Tomahawk (58 page)

Which fell slowly astern, then sank into the sea. Evening came as the plane droned on across the open Med.

He noticed that Honners, beside him, had beads of sweat sliding down her cheeks from under the protective
headgear. She was staring fixedly at the tiny window. He leaned to yell, “You doing all right?”

“I really hate airplanes.”

“It shouldn't be too much longer.” He actually didn't know how long it would be. The carrier could be anywhere between Cap Bon and Crete. But she nodded, trying for a strained smile, and he patted her hand. She shuddered and leaned back.

An hour later, a crewman squirmed through, making sure they were still belted in, checking the lashings on the cargo. Dan caught sight of a white path on the sea. It ended at the familiar squared-off fantail of a
Spruance-
class destroyer.

“We're over the screen. We'll be setting down pretty soon now,” he yelled to Honners. She nodded, eyes still clamped shut.

His ears popped. He was sweating, too, especially when he saw the carrier swing past the window. It looked small from up here. They steadied up, and the engines eased off. His stomach floated, and he gripped the seat frame…. Suddenly the engines went to full power. It was so loud, it sounded as if the props were going to tear off the wings and head off on their own.

A sudden giant hand pressed them back into the seats as they hit the wire and dragged to a stop. Too late, he reached out to where one of the DTDs had slipped its lashings and slammed over on its side. Not good…. The plane bumped and trundled over the deck. The ramp unlatched with a thud, swung down, and the cool sea wind blew in.

Friedman met them in the lee of the carrier's island. He got the subs' DTDs tagged and headed off. The other commander left with them. As soon as that was done, Dan asked him, “Is there any way I can see the admiral?”

“Admiral Kidder? What for?”

“I owe him a report.”

As he followed the tubby flier in a steady climb, he sensed the excitement around him. Usually a carrier felt deserted at night, despite the nearly six thousand men aboard. You could stroll the red-lit passageways for miles
and meet only an occasional roving patrol or off-going watch. But tonight
America's
flight deck was a carnival of colored lights, a bewildering demo derby of bomb carts and yellow gear as nineteen-year-olds in flight-deck jerseys and Mickey Mouse ear protectors jogged about. The same bustle of preparation was evident within the skin of the ship. It didn't feel grim. If anything, it was light-hearted.

The flag bridge at last, intimate and dimmed. He stood for a moment behind the man sitting there, looking down. Ghost-gray fighters and attack aircraft rose slowly into view, then were towed off the elevators and jigsawed into ready positions. Blast deflectors tilted. A helicopter lofted in a strobe-blinking, blade-blurring roar-clatter. Beyond the flight deck was the darkness of the open sea. He was surprised to find the admiral alone. With only hours now to H, he'd expected to find him in flag plot, surrounded by staffies. But here he was, watching evening fall.

Friedman said, “Lieutenant Commander Lenson, sir. The Tomahawk officer.” Kidder turned his head. Close up, Dan caught the heavy eyebrows, the bulky body in silhouetted repose against the activity below.

“You left me hanging till the last minute, Lenson.”

Dan lowered the case gingerly to the deck. He rubbed his hand; it was cramping from the long climb. “Sir, we cranked these out as fast as humans and computers could get them done.”

Kidder eyed it. “Are you saying those are the missions? In there? Neal, we need to get him out to the battleship.”

“His helo's coming up, sir.”

“They don't really need me out there, sir. The crew's perfectly capable—”

“I want you there.”

All he could say to that was, “Aye aye, sir.”

“Okay, what's our status? Are we ready to do this?”

He marshaled his thoughts. “Yes sir, as soon as we download mission data. We have ten routes plotted and fifteen targets covered. Most of those in Benghazi are air defense suppression, as you directed.”

“Sidi Garib?”

“Covered by the submarines. Two routes, three missiles apiece, total six rounds.”

‘That enough to destroy it?”

“We won't see total destruction, Admiral. We're only talking thirty-six hundred pounds of explosive. We programmed horizontal approach and a twenty-meter air-burst. That should give us max effectiveness against medium-hardness industrial structures. But destroying the power plant, the process equipment, the control center, it'll delay completion for years.
And
send the signal we won't permit chemical weapons to be introduced into the Mideast.”

