He coughed, a long, dry spasm that left him gasping for air. The smoke had gotten pretty thick last night. He was sure some of that junk was still in his lungs. Add fatigue, no food, and the pain caused by losing both Simpson and Tartu, and he became very grateful for the support provided by his command chair.
He hated to admit it, but if the Tomcats hadn’t arrived when they did, he and the rest of his force could very easily have been on the bottom of the Baltic. As it was, Leyte Gulf was hurt. A missile hit close to her bridge had rocked the CIC, damaged one face of the SPY-1 radar, and wrecked her forward missile launcher. Ward silently thanked God the launcher had been nearly empty when they took the hit.
The second missile had been even worse, starting a fire in Leyte’s engineering spaces that killed twelve men and damn near finished her. Only good damage control had stopped the flames from spreading.
So here they were. He was short on missiles, running on half engines, and overcrowded with his own wounded and a few, badly burned survivors plucked from the water near where Simpson and the Tartu had gone down. One of his helicopters, another survivor from the frigate, was camping out on Dallas Star’s helipad. He was still two hundred miles from the relative safety of George Washington’s formation. Beyond that, he knew, Leyte Gulf had a longer trip to the yards for badly needed repairs.
In the meantime, though, she was still a fleet unit. Most of her weapons systems still worked, and the all-important SPY-1 radar and Aegis computers were back on the line. She could still fight.
“We’re ready, Admiral.”
Captain Ralph Gunston, Leyte Gulf’s skipper, had taken over as Ward’s chief of staff. Jerry Shapiro was in sick bay with a broken leg and a chest full of missile fragments. Gunston looked more like a marine than a ship’s captain, stocky with a blond crew cut.
“No signs of damage?”
“We found a few rattled circuit boards, but everything’s been checked, and we’ve reloaded all the target packs, just as you ordered.”
“Very well, Captain. We’ll launch on schedule.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Ward stood up slowly, leaning heavily on his chair for support at first. It took him a while to climb one level to the bridge and step out onto the bridge wing, but he wanted to be there when the cruiser showed these French and German bastards her teeth.
The fresh air on the bridge wing woke him up. Their own course and speed turned a cool breeze into a chilling gale. It was already slackening as Leyte Gulf slowed and turned. Even though the wind was within tolerances, Ward didn’t want anything risked. Not for this.
Deep inside the ship’s superstructure, Gunston issued the final orders.
An amplified voice declared, “Now hear this. All hands on the weather decks, remain clear of the fantail.” It was the third, and last, warning — really only a formality. Ward heard a shrill beep, beep over the speakers before all sounds merged in a single, deafening roll of thunder.
It was different, being outside when a missile was fired.
Leyte Gulf’s launchers had roared last night, but, with the ship at general quarters, the CIC had been tightly sealed. And Ward had been too busy thinking about other things to pay much attention to the noise. Things like fending off the sudden, surprise attacks that seemed to come from every compass point. Like the men who had been dying. The men he’d hoped to keep safe.
Now he had time to watch. Every ten seconds, a twenty-one-foot-long, finned gray shape thundered into the clear blue sky above the Aegis cruiser’s fantail, riding high on a pillar of fire before turning and heading south. Twenty Tomahawk missiles, his entire load, were carrying the fight to EurCon’s north German airfields. It would exact a small measure of vengeance for his murdered men and lost ships.
The last Tomahawk roared off, skimming southward past a long thick pall of white exhaust smoke curling behind Leyte Gulf.
Ward stepped back inside. His body cried out for sleep, but he had work to do and priority signals to send. The paybacks had just started.
Brigadier General Howard Noonan, USAF, occupied the watch officer’s desk — overlooking a room filled with row after row of consoles crowded with control keyboards, communications gear, and display screens. Soft, subdued lighting and the quiet, ever-present hum of air-conditioning created the illusion of a calm, restful working environment. Space ops center duty officers and noncoms sat in comfortable chairs behind each console, monitoring space surveillance data flowing in from radar and optical telescope networks scattered around the globe, in low earth orbit, and in geosynchronous orbit.
All duty stations faced an enormous, wall-sized computer-generated display showing the world and man-made objects in orbit around it. Although the men and women working in the operations center routinely tracked nearly six thousand objects, right now the main screen showed only a few specific satellites that were of extraordinary interest. Bright lines showed the predicted orbital path for each satellite, and small vector arrows showed their current, plotted positions.
Noonan, a trim, dapper man, nodded gravely to himself — satisfied by what he could see. As a young man he’d been fascinated by outer space and the possibility of space travel. As a young officer he’d narrowly missed qualifying for astronaut training. He’d taken the setback in stride and buckled down to do his best for the country. Now, at forty-five, he commanded the world’s most advanced space defense force.
After years spent in research and development and after bitter congressional funding battles, the first elements of the G-PALS system were in orbit and operational. G-PALS stood for “Global Protection Against Limited Strikes.”
One of the red phone symbols on his computer monitor flashed. He had an incoming call — direct from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Finally.
Noonan tapped the appropriate key on his board, noted the lights verifying that he was receiving scrambled audio and video communication, and punched the receive control on his console.
A familiar face appeared on his monitor. General Galloway, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, looked tired. He’d been locked up in a nonstop National Security Council meeting since the first reports of EurCon attacks on U.S. and British shipping began pouring in.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’ll make this short and sweet, Howard. The President has approved your plan. ‘Blackout’ is a go. When can you initiate?”
“Right away, sir. My people finished rewriting and testing the necessary sections of battle management code about an hour ago.”
Reid nodded, pleased. Then he turned deadly serious. “Take ’em out for us, Howard. We’re going to need every edge we can get.”
“Yes sir. You can count on it.” Noonan had seen the navy’s preliminary casualty estimates. The French and Germans had pretty clearly won the war’s opening round. He planned to help them lose the second.
Five minutes later, Noonan sat with his headset on, ready and alert. A blank inset box on the main display screen suddenly filled with a jumbled string of numbers and letters. They were receiving a system release authorization code from the President. Almost as soon as the code appeared, it vanished — replaced by a blinking notification in large, bold letters: LAUNCH ENABLED.