The Seventh Angel (26 page)

The tracking computer bleeped again, and new lines of text appeared on the screen:

The words hit Lionel like a punch in the stomach. Zero percent? Telemetry continued past Intercept Point?
ZERO
percent
?

“
Oh shit!” one of the console operators said. “We missed one of them. One of the warheads got past us.”

“
Calm down,” Lionel said. His voice contained a calmness that he did not feel. “Maybe it wasn’t a real warhead. Maybe it was one of the decoys.”

Please, just let it be the one, he thought. Let us get the rest of them. Let us knock the rest of them out of the sky. Please.

But the next alert message announced the failure of EKV #5, followed closely by the failures of EKV #3, and EKV #1.

Of the seven inbound warhead shapes, the ground-based interceptor missiles had managed to kill only three. Four of the targets had gotten past them.

Lionel could see them in his mind’s eye: four darkly conical shapes, streaking through the blackness of space, bending their trajectories downward. Toward his country. Toward the very people who depended upon Lionel to protect them.

How many of those shapes were nuclear bombs? One of them? None? Three? There was no way of knowing, but the warheads would shortly be passing into the reentry phase of their trajectories. Within the next few minutes, the question would answer itself.

Lionel stared at the screen, and the alert messages announcing the failed intercepts. It was up to the Navy, now. He hoped they were up to the challenge.

Like many of his fellow Air Force types, Lionel didn’t think much of the swab jockeys. They had too much mouth, too much money, and not enough of the Right Stuff. But he’d give a year’s pay to see them show up the Air Force right now. If they could knock down all four of the remaining targets, he’d plant a big sloppy kiss on the first Navy type he met. Male or female, eighteen years old or eighty, seaman or admiral. Lionel didn’t care. He just wanted them to finish the job. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.

* * *

Vista Del Rio Assisted Living Community (Long Beach, California)
:

Harvey Calloway muted the audio on the little bedroom television and hobbled over toward the window. With the sound turned off, he could hear the noise from outside more clearly. Down in the street, car horns were blaring and people were shouting. Harvey heard a pop in the distance that might have been a gunshot, but he couldn’t tell. He was in his nineties and even with his hearing aid turned all the way up, his hearing was pretty bad.

The window was only seven or eight feet away, but it took him a minute or so to cover the distance. The arthritis in his hips and knees made his steps short and difficult, the soles of his slippers scuffing painfully across the carpet in the shuffling walk that his great granddaughter called ‘choo-choo feet.’ He hated having to walk like that, but at least he could still make it around on his own. A lot of guys his age couldn’t get out of bed. Hell, come to think of it, most guys his age were already dead.

He was grateful to still be walking, arthritis and all. But he missed the bouncy swagger of his youth. Harvey had been something else in those days. Nothing but balls, good looks, and a big toothy grin. And man had he cut a figure in his uniform.

Harvey had been a U.S. Navy fighter pilot during the big one. In ’42, he’d flown F4F Wildcats against the Vichy French over North Africa. And later he’d gone eyeball-to-eyeball with the Japanese at places like Tarawa, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa. He’d even bagged himself a couple of Zeroes at the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. He’d been flying the F6F by then.

The Hellcat … Now there, by Lord, had been an aircraft. Fueled and armed, she had weighed in at more than 15,000 pounds, but she’d danced on the breeze like a ballerina. And she’d given old ‘
Snake Eyes
’ Harvey Calloway and his squadron mates absolute dominance of the skies over the Pacific.

He craned his neck and looked through the window at the California sky. They’d beaten the Vichy Frogs, the Krauts, and the Nips. Everyone said they’d beaten the commies too, but Harvey had never really bought that. Everybody with a lick of sense knew the Russkis were bent on world domination. And suddenly they just throw down their guns and give up the fight, without firing a shot? Other people might believe that crap, but Harvey knew better. It had all been a trick, to get America to relax and drop her guard. The commies had been lying quiet and waiting for their moment to strike. And now it had come. Now the sneaky bastards were launching their A-bombs at America.

The guy on television was telling everybody to stay in their homes. Don’t panic. Don’t try to run. Harvey shifted his eyes to the traffic jam in the street below his window. It wouldn’t be too hard to follow the television guy’s advice. Even if he could still drive, there wasn’t a prayer of getting out of here before the bombs started to fall.

Of their own accord, Harvey’s eyes pointed themselves toward the drawer of the nightstand beside his bed. There, behind pill bottles, handkerchiefs, and paperback novels, was an old companion: a Navy-issue .45 that had followed him home at the end of the war. He wasn’t supposed to have a gun here; it was against about a dozen of the rules for Vista Del Rio tenants. Harvey had smuggled it in wrapped up in a sweater, because he couldn’t make the staff understand that he needed it for protection.

“
We have a security system here
,” the Placement Manager had told him. “
We have alarms on the doors and windows, and a roving security patrol. You don’t need to worry about burglars, Mr. Calloway. I promise you—you’ll be safe here
.”

But the .45 wasn’t for burglars. It was for a different kind of protection. Harvey had promised himself a long time ago that he’d use it the very first day that he couldn’t get to the toilet by himself. A man shouldn’t have to go through life with hoses shoved into his orifices, and plastic bags of slop hanging from the side of his bed.
That
was something worth protecting yourself from.

Harvey blinked and looked out the window again. Those commie A-bombs should be falling any minute now …

* * *

USS
Shiloh
(CG-67)
:

Two armored hatches snapped open on the cruiser’s forward missile deck, revealing the weatherproof fly-through covers that capped the upper ends of two vertical launch missile cells. At the same instant, another pair of hatches snapped open on the ship’s aft missile deck.