Kidder contemplated the intricate sarabande below them, the raked ranks of aircraft. He said in a musing tone, “So this is a historic moment. The first time we're going to use a long-range precision munition. Makes you wonder whether someday all that down there, whether it'll seem as dated as—what? Black-powder carronades?”

Dan was going to ask him for something in a moment, so he thought before he answered. Finally, he said, “Hard to say, sir.”

“Whatever, it'll be nice to have the additional capability—both nuclear and conventional. I suppose this means now I'm going to need a Tomahawk officer on my staff.”

“Could be, sir.”

“Want the job, Commander? When your tour with JCM is over?”

The offer blindsided him, and he came out with the response too fast. “Actually, sir, I'm trying to get out of the nuclear side of the business.”

The instant it was past his teeth, he cursed himself. Kidder's eyebrows contracted like two hostile caterpillars checking each other out. “I guess that's my answer to that question. Okay, anything else?”

“Sir—yes, there is. The LIA building. One of the non-air-defense targets in Benghazi. The three closest structures to it are apartment buildings, and they don't look all that different from the headquarters. We had to accept degradation in our terminal guidance, in order to get the missions programmed in time, and it's not at its best in the dark anyway. To avoid collateral damage, in accordance
with the rules of engagement, I strongly recommend we delete it from the attack plan.”

“Did you raise that point with General Stahl?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“What was his response?”

“He said it was … psychologically important.”

“He directed you to keep it on the hit list?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I guess I'll go with his judgment on that.”

Friedman was making cut-his-throat motions, meaning, Knock it off. Wrap it up. Let's go. Dan ignored him. He said stubbornly, “I'm not sure he fully understood what I was saying, sir. There's a very real danger, close to a probability, I'd say, of significant collateral damage—”

“He probably did,” said Kidder. “I hear what you're saying, too, and I'm not happy about it. I'm the one who put those rules of engagement on the street, by the way. But at some point, you've got to seize the nettle. We've tried to convey our message to Colonel Khaddafi in a diplomatically acceptable way. He doesn't answer the phone. So now we're going to speak another language to the man. Our message tomorrow morning is going to be, Stop supporting terrorism, or we're going to ruin your day for the rest of your life. I believe I'll leave the plan as it is.”

Dan stood without speaking, looking out at the horizon.

“Thanks for the effort, getting ready for this. I think that's your chopper they're bringing up on the port-side lift.”

New Jersey
was a hundred miles to the east, the pilot yelled back to him after they lifted off. Sakai was strapped in with him. Honners was getting turned around from
America,
headed back to Hampton Roads.

He pondered Kidder's reply during the long flight. If only he hadn't come out with that remark about nukes. Kidder had meant it as a compliment, asking him to join his staff. He should have thanked him> said he'd consider it. Instead, he'd flung the offer back in the admiral's face.

He didn't care, for himself. But he wasn't thinking of himself.

The pilot leaned back again much later, startling him. He pointed soundlessly down. Dan looked, and saw a shadow.

An immense shadow, blacker than the sea. Around its edges and from the stern swirled and poured a ghostly phosphorescence. The blue-green glow outlined the ship, defining it by the absence of light. He glanced up instinctively for the moon, then remembered: There wouldn't be any tonight.

The battleship was running without lights, and the way she was churning up the sea, she was at flank speed. He glimpsed another shadow miles away: a destroyer or cruiser. Then the helo canted, banking around, and the faintly lit helo deck came into view.

They bored onward. The luminescence unrolled beneath them like a moonlit road, swirling and roiling with that mysterious internal flame. Above it loomed the fantail, huge, bulbous, growing till it seemed broad as a city block. His eyes fastened despite themselves on the locating light above the helo's emergency hatch. If the pilot screwed up, misjudged his sink rate they'd have six seconds to get out before they were too far down to escape. Up front, the pilot and copilot were flipping through their checklists, discussing wind limits in calm voices.

