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  Before his First Watch Officer could object, Kensington shouted, “Bo’sun of the Watch! Sound the general alarm! Take the ship to Action Stations.”

  The raucous alarm whooped instantly in response, blaring out of speakers all over the ship, rousting sleeping Sailors from their bunks—as it was designed to do. Then the alarm was replaced by the bo’sun’s voice. “All hands to Action Stations! All hands to Action Stations!”

  “Damn it, Kensington,” Lieutenant Bryce half shouted. “That was not your order to give!”

  “Sorry, sir,” said Kensington, who was not even a little bit sorry. “I was trying to anticipate your next command. Quick reaction, and all that!”

  “Nothing to be done for it now, sir,” Sub Lieutenant Lavelle added helpfully.

  “I suppose not,” said Bryce. “Kensington, call down to Main Engineering and tell them we’ll be needing all engines on line. Lavelle, you call up the Chatham. Tell them we’re going to Action Stations and advise them to do the same.” He snapped his fingers three times. “Step lively. The captain is going to be up here in about two shakes, and I want him to see us doing it right.”

  “Bridge—Operations Room,” the overhead speaker said. “Sonar is reporting three more active contacts!”

  “That would be the rest of those submarines that aren’t going to show up,” Kensington said.

  “Shut your mouth,” Bryce hissed.

  Kensington started to say something, but the overhead speaker interrupted him. “Bridge—Operations Room,” the Operations Room Officer’s voice said. “Bogies have ignored our Level One challenges. Issuing Level Two challenges now. Gun and missile stations reporting ready for combat.”

  “Very well,” Lieutenant Bryce said. “Stand by for orders.”

  A watertight door banged open at the back of the bridge, and the bo’sun called out, “Captain is on the bridge!”

  The captain crossed the bridge with a few long strides, his movements in the darkness carrying a confidence that only years of familiarity can bring. He climbed into his raised chair at the starboard end of the bridge and said loudly, “First Officer of the Watch, what is the situation?”

  “We have six inbound aircraft, sir, as well as three active sonar contacts.”

  “Four,” said Sub Lieutenant Kensington.

  “Correction, sir,” Lieutenant Bryce said. “We have four sonar contacts. The aircraft have disregarded our Level One challenges. Level Two challenges are in progress. Gun and missile stations are reporting ready for combat.”

  Over the speaker, the Operations Room Officer’s voice said, “Bridge—Operations Room. Bogies have gone radar-active. I and J band pulse-Doppler emitters with a cascading pulse repetition rate. Looks like the German Air Force variant of the ECR-90C radar.”

  The captain exhaled audibly. “Luftwaffe. That narrows the field a trifle. We’re either dealing with back-fitted Toranados or those damned Eurofighter 2000s.”

  “Bridge—Operations Room. Bogies are not responding to Level Two challenges.”

  “Is that right?” the captain asked quietly. “Second Officer of the Watch, take missiles to the rails. Shift the gun to anti-air automatic.”

  Sub Lieutenant Kensington stood for a few seconds without speaking. He’d done this a thousand times under simulated conditions, but this was no simulation. There were real planes out there, and real submarines.

  “Second Officer of the Watch!” the captain said loudly.

  Kensington started. “Yes, sir!”

  “Take missiles to the rails, and shift the gun to anti-air automatic.”

  Kensington managed to catch himself before he saluted out of reflex. “Aye-aye, sir!” He keyed a comm box and repeated the captain’s orders to the Operations Room Officer. Were they actually going to shoot? Surely it wouldn’t go that far … or would it? The captain seemed to think so …

  * * *

  Out on the darkened forecastle, the twin arms of the British Aerospace missile launcher rotated up to the zero position. Two small hatches powered smoothly aside, and slender rails extended through the openings to mate with the arms of the launcher. A fraction of a second later, a pair of Sea Dart missiles rode up the vertically aligned rails to lock into place on the arms of the launcher. The rails retracted themselves, and the small hatches closed as soon as they were clear. The entire operation took less than three seconds.

  The 114mm Vickers gun was loaded and ready a split-second later. Its barrel instantly slewed to a new position as it locked on the inbound aircraft and tracked their radar returns through the night sky.

