Brown, Dale - Independent 01 (58 page)

 
         
Without the antiair coverage provided
by the two cruisers, they were almost sure to suffer even heavier losses. In
another hour—maybe minutes—the whole fleet could be destroyed....

           
“We’ve got
eighteen casualties ourselves,” Jacobs forced himself to go on. “There’s a
hundred injured and we’ve lost both waist catapults, one elevator and all our
port-side guns and rockets. May have problems recovering planes on the landing
strip: the first set of arresting cables is fouled up.” He paused. Then:
“Orders, sir?”

           
Orders?
Any orders he gave at this point would be too little
too late. But orders were what admirals gave. Good, bad, too late.... okay, at
least he would not make it easy for the Russians. He’d give them the fight they
wanted.... “Call battle staff to the bridge,” Clancy said. “We’ve got to get
the wagons in a circle—”

           
The
loudspeaker blared: “Collision warning, all hands, collision warning.”

           
“Port side,
Admiral,” Jacob’s voice was blaring at him but seemed strangely remote, like a
surreal movie dream sequence....
“Port
side
,
heading right for us
....”

           
Clancy
stared out the bridge through broken window panes. His rational head told him
that he wouldn’t be able to see the missile, traveling low and fast and just
skimming the waves, but he stood there anyway, as though mesmerized.

           
“Hard port,
flank speed,” Edgewater was shouting now. “Signal the fleet that
Nimitz
is maneuvering to port....”

           
But the
missile kept coming, splitting the air at supersonic speed, seeking its target,
and an end to its long, lethal journey.

 
          
ARMSTRONG SPACE STATION

 
          
Skybolt fired. Saint-Michael’s body
felt as though it had burst into flame. The pain was a weight, crushing him.

           
A flash of
light in the command module changed to a yellow glow, as if the module were a
piece of burning phosphorous. A high-pitched whine blared, louder and louder,
undiminished by helmet or earphones. The module, exposed to open space now,
should have felt icy cold but instead it felt as if it were a boiling cauldron.

           
Through it
all he thought he heard a pounding from somewhere beneath him, growing more
insistent as he fought to stay conscious. Then a piece of some long-destroyed
console broke free and slammed into the side of his helmet, deciding the fight
for him. Everything— the pain, the heat, the sound—mercifully snapped off.

 
          
USS NIMITZ

 
          
Back on
Nimitz
there was a flash of light, a split-second of pure whiteness
like a powerful flashbulb going off. Clancy blinked.
Was that what death was like? A quick flash? Poof and out?

           
A magnum
explosion now roiled the sea into foam not a half mile from
Nimitz’s
scarred port side. The
concussion from the blast hit the
Nimitz,
rattling the ninety-one-thousand-ton vessel like a rick of straw in the wind,
but....

           
But that
was all. Noise, rolling thunder, then dead silence.

           
“What the
hell...?”
The admiral picked up the
phone again. “Clancy here. What the hell happened out there? Did the missile
self- destruct?”

           
“Damned if
I know, Admiral,” Jacobs said. “We got hit with a powerful energy surge just
before that last explosion. Knocked a lot of our stuff into standby. Radars, comm,
sonar—everything was bumped off the line.... We just now got it back. Could
someone have popped a nuke off up there?”

           
“Well, if
it were a nuke I think we’d be on our way to the bottom or to the moon. Get a
poll of the other ships—”

           
Off the bow
about ten miles in the distance, he saw what appeared to be a perfectly
straight arc of lightning slice across the dark sky. Its flash was like
lightning, except Clancy had never seen a
straight
lightning bolt before....

           
This one
terminated in a huge fireball with tongues of flames shooting out in all
directions. The fireball flared to an enormous size, lighting the ocean like a
second sun, then disappeared.

           
“There it
goes again, Admiral,” Jacobs said from down below. “Another glitch, we’re
resetting now—”

           
“Wait a
minute ...
wait
a minute....”

