Somewhere to his right, Seaman Dreyfus summoned up a measure of phlegm, and hocked it over the lifeline. “Where do you learn all of this crazy shit?” he asked.
Melillo panned his binoculars slowly to the right, methodically taking in small sections of sky at a time, the way they’d taught him during lookout training. “I just pick it up here and there,” he said. “I read. Watch the History Channel. Stuff like that.”
“Yeah,” Dreyfus said. “But how do you
Melillo smiled to himself. “I guess,” he said. “Maybe.” In truth, he though he probably
Dreyfus hocked another one over the rail, and followed it up with a nasty sounding snort. “This cold is killing me,” he said. “My feet feel like they’re frozen to the deck plates, my damned nose won’t stop running.
He stomped his feet several times, to get his circulation moving. “Damn,” he said. “It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”
Melillo grinned. “Yeah it is,” he said. “Hey … Do you know where that saying comes from? About freezing the balls off a brass monkey?”
“Get the hell out of here,” Dreyfus said. “You really know where that comes from?”
“Yeah,” Melillo said. “It goes back to the days of sail, when they used to stack cannonballs on deck, ready for use — next to the cannon. You know, in little pyramids, like you see on pirate movies. Well cannonballs are round, right? So they had to come up with a way to keep them from rolling all over the deck …” He paused, his binoculars held motionless as he listened intently.
Dreyfus got tired of waiting for him to finish. “Yeah?”
“Be quiet for a second,” Melillo said. “I’m listening.”
“Listening for what?” Dreyfus asked.
“Shhhhhhhh!”
Seaman Apprentice Melillo shifted the earphone of his headset to free up his right ear, and pulled the cold weather hood out of the way. The air was insanely cold against his exposed skin, but he stood without moving, straining to recognize a sound near the very bottom end of his hearing.
There it was. Yeah. It sounded like …
His binoculars came up again, sweeping the sky in the direction of the sound. After a few seconds of searching, he found what he was looking for: a cluster of black shapes, silhouetted against the starry sky. He calculated a couple of quick angles, and grabbed the push-to-talk button on his headset.
“Bridge — Starboard Lookout. Multiple helicopters, bearing zero-four-zero. Position Angle thirty-three. Moving from left to right very rapidly.”
Even as he was listening to the reply from the bridge, he saw the helos turn toward the ship. He had a better look at them now, and the sound of their rotors was now easily distinguishable. He keyed his headset again. “Bridge — Starboard Lookout. I have three helicopters, I say again
The phone talker on the bridge said something in reply, but Melillo’s attention was focused on the helos now. Through his binoculars, he saw several brief flashes of light in the night sky.
“Incoming missiles!” he shouted into his headset. “Missiles inbound, from the starboard bow! Bearing zero- four-five!”
Again there was a reply from the bridge, but it was drowned out by the bark of an amplified voice from the ship’s topside speakers. “This is the XO from the bridge. We have inbound Vipers! This is
The announcement was immediately followed by the raucous whoop of the missile salvo alarm.
Melillo and Dreyfus were nearly knocked over by another Sailor, running past them through the darkness. They made it into the starboard break, clambered through a watertight door, and were dogging it behind themselves when they felt the ship shudder with the first launch of outbound missiles.
As the roar of the missiles was fading, Seaman Apprentice Melillo said, “We’re getting our birds up there. They’ll knock down the inbounds.”
The last word was overpowered by a prolonged metallic burp from the forward Close-In Weapon System, as the defensive Gatling gun hurled a thousand or so 20mm projectiles at the inbound missiles. The sound was followed by two muffled explosions, not very many yards from the ship. The CIWS growled again, pumping out another stream of 20mm tungsten bullets, but it was a fraction of a second too late.
Even as two of the S-24 rockets were shredded by the ship’s Close-In Weapon System, a third flew toward its target, unaware that it had escaped early destruction by a margin of less than five meters.
The 240mm Russian-built rocket was only marginally more intelligent than a rifle bullet. It had no sensors, no guidance package, and no processing capability of any kind. It knew only how to ignite its solid fuel engine, how to spin its airframe for flight stabilization, and how to detonate when its arming circuit was completed.
It could not be fooled by chaff, or diverted by jamming. It could only fly in a straight trajectory, and explode on cue, but it did these simple things very well.
Ten meters from the target, the rocket’s simple proximity fuse triggered the warhead. One hundred and twenty-three kilograms of RDX-based high explosive erupted into a directed cone of fire and shrapnel.
The rocket struck the destroyer near the centerline of the 5-inch gun, blowing through the wedge-shaped carbon laminate faring, and ripping the large-bore naval cannon from its mount as easily as a child snapping a wishbone.
The concussion heeled the destroyer several degrees to port. The ship immediately rolled back to starboard, and then righted herself as the kinetic energy of the exploding rocket was transmitted down through the keel, and passed from the steel hull into the icy water of the Russian sea.
Broken and burning wreckage from the gun carriage tumbled down into the carrier room beneath the gun, spilling fire, fragments of scorched metal, and scalding hydraulic fluid on the Gunners Mates below. The Gunnery Officer, Ensign Kerry Frey, was killed instantly.
Automatic fire suppression systems kicked on in the carrier room and the 5-inch magazine, limiting the cascade of damage. Two main electrical junction boxes and a breaker panel were shorted out by penetrating shrapnel. Electrical power failed, plunging the carrier room and magazine into darkness. The few surviving battle lanterns came on automatically, casting yellow circles of light over the injured and dying members of the 5-inch gun crew.
About sixty feet aft of the gun, Seaman Apprentice Melillo and Seaman Dreyfus were thrown bodily against a lagged steel bulkhead by the explosion. Melillo felt his nose crunch as he collided face-first with the lagging, and then bounced to the deck. He lay there for a few seconds, too dazed to move.
The forward missile launcher fired again, and there were explosions in the distance, somewhere away from the ship.
The lighting was different now. Electrical power had failed in this section of passageway, and the emergency battle lanterns were on.
Dreyfus lay on the deck, eyes open but not moving.
