Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (45 page)

That seemed to be all they were was going to get. He pressed Transmit. “PaCom,
Savo.
Our intercept capabilities against satellites are … marginal. How badly do you want this guy taken out? That will impact salvo size and any refires needed. Over.”

“This is PaCom. We need it taken down. ASAP. On its next orbit, if at all possible. Expend what ordnance is necessary. Over.”

Dan exchanged glances with Mills. The TAO was frowning, pointing up at the weapons inventory board. “This is
Savo
. Two issues. First: This is a Chinese satellite, correct? We had not understood here that hostilities had gone hot. Interrogative tasking. Over.”

The distant voice turned hard.
“Far above your pay grade, Captain. But for your information, an Air Force Rivet Joint recon plane is missing east of Hainan Island. We suspect shootdown. Execute your orders. Over.”

Okay, that was clear enough. “This is
Savo
. Roger on execution. However, important to make clear we have only eight, I say again, numeral eight, TBMD birds remaining. Interrogative: Will there be resupply? Interrogative: How many should I commit to this mission? Over.”

“This is PaCom. I say for the last time: expend what is necessary. Report results ASAP. PaCom out.”

He blew out, resocketed the handset, and exchanged astonished looks with Mills. “Okay, that clarifies things.”

“They really want this thing off the board.”

“If it’s synthetic aperture radar, it can track forces anywhere in the Pacific, and pass targeting on our battle groups.”

“But if we do, it legitimizes their shooting down our satellites too,” Noblos put in. “Which they definitely can. A multistage solid-fuel kinetic-kill vehicle from Xichang Satellite Launch Center—”

Wenck said, “But they already shot down our recon plane, right? I’d say, it’s game on, and we’re ten points behind.”

Dan glanced at his watch. “Like the man says: above our pay grades. All right, eighty-two minutes until it comes around again. We’ve got an orbital plotting function in GCCS, right? Get that up where we can see it. Also, dig out what exactly this thing is, and get the EWs tuned in if it’s radiating. Donnie, if we shoot a two-round salvo, will we have time to refire? Or have to wait until the orbit after that? Sounds like this is getting urgent.”

But Wenck was shaking his head. “We can’t refire on the next orbit, Dan—I mean, Captain. Each pass, the track moves west, remember? Or the earth rotates out from under it … whichever way you want to put it. If we miss on this go-round, we’re not gonna see this thing again until tomorrow.”

Dan blew out again. Right; with a period of ninety minutes, that would be about … twenty-two degrees of longitude with each pass, or, here near the equator—

“Fifteen hundred miles,” Wenck supplied, apparently doing the same calculation, but faster. “
Way
out of range. So this coming up is gonna be our one whack at this piñata.”

Which also explained why PaCom had been so insistent that they fire
now.
They were isolating the battlefield; taking down the sensors the other side needed to fight an over-the-horizon battle. Just as Simko had predicted.

But he was the guy with his butt in the crack, squeezed between astrophysics, operational necessity, and emptying magazines. He felt for the Fire key, on its steel chain around his neck with his Academy-issue dog tags. “TAO, set up for three-round engagement. Pass what’s going on to the battle group commander. Give somebody else the air defense mission. Do we need to steam west, Donnie? Will that improve our geometry?”

He glanced at the geo plot, overlaid now with the green curved lines of the satellite track function. They didn’t have a hell of a lot of sea room before slamming into the Malay Peninsula, but he could run in that direction for eighty-two minutes.

“Thirty or forty miles is not going to make a difference,” Noblos sniffed.

“But it can’t hurt. Let’s come to two-seven-zero and kick her up to flank. Prepare for three-round engagement.” He stood, stretching the pain out of his back and neck, staring at the GCCS. Taking in the whole vast bowl of the China Sea, and the increasing number of air and sea contacts up to the north, off the coast.

So both sides trudged toward war. Like sleepwalkers …

*   *   *

AN
hour later, they were fully manned. Two watch sections, including Cheryl and Amarpeet, crowded CIC. Dan wanted them all in on this. Not just for training, but so they could say they’d been here when it started—the first offensive step of the war that now seemed unavoidable, though chat kept reporting UN efforts to avert it. No further news on
George Washington,
but another civilian airliner had attempted an approach, to Yokota Air Base. A Japanese F-16 had brought it down short of the runway, unfortunately into a heavily populated part of Tokyo.

