Thirty miles from the USS La Salle, the missile detonated. The warhead’s explosion punched through the steel alloy casing, the intense heat of the burgeoning nuclear explosion vaporizing the metal into a thin layer of molecules that would ride outward on the fireball’s leading wave.
The after part of the missile disintegrated microseconds later. There were no intact portions of it to form the deadly shrapnel that accompanies most missile detonations, but it was not necessary. Even thirty miles from the carrier, the missile was close enough to inflict the damage intended.
The EMP?electromagnetic pulse?was far more destructive to the ships in the vicinity than the relatively small blast effect the missile produced. It killed silently, without warning, and its target was not the human beings inhabiting USS La Salle, nor the structural elements of the ship, but the delicate electronics housed within.
The starboard lookout had just begun his slow, methodical track toward the bow of the ship when the missile exploded. His involuntary reflexes took over?his eyelids slammed shut, and a piercing scream ripped from his throat. He dropped the binoculars from his eyes and plastered his hands over his face. Pain lanced through his eyes and back into his brain, a thin silver needle of agony. He dropped to his knees, not feeling the impact of soft tissue on the hard metal deck. He could hear the screams of the others on the bridge faintly, as though coming from a long distance away. But the pain, the all-encompassing pain, ate every shred of reality other than the lancing agony boiling in his brain. He rolled over onto his side and curled up on the bridge wing, still screaming. His eyes were wide open, tears flooding down his face, and completely unseeing. The nuclear flash had blinded him.
“Holy shit, it?what the hell?” Skeeter’s question transformed itself into a shout as the screen in front of him lit up with an unholy brilliance. Something on the port side of the compartment snapped out an angry, electrical sound.
Every light in the compartment except for the emergency battle lanterns went dark. Skeeter jumped up, ripped the headset off his ears, and took one step back. There was only one type of missile that would cause that type of damage to a modern battleship without a concussive explosion that would have rocked the deck that was so steady under his feet. Only one.
A tactical nuclear explosion.
The ship was oddly quiet, the all-pervasive electronic hum that normally permeated every compartment silenced permanently. From the corridor outside, he could hear feet pounding down the passageways as sailors raced for their damage-control positions, their General Quarters stations, and the myriad other underway positions that the ship assumed when it was fighting for its life.
In a few minutes, they would all know what Skeeter knew?that USS La Salle was no longer a Navy combat vessel but merely a silent, dead hulk.
“They got it!” Gator crowed. He turned to face the admiral. “Right smack on. That Aegis must have-“
He broke the sentence off as he studied the admiral’s face.
The admiral had the microphone for the command circuit in his hand and was doggedly, quietly, and desperately calling up Shiloh and La Salle.
Gator stared at the speaker as though trying to make it answer.
The normal background electronic hum was noticeably louder, and spiked with violent electronic peaks. Electrons chittered all over the electromagnetic spectrum, violently roiling in the aftermath of the weapon.
“Admiral?” Gator said finally, a note of uncertainty in his voice. “I thought the Aegis shot it down.”
Batman replaced the handset in its metal bracket holder. “I don’t think so.”
A look of deep agony settled on his face. “No, I don’t think they got it at all. Every communications circuit we’ve got is blanked out by full-spectrum electromagnetic distortion. There’s only one kind of weapon that does that. And I never thought I’d see it used. It hasn’t been?not since Hiroshima.”
The fog was thicker at the boundary between land and sea, obscuring the Naval Aviation base and the two long runways that ran east to west along the northern portion. Yuri vectored in along the tactical radial, switching to approach-control frequency as he entered controlled airspace.
At the same time, he secured the stealth gear. His superiors had decided to continue normal activities on the base, and at this hour of the morning the first routine training flights were already cluttering the approaches.
He heard several startled exclamations over the ground-control frequency as he popped into being on their radar scopes, but there were no suspicious inquiries or demands for explanations. He smiled slightly, imagining the consternation that the Psychological Services officer?the new term for a zampolit?would be causing in the control tower.
He requested approach instructions and received priority clearance into base, as he knew he would. Five minutes later, the Foxhound alighted gracefully on the tarmac and rolled smoothly to a stop.
Yuri paused for a moment, his engines still turning, at the far end of the runway. Even on the ground, he still had the sensation of freedom, and these were the last few moments of it before he returned to the control of his superiors.
The mission?he mentally ran through his actions and decided that the entire evolution had been executed exactly according to instructions. Even if it hadn’t been, he would have reported it as such?there would be no excuses, could be none. Finally satisfied with his version of the events, he took one last, long deep breath of the purified and filtered air circulating in the cockpit, tasting the oddly sterile flavor of it. Then, using his nose-wheel steering gear, he executed a precision turn toward the flight center and the group of men waiting there.
“There was nothing else you could have done, sir,” OS3 Carey insisted. “Nothing.”
Skeeter stared at the clutter arrayed on the table. The last hour had been an inquisition, a demanding professional look at every second of time from the moment he detected the incoming aircraft to the attack. The admiral’s questions had been pointed and direct, the Chief of Staff openly accusatory. Maybe that was not what the admiral had intended, but it certainly sounded like it if you were the individual doing the answering.
In the end, the admiral had concluded that his performance at TAO had been inadequate, and had ordered the COS to place a letter of reprimand in his service jacket.
Not good enough. He hadn’t made the grade.
Paper charts and tracing paper cluttered the table in front of him, and the entire control of the flag battle group had shifted to ancient methods men had used for centuries to sail these waters. They were moving in closer to the coast of Greece, waiting for instructions on their next port call for repairs. Work crews scampered over the superstructure, trying desperately to resurrect any bit of combat capability left in the shattered gear. Deep in the bowels of the ship, some of the spare electronic components had survived, and the engineering officer and combat-systems officer had said they thought they might be able to jury-rig a rudimentary Furuno radar and one radio circuit in the clear. Secure, encrypted communications were out of the question. The radio components were stored too far above the waterline to have survived.
Shiloh was in better shape. The Aegis cruiser had been specially hardened to withstand EMP, and most of her vital combat circuitry was located well below the waterline. According to the helo that had ferried her XO over ten minutes earlier, she’d have to replace some exterior antennas, but would probably be fully operational within a matter of hours.
Shiloh would be coordinating the medical evacuation of the flash-blinded lookouts and other casualties, including the bridge watch-standers from both ships, as soon as she could raise Jefferson to provide a helo.
