Cauldron

FLIR, the gray-white image of the merchant ship, warm against the cold sea, grew whiter and whiter toward the bow until the display shimmered and sparkled with the heat of the flames. A ship was on fire. Oh, God. He felt chilled to the bone, despite the sweat staining his flight suit.

“Turn right, new course two seven zero,” Calhoun ordered. “I’m going to take a peek with the radar.”

Turning, Alvarez carefully watched the altimeter. He could almost hear the waves outside and feel the mass of the water below him. Helicopters were nimble, but this close to the surface, he wouldn’t get a second chance to correct any mistakes.

Calhoun hunched over his multifunction display. His shoulders stiffened and he keyed his radio mike. “Echo Five, this is 401. Ten contacts, five zero miles, at three zero zero, speed six zero zero. Negative ESM.”

There were enemy aircraft out there, still closing on the embattled convoy with their own radars shut down.

Calhoun quickly flicked a switch. “Radar off. Turn us to zero three zero, now!” The urgency in his voice almost spun the helicopter by itself. “Increase speed a little.”

Alvarez steadied on the new course — nudging his collective forward until they were up to a hundred knots. While Calhoun anxiously scanned the sky to the northwest, they were too close to the sea for him to do much more than watch his flight instruments. The few glances he could spare were for the battle out ahead of them now.

More glowing sparks streaked low over the water toward the convoy — coming from the south now. Jesus, they were being hit from two sides.

It was impossible to see details at this range, but the patterns of light told the story. He knew what it had to look like, with missiles flashing in. He also knew what the men on those ships were doing, hunched over their displays, sweating, each man doing his assigned job and fearing the first mistake. Any mistake, even the smallest, could bring death and failure for them all.

Simpson and Leyte Gulf were both firing now, launching SAM after SAM in an almost continuous stream.

“There! Ten o’clock, Bill!”

Alvarez snapped his head over to the left and followed Calhoun’s arm. A narrow arrowhead shape, silhouetted against the night sky, passed quickly from left to right. Turning on the Seahawk’s radar, even for that brief instant, had been like waving a red flag in front of a maddened bull. Now they were being hunted. The enemy pilot must have run down their radar bearing. He had to be searching for them with his bare eyes. Radar couldn’t pick them out this close to the surface.

Calhoun slewed the helicopter’s thermal imaging sensor, its FLIR, over, and they were rewarded with the black-and-white image of a French Mirage screaming low over the water — flying hundreds of knots faster than they were.

Both men held their breath. If the enemy pilot spotted them, they were goners. Then, after a thirty-second eternity, the predator banked left and headed north. He was giving up, going after more profitable or more visible targets.

Alvarez looked back at the formation. New missile flashes were backlighting smoke trails made by previous launches. Only a few of the SAMs appeared to be headed in their direction. Some went to the west or south, and some even seemed to be headed straight north. Was the EurCon strike force attacking from that direction, too? In addition to the SAMs, rapid-fire, rhythmic flashes from both ships showed that their guns and Phalanx systems were in action as well. The enemy missiles and aircraft had punched through the convoy’s outer defenses.

On this course, the helicopter was closing the formation rapidly. One of the cargo ships was clearly visible, enveloped in flame and thickening black smoke. Suddenly and irrationally, Alvarez wished for a weapon — some sort of missile or gun, any sort of missile or gun. He wanted to chase down that enemy fighter they’d seen and splash the bastard.

A ripple of light, almost a sheet of flame, to the north caught his eye. The EurCon aircraft they’d spotted earlier were firing a new salvo of air-to-surface missiles.

Using binoculars, Calhoun studied the display for a moment, then radioed in another warning. Breaking contact with Leyte Gulf, he said, “All right, Bill. New course three five zero. And slow us down again.”

Alvarez complied, now almost unmindful of the water below. Out the helicopter’s right window, the formation was hidden in a mass of smoke. Flickering lights inside the cloud showed when missiles or guns fired. The burning ship had drifted outside the smoke, dead in the water.

A bigger, brighter flash near where Simpson should be alarmed him for a moment, but Calhoun, listening in on the radio circuit, announced, “Got one with the Phalanx!”

The frigate’s automated, six-barrel Galling gun had knocked down a EurCon missile just a few hundred yards from impact.

Calhoun heard another report passed over the radio and paused, listening intently. When he spoke again, his voice was somber.

“Tartu’s burning.”

More glowing lights streaked low across the sky. The next missile wave had arrived. Alvarez couldn’t see the displays, but knew the American warships’ defenses were already pressed to the limit.

“Change course. Due north.”

He followed Calhoun’s order without thinking, keeping his eyes riveted on the formation.

The smoke cloud now hid the ships completely. Inside, explosions rippled like chain lightning, but he couldn’t see any detail at all. Calhoun, studying the Seahawk’s ESM display, could tell part of the story.

“Simpson’s Mk92 radar is gone,” he announced quietly.

Shit. If Simpson’s missile fire control radar was off the line, she’d been hit, and worse, the hit made her vulnerable to the next wave.

“How about using the radar?” Alvarez asked.

Calhoun shook his head. “Negative. It won’t tell us if she’s a hulk or just dinged. Don’t sweat it yet, Bill. Might be nothing but a scratch.”

Both men knew he was lying. Any hit on a frigate-sized ship by a modem antiship missile would wreak havoc — killing dozens of men in a searing, shrapnel-laced blast, dozens of their friends and shipmates. The older, more experienced Calhoun was doing his best to steady his younger, greener pilot, and maybe himself as well.

More flashes lit the cloud’s interior. Large flashes. Missile impacts. Before they had time to make sense out of the pattern, the still-burning Tartu vanished in a giant white fireball. Alvarez glanced at a digital clock on the Seahawk’s instrument panel, instinctively marking the instant the big container ship died.

“Tartu was loaded with Patriots,” Alvarez said shakily. He crossed himself in horror.

“Yeah.” Calhoun nodded, but kept his eyes on the displays, trying to wring more data out of them.

A sound came over the water, barely audible over the helicopter’s engines. Alvarez had braced himself for a shock wave, but at fifteen miles all that was left of Tartu’s death was a low rumble.

The sea and sky were dark again — lit only by the strange, flickering glow of ships on fire.

Calhoun straightened as he received new instructions from the Aegis cruiser’s helo coordinator. He keyed his mike. “Three zero minutes. Understood. Roger.” He turned to his pilot. “They think the attack’s over — at least for right now. Take us up to two hundred feet and head for Tartu’s last reported position. We’re supposed to search for survivors, then go to Leyte Gulf for an in-flight refuel.”

“Any news on Simpson?” Alvarez asked.

“Yeah. She’s hit bad. At least one fire. Maybe more.” The sensor operator saved the worst news, at least from their perspective, for last. “And she’s got a foul deck. It’ll be a half hour before they even know if they can clear it. Leyte’s hit, too — fore and aft.” His businesslike tone and the work at hand pushed away the questions they had about their friends and their ships.

Alvarez pushed his throttle forward and pointed the helo’s nose toward the drifting, burning wreck. Maybe her crew had abandoned ship before the final blast, or maybe someone had been blown clear. Even as he hoped for survivors, Alvarez knew it was probably wishful thinking.

Clattering low over the choppy Kattegat at seventy knots, they quickly closed in on the battered convoy. Just five miles from Tartu they flew over the first sign that the battle hadn’t been wholly one- sided. There below, the waterlogged wreckage of an enemy fighter bobbed lazily up and down as waves sloshed