Battle Born

explosion sends a molten copper slug out each skeet at the target at supersonic speed, fast enough and hot enough to cut even three-inch steel armor into Swiss cheese within a half mile of ground zero. Because the launch barge was the only target in the area, all twelve slugs hit the barge.

“Me too,” Samson said. “I love the smell of molten copper slugs in the morning.”

“Very, very impressive, Earthmover,” Hayes went on, writing notes in a small notebook. “First a successful ABM test, then a successful counterattack test. Excellent. Interesting to think what it’d have been like if you’d had one of those plasma-yield weapons on a Wolverine.”

Samson looked at Hayes, then hit the radio button on his throttle quadrant: “Fireman, this is Two, get us extended range clearance for second launch sequence.”

“Roger, Fireman Two. Break. Neptune, Fireman flight, requesting extended range clearance for final launch sequence. Ten-mile minimum clearance all vessels.”

“Roger, Fireman flight, this is Neptune control, the range is extended-radius clear. You are cleared hot for final missile series.”

“Fireman flight copies extended-range clear, Fireman flight check.”

“Two,” Samson said. “Fireman, Neptune, stand by.” He turned to Hayes. “Anytime you’re ready, sir.”

“Ready for…?” Hayes stopped, dropping his oxygen mask in surprise. “You’re shitting me, Samson. Don’t tell me you’ve got a plasma-yield weapon onboard that B-1 right now?”

“No — I’ve got two,” Samson replied. “I’ve got one Lancelot ABM and one Wolverine cruise missile armed with a THAAD plasma-yield warhead, ready to go.”

“By whose authority?” said a stunned Hayes, his voice rising in fury. “Who the hell authorized you to do that, Samson?”

“Sir, as you said at that Senate subcommittee hearing, I did it under the authority given me by the President and the secretary of defense,” Samson replied. “We developed the weapon, did some mating, release, jettison, and captive launch tests, and certified it ready for launch. It’s never been tested before on a live launch. We own the airspace for two hundred miles in all directions; we’ve only got a couple of Navy ships in the area, and we’ve got a target. I think we should let ’er rip and see what we got.”

“You’re crazy, Samson,” Hayes shot back. He was so red-hot angry that he thought he would explode. “You have got to be off your rocker. This is the most blatant form of insubordination I’ve seen since… shit, since Brad Elliott. You just think that you can load up a missile with an experimental subatomic warhead and shoot it into the sky anytime you feel like it? We can cause a major military crisis! We can cause an international incident! We can both lose our jobs and spend the rest of our lives in Fort Leavenworth! Goddammit, Samson, you scare me! I’m going to take a good hard look at your suitability for your position and your continued service after we get on the ground!”

* * *

The tactical action officer, or TAO, aboard the U.S. Navy Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided missile cruiser USS Grand Island, who was acting as range controller, attack officer, and supervisor for the morning’s tests, watched his electronic displays carefully. The Combat Information Center — CIC — of the Grand Island had four large multicolor electronic displays forward, which integrated all electronic signals from ships, planes, and shore stations, giving the TAO a three-dimensional picture of his “battlefield” for hundreds of miles in all directions. He and his deputy sat in the middle of the CIC compartment, surrounded by weapons officers, sensor operators, and communications technicians.

He thought what he saw was a glitch in the two displays that gave him horizontal and vertical plots of the missile tracks. He turned to his radar technician and asked, “Radar, what happened to those missile tracks? What do you get?”

“Don’t know, sir,” the radar technician replied. “I saw the target rocket launch, then the airborne missile launch, then the cruise missile launch to attack the launch barge, same as the first test sequence. It looked like a good intercept. Then poof. Nothing. Both tracks disappeared. No debris.”

“Comm, did the zoomies broadcast an abort warning?” the TAO asked a communications technician.

“No, sir,” the communications specialist confirmed.

“Damn Air Force weenies,” the TAO muttered. “Too embarrassed by a faulty flight to tell us they self- destructed both missiles.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Radar, you say you’re not picking up any debris?”

“No, sir,” said the radar technician. “Usually, the SPY-1B will track debris pretty good, enough so we can clear a specific piece of airspace or ocean.” The SPY-1B was the three-dimensional phased-array radar on the Aegis-class warships, powerful enough to track a target as small as a bird two hundred miles away. “Nothing this time.”

“Humpf,” the TAO grunted. Both missiles might have splashed down. He didn’t know enough about either of them to know if they floated, if the warheads became more unstable in seawater, what they looked like when they broke apart, how to disarm a ditched missile — and a hundred other things he would’ve been briefed on if the Air Force had done its job correctly. “Comm, tell all vessels to stay east of the second launch barge. Radar, clear all aircraft out of the range via the shortest way possible away from the missile tracks. Then do a systems check, find out why we can’t see their debris.” On the intercom, he radioed, “Bridge, Combat.”

“Go ahead.” The TAO recognized the captain’s voice.

“We lost track of the missile debris, sir, so we’re clearing all aircraft away from the missiles’ flight paths and terminating all activity. We’re done for the day.”

“Copy that. We’ll form up and head back to the barn.”

“What did you see up there, sir?”

“We saw…” There was a very long pause, then: “We don’t quite know what we saw, Combat. We saw two good missile plumes heading toward each other, then… well, we’re not sure after that. We saw a flash of light, and some of the lookouts say they saw a big silver globe. But we didn’t hear or pick up anything. No explosion, no nothing.”

“Checks down here, sir,” said the TAO.

“What did it look like to you, Combat?”

“About the same.”

“What about the cruise missile? Did it hit its target?”

“Stand by,” the TAO said. “Radar, what have you got on the second launch barge? Did the zoomies hit it?”

“I… I don’t know, sir,” the radar technician stammered. “It’s like the ABM intercept. It looked normal, heading right for the target, then… gone.”

“Gone? The target? Gone like blew up? Gone like sunk?”

“Gone like… gone, sir,” the technician said. “I pick up nothing. The missile has disappeared… shit, and the barge disappeared too!”

“What the hell are you talking about? Surface range thirty, high res,” he demanded, and checked the short- range surface radar depiction. There was no sign of the barge.

“I’ve got a good radar lock on the first launch barge, sir,” the technician said, “but zilch on the second. It must’ve broke apart and sunk like a stone.”

“That barge was almost two hundred feet long, eighty feet wide, and weighed ninety tons. Those things do not just disappear,” the TAO said aloud to no one in particular. Even the first launch barge, which was hit dead-on by the sensor-fused weapon dropped by the cruise missile, was still partially afloat. The TAO hit the intercom button: “Bridge, Combat. We don’t have a fix on the second launch pad. It must’ve sunk. What kind of warhead did they have on that thing? It must’ve been a two-thousand-pounder at least.”

“Negative, Combat,” the captain responded. “We didn’t hear or see any explosion.”

The TAO looked at his CIC crew members in shock. “How is that possible, sir?” was all he could think to ask.

“I don’t know,” the captain said, feeling the anger rise in his throat. He had a suspicion that the Air Force had pulled a fast one on him — that they had tested a new weapon in the wide-open daylight skies and seas, in a well- used military weapons range that belonged to the U.S. Navy. To the officer of the deck, the captain said, “How long for us to get to that second launch barge’s last position?”

“About thirty minutes at standard, sir.”