Lieutenant Peter Matos flew his F-18 fighter on a straight and level course. Reluctantly, he pushed his radio- transmit button. “Homeplate, this is Navy three-four-seven.” He continued to hold down on the transmit button so he could not receive a reply from the Nimitz until he was ready to deal with it. His mind whirled with conflict. Something was still not quite right. Finally, he slid his finger off the button, which freed the channel so he could receive their reply.
“Roger, Navy three-four-seven. We have also registered the intercept,” Petty Officer Kyle Loomis answered. Matos knew that the carrier had been equipped to monitor the missile, and that the men in electronics Room E-334 had watched the needle that registered the sudden end-of-transmission from the AIM-63X as it had impacted against the target, destroying its transmitter.
“Navy three-four-seven, this is Homeplate.”
The voice in Matos’s earphones was unmistakably that of Commander Sloan. Even though a special encoding voice scrambler was being used to prevent anyone else from monitoring their channel, the deep and measured qualities of Sloan’s voice came through. Matos discovered that he had suddenly braced himself, as if he had run across Sloan in one of the Nimitz ’s below-decks corridors.
“We are receiving conflicting signals,” Sloan said.
Matos sensed a growing anger at the edges of Sloan’s voice. He had never personally experienced a run-in with the Commander, but too many of the other pilots had. Sloan’s wrath was legendary. Don’t get jumpy, Matos said to himself. It’s just an electronic echo that makes him sound that way. Keep your mind on the job.
“Our monitors agree with your report of missile impact. But we’re still monitoring the target drone,” Sloan continued. “Its condition reads as steady. That conflicts with the Phoenix’s readout. Do you have the engagement area in good radar resolution?”
Matos slumped lower in the cockpit seat to the limits that his cinched-up harness would allow. His heart sank with the words, and he could taste the bile from the pit of his stomach. Christ Almighty, Mother of God. He moistened his lips and cleared his throat before pressing the transmit button. “Roger, Homeplate. This is three- four-seven. I’m beginning to get the impact zone in good resolution. Stand by.”
James Sloan had no intention of being put off, even momentarily, by one of his subordinates. “Three-four- seven, execute a radar lock-on with the Phoenix,” he transmitted. “The test missile must have failed before it engaged the target. That would explain why we still read the target drone.”
“Roger, Homeplate.” But Matos knew that the Phoenix had hit something. He had watched the radar tracks converge. He also knew that the Nimitz ’s shipboard radar could not see the impact area. The carrier was hundreds of miles astern of his F-18, which put it out of radar range of the test site. All that the carrier people would be able to tell from the equipment in the electronics room was that there was no longer any radio signal coming from the test missile, and that the target drone continued, inexplicably, to send a loud-and-clear transmission.
Matos huddled over his radar screen. The target had maintained a steady course for a short while after the intercept. Matos turned on two cockpit switches, then made an adjustment to the radar. He could now plot both the target drone and the Phoenix’s altitude losses on his vertical display board. Beyond the target was the faint radar reflection that was the remains of the AIM-63X Phoenix missile. It was visible for half a minute, and Matos tracked it continuously as it fell into the sea. “Homeplate, this is three-four-seven. The test missile has dropped into the ocean. I am now tracking the target drone. I am locked to it in the vertical scan. It is descending. Altitude is approximately fifty-one thousand feet. Descent rate registers as twelve thousand feet per minute.”
“Okay,” Sloan answered, “that’s good. Our readout still shows the target as level at sixty-two thousand. The target’s transmitting equipment must have been damaged by the impact. Maybe the Phoenix just grazed the drone.” With no warhead, Sloan knew that complete destruction would require a full-face hit. “Continue to track, and we’ll consider our shipboard monitors as dysfunctional.”
“Roger.” But something else bothered Matos. The target was not falling very rapidly. His own jet could dive faster than the target was going down. For what should have been a smashed target drone tumbling through the sky, it was not performing as expected.
