The Seventh Angel - Страница 56

Ann had reason to be nervous. There were plenty of things that could go wrong. Mouse was designed to navigate safely beneath ice cover, but he’d never been under the ice for this long before. Until now, it had only been for a couple of hours at a time, for testing purposes. The conditions had been controlled then, with divers waiting to go after the robot if anything went wrong. There were no controls here. There were no divers, and there was no backup plan.

Also, several of the program modules Mouse was using now had never been put through their paces before. Ann was confident that the software code was pretty stable, but bugs were still cropping up now and then. There was no telling what the robot might do if his software crashed while he was deep under the ice. He could ram himself into an ice keel, or take a wild excursion out of the operating area, to wind up in parts unknown when the power in his battery cells ran down.

The robot might already be lying in pieces on the bottom of the sea, destroyed by an unrecognized technical defect, or some flaw in his program code. The mission could have failed ten minutes after it had started, and Ann wouldn’t find out until the robot failed to report at the end of its search patterns.

Someone leaned over Ann’s left shoulder. “Has the prodigal robot returned?” It was the red headed Sonar Chief. Her name was Mc-something-or-other.

Ann shook her head. “Not yet. He’s not due to report in for another few minutes.”

The other woman tilted her head. “The way your eyes are welded to that computer screen, I figured that he must be overdue.”

Ann felt the corners of her mouth come up just a little — that strange half-smile thing she always found herself doing when strangers tried to engage her in polite conversation. “No,” she said. “Mouse isn’t late. I’m just a little … nervous.”

“I can understand that,” the chief said. “But don’t let it worry you if your robot comes home empty-handed the first few times. Anti-Submarine Warfare is slow. The search part is, anyway. After you find the target, things can heat up pretty damned fast. But until then, it’s mostly a waiting game.”

Ann nodded. “Thanks.”

“My sonar gang is back in TACTASS, pulling in the towed array,” the Navy woman said. “We didn’t get anything either.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really think we would. Even the old Delta boats can be pretty quiet when they’re running slow and dark. But it was worth a shot. We could still get lucky. Maybe we’ll catch a sniff tomorrow night. Or maybe your Mouse unit will.”

“I hope so,” Ann said.

The Navy woman extended her hand. “Theresa McPherson. Around the CPO Mess, they call me Teri, or Mac. Everybody else just calls me Chief.”

Ann shook the woman’s hand. “Ann Roark,” she said. “Or just Ann. I don’t have any idea what they call me around the CPO Mess. And I probably don’t want to know.”

Chief McPherson laughed and started to say something, but she was interrupted by a short burst of static from an overhead speaker box, followed instantly by a man’s voice.

“TAO — EW, I’m tracking four I-band emitters, bearing zero-three-seven. Zaslon S-800 series phased array radars. Looks like MiG-31s. Probably two flights of two.”

A half-second later, a woman’s voice came out of the speaker in response. “EW — TAO, four I-band emitters bearing zero-three-seven, aye. Which way are the Bogies tracking?”

“EW — TAO, Bogies have very slight left bearing drift with rapidly-increasing signal strength. The CPA is going to be right over the top of us, ma’am.”

From the forward end of Combat Information Center, Ann heard a woman say, “Damn it!”

The words didn’t come through the speaker. The woman hadn’t spoken them over the communications net.

Ann turned to the chief. “What was all that about?”

“The Electronic Warfare techs are reporting to the Tactical Action Officer that Russian aircraft are coming our way. From the radar transmissions, the planes appear to be MiG-31 fighter jets. If they don’t change course in the next couple of minutes, they’re going to fly right over us.”

“Will they see us?”

Chief McPherson shrugged. “Don’t know. Our stealth technology is good. We’re not easy to detect on radar, and the phototropic camouflage makes it hard to spot us visually. But the moon is up, and it’s three-quarters full. If one of those pilots looks the wrong way, he might catch our silhouette in the moonlight.”

“That’s the best stealth technology you could get for my tax dollars?”

Chief McPherson smiled. “You didn’t pay enough taxes to buy a Star Trek cloaking device, Ann. We’re sneaky as hell, but we’re not invisible. If somebody looks right at us, he’s going to see us.”

