He realized that if the water had been deeper he wouldn’t have made it. Then the exhaustion rolled over him in waves with colors flashing on his eyelids. There was no way to fight it.
Bernie Ryng was out before his eyes closed, face down in the dirt and rock — but alive!
ABOARD U.S.S. YORKTOWN, SOUTHEAST OF MALTA
Tom Carleton leaned back in the chair, touching the bulkhead under the console with his toes. Stretching his arms back behind his head, he yawned, squinting up at the ducts in the overhead of Yorktown’s combat information center. The vague glow of red lights in the darkened room cast indistinct shadows into the gloom above him.
This isn’t where I should be, he repeated to himself once more. How many times have I said that in the last half hour? The bridge, his bridge, was two decks above his head. That’s where the captain of a warship should be.
Carleton was seated at the console of Yorktown’s fire-control display system. In today’s Navy, at least on an AEGIS cruiser, that’s where the commanding officer fought his ship. He’d been through it all at school in the past year. There he’d been taught that today the secret to victory was the three C’s — command, control, and communications — and it all hinged on a supersophisticated electronics system within his ship’s hull that managed the defense of the whole damned battle group. But that didn’t mean that he had to like it!
It seemed to him that he was encased in this console, part of the electronic organism. In front of him, numbers and letters skipped efficiently across the display screen in digital perfection. Answers to any question he might ask the computer instantly appeared on that screen, and before him was a smaller screen which displayed what various elements of the fire-control system were doing at any given time, whether responding automatically to the computer or accepting orders from him.
But there was no longer that heady aroma of salt water, no whistling of sea breezes across the bridge, none of the familiar sounds. He was isolated within the machine, an intimate and important part, but nevertheless only a part.
“I have missile lock on, range one eight zero miles, speed mach three.” The voice in his earphones droned on. They were going through a drill, but perfection was demanded along with repetition. Even as Carleton reached to question the time of arrival of the missile, another figure appeared on the screen, announcing the answer as six minutes. “Six minutes to impact of missile,” came over the phones. It was just the same as when he’d served aboard his first ship, someone repeating what was already obvious. You could change the hardware, but changing the system was like pulling teeth.
As the minutes passed, more cruise missiles appeared on radar, emanating from numerous flights of Soviet Backfire bombers. What was now evolving was nothing more than the doctrine they had been trained to respond to — that of the first salvo. When the Russians attacked a battle group, they intended to fill the air with missiles, which was no different from saturation bombing forty years ago. It was a simple theory — some of the missiles would be intercepted, some would get through the defenses, and some would impact on vital targets. The Soviet objective was first to destroy the aircraft carrier, the major weapon of the battle group, then hit the AEGIS command ship, in this case Yorktown. That would destroy the nerve center of the battle group. After that, they could relax and take out the stragglers one by one.
At an expected, given point, the computer took over.
There was no way man could respond to the saturation attack, to the decoys, the electronic countermeasures, the countercountermeasures — to the doctrine of the first salvo.
He watched the screen as battle casualties were indicated, both Soviet and American. None of the enemy’s bombers would return to base, but that was of little concern to the Soviets. Attrition was part of the first salvo theory. On the other hand, not all the missiles were being intercepted either. The minutes and seconds to impact were displayed coldly and efficiently. The carrier took one hit forward, but it did not impair her ability to launch aircraft. Moments later, a second and then a third made it through. The carrier’s flight deck was now incapable of recovering aircraft. There was heavy damage to engineering spaces. Its max speed was now eighteen knots.
One or two destroyers and cruisers were hit and sunk and now Yorktown was hit! Her after launcher was knocked out, there were fires in emergency steering, but her electronics were still functioning.
Carleton had been through these exercises before, but none of them had been so realistic. Before, they had always been in trainers, where they knew that soon the lights would be turned up and an evaluation would be conducted by their instructor. This time, however, he was at sea. There was the familiar ship’s hum in the air and the deck rolled gently under them, but a computer controlled the entire exercise. It struck him that the computer did no better than the instructors on shore. Both of them made sure the battle group was inoperable before the exercise was over. This was a little more realistic in that Russian Backfire bombers were actually a hundred or so miles away from the ship, and the computer had brought a sense of realism that a shore-bound trainer simply couldn’t provide.
Carleton heaved his bulk out of the soft chair and stretched again. Soon the coordinator from the staff would be over to evaluate the exercise. Anything they could imagine to improve the battle group defense would be considered, anything at all. Intelligence estimates left them with no more than two days — three at the most — to iron out any mistakes, dream up any viable tactic, anything that might be more effective when the first salvo became a reality.
THE CRIMEA
USSR KERADIN’S DACHA
With a deep sigh, Cobb settled heavily on the edge of the cistern, carefully folded his dirt-smeared handkerchief, and mechanically mopped his brow and the back of his neck. There was an unpleasant sting of sweat and sunburn. The conditioning from his few days of toil in the California vineyard reminded him that a field hand’s skin was often tanned and wrinkled by the sun. That little touch was something that had never entered his mind until just then. Plunked down by General Keradin’s favorite vines, he realized that this simple part of his careful disguise could easily give him away.
The day had been long and hot. There was little air movement. Now, as the sun began to set, he felt a light, cooling breeze from the north. The really cool nights of fall were maybe four weeks off, but there was a definite change in the weather. And the grapes seemed to reflect it. They were plump and juicy, ripe for the picking. Those of prime interest to Cobb and Keradin were almost ready. In some instances, as he’d pointed out earlier in the day, those benefiting from the full rays of the day-long sun were just about perfect.
He picked up a wooden bucket and poured cooling water over his head. Shaking it from his hair, he let the rest run down his back. He was so immersed in the cooling sensation that he failed to notice someone approaching until a long shadow stretched before him.