“This is PaCom. Go ahead. Over.”
“This is Savo. We have lock-on at this time. Over.”
“This is PaCom. Cleared for autonomous engagement. Intercept and terminate. Over.”
Dan swallowed. “Um… This is Savo Island. Unable to comply at this time. We have radar track and lock-on, but due to range and speed limitations, the target is too far east and too far above the horizon to engage. The next opportunity will be on its next orbit, ninety minutes from now.”
“This is PaCom. Copy all. Interrogative: Can you intercept and terminate at that time?”
Dan cupped the handset, keeping his finger off the Sync button. “Donnie, before I answer him, homer on the Block 4’s infrared, right? Is it even gonna home on an ice-cold satellite?”
“It’s not purely infrared, Captain. That’s just part of the decoy-penetration algorithm.”
“So that’s a yes, it’ll radar-home?”
“Hey, I ain’t guaranteeing it’s gonna do shit,” Wenck muttered.
“What’s that, Chief?”
“Nothing, sir. But you also gotta… gotta remember, this thing’s moving in longitude, too. Like, the earth turns under it. So it’s not gonna pop above the horizon at the same place as before.”
“Wenck, I’m on the phone to PaCom. Are we gonna be able to knock this thing down or not?”
Wenck turned those blue blue eyes to Dan without seeming to see him. As if a million calculations were streaming past behind them. He didn’t answer for a second. Then said, “Sir, I don’t know. Gonna be damn close, all I can say. A diagonal speed vector along with the crossing geometry. And if there’s any maneuvering juice at all on that thing, any smarts built in so it can dodge once it knows somebody’s trying to hit it, the answer’s definitely gonna be no.”
Dan blinked, still holding the phone. Met Noblos’s lifted eyebrows, folded arms, his half smirk. As if their failure would prove, in some way, his own superiority. But he had to put that aside. For now. “Bill, what’s your call? Can we knock this thing down?”
“Savo, this is PaCom. Over.”
He didn’t answer, waiting for the civilian physicist. Who at last drawled, “Well, now that I’ve got it tuned for your technicians, Captain… it might be within the outer edge of the engagement envelope. Theoretically. If everything worked perfectly. But I’d have to say… the odds are against you.”
That seemed to be all they were was going to get. He pressed Transmit. “PaCom, Savo. Our intercept capabilities against satellites are… marginal. How badly do you want this guy taken out? That will impact salvo size and any refires needed. Over.”
“This is PaCom. We need it taken down. ASAP. On its next orbit, if at all possible. Expend what ordnance is necessary. Over.”
Dan exchanged glances with Mills. The TAO was frowning, pointing up at the weapons inventory board. “This is Savo. Two issues. First: This is a Chinese satellite, correct? We had not understood here that hostilities had gone hot. Interrogative tasking. Over.”
The distant voice turned hard. “Far above your pay grade, Captain. But for your information, an Air Force Rivet Joint recon plane is missing east of Hainan Island. We suspect shootdown. Execute your orders. Over.”
Okay, that was clear enough. “This is Savo. Roger on execution. However, important to make clear we have only eight, I say again, numeral eight, TBMD birds remaining. Interrogative: Will there be resupply? Interrogative: How many should I commit to this mission? Over.”
“This is PaCom. I say for the last time: expend what is necessary. Report results ASAP. PaCom out.”
He blew out, resocketed the handset, and exchanged astonished looks with Mills. “Okay, that clarifies things.”
“They really want this thing off the board.”
“If it’s synthetic aperture radar, it can track forces anywhere in the Pacific, and pass targeting on our battle groups.”
“But if we do, it legitimizes their shooting down our satellites too,” Noblos put in. “Which they definitely can. A multistage solid-fuel kinetic-kill vehicle from Xichang Satellite Launch Center—”
Wenck said, “But they already shot down our recon plane, right? I’d say, it’s game on, and we’re ten points behind.”
Dan glanced at his watch. “Like the man says: above our pay grades. All right, eighty-two minutes until it comes around again. We’ve got an orbital plotting function in GCCS, right? Get that up where we can see it. Also, dig out what exactly this thing is, and get the EWs tuned in if it’s radiating. Donnie, if we shoot a two-round salvo, will we have time to refire? Or have to wait until the orbit after that? Sounds like this is getting urgent.”
But Wenck was shaking his head. “We can’t refire on the next orbit, Dan — I mean, Captain. Each pass, the track moves west, remember? Or the earth rotates out from under it… whichever way you want to put it. If we miss on this go-round, we’re not gonna see this thing again until tomorrow.”
Dan blew out again. Right; with a period of ninety minutes, that would be about… twenty-two degrees of longitude with each pass, or, here near the equator—
“Fifteen hundred miles,” Wenck supplied, apparently doing the same calculation, but faster. “Way out of range. So this coming up is gonna be our one whack at this piñata.”
Which also explained why PaCom had been so insistent that they fire now. They were isolating the battlefield; taking down the sensors the other side needed to fight an over-the-horizon battle. Just as Simko had predicted.
But he was the guy with his butt in the crack, squeezed between astrophysics, operational necessity, and emptying magazines. He felt for the Fire key, on its steel chain around his neck with his Academy-issue dog tags. “TAO, set up for three-round engagement. Pass what’s going on to the battle group commander. Give somebody else the air defense mission. Do we need to steam west, Donnie? Will that improve our geometry?”
He glanced at the geo plot, overlaid now with the green curved lines of the satellite track function. They didn’t have a hell of a lot of sea room before slamming into the Malay Peninsula, but he could run in that direction for eighty-two minutes.
“Thirty or forty miles is not going to make a difference,” Noblos sniffed.
“But it can’t hurt. Let’s come to two-seven-zero and kick her up to flank. Prepare for three-round engagement.” He stood, stretching the pain out of his back and neck, staring at the GCCS. Taking in the whole vast bowl of the China Sea, and the increasing number of air and sea contacts up to the north, off the coast.
So both sides trudged toward war. Like sleepwalkers…
An hour later, they were fully manned. Two watch sections, including Cheryl and Amarpeet, crowded CIC. Dan wanted them all in on this. Not just for training, but so they could say they’d been here when it started — the first offensive step of the war that now seemed unavoidable, though chat kept reporting UN efforts to avert it. No further news on George Washington, but another civilian airliner had attempted an approach, to Yokota Air Base. A Japanese F-16 had brought it down short of the runway, unfortunately into a heavily populated part of Tokyo.
The customary litany of warning bells, dampers being shut, main decks being sealed, streamed past but barely registered. He leaned on one elbow, wondering if he should fire three missiles or four. Four would cut his inventory in half. But PaCom had made it clear this thing had to come down. Finally he told Mills to make it a three-round salvo. “I know it’s not doctrine, but let’s just shoot, shoot, shoot. Then look, and maybe shoot again. Maybe.”