Some fraction of a millisecond later, all four of the fly-through covers were blasted into fragments as two pairs of SM-3 missiles rocketed out of their vertical launch cells and roared into the afternoon sky on bright columns of fire.

In the darkened confines of the ship’s Combat Information Center, the Weapons Control Officer keyed the microphone of his communications headset and spoke into the tactical communications net. “TAO—Weapons Control. Four birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted one-each on the four ballistic inbounds.” The rumble of the departing missiles was still faintly audible as he spoke.

The Tactical Action Officer’s reply came over the net a second later. “TAO, aye. Is there enough time to prep a second flight of birds in case we miss on some of the intercepts?”

The Weapons Control Officer keyed his mike again. “TAO—Weapons Control. That’s a negative. The inbounds are moving at about 14,000 miles an hour. We get one crack at this, sir. By the time we get off a second flight of birds, the inbounds will be outside of our missile engagement envelope.”

The reply was several seconds in coming. “TAO, aye. Let’s hope we don’t miss the first time.”

* * *

SM-3 Missiles
:

At about the time the Tactical Action Officer was releasing his mike button, the four missiles were shedding their first stage boosters, and igniting the Dual Thrust Rocket Motors of their second stage engines.

The missiles gained speed and altitude quickly, ejecting their second stage boosters as they were climbing out of the upper stratosphere and into the lower reaches of near-earth space. Three of the SM-3 missiles performed this transition perfectly. The fourth missile did not.

A pre-stressed retaining pin in the mating collar between stages failed to shear under the calculated strain of stage separation. The mating collar did not separate, and the second stage booster did not drop away as it had been designed to do.

The missile’s computer was programmed to detect many types of technical casualties, but this simple mechanical failure had not been anticipated by the weapon’s designers. Unable to sense that the second stage booster was still attached, the missile’s computer transmitted the ignition command to the third stage rocket motor on schedule. The jet of hot expanding exhaust gasses, which should have poured harmlessly into the near vacuum of space, were channeled into the small chamber between the second and third stage motors. Unable to contain the expanding pressure wave, the airframe exploded, spewing streaks of shrapnel and fire into the void of the upper stratosphere.

* * *

USS
Shiloh
(CG-67)
:

The Weapons Control Officer read the flashing warning message on his screen, and keyed his microphone. “TAO—Weapons Control. I’m showing a pre-intercept failure on Bird #4.”

“
Weapons Control—TAO. I copy your pre-intercept failure on Bird #4. What happened?”

The Weapons Control Officer scanned his readouts for a clue to the cause of the failure. After a few seconds, he keyed his mike again. “TAO—Weapons Control. I have no idea what went wrong, sir. Bird #4 just dropped off the scope.”

“
TAO, aye. How long until we find out how our other birds are doing?”

“
TAO—Weapons Control. It should be any time now.”

“
Weapons Control—TAO. Is there no chance at all that we can get another bird up there to replace #4?

The Weapons Control Officer looked at the converging vectors on his display screen. “TAO—Weapons Control. No chance, sir.”

He released the mike button. “No chance at all.”

* * *

SM-3 Missile #2
:

Thirty seconds before impact, the Kinetic Warhead separated from the third stage booster. Unlike the EKVs of the ground-based interceptors, the Mark-142 Kinetic Warhead was equipped with onboard sensors. It detected the target immediately, and used a brief series of pulses from its maneuvering thrusters to improve its angle of approach to the intercept point.

As with the EKVs, the KW’s arrival at the intercept point had to be timed to coincide with the arrival of its target. A millisecond too soon, and the KW would pass through the intercept coordinates ahead of its quarry. A millisecond too late, and the target would blow through the intercept coordinates before the KW arrived. In either case, the Russian warhead would slip past the KW and the intercept attempt would fail. The timing had to be nearly perfect.

It was.

The Soviet-built R-29R reentry vehicle arrived at the calculated intercept point at the exact same instant as the Kinetic Warhead. Several million Newton-meters of additive linear force were spontaneously translated to thermal energy. With a blindingly bright flash that no human eye would ever see, SM-3 missile #2 obliterated its target.

* * *

USS
Shiloh
(CG-67)
:

The Weapons Control Officer watched his screen. “TAO—Weapons Control. Splash one!”

Before the Tactical Action Officer could acknowledge the report, the Weapons Control Officer keyed his mike again. “TAO—Weapons Control. Splash two! And splash three! I say again, three hits—three kills.”

A cheer went up in Combat Information Center, and somebody shouted, “Nice shooting, Ensign. Kick ass and take names!”

The Weapons Control Officer nodded absently. He wanted to shout and cheer with the rest of them, but they couldn’t see what he could see. On the tactical display in front of him, the speed vector for the last Russian warhead continued to track across the screen. In a few brief seconds, it disappeared as the hurtling weapon passed out of the
Shiloh’s
engagement envelope.

It was gone, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

* * *

R-29R
:

The Russian missile’s last remaining reentry vehicle dropped into the ever-thickening atmosphere of the planet below. Its cone shape and internal weight distribution made the device tail-heavy, giving it a nose-up attitude that oriented the widely rounded base into the axis of fall. The reentry vehicle effectively “backed” into the atmosphere, capitalizing on the principles of blunt body gas flow to carry away much of the fiery heat of reentry. The remaining heat load, though still nearly twice the melting temperature of steel, was absorbed and ablated by the vehicle’s pyrolytic graphite heat shield, which charred, sublimed, and then burned away in fractional layers.