Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (38 page)

If he couldn’t be sure of an interception, it was probably better not to fire at all.

But the moment he thought this, a countervailing doubt spoke up. If the Pakistanis had actually aimed the opening salvo of a nuclear war at a population center, wouldn’t it be better to attempt an intercept, even if it would most likely fail?

The Lenson Doctrine, they’d called it in Washington: If the U.S. possessed the capability to prevent a nuclear strike, it was morally bound to do so.

But if it failed, who would be blamed? If he intervened, it had to be successful. Attempting an intercept, and failing, would degrade the credibility of the system as a deterrent.

And
was
it countervalue? Or
were
they aiming at the airfield … a valid military target, after all, even if it was only a couple of miles from a heavily populated urban center?

He wandered in a different labyrinth now. Not of dark sunken passageways, seething with the dust of ages, but of branching decision trails obscured in risk and uncertainty. He squinted at the screen. The impact prediction had halted, midway between airfield and city. It vibrated, but didn’t move either way.

“TAO, what’s your take?”

“If we’re gonna shoot, sir, I recommend a two-round salvo.”

“Concur with that. Tactically.”

“Then we have weapons release?”

“I didn’t say that.” He half turned and caught Wenck’s gaze over the Aegis console. “Donnie? No sign of another launch?”

“No alerts, no detections.”

He covered his face with his hands and scrubbed. What was the Pakistani intent? One single missile, targeted on either an airfield or a city. Was it nuclear-tipped? They’d threatened just that. Was this the follow-through? Some sort of warning? Or merely display?

Mills said tentatively, “The question is, should we get involved at all.”

Dan thought of calling Stonecipher. Then, Jenn Roald. But there wasn’t time. And this wasn’t their responsibility, but his. “That’s the question, all right. But we’re here. Why? Just to stand by and watch? We have to assume worst-case. That this is a nuclear weapon.”

On the screen, the altitude callout pulsed nearly unchanged from second to second. The projectile was midphase, at the peak of its great parabolic arc. Weightless. Cold; despite its terrific speed, there was no atmosphere up there to heat it through friction. But ALIS seemed to have an iron grip on the heightened radar return from its beam-on aspect.

In another minute, that would change, as the warhead headed back down. Its speed would increase even more, accelerated by remorseless gravity. Temperature would climb. It would radiate in the infrared. Then, as its ablative sheathing charred away, the warhead would grow an electrically charged ionization trail, much bigger than the weapon at its heart. The challenge then would be to pick it out from debris, detached stages, or decoys, accompanying it along the downward path through reentry.

He had to decide by then.

“Captain … hadn’t we better let somebody know about this?”

Dan blew out. In blackshoe-speak, it was always a bad idea to be the senior guy with a secret. He unsocketed the red phone and selected satellite high comm, the voice circuit that would connect
Savo
to the highest levels of command. Took a deep breath, and keyed.

“Sit Room, CentCom, Fifth Fleet. This is
Savo Island
Actual. Flash, flash, flash.
Savo
has received launch cuing from Rainbow. Aegis holds Pakistani missile launch. Missile profile, consistent with Ghauri-type. Current IPP is very close to the city of Jodhpur.
Savo
has warhead track and engagement computed. Can engage, but only within a short window. Estimate time to engage is two minutes. Over.”

The circuit indicator light went red, and a squealing screech was followed by a garble. Someone was trying to answer, but the scrambler circuits weren’t synchronizing. He keyed again “Sit Room, CentCom, Fifth Fleet: Dropped sync. Did you copy my last? Over.”

The circuit dropped sync again. “Fuck,” he muttered. Waited two seconds, then hit the button again. “Any station this net,
Savo Island,
over … Screw it, we’re not getting any joy here.” He turned to yell past Mills, “CIC Officer: get on Fifth Fleet Secure. Start calling them and the battle group. Try until you get a response. Then put me on.”

Terranova broke in, loudly but without any stress evident in her South Jersey accent, “Meteor Alfa at apogee. Terminal phase commence. Lock-on remains solid.”

Mills cleared his throat. “Captain. Request permission to engage.”

Dan didn’t answer. He was still staring at the area of uncertainty. A pretty accurate description of where his own mind was parked right now. In neutral. Idling.

