“What the hell is happening, Commander Lipton? How are these missiles multiplying?” Captain King asked, confused.
“They aren’t multiplying,” answered Lipton. “They’re projecting decoys to throw off our defenses.” The irritation in his voice showed just how angry he was at the Russians for employing this new trick.
Minutes went by as they observed the fleet’s missile interceptors start to converge on the enemy threats. One by one, the enemy missile count was starting to go down, though they were still getting close to the fleet. The British and French warships now joined the fray, firing the next round of interceptors. Once the enemy missiles reached forty kilometers from the fleet, they increased speed as they headed in for the kill. The targeting computers were still struggling with determining which missiles were ghosts and which ones were in fact missiles, so interceptors were being launched at each contact, just to make sure.
As the enemy remaining missiles zoomed into the last layer of defense, a new set of missile contacts showed up on the screen.
“Those must be more ghost contacts. There’s no way an enemy missile could travel that fast,” Captain King thought. Her eyes grew wider as the targeting data showed that the new threats were traveling at speeds of Mach 5.2. At that rate, they would close the distance between them very rapidly.
She turned to face her watch commander. “Where are these missiles coming from? And tell me that’s not their true speed,” she demanded.
Commander Lipton didn’t say anything.
Admiral Lindal picked up a receiver near him. “Tappal?” he confirmed. After the slightest of pauses, he yelled, “Tell me those missiles aren’t traveling at Mach 5.2!”
Captain King saw Admiral Lindal hit the speaker button so everyone could hear the answer.
There was no response on the other end for a few seconds, but everyone could hear a fair bit of shouting and loud voices in the background. “Those speeds are accurate, Admiral.,” Tappal finally said. “They appear to have come from the Bear Island vicinity, or at least that’s our best guess. I didn’t think the Russians had deployed them yet, but these must be the new Zircon missiles. They can travel at speeds in excess of Mach 5 and carry a 2,500-pound warhead.”
Captain King suddenly felt nauseous.
“Tell me you can shoot them down or have a plan to deal with them,” demanded the admiral.
“The two Growlers you guys just launched, we’re going to try and see if they can jam the missiles until they hit our defensive perimeter,” said Captain Tappal. He paused. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Admiral, we’ll get one shot at taking them before they come in range of our point defenses. Once they enter that zone, I’m not confident our systems will swat them down. I’d prepare the fleet to absorb some hits, Sir.” His voice sounded bleak.
Admiral Lindal sighed. “Do what you can,” he answered. “Hopefully, this is the only barrage they have.”
Just as Captain King thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, the initial wave of hypersonic cruise missiles was suddenly joined by a second, and then a third wave that were rapidly closing the distance between them.
Turning to the watch commander, the admiral asked, “Did we sustain any hits from the first barrage of missiles?”
Commander Lipton replied, “A couple. One of the frigates took a direct hit. The ship is still afloat, though she has a serious fire to her aft section. Two of the destroyers were hit. None fatally. I’m more concerned by this new set of missiles. I don’t think we’ve ever encountered something like this. I have no idea if we’re going to be able to shoot them down.”
Minutes ticked by as they watched the Growlers use their ECM jammers on the missiles in an effort to help confuse and blind them from the hundreds of interceptors heading toward them. When the first wave of interceptors converged on the hypersonic missiles, they scored a number of hits, but of the forty missiles in the first wave, thirty-two continued on. Then the second wave of interceptors converged, and another ten more missiles were destroyed. At this point, the Zircons were traveling so fast that they were on the fleet before a third wave of interceptors could be fired, and it was now up to the point defense systems to do their job.
Dozens upon dozens of RIM-116 and ESSM missiles from the carriers, destroyers, and frigates joined the fray, adding hundreds of additional interceptors, all trying to stop the hypersonic threats from hitting the fleet. Fractions of a second later, the Phalanx CIWS guns joined in.
“Brace for impact!” yelled someone in the CIC. Seconds later, the ship shook violently, throwing several sailors to the ground who were not strapped in. A thunderous boom reverberated throughout the ship.
“Damage report!” yelled Captain King.
Before anyone could respond to her, the CIWS opened fire a second time. The next wave of hypersonic missiles had already begun to arrive.
“Brace for impact!” someone else yelled.
Thud!
The ship lurched as another missile hit their carrier. The lights flickered off briefly, creating a moment of panic before they switched back on.
Captain King had been thrown the floor and hit something on her way down that temporarily knocked the wind out of her. She watched Admiral Lindal help himself back up from the deck and walked over to one of the action officers. “What’s the status of the fleet?” he asked.
From her perch on the floor, King could clearly see the look of fear written on the young lieutenant’s face.
“This is probably his first time being shot at,” she realized. It was an unnerving experience, one she wished they were not going through right now.
The lieutenant examined his computer screen, which was being refreshed with the status of each ship in the fleet. Although she couldn’t see very much from the floor, Captain King did note that there were several names highlighted in red and many more in yellow.
The young lieutenant answered, “Three ships have been destroyed, Sir. I’m showing fifteen more with damage. We’ll get the actual damage report on how bad they are soon.”
“What about the carriers? How many were hit?” Admiral Lindal demanded.
One of the petty officers tried to use the external cameras to see if they could spot any of the carriers and see if they had any visible damage. “Sir,” he said, “while the winds from the storm have died down the past hour, the rain is still heavy. There’s enough of a mist that it’s difficult to get any clean images. From what I can see, there are a lot of fires in all directions around us.”
“Satellites are back up!” yelled one of the petty officers manning the air-defense system. Bad weather had been interfering with their reception for several hours.
Captain King finally managed to catch her breath and went about the task of getting a damage assessment of the ship. However, she also kept her ears open to overhear what was going on at Admiral Lindal’s end. She managed to pick up that the enemy ships were making best speed to the coastline, and heard Lindal order, “Send a message out to the fleet to engage the enemy ships with our Tomahawks. I want those ships destroyed.”
A few moments later, Admiral Lindal walked over to join her. “Captain, satellites are back up. We’ve identified the location of the enemy fleet. Can you get your birds in the air to finish them off?” he asked.
Captain King looked at the admiral and shook her head. “We’re a no for further flight operations, Admiral. One of those missiles hit the hangar deck. We’ve also got one of the catapults down right now, and the port-side elevator is out. More reports are coming in now, and it looks like we took a lot of damage to the aircraft down there as well.”