9 Days Falling, Volume I

Chapter 13

“Fox Three, Fox Three! Missiles away!” Lieutenant Peter Tang looked at his flight panel, saw the hostile radar lock warning, and made the decision to fire in a heartbeat—but he was too late. He looked over his shoulder at the other three planes in his subflight and saw their missiles streaking away after his, rocketing into the sky above where the unseen enemy had fingered them with targeting radar. He knew damn well what was coming next.

“Countermeasures!” he yelled into his comm-set. “Break formation and every man for himself!” Then he pulled his F-16 into high G turn, tipped into a dive and poured on the power. So much for breakfast.

Tang was up early that morning, along with all the other pilots in his F-16 squadron. Early mess was at 05:00 hours where he had eaten with his buddy Alex Wu and the newcomer, Kevin Lo. Their Americanized names were all too common in the breakaway Republic, where well over 80% of the population adopted and used English given names. You couldn’t even fill out a job or college entrance exam application in Taiwan without listing your English name these days, but call them what you will, these were the Squadron leaders who would have their butts in the seats on Alert One scramble duty this morning—top of the list.

Tang was operating with the 401st Tactical Fighter Wing out of Hualien AFB on the northeastern coast of Taiwan. His 17th Group Thor was among the best in the service, flying F-16A/B Falcons, and charged with defense of the airspace over Taipei. His good friend, Alex Wu had just made 1st Lieutenant himself and was now assigned to the 27th Black Dragon group along with his new sidekick, Lt. Kevin Lo. They were out in the ready rooms when the first reports came in—missile warning—for they were not the only men of war up early that day.

400 Kilometers to the west, in the hilly inland country stretching from Shantou to Fushou in China, the Dong Feng ballistic missiles were up as well, their red tipped noses rising to meet the dawn. In the year 1232, the Chinese repelled Mongol invaders during the battle of Kai-Keng by using the primitive rockets powered by gunpowder, the first known use of that seemingly magical black powder as a weapon of war. The ‘arrows of flying fire’ had come a long way since then.

By 2021 China had amassed a fearsome ballistic missile arsenal to confront Taiwan. US analysts estimated there were at least 1500 missiles available. There were 1800, and of these 600 DF-11s were deployed for the overture, about 50 improved to extend their range to 825 kilometers. These could strike any target on the Taiwanese mainland, though the bulk of the inventory with shorter 300 kilometer ranges would be used against targets on the eastern shores of the wayward island republic. The DF-11s were largely carried by mobile launch trucks, their engines growling on the coastal hills of mainland China that morning as one battery after another signaled ‘armed and ready.’ 300 were available for launch with in twenty minutes of the order to fire, and the order had finally come.

The first batteries began to launch a little after 07:00 hours on the morning of September 25, the second day of the Great War that the world had nervously been awaiting. Now the political squabbles and pipeline attacks of the previous day would become something far more serious. All that came before in the contentious waters of the Diaoyutai Islands and the turbulent black seas of the Gulf of Mexico were but foreshocks. The Chinese missile launch against two American satellites overflying their territory was deemed to be a defensive measure, but this was something else entirely. The Dragon had finally opened its maw and spewed fire and anger at its wayward son. The East Wind of its hot breath was blowing in a hard rain of steel, with missiles roaring from their mobile launch pads and streaking up into the clear morning sky.

The US built PAVE PAWS Phased Array Warning System on the high peaks of Taiwan’s rugged mountains east of Hsinchu City were the first to see the threat, and orders were flashed to SAM batteries all over the island. US built Patriot battery radars could range out only about 170 kilometers, not enough to see the missiles in their initial launch and boost phase, but the Phased Array system gave them six precious minutes to deploy and arm their systems for intercept operations. There were ten Patriot batteries in all, three assigned to Taipei, three to the Taichung region and the remaining four to cities in the southern reaches of the island. They were each capable of firing either four PAC-2/GEM or sixteen PAC-3 missiles per launcher, and each battery had eight launchers. That put 32 active PAC-2/GEMs or as many as 128 PAC-3s in a battery, a formidable missile defense if they could perform as advertised.

150 missiles were up in the first Chinese launch. The world had not see anything like it since the MLRS rocket artillery barrage that had preceded the first Gulf War. Five minutes later a second barrage of 150 missiles were darkening the skies as the East Wind began to blow in earnest. Soon the deadly duel of Patriot versus ballistic missile began, and no one really knew what the likely percentage of successful intercepts would be. One of the first targets was the sole PAVE PAWS Radar that had spotted and announced the incoming strike, defended by a single Patriot battery. Thirty missiles were assigned to this one target alone, and though the Patriots were good, and scored many stunning intercepts and kills, they did not get them all. Twelve got through the defense, slamming into the hilltop and sending huge columns of black smoke and fire into the sky as their 800kg warheads exploded on impact. Three of the twelve were close enough to the main radar itself to do serious damage—enough to blacken the stations capabilities and put it out of the battle for the foreseeable future.

Lieutenant Peter Tang heard the scramble alert and he and his men were up and rushing to their planes. His ready group was on the black tarmac and juiced for action, and within minutes he was leading a section of four planes out onto the main runway for takeoff. The tails spewed their white fire as the engines hurtled the nimble fighters aloft.

Tang looked out to see the first of the Patriot batteries north of the base beginning to fire, the thin white contrails of the missiles scoring the sky. He knew the air defense crews in the Skyguard and Antelope short range SAM defense batteries would be busy soon as well. As he banked right, climbing past 15,000 feet he saw what the Patriots were firing at. Missile trails seemed to be coming down from heaven itself, and he knew the base was being hit by a heavy salvo of Dong Fengs. There were two spectacular intercepts by patriots that set his pilots to cheering before the first of the range modified DF-11s exploded just north of the field.

They couldn’t even hit the damn runway, he thought, and then the colossal explosion at the north end of the main airstrip gave him a hard kick as he remembered the aviation fuel depot there—fourteen big tanks loaded with fuel and lubricant oils, and two DF-11’s had plowed right into them, sending an enormous pillar of fire and oily black smoke erupting skyward. The rest of the salvo hit the runway.

While Taiwanese Air Defense crews were heartened by their initial kill ratio, with PAVE PAWS off line they could no longer see the second wave of 150 missiles as they reached apogee and tipped over to make their blistering descent towards their targets. A minute later the Patriots began to acquire and fire, but two more waves of DF-11s were ready to join battle if deemed necessary. The second wave saw successful intercepts reduce considerably from a little over 50% to just under 40%, which meant that about seventy missiles found targets in the first wave, and another eighty-two blasted home in the second wave. The damage these big warheads were inflicting was considerable.

You never get them all, he thought. Not even close. Some of the damn missiles always get through. They got through in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem when Israel and Iran traded blows in a brief, bloody exchange in 2014, and they’re going to get through here. They have more missiles and planes than we have SAMs! It was a sobering thought as the voice of his buddy Alex Wu, or ‘Alley Ho’ as he called him, came over his headset.

“You up there for the show, Pete?”

“Seeing more than I wished,” Tang called back. “They hit the fuel depot!”

“Going to be thirsty this afternoon then, Tang. So don’t pull any high G barrel rolls up here.”

“Not unless I have a J-20 on my ass,” Tang called back. “See you upstairs, Alley Ho.” He wondered if he would have a functioning base to return to in the hours ahead. His Falcon was not known for its endurance, though he knew tankers would be up in the next hour in the seas east of the island—if they could make it off the airfields in one piece.

Air bases on Taiwan took the brunt of the missile barrages, a deliberate and methodical interdiction intended to prepare the way for things Peter Tang and his mates would soon be contending with in the skies over the island. There were a hundred and fifty F-16s and another 56 Mirage 2000 fighters, most well overdue for the scrap yards by 2021. Taiwan had hoped to buy better F-16Ds from the US, but a skittish congress and budget problems never saw the planned purchase go through.

So the old Falcons would form the bulk of the air defense, supported by 126 of the indigenous F-CK-1A/B fighter interceptors, dubbed “the little fuckers” by US pilots that had trained with them over the years due to the obvious missing letter in their designation. They were capable interceptors, with over 70 upgraded to the new Hsiung Ying C/D (Brave Hawk) model, but would be overmatched by their adversaries on the mainland in due course. The alert ready squadrons climbed up into the angry sky to take up their defensive patrol stations while their brothers behind them would have to deal with the cratered runways when the DF-11s began to hit home.

It soon became clear that this initial barrage was largely aimed at military installations, ports and airfields, and that China’s primary strategy was to try and defeat Taiwan’s defenses before the United States could intervene. An hour after the first massive barrage of 300 missiles, another 300 were being deployed and ready to strike in three waves of 100 each.

Unwilling to stand simply on defense, Taiwan immediately ordered up some bad weather of its own—the Hsiung Feng cruise missile, or Brave Wind with a 600 kilometer range, and the more dangerous Yunfeng with an extended range of up to 2000 kilometers. While only fifty of these longer range missiles had been produced, they would be able to strike a range of targets in mainland China, including Air Force Regional headquarters, Naval bases, fighter and bomber divisions, even as far away as Beijing and Shanghai. Taiwan could deliver one good shock to her adversary, because even though the Chinese had a very robust SAM umbrella themselves, Tang had been correct—you never get them all. It would be enough to save face and rattle the nerves of the people in heavily populated cities when the missiles came in, but not enough to seriously degrade China’s military capability. The Brave Wind was just that, an audacious reprisal intended to inflict short term pain, but it was one the PLA would answer in spades. The East Wind was a storm of serious hurt, and it carried more than ballistic missiles.

The DF-11’s were just the opening round. By the time the second series of 300 missiles had concluded their barrages, there had been over 200 that hit home on or very near their intended targets. The port at the off shore archipelago of Makung was hit with quays blasted, fuel and ammunition storage bungers in flames and one of the three frigates that had been berthed there was struck at her berthing. The Chi Yang, a Knox class frigate, was the first ship of the Taiwan Navy to feel the Dragon’s bite, sinking quickly in a raging fire. Two other frigates berthed there, the Fong Yang and Fen Yang were quickly hauling anchors and racing out to sea even as another spectacular near miss saw a DF-11 send a massive geyser of water skyward in the harbor. Airfields at Hualien, Tainan, Chiayi and Taitung had all been hit, but the cities near them were assiduously spared.

It was then that Lt. Peter Tang saw the threat vector data feed from the E-2C AWACS now coordinating long range surveillance. Enemy fighters were inbound at high altitude, and Tang called to his squadron mates to rally them for the battle ahead. The pilots were brave and well trained, but the odds they would soon be facing were very steep. The Chinese had learned a hard lesson when they scrambled older J-10 and J-11 fighters in their recent duel with Japan over the Diaoyutai Islands.

This time they were sending their best, the one plane Tang was really worried about, the formidable J-20. These were the planes Lt. Matt Eden had warned about when he said the ‘Bats’ were redeploying to coastal airfields days ago, and the same planes defense expert Reed had called ‘Vampires’ when he tried to explain them to the White House Chief of Staff. They were China’s A game, their premier fifth generation stealth fighter, and they trumped any older legacy fighter the Air Force of Taiwan could put in front of them.

It had taken the Chinese some time to get the planes fully wired and ramped up for mass production. By 2021 the plane was a fully integrated and well tested strike fighter and China had built 120 for front line deployment. They were being flown by an elite if limited corps of highly skilled pilots, the very best graduates from the flight schools and military training programs.

The J-20s formed up in three heavy strike squadrons of twenty planes each, half the available inventory. They would be accompanied by some other very capable friends, for China had also produced several squadrons of J-16 ‘Silent Flankers’ in response to similar programs mounted by the US with their ‘Silent Eagle.’ Only thirty-two in number, the J-16 was really a modified J-11B that incorporated rudimentary stealth features. It took a very good plane and made it better, and thirty were aloft in the vanguard, leading in the J-20s. To either side of this central formation of ninety planes were two groups composed of J-10 and J-11 fighters, thirty each. The first major air strike against the beleaguered island would therefore come from 150 planes.

The attack was aimed at the air defense gap between Hsinchu and Taichung, preceded by a wave of truck launched CJ-10 Long Sword cruise missiles aimed at two key targets in the breakthrough zone. One was the coastal radar site at Houlong, and the other was the single HAWK battery near Miaoli City. If it was taken down the overlapping circles of SAM coverage would lapse in this one area, and leave a gap in the defense. While those two cities deployed robust SAM defenses, the gap between them was more sparsely defended. Their aim was to break through this HAWK battery and streak in high over the central highlands and then sweep north to the big naval base at Suao. Others would come in at Taipei from the south, though a few groups had some very special missions.

The J-20s were targeted at the big dam facilities that held in the Shimen Reservoir supplying water to more than three million people in northern Taiwan. Other dams controlling water flowing from the bigger FeiTs’ui / Feicui Reservoir would also be targeted, and within thirty minutes of their destruction an uncontrolled cascade of water would come surging down the two major rivers flowing from the highlands down into the capitol of TaiPei.

The heart of the formation came in very high while flights of J-10s and J-11s peeled off at lower altitudes, bait for the HAWKs armed with strike missiles to engage the SAM batteries. They would try to forge a way through the defenses that had already been heavily saturated by the Dong Feng 11s. The cutting edge of the SAM defenses were the ten Patriot batteries, but its backbone was a much older system of the HAWK SAMs, an acronym that stood for “Homing All the Way Killer,” that were slowly being phased out and replaced by the Sky Bow II systems. While many of the better missiles had been tasked to take on the Dong Feng barrages, the HAWKs were still vital links in the defense to face the threat from aircraft. There was only one small problem, the flight ceiling of the missiles was about 45,000 feet, and so while the J-10s and J-11s swooped in to engage, the J-20s were about to demonstrate one of those often neglected statistics that would make them so deadly, a service ceiling exceeding 65,000 feet. In effect the plane could out fly the missiles that were supposed to shoot it down! The HAWKs were homing all the way, but could not reach their targets before they flamed out.

The Vampires were flying high that morning, out from their hidden caves in the hills of the homeland. When the Chinese strike group broke through the coastal defense network, the F-16s were immediately vectored in to close the gap. They had a good idea where the enemy was coming in high with their main strike package, but the F-16s were straining for altitude as they climbed to meet the enemy. The Chinese J-20 was not easy to find and track. Their returns were not solid on radar, and they came and went. None of the F-16s could seem to hold a steady signal lock and it was coming down to that nebulous line in BVR combat where you either fire or die.

Tang elected to fire. His subflight of four falcons were the first to callout out the NATO brevity code “Fox Three” as their AIM-120C missiles were sent into battle. An active radar seeker, this version of the missile had a good range of 105 kilometers, and could switch to passive homing if jammed. Tang was hoping his missiles could get some of the high flying Chinese fighters “in the basket” of their active radar search sweep where they had a chance to lock on. While capable of receiving in-flight data to assist in a course correction to find the enemy target, Tang’s fighters weren’t going to be able to send anything. They were about to have some very troublesome company in the skies over the central highlands.

High above, some 15,000 feet beyond the service ceiling of the F-16, the J-20s had a long range missile of their own to send into battle. They had easily seen, tracked and targeted the climbing F-16s and had already fired China’s latest long range lance in the deadly game of air to air missile combat—the the P-21 Thunderbolt. By the time Lieutenants Peter Tang, Alex Wu and Kevin Lo detected the radar lock it was already too late. Alex Wu heard his mate call out “Fox Three” and followed suit to fire his missiles, but it was going to be a very busy morning that day, and for all of them it would be their last.

Chapter 14

As if the Chinese attack on Taiwan and the imminent conflict at sea with the Russian Pacific Fleet were not enough, another old nemesis was now crashing the party with familiar threatening rhetoric that was now deemed to be very dangerous. The candles were burning late in the White House Situation Room that night, as William Reed sat uncomfortably in his chair looking at the satellite photography.

“It’s a dual launch,” he said calmly. “Fits the pattern we’ve seen in recent years. Close-ups on the nose of those birds look a little ominous.”

Air Force General Henry Lane folded his arms, eyes tight as he listened. “Our people don’t think it’s a nuke,” he said.

“You want to play Russian Roulette here, General?” Reed had no qualms about engaging the brass in a spirited discussion. That was what he was there for. “I hope we have adequate defensive assets in theater by now, because it looks like another fuse is about to be lit here.”

“We’ve got a full squadron of twelve F-22 Raptor fighters at Osan AFB in South Korea to beef up fighter defenses there.” Lane was looking at his deployment list. “Similar packages are slated for Okinawa and mainland Japan, but it I’m afraid it’s a little too late to get them to Taiwan.”

“We should have had them there a week ago,” said Reed, “but I guess ‘should of’ never won a race. Looks like the Chinese mean business this time. Word is they hit the Taiwanese with at least 600 missiles.”

“We took down a good number of those with the ABM batteries.”

“Not enough, General. They beat up the airfields pretty bad over there, and then punched through with those damn J-20s.”

White House Chief of Staff Leyman leaned forward, a question in his eyes. “Those the same planes we talked about earlier, Mister Reed?”

“Yes sir, fast, deadly, and now a proven threat. The Chinese blew a hole in the coastal defense perimeter and pushed in a major strike package at high altitude. They were up above the service ceiling of the HAWK systems over there. Patriots were the only thing that could get up there, and they were saturated by the missiles. What we need now are assets in theater for a counterattack, but forgive me if I say I’m more than a little nervous about this North Korean launch prep. Everything we’ve moved into the Pacific in the last 48 hours is sitting on Guam.”

“Talks are underway with Manila to obtain basing rights there,” said Leyman.

“Another Raptor squadron was deployed as theater reserve at Anderson on Guam,” Lane put in. “If the situation warrants, we can move those birds to the Phils. We’ll have some heavy metal to throw around today as well.” The US was digging up ‘the bones,’ flights of B-1 Lancer Bombers that were arriving on Guam by the hour.

At that very moment Captain Hap Jason of 7th Bomb Wing out of Dyess AFB in Abeline Texas was on the radio at 311.000 MHZ STRATCOM PRIMARY for some routine radio traffic. He was coordinating a rendezvous with KC-135 Air refueling tankers designated GASSR-11 and GASSR-12.

“Dark flight of twelve requesting ETA on GASSR 11. We’ll need Tanker Drag to BAB, over.” BAB was the call sign for Beale AFB in California as the bombers prepared to top off before they started the long flight across the Pacific.

Jason’s squadron, “Dark 1” would soon be joined by another designated “Slam -1” out of Ellsworth AFB. At Guam their bellies would soon be filled with extended range 2000 lb GBU 3 JDAMS. The Joint Direct Attack Munitions was a kit installed on ‘dumb’ bombs that would convert them into GPS guided munitions, and the new satellite that would direct them was already being moved to compensate for the loss of two GPS birds when the Chinese launched their preemptive ASAT strike. The bombs could be dropped from an amazing range of 80 kilometers out and still fall unerringly to their targets.

The bomber squadrons were being accompanied by two E-6 Mercury airborne command post planes out of Tinker AFB, an ominous sign as these planes were cast in the TACAMO role for coordination of battle orders to US nuclear capable assets, including both boomers and bombers. They were once coded “Looking Glass” for their ability to mirror or duplicate the control of nuclear capable facilities in the event that the Global Operations Center at Offut AFB was destroyed or otherwise off-line. The nuclear giant was waking up, and slowly stretching in bed, flexing its muscle for the long planned war that no one wanted yet everyone was prepared to wage.

Out on Guam, the B-1s would be joined by the ‘Batwings,’ B-2 stealth bombers flying from Missouri. The B-2s could deploy, strike targets, and then return to those bases if necessary, but many were now scheduled to muster at Anderson AFB on Guam to be more readily available in theater. Even the old B-52s, with well over 50 years in active service, were also on the move from Nellis AFB in Nevada and Barksdake AFB in Louisiana, all headed for the vital forward operations base at Guam. One thing was certain that night, the heavy iron was airborne and flying west over the Pacific, ready for battle.

Missile defenses there were beefing up on the tiny island outpost as well. The THAAD Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile batteries were already arriving. Deployed from mobile truck systems like the Patriot, THAAD was designed to find, track, and hit ballistic missiles in their re-entry phase and destroy them by kinetic impact.

As to the satellites, discussion was over in the White House Situation Room. While the US and China had not yet faced off against one another with direct military assets, the Chinese ASAT attacks were deemed hostile acts and it was decided to quickly reply in kind. The US Skybolt system had been resurrected in 2018 as part of the DOD’s Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Program. The need for redundant ASAT capability had become apparent, and the system now used an air launched version of the SM-3 Anti-Ballistic Missile on US AEGIS capable ships. Late on the second day of the war, the Skybolts were flying to repay China in kind for the pre-emptive strikes on US satellites prior to their attack on Taiwan.

At the same time the US was quick to get new assets in place, and a Delta IV at Vandenberg was launched to put another GPS satellite into mid-level orbit at 20,350 kilometers. The Pentagon had already decided they would take immediate steps to prevent any further attacks on its satellites by China, and the B-2s mustered at Anderson would soon be airborne with a little surprise for the Chinese.

Tech Sergeant Jason Banks was up early that day, out of the HC-5 barracks and through the line in the chow hall to hit the tarmac by 05:00 hours. The base was on full wartime footing and the activity had been frenetic the last 48 hours. Yet all the many years of drills and practice exercises paid off, and the whole operation was running smoothly, under the watchful eyes of Master Sergeants from one end of the airfield to another. The Captains and Lieutenants might be flying the planes, but down on the ground things got done on the E level pay grades, and done with precision and skilled expertise that was par for the course.

Banks met up with his special work detail, an E-4 Senior Airman and a couple grease monkeys and bomb bay brats on loadout operations. The B-2 was an awesome plane, its silhouette so striking and unusual when viewed from certain angles that it had often been reported as a UFO. The ordnance trucks had just pulled into the hanger and the special delivery had arrived.

Airman Thomas Knox was the first man on the job, detailed to unload and prep the missiles prior to final mounting. “Holy shit, will you look at those baby’s” he said as Banks watched the first missile on the hoist, hands on his hips, a toothpick still in his mouth from breakfast. “It looks like a god-damned shark! How fast you figure this thing is, Sarge?”

“Fast enough, Tommy Knockers, just watch that hoist and run your hydraulics.”

“Hell this thing looks mean. No wings or tail, Sarge. How does the damn thing fly?”