           
“There’s
another one, sir.” This from a damage-control seaman on the bridge, pointing
back toward the northwest. “They’re all around us, like some damn crazy
lightning storm.”

           
“That’s not
lightning,” Clancy said, beginning to understand. He stared up into the night
sky, shaking his head slowly at the thin clouds and hazy stars. “That,
gentlemen, is our guardian angel....”

           
For the
next few minutes the scene around the
Nimitz
was eerie, unearthly, near-supernatural. A straight lightning bolt would flash,
followed by a fireball near the sea. A few times the lightning would strike the
sea, sending a geyser of steamy water a hundred or so feet into the air; then
another bolt would strike and a fireball would erupt again.

           
As
spectacular as the sight looked to the men aboard the
Nimitz
and her support vessels, it was even more impressive to the
pilot of the lead Soviet Sukhoi-24 bomber, who was viewing it out his
windscreen. While trying to concentrate on radar indications, threat-warning
receivers and strike-radar returns, his attention was being diverted outside to
the strange flashes of light that kept dancing out of the sky. Several times a
minute the clouds would erupt in a circle of light and then a streak of fire
would lance down and hit the ocean. Almost each time there was an answering
explosion—but apparently the explosions were not happening on any of the
American ships. The whole phenomenon reminded him of a meteor shower, the most
dazzling meteor shower he or anybody else had ever seen   

           
As the
Soviet strike force approached the outermost American escorts, the flashes of
light began to form eerie pillars of fire that seemed to block their path like
a shimmering curtain pulled toward them. At the same time the intermittent
threat-warnings from the American carrier-based fighters began to diminish. Had
they managed to run under the F-14 Tomcats?

           
Suddenly
the lead Sukhoi pilot’s cockpit was filled with a flash of fire and light. He
struggled for control of his bomber, watching with disbelieving eyes as the
radar altimeter, which measured the distance between the belly of the bomber
and the deadly waves below, dipped almost to zero.

           
The
formation was in abrupt disarray. The curtain of flashing light was now
surrounding them, and one of the twelve Sukhoi bombers had simply blown itself
apart. The other bombers had broken ranks to recover from the shock of the
explosion, and now, less than a hundred kilometers from the first escort ship
and less than two hundred kilometers from the
Nimitz
, the strike package had virtually come apart: the precisely
coordinated strike formation had suddenly turned into gaggle of uncoordinated
solo attackers. A few of them even climbed out and headed back the opposite way
toward the
Arkhangel
, appearing to
their fellow attackers like enemy aircraft and heightening the confusion.

           
The
Ticonderoga
got off a few
shots at the bombers, but the strikers had been dispersed before they reached
the Aegis ship’s lethal range. The crew of
Ticonderoga
could only look on in awe as the
mysterious curtain of light moved eastward into the night.

           
When the
lightning bolts subsided, the air felt cleaner, colder,
quieter
.
Even the smoke from the fires and exploding missiles seemed to dissipate. A few
of the
Nimitz’s
escorts blew their
horns in celebration—of what, they couldn’t possibly be sure. Even Admiral
Clancy felt like tooting a horn.

           
“Launch the
Intruder tankers to refuel the fighters we sent after those cruise missiles,”
Clancy told Air Ops. He spoke slowly, as if afraid to disturb the mystical air
that seemed to surround the fleet and the bridge. “We’ll need to keep them
airborne until we get the deck cleared off. As soon as possible get Kilo flight
on deck to change over with the eastern patrols.” He turned to Edgewater. “I
want a battle- staff meeting and a full report on the status of the group in
thirty minutes.”

           
He put a
hand on the captain’s shoulder and clasped it tightly. “And get me a damned
radio. I want to make a call to a certain damned space station that’s been
looking over us.”

 
          
THE KREMLIN,
USSR

 
          
The sealed chamber in which the
Stavka VGK, the Soviet Supreme High Command, was meeting was deadly quiet. The
general secretary sat at the head of the triangular table, staring blankly.

