A mist of luminescent exhaust vapor hung low over the water and the warships were backlit in the glare of their own firepower, a shadow squadron sailing across a sun-colored sea.
For almost five full minutes, the launch raged on. It was one of those moments of piercing beauty that sometimes occur during war at sea, and all who saw it would remember.
The scattering of hands topside abandoned the pretense of going about their duties to stare at the developing spectacle through narrowed eyes.
Finally, the last missile flight hit the sky. Darkness returned as their jettisoned booster packs rained down into the sea like glowing embers. The thunder began to fade as their turbojet sustainers carried them away toward the horizon.
On the Enterprise’s flight deck, a new wall of sound began to grow. The first attack diamond of F/A-22s were on the carrier’s catapults, the magnified vacuum cleaner moan of their engines reaching a crescendo as they spooled up to flight power.
Ponderously, the massive warship turned into the wind.
“Admiral, Captain Kitterage is requesting permission to launch aircraft.”
“Inform the captain that he may launch at his discretion.”
Down on the steam-streaked deck, Moondog 505’s canopy settled onto the cockpit rails, closing out the thunder of the night. “Set?” Digger Graves called over the ejector-seat back.
“Set,” Bubbles replied laconically from the rear cockpit.
Following the directions of a wand-wielding greenshirt, 505 waddled into position at the base of number-two catapult.
Below the Sea Raptor’s nose, one set of flightdeck hands linked the plane’s forward landing gear to the cocked catapult shuttle.
Simultaneously, checker hands verified that all ordnance safety pins had been drawn and that the fighter-bomber’s wings were locked down. They also watched as Graves cycled his control surfaces: rudders, elevators, ailerons, flaps, spoilers, air brakes. They flashed Digger the thumbs-up. All go. Ready for launch.
Jet-blast deflector plates lifted into position behind the poised aircraft. Digger felt his aircraft come under tension as the catapult charged. He flared his landing lights, signaling his readiness to the cat officer, then put his throttles to mode four.
Diamond-studded flame spewed from the engine exhausts as the afterburners fired; the piercing scream of the turbofans became something beyond mere sound.
Digger took a deep, deliberate breath and settled himself deeper into his ejector seat. A night carrier launch is possibly the single most dangerous routine conducted in aviation. There is one plus to it, however: brevity. If you are going to die, it will probably happen within the first three seconds.
The cat monkey made the theatrical windmilling gesture that signaled to the rest of the deck that a plane was about to hit the sky. Dropping to one knee, he stabbed his fist forward.
The cat officer squeezed the launch trigger. Thirty tons of aircraft, explosives, and human life hurled down a hundred-and-fifty-foot track into the darkness.
The stealth bomber hovered off the end of the angled flight deck, balanced on the knife-edge between flight and not flight. In the cockpit, Digger Graves performed a quick series of critical actions.
He had to reorient himself using the glowing HUD display, staving off the vertigo of being flung out into absolute blackness.
He had to retract the landing gear and tail hook. He had to hold Moondog 505’s wings level and he had to keep her nose lifted above the invisible horizon. All within a matter of a few racing heartbeats and all while recovering from the gut slug of a cat launch. To simplify his agenda, Digger didn’t bother with breathing.
Somewhere in the middle of that longest second in the world, the Sea Raptor made its transition from projectile to flying machine. The landing gear thumped into the fighter-bomber’s belly and the flaps went flush with the wings as Digger finished cleaning up the aircraft. The blue glare of the afterburner flame disappeared from the rearview mirrors as he throttled back to climb power. That left only the night and the stars and the dim rogue constellation of the Enterprise’s deck lights dwindling away astern and below.
Digger banked the Sea Raptor toward the distant coast of China, and two protracted exhalations hissed in the plane intercom. “You know,” Bubbles said for possibly the hundredth time, “I really fucking hate that part.”
55
“Bridge, this is the stealth bay.”
“Bridge, aye.”
“We’re approaching radar return limits. Captain. The Reds are going to be picking us up on their screens in another couple of minutes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mckelsie. It’s not going to matter too much here presently.”
Beyond the bridge windscreen, the coast of China showed as a band of total blackness between the obsidian of the sea and the starblaze of the sky. The bow of the Cunningham was a shadow dagger aimed dead-on at its heart.
Dix Beltrain’s was the next voice to fill her earphones.
“Captain, we have verification from Task Flag that the touch has been executed. All cruise-missile streams are inbound and on course.”
“Ordnance status?”
“All missile flights are hot. All launch cell doors are open. All systems are sequencing to fire time on target. T minus forty-one seconds and counting.”
“Status on the Retainers?”
“Lieutenant Arkady reports both Retainers are at initial point, ready to move out. We are standing by for launch commit, Captain.”
“Fire when ready, Mr. Beltrain.”
“Very good, ma’am. All systems enabled. Five … four … three … two … ”
The Cunningham’s deck horns squalled their flat warning.
The destroyer’s first round lanced into the sky, the bridge crew shielding their eyes from the yellow glare of the booster flame.
The stealth cruise missiles leveled out a meager fifty feet above the wave tops, razor-blade wings and rudderators snapping open from out of their angular fuselages. As the land-attack variant of the weapon, they had the ability to strike at a target over a thousand miles away. Tonight’s mission was point-blank range for the SCM, the equivalent of firing a highpowered hunting rifle across a poker table. It did guarantee, however, that the job would get done.
The first warning the Red Chinese had of the attack was when their beach sentries spotted the light flare of the Cunningham’s launch on the horizon. Twelve missiles in twice that many seconds. The second warning came a quarter of a minute later as the first of the cruisers whined in over the beach.
The crews of the coastal radar stations had no chance. The inbound stealth weapons registered on the Red radar screens for only seconds before impact. Unlike the HARMs that had taken out the antenna arrays, these weapons went directly for the station control centers, guided in by the impulses of the Global Positioning Satellite System.
Just short of their objectives, the missiles pogoed, climbing steeply, then diving into their targets. The radar sites had all been hardened, either hunkered underground or heavily sandbagged. However, the half-ton, semi-armor piercing warheads of the SCMs struck with the force of Thor’s hammer.
Total kill.
Inland, some Red systems operators realized what was happening as the coastal stations began to drop out of the datalink net. Shouting a warning, they fled their operations rooms, throwing themselves flat on the ground or into adjacent air raid trenches. A few survived.