make themselves heard, to become profane or vulgar. The tensions in the sky east of the carrier were raw, Tombstone could tell, and he found the waiting more and more intolerable as the minutes dragged by.
He glanced at the clock on the bulkhead. Zero seven forty-two. The missiles were seconds away now.
“Right,” Fitzgerald’s voice announced from CIC. “Point defense on automatic. Fire control ready?”
“Fire control tracking,” Barnes’s voice replied. “Nearest target now at six miles and closing …”
“Pass the word,” Fitzgerald said. “To all ships that can hear. Commence fire!”
The Styx missiles had begun their flight close together, but their launch programming and slight differences of altitude and speed had caused them to drift apart, a deliberate strategy to scatter the defenders’ attention and to hit the target from as many directions as possible. Several of the attacking missiles were being directed toward target points well past the Jefferson, so that when their terminal guidance systems engaged, they would begin searching for their target from the ship’s far side.
By the time the first Sea Sparrow shrieked away from the launcher on Jefferson’s starboard side forward of the island, seven Styx missiles out of the original sixteen were approaching the American carrier from as many different directions, at distances ranging from six miles to twelve.
Guided by the carrier’s fire-control radar, a second missile launched seconds later … then a third. Contrails drew white traceries into the western sky as missile sought missile in a fast-paced electronic game of hide-and-seek, a game that unfolded far too rapidly for humans to follow it.
Then the sky exploded into flame.
A Sea Sparrow launched from the Jefferson rocketed into an oncoming Styx, detonating in a fireball that sent pellet-sized fragments slamming into the water for a hundred yards around. The proximity fuze on a second Sea Sparrow warhead touched off when the missile was several yards behind the Styx. The explosion sprayed the SSM with shrapnel, punching holes in wings and fuselage, but the sturdily built SS-N-2 continued to fly, smoke trailing now from the exhaust bell of its turbojet.
Another Sea Sparrow scored a hit, the explosion visible from Jefferson’s deck as a brief, sharp flash on the horizon. There were five leakers still closing … then four … Jefferson mounted three CIWS Mark 15 Phalanxes. Their cartoon-character names had been inspired by the robotic heroes of a ‘70s SF movie: Huey, Dewey, and Louie.
Huey was mounted alongside Jefferson’s island, set outboard and facing to starboard. Dewey was aft, set on the port side of the fantail gallery beneath the flight deck ramp. Louie was on the port side forward, mounted on a faring flush with Jefferson’s hull midway between flight deck and waterline.
All three Phalanx weapons came to life as the Styx missiles entered the carrier’s point defense zone. On the Jefferson’s stern, Dewey’s erect white silo spun under totally automatic control, swiveling to face the nearest of the approaching threats. The six barrels extending from the gray metal box beneath the silo whirled furiously, the discharge sounding like the whine of a high-speed motor. Within two seconds of a target entering its electronic domain, it had tracked, fired, tracked, and fired again.
Painted by J-band pulse-doppler radar, the Styx plunged headlong into a cloud of depleted uranium projectiles. Metal shredded, the missile’s alloy hull punctured in a dozen places. The turbojet engine tore free from its mountings, the stubby port-side wing was ripped away like paper.
Before the shattered missile hit the waves, Dewey had already swung left to engage another target … and then another.
The last Styx missile, its radar guidance equipment smashed, smoke streaming from its propellant tanks, hurried past Jefferson’s island fifty feet above the flight deck. Sailors scattered or ducked as the projectile shrieked overhead. “Jesus!” one AE/2 shouted to the man lying beside him on the steel. “It’s fuckin’ World War Two!”
“More like War Number Three, man,” his friend yelled back. The rest of the reply was lost in the thunder of the warhead detonating in the sea a hundred yards off Jefferson’s port quarter.
CHAPTER 18
Tombstone’s eyes were on the PLAT monitor in CATCC. From his camera-eye’s vantage point, he could watch as the final preparations were made to kick the two Alert Five aircraft into the sky.
He checked the bulkhead clock with mild surprise. Less than five minutes had passed since battle stations had been sounded. The first Indian missile strike had smashed into Jefferson’s defenses and been broken.
Now, though, the stakes were rising. Once Coyote and Shooter were airborne, the launch procedure for the rest of the carrier’s Tomcat defenders would begin. Tombstone could see more F-14s moving up into line behind Coyote’s and Shooter’s planes, and other aircraft were already being lined up on Cats Three and Four.
The Air Boss and his crew would be working flat-out to get the remaining Tomcats up as fast as possible. On the battle board, the Indian aircraft were moving southwest from Kathiawar, an unstoppable wave of machines. Against them were eighteen Tomcats, eight from VF-95, ten from VF-97. Four Vipers were already aloft; the rest would be joining them soon.
They looked slow-moving and clumsy on the deck. Turkeys. Once in the sky, though, it was a different story.
Tombstone studied Coyote’s plane as though trying to memorize each detail, every line and marking. The numerals 204 on the nose were faint, hard to make out against the glare of the morning sun to starboard. Since the early 1980s, the Navy had been using a low-contrast gray-and-gray scheme called low-viz, eliminating the garish paint schemes and squadron markings favored by aviators during the Vietnam era.
Gone were the grinning shark mouths, the stripes and badges and crests.
Even the numbers and nationality emblem were muted to near-invisibility.
It had been discovered during air trials in the late seventies that these bright markings not only made a big difference in sighting an opponent, they actually helped provide the heat contrast necessary for all-aspect heat-seekers to achieve a lock.