           
“Strike,”
he said. “Destroy the
Nimitz.
Launch
the nuclear AS-15 cruise missiles from
Tashkent
,
or the SS-N-24 missiles from the attack submarines. Destroy the
Nimitz.”

           
Then the
whispers and muted voices began:

           
“The
American laser could intercept anything....”

           
“What if
the laser strikes the
Arkhangel...?”

           
“The space
station Armstrong can vector in American B-52s and can steer cruise
missiles....”

           
“We must
have time to evaluate this... this new development, sir,” Czilikov said,
abruptly riding over the
sotto voce
murmurs of disbelief and dismay. “We’ve no available ground-launch satellite
interceptors, no spaceplanes ... so we can’t destroy the space station, not
yet. And it holds the high ground”—in more ways than one, he thought— “against
the
Arkhangel
carrier group. We can’t
send a strike force without risking the
Arkhangel.
”

           
“I will
not
accept it,” the general secretary
said, glaring at Czilikov. “I will not retreat. I will not have this nation denied
access of the seas—”

           
“Sir, we
control
Iran
and the
Persian Gulf
—”

           
“Oh?
Control it with
what?
And for how
long? It is only a matter of time before the Americans move in again. ...”

           
“If we
withdraw, the situation remains as it is. If we advance against the
Nimitz
without further dealing with the
space station Armstrong, we risk everything.”

           
The general
secretary sat back, stared at the shaken generals ranged about him. Once, he
thought, there
had
been a man sitting
at this table who’d not been afraid to take on a challenge. A man who, like
himself, would not even consider accepting defeat. Was another like him out
there somewhere? He had to hope and believe so.

           
Otherwise
the Americans would have scored a victory far more important than the military
one. They would have stolen the future. ...

 
          
January 1993

 
          
ORINDA
,
CALIFORNIA

 
          
“He wanted to be where he could see
the bay,” Ann said. “That’s what he said in his will: ‘I want to rest where I
can see the bay and touch the sky where my daughter lives.’”

           
She bent
down and placed the bouquet of flowers on the mound of earth near the low
headstone that bore the name of Captain Matthew E. Page, United States Navy.
She and Jason Saint-Michael stood on a low hill on the edge of the cemetery
northeast of the Alameda Naval Station. The low clouds and mists obscured
San
Francisco
and
Oakland
Bay
Bridge
far below them in the distance, but the clouds had seemed to part just before
they reached the top of the Berkeley Hills, and the sun now shone brightly on
the summit.

           
Saint-Michael
gripped Ann’s hand, released it, then moved off toward the edge of the hill and
stared out into the vista below. She watched him as he moved away.

           
It was obvious
that the mists rolling up from
San Francisco
Bay
had invaded his
nitrogen-tortured joints: he walked with a cane now in the cool, damp air. It
was an old, gnarled shillelagh given to him in a private ceremony by the
president. He had accepted it with a smile and a handshake, but he’d been quiet
and moody ever since.

 
         
It had turned out to be his retirement
ceremony as well, since the doctors had decided that it would be too risky for
him to go into space again. With no field unit to command and no interest in
sitting behind a desk, he’d reluctantly agreed to the medical retirement that
Space Command offered him. Come next month, he’d be a civilian again. Could he
accept that?

           
Ann had
hoped that getting him to
California
for New Years would somehow improve his mood, but it seemed to have the
opposite effect. Her mother, Amanda, was supportive, but even her up-mood
didn’t really help. He was about to leave her home when the unexpected call
from Admiral Clancy came, requesting his presence at the Oakland-Alameda Naval
Base, headquarters of the
Nimitz
carrier group, the next day.

           
They had
stopped at her father’s gravesite to lay a small bouquet on his headstone, but
now she thought that it hadn’t been a good idea at all. The reminder of Matthew
Page’s death only seemed to resurrect other painful memories of the past few
months, driving, it seemed, a wedge deeper between them.

           
She moved
close to him, linked her arm in his as they looked out at the swirling mists of
San Francisco
Bay
.