  * * *

  “Missiles at the rail, sir,” the Operations Room Officer reported. “The gun is in anti-air automatic.”

  “Good,” the captain said. “Ready all torpedo tubes for firing.”

  “Aye-aye, sir,” Kensington said. He keyed his comm box and repeated the order to the Operations Room Officer.

  “Bring us around to two-six-zero,” the captain said. “Don’t let those subs get past us.”

  Lieutenant Bryce’s voice was loud, “Helmsman, right standard rudder. Steady on course two-six-zero.”

  “Helm, aye! Sir, my rudder is right fifteen degrees, coming to new course two-six-zero!”

  The Operations Room Officer’s voice came over the speaker. “Bridge—Operations Room. Bogies will penetrate our inner defense perimeter in five seconds! Request guns and missiles free!”

  “Negative!” the captain said. “They’re just trying to scare us into breaking formation so those submarines can get past us. We are not at war, gentlemen. We’ll not fire the first shot!” His next words were drowned out by an earsplitting roar that vibrated the thick bridge windows like tuning forks.

  The jets rocketed overhead, not more than ten meters above the foremast. The shriek of their engines was deafening, literally rattling Kensington’s teeth. The glass faceplate of a gyrocompass repeater exploded into fragments under the sudden pressure.

  A sliver of flying glass stung Kensington high on the right cheek, burying itself deep under the skin. His involuntary yelp was lost in the cacophonous scream of six pairs of jet engines running at open throttle.

  And then the jets were gone, climbing away into the darkness, their afterburners carving blue arcs of flame into the night sky.

  Kensington touched his cheek and felt the moistness of his own blood. His ears were still ringing from the fly-by.

  “Steady, lads,” the captain shouted, obviously nearly deafened himself. “We’ll not fire the first shot,” he repeated. “But if they do, I give you my word that we will fire the last one!”

  The Operations Room Officer’s voice came over the speaker again. It was difficult to hear him because he wasn’t yelling like everyone else. Working farther down in the superstructure, he hadn’t been half-deafened by the jets. “Bridge—Operations Room. Bogies are coming back around for another pass.”

  “Keep on those subs!” the captain yelled.

  “Bridge—Operations Room. Bogies have locked on us with fire control radar!”

  “Damn it!” the captain shouted. “Lock on the lead aircraft!”

  Staring out the window, Sub Lieutenant Kensington spotted it first: an orange-white flare in the darkness, followed instantly by five more. Just as his brain was coming to grips with what he was seeing, he heard the Operations Room Officer’s voice.

  “Inbound! We have six inbound missiles!”

  “Flank speed!” the captain shouted. “Hard left rudder! Guns and missiles free! Engage all targets!”

  The deck pitched sharply to the right. Kensington grabbed the crossbar mount of the radar repeater to keep his footing as the ship heeled over into the turn.

  Two brilliant flashes of light from the forecastle and twin rumbles, like freight trains passing a half-meter away, announced the launch of HMS York’s first pair of missiles. The British Aerospace Sea Darts hurtled into the sky on fiery white columns of smoke. Perhaps three-quarters of a second later, two Sea Wolf mi
ssiles leapt off the deck of HMS Chatham.

  The forward chaff launchers fired six times in rapid succession. Six egg-shaped chaff projectiles arced away from the ship, four of them exploding at predetermined distances, spewing clouds of aluminum dust and metallic confetti into the sky to confuse the enemy missiles with false radar targets. The remaining two chaff rounds ignited like roman candles. They were torch rounds: magnesium flares designed to seduce heat-seeking infrared guided missiles.

  The York’s 114mm Vickers deck gun opened fire, and suddenly the night sky seemed to be filled with man-made lightning and thunder.

  The starboard Phalanx fired a short burst of 20mm rounds, and was rewarded a second later by a distant explosion as the hardened tungsten bullets shredded an incoming missile. The high-tech Gatling gun swung around toward another incoming missile and fired again.

  The port Phalanx mount remained silent, waiting for suitable targets to enter its arc of fire.

  Out on the forecastle, a second pair of Sea Dart missiles slid up the loading rails to the launcher.

