“Concur,” Mills said instantly.
Dan opened the order of battle and hastily searched it as the 1MC announced hollowly, “Now set Circle William throughout the ship. Secure all outside accesses.” The A/C sighed to a stop. Doors thudded closed. The air base. An army base, too, though no specific location. Within the city limits? The database held little on Jodhpur itself. Population, nearly a million. A tourist destination. An old fort.
When he looked back up, the IPP was at the western edge of the city, on the far side from the airfield, and the AOU was five or six miles. If they were aiming at anything, it wasn’t the strip, unless the missile was off course. He didn’t have hard numbers on the Ghauri, but the circular error, probable for most second-generation liquid-fueled theater-range weapons, the Al-Huseyns and the Scud derivatives, was around two miles. But even given that generous estimate of its probable accuracy, this thing wasn’t aimed at the airfield. “It’s definitely meant for the city,” he muttered. “Or if it originally wasn’t, it’s now off course and headed for it.”
“Concur,” Mills said again. “The IPP is clearly west of the city, but close enough for major damage.”
Dan glanced at the CIC officer, who was still clutching the handset. He shook his head slightly, looking scared.
“Okay, FIS to green,” Dan said.
Mills touched his mike. “Launchers into ‘operate’ mode. Set up to take Meteor Alfa, two-round salvo. Deselect all safeties and interlocks. Stand by to fire. On CO’s command.”
Dan clicked up the red cover over the switch. ALIS was computing trajectory, intercept point, probability of kill. Mills was tapping away at his terminal, entering a backup order in case Dan’s glitched.
He took a deep, slow breath, watching the ionization plume waver and grow. Taking his time. Thinking it through. But knowing, too, he’d never be sure. And over time, interpretations and stories and maybe even legends would grow around this moment. Like Sarajevo. But all that was out of his hands.
He reached out and unsocketed the red handset of the uncovered high-frequency command net. Bowed his head, then pressed the button. “Flash, flash, flash. This is Savo Island. I pass in the blind: Pakistani missile targeted on Jodhpur. Have consistent drop sync with all commands, this and other nets. I assess that the missile must be engaged to prevent massive loss of life. Engaging at this time. Out.”
He socketed the handset without waiting for a response. Took one more deep breath, then said, in as confident a tone as he could manage, “You have permission to engage.”
17
A heart-stopping pause, during which the toxic-gas-vent dampers whunked shut. Dan tensed, hunched, finger still on the switch. Wait… had he inserted the Fire Auth key? Yes, he had. The steel chain lay close to his hand. But was ALIS going to initiate? Or were they already too late?
The endless moment stretched.
Then a roar vibrated through the hull. “Bird one away,” Mills intoned. A pause, then a second roar. “… Bird two away. Firing complete.”
On the LSD two small bright symbols detached from the circle-and-cross of Savo Island’s own-ship. Morphing into blue semicircles, they headed rapidly inshore, leaping ahead with incredible speed from sweep to sweep of the Aegis spokes. They were already at full speed, almost four kilometers a second, as the dual-thrust motors of the first stage boosted them into exoatmospheric flight.
Dan blew out, with a strange sense of déjà vu. He’d dreamed this, years before, though he couldn’t recall exactly where. Which meant something, he wasn’t sure what. Maybe that time didn’t exist, or that it all existed at once…
He scrubbed his face, trying to deny fatigue. “Matt, get a message out. Short and sweet, but make it clear we stood by until we were certain the TPI was over a population center. Ten Block 4s remaining. Continuing on station, but fuel state critical.”
“Coffee? Just made a fresh pot.” Chief Zotcher set a mug by his elbow. The heavy Victory style, with the ship’s crest on one side and a sonar system logo on the other.
“Uh… thanks. But, Chief, I’d rather have you nailed to that screen. That emitter’s still out there. And there’s gotta be a sub attached to it.”
“We got our best young eyes on it, Captain.”
Dan forced himself to his feet and carried the mug over to the EW stack. He inspected the screen over the operator’s shoulder. “That Snoop Tray, day before yesterday… no, day before that. Nothing since?”
“Nothing radiating out there, Captain.”
“How about from shore?”
The EW petty officer said there was intense air activity over the Pakistani naval air base nearest them. “A major attack. Heavy jamming, AA radars, and the cryppies are reporting a lot of air-to-air chatter.”
Dan regarded it for a few seconds, then was drawn irresistibly back to the large-screen displays. He’d been away less than a minute, but the blue semicircles of Savo’s outgoing rounds were already closing in on the red caret-symbol of the target. He gripped the back of his chair, hardly daring to breathe. “Stand by for intercept,” said Wenck, words eerily uttered at the very same moment by Terranova, baritone and soprano, an ominous duet. “Stand by…”
The symbols met. Aegis’s lock-on brackets jerked, apparently snagging its own terminal vehicle momentarily instead of the target, then recentered. Dan leaned forward.
The radar return blurred, widening, elongating. A second later it began to pulse, then all at once glowed much more brightly.
“Intercept,” Wenck called from the Aegis console. “That winking is rotating debris. The debris is spreading… spreading out… ionization trail growing… it’s burning up.”
The radar return showed what Dan assumed was the smaller debris field left from the explosion of the Block 4’s warhead. Not a gigantic payload, but anything hitting at fifteen thousand miles an hour carried a punch. The Ghauri was single-stage. Its payload remained integral with the airframe, like the old V-2. Once it was destabilized, they could depend on the atmosphere and its own speed to tear it apart. As he watched, the speeding dart of their second round hit as well. The radar return expanded suddenly to five times its previous size, like a bursting firework. Then, slowly, faded.
“Payload detonation,” Wenck intoned. “Both Standards connected.”
The CIC crew rose at their consoles, cheering, clapping. The trail faded, widened, glittered, as the lock-on brackets began to hunt back and forth, uncertain what to lock onto. ALIS’s eagle eye continued to show ever-tinier pieces of debris, the blaze of ionization as they turned to metal gas. But there was no longer a central contact.
He stayed hunched forward, watching the last fading falling sparklings. Then blinked slowly. Even as the vent dampers clunked open, and the air-conditioning whooshed back on, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this it wasn’t over. Not at all.
It had only begun.
The morning resumed. Longley brought up scrambled eggs and toast and limp too-pink ham, but Dan only picked at it, then set it aside to slide up and down the command table until it dove off during a bad roll. Savo set flight quarters, nosed around into the wind, and launched Red Hawk to relieve Mitscher’s SH-60. The ETs came down every half hour with updates from Mumbai news. And the high-side chat was still up, so he was getting DIA analysis, press releases, and reports on the UN’s efforts to arrange a cease-fire. But they weren’t getting anything from Pakistan, and Mumbai seemed limited to reporting bellicose statements rather than actual news.