The captain raced for the general quarters alarm himself, pressing down the ship’s PA button at the same time. “Damage Control, this is the captain,” he shouted breathlessly. “Prepare for missile attack… prepare for missile attack.” His voice echoed throughout the ship to a stunned crew before it was drowned out by the general alarm.
There was so little time. The AS-6 missile would climb steeply to achieve cruise level and would travel at Mach 3 before diving sharply at its target. It was difficult to pick up on radar, even harder to defend against. And Fahrion’s only real defense was her Phalanx Gatling gun, a last-ditch effort when the missile was already plunging downward.
“High-speed contact!” The frantic voice echoed through the bridge speaker. “Intermittent… there’s no aircraft like that.”
The captain blanked out the last words from combat. He was already giving orders to his weapons officer to activate Phalanx. That meant that when the Gatling gun’s fire-control radar locked on the missile — if it ever did — it would spew heavy bullets at more than five tons of highspeed missile dropping down on them. The intent was to destroy a warhead containing more than eleven hundred pounds of high explosive — if the bullets could penetrate it.
“I have a second contact… slightly behind the first.” Fahrion’s captain silently noted to himself that there was one Phalanx and two missiles now targeted on his ship.
“Fire chaff…” Time seemed to stop until the chaff canisters burst in a final effort to decoy the oncoming missiles. With an ear-splitting chatter, Phalanx automatically opened fire. An overwhelming din filled the pilothouse, silencing any last thoughts.
The first missile plunged through the pilothouse, detonating a split second later on the deck underneath. There was a flash, but no one in the pilothouse heard the sound for the entire forward deckhouse lifted into the air, disintegrating. Seconds later, the other missile plunged into the engineering spaces. That blast split Fahrion in two.
Just beyond the Arctic Circle, icy, stormy waters ripped at the burning remnants of Fahrion. The bow section had drifted a few hundred yards from the stern before turning turtle. After the disintegration of the entire superstructure, there was little left to identify it as part of a once-proud guided-missile frigate. The after section lit up in a brilliant gout of flame as the final storage tank for the helicopter’s avgas exploded. Diesel fuel spread in an ugly, brown patina to merge with the foamy North Atlantic. Great rollers tore at the exposed engine room. Here and there desperate survivors struggled for a handhold in the wreckage. There were few of them, and their numbers dwindled rapidly as the cold, gray sea claimed them one by one until there was no longer any sign of life.
In the command post deep within the Pentagon, electronic devices aboard a satellite continued to record the scene. A large screen displayed the death throes of the little frigate and her crew with a clarity that froze the soul. Since the detonation of the first missile within her superstructure, not a word had been uttered by the assembled officers. The awesome split-second power of the cruise missile left them stunned. More than two hundred men had vanished before their eyes.
The unanimous decision at this point was no different than the one made hours earlier in Moscow. There was no turning back.
2
LUCY REED WAS a perfect admiral’s wife. “One of a kind” was the cliché many of Andy’s seniors often used with a trace of envy. The overlying reason she understood her husband so well rested with the fact that she was a navy brat. When her father retired as an admiral, he chose to settle near Annapolis. It was there she met Andy. The old man had also been one of the early pioneers in submarines and that allowed her to understand what drew her soon-to-be husband to the boats.
For as long as Lucy could remember, even before she ever attended her first day of school, moving had been a regular part of her life. New orders meant new friends, new schools, and a different part of the United States (sometimes even another country) to get accustomed to. Unlike her mother, she thrived on the vagabond life. She eventually became more independent than her big brothers. As she grew older, Lucy found that foreign languages came easily to her and she received good grades regardless of the language used in the classroom. It was easy to understand why she was the apple of her father’s eye. What the old man also appreciated was her ability to understand when he packed his bags to be away for long periods of time. Eventually, though, her mother grew more distant with each new set of orders. She dreaded the family’s making another move or her husband’s being away for an extended period. The result was that Lucy began to organize the others. By the time the children were ready to leave home, Lucy ran the family while Lucy’s mother drank. “Navy brat” had pleasant connotations when anyone referred to Lucy.
When she married Andy Reed soon after his graduation from the academy, the young ensign was the envy of the men who knew Lucy’s father well. It was a marriage they all predicted would last because she understood the life. When Andy was accepted for sub school, it was predicted that Lucy would help to make his career. Not only was the navy life ingrained in her soul, she possessed that pert, fresh look — petite, short hair, constant smile, the consummate ensign’s wife.
Near the end of his final day in Washington before taking command of Imperator’s screening group, Andy Reed called Lucy. “I’m going to be a little late, honey… and it looks like I might have to be gone for a while.” She paused momentarily to get rid of the catch in her voice. She’d been following the progress of negotiations with the Russians each day in the Post, and she knew the reports were too optimistic, hollow, without a sound basis. She sensed that her suspicions were correct the past few weeks whenever she discussed them with Andy. He’d been arriving home later each night recently and that made her even more skeptical about the news behind the headlines. “Gone a long time?” she responded.
“Hard to tell. Could be. I really can’t be sure.”
“Want me to pack a suitcase for you?” Lucy had always packed for her husband since the first day he’d gone to sea. There were times that he would be awakened in the middle of the night and would have gone with only the clothes on his back if she hadn’t prepared his suitcase for him.
“That would be great, honey.”
“Civilian clothes, too?”
“No, just uniforms — mostly work type.”
“I bought you some new work clothes last week. Couldn’t get the stains out of the old ones anymore. Or are you going to insist on a couple of sets of the old stuff?”
“The old ones might be more comfortable, I guess.”
“Off to sea again,” she stated flatly. “Okay, I know exactly what to pack, old fellow. Been doing it for years. How about dinner? Can you spare a couple of hours for the old lady before you’re off to see the wizard.”
“You know I wouldn’t miss that.” Reed had missed exactly one dinner with his wife before any extended deployment and that had only been because she’d been rushed off to the hospital to give birth. When he returned home on that only night, he found a note containing the instructions for how long he should keep the meat loaf in the oven. The other kids had the table set when he arrived.
“You want the same old Chateaubriand, or will you put up with some meat loaf and macaroni and cheese?” Teasing him with that same question was part of their pattern.