  “Bogies are firing again!” the Operations Room Officer shouted over the speaker. And another half-dozen missiles leapt into the fray.

  The Sea Darts blasted the forecastle with fiery exhaust as they shot away into the night.

  * * *

  Kormoran 2 (mid-flight):

  The German missiles were AS-34B Kormoran 2s. Sea-skimmers that dropped like stones, not leveling out until they were less than two meters above the wave tops.

  Following its mid-course inertial guidance program, the first missile waited twelve seconds before activating its nose-mounted targeting radar. When it did, it immediately located two radar contacts: one large and close, and a second, smaller contact fifty meters beyond. The target selection algorithm running through the missile’s Thompson-CSF digital seeker instantly rejected the nearer/larger target. Large/near targets tended to be chaff decoys. The missile locked on the smaller target, and executed a short S-turn to the left to avoid the chaff cloud.

  Locked firmly on the second contact, it closed in for the kill. At an optimum range of one-point-three meters from its target, the missile detonated its warhead. Fifty-five kilograms of hexagon/RDT/aluminum erupted into a mushrooming shock wave of fire and shrapnel.

  * * *

  HMS York:

  The concussion shook the bridge, throwing Sub Lieutenant Kensington up against the radar repeater hard enough to knock the wind out of him.”Holy Mother of God!” he gasped. “That was close!” His ears were still ringing, and the brilliant after-image of the close-aboard explosion still danced in front of his night-accustomed retinas. He pulled himself back to his feet. “Why are we seeding chaff so close to the ship?”

  No one bothered to answer, but a second after he asked the question, he dredged up the answer from some half-forgotten training lecture. Missile manufacturers knew about chaff, and they were programming their weapons with little tricks to avoid it. Many missiles were now smart enough not to turn on their radar seekers immediately. If a chaff cloud was far enough away from the real target, a missile with an inactive seeker could fly through it without being distracted. The closer the chaff was to the ship, the better the odds that a missile’s radar would be active and subject to seduction. By seeding an inner pattern of small chaff clouds and an outer pattern of larger chaff clouds, the ship could even sucker missiles that were programmed to ignore the first targets they spotted.

  A fireball blossomed in the distance, as one of the Sea Darts intercepted and destroyed a German sea-skimmer. A few seconds later, a Sea Wolf from the Chatham vaporized another of the German missiles.

  The Phalanx Gatling guns continued to spray short bursts of 20mm bullets into the night.

  * * *

  Flight Lead:

  Two hundred meters above the water, Fliegen Oberleutnant Pieter Hulbert torqued his pistol-grip control stick to the left and nudged the rudder pedal, twisting his EF-2000S EuroStrike-Fighter into a tight turn. Mounting G-forces mashed him back into his seat as the agile jet fighter practically stood on its port wing. Stubby canard-style foreplanes gave the delta-winged aircraft a vicious midair turning radius. Hulbert grunted several times as his plane ripped through the turn, an old fighter pilot’s trick for keeping blood pressure in the upper body when the Gs were stacking up.

  He bumped the dorsal airbrake, and a streamlined section of the fuselage just aft of the cockpit folded open, creating a drag-stream that caused his plane to shed speed and altitude rapidly. The maneuver saved his life, as a Sea Wolf missile punched through the section of sky that his aircraft had occupied a millisecond earlier. The G-forces eased off as he rolled out of the turn into level flight less than a hundred meters above the water.

  Hulbert scanned his Head Up Display for the targeting reticule. There! A wire-frame rectangle popped into existence on the HUD, outlining a fat radar blip. With the touch of a button, Hulbert called up an infrared display, superimposing the target’s IR signature over its radar image. The IR signature was black: no significant heat sources. Not enough for a warship, anyway. It was a false target, a chaff cloud.

  He sequenced to the next radar target and immediately called up its IR signature. An irregular oblong appeared on the HUD—gray, shot with dapplings of white. Heat sources. Heat from engine exhaust. Heat from ventilation systems. It was a warship. A target.

