Страница 72 из 74
He knew Murph wouldn’t respond to the upcoming strafe, but he couldn’t help but give the order anyway.
The F-18 had already executed a tight turn and was on her way back when the order to fire came in. The pilot altered his course slightly so the plane would pass just ahead of the ship rather than over her bridge. At a half mile out, he toggled the six-barrel 20mm ca
They couldn’t afford to play chicken any longer. “USS Ross, this is the Oregon. Please do not fire again.” Juan went for broke. “Listen to me very carefully. There is a Chinese stealth warship in these waters. It used a modified EMP weapon to take down your plane.” He wasn’t going to try to explain it was invisible.
“Our aircraft are hardened against EMP weapons,” the woman aboard the destroyer responded. “We will consider it a provocation if you continue on this course. Come about now or we will disable your ship.”
Cabrillo grew desperate. “Ross, I beg you. Do not fire. You have a real enemy out here who is trying to sink the Ste
The woman — Juan guessed she wasn’t the captain but probably the Ross’s XO — came back, wariness in her voice. “What do you know about the Ste
“I know that she’s about to be targeted by the same weapon that downed your jet.”
“I will give you one last fair warning to turn your ship about or the next time we fire it won’t be for effect.”
Resigned to his fate, Cabrillo replied, “As Pat Benatar so famously sang, ‘Hit me with your best shot.’”
“I get it now,” Hali said.
“Why is the Navy being so aggressive? Would have been nice if Overholt had called to let us know,” Max said dourly.
“Damn.” Juan fished his cell from his back pocket and speed-dialed Overholt. With a little luck, he could get the Navy to back off this confrontation. The F-18 finished its turn and poured on the speed. She was coming hard, charging like a monster, but Juan knew this was a feint since the carrier hadn’t given the order to open fire.
The phone rang a fourth time and went to voice mail. Overholt was like a teenage girl when it came to his cell. He was never without it and rarely in a place where he couldn’t access a signal. Odd that he hadn’t picked up.
“Lang, it’s Juan,” Cabrillo said after the beep. “I need you to call me ASAP. The Navy wants to turn the Oregon into Swiss cheese.”
The Super Hornet flew over the Oregon from stern to stem, flying low enough that the noise and vibration and the brutality of her jet exhaust shattered all the bridge windows in a cascade of shards that would have injured anyone who’d been up there.
“This is Viper Seven. I just blew out their bridge windows with my exhaust. That’ll turn ’em.”
“Roger that, Viper Seven, but get into position for a real strafing run if this suicidal fool doesn’t turn. Guns only.”
“Turning now. And I’m carrying air-to-air, not air-to-surface, so my missiles wouldn’t do squat against a ship this big.”
Juan studied the radar plot showing up on the main screen. The two additional fighters off the Ste
“Captain Cabrillo of the Oregon, this is Commander Michelle O’Co
Juan didn’t respond. Let them think they’d killed everyone on the bridge. It would take the crew a few minutes to organize a new watch. That would buy more time.
“Ross to Oregon, do you read me?” O’Co
Juan let her stew.
Over the military net, he listened in while O’Co
“Negative,” Viper 7 radioed. “I didn’t see anyone up there.”
“They’ve come close enough,” Giddings said. “Viper Seven, strafe them at the waterline. Ross stand by to pick up the crew when they man the lifeboats.”
“Roger that.”
The fighter came down on them like an eagle, and as soon as it was in range, the 20mm erupted. The hardened shells hit the ship just above and at the waterline near the bow so that water frothed like she had been hit by a torpedo. None penetrated. The Oregon’s armor plate deflected all of the rounds. Had she been any other ship, this would have been a crippling attack, and at the speed she was ru
The old girl plowed on as if nothing had happened.
“Viper Seven, report,” Giddings asked a few moments later while the plane circled like a wolf around a wounded deer.
“Nothing,” Viper 7 finally said in dismay. “Nothing’s happened. I hit her good but she’s not sinking.”
“Alert One,” Giddings called out. This would be the lead plane of the two additional Hornets they’d put up. “You are go for Harpoon launch.”
Because of the time it took the Oregon’s supercomputer to decode the military encryption, the plane had already nosed around, and the ship-killing missile was off its rails.
“Wepps!” Taking a few rounds of 20mm was one thing. Nearly a quarter ton of high explosives was an entirely different challenge.
“On it.”
The Harpoon missile dropped down to surface-skimming mode as quickly as it could and accelerated up to five hundred miles per hour. Its radar immediately locked onto the one juicy target it saw and flew at it with robotic efficiency.
Mark Murphy dropped the doors hiding the Oregon’s primary defensive weapon and had the six-barreled Gatling, a clone of the one carried by their attacker, spun up to optimal speed. Its own radar was housed in a dome above the gun that gave it the nickname of R2-FU because it looked like the cute droid from the Star Wars movies but had a nasty attitude.
When the inbound Harpoon was still a mile away, the Gatling opened up, throwing out a barrier of tungsten that the missile would have to fly through to reach the target. It was the old problem of hitting a bullet with another bullet, but, in this case, the Gatling had unleashed more than a thousand, all aimed directly at the missile.
The Harpoon exploded well away from the ship, and Murph silenced the gun. Pieces of missile plowed into the ocean while its fireball bloomed and distorted as it lost the force of the Harpoon’s powerful rocket motor.
In the op center, they watched the battle unfold via a camera mounted near the gun emplacement. The resolution hadn’t been good enough to actually see the incoming missile, but they all cheered when the orange-and-yellow explosion suddenly appeared.
“Juan!”
“What?”
It was Linda. She was pointing to the bottom corner of the massive screen, the mast camera that had been slaved to tracking the first F-18. “It just vanished.”
“What?”
“The plane. I was watching it and it just vanished like it faded out of existence. I just checked radar, and it’s gone.”
Cabrillo’s jaw tightened. “Helm, plot a course of thirty-seven degrees. All ahead flank. Wepps, ready the main gun.”
“This is Alert One,” the pilot of the lead inbound flight reported. “They have something like the Sea Wiz, the Gatling guns our Navy uses. They shot down my missile.” This had been reported by the pilot moments ago. “And I no longer have Viper Seven on my scope.”
“Copy that, Alert One. Fire all. Again, fire all. You and Alert Two.” This time, it was Commander O’Co