The customary litany of warning bells, dampers being shut, main decks being sealed, streamed past but barely registered. He leaned on one elbow, wondering if he should fire three missiles or four. Four would cut his inventory in half. But PaCom had made it clear this thing had to come down. Finally he told Mills to make it a three-round salvo. “I know it’s not doctrine, but let’s just shoot, shoot, shoot. Then look, and maybe shoot again. Maybe.”

“The numbers aren’t there, Captain,” Noblos put in. “You could go with two. Or even one, and save the taxpayers from throwing away more money. I don’t believe you have decent P-sub-K on any of them.”

Dan waved Longley and a sandwich off, then relented. He picked at chips and a pickle in between scrolling down intel updates. Japan had just announced mobilization, and the Diet had approved conscription, for the first time since World War II. The Republic of Korea was already mobilized, and Seoul, only a few miles from the DMZ, was being evacuated.

He shivered, recalling the eerie wail of the sirens there during the weekly drills. Both halves of that divided country had been on a near-war footing since the armistice. Now they were preparing for a rematch.

He’d read through OPLAN 5081. He had to keep reminding himself that GCCS wasn’t always accurate. But it looked like the first stage, positioning forces behind Taiwan and in blocking positions in the passages out of the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, was almost complete.

Once Strike One joined up with its Australian contingent, it would neutralize and bypass the Spratly Islands, off the Vietnamese coast. The Vietnam People’s Navy would occupy and hold behind them. They’d claimed the Spratlys for centuries, and only lost them to the Chinese in 1988; he suspected their repossession would be Hanoi’s reward for joining the allies. Strike One could then continue north to seize or at least neutralize the Paracels.

At that point, an iron ring of sensors and weapons would encircle the Middle Kingdom. The allied advance would stop there, hold whatever counteroffensive the Chinese could mount, and contemplate the next step. If one would be necessary; the administration seemed to assume the blockade would force war termination, in and of itself.

Just as the British had thought, in 1914, that their naval blockade would force Germany to the peace table. He shook his head, comparing the GCCS display to the deployment chart in the op order. Everything seemed to be moving into place, except for the hole south of Kyushu where the
Washington
battle group should’ve been. Losing the carrier’s airborne sensors and ASW aircraft left a huge gap in the defenses.

“SAR complete.”

“Stand by for sunup … counting down … five … four … three … two …
one.
”

“Satellite Alfa above the horizon. Still in atmospheric distortion … Target acquired.” Terranova’s soft, determined voice. “Stand by … lock-on, Satellite Alfa.”

Dan got up and stalked through CIC, back to the electronic warfare stacks. Put his hands on the operator’s shoulders from behind, and studied the green flicker of the SLQ-32. “What have we got?”

“I’m not picking up anything, Captain.” The tech explained that if it was an ocean recon bird, it would be putting out power in the X band, giving its radar a resolution of about a meter. “That’d be adequate to pick up aircraft. Even something the size of a tank. If it’s a comm relay, we’d copy that, too. But—”

“But what?” Dan glanced back to the command desk.

“We’re not picking up shit, sir. Maybe a very faint, intermittent transponder emission. That’s all.”

“Captain,” Mills called. Dan wheeled and jogged back.

They had track again. The same tiny contact as before, creeping above the artificially generated black cutout of the radar horizon. Cupped by the vibrating brackets of the Aegis lock-on. “Permission to engage?” Mills murmured.

Dan nodded. It didn’t matter what it was. Their orders were clear. “Released.” He flicked up the red cover and hit the Fire Auth switch.

Next to him, Mills murmured, “Confirm, batteries released for three-round engagement. Shifting to auto mode.”

Out of the corner of his eye Dan noted Mills lifting his hands from the keyboard, like a pianist finishing a demanding piece. Wenck and Noblos had set the no-fire threshold to .1, one-tenth. If ALIS calculated a lesser probability of kill, she wouldn’t fire. A hush the space of a drawn breath stilled the compartment. His gaze darted to the ordnance status board, to the surface radar picture, to the GCCS; then flicked back to the Aegis display.

The bellow of the rocket motor sounded muffled, more distant this time than usual. For a second he wondered if it was some sort of misfire or abort. Then Mills reached for the joystick, and pivoted the camera on the aft missile deck.

