“We’ll know in about three minutes, Rob. Get back to me then, okay?”
“Roger,” the former Tomcat driver replied. “Out.”
“Dr. Gregory, what can you tell me?”
“Sir, the inbound is probably their equivalent of one of our old W-51s. Five megatons, thereabouts. It’ll do Washington, and everything within ten miles-hell, it’ll break windows in Baltimore.”
“What about us, here?”
“No chance. Figure it’ll be targeted inside a triangle defined by the White House, the Capitol Building, and the Pentagon. The ship’s keel might survive, only because it’s under water. No people. Oh, maybe some really lucky folks in the D.C. subway. That’s pretty far underground. But the fires will suck all the air out of the tunnels, probably.” He shrugged. “This sort of thing’s never happened before. You can’t say for sure until it does.”
“What chances that it’ll be a dud?”
“The Pakistanis have had some failed detonations. We had fizzles once, mainly from helium contamination in the secondary. That’s why the terrorist bomb at Denver fizzled-”
“I remember.”
“Okay,” Gregory said. “It’s over Buffalo now. Now it’s reentering the atmosphere. That’ll slow it down a little.”
“Sir, the track is definitely on us, the NMCC says,” a voice said.
“Agreed,” Captain Blandy said.
“Is there a civilian alert?” Ryan asked.
“It’s on the radio, sir,” a sailor said. “It’s on CNN, too.”
“People will be panicking out there,” Ryan murmured, taking another drag.
“System up?” Blandy asked.
“We are fully on line, sir,” the Weapons Officer answered. “We are ready to fire from the forward magazine. Firing order is selected, all Block IVs.”
“Very well.” The captain leaned forward and turned his key in the lock. “System is fully enabled. Special- Auto.” He turned. “Sir, that means the computer will handle it from here.”
“Target range is now three hundred miles,” a kid’s voice announced.
“Any time now,” the Weapons Officer said.
He wasn’t far off.
“One away!” a sailor said off to the right. “One is away clean.”
“Okay.”
The SM2-ER missile had two stages. The short booster kicked the assembly out of its silo-type hole in the forward magazine, trailing an opaque column of gray smoke.
“The idea is to intercept at a range of two hundred miles,” Gregory explained. “The interceptor and the inbound will rendezvous at the same spot, and-zap!”
“Mainly farmland there, place you go to shoot pheasants,” Ryan said, remembering hunting trips there in his youth.
“Hey, I got a visual on the fucker,” another voice called. There was a TV camera with a ten-power lens slaved into the fire-control radar, and it showed the inbound warhead, just a featureless white blob now, like a meteor, Ryan thought.
“Intercept in four-three-two-one-”
The missile came close, but exploded behind the target.
“Firing Two!”
“Two away clean!” the same voice as before announced.
It was over Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, now, its speed “down” to thirteen thousand miles per hour…
Then a third missile launched, followed a second later by a fourth. In the “Special-Auto” setting, the computer was expending missiles until it saw a dead target. That was just fine with everyone aboard.
“Only two Block IVs left,” Weps said.
“They’re cheap,” Captain Blandy observed. “Come on, baby!”
Number Two also exploded behind the target, the TV picture showed.
“Three-two-one-now!”
So did Number Three.
“Oh, shit, oh, my God!” Gregory exclaimed. That caused heads to snap around.
“What?” Blandy demanded.
The IR seekers, they’re going for the centroid of the infrared source, and that’s
“What?” Ryan asked, his stomach in an instant knot.
“The brightest part of the target is
“Five away… Six away… both got off clean,” the voice to the right announced again.
The inbound was over Frederick, Maryland, now, doing twelve thousand knots…
“That’s it, we’re out of Block IVs.”
“Light up the Block IIIs,” Blandy ordered at once.
The next two interceptors did the same as the first two, coming within mere feet of the target, but exploding just behind it, and the inbound was traveling faster than the burn rate of explosive in the Standard-2-ER missile warheads. The lethal fragments couldn’t catch up-
“Firing Seven! Clean.”
“That one’s a radar homer,” Blandy said, clenching his fist before his chest.
Five and Six performed exactly as the four preceding them, missing by mere yards, but a miss in this case was as good as a mile.
Another shudder.
“Eight! Clean!”
“We have to get it before it gets to five or six thousand feet. That’s optimal burst height,” Gregory said.
“At that range, I can engage it with my five-inch forward,” Blandy said, some fear in his voice now.
For his part, Ryan wondered why he wasn’t shaking. Death had reached its cold hand out for him more than once… the Mall in London … his own home …
“Okay, here comes seven-five-four-three-two-one-now!”
“Miss!
“Nine away-Ten away, both clean! We’re out of missiles,” the distant chief called out. “This is it, guys.”
The inbound crossed over the D.C. Beltway, Interstate Highway 695, now at an altitude of less than twenty thousand feet, streaking across the night sky like a meteor, and so some people thought it was, pointing and calling out to those nearby. If they continued to look at it until detonation, their eyes would explode, and they would then die blind…
“Eight missed! Missed by a cunt hair!” a voice announced angrily. Clear on the TV, the puff of the explosion appeared mere inches from the target.
“Two more to go,” the Weapons Officer told them.
Aloft, the forward port-side SPG-62 radar was pouring out X-band radiation at the target. The rising SM-2 missile, its rocket motor still burning, homed in on the reflected signal, focusing, closing, seeing the source of the reflected energy that drew it as a moth to a flame, a kamikaze robot the size of a small car, going at nearly two thousand miles per hour, seeking an object going six times faster… two miles … one mile… a thousand yards… five hundred, one hun-