  Hulbert shifted his right thumb up to the top of the control stick and flipped up the hinged plastic cover that protected the arming selector and fire button. He held down the arming selector, giving the missile under his starboard wing its first look at the target. A bright circle appeared on the HUD, signaling the missile’s acknowledgment. He released the arming selector and gave the control stick a tiny jog to the right, improving his alignment on the target, to give the missile the best possible odds of success. His thumb shifted to the fire button.

  The Kormoran missile dropped away from the wing, falling for nearly a second before its engine fired in midair. Then it dropped even closer to the water to begin the inertial-guidance portion of its attack on HMS York.

  Oberleutnant Hulbert twisted his pistol-grip control stick to the right, peeling his aircraft away from the firing bearing as quickly as possible. It was a good tactic: what any smart fighter pilot would have done in the same situation. But in this case, it was fatal.

  The 114mm cannon shell that tore through his port wing wasn’t even aimed at him; he just happened to fly between it and its intended target.

  Red tattletales began flashing all over his instrument panel, accompanied by a small choir of alarm bells and warning buzzers. Fly-by-wire was out and shifting to backup. Fuel pressure was dropping rapidly. The HUD lost power and went dark, and half of his instruments started fluctuating wildly.

  The plane began to vibrate, and the control stick bucked crazily in his hand. A quick glance over his left shoulder told him that the carbon-fiber wing was starting to delaminate. He had perhaps ten seconds before the entire aircraft came apart on him.

  He reached behind his head and groped for the looped shape of the eject handle. His fingers locked on it.

  The second 114mm shell wasn’t aimed at his aircraft either. It punched through the thin skin of the EF-2000S’s fuselage just aft of his seat, about sixteen centimeters left of centerline. The explosion rolled through the tight little cockpit, simultaneously shredding Hulbert’s body and flash-cooking it to cinders. Unable to contain the expanding pressure wave, the aircraft ruptured like an overripe fruit, spilling fire and twisted metal into the night sky.

  * * *

  Kormoran 2 (mid-flight):

  Oberleutnant Hulbert’s AS-34B flew two meters above the wave tops. In route to its target, it encountered two fat radar contacts, both of which it discarded as too large. The missile’s target selection algorithm evaluated the third radar contact it detected and decided that the new candidate was of a size and shape appropriate for a valid target. Twice, the missile made mid-course corre
ctions to improve its angle of attack, unaware that the second of these course changes snatched it out of the way of a burst of 20mm rounds from the destroyer’s Phalanx Close-In Weapon System. The missile kicked into terminal homing mode and accelerated to mach 0.9 for the attack.

  * * *

  HMS York:

  The starboard Phalanx mount had expended the last of its ammunition. It continued to track the incoming missile with unerring accuracy, its six Gatling gun–style barrels spinning impotently.

  The missile struck the destroyer starboard side midships, just above the waterline, blowing a huge hole through the old ship’s steel hull. The fireball and shock wave ripped through Engine Room Number One, buckling decks, collapsing bulkheads, shattering pipes, and severing electrical cables. Anything that was even remotely flammable was instantly incinerated—from the insulated lagging that lined the bulkheads, to the six crew members closest to the blast.

  The sound wave that accompanied the explosion ruptured the eardrums of the three engineering personnel who survived the initial detonation.

  Though the point of impact had been a half-meter or so above the waterline, the hole created by the explosion extended well below the waterline. The sea poured through the ragged hole in a sledgehammer torrent that drove an apprentice engineer to the deck.

  Unable to fight the relentless deluge, the young man was swept across the space by the wave front. Deafened by the explosion and half-blinded by the seawater, he flailed about helplessly under the driving cascade as water forced its way up his nose and past his shattered eardrums. He opened his mouth to scream, but the water forced itself down his throat, pumping his lungs full of liquid fire. Still tumbling, his head slammed into a pump housing hard enough to crack his skull. The in-rushing sea tossed him about like a rag doll until it had driven the final spark of life from his limp body.

  Electrical power to the compartment failed immediately, plunging the huge space into darkness. Battery-powered emergency lanterns kicked on, casting spheres of light into the roiling black floodwaters. Scalding tendrils of steam drifted through the semidarkness, the inevitable result of contact between cold seawater and super-heated metal.