“Admiral! Kremlin’s been hit!”
“What? When? Just now?”
“They went off the air for a few minutes, sir. I thought it was a comm failure. Now they’ve started broadcasting an SOS. They must have gotten hit pretty bad.”
Vaughn glanced toward the Russian liaison officers. Captain First Rank Sharov was already hurrying across the compartment, an expression of sharp concern etched into the lines of his face.
“Admiral,” he began.
“I heard, Sharov. I’m sorry.”
“Moskovskiy Komsomolets and Vliyatel’nyy are alongside, Admiral,” the Russian staff officer said. “But they need additional help, and quickly. The fire on the flight deck is out of control.”
Vaughn looked up at one of the LSDS, a display set to show the dispositions of all of the vessels of the fleet. Vicksburg, Jefferson, Kearny, and Winslow were all steaming together in a fairly tight group forty miles across, with the destroyers serving as an antiair screen between the carrier and the coast. Amarillo and the Peoria followed a few miles astern of the Jefferson. Kreml and her two escorting destroyers lay seventy miles to the southwest. The Kresta-II cruiser Marshal Timoshenko was steaming sixty miles northwest of the Russian carrier, which put her nearly ninety miles due west of the Vicksburg.
The other ships of the two squadrons, two American Perry-class frigates and a pair of Soviet ASW frigates, were part of an antisubmarine net thrown out along an arc from the southwest to the east. One of these, Biddle, was in pursuit of the Osas that had slipped through the American screen over an hour earlier.
“Timoshenko is closer than we are,” Vaughn said.
“The Marshal Timoshenko is pursuing a sub contact, Admiral,” Sharov said. “If they abandon the chase …” He left the warning unspoken.
Submarines were a carrier’s deadliest opponent, deadlier by far than any aircraft.
Vaughn pursed his lips. The strongest arm of the Indian navy was without doubt their submarine force: six German Type 1500s, four Russian Kilos, and eight … no, make that seven Foxtrots.
According to the latest satellite reconnaissance, Chakra, the nuclear sub on loan from the Russians, was still, as expected, conspicuously in port, but that still left the Indians with a fleet of seventeen conventional subs. At least ten or twelve of them would be off India’s west coast and capable of striking at the joint task force.
Memories of his 1980 encounter with a Russian sub returned once more.
“I’m sorry, Captain Sharov,” Vaughn said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
He gestured toward the LSD that showed the swarm of radar contacts within thirty-two miles of the Aegis cruiser. “Vicksburg is coordinating the air defense for my entire battle group. It’s just not possible.”
Radio calls crackled back and forth across the comm net in the background, disembodied and distant.
“Get him! Get him!”
“Bring it around, Shooter, I’m on his six. Fox two!”
“This is One-oh-five. Looks like they’re breaking through to the east.
Somebody get over there and …”
“This is Two-two-oh! Two-two-oh! I’m hit! I’m hit! I’m-“
Sharov stared at Vaughn openly for a moment, then let out a breath.
“Understood, Admiral. You can not sacrifice your battle group to save one ship.”
“It’ll come out right,” Vaughn said, feeling the emptiness of his words.
“You’ll see.”
On the television monitor behind him, Vicksburg’s five-inch gun continued to slam away at the approaching aircraft. Amidships, the cruiser’s starboard CIWS Phalanx activated, pivoted, and fired.
The attackers were within two miles of the command ship now.
Colonel Singh held his Jaguar International at wave-top altitude. The sea was a gray blur beneath his plane as he raced toward the south.
The Illyushin-38 naval reconnaissance plane serving as coordinator for the strike had fed him the data he needed. The American target should be less than twenty-five kilometers ahead.
This time he was carrying only a single ASM, a bright-red, deadly-looking missile slung from his centerline stores rack. The AS-37 Martel had been developed in the early 1960s by France’s SA Matra and England’s British Aerospace Dynamics working together in one of the very first instances of European weapons collaboration. Weighing 550 kilos — over half a ton — and carrying a 150 kg warhead, the Martel had only recently been made available for export from France or Britain, and the missile had not been in production since the late seventies. India’s recent and urgent arms buildup, however, had led to secret negotiations with France, and a limited number of AS-37s had been made available to India for “trials” with the HAL-production version of the SEPECAT Jaguar.
The name Martel was derived from Missile AntiRadar Television. Where the AJ-168 version of the Martel used by Britain was guided by a television transmitter mounted in a blunt, glass nose, the French AS-37 was strictly radar-homing. As he approached the target, Singh dialed through a series of frequencies, searching for the particular band used by the American SPY-1 radar. When he heard the distinctive tone, he punched the buttons that locked the signal down in the missile’s memory.
Now, no matter how fast or frequently the hostile radar changed frequencies, so long as it remained within the same preset band, the Martel would track it.
Operating from a low-altitude launch, the Martel had a range of thirty kilometers, a little more than eighteen and a half miles. According to the data from the IL-38, Singh was now well within range. Obviously, the closer he could get before release, the more likely the possibility of a hit. He could hear the radio calls of the other Indian pilots in the sky around him as they attacked the American ships. Dozens of aircraft had been downed already, and missile after missile had been destroyed before they could strike their targets, shot down either by the American antiair missiles or, in the last seconds of their approach, by the deadly breath of their guardian CIWS Gatlings.
Somehow during the past hour, Jamall Rajiv Singh had managed to acquire an almost passive fatalism about this mission, about his chances for success … and for survival. His initial terror had faded as his comrades on either side had fallen away, targeted by enemy missiles, shot down by enemy Tomcats.
Now, nothing remained beyond sea and sky, his aircraft and the load it carried. The enemy he had feared had been reduced by the miles and the continuing violence around him to an abstraction, the target … now twenty kilometers ahead.
With an icy calm he’d never realized he possessed, Singh readied the radar-homing ship-killer for launch.
CHAPTER 25
Batman closed to within fifty yards of the Sukhoi Su-7BM, close enough to see the Indian flag and tail numbers painted on the curiously bright orange tail. The rest of the aircraft was a dull blue-gray with camouflage dark olive blotches. A pair of 500-kilogram GP bombs was slung from the wings. The Sukhoi Fitter was weaving back and forth, trying to lose its relentless pursuer. Batman held tight on the Fitter’s six. The other plane broke left, trying to snap free of the Tomcat. Batman found himself looking into the Fitter’s cockpit. He could see the other pilot, his helmet turned to watch Batman’s approach.
Batman squeezed the trigger and the Tomcat shuddered. Tracer rounds snapped across the Fitter’s nose, missing by feet, then walked back into the aircraft’s blunt nose intake with its distinctive pointed shock cone. Holes appeared in the nose And then Batman’s cannon clicked empty. The ARM display on his HUD guns discrete was off, and the number of rounds left now showed 000.
He pulled back on the stick and cleared the slow-turning Su-7 by yards.
“He’s still turning, Batman!” Malibu called. “Still turning. I think he’s headed back to India!”
“Good thing,” Batman replied. He dropped the Tomcat’s right wing, banking to starboard and away from the