           
“Strange in
a way,” he said, “but I miss that station. I mean, what is it anyway?
Computers, instrument panel—nuts and bolts, really. But I miss the damn thing.
You wouldn’t believe how I miss it.” He looked at her, thinking of her
life-saving skill and the fierce dedication she’d shown toward Skybolt. “I take
that back.... Of course, you would know.”

           
There was
no good answer to that. What she said was, “Jason, why did you agree to come
here?”

           
“I thought
I should say good-bye to your father.... When will you be going back?”

           
“Back?”

           
“To the station.”

           
“Never,”
she said.

           
“Never?
Why?”

           
“Because
that part of my life ...” she didn’t add,
his
life
, “is over. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

           
“But what about your career?
That’s your laser device up
there. That’s
yours.
You can’t just—”

           
“I seem to
remember this guy, a cocky sonofabitch Space Command general who said it wasn’t
my
laser. You know something? He was
right. You want to know something else? I don’t want it anymore. Don’t look at
me that way. I just don’t want anything more to do with it. I built that laser
as a defensive device, Jason. Not an offensive one.”

           
“So what
were we supposed to do? Let those Elektron spaceplanes use us for target
practice?”

           
“No, of course not.
We had no choice—it was them or us. But
Space Command’s already rebuilt most of Armstrong and placed it in the same
orbit over the
Arabian Sea
that you put it in. They’re
using it to shadow the
Arkhangel
group—”

           
“I still
don’t see—”

           
“If Skybolt
is supposed to be a defensive weapon, protecting us against strategic nuclear
weapons, what’s
Silver
Tower
still doing over the
Arabian Sea
?”

           
He paused
for a moment—“Surveillance. It’s still by far the best surveillance platform
we’ve got. And it can help protect the fleet from a sneak cruise-missile
attack....”

           
“Or fighter
attack? Bomber attack?”

           
“Sure....”

           
“How about
hitting the
Arkhangel
directly? I
wonder what Skybolt would do against a carrier? Blow up a few planes on its decks?
Set off a weapons magazine? Do some serious damage to electronics? Maybe even
kill a few sailors on deck. Why not go one better? You don’t have to be a
think-tank guru to come up with the idea. Just a sincere dedicated chief of
staff, secretary of defense—or president? The Russians are going to have the
Brezhnev
leave the
Persian
Gulf
and sail to
South Yemen
for resupply.
They say that it will rejoin with the
Arkhangel
and form a new, stronger battle group to hit the
Nimitz
again. So why isn’t it logical we attack the
Brezhnev?
Attack it when it gets to
port? But better still, why don’t we run our laser over the
ArkhangeV
s home
port
of
Vladivostok
?
Or
Murmansk
?
Or
Leningrad
?
Or
Moscow
?”

           
“That’s
going pretty far, Ann. ...”

           
“Maybe, but
are you so sure? You used to work on Space Command planning staffs. What if you
now had weapons with the destructive capability of
Silver
Tower
and Skybolt? Can you really
say you’d never consider using them to stop a war before it starts?
Preemptive strike?
Surgical strike?
Or just good old saber-rattling from seven hundred miles in space?”

           
“I don’t
believe we’d ever do that....”

 
         
“I wish you would convince me. But you
know as well as I, too much success, like Skybolt has had now, can breed a need
for more and more.... I wanted to develop it for defensive reasons only. But
now....”

           
He didn’t
argue with her, but turned away and stared at the huge ridgelines of fog
rolling across the bay. They stood together quietly for a long time, until she
noticed him shifting his weight from one leg to the other.

           
“We should
leave,” she said. He followed her back to the car.

           
Rush-hour
traffic had thinned as they made their way down
Mount
Diablo Boulevard
to the
Nimitz
Highway
and on into the Oakland- Alameda Naval
Base. When they reached the gate and showed their IDs, the shore patrolman
pointed toward a waiting staff car parked at the reception area.

