increasing the danger of detection logarithmically.
“We’re going to have to wait for a moment, then,” Sikes said, his voice low and quiet. He glanced at his watch.
“Another eight minutes, I think. Then we use the silencers.”
“Why not use them now?” Pamela demanded.
Sikes saw the tension in her face, and saw her start to move before she even shifted her weight by much. He grabbed her by the elbow, his hand a steel band around her upper arm, and dragged her back down to the ground. “You shut up and stay under cover or you’ll jeopardize the whole mission. I don’t want you here but we’ve got a job to do.
You’re not gonna screw it up, not like you did before. Now shut up.”
“But what are you,” she began.
Huerta slapped one massive hand across her mouth, catching her head in the crooK of his arm.” you heard the commander,” he said. “You stay quiet voluntarily or I crush your larynx.” He smiled congenially. “I can do that, you know. Wouldn’t even kill you, just make you mute for the rest of your life. You got that?”
Huerta felt her head move in his tight grip as she tried to nod. He rewarded her by loosening his hold slightly, while still keeping his hand lightly over her mouth. “We wait eight minutes, like the commander said. When I want you to do something or say something, I’ll tell you.”
Garcia took out his silenced pistol and checked it for the thirtieth time, even though they all knew they were as ready as they would ever be. Eight minutes. They waited.
“Everybody’s here. Bird Dog,” Gator said impatiently.
“What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?”
“Nope,” the pilot said cheerfully. God, it was good to be airborne again! And on a strike mission, too. Nothing could match the heady feeling of a Tomcat with wings dirtied, antiair missiles and five-hundred-pound bombs slung up under the wings on hard points, just waiting to be used. It made the Tomcat a bit more ungainly, true, but the added inertia during turns and maneuvers kept him conscious of the enormous firepower now under his command. “One more guy’s gotta finish tanking a Hornet, topping off his tanks, of course. I’m telling you.
Gator, if I ever get out of the Navy, I’m going to invent a fuel line that spools out from the carrier and runs straight up to those bastards.
Thirsty little motherfuckers you can’t even run a strike without giving them time to suck down the fuel.”
“Lightweights,” Gator agreed. “Can’t even carry enough bombs to do any serious damage. But that’s what we’re here for. Anyway, you wanna get the rest of us headed in? The Tomcats are a little slower we can start and the Hornets will catch up.”
“Roger.” Bird Dog flipped the communications switch to tactical.
“Okay, people, let’s make it happen.” He heard Gator moan in the background. He’d catch hell back at the carrier later for his lack of circuit discipline, but for the moment, he didn’t care. It was his plan, his mission, and he was about to see it work. One disgruntled captain hell, even a pissed-off admiral!couldn’t change that.
Behind him, the Tomcats broke up into groups of two, flying a close formation in tight station-keeping circles.
Once they left the sponge, the area where an attack force clustered to meet unexpected threats or to wait for ingress onto a target, they’d break into high-low pairs, one taking station at altitude to back up the lead down lower. It was a method of aerial combat that the Americans had perfected as no one else in the world had.
Finally, the last gas-sucking Hornet was ready. “Better get inbound before they have to go again,” Bird Dog grumbled. He gave the signal over tactical.
Twenty minutes until feet dry, the transition from flying over water to flying over ground. But before that happened, it all went according to plan “Got the first one,” Gator said suddenly. “Solid radar contact on contact breaking off from USS Arsenal.”
“Good blackshoe,” Bird Dog said approvingly. “Take your shot we’re next.”
In addition to its vertical launch system for Tomahawks and antiaircraft missiles, the USS Arsenal had two four-missile Harpoon assemblies on either side of the ship. The longrange antiaircraft missiles, originally developed for launch against surface Echo 2-class Soviet missile submarines, were thick cylinders tapering into a pointed nose, wind and control surfaces folded during its storage in the selfcontained launch box and popping out after it was ejected with pressurized air. It was controlled from Combat using the Harpoon shipboard command and launch control set (HSCLCS, pronounced “sickles”). It was a fire-and-forget missile, and a potent anti ship threat.
“We’ve never fired one, except in tests,” the captain remarked to no one in particular. No one answered. This was the first of many first launches for the Arsenal, and proving the operational capabilities of the Harpoon from it was almost as important as validating its land attack capabilities.
The captain watched the small camera screen mounted to the left of the large-screen display. It showed that the quad launcher was silent and passive. “Now.”
The launcher shuddered once, then a thick cylinder emerged, its pointed nose slowly emerging, followed shortly by the seventeen-foot body. As it popped out, cruciform fins unfolded from both the centerline and the booster section. It seemed to take forever for the missile to launch.
As it cleared the launcher, the missile picked up speed. It arced straight up, cleared the ship within seconds, then tipped over at a lesser angle.
“One away.” The technician’s voice was jubilant. “Successful launch; all stations report no damage. Captain.”
“Very well.” He waited for a few more seconds while the missile remained visible on the remotely controlled television camera, then shifted his gaze to the large-screen display. The potent SPY-1 radar had already picked it up as a target, and was tracking it on its northwesterly course. The SPS-64 surface search radar also held contact on its intended target, a small coastal command and control communications ship owned by the Cuban navy.
“I’ll be on the bridge.” The captain unbuckled himself from the seat and strode quickly forward and up to open air.
He was just in time. A flare of light on the horizon, followed by a pressure wave of sound, washed over the ship. Fire spiked into the sky, then quickly died out as the sea ate the remains of both missile and ship.
“It worked,” the OOD murmured. “Oh, boy, did it work.”
The captain turned a stern eye on him. “You didn’t doubt it would, did you?” From his superior’s tone of voice, the junior officer could never have guessed that his captain was just as relieved as he was.
“I’ll be in Combat.” The captain chided himself for his break from discipline in running out on the bridge to watch the first attack.
Still, it would be his only opportunity the rest of the missiles were after targets too far away to be observed by the naked eye. Any sense of achievement would come only after aircraft armed with TARPS overflew the land sites for battle damage assessment.
The Tomahawks took longer to launch, but six of them still left the ship in a rapid ripple of noise, fire, and smoke.
The ship shuddered as tube after tube shot out the lighter, land attack missiles.
Each Tomahawk was of the TLAM-C variety, configured with a conventional warhead of high explosives. It was capable of achieving speeds in excess of five hundred knots, and cruised at an altitude of fifty to one hundred feet above the sea, making it a difficult target to detect at long range.
It could be launched over two hundred and fifty nautical miles away from the target, and used a combination of digital sea mapping area correlator radar along with optical viewing of the target area for terminal flight. For these missiles, the target package took them on a slight detour to the east to insure that they cleared the inbound fighter raids.
“And now we wait.” And if that were news, the captain thought. If there’s one thing every sailor in every navy learned how to do, it was hurry up and wait.