“That’s classified, Knox. All you need to know is that you load a pair and get it done by zero-six flat, kapish?”

It was mean, and it was also very, very fast. The weapon was called the X-51C, a hypersonic stealthy cruise missile developed by Boeing that was dubbed the WaveRider because it rode its own shockwave for lift, and therefore did not need wings. Originally tested on the older B-52s and designed as a technology demonstrator, the weapon was moved into production in 2018 and a limited inventory was available for this special strike mission. The marriage of a fast, stealthy cruise missile with the B-2 was inevitable, as the B-2s could carry two of the X-51s and, given their proven ability to penetrate hostile airspace undetected, the new weapon’s effectiveness was practically guaranteed.

With a range of 740 kilometers, the X-51 was propelled by an MGM-140 ATACMS solid rocket booster to achieve an initial speed of Mach 4.5 after launch. This first stage would be ejected and then the second stage would ignite a Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne SJY61 scramjet that moved the shark-nosed cruise missile to Mach 6.0 and beyond. The first targets assigned to the B-2s would be the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center and the Guangde Rocket launch site west of Shanghai, respectively known as Base 25 and Base 603. These targets were within 500 kilometers of the coast and could be struck by B-2s over the South or East China Seas.

The Xichang Satellite Launch Center, or Base 27, which handled most of China’s GPS satellite launches, was a tougher nut to crack, as it was more than 1000 kilometers inland. The B-2s would be required to penetrate and overfly the Chinese mainland before launching their missiles. An alternate route was devised for the bombers to quickly cross the narrow neck of Vietnam, then turn north over Laos and approach the base from the south. Once the missiles were launched and airborne, they were virtually unstoppable.

“My, my,” Knox went on chattering. “Look what momma’s bringing home to Texas.” Sergeant Banks and his detail were working on bomber AV-7, the Spirit of Texas, in active service in the B-2 fleet since 1994. The “Spirits” were all lined up in the hangers that morning, Missouri, California, South Carolina, Washington and Kansas, Banks home state. They were all assigned to the famous 13th Bomb Squadron of the 509th Operations Group out of Whiteman AFB, Missouri. Formed in 1917, the Squadron had been hit on the ground at Port Moresby by the Japanese in the second World War, and lost all their B-25s. They were reconstituted with A-20 Havocs and raised hell for the duration of the war. Over the years they flew the A-26 Invaders in the Korean War, and a thousand sorties in Vietnam with the B-57 Canberra. Years later they moved on to the B-1B Lancers and now they were flying something quite different than the old B-25s from WWII.

“I never will get used to these things,” said Knox as he looked at the B-2. They don’t even look like a plane. Hey Sarge,” Knox grinned at his Tech Sergeant. “Why in hell would anyone want to name a something like this Spirit of Kansas?”

“Load the weapons, Knox, not the bullshit. You come on down to Topeka sometime and I’ll show you some good food and good bars to go with it.”

“They let you drink in Kansas? I thought all you guys did down there was smoke that damn blue grass until you were blue in the face.”

“You’re gonna be blue in the face if you don’t wire that jaw shut, Knoxwurst. I’m going down the line to check on Harley’s group. When I get back here that first missile better be in the bay and ready to rumble.”

“Don’t worry, Sarge. I’ll have ‘em both up and ready in no time.” Knox waved at another Airman and maneuvered the ordnance cart under the planes enormous wing, heading for the central bomb bay under the plane’s fat fuselage. “Look out, Watson! Here comes the doom buggy. Outta my way.”

Banks shook his head and started down the line. Doom indeed he thought, wondering what was in the warheads on these sleek new cruise missiles. He had heard a little about them and knew they were fast as greased lightning, with a heavy wallop. Chinese asked for it, he thought. So we’ll serve dinner tonight—take out. They won’t even see the damn planes coming, let alone the missiles.

The distant wail of an alert siren cut through the pre-dawn stillness, its shrill warning suddenly sending a shiver up the Sergeant’s back. You didn’t hear that all too often out here, unless the weather was real bad and there was a high wind warning up. Something about it chilled him, even in the humid, languid airs of the base. He listened intently, suddenly realizing what the siren meant.

“Christ almighty!” he said aloud, stopping and looking back over his shoulder at Knox and the rest of the crew. “On the double, gentlemen—we’ve got incoming!”

Guam sat in the middle of the vast Pacific ocean like a big New York strip steak. The fat end of the steak was in the south of the thirty kilometer long island, where Naval Base Guam established facilities for the Commander of Naval Region Marianas, and Submarine Squadron 15, with three Los Angeles Class subs in attendance. The bay was empty that morning, as all three boats were out to sea, heading north at high speed now to screen the advance of CVBG Washington. South of the harbor was the big Joint Region Marianas Ordnance Annex, where both conventional and nuclear weapons were stockpiled for the navy. It was one of two large depots in the island. The narrower strip of the steak in the north was the site of Anderson AFB and the base munitions storage area where tons of ordnance were stored in a wide area of underground bunkers. Just west of this area was the Naval Computer and Telecommunications Station, with the Marlock 25 meter satellite tracking antenna.

The assets now being gathered on the island and its strategic location made it one of the most valuable US bases in the Pacific, perhaps second only to Pearl Harbor and Hawaii. As such it would soon become a rich target of opportunity for anyone wishing to wage war against the Americans. China had not yet fired on US territory in anger, their ASAT attack being deemed “defensive” in nature in the debates still raging in the UN. This thin rein of restraint still held the Chinese in check even as their missiles launched on Taiwan. But China had other wayward sons, and the volatile regime in North Korea was one of them, with the world’s fourth largest standing army snarling at the south across the DMZ.

North Korea would do the dirty work and launch the first blow, or so it had been planned. This would present the US with the impossible choice of having to attack North Korea and bring it into the war if they acted in reprisal. The nightmare scenario of having to defend Japan, South Korea and Taiwan at the same time was now becoming a dire reality.

Defense analyst Reed had argued that the US should take prompt preventative measures and destroy the Musudans on the launch pad before they could fire. “This deployment appears to be identical to the tests we observed earlier,” he said hotly. “If I’m correct, then we’ve got to get the damn things in their boost phase. Once they hit apogee it will be too late.”

“We still have THAAD out on Guam, Mister Reed,” Air Force General Lane replied. “The system is tried and true. We can get these missiles just as they tip into their descent phase.”

“And what if they explode before they tip over, general?” Reed gave the Air Force officer a wide eyed challenge. “What then?”

Lane eyed the feisty analyst, inwardly resenting a civilian trying to tell him how to do his job, but he realized what Reed was getting at. “You are suggesting this is an asymmetrical weapon?”

“Damn right I am! They still can’t hit the broad side of a barn from three feet away, but they can get a missile close enough to put some serious hurt on the assets at Guam. All it has to do is get up over the island and go kaboom.”

“I don’t understand,” said Rod Leyman, White House Chief of Staff. “What good will that do them, even with a nuclear bomb if they have one? Don’t they have to hit the island itself?”

“EMP,” Reed said flatly. “That’s what’s written all over this deployment, Mister Leyman, and General Lane here knows exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Electro Magnetic Pulse,” said Lane. “A high altitude explosion would have a fairly wide footprint.”

“Which is why you have to either get the missiles before they launch,” said Reed, “or else that footprint is going to stomp on every computer and electronic device on that island and you can write the whole place off as an effective operational military base.”

“We can put cruise missiles on that launch site in a heartbeat,” said General Lane. “I’ve got bones at Kadena on Okinawa, B-1 bombers. They’re ready on the Tarmac now.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Reed argued.

“He’s waiting because the President has yet to make the decision to strike the first blow here, Mister Reed. To do so we will have to make a direct military attack on a regime in North Korea wound up tighter than a coiled spring. We already have a hornet’s nest on our hands in Taiwan. All we need is for a million North Koreans to come surging over the border into the Seoul, right?”

Then word came in that the North Koreans had already fired Musudan I and the tension in the room was palpable. As the minutes passed, Reed shifted uncomfortably in his chair, tapping his pen on a notepad in front of him. They were too late, or so he thought. The missile was going to explode at high altitude and send a violent EMP burst through the atmosphere that would knock the base off the operational list for the foreseeable future, but this time he was proved wrong. The US had picked up the launch by satellite, tracked it through the ascent phase and then keyed assets to intercept as it passed through apogee and began its terminal descent.

The Musudan tipped over and it was soon bait for the very capable ABM systems the US had deployed on the island for just this contingency. Alpha Battery, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment on Guam was given the order to fire, and it sent up two THAAD missiles using the “hit-to-kill” strategy to destroy the incoming Musudan by kinetic impact.

The first shot was an easy kill for the advanced US ABM system, and the rhetoric that accompanied the attack would end up being far worse than the event itself. North Korean media announced that the US and its allies were “waging madcap war maneuvers against it to plan a pre-emptive nuclear strike.” They were not too far off the mark with that one, because there were two rockets positioned on the east coast of North Korea, and defense analyst Reed and others like him now believed they knew what the second missile housed in its red tipped nose.

Musudan II was indeed carrying an EMP super-bomb, technology the North Koreans had obtained from the Russians years ago through espionage. Their first shot was just target practice to test US defenses as much as anything else. By watching the destruction of the first missile, the North Korean military could reap the political harvest while also determining the approximate altitude of the kill so they could set their warhead to explode well before the US ABM system could do its job. It would raise the altitude of their intended detonation, and also increase the lethal footprint of the effects on the earth below. If Musudan II fired as planned, and did its intended job, there wouldn’t be a silicon circuit worth the name functional on Guam and surrounding areas for hundreds of miles.

An hour later Musudan II fired as planned.

Reed was still in the situation room when it happened, now permanent staff there to keep his well educated iron in the fires of the heated debate. He was stewing because General Lane had given him that ‘I told ya so’ smirk when THAAD took down the first missile without any trouble.

“Have a little faith, Mister Reed,” he had admonished. “We know what we’re doing here.”

“Right,” said Reed. “Well don’t be surprised if this one explodes at apogee.”

“It’s not ever going to get there,” said Lane, cool and unruffled. “We have a few more surprises in store for Mister Kim Jong-Un.”

The B-1s on Kadena were not the only bones the Air Force had dug up from the boneyards. They had pulled something out of the hangers at 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona. It was called YAL-1, formerly known as the Airborne Laser Project, a prototype aircraft from a program cancelled years ago because of its expense. The Air Force had been secretly preparing to test it in a live scenario like this, secretly moving it into the Pacific. It was up early that morning from Kadena, escorted by a pair of F-22 Raptors.

The US intelligence was so good that they even intercepted the North Korean signal ordering the second missile fired. When it roared to life, its hot exhaust tail red with fire as it rose from the launch site to break through the thin cloud layer above, YAL-1 was waiting in ambush in the skies above Japan. It was orbiting at an altitude of 45,000 feet in a typical ‘racetrack’ pattern, a specially modified jumbo jet, the 747-400F.

Infrared sensors on the plane had already detected the launch and were ready to respond as the Musudan missile clawed its way into the sky in its initial boost phase. A low-power targeting and tracking laser was already locking onto the missile as fast computers calculated its trajectory. Concave mirrors pivoted to align the directed energy laser on the target. Turbo-pumps howled at the rear of the plane and blasted a stream of hydrogen peroxide and iodine through metal nozzles, the fuel needed to power the enormous chemical oxygen laser designated COIL. Just as the Musudan missile began its initial boost, a million watts of lethal energy lanced out from the nose of the 747 and crossed the distance of a little over 500 kilometers at the speed of light. They would paint the target with an invisible high energy beam that literally cooked the fuel in the first stage and the resulting increase in internal pressure caused it to explode. General Lane was going to notch his belt once again that morning, satisfied that he had put this upstart hothead Reed in his place once and for all.

“Now then,” he leaned forward when the news of a successful kill came through, steepling his fingertips in satisfaction. “Let’s get the B-2s up from Anderson and let the WaveRiders take out the rest of their launch facilities while we do the Chinese. Any objections?”

No one said anything.

Chapter 15

Captain Vladimir Karpov considered his tactical situation and the tentative contract he had negotiated with the Americans as he sat in the Captain’s chair aboard Kirov. It wasn’t signed yet, nothing more than a verbal agreement, a thin understanding he had negotiated with the commander of the nearest American Carrier Strike Group off the coast of Japan to the south. The Americans were justifiably edgy about the sortie of the entire Red Banner Pacific Fleet. So Karpov had decided to “pull a Volsky” and make direct radio contact with his adversary on CVBG Five. They had bandied about with boasts, insults, and veiled warnings to each other for some time, then got down to the subtle business at hand.

“You have your orders. I have mine.” He had told the American Captain Tanner. “You’re here to keep an eye on me. I’m here to keep an eye on you. It’s that simple. We’ve been at it for eighty years, and this is no different. But things do tend to get a little out of hand when this much metal puts to sea.”

The Americans wanted him to stay north of 43 degrees, which he was more than happy to do. At the same time he had advised Tanner that any hint of a strike package heading his way would be answered with missiles, a shoot first and ask questions later policy given the circumstances. The conversation had finished with that agreement in place, tentative as it was.

“I think we understand one another,” Tanner had radioed. “You just remember those 43 degrees. Yes, I’ll chase a few gulls down here. It’s a favorite pastime for a carrier Captain. But I hear the birds up north are pretty sparse.”

It was a subtle way of telling Karpov the Americans had no intention of pressing the issue. Both sides were clearly ‘showing the flag’ and the muscle behind it, but neither Captain wanted this to go any further than it had to.

“Haven’t seen so much as a seagull this morning,” Karpov replied. “And I have also heard the waters south of 43 degrees are a still polluted by that old reactor at Fukujima. Yes, Captain Tanner. I think we do understand one another. I suppose we can only hope that our respective governments can come to a similar understanding. Enjoy your coffee. Karpov out.”

The problem was always those respective governments, thought Karpov. They were the old Greybacks who hovered over maps and projected their greed and desire in thickly worded pronouncements. The United Nations was their forum and great theater in times of high crisis like this. The Chinese had stolen the show when one of their Generals stormed in and brazenly stated that a nuclear exchange was not only contemplated but apparently acceptable if the Americans wanted to try and stop them from forcibly integrating Taiwan with the mainland. His cold logic of war was as stark and simple as possible—you’ll kill us, we’ll kill you, and when the radiated dust settles we’ll have survivors equivalent to your entire current population, and you will be gone. That was war’s grizzly bottom line.

Karpov was doing the same math in his mind that day as he sized up the enemy carrier battlegroups heading his way, ticking off ship names, classes and capabilities in his mind, and working out his battle plan if it came to that. In the end one side or another would still have ships afloat and claim the victory, but the odds looked fairly steep for his Red Banner Pacific Fleet. CVBG Washington was enough to contend with, but he would soon be up against two American Carrier Strike Groups, as CVBG Nimitz was also heading west from Hawaii.

Nikolin interrupted his reverie with a communication from Naval Headquarters at Fokino. It was a plainly coded message, decrypted and printed on screen and teletype as it arrived, and it sent a rising pulse of adrenaline churning in Karpov’s stomach when he read it: SSN Tigr sunk by hostile action in the Gulf Of Mexico. PLAN forces have attacked Taiwan. Stand Ready. Hostilities imminent.”

Hostilities were already well underway, he thought. The Chinese… He shook his head. So it finally came down to missiles and manpower. That was sure to pull in the Americans and everyone else, present company included. Apparently there had also been a shooting incident off the US Coast. Tigr was an improved Akula class boat, and a good one. What was it doing in the Gulf of Mexico? That was one hell of a place to put on the patrol schedule given the present situation there. Then the other news concerning the hurricane and the major damage to the oil platforms began to filter through this latest comm-signal, and he wondered what had really happened in the oil dark waters of the Gulf.

Suppose our Tigr had something to do with the catastrophic collapse and sinking of that big British Petroleum platform? What would have possessed the Americans to simply fire on a Russian sub if it were not up to some very real mischief there in the Gulf Of Mexico?

The Greybacks, he thought. They pulled something out of their fedoras and this is what it came to in the end. Tigr was blown to pieces and sixty-five men were dead in the wreckage at the bottom of the sea.

“What are our friends doing on the Washington, Rodenko,” he asked his radar man. The Americans were too far away to appear on the ship’s organic radar systems, but Volsky had naval air assets up from Vladivostok, a pair of A-50U Shmel long range radar planes 300 kilometers south of his position in the border zone known as the AEW line. Both sides had Airborne Early Warning assets deployed there, and the Russian planes had company in the zone with an E-6 Hawkeye off the Washington, and a larger E-3 Sentry AWACS plane from airfields in Japan. Rodenko was also receiving satellite data from space where Russian spy birds watched with their high resolution cameras and infrared sensors.

“The American carrier is heating up, sir,” said Rodenko. “I’ve seen this before. It looks like they’re spotting for launch—at least two squadrons. If this is so I should have radar return feeds from the A-50s soon for confirmation.”

Karpov expected this. Tanner would have to put something in the air. The only question was whether or not those planes would be chasing seagulls or Russian ships. “Is the battlegroup still heading north?”

“Yes, sir. They are about 200 kilometers south of the AEW line now, course 005 degrees. They can launch any time, and they’re definitely spotting now.”

Karpov did not like the sound of that. The American strike squadrons would have a combat radius of about 770 kilometers. Their standoff Harpoons could then fire at a range of 125 kilometers. They were already in strike range, some 600 kilometers to the south and his longest range cruise missile aboard Kirov was the P-900, which maxed out at 400 kilometers. He had two other fleet assets present with a longer reach. The Varyag was carrying the P-1000 Vulkan missile, built in the days when the design theory called for big missiles, with heavy warheads and long range. The newer inventory of supersonic missiles on Kirov today relied more on sheer speed and agility to defeat the enemy defenses, but Karpov now wished he had a big stick with a longer reach. Varyag was a powerful long range threat. The fleet carrier Admiral Kuznetsov also carried eight P-700 Shipwreck missiles with a 625 kilometer range.

If he wanted to be able to begin offensive operations he had to do it with those two ships or the limited strike wing aboard the Admiral Kuznetsov, or else take his surface action group south at high speed so Kirov could close the range. The two sides were closing on one another at about 25 to 30 knots each. This meant the range was diminishing by a hundred kilometers per hour. In another two hours he might get his flagship into missile range, but he had another option, though he was waiting on a signal from Fokino before he acted.

As for his adversary, the Americans had at least four strike squadrons on that carrier with at least twelve planes each. That could theoretically bring 48 planes with Harpoon anti-ship missiles, but the math wasn’t that simple. In WWII each strike plane of the Japanese carriers had the simple job of carrying a single torpedo or one or two dumb bombs to the target. Everything was different in modern warfare, because defeating the enemy electronics suite was also a necessary part of the attack. If you could jam or suppress their radars you could then inhibit the otherwise fearsome SAM missile defense modern ships were capable of projecting. Karpov knew the American planes would be arrayed with a wide range of assigned duties if an attack came in, and he had studied the tactics well. Know thine enemy…

AWACS coverage would be provided by the carrier itself and land based assets already in place on the AEW line. Two groups of four fighters would be equipped for target combat air patrol, (TARCAP) and fighter escort duty. At least one or two planes would be standoff jammers flying the FA-18G Growler, and two F/A-18E/Fs would be equipped for mid air refueling operations. Two groups of 4 strike aircraft each would be equipped for SEAD duty, the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses. These would carry HARM anti-radiation missiles to seek out the Russian radars and hopefully get some hits. These twenty planes were just the strike asset support group.

The meat of the package would come in three groups of four F/A-18's equipped for long range ASUW, Anti Surface Warfare duty. They would carry at least two 360 gallon external fuel tanks at this range and a weapons load out of 2 x AIM-9 Sidewinders, 2 x AIM-120s and 4 x AGM-84 Harpoons. It was these last twelve planes he really had to worry about, and the 48 Harpoons they were carrying. So the math produced the same sum, though it got there by a different method. It was a deadly dance in the skies that required careful choreography. The difficulty was in coordinating the time on target for the Harpoons to be within seconds of the HARM attack on the his radar sets. It would not be easy in the heat of combat.

Karpov thought back to those early days in the North Atlantic where the British carriers would throw groups to ten or twenty old by-plane Swordfish and Fulmar fighters at him, and then again to the more sophisticated attacks mounted by the Japanese with waves upwards of ninety planes sent in from a full carrier division. Those attacks seemed so primitive and foolhardy to him now, and it was only Kirov’s dwindling SAM inventory that allowed any of those planes to have even the slightest chance of harming the Russian ship seriously.

The attack forming to his south, however, was another matter entirely, several orders of magnitude above the threat posed by Admiral Hara’s brave Japanese pilots of WWII. That said, Karpov did not think it would be enough. The support group and strike assets in the attack he imagined would probably use three of the four squadrons on this American carrier. They would need to hold back that fourth squadron for defensive CAP over their task force and other contingencies. While a potent threat, the Captain did not think the Americans would seriously hurt his task force with this single carrier. If Captain Tanner was a wise man he would wait for the Nimitz group and then coordinate a joint attack, double or nothing.

He did not underestimate the skill of his opponent, but what Karpov did not know was that Tanner was now constrained by the urgency carried in that last FLASH emergency message traffic he had received. The American Captain had orders to find, attack and sink the battlecruiser Kirov, and another way to double down on his strike package bid that day. The Nimitz was coming for backup, but CVBG Washington was the cop on the beat at the moment, and if Tanner was ready to rumble he could strike at once.

This was the inherent advantage the Americans possessed, thought Karpov, the option of the first blow. Well I have some bad news for them. That option is mine as well. We have other assets in theater just for this contingency.

Rodenko soon reported planes in the air over the US carrier group, and trouble heading north with bad intent. Then came a sudden, distant rumble, a vibration in the air, and all Karpov could think about was that first deep vibrato when Orel blew up in the North Atlantic and sent them all careening through time to 1941. He could see the wide-eyed looks from Nikolin and Pavlov over on navigation with that same thought in mind as well, but Rodenko was quick with his report.

“It’s that damn volcano again,” he said coolly. “Another eruption, and it looks like a big one this time.”

Karpov took his field glasses and observed the distant outline of Iturup Island behind them where the volcano named “the Demon” was awakening. The thought he had about it earlier came to mind again, and his eyes narrowed with a demonic expression of his own. He grinned to recall how he had described himself as the devil to the American Captain. Perhaps there was some mischief in the air with this restless mountain behind him that he could use to good advantage.