The return blurred and began to stretch out. The ionization trail. It looked like a comet, hearted with a harder dot that must still be the warhead itself.

Behind him Wenck said, “Skipper?”

Dan stared at the geo display. Had the quivering oval started to move? Yes. It had.

Only about ten miles across now, it was slowly, slowly tracking northwest.

Directly over the city.

Mills touched his arm. “Permission to engage? Roll FIS to green?”

The Firing Integrity Switch. Essentially, the safety catch on the ship’s main battery. Dan muttered, “Not yet … not yet. CICO, joy on the Sit Room? CentCom?”

“No joy, sir. Circuit keeps dropping sync.”

Dan said, “Stand by on permission to engage. Set Zebra.”

Mills said into his mike, “Bridge, TAO. Pass Material Condition Zebra throughout the ship. Launch-warning bell forward and aft.”

“IPP’s moving again,” Terranova noted.

“I hold it,” Dan said. “Moving away from the airfield, toward a population center.”

“Concur,” Mills said instantly.

Dan opened the order of battle and hastily searched it as the 1MC announced hollowly,
“Now set Circle William throughout the ship. Secure all outside accesses.”
The A/C sighed to a stop. Doors thudded closed. The air base. An army base, too, though no specific location. Within the city limits? The database held little on Jodhpur itself. Population, nearly a million. A tourist destination. An old fort.

When he looked back up, the IPP was at the western edge of the city, on the far side from the airfield, and the AOU was five or six miles. If they were aiming at anything, it wasn’t the strip, unless the missile was off course. He didn’t have hard numbers on the Ghauri, but the circular error, probable for most second-generation liquid-fueled theater-range weapons, the Al-Huseyns and the Scud derivatives, was around two miles. But even given that generous estimate of its probable accuracy, this thing wasn’t aimed at the airfield. “It’s definitely meant for the city,” he muttered. “Or if it originally wasn’t, it’s now off course and headed for it.”

“Concur,” Mills said again. “The IPP is clearly west of the city, but close enough for major damage.”

Dan glanced at the CIC officer, who was still clutching the handset. He shook his head slightly, looking scared.

“Okay, FIS to green,” Dan said.

Mills touched his mike. “Launchers into ‘operate’ mode. Set up to take Meteor Alfa, two-round salvo. Deselect all safeties and interlocks. Stand by to fire. On CO’s command.”

Dan clicked up the red cover over the switch. ALIS was computing trajectory, intercept point, probability of kill. Mills was tapping away at his terminal, entering a backup order in case Dan’s glitched.

He took a deep, slow breath, watching the ionization plume waver and grow. Taking his time. Thinking it through. But knowing, too, he’d never be sure. And over time, interpretations and stories and maybe even legends would grow around this moment. Like Sarajevo. But all that was out of his hands.

He reached out and unsocketed the red handset of the uncovered high-frequency command net. Bowed his head, then pressed the button. “Flash, flash, flash. This is
Savo Island
. I pass in the blind: Pakistani missile targeted on Jodhpur. Have consistent drop sync with all commands, this and other nets. I assess that the missile must be engaged to prevent massive loss of life. Engaging at this time. Out.”

He socketed the handset without waiting for a response. Took one more deep breath, then said, in as confident a tone as he could manage, “You have permission to engage.”

17

The Devil and the Sea

A HEART-STOPPING
pause, during which the toxic-gas-vent dampers whunked shut. Dan tensed, hunched, finger still on the switch. Wait … had he inserted the Fire Auth key? Yes, he had. The steel chain lay close to his hand. But was ALIS going to initiate? Or were they already too late?

The endless moment stretched.

Then a roar vibrated through the hull. “Bird one away,” Mills intoned. A pause, then a second roar. “… Bird two away. Firing complete.”

On the LSD two small bright symbols detached from the circle-and-cross of
Savo Island
’s own-ship. Morphing into blue semicircles, they headed rapidly inshore, leaping ahead with incredible speed from sweep to sweep of the Aegis spokes. They were already at full speed, almost four kilometers a second, as the dual-thrust motors of the first stage boosted them into exoatmospheric flight.

