could ripple off its antiair weapons at speeds far in excess of those that any mere mortal could have achieved.
The tactical plot resolved into four missile symbols, all of them inbound on the cruiser. As they inched their way across the display toward the ship, the cruiser shuddered violently. In sequence, four hatches in the vertical launch system popped open, and antiair missiles rose majesticly out of it, wavered for a moment, then turned to point unerringly at the incoming threats.
But a head-on encounter was a bit like throwing telephone poles at each other. At a high rate of closure, there was no room for error, no room for the slightest course deviation. And if the standard missiles didn’t take out the threat, it would be up to the close-in weapons system, or CWIS.
The telephone sitting on the station commander’s desk rang, making him jump. It was linked to a very special headquarters, and rarely rang. He hesitated for an instant, then, aware that his hesitation could send the wrong message, he picked it up and said his name.
He listened for moment, and replied, “Yes. It shall be.” He replaced receiver, and turned to look at the rest of the crew. It was a small group, one that lived and worked together in close, isolated circumstances. Here on the tip of the Strait, their small installation was isolated from everything else by three fences and numerous guards. The compound itself housed living quarters as well as the actual purpose for the site. It was completely self- contained.
He stood, and took a deep breath. “It is the time we have been waiting for — the time we’ve trained for.” He turned to his second in command. “We are ready, are we not?”
“Of course.”
“Then execute Plan Vengeance.” Immediately, the room broke into a flurry of activity. Technicians darted to consoles, and others ran down the stairs to the underground compartment below. The commander scribbled a set of coordinates on a piece of paper and gave it to his second. “Now. It must be now.”
“You realize what this means?” the second said, his face composed and a look of religious fervor in his eyes. The commander nodded. “Yes. It means that within the next thirty minutes, we will look into the face of Allah himself.”
In the underground bunker below them, technicians ran to the missile launch room. There, the long-range antisurface missiles lay staged in their quad canister. It was a knockoff of the American design for Harpoon missiles. The Harpoon design had been reverse-engineered by the Chinese, and these substitutes made available to a select certain few on a very limited basis.
Outside, dozens of laborers rushed to shovel the thin layer of sand covering the outer hatch off. That accomplished, they manually retracted the massive steel plate. The covering of sand was necessary to disguise the launch hatch, both visually and thermally. The sand proved to be an excellent insulator, and even infrared satellite photography showed no change in the surface temperature around the installation. It was one of Iran’s most heavily guarded secrets.
Within three minutes of the order, an amazing time for men who dared not practice their skills, the launch hatch was clear. Below, the technicians manned consoles, and on the commander’s order, launched four antisurface missiles at the USS
The first missile suffered from the inattention of a Chinese technician who had been hungover on the day he had assembled the delicate microcircuitry in its guidance system. While it launched satisfactorily, it quickly veered off course, heading south for a while, then turning back inland. It eventually detonated in the desert when it ran out of fuel.
The second missile fared slightly better. It launched as it should, rose to altitude, and immediately homed in on the
The third and fourth missiles, however, performed just as advertised. They bore straight in on the
The third missile was six miles away from the cruiser when an antiair missile caught it. Although the standard missile only grazed it, the impact was enough to shatter the casing and send the Harpoon tumbling into the ocean.
The fourth missile, however, was still on course. The standard missile targeting it bore in with uncanny precision. But the head-on encounter at the higher rate of closure proved to be the problem. A gust of wind caught the Harpoon, veering it ever so slightly off course just at the moment of impact. The standard missile whizzed by, its wake rocking the Harpoon, deflecting it slightly, but it soon regained its course. It bore in steadily on the cruiser.
“Three down, one to go,” Norfolk said. The cruiser launched two more missiles at the Harpoon, but even as he watched the geometry unfold, the TAO knew that they were too late. It would be up to the close-in weapons system to save them now.
And even if CWIS worked perfectly, tracking the missile with its independent radar system and firing its 2000 rounds per minute of depleted uranium pellets, there was still a substantial danger to the ship. Even if the missile were destroyed, it would not be completely obliterated. The air around them would be filled with shrapnel and those that hit could be almost as damaging to the cruiser as a direct hit.
The close-in weapons system picked up the target immediately, and its R2D2-like form swivelled as it followed the missile inbound. When it judged that it had an optimum range and angle, the CWIS started firing. It sounded more like an angry
Everything functioned perfectly. The missile was peppered with super-dense projectiles, and immediately disintegrated. But the mass of metal that composed its body, along with its warhead, continued on their same path, and rained down on the cruiser.
Inside Combat, the impact sounded like hail on a tin roof. One bit of shrapnel shattered a window on the bridge, adding sharp shards of Plexiglas to the barrage pelting the bridge team. Two larger chunks penetrated the skin at Combat, and ricocheted through the compartment, causing considerable damage. Six more found their targets just above the water line, piercing the skin and generating leaks.
But the worst damage came from those bits of the missile that found the antennas and radars on
The first one ripped across the -49 radar, immediately rendering it useless. The second slammed into the SPY-1 system, destroying two-thirds of the small radar elements housed there.
Inside Combat, the screens went blank.
One by one, the four missile symbols disappeared from the tactical screen. There was utter silence in TFCC as they watched the drama unfold.
“Launch the alert-five Tomcats,” Batman snapped. “Then get everything else we have on the deck turning. If this is the start of a full-scale attack, we’ve got to be ready.”
The flight deck exploded into a melee of confusion. To an outsider, it would look like utter chaos, but to Batman’s experienced eyes, everything was running quite smoothly. Pilots were pouring out of the hatch from the handler’s office, having hastily signed out their aircraft. They ran around each jet, doing an abbreviated preflight, and then were up the boarding ladders and into cockpits within minutes.
Yellow shirts coordinated the entire evolution, snapping out commands to the green-shirted technicians and brown-shirted plane captains who were dealing with small maintenance problems, critical maintenance problems and moving the aircraft around. The Tomcat that was down for a hydraulic gripe was quickly towed aside as more fighters jockeyed behind him, each pilot eager for his shot at the catapult.
Batman felt his gut churn as he watched the fighters launch. Every second that passed by seemed more and more perilous. When would the wave of missile attacks start? And the enemy fighters? Could they get enough air power up quickly enough to cover for the crippled cruiser?