“Rodenko, what’s the prevailing wind direction right now?”

“Almost due south, sir.”

Aboard CVBG Washington Captain Tanner had finished consultation with his CAG, the Carrier Air Group Commander, and was watching the last of the Diamondbacks take off to form up for the attack. The Dambusters were spotted and ready to join them in the number three hole. The Royal Maces were already aloft and he would hold his last squadron, the Eagles in the cleanup spot. Karpov’s math was a little off that day. All SEAD and support craft aside, he had anticipated twelve strike planes with four harpoons each in the core attack, but there would be twice that number. Tanner had thirty-six planes between the three squadrons and he was using them all. And his support group was going to turn over all escort and TARCAP duty to some friends arriving from nearby airfields on Japan.

The 35th Fighter Wing with 13th and 14th Fighter Squadrons were operating out of Misawa AFB. The Wing’s insignia was quite appropriate that day, a fist clutching a crimson dagger with the motto “Attack To Defend.” The fighting 35th would stand in for the lack of a second carrier strike group, and both squadrons were on the tarmacs and ready for takeoff. The snarling black Panthers of the 13th Fighter Squadron were up first, quickly followed by the Samurai Lightning of the 14th Squadron. Both groups specialized in air superiority missions, and they would take that duty well in hand to allow Tanner to load out more of his Superhornets for the strike mission.

This would free up eight more planes for surface warfare strike load outs, and along with his reserve of four planes he was now going to have 24 FA-18 Superhornets up and angry instead of twelve. The ‘bugs,’ as they were called, would be just a little thicker in the sky that morning. This would give him ninety-six harpoons in the strike, twice what Karpov expected.

The land based planes were F-16C Fighting Falcons that day, though the pilots had taken to calling their rides “Vipers” instead. The twelve planes of the 13th would take off after the Russian AEW assets, and then form up to accompany one arm of Tanner’s naval strike groups.

The Samurai Lightning of the 14th would stand an air superiority watch over Hokkaido in case the Russians threw anything at Tanner’s group from their airfields around Vladivostok. The Captain was watching the last of the Dambusters taxi and launch when he got the same news from his weather man that Karpov had just received.

“Looks like another eruption from that volcano up north, sir.” said Duffy. “That’s going to pile a ton of ash into the sky near the target zone, Captain.”

“Look, Cloud Man, why’d you have to go and spoil my lunch?”

“Sorry, sir. It’s the damn volcano.”

“Pyle!” The Captain wanted his communications officer.

“Sir?”

“You get on the radio and notify those strike groups. The weather up there is going to be a little smoky. They may have to divert to avoid that damn ash cloud.”

Tanner spelled out what he wanted, and he was about to make a big mistake. The strike package would split into two groups. The Alpha Group would fly northwest to link up with the land based fighters out of Misawa. This combined force would then make their attack by coming in just off the coast of Hokkaido and far enough west to avoid the ash, which would wreak havoc on the planes if they got caught in it. The Bravo Group would fly northeast then north to avoid the ash cloud as well, and come in from the wide Pacific. They would not have the benefit of the Falcon fighter escort, but the planes designated for SEAD attacks would fire and then quickly assume an air defense role.

There was going to be more in the sky than smoke and ash that day, and Tanner was satisfied his little pincer attack would catch the Russians napping. He was confident that he had the matter well in hand, but he had not yet taken the full measure of his opponent, and Karpov had ideas of his own that were soon to make it a bloody day for all concerned.

“Their strike package is splitting up,” said Rodenko. “Looks like they’re diverting some planes over Hokkaido and a second group well east over the Pacific.”

“Excellent!” Karpov saw an advantage here. “Contact Admiral Kuznetsov. Tell them I want everything they can fly heading east. They’ll provide a strong fighter screen there. As for the group over Hokkaido, let’s say hello with our new S-400s.”

It was going to be a wild hour at the edge of a great firestorm, though no one realized just how bad it would be.

Chapter 16

It started like any normal day in the Gulf. Shipping traffic was getting underway after a long night taking on a wide range of crude and distilled oil and gas. Princess Royal was only one of a number of very large tankers scheduled to transit the straits of Hormuz. Already bloated with Kuwaiti crude, Fairchild & Company had a lot riding on her safe return. Exercising a futures contract written when crude was still well below $100 per barrel, Elena Fairchild had managed to fill her largest fleet tanker for just $70 US per barrel. The price had already doubled in the 6 months since she signed the contract, committing a major share of the company’s remaining operating capital to the deal.

The Captain of Princess Royal was very edgy that day. When the company owner and CEO interrupts a business dinner to make an emergency radio call to your ship, you listen very intently. Princess Royal was to be put on full alert, its modest crew to be on watch for any close approach of light craft. All four 50 caliber machine guns were to be deployed on deck, with orders to shoot first and ask questions later should any craft get within 500 yards of the giant tanker. The Captain was to launch his motorized cutter and sail it half a kilometer in front of the vessel at all times, with a party of seamen scouring all points of the compass, with particular attention to anything seen floating in the water.

They were obviously worried about mines, thought the Captain, but had little understanding of how they really worked. He had no doubt that the Iranians had rocket assisted mines on the floor of the Gulf even now, and these could be triggered by the passing of a massively hulled ship like Princess Royal. They could come rocketing up from the sea floor at any time.

In spite of the hair raised by such a call, the morning voyage had been thankfully uneventful. Princess Royal had passed Abu Musa half an hour ago, a small arrowhead shaped Gulf island that had been disputed by Iran and the UAE for some years. Iran had settled the matter by simply occupying the island, along with two other little rocks north of it, Tunb as Sugrah and Tunb al Kubra. The three sat astride, or flanked, the main deep water shipping lane of the Gulf, waters the Princess Royal had to navigate as she steamed for home. Now she was just at the technical maritime boundary between Iran and Oman, on her last leg up towards the Musandam Peninsula where she would enter the southernmost shipping lane and make her dog-leg right turn around the peninsula, officially entering the Straits of Hormuz.

Abu Musa was a barren little island, with a small harbor at its western end, served by a sandbar quay. Seven small craft had been berthed there when Princess Royal made her closest approach to the Island. Six were there now. A single paved road circled the small island, which was bisected by a single runway air strip that extended all the way across from the western harbor to the east shore. Colonel Andar, the Island’s military commandant, was not at his desk this morning either. He had taken to his armored SUV half an hour earlier, heading for the east coast.

A bit behind schedule, and with no air traffic due to land for hours, Andar decided to simply drive down the long concrete air strip rather than taking the longer coastal road. He had just arrived at the far end of the strip, ending just yards from the eastern shore of the island, and was sitting in his vehicle listening to Radio Teheran while he watched the sumptuous rear end of the British flagged Princess Royal through his binoculars as she headed into her turn in the distance.

He checked his watch, knowing the seventh patrol boat would be coming round the sharp southeastern tip of the island at any moment. Officially he no longer commanded seven patrol boats. One had been sent home to the Iranian mainland three days ago for scheduled maintenance, or so the files would read now. Officially, this boat was never even in his harbor, and the fuel and munitions she loaded the previous evening were never in his inventory bunkers as well. It was amazing how unknowing and oblivious the government could be, he thought with a wry smile.

He was here to witness the event that would change the world in a way that few could imagine just now. 9/11 had been called a day that changed everything. The anniversary of that event had just passed uneventfully, with nary a word from Osama bin Ladin. His second in command, Zawahiri, had chided the Islamic fighters the world over for not striking harder against the infidel occupiers. He had claimed they were in league with the devil Americans now, fearful of Iran as well. They should be fearful, Andar thought. And the Americans should be fearful as well. They had the impudence to threaten Iran, and lecture her as to what she might or might not do. Their lap dog Israel was always yammering, straining at the leash.

The operation today had been carefully planned. The American carrier group, headed by CV Reagan had steamed into the North Arabian Sea on the final leg of her six month tour some days ago. The rotation cycle saw her relieve the Eisenhower there, which was already well across the Indian ocean, sailing for the troubled waters of the Pacific. Reagan was now standing its maritime security watch, which had been heated up on schedule to draw American interest there. Fighters in Iraq had been ordered to stir up trouble for the very same reason. Teheran had dictated the pace of activity and the theatre was brought to a high boil. Reagan would stay in the Arabian Sea and be unable to move east if needed there. It was all planned.

He smiled as the patrol craft, of which he knew nothing officially, came into sight on schedule to his right. It was making a gradual approach to the lumbering supertanker, soon to cross the fading remnant of its wake, but never to get close enough to raise any alarm.

The Americans and the British—meddlers, thieves, bullies, brigands—would soon see what their adventurism may cost them. The Princess Royal was about to have a few problems.

On the bridge of Aegean Reliance, a Greek flagged 40,000 ton container ship moving up the Gulf, the Watch Commander leaned forward of the wheel to make certain his eyes had not deceived him. His jaw hung open in disbelief. The Duty Officer had just reported a fireball where the tanker Princess Royal was making its hard right into the shipping channel in the straits.

“What happened? Did you see what I think I saw?”

The duty officer pointed to the video imaging system, recording the forward arc of the ship as it navigated the constricted waters. It was a protocol now required by the tanker insurance industry, as a way of documenting any potential collision at sea.

“Activate camera two and then play number one back again!” The Watch Commander wanted to be absolutely convinced before he took any action, but the playback did nothing to ease the sickly feeling in his gut. He saw the streaking shadow lance at the heart of Princess Royal and watched the fireball envelop the vessel amidships, expanding out in a massive explosion. The Watch Commander rubbed that spot on his left elbow that always started to throb when the world went topsy-turvy on him.

“Signal the Director’s Office,” he said slowly. “Tell him we think the Princess Royal has had some kind of accident. No…tell them we think she was deliberately attacked. Indications are there was a major explosion aboard, but we think she was struck by a missile.”

He was reaching for his field glasses, eyes scanning the dark waters for any sign of a small craft. He thought he spied something in the water, but then it was gone. Then he turned to focus on the burning tanker ahead. The fire was bad and he had to see about rendering assistance.

“Traffic control!”

“Sir?”

“Anything ready for immediate launch?”

“We have one cutter ready on 15 minute notice sir. “

“Notify the Captain. We may be involved in rescue operations. Helmsman!”

“Aye?”

“Slow to 5 knots.” With a sinking feeling he realized he wasn’t going to follow Princess Royal into the straits any time soon. He would need security on deck at once, and a quick course plot to the nearest port, most likely Port Rashid at Dubai. They had shut down most commercial traffic there in March to favor newer facilities at Jebel Ali, but the port was still there, damn it, and this was going to be an emergency situation.

Who had fired the missile? Was his ship next? But for now, the law of the sea tugged at him. He would see what he might do to help the stricken ship ahead, but his decks were stacked high with over a hundred steel shipping containers, and the safety of this vessel would have to come first. Princess Royal was on fire and blocking the channel ahead. If she sunk the channel would be closed indefinitely. He would need an emergency berthing at a local port, and that quickly.

“Order the lighter to be ready to make way. Mission is search and rescue—Full medical team! I want complete video documentation on this console from now on. No tape rotation. You save every inch of footage. Understood?”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The Duty Officer fed the orders down to the Launch Bay. Then the Watch Officer reached for the handset to call the Captain. All their lives were about to become very complicated.

Arkansas Anchorage, was established 80 miles from Dubai in the Persian Gulf to support US military operations in the region. It was home to ASPRON-4, the Military Sealift Command's fourth “Afloat Prepositioning Ship Squadron Four,” though officially she did not exist either. The squadron was de-listed from the service rolls once the major movement of equipment to the Gulf had been officially completed. Unofficially, she still had a number of vessels at anchor, for contingencies that came up more often than bad weather in the volatile Persian Gulf. And with the Ronald Reagan group on the other side of the Straits of Hormuz, in the North Arabian Sea, ASPRON-4 was one of the few remaining navy units still available to quickly respond to the theater commander once reactivated. This was not a combat outfit, but the unit had four large, medium-speed, roll-on/roll-off ships, each one packed to the gills with pre-positioned military equipment, munitions and supplies for the US Marines.

They were going to be needing them soon.

Al Dhafra Air Base, located about an hour outside of Abu Dhabi, was one of the first US facilities to receive word on the incident involving Princess Royal. It had been home to the Air Force's 763rd Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron in support of Operation Southern Watch during the pre-war years of containment for Saddam. At that time it used U-2s and Global Hawk spy planes to keep an eye on the Iraqis. Now, ten years later, nearly 300 US personnel were still deployed at Al Dhafra facility, though she had no teeth.

For that the ball was quickly passed to Balad airfield in Iraq, where the flight controller inside “Kingpin,” the base control tower, was monitoring aircraft in flight over the battlespace at that very moment. The base had seen a quiet ‘surge’ of its own in recent months in a special agreement signed with Iraq. The big B-1s had returned, as well as fresh squadrons of F-16C fighters, the advanced ‘Block 50’ version, equipped with a high-tech cockpit helmet allowing the pilot to aim and fire his weapons at a target with a simple head movement. The base had also doubled its ISR component in the last two months, an acronym that stood for Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance.

When the word came in that a tanker was on fire in the Straits of Hormuz, Balad went to red alert at once. The Air Force would be calling on all these services, and then some, in a matter of minutes. The Kingpin tower commander immediately diverted a pair of F-16s to overfly the scene, and a Global Hawk was on the tarmac in ten minutes, ready to take a high resolution look at anything happening in the vicinity of the incident.

Further east, at the main port of Jebel Ali, the light helo carrier Iwo Jima was already slipping her moorings and getting ready to put to sea. Aboard were elements of the 26^th Marine Expeditionary Unit, with ten helicopters of varying types along with a squadron of five AV-8 Harrier type jump jets. The Marines had everything they would need to perform their signature mission—take and hold enemy ground by amphibious assault. And if anything was lacking, or needed by way of replenishment, ASPRON-4 would serve it up on a platter when the leathernecks called.

The Americans were quick to react to the situation. Carrier Strike Group Ronald Reagan was already alerted to the trouble, and the Navy was revving up operations in the Arabian Sea. First and foremost on their minds was the safety of other shipping now using the Straits of Hormuz. If this was a terrorist attack, aimed at shutting down the vital channel, the US Navy was well equipped to respond. The guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville, and destroyer USS Gridley were steaming in the van and ordered to the Straits at once. Additional support was nearby. The USS Ardent, an avenger-class Mine Countermeasure Ship, would accompany the two fighting ships into the narrow waters. Planes and helos from the big carrier provided a thick top cover for the operation.

The situation was quickly confirmed as a deliberate attack. Already major media stations like CNN had picked up Al Jazirrah video feeds of the wounded Princess Royal , which was now breaking news. The question that hung in the air like the darkened pall of thick black smoke over the stricken tanker, was whether or not she was in any danger of sinking, and thus blocking the channel. She was not, but that information was known only to Fairchild & Company personnel at the moment.

The navy acted as though the viability of the shipping channel was under immediate threat. They called Port Fujairah in the UAE for quick tug support when reconnaissance indicated the ship was in no immediate danger of sinking. Intel had a line on a patrol boat that had been picked up by cameras on a container ship following some ways behind Princess Royal when she was attacked.

US Intelligence was quick to put two and two together. They scoured satellite imagery on the Gulf Islands they had been monitoring for some time. Last week’s archive showed seven boats in the harbor on Iranian occupied Abu Musa, the island closest to the point of the attack. Photo specialists at Navy Intel were quick to match the satellite imagery with the video footage obtained from the container ship. They had found their smoking gun.

The information was routed directly to the office of the Vice President, and then on to the White House. The briefing to the President would indicate, with a high reliability, that this was a deliberate, and state sponsored attack on a British registered oil tanker, and no mere incident of simple terrorism, particularly in light of the current geopolitical tensions. Within minutes, US forces in the Persian Gulf were brought to an elevated state of readiness, and the phone was ringing in the quay bunker at ASPRON-4.

As the Fairchild ship was a British registered vessel, HMS Iron Duke, a Type 23 frigate, was immediately ordered to assist other Fairchild operations ongoing in the Med. Britain was covering all her bets, particularly those involving the conveyance of much needed oil supplies as the country prepared to go to a full wartime footing. The Iron Duke was happily en-route to the Eastern Med at the time, sailing to rejoin the US Roosevelt battlegroup. She had participated in “Operation Firestone,” a naval exercise held off the Carolina coast a month ago, sailed home briefly, and then put out to sea again with a new commanding officer, Captain Ian Williams. When word came in that he was to sail immediately for the Bosporus, he was quite surprised.

With all this hubbub in the Persian Gulf why are we being sent up to the Bosporus? Are the Russians planning to sortie with something? Then he received further orders: rendezvous with a small flotilla of oil tankers led by the corporate maritime security ship Argos Fire and provide additional escort through the Black Sea to terminal ports at or near Supsa. He turned to his executive officer still dumbfounded by the message.

“Well here’s a private little nightmare,” he said quietly, with endemic British calm. He handed the message to his XO. Lt. Commander Colin Firth, who read it quietly, one raised eyebrow his only immediate reaction. Then he turned to the Captain, a look of concern on his face.

“We’ll be the only Western shipping in a sea of red in short order, sir. Care to wonder what the Russians will do when we poke our nose into the Black Sea? It’s not hot with us and them just yet, but it will likely be so very soon.”

“Quite so,” said Williams, drawing on the pipe that seemed glued to his right hand, particularly when he was on the bridge. The service frowned on the behavior, but a Captain at sea on his own ship was a bit of a demigod, and no one would presume to even take notice, let alone be bothered by Williams’ addiction to aromatic tobacco. He was a bit of a purist, and smoked only one brand, Gawith & Hoggarth Top Black Cherry, a Kendal style blend made from a 200-year old recipe dating from the days where British purity law dictated that only certain natural ingredients could be used in pipe tobacco. The crew had taken to calling the bridge “Cherry Estates,” and it was always easy to know just where the Captain was on the ship, surrounded as he was by a thin veil of sweet, aromatic smoke.

“Well, we won’t be alone, XO,” Williams put in. “That ship noted in the dispatch there will make for some interesting company.”

“Argos Fire, sir? I can’t say as I’m familiar with it.”

“You’ll think otherwise when you lay eyes on her,” Williams said with a smile. “It’s a Type 45. This Fairchild & Company bought the damn thing lock, stock and barrel some years back and ran her through BAE Systems in Portsmouth for a good overhaul.”

“HMS Dauntless, sir! I remember now. Well that will take the sting off this assignment, unless they’ve made her into a corporate yacht.”

“Oh I’ve heard a bit about this ship, Mister Firth, and it has all the bells and whistles, and good teeth as well.”

Events were now taking on a momentum of their own, and intelligence chatter began to burn up the airways. If the Americans wanted a pretext for another swipe at Iran, the attack on Princess Royal had given it to them. For years there had been talk of a planned attack to impede Iran’s nuclear ambitions, yet nothing ever materialized.

Israel’s request for a thousand more GBU-39 bunker busters had finally been approved and put on the fast track, but the Pentagon would have to move heaven and earth to get them delivered. Russia quickly countered by announcing the sale of their advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, a fearsome deterrent, even for the capable air forces of Israel and the US. All along the US eastern seaboard the Navy was thrumming with activity, and this very same day the Russians decided to send the US yet another message by ordering one of their newest Borei class nuclear ballistic missile subs out for test firing in the North Atlantic. There were too many military assets, on all sides, standing on their toes and looking for a brawl. The attack on Princess Royal had set more in motion than anyone realized at the time, even the company senior executives on board the Argos Fire in the Aegean.

It was the worst possible time for military trouble, given the fragile state of affairs in the West. That same afternoon, while Princess Royal burned in the Straits of Hormuz, oil futures began to spike up in an unusual trading session that should have never been called by the Boyz on Wall Street. They were just trying to apply the most basic rule of plunder when it comes to financial dealings — cover your ass. But when bad news hit the trading pits, bad things could happen very quickly.

Chapter 17

“How could we have missed this?” said Elena Fairchild in an exasperated tone. “How?” She looked squarely at her intelligence chief, Mack Morgan, who had been called on the carpet to answer for the lapse. They were in the executive offices on the ship, and Captain MacRae stood by Morgan’s side, hat in hand, hoping to lend his mate a little moral support.

Out in the Aegean, the Fairchild flagship Argos Fire was leading her small flotilla through the long channel of the Bosporus along the planned route to the Black Sea. The frigate Iron Duke had caught up with the flotilla, and she was a welcome sight. Elena Fairchild had a little pull with the government, and she had made a few phone calls to make the arrangement earlier. The frigate now led the way, with Princess Irene next in line and then the two larger tankers followed by Argos Fire. They would enter the Black sea that night, a worrisome prospect given the rising tensions. Now, however, Elena Fairchild’s mind was beset by the news in the Persian Gulf and the fate of Princess Royal.

“Salase only told us half the truth,” said MacRae. “He floated that malarkey about a mine, but from the angle on that damage the attack was made by a missile, and it was fired from a position well behind the ship.”

“We had the report, m’lady,” said Morgan sheepishly, “but there were no details; no confirmation. His heavy dark brows were lowered with concern and just the right amount of regret played over his dark eyes. “Salase had us watching our nose with that hint about the mines, then someone gave it to us in the ass, eh?”

“What Mack says is true, m’lady,” MacRae spoke up. “I stopped by the radio room to check on black channel traffic right before the dinner. We had a message on the BTC pipeline trouble, and a nebulous warning of mines in the Persian Gulf. I had the damn message in my pocket during dinner, but never got the chance to pull you aside.”

“Salase knew more than he was delivering,” said Fairchild. “I’ll have that fat pig on a spit the next time I see him.” Elena was furious. “What do you think he really knew?”

“Hard to say,” said MacRae. “It was clear he wanted to warn us of the attack. He could have kept his mouth shut, you know.”

“I don’t think he was doing me any great favor,” said Elena. “He threw that bone on the table just to shake things up and close the deal the other night. The fat little bastard was laughing at me behind those bulging eyes of his all evening. We’ve got five dead and one missing on the Princess Royal. Damn, we’re getting very sloppy.” She was pacing nervously, agitated by the bad news and a long, sleepless night.