The female voice came over the speaker again. “EW — TAO, give me a recommended course for minimized radar cross-section, and stand by to launch chaff. Break. Weapons Control — TAO, have Aegis and CIWS ready to come on line at a second’s notice if those Bogies start shooting. Break. RCO — TAO, get SPY ready to transmit on zero-notice. If the situation goes hot, we’ll need to get radar information to fire control immediately.”

As the individual stations began acknowledging their orders, a male voice came over a different set of speakers. “Commanding Officer, your presence is requested in Combat Information Center.”

Ann could feel the tension level in the darkened room go up dramatically. Men and women at electronic consoles around the compartment began pushing buttons and speaking into headsets in low voices.

She heard the clang of an opening door, and a voice called out, “the captain’s in CIC.”

Captain Bowie strode into the room, making a bee-line for a woman seated in a chair at the focus of three large tactical display screens. The captain and the woman went into a hushed conference immediately.

Ann nodded toward the woman. “Who’s she?”

“That’s Lieutenant Augustine. She’s the Tactical Action Officer. She’s in charge of fighting the ship.”

“Is that her regular job?”

“She’s the Operations Department Head,” Chief McPherson said. “TAO is a watch station. It rotates with the watch turnover. OPS has got the bubble now, because she’s the best TAO we’ve got, and the captain figured things might get hairy.”

Ann regarded the female officer without speaking.

Chief McPherson cocked an eyebrow. “What? You didn’t think the gals just came along to clean the ashtrays, did you?”

A voice broke over the speaker. “TAO — EW, I’ve got multiple X-band seekers, centered on bearing zero-three-five. We’ve got Vipers, ma’am. I count three … make that four. I say again, EW has four inbound missiles, bearing zero-three-five!”

The woman’s voice came back instantly. “TAO, aye! Launch chaff, now! Break. All Stations — TAO, we have inbound Vipers! I say again, we have missiles inbound! RCO, go active on SPY. Break. Weapons Control — TAO, shift to Aegis ready-auto. Set CIWS to auto-engage.”

Ann’s stomach contracted into a knot. “They’re shooting at us?”

“Yeah,” Chief McPherson said. “We’ve got missiles coming towards us, and our radar’s not up yet.”

She gave Ann’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “I’ve got to get to my station. Put on your seatbelt and keep your head down. And hang on to that laptop if you don’t want to lose it. The ride is about to get bumpy.”

She wheeled around, and trotted away before Ann could respond.

Ann heard a quick succession of muffled thumps. “TAO — EW, launching chaff. Six away.”

The reports kept coming through the overhead speaker. “TAO — RCO. SPY is active. Transmitting data to fire control.”

“TAO — Weapons Control. Aegis is at ready-auto. CIWS is set to auto-engage.”

Ann fumbled at the sides of the chair until she located the seat belt. She belted herself in, and then grabbed her laptop computer, hugging the black plastic rectangle to her chest like a sheet of armor plate.

Mouse would be coming to the end of his run, now. The robot might already be out from under the ice pack, bobbing on the surface, waiting for retrieval. Ann knew without asking that no one would care.

“TAO — EW, inbound Vipers are showing staggered monopulse radar signatures. I think we’re looking at AS-23 Kronos missiles, ma’am. Recommend we avoid jamming. Some of the Kronos variants have home-on-jam capability.”

The Tactical Action Officer’s voice came back a second later. “EW — TAO, my memory might be failing me, but I don’t think the MiG-31 can carry the AS-23 missile.”

“TAO — EW. I don’t know what they can carry, ma’am. I’m just telling you what’s on my slick.”

Ann listened to the chatter and wondered what in the hell they were talking about.

Without warning, the ship gave a violent series of tremors, accompanied by a sequence of tumultuous rumbles that seemed to shake the teeth in Ann’s head. She cried out, but her voice was nearly swallowed up in the cacophony of sound.

In the ear-ringing silence that followed, another report came over the speaker. “TAO — Weapons Control. Twelve birds away, no apparent casualties. Targeted two each on the inbound Vipers, and one each on the Bogies.”

The giant display screens at the far end of the room flickered with cryptic symbols. Their meaning was as foreign to Ann as the unintelligible reports tumbling out of the speakers, but she knew enough to realize that her future was being spelled out in that intricate dance of shapes and lines.