Dan blew out, with a strange sense of déjà vu. He’d dreamed this, years before, though he couldn’t recall exactly where. Which meant something, he wasn’t sure what. Maybe that time didn’t exist, or that it all existed at once …

He scrubbed his face, trying to deny fatigue. “Matt, get a message out. Short and sweet, but make it clear we stood by until we were certain the TPI was over a population center. Ten Block 4s remaining. Continuing on station, but fuel state critical.”

“Coffee? Just made a fresh pot.” Chief Zotcher set a mug by his elbow. The heavy Victory style, with the ship’s crest on one side and a sonar system logo on the other.

“Uh … thanks. But, Chief, I’d rather have you nailed to that screen. That emitter’s still out there. And there’s gotta be a sub attached to it.”

“We got our best young eyes on it, Captain.”

Dan forced himself to his feet and carried the mug over to the EW stack. He inspected the screen over the operator’s shoulder. “That Snoop Tray, day before yesterday … no, day before that. Nothing since?”

“Nothing radiating out there, Captain.”

“How about from shore?”

The EW petty officer said there was intense air activity over the Pakistani naval air base nearest them. “A major attack. Heavy jamming, AA radars, and the cryppies are reporting a lot of air-to-air chatter.”

Dan regarded it for a few seconds, then was drawn irresistibly back to the large-screen displays. He’d been away less than a minute, but the blue semicircles of
Savo
’s outgoing rounds were already closing in on the red caret-symbol of the target. He gripped the back of his chair, hardly daring to breathe. “Stand by for intercept,” said Wenck, words eerily uttered at the very same moment by Terranova, baritone and soprano, an ominous duet. “Stand by…”

The symbols met. Aegis’s lock-on brackets jerked, apparently snagging its own terminal vehicle momentarily instead of the target, then recentered. Dan leaned forward.

The radar return blurred, widening, elongating. A second later it began to pulse, then all at once glowed much more brightly.

“Intercept,” Wenck called from the Aegis console. “That winking is rotating debris. The debris is spreading … spreading out … ionization trail growing … it’s burning up.”

The radar return showed what Dan assumed was the smaller debris field left from the explosion of the Block 4’s warhead. Not a gigantic payload, but anything hitting at fifteen thousand miles an hour carried a punch. The Ghauri was single-stage. Its payload remained integral with the airframe, like the old V-2. Once it was destabilized, they could depend on the atmosphere and its own speed to tear it apart. As he watched, the speeding dart of their second round hit as well. The radar return expanded suddenly to five times its previous size, like a bursting firework. Then, slowly, faded.

“Payload detonation,” Wenck intoned. “Both Standards connected.”

The CIC crew rose at their consoles, cheering, clapping. The trail faded, widened, glittered, as the lock-on brackets began to hunt back and forth, uncertain what to lock onto. ALIS’s eagle eye continued to show ever-tinier pieces of debris, the blaze of ionization as they turned to metal gas. But there was no longer a central contact.

He stayed hunched forward, watching the last fading falling sparklings. Then blinked slowly. Even as the vent dampers clunked open, and the air-conditioning whooshed back on, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this it wasn’t over. Not at all.

It had only begun.

*   *   *

THE
morning resumed. Longley brought up scrambled eggs and toast and limp too-pink ham, but Dan only picked at it, then set it aside to slide up and down the command table until it dove off during a bad roll.
Savo
set flight quarters, nosed around into the wind, and launched Red Hawk to relieve
Mitscher
’s SH-60. The ETs came down every half hour with updates from Mumbai news. And the high-side chat was still up, so he was getting DIA analysis, press releases, and reports on the UN’s efforts to arrange a cease-fire. But they weren’t getting anything from Pakistan, and Mumbai seemed limited to reporting bellicose statements rather than actual news.

Of course, in the middle of a war, no one knew what was happening. No news agency had reported on the Jodhpur missile, making him wonder if the Indians had even detected it. So far, there’d been no official notice.

He sucked a breath. Maybe, just maybe, the Indians
hadn’t
detected it. If so, and it was a signal, intercepting it had been exactly the wrong thing to do. If one side thought it had sent a warning, and the other didn’t respond, what was the natural conclusion? That the warning had been brushed aside.

He shivered at the most chilling thought yet: that
Savo
’s presence, and his attempt to protect innocents, might
lead
to escalation.