“Well, it could have been worse,” said MacRae. “A mine, I mean. This was a missile, and at least she was struck well above the water line. There’s no danger of her sinking, and from the looks of this video,” he gestured at the monitor on Fairchild’s desk, “only the center compartment seems to be involved.”

“God,” Elena breathed. “I can’t lose that ship. That’s twenty percent of her cargo on fire. What if the rest goes up? We’d be ruined! We won’t be able to deliver the oil to Chevron as agreed.”

“We’ve got to get Princess Royal out of the straits,” MacRae said, in a calm voice. “We can move her to Al Fujairah on the coast of the UAE. It’s one of the largest bunkerages in the world now, bigger than Singapore. And just our luck, they can handle ships in this class.”

“What about the report of engine damage?”

“Some flooding affected the engine room, but she can be towed,” the captain reassured her. “This is all theater. If they wanted to sink her they would have hit her closer to the water line, or used a mine to gut her hull below the water line. This was just a gun and run media show. The real damage is there, right on CNN. Do you have any idea what this will do to oil futures and tanker insurance rates? With everything shut down in the Gulf of Mexico, the price of crude is going to double very soon, mark my words.”

That was the first thing he had said that gave her any solace. Fairchild composed herself, her eyes tightening with sudden resolve.

“Do you think we were deliberately targeted—by our rivals, I mean?” She looked at her intelligence chief now.

Morgan ran a hand through his thick, dark hair and breathed heavily, thinking for a moment. “No,” he began. “No, I don’t think so. And I doubt Salase knew anything more than he revealed at that contract dinner, from what I’ve heard of it. Oh, he got wind of the attack, and he knew he couldn’t come to the meeting without revealing it, but he didn’t have the details either. His network wasn’t that good.”

“Better than our information,” Elena fumed.

“We had it, just as the Captain says,” Morgan countered. “Had it in our pocket the whole time.”

“Not soon, enough,” she said quickly. “You slipped up on this one, Mack. We should have had it days before.”

“I’ll not argue that, m’lady. But now it’s done and we’ve got to consider the advantages in the situation.”

She bit her lower lip, her mind racing. “You think they can get the ship to Al Fujairah, Captain?”

“It’s just 30 miles south, the only port that could handle Princess Royal. If this is an isolated attack, as I think it is, she’ll make it with no problems. I got a hold of Volker there. They have a couple of KC-air tankers they can rig for fire-fighting. Their engineer thinks we can get retardant on the fire and contain the damage—but it’s likely we’ll lose everything in the central fuel bunker.”

“Even so, if we save the rest we still come out ahead. We’ll have 80% of our cargo, but it will be worth twice as much as we thought.” She was shaken with sudden energy, moving quickly to her desk computer to pull up her operators file. Her hands moved quickly over the keyboard, the Claddagh ring catching a gleam of light as she typed.

“Hello…” she said, noting a priority alert on the intelligence channel of her screen. With their feet to the fire over the missed threat to Princess Royal, her spooks had been very keen to make up for lost ground, and regain some face. “Well, what have we here?” She waved MacRae and Morgan over to have a look at her screen.

“Thunder Horse down?” he gave her an unknowing look.

“Radio intercept,” she said, eyes alight. “It’s a big BP platform in the Gulf of Mexico. I’d say they have some significant damage out there if a platform of that size is having trouble.” She tightened her lips, deciding something, then started typing.

“That hit CNN this morning,” said Morgan, “but I can tell you what won’t be on the news about it, and that what’s most likely in that intelligence report.”

“Trying to cover your backside, Mack?” she prodded him, still perturbed but willing to forgive. “Alright, let’s have it.”

“Word is that that damage to Thunder Horse was not all from the hurricane. The Yanks took down a Russian sub in the Gulf of Mexico just last night. Akula class attack boat. They think the damn thing put a torpedo right into the rig.”

She raised her eyebrows at that, as did MacRae. It would have been a very bold move, and a strong escalation in the rising tension between East and West.

“Yanks are mad as a hornet about this one. Someone in DC wants red blood, now, if you know what I mean m’lady.”

“I think I do, Mack. Keep an ear on it for me and let me know the moment you have anything else.”

“Of course. The question is, what will the Americans do?”

Elena looked up at MacRae, her mind working hard. “The gloves are coming off, gentlemen,” she said quietly. The Russians traded a very expensive submarine for an even more expensive oil drilling platform just now. They’re letting us know they can hit the oil, and hit it hard. You know what that might mean for our little jaunt into the Black Sea. Thank God we managed to bring in a little more help with the Iron Duke, but I’ll want the Argos Fire trimmed for action the instant we pass the Bosporus.

“She’ll be ready, m’lady.”

“We need to get hold of the Van Ommeren group now. They’re the main player for tank terminal operations in the UAE—and call Vopak too.”

“The Dutch again,” said MacRae, hand on his chin. “I think we may have a play here, Elena.”

“Mississippi Region?” she asked.

“No. First here, in the Caspian region.”

She looked up at him, nodding her head in agreement.

MacRae smiled. “Caspian bandits are shooting up Royal Dutch Shell operations in the region over here, and someone is taking pot-shots at our traffic in the Persian Gulf.”

“While BP, and god knows how many other producers, have big headaches in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Yes. Now we’re four days at full speed from being able to do Princess Royal any good. But we could offer Royal Dutch Shell a helping hand with their Caspian Region operations. We already have the Chevron contract in hand, but I doubt they’ll be able to bunker two and a half million barrels in Baku. Perhaps Royal Dutch Shell might need a lift for some of their oil in the Supsa terminal. We can split our three tankers between Chevron and Shell. I smell another arrangement.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Elena. “Assuming Vopak and Van Ommeren can save that oil on Princess Royal and bunker it at Al Fujairah. Once Chevron takes possession they may have second thoughts about shipping it to Singapore, particularly after this news in the Gulf of Mexico.”

MacRae smiled. “We couldn’t have planned it better! But what about the Salase deal and Singapore? He’ll lose his brokerage commission.”

“Fuck Salase,” Elena put a fine point on it. “That’s what he was trying to do to me, wasn’t it?”

“He wouldn’t get to first base,” said MacRae, pleased by the warmth of her smile in return.

Morgan noticed the familiarity between them, but pretended not to. He knew that MacRae was fairly close to the CEO, and was grateful for his presence here to take a few arrows for the intelligence lapse. Fairchild was correct. He should have had it—had it all, hook, line and sinker, cut and trimmed in a pan with hot oil, salt and a patty of butter. That was the way Fairchild was accustomed to being served up her intelligence, and he made a mental note to brush up on his cooking skills. He already had men working on the situation they would most likely face in the Black Sea, and was ready with that initial report if needed.

“In fact,” Elena’s eyes leapt ahead to light on some distant thought. “We might even twist this arrangement into a nice new pretzel.”

MacRae was nodding yes.

“Salase has brokered a deal with the Americans to move oil east for the Japanese—and I was to carry it for him, all the way from the Black Sea to Singapore. But if I get my oil, whatever’s left of it on Princess Royal, and bunker it in Al Fujairah, it would be so much closer to Singapore, wouldn’t it?”

“So we make a trade?”

“Exactly—barrel for barrel, just as I suggested to Salase. It would be as if we moved the Black Sea oil round the Cape without even sailing!”

“Lovely,” said MacRae. “And when our three little ladies are all loaded up here with the oil from Chevron and Shell?”

“It becomes ours in trade, and we ship it to the states. They’ll be desperate for fresh deliveries. I can have five buyers in an hour. Oil inventories were down to a 21 day supply after Hurricane Ernesto, for God’s sake. Now this Hurricane Victor is going to shut down refineries for at least another two weeks. They’ll be spot shortages cropping up already. We’ll make a killing, and we don’t have to go to Singapore to collect. They can take my cargo on Princess Royal in trade and we’ll find someone willing to ship it to Singapore in short order. There must be three or four carriers in Al Fujairah we could subcontract.”

The Captain was suddenly relieved. “The thing now is to get Argos Fire and our three princesses out to those Black Sea terminals at all speed. From there we should be close enough to launch helos that could make it in to the Caspian, and we could even pick up a little security money from Chevron and Shell in the bargain. Remember that call for mercs? We have some fellows aboard who are fairly handy with automatic weapons.”

“My fifty Argonauts.”

“Exactly. And with four X-3 Helos to move them. With your permission, Madame, I’ll get the men ready for a mission or two.”

The Argonauts were the fifty man security contingent on board the Argos Fire, a highly trained commando that would be perfect for the job. The four X-3s were a nice trump card in a situation like this, fast, deadly, and with good range.

“That’s four hundred miles to Baku,” Morgan warned, “and another 256 up to Fort Shevchenko where this Chevron Platform is located. You’ll get there, but then what? The fuel tanks will be dry as a bone.”

“We can refuel at Baku in both directions,” said MacRae. “BP has an operations center there and I think they’d support us.”

“They will indeed,” said Fairchild. “But I want this done right. Make sure you dole out plenty of ammunition,” she quipped. After all, boys will be boys.”

He offered a winsome salute and turned for the bridge. Morgan started to follow him, but stopped short of the door when she called his name.

“Mister Morgan,” she said calmly.

“I know I dropped the ball,” he began, but she quickly waved that away.

“Forget that, Mack. But just so you know, Salase threw the damn thing on the dinner table like a cold wet mackerel. Caught me completely by surprise. Don’t let it happen again.”

Morgan nodded gravely.

“Now what am I going to be facing in the Black Sea?”

“Well to put it plainly, Madame, the Russians. The fleet there isn’t what it used to be, particularly after the partition with Ukraine. The Moskva was the flagship, but being the lead ship in its class they renamed it Slava and sent it to the Northern Fleet two years ago. They filled the void with three smaller frigates, Grigorovich, Essen and Makarov. Good missiles on all three, the P-800 Onyx/Yakhont and the P-900 Kalibr cruise missile. NATO calls it the Sizzler. After that they don’t have much else of a threat. They decommissioned the Kerch, though it’s still in mothballs at Novorossiysk. They’ve also managed to keep one old Kashin class destroyer afloat commissioned in 1969, but barely. It spends most of its time in port or dry dock. They’ll have two old Krivak class frigates, and two diesel subs. The rest are coastal corvettes, and I assume we’ll be hugging the Turkish coast so I doubt they could put in an appearance there.”

“Can we handle them, Mack?” That was all she really wanted to know. “Am I flushing half my company down the tubes here while I watch the other half burn in the Straits of Hormuz?”

“Oh, with Iron Duke along we’ll handle the Black Sea Fleet, m’lady. But the Russian air force is another matter. You’ll be at risk in another four hours. We have a good air defense missile umbrella, one of the best in the world for that matter, but we’ll have no air cover to speak of, unless we can get Turkish support. If the Russians get serious about it they can give us something to shoot at. Our Sampson radar can track a cricket ball flying at Mach 3 and our Sea Vipers are as good as they come. That said, they only need one hit on a tanker to cause serious pain—as we’ve seen with Princess Royal in the Gulf.”

“Very well… Keep your ear to the ground on this for me. I want to know what they tee up before it gets airborne.”

“The Chinese have been taking pot-shots at American satellites, but as far as I know they haven’t hit anything belonging to the Crown yet. I’ll see if I can have them keep a good eye out for us, Madame.”

“I’ll sleep easier, Mack. Thanks.”

Morgan saluted, and made a graceful withdrawal, glad he had not been grilled and fried like the fish he was supposed to have served. That bit about the cold mackerel made the point well enough for him. He couldn’t let the company down again.

Chapter 18

The commander of Iran’s aerial defense, Brigadier General Ahmed Mighani was not happy. He had been reading all morning, digesting news feeds and official government statements on the ever boiling kettle of the Gulf. The latest was the typical fare, half taunting and half bravado, with a swipe at Israel in the mix: “The Zionist regime lacks the diplomatic, economic and social capability to launch a wide-scale war,” General Yahya Rahim Safavi said in response to threats by Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. “Iran's armed forces, including the Revolutionary Guards, and 11 million members of the Basiji, the Guards voluntary force, “are fully prepared to deal with any attack.”

Yes, he thought. So prepared that I can barely fly half the planes we have in inventory, and have to scavenge equipment that should have been retired twenty years ago. This was followed by a story claiming the US planned to use Georgian military facilities as a beachhead to strike Iran. And at this very moment the Pathfinder, an oceanographic survey ship owned by the US Military Sealift Command, was making its second visit to the Black Sea in the last ten days. The official purpose of the visit was to conduct an underwater survey to ostensibly look for the wreckage of the Armenia, a WWII era Soviet hospital ship sunk by the Germans. Needless to say, that mission was now cancelled.

The curiosity of the Americans knows no bounds, he thought, fully aware that this ship could also monitor Russian submarine activity in the Black Sea at a range out to 60 miles. He continued reading: “With regard to the United States, Safavi said military assets in the region were deployed in such a way that they actually posed a serious danger to the U.S. itself.”

General Mighani wondered what that was supposed to mean, concluding that all the American assets would, of course, make wonderful targets for Iran’s Shahab IIIs, the medium range ballistic missiles that were the backbone of the country’s real deterrent against any possible attack. The government release continued it’s confident line: “There is no doubt that the Americans, who are still meddling in the Pacific, will not open a second front with a major war in the Middle East,” he said, referring to a possible attack on Iran.”

No doubt, no doubt. That was why the nation was busy this morning conducting an emergency preparedness drill over the next three days. No doubt…

But the cable that had darkened his mood had come suddenly, interrupting his review of the National Air Defense drill. The news about the attack on a British flagged tanker was cause for both elation and regret. It was a dangerous situation that could easily cause him great grief. The British tanker was struck amidships as she entered the Straits of Hormuz. The attack delivered a sharp rebuke to those who have plundered the region for decades, he thought. It also made the obvious point that the oil the West so desperately needed could be choked off at a moment’s notice. But the danger that this attack would be blamed on Iran was very real.

At the moment he had no hard information as to who the perpetrators might be, and did not know the incident had been carefully planned. Special Operations had not bothered to consult with the Air Force for security purposes. He was only told to conduct these silly exercises, but with live ammo load outs.

There was other news as well. An attack on the US embassy in Yemen, beginning with a suicide bomb and followed up by an attempt to storm the embassy in San’ai, had also just crossed the wires. The attacked failed. Good coffee in San’ai, he thought, but bad politics. Could this be part of a new wave of jihadi attacks? It was clear that the Americans would look first to Iran for any potential involvement. He knew the incident would offer them just the pretext they needed to make good their longstanding threats. Already the American light carrier Iwo Jima had put to sea from its berthing at Jebel Ali, and there were alarming signs of increased US naval activity building in the region.

In an official statement to the Iranian press, for general release, he made it clear that Iran would be ready, sounding just like all the other official statements he had been reading that morning. “If Iran is attacked, it will deliver a crushing blow to the enemy…we will surprise the enemy and make them regret their actions.” And now he was sorting through his surprises, realizing that, when it came to fixed wing aircraft in defense of the homeland, he had very little in inventory.

The aging Iranian air force was still holding on to retired legacy systems inherited from the days of the Shah. He had all of 65 F-4 Phantom fighters, and some 60 F-5E Tigers, though he knew the air force would be lucky to get even half of these in the air and keep them there for longer than a few days. Of the 25 old F-14 Tomcats, perhaps 6 were mission capable. Officially he also had 25 more advanced Russian Mig-29s in inventory, but he knew many of these were mere trainers. The one plane he had any faith in, perhaps good for one desperate strike at a given target, would be his strike group of a dozen Sukhoi-25s and the 30 Sukhoi-24s behind them. Half of these had been a surprise gift from Saddam, fleeing to Iran during the first Gulf War. He knew his planes were no match for the superior American made inventories that they would have to face, but some would reach their targets. The rest of his air force was comprised of a few old Chinese J-7 fighters and a couple dozen French made Mirage F-1s, both planes dating to the old cold war era of the mid 1970s.

The only thing he could do with such a force was simply throw it into the wind and hope for the best. The American F-16 and F-15 fighters would destroy the bulk of his force in a matter of hours, not to mention the lethal F-22 Raptors, a new stealth fighter that could not even be seen on the old radars his planes mounted. His only hope was that some of his planes would pose a distraction, while perhaps a few others would manage to unleash a few missiles. Yes, it was in his missile inventories that all hope resided now. He had enough to unleash a storm on the Gulf, and make life there very miserable for a few weeks, perhaps a month at most. The air force would simply buy him a few precious hours time so his liquid and solid fueled missiles could be staged and targeted on key installations in the region that the Americans depended on for their life blood of oil.

The strategy, of course, was not to concentrate his force on American military assets. Oh, he would use the new Russian missiles to threaten the American carriers, but otherwise engaging the U.S, military was fruitless. No, instead he would fling his arsenal of Shehabs at the major oil terminals on the oil rich states to the south. He would strike at America by cutting off the flow of her precious oil business. There was no other way. But how long would it be before the American planes swept his meager air force aside and pounded his missile sites to dust? Saddam had played cat and mouse with his mobile missile systems in the desert for many weeks, but the American planes and missiles were much better now.

And even though Iran had been making efforts at strengthening its air defense systems in recent years, taking delivery of more advanced Russian made Tor-M1 and S-300 systems, they were too few and too widely dispersed to provide a credible defense. The system had weak low altitude radar coverage, no overlapping radar network, shaky command and control systems, and inadequate electronic counter-countermeasures. So the so called ‘exercises,’ and all his bravado today before the press, was more talk than anything he could put to action. The surprises, he knew, would not come from his fixed wing aircraft, or from his ability to fend off a determined enemy air attack, but from the considerable missile forces Iran had been building over the last decade. The best defense, he knew, was a good offense. Iran could make any attack against its homeland a painful option for the aggressors.

The long war with Iraq had also proved the folly of trying to wage war with conventional ground forces, particularly against American equipped enemies. Millions of young Iranian men had died, some in suicidal WWI style human wave assaults against the prepared Iraqi defenses. Even the inferior Russian built T-55 and T-72 tanks Saddam had in inventory were enough to repulse such attacks, particularly when backed up by chemical weapons, napalm, artillery fire, wire, mines and a host of other defenses. God rot the soul of Saddam, he thought. The General’s son, a young Revolutionary Guardsman, had died in such a battle. Mighani passed several moments, imagining the last moments for Saddam. He would have liked to have been there, watching him hang.

Yes, the lesson of that long war was evident. The one weapon that seemed to in any way surprise the enemy was the short range ballistic missile. Capable of delivering large warheads over great distances, with reasonable accuracy, the missiles put the enemy urban centers into the war theatre and acted as a supreme weapon of terror. The famous ‘scud wars’ in the Gulf were a perfect example. They were far more effective than believed, and very few SCUDs had been successfully intercepted back then—not even by the American Patriot system. He knew those defenses were better now, but the Chinese had just demonstrated what a massed missile barrage could do to Taiwan.

So when he watched his old fighter planes perform their low level fly-bys, he knew that there would be little he could really do to defend against a determined American or Israeli air campaign. But we can hit back, he mused, not long, but long enough. The single missile in the belly of a British tanker this morning put a fine point to it. Only a very few of his planes or missiles would have to reach their targets to have a dramatic and devastating effect—a very few. And there were some weapons he held close to his chest, the real surprises should the Americans ever be so bold as to strike mother Iran. He would get a chance to play his hand sooner than he hoped.

The phone rang. An adjutant handed him a new telex. The first page was obvious, though insulting. The Americans were over-flying Iranian soil with their damnable drones! It was time stamped thirty minutes ago. Three had made close approaches to Abu Musa in the Gulf, where a small outlying airfield was maintained with a few maritime patrol boats. He could smell the lies they would soon be vomiting in the UN. Then he read the second page, time stamped ten minutes later. It was signed by Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar and marked with the highest level of urgency:

The Marines were indeed landing on Iranian soil, storming out of their hovercraft and helos covered by a phalanx of F-16 fighter groups that had massed over the Persian Gulf like a swarm of angry locusts. It took little time to occupy the tiny island of Abu Musa, where the leading companies in the first assault wave brushed aside light resistance from the small island garrison around the harbor, while other forces swooped down from helicopters to secure the island’s small air strip.

The assault groups quickly secured the tiny harbor and quay where they had hoped to find the proverbial “smoking gun” in a rogue Iranian attack boat. Nothing was there. By the time Colonel Andar was ignominiously led off to interrogation by his Marine captors, the small attack craft that had skewered Princess Royal was deep below the oil-dark waters of the Persian Gulf. The frogmen had rendezvoused quietly with a small Iranian sub, which had then skirted off towards the Iranian territorial waters of the northern Gulf coast.

All across Iran the aging Iranian air force was scrambling to put planes in the air, expecting their airfields to come under blistering attack by cruise missiles and stealthy aircraft launched by the U.S. from its carrier groups and Gulf region bases. None came. The American response had been deliberately scaled to the simple objective of seizing Abu Musa to try and track the source of the terrorist attack, while writing a spectacular headline and poignant message to the Iranian Government at the same time.

An uneasy calm settled over the Gulf region, but tensions ratcheted high as radar crews squinted at their screens in anticipation of the next retaliatory wave of incoming strikes. Missiles in Iran were fueling at a frantic place, and mobile launchers emerged from their hiding bunkers to prepare their deadly game of shoot and scoot. But for the moment, however, the missiles stayed on their launch pads.

The hours ticked by, and tensions slowly subsided. One by one the Iranian air force planes in the initial scramble defense waves were running low on fuel and returning to their bases. Too few rose to replace them, as the initial wave had sent more than 80% of the inventory aloft. In spite of recent drills, only 75 of the 125 aging F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers were air worthy. Of these 60 had flown in the first alert wave, leaving fifteen to take their place in the hot late afternoon sun. There were still five old F-14 Tomcats and ten Mig 29s available as well.

All across the region radars were humming as they scoured the skies for any sign of incoming enemy aircraft. Yet nothing was seen. Then, a few minutes before dusk, the newly installed Syrian early warning radar facility atop Lebanon's highest peak at Mount Sannine, went dark. There were crucial minutes of confusion at Syrian Air Defense Command before they realized the facility had been destroyed by a missile. The source was not discovered, but the outpost had been hit by an Israeli Popeye Turbo cruise missile launched from a submarine in the Eastern Med. Other missiles were already on their way to strike similar early warning outposts in Iran, this time launched by Israeli submarines in the Persian Gulf. The hawkish government, always ready to exploit any opportunity, had chosen this delicate moment to launch their long planned air strike against new suspected Iranian nuclear facilities!

