“Gotta go,” Lenson said, bolting for the door. He threw back over a shoulder, “Stay in your stateroom, Agent. We’ll reconvene on this, all right? If we come out the other side.”
25
The general quarters alarm rang on and on. Then cut off as abruptly as it had begun. Savo creaked like an aging carriage as she leaned into a slow turn.
Letting himself into CIC, Dan ran his gaze over the displays, the combat systems summary, the surface summary. On the far right, System Availability. Green across the board: SM-2s up, guns up, VLS, TLAM, Harpoon up, and Phalanx ready. But the weapons inventory was sobering. Savo had expended all her Harpoons. Her magazines held no more Sparrows, and only two Block 4 antimissile rounds. The seas were heavier tonight. The winds were increasing. The gun video showed the dead black of a night sea, the sparkle of stars. The forecastle camera was focused on the missing bow. The truncated, torn-up ground tackle was only just visible in the starlight.
On the rightmost display, the Aegis picture. As he sank into the command chair, tucking the worn blue plebe-issue bathrobe against the contact of bare skin with icy leather, a new constellation glittered at extreme range. Wenck and Terranova had their heads down at their console, palavering in low voices.
The callouts identified the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt battle group. The carrier. A cruiser. Three destroyers. And the replenishment ship that would refuel Savo before she and Curtis Wilbur headed back to Guam.
After that… it was out of his hands. For good, or ill.
“FDR’s three hundred miles away,” Singhe murmured, beside him. “Call sign of battle group commander is ‘Shangri-La.’ Ten, twelve hours out, if the seas don’t get any steeper, and they maintain speed.” From the strike officer, the familiar scent of sandalwood. From him, he was afraid, the reek of sleep, perspiration, and unwashed underwear.
“Okay, but why’d you sound GQ?”
“We received a launch cuing, Captain.”
“From where? All our satellites—”
“Not a satellite. From AWACS. Passed to us via the Slow Lead data link.”
“Dave got that set up? I never heard—”
Singhe blinked. “I believe he told you, yessir—”
Dan twisted in his seat, cutting her off. “Donnie? Chief Wenck?”
“Yessir, we’re lookin’ for it.” His and Terranova’s intent frowns, lit a jaundiced amber, hovered above the console.
“Where do they cue it to… okay, yeah.” He read the note, in Singhe’s handwriting, on a message log beside the red phone. The launch coordinates were far inland, in the Wuyi Mountains. Farther than he’d thought AWACS could reach. They must be at extreme altitude, max radiated power. Trying to fill the gap left by the loss of the satellites. Or else the allies had some other reconnaissance asset out there. Perhaps a high-altitude drone.
“Shifting to ALIS mode,” Wenck announced. “But it’s probably out of range.”
Dan took a last glance at the rightmost screen. “Put up the gun radar.”
Terranova’s soft voice: “All stations, Aegis control. Stand by… shift to BMD mode.”
The god’s-eye view vanished, succeeded, in the next blink of an eye, by the fanlike sector scan. The gun radar came up on the port display, providing at least a little local awareness. Dan felt naked without Stonecipher watching his back. But nothing threatened on either screen. Just the random freckle of terrain return from far inland. He flinched away as someone set coffee down next to him. When he looked up, it was Fang. The liaison’s shoulders sagged.
“Thanks, Chip. You bearing up?”
“Doing okay. Look like you need a jolt, Captain.”
Dan took a slug, monitoring the ALIS output on the rightmost display. The search beams clicked back and forth. The sea between Savo and the Chinese coast gave nothing back. The coastline came up clearly, outlined in honey yellow. Behind it, a variegated clutter of mountain return. To southward, a ghostly-faint return from northern Taiwan.
The display blanked, changed. “These coordinates,” Wenck announced at the same time the forward door creaked and someone else let himself in. Dan spared a quick glance. It was Dr. Noblos.
The man they’d just fingered as Savo’s resident rapist.
The scientist was in slacks and a homey-looking green cardigan sweater. His short white hair was brushed back. He leaned against the jamb with arms folded and chin up. “Those launch coordinates are out of your range,” he said, with an air of being glad to say so.
Dan said, “Can we get on it when it’s in range?”
“Doing that now, sir,” the Terror muttered.
The forward door creaked open again. Really, he had to get somebody to check out the hinges and seals. A noisy watertight door was one ready to fail. Savo was getting weary too. She deserved a spell in port. An overhaul.
A slight figure in blue coveralls slipped in. Noiselessly, it drifted to a corner opposite the scientist. Chief Toan, the “sheriff.” Keeping an eye on Noblos, as directed.
Dan shifted his attention back to the situation at hand. “Good on ya, Terror. Amy, any way we can get updates on the track via—”
“On it, Captain. Those go to ALIS automatically as they’re generated. This is just a slower data link than satcomm used to give us.”
“Understood.” He stared up at the screen, hands flat on the desk. Waiting for their cued target to come over the horizon, to where the radar could grab it.
“There it is,” Terranova murmured at the same moment Wenck said, “Locking on. Jeez. Like a bat outta hell.”
The brackets vibrated around a small, fast-moving white dot just off the coast. It clicked forward with each sweep, as if escapement-loaded. Headed toward Taiwan, but the altitude and speed from the swiftly climbing readouts told him, even in the absence yet of a predicted impact point, that it wasn’t aimed at the island itself. “Missile lock-on, designate contact Meteor Juliet. Going way too fast, too high, for Taipei,” Wenck called.
Singhe murmured, “Not coming our way, either. Azimuth’s too far south.”
Dan blew out and relaxed in his chair. Exchanged a relieved nod with Fang. “So… where is it aimed?”
Singhe typed, then studied her screen. “Someplace to the east. We’ll know in a couple of minutes. Once ALIS generates aim point.”
“Impact point. Not aim point. They’re different, Amy. Intent versus result. You hardly ever hit exactly where you aim.”
“Thank you, Captain. Correction noted.” She jotted something on her notepad.
Captain Fang lifted a headphone from one ear. “I have speed and altitude data from our Patriot battery. By voice.”
“Good. Can they take it?”
“No. They can track, feed us data, but they are out of missiles, Dan. As I told you? They were all expended countering the attacks.”
Why did everyone keep telling him they’d already told him things? Obviously, a conspiracy. To gaslight him. Or else he was missing stuff. He grunted, “Uh-huh, understand. Anybody got an ID?”
Terranova said, head down, “Seems to be a two-stager… we saw separation… but still, a pretty big return… could be a DF-21.”
“Intermediate range. Solid-fuel, two-stage, road-transported,” Chief Wenck added.
Dan leaned back and stretched, frowning. It was clearer with each second that the missile, still gaining altitude as it arched over the west coast of Taiwan, wasn’t headed for that island. But if not, where? Or was it just a threat, a demonstration, on the order of “your antimissile capabilities are exhausted; Taipei is helpless now”?