The picture came up center screen. A solid white wall whirled, thinned, illuminated from above; then blew off, gradually revealing a calm green sea. Then it was blotted out by a harsh illumination so brilliant the camera blanked, before opening its eye again to more smoke. “Bird one away,” Terranova announced. “Bird two away … bird three away. Rounds complete from after magazine.”

Mills joysticked the camera to follow pinpoints of flame until they winked out of sight. “Stand by for refire. Select and authorize missiles eleven and twelve in forward magazine.”

They’d agreed on a shoot-shoot-shoot sequence, with three in the first salvo, then a look, with two missiles prepared for a refire. Dan doubted they’d have time for a second salvo, fast as this thing was traveling, but if PaCom needed it shot down,
Savo
wouldn’t fail for lack of trying. As to what would happen after that … he put that aside. The fog of war was shrouding the whole Pacific.

“Twenty seconds to intercept,” Noblos announced.

On the right-hand screen, the white dot crept steadily higher. The horizon was out of sight now, below the beam. The brackets pulsed, not so much vibrating as swelling and then shrinking. Probably a reaction to the varying reflectivity they’d noted on the first orbit. Terranova had posited it might be rotating, presenting different faces of an irregular body. But why would a recon satellite
rotate
? There had to be some other explanation.

Unless this wasn’t a recon satellite …

“Stand by for intercept …
now.
”

The white dot suddenly novaed. It wobbled, pulsating much more wildly, brightening and dimming. The brackets slewed back, slipped off, steered back on. But their grip seemed less certain. Off-center. “What’s that mean?” Dan called. “Donnie? Bill?”

“Not sure.”

“Could we have a hit?”

“More likely a near miss,” Noblos called back. He didn’t sound excited, or even involved. Once more Dan wondered why the guy seemed so pessimistic about the system he himself had helped engineer. He really ought to have inquired more closely into the relationships among the Missile Defense Agency, the Navy Advanced Projects Office, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Commander, Operational Test and Evaluation Force, and Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. All had taken part in the design of the Block 4 and the thrust-vector-control booster. He’d met some of the monsters that lurked in the Navy’s development labyrinth, back when he’d worked with Tomahawk. Not everyone wanted a new program to succeed. But he couldn’t believe Noblos actually wanted them to fail. More likely negativity was just part of his personality.

“Second round intercepts …
now.
”

The radar return pulsed, but didn’t strobe this time. Actually, Dan couldn’t see any effect. “Are we calling that a miss?”

The EW operator called, “Transponder ceased emitting.”

The CIC officer walked back, and returned. “The signal was intermittent, but he was hearing it. Then it stopped.”

“Stand by for impact, shot three …
now.
”

The blip smeared across the screen, so sudden and bright the watchers flinched. When the trace dimmed, it left only the by-now-familiar returns of spinning debris. The shrapnel from their TBM shootdowns had been incandescent hot. This chaotic, random flicker expanded across the screen like galaxies in a cooling, aging universe. “Direct hit,” Wenck said.

“Concur,” muttered Mills laconically.

“Good job, everyone. I really wasn’t sure we were going to make that basket. Report it on covered voice.” Dan leaned back, cradling aching kidneys with both hands.

Mills resocketed the red phone. “Strike One says Bravo Zulu on the shootdown.
Savo Island,
return to formation. Launch helo and sanitize Sector Hotel before the strike group passes through it.”

“Anything from PaCom?”

“They acknowledged.” Mills hesitated.

“What else?”

“Nothing, sir. They acknowledged the report. Asked how many rounds were expended. I told them, three.”

“Very well. Make it so,” Dan said. “Bravo Zulu” meant “well done.” But the lack of any comment from PaCom was less reassuring. Oh, well. They probably had more on their minds than patting
Savo
’s back. Though it would’ve been nice to have something to pass on to the team, over and above his own congratulations.

The ear-piercing shreik of the boatswain’s pipe made him plug his ears.
“Now secure from condition three TBMD. Set condition three wartime steaming. Now flight quarters, flight quarters. All hands man your flight quarters stations for launch of Red Hawk 202. Stand clear topside aft of frame 315. Smoking lamp is out throughout the ship. Now flight quarters.”