Data is missing, he thought. The only reason it made no sense was that he was operating without all the information. Garbage in, garbage out, as they said in the computer classes at Pensacola. Don’t jump to wild conclusions. Leave the emotional responses to civilians. Military technicians waited for the data. Technology was really the science of hindsight. When they corrected and analyzed all the material, they would easily discover what had made this test seem so bizarre.
Matos was no longer apprehensive. There was something about rote procedures that was calming and comforting. As long as he stuck to the technician’s routines, then he could push his fears away. The blips on his radar had again become no more than game pieces, and the entire maneuver had taken on the aura of electronic chess.
The impact has distorted the drone’s shape, Matos thought. It’s been bent into some sort of low-drag lifting body. Flattened out into a metal parachute that has already reached its terminal velocity. Wilder things have happened. Matos felt that Commander Sloan’s idea that the test missile had only nicked the target drone was probably right. That would explain how and why the drone’s misleading signals were still being routinely sent to the Nimitz.
“Vertical scan indicates twenty-five thousand,” Matos reported. Events had settled down, and things were beginning to make sense. “Seventeen thousand feet. The target is now tracking thirty-eight degrees to the right of its intercepted course. I am showing…”
As Matos’s eyes traveled over the array of data readouts, he froze when he saw the new trend. It was too far from normal to pretend otherwise. “Homeplate… the target’s descent rate has decreased.” Matos’s voice was pitched higher. “Eight thousand a minute. Now it’s six thousand a minute. The altitude is fourteen thousand feet. The descent rate has dropped to three thousand a minute. The target is leveling out at eleven thousand feet!”
After just a few minutes’ pause, Sloan’s voice filled the void. “Navy three-four-seven, I don’t know what the hell has happened out there, but you better find out. Fast.” There was no longer any mistake about the timbre of Sloan’s voice or its intent.
“Roger, Homeplate. Proceeding toward the target. I’ll obtain a visual sighting.” Matos pushed the throttles forward. The F-18 accelerated rapidly, pushing him back against his seat. A flood of disjointed emotions swelled in him, but he held them at bay. He directed all his energies at the technical task of intercepting the moving radar target.
“That’s a good question, Commander. What the hell has happened out there?” Randolf Hennings had begun to allow himself a small measure of an admiral’s anger. He had played silent errand boy far too long. Retired or not, Hennings’s natural propensity for leadership-in mothballs for the past several years, like his naval uniforms-had begun to emerge. Sloan was losing control of the situation.
Hennings had not liked Commander James Sloan from their first handshake. There was something too shrewd and calculated about the man. He had shown no hint of good nature. It was as if the universe had been created solely for the benefit of Commander Sloan.
Sloan had ignored the Admiral’s question. “We’ll take over,” he said to Petty Officer Loomis. He dismissed the technician, and Loomis left the room quickly and quietly. “Nothing wrong has happened, I’m sure,” Sloan finally answered, turning toward Hennings. “But even if something has… there’s no need to let it get beyond the two of us. I won’t call the electronics specialist back until we’ve resolved whatever the problem is.”
“There are three of us,” Hennings said. “Don’t forget your pilot. He knows more than we do. He’s the one who’s out there. We don’t get a very clear picture…” He motioned toward the stack of electronics. “… from all of this.”
“Matos is no problem,” Sloan answered. “I know how to pick men. I know how to assign jobs.”
Randolf Hennings looked with marked disdain at the young commander. He doesn’t command men. He uses them, Hennings thought. Men like him were no good for a crew, a ship, or a navy. “Don’t be surprised if your subordinates sometimes take a tack against the prevailing wind.”
“ Surprised? Hell, no. I’d be amazed.” But as soon as he said it, Sloan knew he had gone too far. He had let the remark out too quickly, on the heels of all the wrong turns that events had taken. The remark hung in the air between the two men, and Sloan regretted it. An unnecessary indulgence.
Sloan tried to eradicate his error. He smiled at Hennings, then forced a small laugh. “You’re right, Admiral. They sometimes try to tack against the wind. We all do, on occasion.”
Hennings nodded slightly but said nothing. He resented being linked to Sloan, no matter how minor the