The dotted white lines and deck-edge lights grew rapidly through the windscreen. Forward of it, an obsidian pyramid emerged from blackness. It was so dark, he could see the stars wavering and shimmering above the stacks. Just as it seemed inevitable they would crash into the uplifted barrels of the aft sixteen-inch turret, the pilot transitioned into a hover. Seconds later, the wheels banged down.

Perry Kyriakou, the missile officer, met them on the windswept deck abaft number three turret. It vibrated beneath their feet, juddering with the thrust and hammer of the huge screws far below. Dan handed him the case, glad to be rid both of the weight and the responsibility. Even
when they were empty, his fingers stayed crimped in a painful question mark.

The Tomahawk officer led them forward. The wind was so strong, they had to lean into it. Dan craned his neck upward, hoping to see the after ABLs, but he couldn't make them out in the darkness.

Inside, the red darken-ship lights were on. Following Kyriakou down the midships passageway, he inhaled the shipsmell of paint and oil, food and damp rubber, the crowd smell of hundreds of men crammed close together without an excess of fresh water. She tilted strangely, rolling a degree or two, stabilizing, then a little more, till she reached the limit and started back. “She does that at high speeds,” Kyriakou said when he remarked on it. “How you doing? You look beat.”

“It's been a rough couple of weeks.”

“Same here. Lebanon and all. Sweat pumps on the line. All we did was stand watches and sleep. And go to GQ for those ghost contacts.”

“Well, now you get to shoot back.”

“My guys are ready. We've simulated a launch every watch.”

“Good. There's a lot riding on this.” Then he noticed something different about Kyriakou. “Hey. Those oak leaves?”

“Thanks, yeah … I picked it up a few months ago. Not too long after the commissioning.”

Dan congratulated him, but he still couldn't get those apartment buildings out of his mind.

“Anyway,” Kyriakou went on, “CO wants to see you after you have a chance to wash your face. He's up on the bridge.”

“I assume he's on his way to the launch box.”

“Yeah, but not a straight shot. We're blowin' south right now. High-speed feint, darkened, emission silent. A Bulgarian intel trawler was bird-dogging us. Captain wants to get well over the horizon from him. All he needs to do is fire off a warning to Tripoli as soon as he sees the booster flashes.”

Dan stopped for a second. “Silent? No radar, no TACAN, no radio?”

“Yeah, those guys who flew you out here were good.”

“Great.” He'd really have been worried if he'd known the guys in the front seat were flying blind.

Kyriakou let them stow personal gear in his stateroom, back by the forward stack. He gave them a couple of minutes in the head, then led them forward through the antiquated narrow passageways—not much changed since the ship had been built in ‘43—and past more staterooms, radio rooms, and first-aid compartments and the captain's sea cabin, until they reached the bridge.

Dan found Foster eight levels above the sea, feet propped up in the glassed-in outer bridge. The wide sea was black all around them. The wind whistled through the open doors. The old battleship leaned slowly, in those strange gradations. He remembered how the other ships he'd served in had rolled. This felt different: deliberate, massive. For some reason, he felt nauseated.

“Dan. Good to see you.” They shook hands. Foster's voice was soft in the dark. “Did you bring us our missions?”

“Yes, sir. The guys are downloading ‘em now.” He turned to Kyriakou. “Oh, Perry, I brought you new track-control software on that drum, too. It's got the train-error thing debugged.”

“Bring me up to speed on all this, Dan,” Foster said, leaning forward to click on a shaded light. It illuminated the op order and the update messages, with
New Jersey's
positions and event numbers marked in yellow Hi-Liter. “I don't have to know the minutiae of targeting, but let's go over launch time, number of missiles, salvo spacing. Just to make sure we're all singing from the same score.”

The nausea grew, and he felt dizzy. He reached up, supporting himself with one hand from the massive steel shutters that came down during battle. “Aye, sir. The launch order's gonna come in by Anthracite message.”

“Anthracite is nuclear. You mean Topaz?”

“Sorry, sir, I'm a little out of it right now…. The