Even as the first alert wave of Iranian aircraft were landing for refueling, two Israeli air groups flying F-15 I and F-16 I fighters were being led by radar suppressing G-550 Suter and NCCT aircraft on a mission targeting uranium enrichment facilities in Qom and Natanz, as well as the heavy water reactor at Arak, the new facility at Bushehr, and the gas storage complex at Esfahan. The Israeli attack would look like a joint operation with the Americans, though Israeli diplomats had not revealed their intended strike date to politicos in Washington until the planes were well on their way. It was a necessary formality, for the Americans had supplied most of the KC-707 air refueling tankers and liberal allotments of missiles and bunker busting bombs that would be used in the attack.

The strike groups began their run up the Mediterranean coast, then turned East, flying low over Syria. With massive jamming and software attacks unleashed by the IDF, Syrian Air defense response was simply too slow, and the fledgling government there after Assad’s fall years earlier was too reluctant to pick a fight with Israel in any case. The few anti aircraft missile batteries that managed to acquire Israeli targets were quickly extinguished from the grid as their radars fell prey to the AIM “Harm” anti-radar missiles. The strike groups were out of Syrian airspace in a flash, but even though the Iranians had been forewarned, there was little their own air defense could do about the attack.

The Israeli F-15 top cover swept aside the few remaining Iranian aircraft aloft to contest their approach, and the F-16s went to work. As night fell the moon was just off full and targets would soon begin lighting up the deepening dusk, their heavy laser and GPS guided ordinance pummeling the industrial heart of the Iranian nuclear program, at least those facilities that were known. The Israeli’s were meticulous, and went after any known ballistic missile sites as well, though they knew they would be faced with a perpetual duel with mobile systems in the coming weeks.

Unable to prevent the attack, or hinder it an any way, the Iranians had a precious few minutes to consider reprisals. They could order a massive retaliatory strike, in keeping with the rhetoric of their own government in recent months, and “severely punish any aggressor who would dare to threaten or strike the Iranian homeland.” But the Israelis were already finding and extinguishing a good number of the fixed Shahab missile sites. If they were to launch a counterattack, it had to be soon. Alternatively, they could stand down, ride out the storm, then take the role of the aggrieved victim and raise hell in the UN and every other international forum available. The scene the previous week in the UN with the Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Americans all exchanging accusations and threats did little to convince them the diplomatic route would prove fruitful. The attack on Princess Royal, would also stand as a flagrant violation of international law, and serve as an all too visible and obvious provocation.

Their third option was to take the conflict "international" and make the world suffer the consequences. The Straits of Hormuz and the oil rich Sheikdoms to the south were the most inviting and easily ignited targets a ballistic missile commander might ever have. They still had time to draw the sword of Islam and make their reprisal before the second wave of Israeli planes went after their missile sites.

The Iranians had made up their minds.

At a little after 22:00 hours, Gulf time, the first wave of missiles left their launch pads. The Israelis had found, and destroyed, sixteen launching sites, those deemed most likely to harbor weapons packages that might be aimed at Israel. But the Iranian response had a far greater scope, taking in the full range of the target rich southern shores of the Persian Gulf. The oil storage bunkers and terminals at Al Fujairah, the world's third largest bunkering center, were among the many targets they had decided to strike, and the list was long.

Missiles were falling at the export terminals of Ras Tanura, Ras al-Ju'aymah and the industrial city of Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia. The American facilities in Qatar were struck that night as well, along with the ports at Abu Dhabi, and a host of other key facilities along the coast. If the Iranians could not have atomic energy, the world would not have petroleum. The equation was quite simple. And added to the catastrophe already underway in the Gulf of Mexico, it would mark the end of modern life as so many had lived it for the last hundred years.

Assad al Arif watched amazed from his makeshift sasha, a palm frond fishing canoe bobbing at the end of its mooring rope a few miles south of the main oil storage facilities at Al Fujairah. He had been out all day, fishing as his father and grandfather before him, and now was simply tending and mending his nets in the quiet evening. Then the horizon to the north exploded in fury and red orange flame. An Iranian Shahab had struck the ENOC oil terminals there, igniting an inferno of burning oil and gas as one storage tank after another was engulfed in the holocaust of fire.

From far more plush accommodations in the city itself, the ruler of Fujairah, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, and His Excellency Sheikh Hamad bin Saif Al Sharqi, his deputy, watched in horror as the oil storage bunkers burned out of control. Millions of barrels of oil would be consumed in a conflagration that sent massive clouds of broiling smoke aloft to further char the black night settling over the Straits of Hormuz.

Two of the world’s top five oil producing regions were now awash in flood and fire, and the third, and the newest and biggest in the Caspian region was now more vital than ever. The fires of rival clan contention in Kazakhstan were burning closer and closer to the massive Kashagan superfields. And massing on the northern border, the Russian Army sat like a hungry wolf waiting to spring on its prey.

“And so it begins,” said one Sheikh to another. The long feared “incident” in the Persian Gulf had finally ignited the well oiled kindling there, and the fires were burning.

“No my friend,” said the able deputy to his Highness. “And so it ends…”

Chapter 19

The news went from bad to worse on Medusa platform that morning. Mudman had been monitoring the video and radio coverage out of Busachi where pump stations and corporate offices sat amid a field of storage tanks and piles of ling, black reserve oil pipeline.

“Hey Flackie,” he called, pulling out his ear bud for a moment and lowering the volume. “We got us a hurricane now.”

“What are you talking about Mudman?” Ben Flack was in no mood for more bad news. “That’s old news. I’ve had Richmond on the phone all morning yammering about shortfall in the Gulf of Mexico. They lost some real big platforms out there.”

“No—right here,” Mudman pointed to his TV screen. “Those bastards at MECCA are calling for a major uprising. Calling it Hurricane Barbarossa or some shit. Named it after some damn Turkish Muslim Pasha. Even got old Azul Abar on board with them.” Azul Abar was a notorious militant gangster/terrorist in the Region, and head of incipient insurgent group known as the Caspian Region Volunteer Force. He began playing the news feed from his monitor: “About 0100 Hrs, today ‘Hurricane Barbarossa’ commenced with heavily armed fighters in hundreds of units filing out from different MECCA bases across the Caspian Region in solidarity to carry out destructive and deadly attacks on the oil industry in the Kazakh state.”

Apparently the militants had made good on their claims, blowing up a big Shell pipeline and reportedly razing nearby facilities. Several Shell employees were thought to have been killed in the incident. “The foolhardy workers and soldiers who did not heed our warning perished inside the station.” The statement was being made by a MECCA colonel on the scene.

Mudman reached for the volume, turning it up a notch so Flack could hear better. The spot continued with a countervailing government spokesman: “There is no war in the Caspian Region.” It was the Caspian information minister. “The oil war propaganda is just a gimmick by the militants to create fear in every law-abiding citizen, both local and foreign alike, and to provoke tension in the polity. We are not aware of their antics and capabilities. The joint task force in place is very capable of containing the indiscretion of the militants. So there is nothing like war. The Kazakh government has been trying a combination of dialogue, consultation, and development of the region and, after consultation, we created a dedicated ministry to address these issues.”

“What a load,” said Mudman. “That guy must have been trained by Baghdad Bob. No war, eh? What’s all the smoke and fire for then?”

Flack was at the Plexi screen, binoculars up and watching the menacing lighters closer to the shore. There had been bad news all morning, explosions inshore north of Busachi and south of Fort Shevchenko, pipelines destroyed, pump stations on fire, not to mention the loss of the Crowley tug Galveston and all its crew taken as hostages. He had called the local military and police to no avail, and the Merc order he had urgently placed had gone unfilled. There were just too many facilities at risk to adequately guard them all. The security forces in the region, and the fourteen hapless patrol boats of the Kazakh Navy, were already stretched thin, now locked in a death grip with MECCA rebels.

“We’re too damn close to those bastards,” Flack murmured. “Hell, they attacked the Shell platform a while back, and that was 24 miles off shore!”

“Where are those Mercs?” asked Mudman. “Better get a helo in here, boss.”

The phone rang and Flack moved to his desk, irritated, his eyes still watching the coast for signs of hostile movement in his direction. He knew his time was running out. He’d be lucky if he could get a company helo now and get his people to safety.

It was Richmond again, only this time the manager at the other end of the line promised good news. “We’ve got some help heading your way right now. Fairchild has three tankers on the way to Supsa, and we want you get anything you have into the trans Caspian pipeline to Baku.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing?” Flack bawled. “The problem is this: we’re losing pump stations on shore and the flow pressure is down—Kapish?”

“Then rig to load your local tankers and move it that way. We need that oil bunkered in Baku ASAP.”

Flack was shocked. “Yes, I have three or four tankers at Fort Shevchenko, but I can’t even begin to contemplate an operation like that without security. You guys must be out of your minds!”

“Now calm down, Flack. We’ve got the security. Fairchild’s flagship is leading in tankers to Supsa.”

“A lot of good that will do me here,” Flack protested. “Supsa is on the Black Sea coast. This is the goddamned Caspian, or have you looked at a map lately?”

“Yes I can read a map. What I’m saying is that this Fairchild ship is a destroyer, or something like one, not one of their tankers—a ship called the Argos Fire. Rumor has it the damn thing is armed to the teeth. They have helos with the range to get out your way, and they have security personnel too.”

The mention of helos brightened Flack’s mood considerably. He took down the call sign and frequency to contact the Fairchild group, writing quickly with a dulled pencil.

“Now you just worry about those tankers. These helos are the new X-3 hybrids—something like an Ospry. I’ve heard they’re packing some mini guns and shit. Nobody is going to bother you, mark my words.”

Flack hung up, his mind racing. How was he supposed to get a loading operation started in this mess? He pulled up the flow diagrams on his computer. He had three pump stations down, but there was still #17, and a good line out to the platform. Even with pressure as low as it was, he could probably get something moving and loaded if he could keep #17 up. It was inshore in the shallows, however, a dangerous place to be.

“Mudman!” he yelled to get his tech’s attention. “Get on the blower and call Pump 17. Tell them we need them to get ready to push crude my way. Anything they can move.”

“What the hell we gonna do with it?”

“Never mind, just call them and tell them what I said.”

At that moment the sound of distant gunfire jangled his already frayed nerves. Flack ran to the Plexi screen, raising his binoculars. He saw three lighters heading directly toward his platform, bristling with brawny, dangerous looking men in camo fatigues. They were joy shooting in the air to announce their imminent arrival. He felt the cramp in his bowels tighten.

“We’re gonna have company, Mudman. Looks like the MECCA oil war is about to get personal.”

The shift tech was already peering at the scene with obvious anxiety. “I think you better tell the Rig Boss to put his sidearm away,” he breathed. “These guys look like hell warmed over.”

“Ain’t gonna be no PTA meeting,” said Flack. He considered the alternatives, edging over to his desk, his eyes riveted on the advancing boats.

But something was odd about their approach. They diverted left, circling briefly. Then Flack knew why. In the distance he heard the telltale thump, thump, thump of a helo, and turned to see two copters low on the horizon behind him.

“KAZPOL?” Mudman was at his side as Flack peered through his binoculars.

“Not from that direction… Can’t be Caverton either. Nothing I’ve seen round here before,” he breathed. “Maybe it’s this Fairchild Group.” In the nick of time will do, he thought.

“Fairchild?” Mudman was in the dark. “Who’re they?”

“Never mind who they are—you just get on the phone to #17 like I said.”

“Right, Flackie.”

The lighters continued to circle, like three sharks prowling around a great mechanical behemoth. Through his high powered lenses Flack had a good look at them, tough looking thugs, their faces swathed in black face masks or dark bandanas. Many wore white turban head dresses and checkered scarves. Each one sported ammunition belts draped over their shoulders, and they were heavily armed. They seemed equally perplexed by the approaching helos, some pointing at the aircraft and shouting. The shout was an order, Flack realized, when one of the men hefted a light machinegun and opened fire. The oil war, which the Caspian government denied, was now just a few hundred yards away.

Overhead, the two Fairchild helos saw the tracer rounds streaking up, wide off the mark, but close enough to get their attention. They were flying a modified version of the revolutionary Eurocopter X-3. With two turboshaft engines powering a five-blade main rotor system and two propellers on short-span fixed wings, it was capable of over 220 knots and could range out about 900 nautical miles at lower speeds. They made a high speed run into Baku, refueled at the BP facilities there, and then raced north, flying low over the Caspian Sea to reduce their radar signature in case there were unfriendly eyes out there. They made their approach on the eastern shore, well away from Russian assets in the region. This version was specially adapted by Fairchild engineers for security purposes. The twin 30mm rocket pods were augmented by a pilot controlled mini-gun mounted in the nose of the sleek craft.

The group leader, Lieutenant Ryan, barked an order when he saw the tracer rounds sprayed in his direction, his voice heavy with the touch of silver as he spoke, a true thoroughbred Irishman. “I suppose we’d best introduce ourselves to those gentlemen. Let them have a taste of the number one pod.” He was referring to one of the two weapons pods mounted on the stubby wings of the copter. His co-pilot and weapon’s master was only too keen to reply, thumb pressing the red fire button on his joystick a second later.

The helo shuddered as a salvo of three mini rockets ignited from the pod and churned into the sea directly in front of the lighter that had fired, sending a wild spay of water into the air. The exploding rockets rocked the other boats with heavy swell.

“That got their attention,” said Ryan, leaning on the stick to swing his craft off on an alternate heading. He dropped altitude and angled his rotors so they would chop more heavily at the air, creating an awful racket. Fairchild and Company was clearing its throat as its outriders arrived on the scene. “You can return those tracer rounds now. Shot across the bow will be enough, Tommy.”

“Aye, Sir.” The nose mounted mini-gun rotated quickly to acquire the target and the sleek metal barrels growled out a sharp burst. The rounds streaked into the water, very close to the lead boat that had fired at the copters.

Confusion reigned on the three boats as they circled the platform. Then they saw a man hefting up what appeared to be a shoulder fired weapon, which prompted Ryan to stiffen the lesson. “Better serve them another drink,” he shouted. “That’s looks like an SA-7! Get serious, Tommy!”

“Right-O, sir!” There mini gun rotated and fired, only this time the rounds tore into the lighter and leveled it with withering fire. It was enough to convince the locals in the other two boats that they had chosen the wrong platform for their oil war today. The remaining lighters turned and beat a hasty retreat toward the shore and safety, their bravado quashed by the firepower of this unexpected new adversary.

Back on Medusa Platform, Flack clenched his fist and beamed. “Thank God for small favors,” he said aloud. “Looks like the cavalry has arrived.”

“Lemme see,” said Mudman, hovering at his side. Flack passed him the glass so he could have a peek at the helos. “What’s that? Looks more like an Osprey?”

“Fairchild helos,” said Flack. “They look pretty mean, eh?”

The X-3s had circled the rig, lingering for ten minutes until there was no further sign the militant lighters. Ryan used his long range camera optical system to keep a close eye on those boats, but he saw no further sign of any hostile action. Just in case there was another SA-7 close at hand he decided to gain some altitude, taking his helos up to 3000 meters, which was well under his service ceiling and yet beyond the range of the SA-7s. Then they swept inshore towards the coast in a roar of thumping rotors and turboprops.

The radiophone jangled and Flack picked up the receiver, irritated. “Now what?” he nearly shouted, still distracted by the helos. The voice on the other end of the line was unfamiliar.

“Chevron Medusa?”

“Yeah, this is Rig Manager Flack. Who’s this?”

“Fairchild and company. Captain Gordon MacRae speaking on board company flag Argos Fire. We’re arrived at Supsos Terminal and I took the liberty of sending in a few helos.”

“Right,” said Flack. “Corporate boys said we should expect you. Hope you people have some mercs aboard those things. I have eighteen people here on the platform, and we’re stuck under orders to keep moving any crude in the line. We’ve a good credit bunkered at Baku, and if this situation gets tamped down out here I’m good for the rest as long as you can provide the empty ships. You got tankers?”

“We’ll have two SuezMax ships with a million each and one smaller tanker ready to anchor for loading at Supsa and Kulevi in three hours—2,500,000 barrel carrying capacity all told.”

“Two and a half Million?” Flack glanced at his flow charts. “Christ that will take a good long day for you to load—and that under ideal conditions. I’ve got a million and a half bunkered at Baku. But I’ll need time to move that last million barrels over the line, and I’ve barely got a pulse on the main pipeline here right now. If I lose my last pump station we won’t be able to move a thing.”

“Where’s this pump station, Mr. Flack?”

“Inshore, right in the middle of all the ruckus out there. I have a three man crew there and they’re sacred shitless. Any chance you people can get one of those choppers out to boost morale?”

“We’ll do you one better, Mr. Flack. We’ve got good men on those helos we sent. In the meantime, could we set down on your landing platform and pick up someone who can take our helo out to this pump station? And we’ll need aviation fuel if you have any.”

“Roger that, Fairchild. I’ll have a man ready when you get here. But you better bring some muscle. I’ve been out here three years and I’ve never seen it this bad before. You’re likely to run into trouble inland too. As for the fuel, land at the air strip at Buzachi north of Fort Shevchenko. They’ve got what you need, unless the damn place has been overrun.”

“Roger Chevron. We copy that. We’ll be armed and ready.”

On board the bridge of the Argos Fire, MacRae scanned the coastline near the terminal, noting the pall of black smoke rising in the distance.

“That’s an oil fire,” he said calmly to his executive officer.

“Aye, sir, Morgan says there was another terrorist attack this morning. This time they went after an old fuel tank. Always hate to see it burning like that, but it looks worse than it is.”

MacRae nodded. “You can slow to one third. Take our two big ladies in for loading, Mister Dean. Our youngest daughter is going up to Kulevi with the Iron Duke. We’ll watch her big sisters down here, but no anchorage for us. I want us at a minimum of 10 knots at all times, cruising off shore like a shark, if you get my meaning.”

“Aye, sir. Let’s hope we have a quiet night.”

“We will if the Russian don’t get too curious. I’ll be in the executive suites. Let me know the instant you see any air/sea movement in our direction. We’re only 400 kilometers southeast of Novorossiysk, and that’s too damn close for my liking.”

“Didn’t have any trouble getting here, sir.”

“Getting here with three empty tankers is one thing, but now we’ve stuck our head in the bear’s mouth, eh? Getting those ships out again with their bellies full of crude is another matter. You have the bridge, Mister Dean.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Dean gave him a crisp salute as he was piped off the bridge. Five minutes later MacRae knocked softly on the door to Fairchild’s offices, the worry in his eyes too obvious to hide.

Chapter 20

“Come.”

He let himself in, removing his hat as he entered.

“Afternoon,” he said matter of factly, crossing the plush carpeting.

“Yes,” said Fairchild, “but not a good one.” She had a harried expression, her face tired and drawn.

“Complications?”

“Princess Royal is in trouble,” she said bluntly. “The fire is burning too hot to contain with retardant. The bulkheads forward of the damaged sector may be weakening. The tugs have arrived, but she’s still in distress and moving her under these circumstances is going to be very dicey.”

“Doesn’t sound good,” the Captain commiserated.

“It sounds absolutely frightening.” She returned. “I’ve got calls out to anyone I can find in Al Fujairah for an at-sea offloading operation, but it’s going to be very risky. If one of the other holding tanks becomes involved in this fire we may not be able to save the ship.”

“The aft compartments should be accessible,” MacRae suggested. “That’s three of the five—some 600,000 barrels. Vopak and Van Ommeren both have at sea loaders at Al Fujairah.”

“Yes, they’ll be underway in an hour, or so I’m told. But that’s a lot of crude, and we’ve lost the main pumps on Princess Royal. They’ll have to bring in new equipment.” She gave him a defeated look. “And she’s listing five degrees…”

“They’ll compensate for that. Shouldn’t be any trouble to correct that with ballast.”

“Some of the oil in the center hold has begun leaking into the ballast zone,” she said. “Damn double hulled tankers. They’re top-heavy and unstable.”

After the Exxon-Valdez incident all tankers calling on US ports had to be doubled hulled. The space between hulls was often used for fuel or ballast, with small areas for maintenance access. Fuel leakage into this area could be very hazardous. MacRae knew the danger that the fire would spread was now very real. Elena looked at him, clearly disturbed. “I think we may lose her, Gordon.”

She didn’t often address him by his first name, and the sound of it was welcome. He wanted to move closer, offer something more to reassure her, but found the distance between them imposed by their roles as Captain and CEO too difficult to bridge.

“We don’t know that yet,” he reasoned. Men always needed to fixed things, he thought. Every problem was met with a potential solution, some workable alternative in the mind of a man. Elena Fairchild, for all her discipline and the hard edge to her character honed by business dealings, was nonetheless a woman. She processed things quite differently. MacRae was sensitive enough to understand this, and took a different tack.

“Here,” he said. “A bit of good news. It seems our local rebels didn’t want to tangle with our helos and the Argonauts. They beat a hasty retreat for the Caspian coast. We have a fast boat out now with a twelve man security team watching over that rig. The men are going to secure the airfield at Buzachi, refuel the choppers and then see about getting out to one of their pump stations so they can move what they have in the line into Baku to top off their bunker credit. Princess Angelina should be loading here in an hour or so. Princess Marie will be right behind her, and our little girl, Princess Irene will be up at Kulevi with the Iron Duke.”

“Dangerous up there,” she said. “Too close to the Russians north of Poti like that. Mack tells me there’s a Russian military base just 10 kilometers north at Nachkadu. Too bad Supsa didn’t have enough storage for all three ships here.”

“At least we’ll be loading two ships at one time this way,” said MacRae. “And I’ve posted a squad of Argonauts with Princess Irene.”

Elena nodded half-heartedly, and he stepped over to the coffee bar. “You look like you could use a spot of tea,” he said, trying to sound as enthusiastic as possible.

She mustered a wan smile. “I’m exhausted,” she confessed.

He poured her a cup from the ivory pot she kept at the ready. Two lumps, with a twist of lemon, just as she liked it. “She’s tough old gal,” he said, coming round to Princess Royal again, his voice softening. “She’ll hold up long enough to get a good bit off into Volker’s tankers. They’ll manage.”

“There’s more…” She took the cup, here dark eyes finding his, appreciating his closeness at the moment, the masculine presence, the quiet competence of the man.

