Seconds later these missiles followed the first two, shrieking into the wet morning air. Spray lashed across Vicksburg’s bow as the VLS reloaded once again.
Vicksburg’s weapon systems were so highly automated that it was theoretically possible for a single well- trained man to handle the ship in combat. Forward, she carried twenty-nine Standard SM-2(MR)s. Aft were sixty- one more, each with a range of thirty-five miles at Mach 2.
When combined with her two Mark 15 Phalanx CIWS mounts, one port, one starboard, Vicksburg’s weaponry made her arguably the deadliest AAW vessel afloat, as well as one of the most complex.
As Vaughn watched the Indian aircraft approach the heart of the battle group, he wondered which would count for more in the coming fight, deadliness … or the complexity that more than once in the past had lead to errors, and disaster.
CHAPTER 24
Tahliani had been able to round up only five other Sea Harriers out of his flight. The others, evidently, had scattered or fled when two of their number had been downed by American Phoenix missiles earlier.
He checked his fuel gauge and winced. It would be a near thing making it back to Viraat now. His earlier maneuvers had spent far too much fuel.
Risking discovery, he brought the Harrier’s nose up and climbed. At ten thousand feet his radar display showed his target, now less than eighty kilometers away but still well over the horizon from the Harrier formation that continued to hug the surface below. He did not chance using his own radar but remained in passive mode, recording the radar emissions of the target rather than sending out signals of his own.
The target plotted, he dropped to wave-top height once more. Carefully, they stalked their enemy, staying unseen below the horizon.
The American E-2Cs were the greatest danger, but those watched northward now, toward the heart of the vast, churning dogfight sprawling from Kathiawar to the fringes of the American fleet. The Harriers still had a chance to strike without being detected.
Tahliani had led his formation far to the south, circling past the Jefferson’s last-known position. At such a low altitude, and with nothing like the American Hawkeye to coordinate the battle, they had to rely on guesswork to find their prey.
“Target ahead,” he said, breaking radio silence now for the first time since he’d decided to make this strike. “Range seventy-nine kilometers.
Arm missiles!”
One by one the others reported their Sea Eagle ship-killers armed and ready for launch. The Sea Eagle had a range of one hundred kilometers.
By narrowing that distance, they would shorten the enemy’s reaction time once the missile had locked on.
If they got much closer, though, the enemy ship’s radar would be certain to see them, if they hadn’t been spotted already by the circling Hawkeyes.
“Blue King Leader to Blue King,” Tahliani said. “Launch! Launch!”
His Sea Harrier lept into the sky as the Sea Eagle dropped free and fired. He could see the reflection of the exhaust on the sea, a dazzling flare of orange and gold. One by one, the other Harriers dropped their deadly packages. In seconds, eleven missile contrails were speeding across the water toward their distant target.
“”If the slayer thinks he slays,’” Tahliani said, his voice a sonorous chant as he quoted from the Katha Upanishad, “‘if the slain thinks he is slain, both these do not understand. He slays not, is not slain … ‘”
A suitable epitaph for the brave men who worked the ship that lay invisibly beyond the horizon. And perhaps it would serve as a plea for forgiveness as well.
It would take nearly five minutes for the Sea Eagles to reach their target. By then, the Harriers would be long gone. With a snap of his wrist he twisted his aircraft skyward, then around toward home.
Vaughn looked away from the LSD he was studying as the Tactical Officer snapped a warning. “Missile launch!” the TO called. “Eleven new bogies, probable ASMS, bearing one-eight-five. Range seventy-five miles. Speed five-niner-four knots.
“Mach point eight-five,” Cunningham said at Vaughn’s side. “Sea Eagles, just like the ones they smacked Jefferson with. Seventy-five miles, though. That’s pretty far for Sea Eagles.”
“Sir,” Harkowicz, the TO, said. “We’re not the target. It’s … Sir, it’s Kreml!”
Vaughn’s eyes widened. “The Kremlin? You’re sure?” He looked across the CIC suite toward the three Russian Officers at their communications center. “Where is she?”
Cunningham pointed to a graphic symbol on the LSD. “About seventy miles southwest of us, sir. Parallel course, west-northwest, eighteen knots.”
“We’d better tell them, sir,” Cunningham said, following the admiral’s stare. “They’re not tapped into our data network.”
Vaughn’s anger at the Russians, at the way they’d been dragging their feet earlier, surfaced again.
But no, Cunningham was right. They did have to be told.
He hurried across the room to tell them himself.
“Urgent message from Vicksburg, Admiral,” the aide said as he handed the message sheet to Dmitriev. “They report several antiship cruise-missiles have been targeted on us from the southeast.”
He took the message and scanned it. It had been signed by Sharov.
Dmitriev knew his Chief of Staff was prone neither to exaggeration nor to sensationalism.
The Russian admiral checked his watch and the information on the sheet.
According to the report, the missiles were a bit over twenty miles away … three minutes at eight tenths the speed of sound. “Is there anything on radar?”
The aide, already at attention, managed to convey a further crisp snap to his posture that came short of clicking his heels. “Negative, Admiral.”
“Hmm.” It could be an American ruse to hurry him in launching his aircraft, but he doubted that. Not that Vaughn wasn’t capable of cheap theatrics, but … “Point defenses on full alert,” he ordered. “And notify Kurasov to check in that direction. We will take no chances.”
Admiral Dmitriev was painfully aware of the crowded state of Kreml’s flight deck, where bombs and incendiaries were still piled high as fueling and arming for the strike continued. He’d thought that the Russian squadron was well enough sheltered by the American task force.
If it was not … The lessons of the Battle of Midway were taught at Russian naval academies as well as at Annapolis, and Dmitriev was uncomfortably aware that he might well be about to be cast in the modern-day role of Nagumo.
He checked his watch again. Two minutes …
The air battle was rolling south toward the Vicksburg. The Aegis cruiser had shifted course slightly in order to bring her closer to the Jefferson, now some twenty miles to the east, starboard of the cruiser and slightly astern, but her antiair umbrella extended well beyond the carrier, striking down incoming aircraft with almost clockwork precision and regularity.
Both Vertical Launch Systems were in operation almost continuously, with the Aegis controlling at times as many as a dozen Standard missiles in flight simultaneously. Both the DDG Lawrence Kearny and the destroyer John A. Winslow had pulled in closer to the core of the battle group and begun taking their directions from Vicksburg.
