“Older fighters,” Mills said from the TAO seat, squinting at his screen. “Upgraded to land attack, but older airframes. Sending in the second team?”
“Probably, after we took their strip alert out. We gave them time to recover, and patch up the airfield.”
More contacts were blinking into existence over Taiwan. Dan keyed to those callouts, and got a surprise. “These guys out of Taipei—”
“Sukhoi-35s,” Staurulakis murmured.
Mills gasped. “You’re shitting me,” he managed at last.
“That’s the ID. Su-35s.”
“Russians?”
“Sold to the Chinese. The latest and greatest.” Her keyboard rattled; she peered at the screen. “Can carry the Kh-31 antiship missile, or the Chinese version, the YJ-91. Mach 3. Hundred-kilo warhead. Passive antiradar seekers. If they hit the carriers with those—”
“Get this out to Fleet and PaCom.” Dan hunched over his keyboard, alternately eyeing displays and typing. Repositioning Kristensen and McClung, placing them across the line of attack from Okinawa.
Through a haze of fatigue, the heart-squeeze of dream, a cold logic was focusing his brain.
The blitz on the Okinawa fields had shut them down long enough for him to thread the needle in, but now they were reactivating. Yet the Sukhois were even more threatening. If they were carrying antiradiation missiles, he had a dire choice. Either shut down his radars, go blind, or invite the passive seekers to home on the thousands of kilowatts the SPY-1s on his major units were broadcasting.
Or was he the target? Wasn’t it more likely USS Ronald Reagan and her escorts, closing from the east, were the bull’s-eyes these strikes were generating for?
The search-and-rescue controller said over the command circuit, “Red Hawk inbound. Pilot on board. Fifteen minutes to bingo fuel. Wants to know if we’re coming to recovery course.”
Dan traded glances with Staurulakis. Put Strafer between the carrier and the threat? A useless sacrifice. Chaff and flares weren’t going to fool anything this advanced. If only Zembiec had gotten the lasers they’d promised for so long… “Pull him back,” he muttered. “Hot refuel on whoever’s got a clear deck to the south.” He snapped off, to the weapons control circuit.
Forty contacts were closing from Okinawa. And they were nearer; even at a lower speed, they’d hit the task force first. Only five from the southwest, from Taiwan, but faster and far better armed. He decided to let Sejong and the two other Korean destroyers take on the larger attack, with Hampton Roads and Savo Island plucking down some of the leaders at long range. With any luck, they might get the rest to drop early and back away. And maybe the carriers could vector some fighters out, cut down their numbers before they arrived. He typed fast.
BARBARIAN: All units Horde, FLASH FLASH ALERT incoming air strikes de Taiwan, Okinawa.
He toggled direct to Encapsulate, the carrier group leader on Truman.
BARBARIAN: Request permission retire as previously planned.
Seconds ticked past. This was taking way too fucking long. The closer he could get 76 to the carriers, the more cover they’d have. And the more effective antimissile coverage he could give them. Concentrate your forces… Instead, they’d strung them out for three hundred miles, pinched in the middle by an island chain with still-active enemy airfields. He clicked to the SAR circuit again. “We got any more pilots in the drink out here?”
“That’s a negative, Admiral. The others, no chute seen, no response to radio queries on the SAR frequency.”
Staurulakis was looking at him expectantly. He glanced around. Min Su Hwang, eyebrows lifted. Enzweiler, bland face gone pale. The rest were still focused on their consoles.
Back to the command net. He cleared his throat and typed.
BARBARIAN: All units Horde: Immediate execute: Course 100. Speed 30. Maintain formation.
The new course would take him out of the op area and close the enemy’s main targets, the carriers. The red carets jumped forward. “Range on those KH-31s,” Dan rasped to Mills.
ENCAPSULATE: Disregaard previous message. Immediately execute: course 0 nine zero. All unit reply.
“What the fuck,” Stauruakis breathed. She pushed back from the desk. “That takes us back toward Shanghai—”
Dan read it again. “This doesn’t sound like Encapsulate.”
“Or a native English speaker.” Hwang bent over him; the Korean liaison put his finger on the screen. “You’ve got a misspelling. And a misuse of the plural. Is that channel secure?”
Dan typed,
BARBARIAN: Interrogative last from Encapsulate. Suspect penetration of high-side chat.
More lines popped up the moment he hit Enter:
ENCAPSULATE: Disregeard slander from Barbarian. This is admiral. Obey what I say. Course 0 ninety.
ENCAPSULATE: This comm channel compromised. Go to satcomm navy red for voice orders.
ENCAPSULATE: Disregarde other order. Encapsulate orders false. Continue regard this net. Course 0 ninety immediately execute. All will comply.
Commander Jamail stood at his elbow, notebook screen tilted toward Dan. “Launch range on KH-31, from the inteclass="underline" seventy nautical miles.”
Dan rulered on his own terminal, and got a little over a hundred miles to the slower northern gaggle. Aegis was tracking the leaders, bogeys Papa through Tango. The system had designated them to Hampton Roads and McClung. Dan clicked to the control circuit and asked for Kristensen vice the other cruiser. “We have to maintain ABM mode. Keep scanning for ballistics,” he explained to Cheryl, who flicked her gaze his way and lifted her shoulders a millimeter.
He plucked the red phone off its socket, hoping whoever had hacked the fleet’s satellite-downlinked secret chat hadn’t gotten to their voice comms as well. The circuit beeped and synced, and he put the new course out. His units answered, but the voice (not Jung’s) answering from Sejong the Great sounded doubtful. Dan handed Hwang the handset and asked the liaison to explain it in Korean.
He still didn’t hear any clearance from Strike for his turnaround. But they weren’t objecting, either.
Wenck, from radar controclass="underline" “Range to strike Alfa: eighty miles. To strike Bravo: two hundred thirty.”
Lenson snapped, “We got it, Donnie. No need for voice announcements.”
“Sorry, Admiral.”
“Stand by to take tracks 1531, 1532, 1533, 1522 with Standard enhanced range.”
A deafening buzz racketed. Heads snapped around. The Aegis operations specialist announced, “Cuing from AWACS. Profile plot, Meteor Alfa. Elevation forty thousand… fifty thousand… moderate climb out. Identified as hostile TBM. ID as hostile. Launch point… near Gwangju, South Korea. No impact point yet.”
Shit, he hadn’t even known there was an AWACS up. Before he could react Soongapurn called, “Slow climbout, that’s liquid-fueled. Single stage, medium range. Looks like a Nodong.”
“North Korean,” Mills supplied, punching a pub from the ref shelf. “But they fired from South Korea—”
“It’s road mobile,” Soongapurn supplied, behind them now. “On transporters. They trucked them south once the armistice was signed.”
Dan felt nothing. Just the icy detachment that seemed to take him when he got past fatigue, and past fear, into life-or-death mode. A place he didn’t like, and had hoped never to inhabit again. Yet here he was.