“The numbers aren’t there, Captain,” Noblos put in. “You could go with two. Or even one, and save the taxpayers from throwing away more money. I don’t believe you have decent P-sub-K on any of them.”
Dan waved Longley and a sandwich off, then relented. He picked at chips and a pickle in between scrolling down intel updates. Japan had just announced mobilization, and the Diet had approved conscription, for the first time since World War II. The Republic of Korea was already mobilized, and Seoul, only a few miles from the DMZ, was being evacuated.
He shivered, recalling the eerie wail of the sirens there during the weekly drills. Both halves of that divided country had been on a near-war footing since the armistice. Now they were preparing for a rematch.
He’d read through OPLAN 5081. He had to keep reminding himself that GCCS wasn’t always accurate. But it looked like the first stage, positioning forces behind Taiwan and in blocking positions in the passages out of the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, was almost complete.
Once Strike One joined up with its Australian contingent, it would neutralize and bypass the Spratly Islands, off the Vietnamese coast. The Vietnam People’s Navy would occupy and hold behind them. They’d claimed the Spratlys for centuries, and only lost them to the Chinese in 1988; he suspected their repossession would be Hanoi’s reward for joining the allies. Strike One could then continue north to seize or at least neutralize the Paracels.
At that point, an iron ring of sensors and weapons would encircle the Middle Kingdom. The allied advance would stop there, hold whatever counteroffensive the Chinese could mount, and contemplate the next step. If one would be necessary; the administration seemed to assume the blockade would force war termination, in and of itself.
Just as the British had thought, in 1914, that their naval blockade would force Germany to the peace table. He shook his head, comparing the GCCS display to the deployment chart in the op order. Everything seemed to be moving into place, except for the hole south of Kyushu where the Washington battle group should’ve been. Losing the carrier’s airborne sensors and ASW aircraft left a huge gap in the defenses.
“SAR complete.”
“Stand by for sunup… counting down… five… four… three… two… one.”
“Satellite Alfa above the horizon. Still in atmospheric distortion… Target acquired.” Terranova’s soft, determined voice. “Stand by… lock-on, Satellite Alfa.”
Dan got up and stalked through CIC, back to the electronic warfare stacks. Put his hands on the operator’s shoulders from behind, and studied the green flicker of the SLQ-32. “What have we got?”
“I’m not picking up anything, Captain.” The tech explained that if it was an ocean recon bird, it would be putting out power in the X band, giving its radar a resolution of about a meter. “That’d be adequate to pick up aircraft. Even something the size of a tank. If it’s a comm relay, we’d copy that, too. But—”
“But what?” Dan glanced back to the command desk.
“We’re not picking up shit, sir. Maybe a very faint, intermittent transponder emission. That’s all.”
“Captain,” Mills called. Dan wheeled and jogged back.
They had track again. The same tiny contact as before, creeping above the artificially generated black cutout of the radar horizon. Cupped by the vibrating brackets of the Aegis lock-on. “Permission to engage?” Mills murmured.
Dan nodded. It didn’t matter what it was. Their orders were clear. “Released.” He flicked up the red cover and hit the Fire Auth switch.
Next to him, Mills murmured, “Confirm, batteries released for three-round engagement. Shifting to auto mode.”
Out of the corner of his eye Dan noted Mills lifting his hands from the keyboard, like a pianist finishing a demanding piece. Wenck and Noblos had set the no-fire threshold to.1, one-tenth. If ALIS calculated a lesser probability of kill, she wouldn’t fire. A hush the space of a drawn breath stilled the compartment. His gaze darted to the ordnance status board, to the surface radar picture, to the GCCS; then flicked back to the Aegis display.
The bellow of the rocket motor sounded muffled, more distant this time than usual. For a second he wondered if it was some sort of misfire or abort. Then Mills reached for the joystick, and pivoted the camera on the aft missile deck.
The picture came up center screen. A solid white wall whirled, thinned, illuminated from above; then blew off, gradually revealing a calm green sea. Then it was blotted out by a harsh illumination so brilliant the camera blanked, before opening its eye again to more smoke. “Bird one away,” Terranova announced. “Bird two away… bird three away. Rounds complete from after magazine.”
Mills joysticked the camera to follow pinpoints of flame until they winked out of sight. “Stand by for refire. Select and authorize missiles eleven and twelve in forward magazine.”
They’d agreed on a shoot-shoot-shoot sequence, with three in the first salvo, then a look, with two missiles prepared for a refire. Dan doubted they’d have time for a second salvo, fast as this thing was traveling, but if PaCom needed it shot down, Savo wouldn’t fail for lack of trying. As to what would happen after that… he put that aside. The fog of war was shrouding the whole Pacific.
“Twenty seconds to intercept,” Noblos announced.
On the right-hand screen, the white dot crept steadily higher. The horizon was out of sight now, below the beam. The brackets pulsed, not so much vibrating as swelling and then shrinking. Probably a reaction to the varying reflectivity they’d noted on the first orbit. Terranova had posited it might be rotating, presenting different faces of an irregular body. But why would a recon satellite rotate? There had to be some other explanation.
Unless this wasn’t a recon satellite…
“Stand by for intercept… now.”
The white dot suddenly novaed. It wobbled, pulsating much more wildly, brightening and dimming. The brackets slewed back, slipped off, steered back on. But their grip seemed less certain. Off-center. “What’s that mean?” Dan called. “Donnie? Bill?”
“Not sure.”
“Could we have a hit?”
“More likely a near miss,” Noblos called back. He didn’t sound excited, or even involved. Once more Dan wondered why the guy seemed so pessimistic about the system he himself had helped engineer. He really ought to have inquired more closely into the relationships among the Missile Defense Agency, the Navy Advanced Projects Office, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Commander, Operational Test and Evaluation Force, and Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. All had taken part in the design of the Block 4 and the thrust-vector-control booster. He’d met some of the monsters that lurked in the Navy’s development labyrinth, back when he’d worked with Tomahawk. Not everyone wanted a new program to succeed. But he couldn’t believe Noblos actually wanted them to fail. More likely negativity was just part of his personality.
“Second round intercepts… now.”
The radar return pulsed, but didn’t strobe this time. Actually, Dan couldn’t see any effect. “Are we calling that a miss?”
The EW operator called, “Transponder ceased emitting.”
The CIC officer walked back, and returned. “The signal was intermittent, but he was hearing it. Then it stopped.”
“Stand by for impact, shot three… now.”