“What more?”

“Cable on my desk,” she said, too beset at the moment to explain.

He stepped away and saw the telex, reading it quietly, his brow raising a bit as he did so.

“I see,” he said. “Marines on Abu Musa. Leave it to the Americans to jump right in like that.”

“What are they up to? The Iranian’s will be up in arms and a big chunk of my company is right in the thick of it over there!”

“Intel thinks this was a missile,” said MacRae. “Maybe the Americans know something more.”

“Oh, they’ve been angling for a reason to go after Iran since they knocked off Saddam,” she said, exasperated.

“Yes, well I can’t imagine they’re still spoiling for a fight right now with what’s been going on in the Pacific. Bloody hell out there on Taiwan, from the latest news. Mack has the full report if you want it.”

“I’ve’ enough bad news for the moment,” she said. “Fact is, Marines are on Iranian soil.”

“That island is disputed territory,” he said quickly.

“Yes, but the Iranians have an airfield there, and they won’t take this lying down.”

She shrugged with disgust. “Perhaps someone should gently suggest to the Iranians that taking pot shots at oil tankers in the Gulf is hardly conducive to the promotion of peaceful commerce. Insurance rates are going to skyrocket again, not to mention oil prices, which the only thing that might save us in this situation,” Fairchild conceded a crack of hope in the otherwise bleak news. “Oil’s moving. It’s gained $16. on the exchange in the last hour, and futures are already at $175.”

“It’ll go higher,” said MacRae. “Traders are fleeing to commodities again to escape the mess in the US financial system. With Thunder Horse down in the Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Hormuz closed—pipeline into Ceyhan blown too, well, it’ll go higher, you can count on that.”

“So we’ve got to salvage that oil on Princess Royal. If we can at least get those three compartments ashore it might just be enough. Then we take everything we can get here and get the hell out of this place as quick as we can.”

MacRae pursed his lips, his jaw set with the realization that she was probably right. Things were wound up tight enough in the Gulf, he thought, and someone has lit the match. Now it was more than the oil in Princess Royal at stake. The whole region could erupt at any moment, and the price of oil would erupt with it. It was certain to do so. It was just a matter of time, and very little of that remained.

Even as he was contemplating this, the telex began chattering yet again, as if reading his very thoughts and telling him the worst had already happened. Elena Fairchild turned, half afraid to look. She leaned to read the text, her head shaking with an air of disillusionment as she did so.

“It gets worse every minute,” she said quietly, pinching the bridge of her nose between her eyes where the headache had been bothering her the last hour.

“More trouble?” MacRae stated the obvious.

“It appears so,” she said. “The Israelis are at Iran’s throat again and the Mullahs started firing ballistic missiles! The hit installations all along the Gulf coast—my god, look at this list! They hit Ras Tunura, Al Jubayl, Al Fujairah. This is insane!”

She rushed to the telescreen and had up a news feed. Initial reports looked very bad. The life blood of Western civilization was burning in the Persian Gulf.

In these same crucial minutes, the fires aboard the beleaguered Princess Royal had spread to yet another compartment, and now threatened the massive central reservoir on the ship. There had been another explosion aboard the tanker, and she was listing. Even as word came of the Israeli strike on Iran, secure phone lines sent emergency signals to the Argos Fire notifying the Fairchild CEO that her flagship tanker was now doomed to near total loss. The chaos at the port would prohibit any further rescue operation.

MacRae took the decrypt, reading it with sad, dark eyes, his lips pursed, jaw set, brows heavy. “I’m not one to cry wolf, Madame,” he began, “but I don’t know whether our big lady will make it out of there now. You may have to be prepared to lose her.”

“Along with half a billion dollars in oil.”

The oil recovery operations had to be terminated due to the raging fires, and the ship continued to list while frantic tugs attempted to push her out of the main sea lanes and rig heavy towing lines to move the stricken vessel to shallower waters near the coast. But Princess Royal would not reach the safety of the jetties and docking quays of the port at Al Fujairah, and her captain would not rest easy that evening at the International Marine Club there. Al Fujairah was also on fire.

“Then this is it, Gordon,” she said quietly. “This is all we’ve got now—those three tankers out there waiting for oil from Baku. When news of this hits home they’ll start to renege on every contract pending. Oil is going to be worth $200 a barrel in a few hours, if not sooner. Three days from now it will be up another hundred. We’ve bloody well got to get these tankers loaded, and that fast. How many men did we sent out to Kashagan?”

“The Argonauts? Nine man squad per helo, with two non-comms. Twenty man team in all.” MacRae was surprised she could so easily shrug off this news on Princess Royal. She was already moving on to the situation here, and he soon found out why.

“Then we still have some muscle here?”

“Three squads, m’lady. Thirty-three men, though I have one squad with Princess Irene up north.”

“Get the rest ashore. Secure the loading facilities. Get engineers with them as well. Nobody is going to back out on my contract. Not while I’ve got this ship and a couple squads of very dangerous men to set this right.”

“You mean to simply take the oil?”

“Take it? It’s mine already! I’ve a letter of credit on file at the exchange for everything Chevron has bunkered at Baku. Made the trade this morning before Princess Royal was hit. Yes, we’ll lose the ship, but her oil belongs to Chevron now.”

“But Chevron hasn’t even taken possession of that oil yet.”

“A minor detail.”

“They’ll say the contract was contingent upon safe delivery and claim non-performance.”

“They can argue with me in court over it six months from now,” She smiled, a fiery light in her eyes. “In the meantime, I’m damn well going to take possession of this oil here—every drop I can get my hands on. And if anyone thinks they can back out of the deal now they’ll have to get past my Argonauts first. Understand?”

MacRae took a long breath. “I do indeed,” he said.

She sat at her desk, eyes staring blankly at the screen, a simmering anger inside her that was slowly giving way to a feeling of thrumming anxiety. She could still lose it all, she thought, not just Princess Royal but all her remaining tankers as well. She could lose the whole damn company in the next forty-eight hours, but what did that matter in the grand scheme of things? She knew, deep down, that it was something more than the fear of imminent ruin and bankruptcy that was plaguing her. It was that damn phone call—the red phone—the signal she had received in those three agonizing words: Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo….

It was back, she mused darkly. Kirov was back in the here and now, and God only knows what had happened to the world while it was gone—happened so subtly that few, if any, could perceive it. The words of Shakespeare whispered again in her inner ear: “Hell is empty, and all devils are here.”

What were those devils up to, she wondered? What did they do to change the course of events in that distant era, the time of her grandfather’s day, when the world was locked in a titanic struggle from one end of the globe to another? The same unanswered question that had plagued the Watch for the last 80 years returned to haunt her. What did the Russians know? They had tried to penetrate that iron curtain for decades, but it was late in the game before the Watch had been able to establish a foothold deep inside the Russian intelligence community itself. They finally had a man inside, and all reports seemed to indicate that the Russians were still fumbling in the dark about Kirov’s sojourn to the 1940s. So it was not an official act of the Russian government to send the ship there. That was the great revelation that had finally been confirmed. It had been an accident—a strange and inexplicable accident—or was it? Other information indicated the Russians had been doing some very odd things in and around their nuclear testing sites. The Americans too.

It all has something to do with that damn ship, she thought. The answer has to be there. Yet her latest intelligence on that indicated Kirov had put to sea two days ago, leading out the Russian Red Banner Pacific Fleet. What will the Americans make of that, she wondered? Then word came in on the secure line late last night. Admiral Yates, the current director of the ultra secret organization, had come to a decision on the question that had been debated by all the Twelve Apostles for some time. Now that Kirov had been seen to vanish and reappear, and the time of the ship’s intervention to the past had been finally discovered, should the ship be destroyed?

They went round and round on that issue, with some members feeling that it would be better to use espionage to try and ascertain just how the ship was able to move in time. Others refuted that with the assertion that the “incident,” as it came to be called, was an accident, mere happenstance, and that the ship had no voluntary control over its movement into the past. They cited that a nuclear detonation seemed to be involved in at least two observed shifts, the first witnessed by the Royal Navy in 1941 when Task Force 16 was destroyed, and the second witnessed by the Submarine Ambush this very year. This explained the strange activities involving above ground nuclear tests, and it was also a far less nefarious explanation of the event, yet one that left several members unsatisfied, Elena Fairchild among them. Kirov had also appeared in the Med and in the Pacific, and no evidence of any nuclear detonations were involved in those incidents.

In the end the Council of Twelve, as it was called when the Watch convened a major meeting, was split six to six on the issue, and the deciding vote went to Admiral Yates. The order was given to seek the immediate destruction of the battlecruiser Kirov and therefore close the possibility, once and for all, that the ship would ever again return to plague the Royal Navy of the past. High ranking officials in the US government were always seated as members of the Twelve, and when Kirov was seen to sortie again in the Pacific they saw to it that orders were quickly relayed to find and sink the ship at any cost.

She sighed inwardly, realizing that if the time breach was something peculiar to the ship itself, its cause would now never be discovered. Perhaps that is for the better, she thought. The power to change the course of events in the here and now was a heady enough drink for any man to stomach, or any woman. The power to change the course of history by altering past events was too great to even fathom. Yet she wondered, even now, what the men aboard that ship ever truly learned about what had happened to them.

Then the intelligence line rang again and her reverie broke. She came back to the moment, seeing Captain MacRae still standing there, hat in hand, looking at her strangely as though he could discern the inner turmoil of her thoughts. She smiled wanly, attempting to give him a thin reassurance that she was still in the fight, then reached for the line.

“Fairchild….Yes…. I see. Very well. Yes, I think we’d better have a look, but be discrete. Report as soon as you know more.”

“More bad news?” asked MacRae.

She cocked her head to one side, considering. “Well here’s a strange bird,” she said. “That was Mack Morgan. I guess I ruffled his feathers over that lapse with Salase, and now he’s ferreting out anything he can find. Well, it may be nothing, but he seems to have gotten wind of an operation underway in the Caspian—a Russian operation. It appears that some unusual assets are deploying to the Makhachkala area, and it involves a ship called the Anatoly Alexandrov.”

She was typing something at her computer terminal. “That’s odd. I just looked it up on the register and it’s a floating nuclear reactor; not a warship—presently anchored ten kilometers off the Caspian coast and listed as inactive. It seems Intel picked up a lot of activity at the Russian naval base at Kaspiysk, and that ship seems to be the focal point. We have helos out there. Think we might be able to sneak a peek with some long range cameras?”

“That would be risky,” said MacRae. “Let’s not forget about those long range Russian missiles. But we could see about getting a UAV up for a look. I’ll bet our friends in NATO might help, if it’s deemed critical.”

“I can make it critical,” said Elena, and MacRae knew she would do exactly that.

Chapter 21

Evening came, one more in its endless round. Light, pale and diffused, washed over the gray bank of low clouds that slouched heavy and tiresome in the still air and obscured the winding interface of land and sea with its listless presence. And the sea itself moved with a languorous swell; the land lay hushed and subdued. The helmsman aboard Argos Fire gazed out on the indolent waters of the bay, leaden-eyed and waiting for relief.

The ‘wine dark sea’ was Homer’s poetic description for the deep burgundy stillness that falls upon the waters of the sea at sunset. Achilles was said to have looked upon it as he mourned the loss of his beloved Patroclus, killed by Hector before the gates of Troy. Achilles would have been gazing at the Aegean, but as Captain MacRae looked west that evening, the calm waters of the Black Sea seemed a blood red merlot, deepening to shadowy black on the horizon. The sea belies itself, he thought. If Morgan is right on this one, we’ll have trouble soon, and more than we need.

Mack had sent up an Intelligence decrypt indicating that the Russian Black Sea Escadra was about to sortie—bad news for Fairchild & Company at a time like this.

He watched as the sun fattened over the water, the sky a wash of crimson and charcoal gray. MacRae was standing with his executive officer, Commander William Dean, and they were watching the long range returns on the Sampson AESA Radar system for any sign of what Morgan had warned. It was an active electronically scanned array that could broadcast a strong signal spread out over the band so effectively that it seemed little more than background noise to other receivers. The radar was mounted atop the tall, fully enclosed mainmast that had been characteristic of the Type 45 destroyer, and Argos Fire was exactly that.

The Sampson array sat in a great white ball at the top of the main mast, rotating inside at 30 revolutions per minute. The AESA technology allowed it to generate many more sub-beams than a typical radar set, and therefore track many more targets at one time. It also changed frequency with each pulse sent out and could send a rainbow of varied frequencies out in a single beam. In effect, it had powerful detection capabilities while remaining difficult to intercept by other radar listening devices and highly resistant to jamming.

Positioned high above the sea, it also provided excellent coverage against any low level target while extending the overall horizon distance. It could therefore range out to 400 kilometers, all the way up the Black Sea coast to the big Russian naval base at Novorossiysk. MacRae didn’t like what he saw there on the signal returns.

“I’m getting multiple contacts now,” said Radar man Haley. “ Yes, sir. It looks like they’re getting ASW helos up off their frigates. I’d say Morgan was correct. The fleet is putting out to sea.”

“As will we in short order,” said MacRae, looking at his wrist watch. The loading operation had been underway for some time, and went faster than expected. Authorities at the terminal were initially prone to haggle, producing reams of administrative paperwork and sending over requests for verification of letters of credit. The Terminal was principally a British Petroleum project established at the turn of the century, but was now 100% nationalized by the Georgian State. A half hour later they were much more cooperative. MacRae had dispatched two squads of Argonauts, the elite commando that served the interests of the ship, and the Fairchild Corporation. The men fanned out to secure the four big storage tanks the fiscal metering station, with a special detail assigned to guard the central control room and export loading system.

The three Fairchild tankers were docked well offshore, and the export system was a series of diesel driven pumps that moved crude oil from the storage tanks through the export meter, and then into a 36 inch pipeline that extended over 5 kilometers to a securing buoy off shore. Here there were several 20 inch floating hoses that would connect to the waiting tankers. It was soon clear that Elena Fairchild would have her oil, one way or another, and the loading procedure had been underway for a little over three hours before the trouble began.

The Georgian Terminal Export official’s new found smile had been little more than a thin veil. He had apparently made a call to the coast guard base at Poti, and Haley soon reported he had a close signal return of a small craft approaching the loading zone.

“What have we got, Mister Haley?” MacRae was at his side again.

Haley had been checking his database and was quick to answer. “Georgian Coast Guard patrol craft, a single boat, Grif Class. Forty-eight tonner. It’s small, fast, but not much of a threat. It has an eleven man crew with two twin 12.7mm machine gun turrets, manually operated. That’s all the bite they have.”

“Well that may not impress the two of us,” said MacRae, “but I wouldn’t want them raking the hull of any of our little princesses out there with those guns.”

“Aye, sir.”

They could hear the distant whine of a siren as the patrol craft bravely rushed to the scene. MacRae wanted them on the radio and moments later he was speaking with the boat’s skipper.

“Top of the morning,” he said calmly. “Captain Gordon MacRae, Fairchild Enterprises, aboard corporate HQ Argos Fire here. How may we assist you?”

There was a brief pause before the return call came. “Good morning, Captain. I have received a call from the Georgian Export Ministry and it seems that we have instructions to close this terminal. You will have to cease loading operations at once. Over.”

MacRae raised an eyebrow. Elena Fairchild would not stand for that in any wise, so he decided to explain the situation. “See here,” he began. “We’ve proper letters of credit, all approved in the last twenty four hours. We’ve export credits that are more than adequate for the tonnage involved. Our operation is well underway and we have a tight schedule to meet.”

“That may be so, Captain, but I have my orders. You will have to cease operations and move your tankers off shore beyond the ten kilometer marker. Over.”

MacRae looked over his shoulder at his XO, Commander Dean. “He’s not much impressed by our paperwork, Mister Dean.”

“It doesn’t sound like it, sir.”

“Well, I’m not much impressed by his twin MG mounts either. I think we’ll just continue with the operation and ignore this situation for the moment. Let’s see if he’s prepared to press the matter.”

They watched as the boat approached. “Those were once KGB boats, were they not, Mister Haley?”

“I believe so, sir. They were taken over by the old Georgian Navy and then folded into the Coast Guard.”

“Anything else they might send our way?”

“No, sir. They had two missile boats, Dioskura and Tiblisi, but they’re sitting at the bottom of the bay at Poti up north. The Russians beat up what was left of the force pretty bad in that scrap they had with Georgia in 2008. They have a total of five of these boats left, and a couple P-24 fast attack boats they bought from Turkey. Both those are at Batumi, sir.”

Another radio call came in from the boat, this time more insistent. “Captain MacRae, we have no word that you are ready to comply with our instructions. I must insist you terminate your operation at once.”

MacRae wanted to be careful here. The pipeline that fed the four big storage tanks at the terminal stretched all the way through Georgian territory to Baku in Azerbaijan. It could be interdicted at any of a hundred points along that line. Furthermore, Georgia was an ally of the West, though a skittish one at the moment with the Russians breathing down their neck again. There had to be political considerations here, and MacRae wanted to know more.

“Get Mack Morgan on the line,” he said to Dean, and a moment later he had his Intelligence Chief, asking him about the situation on a secure line.

“Sorry for the surprise, Captain,” said Mack. “It seems the Russians are leaning on the Georgian Government pretty hard and threatening intervention if they don’t shut down all oil terminal exports on this line.”

“This is starting to paint a pretty black picture, Mack. The BTC line is down, the Straits of Hormuz are closed, there’s trouble at Kashagan and they’ve even hit the big platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the last major line open and we’re sucking on the damn thing for all its worth. The only other crude source open would be Nigeria.”

“No question about it, Gordie. The Russians have sent in border guard detachments to all the outposts on the frontier in Abkhazia. There’s activity at the military garrison in Sochi up north, and a motorized column is heading that way from Novorossiysk. We just got word that the 2nd Georgian Infantry Brigade has orders to deploy to Supsa and Poti to deter any further movement into Georgian territory, and they’re going to be in our hair soon enough.”

“Is this a private fight, or can anybody get in on it?” MacRae repeated the old Irish barroom challenge.

“We’re going to be right in the thick of things if the situation deteriorates,” said Morgan. “That infantry brigade could be sending a full battalion to secure these facilities according to one source on the ground here. We haven’t confirmed that yet, but it’s something to consider.”

“A wee bit more than the Argonauts can manage. How soon will they get here?”

“Three hours, maybe four. There’s a bridge they need to cross just a few klicks inland on the river. We still have an X-3 aboard and could get men out there if you know what I’m thinking.”

“I do indeed,” MacRae smiled.

“The river runs north of the terminal. We get that bridge and the one here over the estuary at the mouth of the river and we’ve got the place, lock, stock and oil barrel.”

“I’ve already got a full squad on the estuary bridge. I’ll take your advice, Mack, but this could get delicate. All they have to do is cut the flow on this line and they can choke off that oil any time. Then we’re limited to what we have in the tanks here.”

“Six holding tanks, 40,000 tons per tank,” said Mack. “That’s just under 300,000 barrels per tank—almost two million barrels on hand at the moment, enough to top off both our tankers here.”

“We’ve half of that aboard Princess Angelina already. I just need time to load Princess Marie, that’s all. Is there any way we can block that bridge up river without blowing the damn thing to hell?”

“Leave that to me, Gordie. I’ll handle it with the X-3.”

“Get you a case of beer for that one, Mack. Get to it.”

“Aye, sir.”

MacRae signed off and crossed his arms, grinning at the Georgian patrol craft now circling in the waters between Argos Fire and the loading operation servicing Princess Angelina. “What are they doing out there, waving at us, Mister Haley?”

“I think they’re getting a little impatient, sir.”

Dean cut in. “Look there…They’ve rotated that forward MG turret our way, sir.”

“Have they?” MacRae, reached for his field glasses, observing the patrol craft for a moment. The radio chattered again, and the heavily accented English from the patrol boat seemed more insistent. “Argos Fire, Argos Fire. Prepare to be boarded. Over.”

“Prepare to be boarded? Tell them we have no time to receive them at the moment. And make it clear, Mister Haley.”

“Aye, sir.” Haley sent a firmly worded response, but the patrol craft edged closer, and now sounded its siren, as though the sound alone would be sufficient to enforce its will in the situation. Argos Fire was a big ship, but the re-design had cleverly hidden all her potent weaponry. The Iron Duke was well away from the scene, thirty kilometers to the north with Princess Irene, so MacRae reasoned this Coast Guard unit thought they were simply dealing with a civilian vessel, and that the two twin MG mounts at their disposal were a significant enough of an advantage to intimidate the bigger ship, the only military caliber weapons in play.

“Captain of the Argos Fire,” came the radio call again. “If you do not comply with our orders at once we will be forced to take stronger measures.”

“Listen to that man, Mister Dean. He’s already forgotten my name, and his ‘instructions’ have now become orders. Very impolite, wouldn’t you say?”

“Indeed, sir.”

“I think we might give him a peek at what he’s dealing with here. We wouldn’t want him to make a mistake he’ll soon come to regret. Raise the forward deck gun and show him the muzzle.”

“Aye, sir. Mister Conners, if you please.”

Connors was the Weapons Systems Operator, and he quickly complied, toggling a switch on his panel. “Forward turret active and ready, sir.”

They heard the deck panels sliding open and the hydraulics lifting the turret into view. It was a modified BAE Mark 8 naval gun in an angled stealth turret using a new barrel and breech designed for the AS-90 self-propelled gun in the British Army. Fairchild had purchased one on a special order and implemented a BAE plan to up-gun the older Mark 8 turret with this newer 155mm third generation maritime fire support system. The sleek barrel rotated smoothly to bear on the advancing patrol craft, gleaming in the rosy light of the setting sun. MacRae took hold of his radio handset and decided he would explain things.

“Georgian Coast Guard,” he began, his tone formal and firm. “I regret to inform you that we are unable to terminate loading at this time and cannot allow boarding of this ship under any circumstances. Any attempt to do so will be opposed. This is a special operation sanctioned by the British government, so I advise you to stand clear of our loading zone. I have orders to secure and protect all at-sea assets here, and I will not hesitate to do so if you interfere. And you might have a look at our forward deck if you think I’m talking through my beer foam. Over.”

MacRae was looking through his field glasses again, and saw a man in naval whites emerge from the pilot house of the patrol boat arms on his hips as he stared at the Argos Fire. He made a frustrated gesture and the siren cut off. The patrol boat slowed, still cruising about a thousand yards from the Argos, but now diverted from its threatening advance.

