“Lock it up, Boots,” Stiff screamed, still on the radio, although he thought he was on the intercom. “Lock it up and we’ll shoot an AMRAAM.” The acronym stood for advanced medium-range air-to-air missile.
Boots was trying. The problem was that the ballistic missile was essentially stationary in relation to the earth. It was accelerating upward, of course, but its velocity over the ground was close to zero just now. The designers of the F-14 weapons system did not envision that the crew would want to shoot missiles at stationary targets, so Boots was having his troubles.
Frustrated, he snarled at Stiff, “Go to heat, goddamnit. Shoot a ’winder at that exhaust.”
“A ’winder ain’t gonna dent that fucking thing,” Stiff replied, his logic impeccable. He was on the ICS now. “We’ll come up under it and shoot as it accelerates upward.”
“Okay! Okay!”
And that is what he did. As the missile accelerated upward, Stiff Hardwick kept his nose down, punched the burners full on and accelerated in toward the launch site, then pulled up to put the climbing, accelerating ballistic missile in front of him.
Now Boots got a radar lock.
The symbology on the HUD was alive, showing the target, the boresight angle, the drift angle ….
Stiff Hardwick lifted his thumb to fire the first AMRAAM. As he did an infrared missile from Carlos Corrado’s MiG-29 went up his right tailpipe and blew a stabilator off the F-14.
Jake Grafton heard all of it. “A missile is in the air! Just came out of silo one!” was the shout over the radio.
He picked up the red telephone, the direct satellite connection with the White House.
“Mr. President, I don’t know what happened, but apparently the Cubans have launched one.”
The president must have heard the shouts over the net the same as Jake did. His question was, “What is the target?”
Jake had the targets memorized. “It came out of silo one, sir. The target is Atlanta.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” the president said mechanically, and hung up.
When Toad Tarkington came to, the night was quiet. He was lying on cool earth, the sky above was dark … and there was a marine standing over him with his mouth moving.
He was deaf. He had lost his hearing.
Toad sat up, fell over, forced himself into a sitting position again. He ached all over, every muscle and tendon screamed in protest. But he was alive.
He got to his feet, swaying. The marine helped steady him.
The barn was right there beside him.
He pulled his pistol, staggered for the entrance.
The interior was a shambles, the stench nearly unbearable from bodies fried and seared by the exhaust of the missile.
Toad pulled boards out of the way to get to the open door that led down to the control room.
The lights were still on. Using a palm on one wall to steady himself, he descended the stair.
The old man was still sitting at the console, still wearing the tie around his wrists.
He looked at Toad dispassionately.
“You bastard,” Toad said. He said the words but he could barely hear them. “You foul, evil old man.”
A young marine who had followed Toad down the stairs grabbed the white-haired old man, shoved him toward the stairs. “Get going, you old fart! Upstairs, upstairs.”
Tarkington sagged to his knees on the floor, then stretched out. He was so tired ….
Boots VonRauenzahn pulled the ejection handle, and both he and Stiff Hardwick were launched from Showtime One Oh Nine a fraction of a second apart.
Stiff got his wits about him as he hung in his parachute harness in the night sky. He could see the ballistic missile accelerating into the sky — it was now a bright spot of light amid the stars — and he could see the burning wreckage of his Tomcat as it fluttered toward the ground.
He couldn’t see the MiG-29 that had shot him down. He could hear him though, a rumble that muffled the fading roar of the ballistic missile heading for space.
What he didn’t know was that Carlos Corrado had decided that his fuel state didn’t allow him to jab the Americans anymore this night. He was on his way back to Cienfuegos. With his radar off.
The SPY-1B radar aboard Hue City acquired the rising ballistic missile as it rose over the rim of the earth and transmitted the information by datalink to Guilford Courthouse, which picked up the missile on its own radar seconds later.
Hue City’s tactical action officer (TAO) in the Combat Control Center reached out and pushed the squawk-box button for the bridge, notifying her captain. “Sir, we have a possible ATBM threat, bearing one hundred seventy-five degrees true.” An ATBM was an antitactical ballistic missile threat.
The information from the SPY-1B radar was fed into the Aegis weapons system, which used the radar to control SM-2 missiles. The TAO waited for the computer to present the specifics of the target’s trajectory.
Her orders were to shoot down any missiles launched from Cuba over the Florida Straits. To do that, she would use the latest version of the SM-2 missile, of which her ship carried eight. Guilford Courthouse also carried eight of these weapons, which had an extraordinary envelope. They could fly as far as 300 nautical miles and as high as 400,000 feet, about 66 nautical miles.
The ballistic missile that was flying now was still climbing and accelerating. The trick was to shoot it over the Florida Straits before it got out of the SM-2 envelope.
The captain was on the squawk box. “You may fire anytime,” the old man said.
The TAO was Lieutenant (junior grade) Melinda Robinson. Her mother had wanted her to be a dancer and her father wanted her to take up law, his profession, but she chose the navy, confounding them both.
Just now she concentrated on the computer presentations on the large, 42-inch by 42-inch console in front of her.
“Two missiles,” Robinson ordered. She was tempted to fire four, but the Cubans might launch more ballistic missiles, so she couldn’t afford to run out of ammo.
“Fire one,” she said.
The SM-2 Tactical Aegis LEAP (lightweight exoatmospheric projectile) missile roared from the vertical launcher in front of the ship’s bridge in a blaze of fire.
Two seconds later a second missile roared after the first.
Guilford Courthouse also fired two missiles.
The solid fuel third-stage boosters of the SM-2 missiles lifted them through the bulk of the atmosphere, and finally separated at an altitude of 187,000 feet. The second stages ignited now, lifting the interceptor missiles higher and higher.
At 300,000 feet the second stage of the missile pitched over and ejected the nose cone of the missile, exposing the infrared sensor of the kinetic-energy kill vehicle. The motor continued to burn for another sixteen seconds, carrying the kill vehicle higher and still faster. At 370,000 feet the kill vehicle was aligned by its GPS-aided inertial unit and was ejected from the missile.
Tracking the target now at 375,000 feet of altitude, the kill vehicle homed in on the ballistic missile’s final stage at 6,000 miles per hour.
And hit it.
The second missile missed by a hundred feet, the third struck a piece of the target missile, and the fourth missed by seven feet.
“Admiral Grafton, Hue City reports the ballistic missile was destroyed over the Straits.”
Jake picked up the telephone to the White House and waited for someone to answer.
“Hue City, an Aegis cruiser, reports the Cuban missile was destroyed over the Straits.”
The president didn’t say anything, but Jake could feel his relief. When he did speak, he sounded tired. “How many warheads are still in those missiles?”