Omar Al Saud stood on the forward observation deck on the top level of the thirty-million-dollar luxury yacht, watching through a pair of field binoculars. He ignored nearby yachts sailing past to gawk at the ultra-modern design of his 120-foot-long vessel, complete with helipad and Leonardo AW169 helicopter. Through the binoculars, the prince focused on the TEL trucks that had begun arriving from Cairo along El Qantra Shark-Al Arish Road overnight, under the cover of darkness — eighteen of them — taking over a hill just southwest of the encampment. Each truck carried two Qader medium-range anti-ship missiles developed by Iran. The Egyptian Army conducted exercises in the region from time to time as part of their strategy to keep Israeli forces on edge, so Al Saud hoped the TEL trucks, disguised as civilian vehicles parked almost a hundred miles from the canal, wouldn’t attract the attention of US aerial assets — at least not quickly enough to make a difference.
The Saudi prince frowned, wishing he had had more time to acquire twice as many of the missiles from the corrupt military minister in Cairo. Described by his Iranian contacts as the most powerful and precise cruise missile of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Al Saud wanted to overwhelm the carrier with them, but the latest update from his people watching the salvage operation indicated that the southern passage of the canal would be cleared within the next twelve hours. And besides, the longer he waited, the greater the chances of the Americans discovering his plot and leveling the site.
It is now or never, he thought, also wishing he could do this at night, but the Saudi prince did not want to risk Lincoln escaping the 160-mile range of the missile, nor did he want to expose the trucks, civilian-looking or not, to a full day of potential visual surveillance by the Americans.
Reaching for his satellite phone, Al Saud hit the speed dial and told the man who answered, “Now.”
He refocused the powerful Zeiss binoculars on the remote hill some six miles away in time to see the trucks’ operators pull back the gray canvases covering the rear of their vehicles. A moment later, the sequential flashes of thirty-six Qaders, each packing a five-hundred-pound warhead of high explosives, filled his view as the eighteen-foot-long weapons shot out of their individual launcher tubes. The volley of cruise missiles vanished over the horizon in the southwestern sky, skimming the desert sands. The missiles’ digital autopilots constantly queried and microcorrected their flight paths using high-precision GPS systems programmed with Lincoln’s coordinates.
Dropping the binoculars on a lounge chair, Al Saud walked to the stern helipad. Not wishing to be anywhere near the area when those missiles hit, he climbed aboard the Leonardo AW169 bound for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The AN/SPS-48E 3-D air search radar system picked up the tip of the threat from almost a hundred miles away. Its advanced algorithms separated the incoming missiles from the ground clutter.
“Vampires! Vampires! Sixteen! Heading two-one-zero. Range nine-eight miles. Speed four-five-zero knots. Impact in one-two minutes,” reported one of the Combat Fire Control operators sitting behind a console in the captain’s bridge.
Navy SEAL commander Jake Russo stood on the bridge next to Capt. Marvin Bennett as they snapped their heads around, looking at the young ensign in disbelief. “Sixteen?” asked Bennett.
“Yes, sir… wait… wait… it’s now twenty-one… no, change that… twenty-nine incoming… wait… it’s thirty-six. Confirmed. Thirty-six vampires.”
Oh, fuck me, Russo thought.
Bennett turned to his CFC operators manning the controls of the AN/SWY-2 Ship Defense Surface Missile System and with far more composure than Russo felt, ordered, “Map, track, and splash.”
The CFC technicians went to work, activating the port-side MK 144 Guided-Missile Launcher storing twenty-one missiles, as well as the RIM-7 anti-missile weapon system housing eight Sea Sparrows. Both of those missile systems, however, had an operational range of around ten miles, meaning all Bennett could do was track the vampires until they got within range.
A moment later, a call came in from Commander Harold Gorman, skipper of USS John Paul Jones (DDG 53), an Arleigh Burke — class guided-missile destroyer two miles north of Lincoln.
“Believe this shit, Marv?” Gorman hissed. “Damned Egyptians.”
“Harry,” Bennett said. “It’s going to be close. I only have close-in weapon systems.”
“We’ll thin the herd for you.”
John Paul Jones had one sixty-one-cell and one twenty-nine-cell MK 41 Vertical Launching Systems housing an array of different missiles. The assortment included BGM-109 Tomahawks, RUM-139 anti-submarine missiles, RIM-174 Standard ERAM missiles with a range of more than 150 miles, and the new-generation RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles with an operational range of twenty-seven miles. And all that meant it could remove some of the threat before it reached the kill zone of the carrier’s close-in weapon defense systems.
But Russo still silently cursed his current predicament as Pacheco’s words echoed in his head. The carrier strike group and its various onboard defense weapons systems had been designed to operate in concentric circles, with the aircraft carrier in the center. Missiles fired at the battle group at sea would be dealt with by the escorting destroyers and frigates encircling the carrier — the reason Lincoln only carried close-in defense systems to handle anything that happened to get through the onslaught of the outer shields.
But we’re stuck in a line, Russo thought as the CFC operator reported the missiles at sixty miles away. Like a sitting fucking duck.
The impotence of his current position made him crazy, but he, personally, had no options and no job to do here. Even if a Stinger could bring down one of the missiles, he didn’t have one, and by the time he could get his hands on one of those brought on board after the attack on Truman, it would already be too late. So he did the only thing he could do: stand next to Bennett over the radar station staring at the array of dots rapidly closing in on the carrier.
And all aimed at us, he thought, trying very hard to put out of his mind what would happen if just one of those missiles made it through their defenses.
“Three-six vampires,” reported the operator. “Heading two-one-zero. Range— Way to go, Jones!”
Eight dots appeared on the bottom of the radar screen as the destroyer released its load of ERAMs, dashing at Mach 3.5 toward the threat. In less than a minute, the volley tore into the front end of the incoming missiles.
“Three-zero vampires,” reported the operator. “Heading two-one-zero. Range three-niner miles. Speed four-five-zero knots. First impact in zero-four minutes, thirty-eight seconds.”
“Eight missiles, six hits,” Bennett said, frowning. Russo felt a rising panic in his chest at his utter lack of control of the events rapidly unfolding in front of him.
Fifteen more dots lit up on the lower left side of the console as Jones next released its load of Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missiles.
With a combined closing speed of over a thousand miles per hour, the volley of ESSMs bridged the gap in under a minute, their dual-mode X-band seekers locked to individual targets tracked by Jones’s Sewaco/Active Phased Array Radar, providing target illumination all the way to impact.