Soon the sound of the X-3 helo cut through the stillness of the oncoming night as the helicopter lifted from the aft deck and smartly pivoted about. Mack Morgan was aboard with five Argonauts, and MacRae smiled when he saw the helo sweep out and hover just off the bow of the Georgian patrol boat, the heavy downwash of his props flattening the water around the boat and sending up a sheet of white wet spray. MacRae was back on the radio.

“Georgian Coast Guard,” he said. “To prevent any further misunderstanding, that’s a 4000 RPM mini-gun in the nose of that chopper, and that big baby out on my forward deck is a 155mm QF naval battery. Now, my radar man here tells me you’ve got a whole lot of trouble up north in the Russian Black Sea fleet. Let’s not have a squabble among friends here. I’d much rather stand with you than against you if they come south, but I have my orders. Understood?”

This time there was silence from the other end of the line, and MacRae folded his arms, smiling. “I think they got the message.”

Chapter 22

“Bear Hunt!” Rodenko exclaimed. “They’re sending fighters after our A-50Us.”

That got Karpov’s attention immediately. Bear hunt was the old warning call from the days when the Bear-D turboprop was Russia’s long range recon asset. The handle stuck, even though the old Bears were now sleeping quietly in their caves for a long hibernation with mothballs. Fighters vectoring in on the A-50-U AEW planes would be the opening notes in the symphony that was about to be played, the harsh clash of cymbals to sound the thunder that would soon follow. He was quickly at Rodenko’s side.

“What do we have down there?”

“Black Bear has a Mig-29 off Kuznetsov in escort here,” Rodenko pointed, but it’s getting hungry for fuel by now. Red Bear is all alone further east. They were tasked to keep an eye on Nimitz. No threat there at the moment.”

“Get Black Bear out of there,” said Karpov, his eyes narrowing. “It seems our Captain Tanner is not going to honor our little agreement.”

“It could be a bluff, sir,” Rodenko suggested.

“We’ll know that soon enough.” Karpov turned to Nikolin. “Signal Naval HQ Fokino. Call Sign Bear Hunt.” Karpov had spent some time huddling with Admiral Volsky before the fleet left Vladivostok, and Volsky had assured him his ships would not be alone. The Fleet Naval Air Arm was going to have bombers waiting in racetrack orbits with aerial refueling tankers, and from the moment Karpov had concluded his tentative negotiation, these planes were ordered up and ready to support the fleet if called upon. By signaling Bear Hunt, Karpov was telling the Admiral the Americans were beginning their attack. There was no other way to interpret the deliberate advance of fighters on his long range AEW assets—not under these circumstances.

Nikolin sent the signal, and minutes later a coded message returned from Fokino. “It’s just two words, sir,” said Nikolin, a bemused look on his face. “Andrei Nikolayevich.”

Karpov smiled. “Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev, Mister Nikolin. Our TU-22M3 strike bombers are coming.” He thought for a moment, his heart heavy on the one hand as he contemplated the orders he must now give and looked to the hours ahead. The code was Volsky’s authorization to proceed with his plan, yet after the grueling experience on the last several months, seeing the ship in battle, men killed, he was stricken with the gravity of the moment. We did not want the war, he knew, but it is coming to us under the wings and fuselages of those American strike planes. If we have to fight it, then I owe it to the ship, the men, and my country to do all I can to win. The thrum of excitement chased his reservations away. It always came to him when battle stations would sound, one part adrenaline, one part fear, one part an earnest love of the fight. You could not be a man of war and not feel that, he realized. It was time to fight.

Karpov clasped his hands behind his back, eyes narrowing, a posture Rodenko had seen time and time again as he prepared to give the order to engage in combat. He knew what was coming next.

The Captain turned to the log officer. “Let the record indicate that, on orders from Naval Headquarters Fokino I am now engaging the American Carrier Task Group Washington. Captain Vladimir Karpov commanding. Time stamp and record.”

“Sir,” called a mishman of the watch. “The log is entered and now recording.”

“Very well, Mister Nikolin—signal the Admiral Kuznetsov. Send one word: Pustomazovo.”

Nikolin raised his eyebrows again. “Sir, sending code Pustomazovo, aye.” He had no idea what he was sending, but the Captain of the Admiral Kuznetsov knew exactly what it meant. It was the birth place of the Russian aircraft designer Tupolev, informing him the strike package was deploying, and the signal to move his available fighter cover into a screening position for the Tu-22s. NATO called the old bombers Backfires, and Volsky had fifteen of the newly upgraded TU-22M3s, all adapted for carrying long range weapons. The Russians were now going to show the West just what had been going on in their missile labs for the last ten years.

It was called the KH-32, a longer range version of the older KH-22 “Kitchen” that the Backfire once carried. This new missile had a long arm indeed, a thousand kilometer range, and a very unusual attack profile. With a performance ceiling of an incredible 44,000 meters, the missile climbed to the edge of space to enable it to look down and well beyond the horizon of the attacking aircraft to acquire its target, and it was getting help from Russian satellites that had been watching the American carrier groups for some time. The new computer brain in the missile could also analyze and classify its targets to set strike priority. Once it determined its objective, it closed at a high supersonic speed that was very difficult to intercept.

It was Russia’s answer to the fact that Admiral Kuznetsov was their only aircraft carrier. Karpov had decided early on to use the ship and its precious naval air assets as a defensive shield, and not a long range strike weapon. He wanted all twenty-eight Mig-29Ks and the fourteen SU-33s positioned for air defense, and their first mission was to screen and protect the Backfires. As things stood, by the time the American AWACs on the line picked up the bombers, it would be too late. The improved range of the KH-32 missile would allow them to fire and then withdraw, safe behind the Russian air defense screen.

Karpov would have the final word as to whether or not the bombers would engage, but time was running out. He had Rodenko watching the situation on his closest AEW plane, Black Bear, and then the report he had feared and expected finally came.

“Two American fighters now inside 100 kilometer range, sir. Black Bear reports active radar lock…” Rodenko looked at the Captain, his features drawn and set. “Missiles in the air, sir. They have fired on the A-50.”

Karpov took a long breath, hands still clasped behind his back. And so it begins, he thought. It was not the Royal Navy of 1942 this time. The Americans of 2021 had just fired the first shot, meant to blind him to what would soon follow, a fist full of sand in his eyes before the main attack. So be it.

He no longer had the luxury of musing over the fate of the world. There did not seem to be anything he could do in the here and now to avoid what was coming next. Now the game would move to the struggle for the first salvo between the two naval flotillas set to engage. He had no doubt that the planes off those carriers would be attacking his fleet within the hour. His adversary thought he had the upper hand with the ranged firepower of his air assets. He was wrong.

“Mister Nikolin,” he said calmly. “Send the signal Red Banner One.” He would get his KH-32s in the air, and the first salvo would be his. The Backfires had overflown the Admiral Kuznetsov where it was positioned north of Iturup Island and its restless Demon volcano. They were flying high at just over 40,000 feet, avoiding the emerging ash plume from the eruption now underway. Get the missiles off now, thought Karpov—especially the air breathers. The ramjet driven high speed cruise missiles would need clear skies.

The planes had a big KH-32 under each wing and a reserve on the fuselage. When they received the signal, they fired their wing mounted ordnance, sending thirty of the deadly new supersonic cruise missiles streaking away and climbing for the stars above. They would more than double their launch altitude before they tipped their noses over at apogee and began to seek the distant American battlegroup. Thirty supersonic kamikaze missiles would soon be heading south to find the American carrier. By the time they descended for their final plunging attack run they would be coming at over Mach-5, their noses glowing red with the heat of the friction in the atmosphere… and they would not be alone.

A bastion of attack submarines were off to the south, now entering cruise missile range of the American task force. Three Akula Class attack submarines were spread out in the vanguard, forming a screen against intruding enemy subs. Their job was simply to find and attack any enemy submarine attempting to penetrate the screen and threaten the next group of SSGNs. Two older Oscar Class subs were following them, the Omsk and Viluchinsk. They carried some vintage cruise missiles, each with twenty-four of the old P-700 Granit “Shipwreck” missiles. With a range just over 600 kilometers and a heavy 750 kg warhead they posed a grave threat.

Behind them came the pride of the Russian undersea fleet, the new Yasen class boat, SSGN Kazan. Here were no less than forty P-900 “Sizzler” cruise missiles, fast sea skimmers with a high speed terminal run programmed for dizzying evasive maneuvers.

Karpov counted down the seconds, knowing his Backfires had their missiles in the air by now, and holding his breath as the time ticked off. He wanted to give his missile fire order to the sub bastion to coordinate the time on target as closely as possible for each weapon system involved. He had worked out his initial attack the previous evening, laboring late into the night to check and double check each detail of the plan. He had even coded everything into discrete message transmissions to be sent at crucial intervals as the action unfolded. The time was now.

“Nikolin! Send low frequency transmission undersea Order One as programmed.”

“Sir, aye, sending undersea transmission one.”

If all went according to plan there would soon be a salvo of twenty of the slower P-900s from Yasen, half of the boat’s missile arsenal. Undersea Order Two would send twenty-four of the faster P-700 cruise missiles from the two Oscar class boats leaping from the sea like a school of angry flying fish and skimming right over the wave tops toward the American carriers. These forty-four low altitude missiles would be added to the thirty KH-32s off the Backfires, soon to be falling like meteors from the edge of space.

Karpov looked at his watch, then glanced up at the ship’s chronometer, mentally calculating something in his battle mind. The American strike planes were almost at the AEW line and closing, about 400 kilometers out. Rodenko reported multiple contacts inbound, with data fed by Black Bear, but that plane had but seconds to live. He had to act at once.

“Rodenko! Feed AEW data to Samsonov at once to fix the position of the American strike groups. When we lose Black Bear switch to predictive plot. We know where they are headed and our systems can calculate their course and speed easily enough. Sound air defense alert and signal all fleet units! Samsonov, I want the S-400s ready, four salvos of eight. Concentrate your fire on the Alpha strike group coming in from the Hokkaido coast. Kuznetsov’s fighters will handle the Beta strike group.”

Rodenko was quick to comply and Samsonov soon had good live targeting data on the planes coming in off the coast of Japan. They would lose the contact soon enough until the ship re-acquired them with her own radars, but the computers would continue to project a predictive plot based on the last live course heading and speed they had obtained. The S-400s would be keyed to intercept based on that plot until their active radar could redefine the precise location and home in. The Captain was going to deliver yet another surprise, for the Americans would not expect SAM defense for some minutes, until they were inside the 300 kilometer range of his older S-300s. But the new S-400s had an extended range to 400 kilometers, and they could fire at once.

Captain Tanner wanted to try his patience that morning, and he would now pay the price. Rodenko turned to Samsonov and nodded. Karpov gave the order to fire and the missile warning sounded as the first of the S-400s were up and away. Like an old veteran returning to the front, wounded, bandaged and yet resolute, Kirov was at war.

Far to the South Captain Tanner got the bad news soon enough. He was sitting in the Captain’s chair on the bridge of CVN Washington, and about to have a very bad day. His AWACS coverage soon reported the Backfire strike group, but they had fired from well beyond 600 kilometers.

“Deaken!” He wanted his weapons specialist. “What’s coming at us off those damn Backfires? They’re over 800 klicks out!”

“Can’t be throwing the kitchen sink at us at that range,” said Deaken. He was referring to the KH-22 “Kitchen” missile with a maximum range of 600 kilometers. “Has to be something new—probably the KH-32.”

“Well, what about it?””

“World of pain, sir. High angle attack. Sucker climbs to the upper edge of the atmosphere, acquires, and then dives on the target.”

“Just what I didn’t need to hear.”

“Sir!” Deaken had just picked up another missile launch warning from the AWACS. “We’ve got multiple missiles inbound, 300 klicks out. Those have to be off subs!”

“Well where the hell is our screen?”

Skip Patterson was at the Captain’s side and the XO had a serious look on his face. “That bastard stole a march on us, sir.”

Tanner leaned back, shaking his head. “All’s fair in love and war, Skip. This guy Karpov thought things out real good. He knew we were reneging on that deal an hour ago and he had a sub missile group right on the AEW line ready to bushwhack us. Where are our boats, damnit?”

“They probably had them on sonar sir, but the kill orders just went out. The Russkies just beat us to the punch, but they’ll be after those subs now. Bet on it.”

“A lot of good it does us now, Mister Patterson. They got their shot off, and that’s all that matters. The Backfires were another surprise. Every drill we’ve ever run had them launching inside 600 klicks. Alright people,” Tanner raised his voice. “It’s about to get ugly. Better hope Shiloh and the boys on those DDGs are on their game today. We’ve drilled this for years, but this is the real McCoy. Signal all units—weapons free. Prosecute, prosecute, prosecute.”

“Aye sir, all units track and prosecute vampires. AWACs has the sub surface launches still in booster phase. We should get them on the SPY system at tip-over when they hit our radar horizon.” The US AEGIS defense system was about to get its first real war test, and the SPY-1D/3D radar would be the first shipborne system to pick the missiles up as they tipped over after the initial boost and then descended to their low level sea skimming altitudes for the target approach.

“How fast are these new ALCMs, Deke?” Tanner was trying to calculate his kill chain probabilities here.

“The KH-32s? Very fast, sir. They’ll be humming at Mach 5 when they hit our radar horizon and at least Mach 3.5 if they make a low level run after that. We’ll have one good shot, maybe two at that speed. Double that for the Sizzlers because they run subsonic until the final approach. And we can beat on the older Shipwrecks all day. They’re fast, but with a radar cross section that big we’ll lock and track them easily enough. We’ll only get a couple shots at them, but one should do.”

The air launched missiles were going to be the real problem, thought Tanner. Anything coming in at that speed reduced the defensive SAMs reaction time to the bare minimum. They had to acquire, track, engage and prosecute that contact, and they may only get a few good shots at a missile that fast, perhaps only one. A few seconds later they got word their AEGIS Cruiser Shiloh was already firing.

“Hell they took a pot shot at those KH-32s with the RIM-161s, sir!” That was the Standard Missile 3, designed for intercepting ballistic missiles. It had the range to even leave the atmosphere and get up after satellites if necessary, and Shiloh was sending a barrage up to see if they could thin the soup on those Backfire launched cruise missiles. To make the shot the AEGIS system was relying on data from the AWACS, as the incoming missiles had not reached the ship’s radar horizon yet. It was a proverbial ‘long shot’ but a good play. Tanner just hoped to God it would help him, but he knew that, with over seventy missiles inbound, something was bound to get through.

His battlegroup was not tightly concentrated. He had destroyers Lassen and McCampbell out on ASW Screen, Wilbur, McCain and Fitzgerald in the inner screen, and CGN Shiloh was in tight.

I should have waited for Nimitz, he thought. That damn Flash-Z traffic forced me to take immediate action against my better judgment, but no one will know or care much about that when this is over and done. If this old girl gets hit, the only thing that will make the news cycle is the smoke and fire. I’ve got 80% of my aircraft aloft, with most of those heading north to send our Harpoons Karpov’s way within the hour. Let’s hope we’ve got a deck here for them to come home. Otherwise they’ll have to land in Japan.

The “war” as it would now be called in all seriousness, was only a matter of minutes away, coming at him in seventy-four screaming anti-ship missiles.

Chapter 23

And it was coming fast.

The KH-32s were going to be a little ahead of the game. Climbing to the dizzying height of 44 kilometers, they quickly acquired the American carrier battlegroup and began their descent. The attack profile was one a ballistic missile might take, though it was deemed ‘semi-ballistic’ in naval circles. It still spelled deadly any way you worded it, and the thirty missiles were diving at Mach-5. Rising to the challenge, CG Shiloh was sending one SM-3 after another up for the chase.

The radar picked up the incoming missiles easily enough, and the enhanced infrared seeker was quick to refine the target data. Even if the missile did boast of a stealthy approach there was no way to hide the heat generated by the incredible speed of the KH-32s. The SM-3 attack was like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet, as it relied on a strike to kill by kinetic impact. When it did hit, however, it did so with the force of a ten ton Mack truck moving at 600 miles per hour. As the missiles climbed, their attitude and course were corrected by precise, short propulsion bursts, an improvement in the latest block of the Raytheon designed missile.

All the corporate sales talk about ‘a more flexible, capable, and cost-effective architecture, improved sensor technologies, and a variety of options to detect and track enemy missiles was now about to be put to the test. It would be a test unlike any other ever run for the missile, which had a good track record in one-on-one engagements under well controlled conditions, but this was the real thing. It wasn’t a test with a missile platform quietly waiting for a target, knowing its timing and approach vector from the start. This time it was thirty missiles all at once, and there was only one catch—Shiloh had only 24 of the SM-3s in inventory, and three of the destroyers had only 12 each. Normal protocol was to fire two missiles at each incoming target. They would barely have enough.

The KH-32s were also getting an assist from another Russian AWACS plane. The A-50s on the AEW line were presumed to be expendable assets if war actually broke out. When Black Bear went down in flames, the Russians were quick to activate their newest addition of the airborne surveillance fleet, the A-100. The plane was built on the capable workhorse of the IL-476 airframe, and upgraded with new advanced AESA radars. It had better loiter time, extended detection range, and resistance to jamming. Positioned behind Kuznetsov’s fighter screen, its life span was more secure, and it was now giving an able assist to the missiles in order to vector them in on their targets. Ignoring the outer destroyer screens, they were after the heart of the American task force, AEGIS Cruiser Shiloh and CVN Washington.

Eighteen SM-3s were in the air already, and Shiloh was pouring it on, her deck and superstructure awash with white and amber smoke as the angry fire of the missiles’ exhaust rocketed them skyward. Anxious crews aboard the ship were watching the radar screens and tracking the engagement. The SM-3s were performing as advertised. They got one, then three of the incoming KH-32s, and the hot race to get the others was intense. After seven kills operators on Shiloh were encouraged until they saw that three missiles were now well below the expected kill altitude from this initial barrage. Three, then five, then seven were through the SM-3 salvo, their incredible speed making a direct hit a very tough prospect. Nine of their brothers had died to penetrate this outer envelope, and a second wave of SM-3s were still engaging the remaining fourteen missiles there, but these lucky seven were now on their way in to the target. Shiloh would have but one last slim chance to get them.

The RIM-162 ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile) was that last chance. It had improved range and agility and came four missiles to a cell in a VLS ‘Quad Pack’ on the forward deck. The missiles had seen numerous test firings over the years, swiping target drones from the sky, and defeating slower subsonic anti-ship missiles like the Beech AS-34 Kormoran. The ESSM was designed specifically to deal with supersonic missiles with evasive maneuver capability. Yet design is one thing, testing another and the heat and intensity of real warfare quite another indeed. These were not Kormorans or target drones, nor were they supersonic—they were true hypersonic missiles coming in at nearly 4000 miles or 6500 kilometers per hour. They could cover their entire active range of 1000 kilometers in about ten to twelve minutes accounting for extra time needed in the initial boost phase. Now they were deadly meteors, five times faster than anything the Sparrows had been sent to track and kill before. Twelve missiles were fired from Shiloh’s broiling foredeck, but only three found targets in the precious few seconds before the incoming missiles got into the hot zone. Four KH-32s were going to get through. One would miss, spoofed by countermeasures, three would hit and the battle would shift dramatically on that score alone.

Shiloh took one missile amidships, between the two prominent box-like superstructures that house the valuable radars. The warhead packed a considerable wallop on its own, but the additional kinetic impact imparted by speed was tremendous. It sheared through the mast there destroying the ship’s electro-optical sighting system, the AN/SPS 49 system, and then penetrated the superstructure until it had nearly blown completely through the bottom hull. Black hell was at the center of the ship, which shuddered under the impact, the central mast toppling over the side and into the sea. It was a bulls eye hit, near fatal, and it was going to quickly take Shiloh out of the game for the next crucial minutes when the ship lost power while emergency crews and engineers were scrambling from undamaged sections to fight the intense fire.

Aboard CVN Washington, Tanner saw what happened, his jaw slack as the massive column of dark black smoke and fire bloomed at the center of his primary air defense escort.

“Holy God! One got through. Will you look at Shiloh!” Before he had his field glasses up there came a hard jolt and the sound of an explosion, much closer, as two windows shattered on the main bridge. Tanner whirled about to see the number one elevator forward of the island erupt in fire and smoke, an FA-18 Superhornet smashed to pieces, a segment of its wing spinning wildly along the flight deck to collide with a waiting helicopter. The damage extended into the elevator shaft and well below to the hanger decks where there was a major fire underway in seconds. Then the second missile hit, smashing into his forward deck and tearing a segment from the front of his ship near the bow. The KH-32 had penetrated three decks deep into crew living spaces, but thankfully most everyone who might have been there was at some other duty.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” said Tanner. “We should have had Antietam in tight with us. One damn AEGIS can’t handle a saturation barrage like this.”

“It isn’t over,” said XO Skip Patterson darkly. “The pickets are engaging the sea skimmers now. We’ve still got over forty vampires inbound.”

“Well have a good look at Shiloh.” Tanner gestured to the ship on his near horizon, wreathed in smoke.

“It’s up to the pickets,” said Patterson, and anything our air cover can throw at them.”

Wilbur, McCain and Fitzgerald were having a field day in the inner screen with their RIM-156 SM-2 medium range SAMs. The missiles were developed with inertial guidance so all three ships could share illumination radars to better defend against saturation missile attacks. They were Flight I construction, and did not have the enhanced Sea Sparrows that had been installed on ships beginning with Flight IIA, but McCain had been refitted with the newer RIM-174 ERAM extended range missile, sometimes called the “Standard Missile 6.”

Against the big Russian P-700s, the American missiles were more than adequate, and the three destroyers in Tanner’s inner screen were getting the job done. Excited crewmen aboard Wilbur reported one kill after another as their SAMs found and took down the lumbering missiles. But then one got through—the only one that got through out of the entire barrage of twenty-four missiles off the two Oscar class subs. One of the 25mm chain guns got a piece of it, but Wilbur got wacked with the rest. With 750 kilograms of penetrating explosive warhead at the tip of a missile over thirty feet long and weighing 15,400 pounds, the ship took a tremendous hit.