           
“Admiral
Clancy is waiting for you, General. His driver will take you and Dr. Page.”

           
Puzzled,
Saint-Michael returned the SP’s salute, turned across traffic into the parking
lot and parked beside the large navy-gray sedan. The driver saluted and held
the doors open for them.

           
“All this for a simple debriefing?”
Ann said, peering out
the darkened windows. She could see very little in the fog and haze surrounding
the base. “We’re not heading for carrier group headquarters, either. Driver,
where are we going?”

           
“Slip
seventeen, ma’am.”

           
“But we
are
going to meet Admiral Clancy
... ?”
Saint-Michael said.

           
“Yes, sir.
He’s waiting.”

           
Ann
shrugged. “The boonies. We may as well sit back; it’ll be a long ride.”

           
The base
was not very large, but the warehouses, docks, and buildings that they were
forced to weave among made the trip seem endless. After ten minutes they pulled
alongside a long, dark dry dock area in front of a maintenance enclosure. The
dry dock was filled with oil-clogged water and a bit of debris, but it was
still relatively freshlooking water; the drydock basin had only recently been
filled with seawater. The enclosure was contained on all sides, but by the
looks of the four-inch-diameter hawsers leading to the diesel, ship-moving
“mules” on the pier, the vessel inside was huge.

 
         
The driver stopped at the foot of a
security tower located a hundred yards from the maintenance enclosure, opened
the door for his two passengers, saluted, then quickly departed.

           
“This is
getting
very
strange,” Saint-Michael
said. “I wonder what—”

           
Suddenly, a
horn began to sound from loudspeakers on the maintenance enclosure. The two
rail-mounted mules outside the enclosure were started, and the front door of
the enclosure began to slide open.

           
“I think
we’re about to find out.”

           
When the
doors were fully opened the mules took up the slack on the hawsers, and with
clouds of diesel exhaust billowing skyward, the tractors began to pull on the
vessel hidden inside. It had only been pulled a few feet out of the building
when Ann suddenly grabbed his arm.

           
“It’s the
California
,”
she said. “Number thirty-six. They
brought the
California
back to
Oakland
.” But as it was
gently pulled out of its enclosure it was obvious it was not the same
California
.

           
“I hardly
recognize her. Look—I’m not sure but I think those are twin missile-launch
rails on the nose.”

           
“And two
RAM missile-launchers on the forecastle,” he said. “Also cannons everywhere...
but what the hell is
that?”

           
The
California
was a bit more than halfway
outside when they both gaped at a huge new structure just behind the midships
masts. Four massive legs dozens of feet high and several feet wide sprawled
across the entire aft section of the ship; it appeared the battleship had had
to be lengthened a few feet in the stem just to accommodate the huge legs.

           
Two RAM
missile launchers were mounted between the legs to provide defensive cover for
the rear quadrant of the ship, but the most impressive new feature was the
device on top of the pedestal: a huge elongated dish at least forty feet wide
and fifty feet long, arranged so that the long part of the dish was parallel to
the ship’s beam. The dish had two sections of steel folded down on top of it,
hinged on the sides and supported by hydraulic pistons.

           
“What the
hell... I’ve never seen anything like that,” Saint-Michael said. “It looks like
some kind of wing, but on a navy warship ... ?”

           
The
California
was towed clear of the
enclosure and the maintenance and security towers surrounding it, then pulled
to a halt by two mules in the rear. A gangway was set in place with the familiar
“USS CALIFORNIA” on the canvas sides, but its vessel designation no longer read
“CGN-36”; it now read “DWRS-36.”

           
“Well, stop
gawking and get up here,” they heard from the ship. They looked up the newly
painted side of the
California
and saw Admiral Clancy waving them toward the gangway. According to naval
etiquette, they saluted the colors aft, then the officer of the deck, and then
hurried up the gangplank and were met by the admiral.

           
“Permission
to come aboard, Admiral,” Saint-Michael said, saluting him. Clancy returned the
salute.