He climbed up the ladder into the Seahawk, accepting a cranial and life vest from the crew chief. “We’ll be a few minutes taking off, Admiral,” the enlisted man said as Bersticer scrambled up the ladder and took his seat at the admiral’s side. “That Russkie helo’s on its approach to the Vickie now. We want to give them plenty of room.”
Vaughn nodded as he strapped on the helmet. It figured. The Russians were always getting in his way! Well, God help the bastards if they ever got in his way again!
In Greek mythology the mirror-brilliant shield of Athena was Aegis. The hero Perseus used it in his battle with the gorgon Medusa, fighting her by watching her reflection in the shield.
It was a potent name for a potent modern air defense system. Linked by fifteen on-board computers and sophisticated electronics to the SPY-1 radar system, Aegis could track hundreds of targets simultaneously, could guide upgraded Navy Standard missiles, and could even coordinate fleet defense with other ships in the squadron. In the so-called “Armageddon mode,” Aegis could track and fire automatically, without any input at all from the crew beyond turning it on. Any target meeting certain criteria of speed, course, and altitude within ten miles of the ship would be fired on.
The vessel chosen to house Aegis was the end product of a long line of compromises. Originally designed as destroyers, the Ticonderoga-class cruisers had been intended as antiair warfare complements to a new type of ship, the nuclear strike cruisers (CSGN) that were to have been fitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Aegis was to have been fitted to both of them, creating an electronically interlocked AAW system. Then Congress refused to fund the CSGN program, and cost overruns threatened to torpedo the Ticonderogas and their high-tech Aegis system as well.
At the beginning of 1980, the Navy changed the Ticonderogas’ classification from destroyer to cruiser, a move that made the cost overruns look better on the Pentagon’s books and better reflected the vessels’ abilities. As Aegis cruisers, the Ticonderogas became a vital part of the Navy’s global strategy. A total of twenty-seven were planned, providing missile and air defense coordination for each Navy carrier battle group as well as the four battleship combat groups.
America’s Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers were widely regarded as the most capable antiair warships ever developed. U.S.S. Vicksburg, CG-66, was a recent addition to the class, having been laid down by Litton/Ingalls Shipbuilding, launched from the Ingalls floating dock in 1990, and formally commissioned early in 1991. Just over 532 feet long at the waterline, displacing 9,500 tons with a full load, Vicksburg’s hull was low and sleek with a sharply angled bow. Her superstructure was notoriously boxy, sandwiched between two massive gray cubes that faced fore and aft like gigantic bookends. Those cubes housed Vicksburg’s SPY-1B phased-array radars, which were visible on the slightly angled upper surfaces as flat hexagons, one aiming in each direction. The bridge was a flat line of windows planted atop the forward cube, dwarfed by the blunt steel mountain on which it rested.
Vicksburg’s complement was twenty-four officers and three hundred forty men. Through the tangle of antenna arrays, data links, and satcom dishes, she was a high-tech spider at the center of a vast, electronic web, able to receive and process data from any of the other, ships or aircraft in the squadron or, by satellite, to communicate with CINCPAC in Hawaii or the Joint Chiefs in Washington.
And the heart of the entire system was Vicksburg’s CIC, where the ship’s battle staff watched the electronic signatures moving within the reach of the ship’s senses and worked to piece together a strategy to deal with them. A seaborne analogue of the E-2C Hawkeye, Vicksburg could serve as a battle management system to coordinate the movements and responses of the entire fleet. Her SPY-1 was a marvel of computer-directed electronics, constantly searching for small, pop-up targets such as aircraft or missiles within forty-five nautical miles of the ship, while simultaneously scanning a much vaster area out to a range of two hundred miles for larger targets.
Captain Randolph Cunningham of the U.S.S. Vicksburg had just entered the CIC. The Combat Information Center was part of an operational complex called the Command and Control Suite. The room was large, larger than the fact that the ship was built on a Spruance-class destroyer’s hull would have suggested, and it was dominated by four Large Screen Displays, or LSDS, set side by side above a bank of computer consoles.