It had been a very long time since the last casualty of a sea skimming anti-ship missile against a ship of this size had been logged during the Falkland War. DD Sheffield was struck amidships, burned, and eventually sunk by an Exocet in 1982. USS Stark had also been hit by two such missiles in 1987 and managed to survive the attack. But the Exocet was a featherweight champion, weighing only 1500 pounds. The Shipwreck that struck Wilbur was a true heavyweight, weighing ten times more, with a warhead that was 4.5 times bigger and moving twice as fast. Wilbur would not survive. The hull was ripped open, flame and fire gutting the ship in an enormous explosion that sent the vessel careening onto its starboard side, immolated and shrouded in thick black smoke.

The Shipwreck had been very well named.

There was a brief interval of quiet, a precious few seconds in all, and then the alert warning was shouted again on the bridge of CVN Washington.

“Here come the Sizzlers,” said Patterson, the Russian P-900s that Kirov had battered the navies of WWII with were now in their own league, against opponents they had actually been designed to fight and kill—and they were doing that job with lethal efficiency. There were only twenty coming in the barrage off Kazan but, after a slow, subsonic approach, they descended to the wave tops and began a dizzying dance of evasive maneuvers while accelerating to Mach 2.5.

Tanner heard the battle traffic on the radio, his jaw tight as the frantic calls came in. Lassen in the outer screen had taken a KH-32, the last to get through Shiloh’s brave defense before the cruiser was hit. It was followed soon after by a P-900, and the destroyer was down for the count. McCampbell took a Sizzler aft, its helo deck afire and inoperable now. The two destroyers had been out sprinting and drifting on ASW picket, and now that defensive line was fairly well compromised. McCampbell would survive the hit and continue providing some forward defense, but Lassen was out of the fight. McCain and Fitzgerald were both unscathed, still maintaining an adequate inner screen.

Eight Sizzlers tried for the prize and bored in on Washington, but the flattop was not without defensive teeth of its own. It fired twelve RIM-24 Sparrows, and the combined defense took down five of the eight vampires in a stunning duel off the starboard side of the ship. The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe close in missiles on the carrier got two more, but the last missile made it through the gauntlet of hissing SAMs.

Tanner saw it coming, heard the chatter of his last ditch Phalanx CWIS systems, but the missile skipped away like a skilled boxer. He was transfixed by its approach just as the British, Italians and finally the Japanese had stood spellbound by the deadly, seductive dance. Then it ended with fire. The missile struck dead amidships, penetrated the hull and started a second fire below decks near the number two elevator.

When it was finally over, ten of the seventy-four missiles had punched through the SAM umbrella, one missed, but nine others struck five ships, with the carrier taking three significant hits. Yet US carriers had been born from the cauldron of war in the Pacific long ago. Washington was a massive ship, well over a 100,000 tons, and her design drew upon the hard experience gained in WWII. All the main hangers were segmented in to three fire bays, each separated by thick steel bulkheads and fire doors that would could be closed to contain the damage in any one given area. The crews were well trained and expert at damage control. They would get the upper hand in time, and the damage to the forward deck was close enough to the bow that it would not yet impede flight operations. CVN Washington would live on to continue the fight, just as so many of her ancestors had taken hits and fought on in the last great war.

Like two men fighting a measured duel, Karpov had fired first and hit his enemy square in the shoulder, but the offensive might of the American battlegroup was already airborne before his salvos struck home, and now the Russian fleet would face the wrath of three experienced naval air strike squadrons.

It was just the beginning.

Aboard Kirov Karpov listened intently as Rodenko reported on the battle, his fist tightening with each apparent hit. Nine hits in all, he thought. Twelve percent! That was an exceptionally good tally, but he was not yet certain of the real damage he had inflicted on his enemy. His opponent’s left hook, coming in over the coast of Hokkaido, was now being engaged by his S-400 SAMs, and he hoped the new missiles would do their job.

Samsonov sent up four salvos of eight missiles each, half the entire inventory on the big long range missiles. The American planes were still in formation, cruising at about 1400kph as they made their approach. Kirov fired at a range of 450 kilometers knowing the that would diminish as the missiles and planes approached one another. The S-400 accelerated to the eye popping speed of Mach 12 in the first 22 seconds after launch. At the half minute mark they acquired the incoming strike packages and began to register and home in on targets.

The US pilots saw them coming on radar, surprised that the enemy would fire this early. Flight Lt. Cap Anson leading in the Royal Maces heard chatter from the Vipers, the F-16s from the 13th Squadron Panthers out of Misawa up front on escort.

“Somebody jumped the gun! I’ve got vampires coming up at eleven-o-clock. Damn fast!”

“Roger that, Lucky Thirteen,” said Anson “Wasn’t expecting company for another five minutes. Must be nerves. Russkies haven’t been to a real dance for decades.”

Anson knew better than that. If the Russians fired they had the range to do so. This had to be an advanced missile, probably one of the newer SA-21 Growlers, the NATO reporting name for the S-400 Triumf. He keyed his Squadron comm-link. “Ready on ECM and open up the throttles, gentlemen. Here comes our fifteen minutes of fame!” It was going to take them that long to reach firing range on the enemy fleet targets, and they would be tangling with these advanced SAM defenses the whole way in.

Yet they were now committed. This was the strong left hook of Tanner’s strike plan. The Vipers of the 13th would lead, and their Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR) in the nose of the plane was giving them a good look at what they were facing—salvos of lightning fast missiles coming at amazing speeds. Lt. Col Kurt Brillings was in the lead, dubbed the “Brillo Pad” for the way he would scrub the skies clean of aggressor fighters in training—but these were not fighters.

“Take aim, gentlemen!” he called to his squadron mates. “Fox Two!” The Russian SAMs were fast—too fast—and had closed too quickly. The entire run of the missile out to its maximum range would be completed in just 100 seconds, a minute and a half, with no time for idle chat on the part of the defenders. Brillo was firing now while he still could, and using his more agile AIM-9 Sidewinders that would home on infrared. Anything moving at Mach 12 in the sky would be hot as a meteor. The rest of the squadron followed suit and seconds later they were breaking left and right for evasive maneuvers, as the P-400s came howling in to the attack.

‘Dandy Randy’ was the first to die, Captain Randal Brooks would not be returning to Misawa. An S-400 found his plane in a high speed turn, pivoted, and closed with four times the velocity of the fighter to strike it head on. The broiling explosion lit up the azure blue of the sky with orange fire. The Sidewinders got to two of the first salvo of eight SAMs, the remaining six detonated close enough to targets that their withering fragmentation warheads sent a hail of shrapnel through wings and windshields within twenty meters. Four other F-16s went down with Brooks, but the others evaded or spoofed the last three missiles. It was a high cost to pay, and the Vipers bore the brunt of that salvo. Now the SEAD support group of eight F/A-18s with radar seeking HARM missiles were next in line.

Behind them came the strike package of twelve Superhornets with four harpoons each, and a Growler on standoff trying to jam the enemy radar. Thanks to the presence of the F-16s, all the planes that would have normally flown TARCAP assignments were re-designated for strike. This baker’s dozen were the hard fist of the left hook in Tanner’s attack, but they had nine more minutes of hell ahead of them before they could get close enough to fire.

Chapter 24

Captain Tanner was in his own ‘Situation Room,’ the Flag Plot for his strike group on the wounded carrier Washington. The electronics had been upgraded with the latest flat panel displays indicating the positions of every ship in the immediate region, with a host of arcane symbols used to indicate aircraft aloft, from the strike groups he had bearing north to the support assets like AEW and air refueling tankers, their positions indicated by telltale race tracks in phosphorescent green. Radar displays, a sonar watch team, and numerous comm panels were attended by midshipmen and operations specialists of every stripe. He was patched in to the CAG, the Air Boss, his Damage Control Chief, the Tactical Action Officer and the OOD up on the main bridge. His XO Skip Patterson was at his side.

“One hell of a mess,” said Tanner. “They sucker punched us square in the face.”

Patterson nodded grimly. “We’re naked out here at the moment, sir. Shiloh has restored power and propulsion but is still fighting fires amidships. And she’s fired all her SM-3s anyway. The Russians send any more of those ALCMs at us and we’re history. Out in the screen, Lassen is going to have to be towed and McCampbell is fishing Wilbur’s crew out of the water with swift boats. They lost their aft helo deck and all the ASW assets on both ships have had to divert to Japan. We’ve no ASW coverage on the outer screen now. On the inner screen, Wilbur took two hits and I’m afraid we’re going to lose her.”

“And we took three,” Tanner folded his arms, shaking his head with disgust. “We were too damn thin with our close in SAM coverage.”

“AEGIS was always front man in the game, sir,” said Patterson.

“Well it wasn’t enough, damnit. Now I’ve got a bloody nose up front and two elevators good for little more than scrap metal.”

“That bug on the number one lift got slammed pretty good. They’re clearing the wreckage there now, but Chief Wilson says we might be able to get the number two elevator functional again. This new Russian missile packs one hell of a wallop. Fires are out but there’s a fifteen foot hole on our starboard side near that number one elevator, and the missile penetrated over forty feet deep. Thank our lucky stars the fire doors were closed.”

“Alright, let Chief Wilson sort out the hanger deck. We need to regroup. We’re spread too thin. As soon as McCampbell has completed her rescue operation I want her to take Lassen in tow and head south to rejoin big George here. She may not be able to run helo operations but we can, and McCampbell can coordinate the USW delousing operation if we position her correctly. All we need now is for some rust bucket of a sub out there to get lucky and slip inside while our guard is down. As for McCain and Fitzgerald, we’ll need them in tighter until Antietam gets here.”

“Antietam sir? Isn’t she assigned to the Admiral’s command ship?”

“At the moment, but as you can see, it was a mistake for us to leave Antietam down south with Blue Ridge. Now that Shiloh’s hurting we’ll need her here as well.”

“Very well, sir, but Admiral Stone will be the devil to pay.”

“Stone? He can sit down there issuing orders all day if he wants, but it’s my ass in the sling out here on the duty line. Stone still has Stetham and Mustin, and that’s more than he needs down south for my money. Make the request. Be polite, but firm. We need Antietam up here on the double. If the Russkies get off another one two punch like that we could be the first carrier sunk since the last war, and I don’t want my name in the history books on that score, or my ass in the god damn drink. Get it done, Skip.”

“Sir, Aye, Aye.”

Patterson knew just what to say.

Tanner folded his arms on his broad chest, eyes playing over the big wall panel displays. “Our boys should be bringing the heat up north in another five minutes,” he said glancing at the chronometer. “This Karpov is the real devil to pay, XO. He can dish it out pretty damn good, but now let’s see if he can take it.”

The S-400s had taken down six F-16s and two SEAD planes, and now the last salvo of eight was up after the Royal Maces. Their combined defensive fire was only good enough to get three of the speedy SAMs and five got through. In the wheeling dance of evasive turns and countermeasures, three of the twelve strike planes were hit. Yet it wasn’t over. Varyag was also carrying sixty-four S-300s, and that ship had followed up Kirov’s barrage with thirty two more of the deadly SAMs. Their speed and 300 kilometer range were now proving to be formidable. When a missile of that speed obtained a hard radar lock it was very difficult to shake it off, if not impossible. Two more planes in the SEAD group went down, leaving four to fire their radar seekers in a desperate attempt to suppress the target’s acquisition radar systems, but their range was limited—that was becoming the salient difference in the engagement. The US missiles were good, but they had short legs. The American planes were forced to fly through a SAM envelope 200 to 300 kilometers deep before the F/A-18s could get in range to launch their Harpoons. Now they were learning just how good the Russian missiles were, and how valuable the assets of speed and long range were in combat, and it hurt.

By the time the strike wave was in close enough to launch, there were seven of twelve strike planes left. They had endured what the Japanese had faced, pressing on in the heat of the intense engagement, watching their buddies wheel in desperate attempts to evade the lethal SAMs, hearing their last words as they shouted and cursed the enemy they were facing. But seven got through to fire, and within seconds the sky was scored by the thin fuming rocket trails of twenty-eight Harpoons.

Fired at altitude like this, the missiles quickly descended to the deck. They weren’t fast at 860kph, nor were they particularly stealthy. But they were dogged, low flying lances that would be difficult to track and kill. The S-400 and S-300 systems were not going to be agile enough to get at them down on the deck. If a missile got through it would hit with a 500 pound warhead, nowhere near the wallop of the heavier Russian missiles, but more than enough to damage or disable a modern ship.

Aboard Kirov Rodenko saw the incoming barrage and informed Karpov. The ship and crew were ready at air defense action stations and within seconds Kirov’s medium range system dubbed the SA-N-92 by NATO was firing. The crab like Kashtan CIWS and 30mm chain guns were also armed and ready.

Two Udaloy class destroyers were in the first defensive screen, Marshal Shaposhnikov and Admiral Vinogradov. Once called Russia’s answer to the US Arleigh Burke class destroyer, they were in no way worthy of that claim. These were Udaloy I class ships, optimized for ASW duty, though they did carry both the SA-N-9 Gauntlet system, the earlier version of the same weapon Kirov was firing. Together they lit off a barrage with everything they had, eight missiles each. Kirov was the heart of the medium range defense, however with 128 upgraded missiles. It had more raw firepower than all four of the Udaloy destroyers in escort, and then some, but the destroyer Captains knew they were the screen and weren’t going to just sit there waiting for the American missiles to arrive. The barrage was thick enough to thin the soup a bit and when the Harpoons began their terminal approach to the fleet, there were eighteen left.

“Switching to Kashtan system at ten kilometers,” said Samsonov as Karpov looked on. There was much more tension in the room now. Those last mass attacks by the Japanese had raised more than a few hairs on the back of the crew’s necks, but this was something altogether different. The missiles were three to four times faster than the planes they had faced, and they were locking on with active radar. The electronics were so good the Russian jammers had no appreciable effect on the Harpoons. We’ve got range, mass, speed, thought Karpov, but they’ve got top notch electronics. We’ll see which side prevails.

Out in the screen brave Shaposhnikov fired its own CADS-N-1 Kashtans, missiles streaking away and skipping down towards the sea as they acquired the Harpoons. The cruiser Varyag got into it with a salvo of OSA-M missiles as well, and the skies above the turbulent sea were soon a spaghetti of missile wakes as they danced away to find targets—and find them they did. Eleven more Harpoons were swatted down by the close in missile defense barrage, and now the mini-guns were spitting fire and steel at the oncoming survivors, their hot barrels spinning furiously as the 9000 round magazine fed them shells. They got four more harpoons, but the final three were going to cross the finish line and find targets.

Admiral Vinogradov was hit first on her aft quarter and then on the number two deck gun when one of the Harpoons executed a popup maneuver and slammed the forward deck. The one two punch wracked the ship from bow to stern, and it was soon enveloped in thick black smoke. The last Harpoon was heading for Kirov, but in the heat of the action the Varyag had put on thirty knots and moved out off the big battlecruiser’s starboard side. Now her Captain Myshelev executed a high speed turn and drove his ship right into the path of the oncoming missile, heroically sacrificing his cruiser to protect the fleet flagship.

The bridge crew were awed by the maneuver, elated at first until they saw the explosion on the cruiser’s bow. Had the ship been quicker the missile would have struck her loaded missile tubes, arrayed in four sets of two on each side of the ship. As it was, the Harpoon struck the hull above the water line and blew right through the narrow angled bow.

Karpov grimaced when he saw the hit, though he knew the missile had not struck a vital spot. There would be a fire, casualties, but the ship would survive. He was soon on the radio to assess the situation.

“Falling on your sword, Myshelev?”

“Someone had to take the hit,” Myshelev’s gritty voice came back. He was a career officer that Karpov knew and respected, heavy set, gruff, and a hard taskmaster at sea. “Don’t worry, we’ll have the damage controlled in fifteen minutes. Most of the explosive force went right through the bow! We’ve got a broken nose to go with the one I already have, but we got lucky today.”

“We’ll toast you at officer’s mess,” said Karpov. Then his voice lowered to a more serious tone. “No more heroics, my friend. I need your Vulkans. Can you execute Long Arm?”

“Ready and able, Captain. Just say when.”

Karpov smiled. He had no idea what was happening with his submarine bastion. The boats had all gone silent after their initial barrage. They had orders to sprint to a new location, but he knew that American subs were out there as well, and the hunt was on. Fleet HQ Fokino had messaged him to indicate a second squadron of bombers was on the way, compliments of Admiral Leonid Volsky, but Karpov looked at his watch, knowing it could be another forty five minutes before the bombers were in position.

“What’s happening on our other flank, Rodenko?”

“Two squadrons off the American carrier are mixing it up with Kuznetzov’s fighter screen, sir. The fighting is intense! We’ve lost eight Mig-29s, but we hurt them as well. If anything gets through, they could be in firing position in twenty minutes.”

“Then we fire first,” Karpov said firmly. “How far away is that American carrier?”

“I’m reading its position at about 512 kilometers from the satellite data link, sir.”

Karpov turned to the communications officer. “Mister Nikolin, signal fleet message ‘Long Arm One.’ Execute at zero 10:40.”

“Aye, sir. Messaging all fleet units.”

He really only had to message two ships, Varyag and Kuznetsov farther north. They were the only fleet assets with the reach to fire and hurt the enemy now at this range. The carrier was packing twelve P-700 Granit Shipwreck missiles with a range of 625 kilometers. Varyag had the last of the P-1000 Vulkans, the only ones remaining in service on a surface ship now, sixteen big missiles that could reach out 700 kilometers.

The Russians had parried the American left thrust over Hokkaido, largely through the effectiveness and range of their long range SAMs. Now Kuznetsov’s fighters were embroiled in the fight, a strong shield holding off the other two American squadrons. Karpov knew the two groups had planned to time their strike together, but the attack had come unhinged, like a fighter who had tried to follow that left with a big right hand, but it was blocked. It was time to counterpunch.

The minutes ticked away. They watched Varyag bravely turn and point her crumpled bow at the distant horizon where the enemy waited. Then the missiles began to fly, long white javelins launching from angled firing tubes on either side of the cruiser. They fired in pairs, two at a time, their wings deploying after ejection and engines roaring with anger as they sped away. Developed in the late 1980s, little was known about the Vulkan for many years. In fact, NATO was not even aware that it had secretly been deployed on Russian surface ships. Now it made its debut in combat for the very first time before slipping into the mists of obsolescence, the last of the Mohicans.

The titanium nose of the missile was slim and long, and housed an Argon system radar that allowed it to scan and select specific targets, with a bias toward big lumbering carriers. Behind this was a 1000kg warhead, big enough to do some serious damage, and one of the largest conventional warheads on any anti-ship missile in service. It came from the Soviet mindset where longer, bigger and faster was deemed better, and it was all three, nearly 10,000 pounds of murder on wings, with bad intent. As the salvo completed, one of the sixteen missiles would rise as leader, using its altitude to acquire the distant target. It would pass this data on to the other fifteen at lower altitude, and if this missile were taken out, another would automatically rise to the position of salvo leader as the attack progressed.

Behind the Vulkans came the P-700 Shipwrecks, fat supersonic flying busses that had already challenged the American Task force when fired by the Oscars. Karpov was sending a nice concentrated barrage of twenty-four missiles at the Americans to keep them dancing while he dealt with their final thrust against his fleet coming in from the east.

Then it happened. Another Vulkan got into the fray on the high peak at the northern tip of Iturup Island. SVERT, the Sakhalin Volcanic Eruption Response Team began to register intense seismic activity at 10:40 hours. The Demon had slumbered for 10,000 years in a quiet glacial valley, and no one knew when it had last erupted. Yet over the centuries a massive pool of deep magma had migrated up towards the submerged caldera that formed the gap between the islands, and the area had been restless and grumbling in the last several years. Now the Demon awoke.

Another deep rumble was heard, and Karpov turned to look off his port quarter where the distant silhouette of the island could still be seen on the horizon some thirty kilometers away…until it exploded.

An enormous plume of fire and ash rose into the sky, larger than any eruption in the long island chain since the dawn of the present Holocene epoch, nearly 12,000 years ago. It was to be the largest eruption in recorded history, with fire and ash spewing from the 1.5 kilometer wide crater at the top then blowing it wide open. It was bigger than any geologist believed possible for this region, though they had not fully measured the huge magma chamber building for generations beneath the Kurile subduction zone. Other volcanoes of this type like Vesuvius, Krakatoa, Mt. St. Helens and Pinatubo had demonstrated the vast explosive potential of a stratovolcano. The Demon would trump them all, even besting the massive eruption of Mt. Tambora in 1815.

Karpov covered his ears as the raging sound of the explosive eruption intensified. They felt the ship roll with a blast wave, as though a massive nuclear detonation had ripped the top off the island volcano with an explosion exceeding 1000 megatons of TNT. The roar would be heard throughout all of Japan and Northern China as far away as Beijing, Taipei, and even Manila, over 2500 kilometers to the south. The broiling mass of ash and pumice was seared by tall geysers of molten lava cascading up and then down again to hiss into the boiling sea. Massive volcano bombs, rocks the size of a bus, were hurled up into the atmosphere, some falling like meteors as far as twenty or thirty kilometers away. A steaming red and black column of smoke would eventually climb to a height of fifty-seven kilometers and eject nearly fifty cubic miles of pyroclastic ash and pumice.

Rodenko stared at his radar screen and could not believe what he was seeing. They felt the ship shudder, as much from the wrenching sound as anything else, and Rodenko reported a large signal return wave approaching at nearly 500kph. Karpov turned his field glasses north and saw it coming, a rise of seawater glistening in the morning sun, and all he could think of at that moment was the Mississippi, the old American battleship, the ‘Black Lady’ that he had swamped with a thousand feet of radiated ocean in the North Atlantic.

“All hands! Brace for heavy seas!” His voice seemed high and thin over the welter of sound and fury that was surging at them as the horizon itself seemed to rise up in a massive seething dome. And then the Demon showed its real face, and the whole northern tip of Iturup island, and much of the submerged caldera, exploded in a titanic upwelling of seawater and molten earth.

The shock wave was so powerful that it blew out windows in buildings as far away as Vladivostok, two days sailing time to the west. At Fokino headquarters Admiral Volsky was nearly thrown from his chair. He turned, awestruck, as he saw the angry red glow on the horizon and what looked like a massive mushroom cloud out where the fleet had deployed. His first thought was that the Americans had struck with nuclear weapons.

“My God,” he breathed. “It’s begun.”