"Sounds too simple," Saint-Michael said, his irony lost on Ann for the moment. "Well, let's do it."
Marty said, "And I can tether Enterprise to the keel and transfer to—"
"Negative," Saint-Michael said as he began to pull apart consoles in the command module. "I want you to get in contact with someone on earth, tell them our situation and request a rescue sortie soon as possible."
"That'll be a trick," Marty said. "I never did fix Enterprise's TDRS."
"So use UHF standby radio. The Dakar-Ascension earth stations will be your best chance, or Yarra Yarra in Australia. Keep trying. I don't know how much longer our air is going to last… You copy that, Marty?"
The GL-25 cruise missiles sped south of the Tropic of Cancer, still without being detected — any ships larger than small fishing vessels had long since abandoned the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, like townfolk in the Old West scattering off the main street as the sheriff and the outlaws began squaring off. Two of the cruise missiles had guidance-system malfunctions and automatically crashed themselves into the sea, but the rest were precisely on course, speeding toward the twenty American naval vessels now only five hundred miles away. Three hundred miles from the outermost escort vessel the missiles began their preprogrammed descent back to low-altitude cruise mode, a maneuver designed to duck under the extreme farthest range of any maritime radar.
The inertially guided missiles had been programmed as if all of the Nimitz's escorts were still arranged in a protective circle around the carrier. If the fleet had remained in the same defensive formation as when the missiles were programmed some twelve hours earlier, the missiles might never have been detected until it was too late. The target-run point, at which the missile's homing radar would be activated, was designed to allow for movement of the fleet; but the planners had to work under the assumption that the fleet would stay together and not change course by more than a hundred miles after launch. Secrecy meant everything to the success of the Soviet missile strike.
But one ship, the USS Mississippi, was no longer with the Nimitz group. After the Backfire bomber attack, the Mississippi had been ordered to the area of the Backfire-Tomcat dogfight to search for Russian survivors. It had taken several hours to steam north to where the battle had taken place, and they stayed in the area for some eight hours rescuing a handful of survivors and retrieving bodies. When they started back toward the Nimitz to retake their place in the cordon they were a hundred miles out of position. Which put them three hundred miles south and west of the first of the GL-25 cruise missiles…
Commander Jeffrey Fulbright, captain of the Mississippi, was on the bridge trying to warm his insides with a fresh cup of coffee. "Those Russians were really scared of us," Fullbright was saying to Lieutenant George Collene, the deck officer. "I guess they thought we were going to put fire to their fleet. Credit doses of negative propaganda."
"Or good old-fashioned fear of retaliation, sir," Lieutenant Collene said. "If I had just tried to bomb an enemy vessel I'd sure as hell think twice about getting on their ship afterward."
Fulbright glanced at the young officer, closed his right hand into a fist. "Wouldn't you just love to go down there and properly welcome those sonsofbitches to the USS Mississippi?"
Collene looked at his captain over the top of his glasses. "That, sir, is what their political officers tell them we do."
"So let's not disappoint them —"
"Bridge, CIC. Radar contact aircraft bearing zero-four-zero true, range two-eight-seven nautical miles. Fast-moving, heading south."
Fulbright picked up the phone. "CIC, this is Fulbright. Got an ID on 'em?"
"Negative, sir."
"Feed me the numbers." He lowered the phone and called to the deck officer. "Lieutenant, steer heading zero-four-zero true. Make it zero-six-zero. We'll try to cut them off, whatever they are. Make flank speed. Let's go take a look."
"Zero-six-zero true, flank speed, aye, sir." Collette repeated the command to the helmsman, who repeated it to Collene, steered the ship to that heading, made the speed change to engineering and then read off his instruments to Collene when the course and speed were set.
"On course zero-six-zero. We are at flank speed, showing two-seven knots, sir."
"Very well."
"Bridge, contact one now two-six-five miles, bearing zero-four-five. We have a rough altitude estimate of angels ten and descending. Speed estimated six-zero-zero knots."
"Any identification beacons? IFF?"
"No codes, sir."
"Lieutenant, steer zero-nine-zero, maintain flank speed. I want—"
"Bridge, CIC. Radar contact aircraft two, range two-six-zero nautical miles, bearing zero-three-eight, fast-moving, same heading south as contact one. Speed and altitude the same as contact one."
Fulbright swore and picked up a second phone. "Communications, this is the bridge. Get Nimitz on FLEETSATCOM. Advise him of our contacts. Broadcast warning messages on all emergency frequencies to all aircraft on those contacts' course and speed. Tell them to change course and stay clear of all vessels in this area or they will be fired on without further warning—"
"Bridge, CIC. Radar contact aircraft three, range two-four-zero, bearing zero-three-zero, moving below angel's five. Same course and speed as the… Now radar contact four, same course and speed… looks like a stream of them, sir. New contact five…"
"Discontinue reports, radar, I get the picture," Fulbright said. "Lieutenant, sound general quarters."
There was irony in the station's near-destruction: if the command module had not been as torn up as it was by the previous Soviet attack it would have taken hours, perhaps days, to trace all the wiring and circuitry leading from Skyboltt and the MHD reactor to the station's banks of batteries. As it was, the main, emergency and essential power buses, and the connecting point between the power supply and the circuit powered by it, were all now readily accessible.
Saint-Michael's job was to connect the backup power system to the main bus. Finally he stood up from the planter box, clicked on his interphone, and told Ann that he was ready. She reported finishing the rewiring in the Skybolt control module, so he switched the channel to air-to-air and raised Marty. "We're going to fire up the reactor, Marty. Stand by."
"Roger, General … hey, wait a sec, I'm picking up UHF broadcasts from … the Seychelles, or someplace like that. It sounds like the navy. Something's up…"
"Okay, listen in and give me a report later. We're going to fire her up and see what happens."
Ann maneuvered herself to the one control panel in the entire module that was illuminated. It was a simple switch that would allow power from the backup batteries to flow to the ignition circuits. "Jason, when I start up the reactor it'll go full bore until I get power to my main reactor controls. I only hope the batteries can handle it… "
"Look at it this way: if something goes wrong we can't be in any worse shape than we are now. Any explosion will be out on the keel where the batteries are. Plug 'em in."
Ann touched the switch and closed her eyes. "Here goes everything."
The Soviet attack on the Nimitz carrier group was going as planned.
Five minutes after the last GL-25 cruise missile hit its initial point, the Kiev and Novorossiysk attack carriers began launching the first of a dozen Sukhoi-24 Fencer supersonic bomber aircraft off their ski-ramp launch platforms toward the American vessels. Each swing-wing bomber, a synthesis of technology borrowed from the American F-111 and British Tornado strike bombers and modified for carrier operations, was armed with four "launch and leave" AS-N-16 laser-guided antiship missiles, a thirty-millimeter cannon and an undercarriage pod with twelve laser-guided missiles. The missiles would be used to attack random targets as the fighters left the target area.