Elsewhere around the room were twelve smaller automated status boards, ASTABS in Navy jargon.
The array of screens was designed to present Vicksburg’s Tactical Department with every piece of information they might conceivably need during battle. Each screen was individually programmable. One LSD might be set to display surface shipping, a second close-in air contacts, a third distant targets, a fourth intelligence data or updates. ASTABS could show the status of ships or aircraft in the squadron, data on tanker loading, ship cargoes, engagement tracks, sub sightings, anything the tactical people needed to help them comprehend the incredible complexity and movement of the participants in modern combat. Seat after seat at console after console was manned by sailors monitoring the electronic world beyond the cruiser’s bulkheads.
Cunningham studied the displays showing the Vicksburg’s helo status for a moment. The Russian Helix had landed safely, dropped off her passengers, and was now headed for the Kreml with Admiral Dmitriev. The three Russian staff officers were now being escorted forward to Vicksburg’s wardroom. The second helo, the Seahawk carrying Admiral Vaughn and his staff, was inbound with an ETA of four more minutes. He should have met the Russians, he knew, but Vaughn’s instructions about no formal ceremony had been explicit. That was just as well. Seas were rough, and the Soviet officers would probably prefer to be greeted in the dry security of Vicksburg’s wardroom, rather than the spray-drenched openness of the CG’s fantail.
He would have to go aft to greet Admiral Vaughn, of course. CBG-14’s admiral would expect that.
He was just about to turn and leave the CIC when the Tactical Officer called to him. “Captain?” The officer was standing behind an ET chief seated at one of the consoles, puzzling at the display on one of the LSDS. “Something funny here.”
“What do you have, Hark?”
Commander Gregory Harkowicz pointed. The screen displayed numerous white blips against a dark blue background. Letters and numerals tagged most of the contacts, identifying them as ships and aircraft belonging to the battle group. But there were four close-spaced blips to the northeast, still unidentified.
Cunningham squinted at the screen. “Aircraft?”
“No, sir. Surface vessels. Range thirty miles. Contact is intermittent. They come and go. That suggests very small targets, maybe fishing smacks. Speed eight knots.”
That made sense. Seas were running at three to five feet. A small boat could easily be lost in the radar reflection from the ocean, registering only as it rose to the crest of each wave.
“How long have they been there?”
“We picked up something maybe an hour ago, Captain,” the ETC said. “But it disappeared and didn’t show again. This has just been within the last ten minutes.”
Cunningham stared at the display, trying to milk additional information from the uninformative screen.
“Five gets you ten it’s a dhow fleet,” he said softly. “But …”
Harkowicz looked at him. “You’re thinking patrol boat?”
“Could be. Cruise Druze.”
The TO chuckled. During the carrier operations off Lebanon during the early eighties, there’d been some concern that one of the warring Lebanese factions might attempt a suicide attack on a Navy ship with a light plane or speedboat packed with explosives … or even with a single fanatic on a hang glider. The hypothetical lone commando on a hang glider had been dubbed “Cruise Druze,” and the word had stuck.
“Give me a Jane’s readout for India, Hark,” Cunningham said. “List only.”
An ASTAB nearby flickered, and a column of ship names, numbers, and types replaced a readout on fleet fuel consumption. Cunningham scanned the list as it scrolled. His eyes widened. “Stop. Oh … shit.”
“Sir?” Then Harkowicz saw what the Captain had noticed. “Oh …”
“Thought I remembered Osas,” Cunningham said. “Eight Osa IIS, each carrying four Styx SSMS. We’d better-“
“Captain!” the ET chief called. “Unknowns accelerating! Radar makes it twenty knots! Twenty-five … thirty knots!”
No native dhow could manage thirty knots. “Battle stations!” Cunningham snapped. The Tactical Officer’s hand was already slapping down on a large, red button on a nearby console. “Sound fleet alert!”
