“You neglected to mention that tasking out our combat air patrol will also leave us naked without overhead cover,” said Simmons.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good; don’t be afraid to challenge me when it is needed. Just not too often,” said Simmons. “I understand your concern, but they’re an asset we have to use, in this case just like the original designers of drones intended. Deadly, but disposable. Order them out, command protocol Divine Wind.”
Fifty-Five Miles Northwest of the Zumwalt, Pacific Ocean
The remaining Shrikes climbed steeply up to sixty-five thousand feet and raced toward the coordinates provided by the Orzel. They flew in a tight stack of wedges, each pilotless aircraft programmed to hold itself exactly seventeen inches away from the next. The distance had been chosen by the Shrike software designer after reading that the closest that human pilots would risk was the eighteen inches of distance that Blue Angels pilots put between their planes during their Diamond 360 maneuver. The effect was to blur the drones’ already small radar signatures into one.
Within minutes, the formation crossed the white wakes of the Russian and Chinese surface-ship formation, arced out in a wide curve.
They relayed the image back to the bridge of the Zumwalt.
“Sir, we have a video burst from the flight. They’ve got visuals on the enemy surface task force. Looks like the Puffin missiles took out three of the smaller ships, but four biggies, including the Zheng He, are steaming in our direction at flank speed, fifty-five miles out,” said the tactical officer. “We’re in their missile range now. I’m not sure why they haven’t fired again.”
“They’re likely as low on missile stocks as we are,” said Simmons. “Looks like they’re planning on making it personal, finishing us off with guns.”
“Redirect the drone flight at them?” said the tactical officer.
“No, taking out the enemy’s remaining carriers is more important than even us,” said Simmons. “Proceed as planned.”
The drones flew onward past the surface ships, indifferent to both the tension that this bypass caused the American fleet and the relief it gave to the surface ships below.
Admiral Zheng He Bridge
The shouting on the bridge of the Admiral Zheng He subsided as the aircraft flew on. It had not been visible, but radar had initially picked it up at over thirteen miles overhead. They tried to shoot it out of the sky but it was impossible to get a radar lock. That it had not come in low pointed to its being one of the Americans’ surveillance aircraft, perhaps one of their rumored high-altitude drones. They passed on the information to the aircraft carrier element’s combat air patrol and ordered a pair of fighters to intercept.
A single surveillance plane would confirm the surface screening force’s position to the Americans. But they would also know it didn’t matter. His force was closing in on the remains of the U.S. task force to finish them off. Any kind of follow-up attack from the American mainland would come too late. They were alone, soon to be cut off, and as vulnerable as any enemy commander could hope. It would be an absolute victory, the kind Sun-Tzu had written about but never achieved in his own career.
Wang considered for a moment that perhaps, once his staff reviewed his command footage and records, he should write his own book.
USS Zumwalt, Forward Rail-Gun Turret
It was like being back on one of those road trips, the kids in the back seat of the station wagon constantly asking the same question over and over.
“Damage crew, how much longer?” said Captain Simmons into the radio.
Yet it also nagged the old man that it had taken this kind of moment for him to see his son at his best.
Mike took in the showers of welding sparks raining down onto the crew below decks frantically trying to repair the rail-gun loading mechanism and the power cable connections.
“Twenty minutes,” said Mike.
“You have ten. That battle cruiser mounts one-hundred-thirty-millimeter main guns with a fifteen-mile range. You taught me boxing, so you know that I need that rail gun to be punching at them before we get inside their swing.”
“If we’re going to fight the rail gun, Vern says we really are going to need to power down the bilge and auxiliary pumps. We can’t do that, sir, not now. This ship wasn’t designed to take hits. Big, top-heavy design like this, we risk taking on too much water and we’ll roll.”
“Chief, I understand. Just focus on your job and I’ll do mine.”
The little bastard is even starting to talk like me, thought Mike.
USS Zumwalt Ship Mission Center
The display on the far wall showed the rail-gun turret free of the debris, but then a spray of sparks shot out from one of the holes punched in the deck. Out leaped Brooks; his work overalls were already singed at the legs, and now they were blackened about the shoulders. He was literally smoking. He threw an acetylene cutting torch down on the deck and cursed, first at the malfunctioning tool, then at the hole in the ship, and then at something in the distance, evidently the enemy fleet. Then the young sailor picked up the tool and went back into the hole. In that action, Jamie saw his father’s influence.
“Sir, we’ve got a contact burning through the jamming. It must be close,” Richter at the radar station said. “Yes, I have the enemy task force at forty miles out. Four ships, one capital-ship size. That must be the Zheng He.”
The rail-gun turret tried again to swivel, but it just shook back and forth like a muzzled dog. Sneaking peeks up from their workstations, the crew whispered, getting visibly anxious.
Simmons cued his headset again, leaning forward to get a better look. “Damage control, how much longer is it going to take?”
“Jamie, I am not trying to assemble your goddamn bicycle on Christmas Eve! Just leave us alone and we’ll get it fixed,” said Mike.
A few of the crew stifled laughs as the conversation played out on the room’s speakers. Simmons grimaced in exasperation and shook his head, throwing the headset at the deck.
“Radar’s picked them up, sir. Thirty-nine miles now,” said Richter. “I’m guessing they’ve developed the same tactical picture we have. They’re now closing directly at us at flank speed.”
138 Miles Northwest of the Zumwalt, Pacific Ocean
The two Chinese J-31 fighter jets from the task force’s combat air patrol elevated to follow the incoming target and then went to afterburner to close for a firing solution.
The pilots were angry. They hadn’t been sent on the strike mission against the enemy fleet, which had most likely kept them from dying, but it left them furious at their impotence, all the more so when their wing mates didn’t return. And now, twenty thousand feet below, the Liaoning, the carrier they had launched from, their home for the last two years, had smoke spilling out of its stern. A submarine had somehow snuck close enough to fire off a torpedo before the destroyer escort had sunk it. They had been bystanders yet again, powerless against an attack that had left their home listing badly to starboard. They were unsure if they would be able to land on it at the end of their patrol or if they would have to divert to one of the other carriers. That was a question to be answered later, though. Now, at least they could vent their fury on the American drone.
The lead pilot radioed that the radar signature of the surveillance drone coming in above them at seventy-seven thousand feet was strange. It didn’t fit any profile in the recognition software, which conformed with the report from the surface-fleet element. He fired a long-range PL-12 air-to-air missile at it, and then a second one, just for good measure.