The Seventh Angel - Страница 72

“Talk about cutting it close!” someone said aloud.

Someone else cut loose with a whistle.

But chief was still watching the screen. It was a race between symbols now. The red submarine symbol and the blue torpedo symbol, on an iconic rendezvous with destiny.

“Get him,” Chief McPherson said to the torpedo symbol. “Kill the bastard now.”

The 29-MC speaker rattled with the voice of the Sonar Supervisor. “All Stations — Sonar has multiple launch transients bearing two-niner-zero!”

The chief’s heart froze in her chest as she saw two hostile missile symbols appear on the CDRT.

“Oh God,” she said. “Oh my God…”

* * *

Ice Pack, Southeastern Sea of Okhotsk:

The water at the center of the hole roiled and frothed, and the ice began to tremble madly. A final surge of expanding gas ruptured the surface of the water, and riding in its midst came the blunt-nosed profile of a Russian-built R-29R ballistic missile.

The 35-ton machine rose above its watery launching cradle, and the instant that it cleared the surface, the rocket engines of the missile’s first stage screamed to life in an orgy of burning fuel and manmade thunder.

The missile climbed toward the heavens on a pillar of silvery fire and smoke.

The displaced water had not even fallen back to the surface of the ice when the performance was repeated. Again the water at the center of the hole churned, and a second Russian nuclear missile leapt toward the stars in the black Siberian sky.

In seconds, both missiles were climbing faster than rifle bullets, and still accelerating rapidly as they roared away into the night.

* * *

USS Towers:

The captain’s voice was a shout, and it didn’t come over the net. “Weapons Control this is the Captain. Kill those missiles! Kill them now!”

The ship shuddered once in instant reply, and a friendly missile symbol appeared on the Aegis display. “One bird away,” the Weapons Control Officer reported. “No apparent casualties.”

For the first time, Chief McPherson lost track of the submarine. That was it. The missile cells were empty. There were two nuclear missiles streaking toward their targets, and only one missile to go after them. There were no more. The cupboard was bare.

A deathly quiet descended over Combat Information Center, broken only by the hum of cooling fans and the muffled sobbing of an unseen Sailor.

The spell held for several long seconds, until it was shattered by an amplified voice from the 29-MC speakers. “All Stations — Sonar. Loud underwater explosions with secondaries, bearing two-niner-zero. I think we just killed us a submarine.”

For the half-second before the Sonar Supervisor released the microphone button, the cheering of the Sonar team came faintly through the 29-MC. They had done their job, and they were celebrating. But they didn’t know what the CIC team knew.

On the Aegis display, three missile symbols rushed toward the sky — two of them red, the other blue.

Chief McPherson felt her eyes well with tears as she watched the writ of Armageddon play itself out in a dance of colored icons.

Someone behind her spoke. It was a man’s voice, but she didn’t turn to see who it belonged to.

“And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air,” the man said. “And there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done.’”

As the last word died down into silence, two symbols merged on the screen. A half second later, the Air Supervisor shouted. “Got one! We got one of the bastards! Splash one ballistic missile!”

Someone clapped the Air Supervisor on the back, but no one cheered. On the screen, the remaining missile symbol moved with increasing rapidity as the real ballistic missile gathered speed out there somewhere in the night. Already, it was beginning to edge to the east, toward the United States.

“We’re done here,” Captain Bowie said. He turned to the TAO. “Call the bridge. Tell the XO to take us home.”

He looked away from the screen. “If there’s any home left to go to.”

CHAPTER 57

WHITE HOUSE

PRESIDENTIAL EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER

WASHINGTON, DC

THURSDAY; 07 MARCH

7:20 AM EST

“My God,” the president said. “I can’t believe this is happening again.”

On the wall-sized geographic display screen, a curving red trajectory line arced up from the Sea of Okhotsk toward the United States.

National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven sat at the briefing table. “I know, Mr. President,” he said. “But we can take a little comfort in knowing that this is the last one. USS Towers destroyed Zhukov’s submarine. That nutcase is all out of nuclear missiles.”

As he spoke, the curving red line on the screen flashed and grew longer. The unfinished end of the arc crept toward the U.S.

“One missile is enough,” the president said. “Last time, he was aiming for the ocean, and one of the warheads got past us. This time, I guarantee you he’s not aiming at the water.”

Brenthoven nodded. “I’m sure you’re right about that, sir.”

* * *

30 Space Wing, Vandenberg Air Force Base (Santa Barbara County, California):

Hydraulic pumps moaned, and the armored covers slid aside from four of the missile silos. The reinforced concrete silos were octagonal pits of shadow under the dark pre-dawn sky.

Billows of smoke boiled up out of each silo, and four Lockheed Martin booster rockets blasted into the air on snarling trails of fire.

More than 2,000 miles northwest of Vandenberg, three more interceptor missiles climbed away from the Army missile complex at Fort Greely, Alaska, and hurtled toward the fringes of space.

* * *

EKV:

Seventeen minutes later, and more than a thousand miles to the west, Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle #1 collided with the first reentry vehicle at 25,000 miles per hour. Millions of Newton-meters of kinetic energy were translated instantly to several hundred megajoules of thermal energy.

With a flash that would have dazzled the eyes of any human observer, the EKV and its target were annihilated.

* * *

U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska:

A hundred and fifty miles below, and four time zones to the east, the morning watch team in the Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications Control Center witnessed the destruction of EKV #1 and its target on the tasking screens of their consoles.

Less than ten seconds later, EKV #4 killed another warhead, followed almost immediately by another successful kill as EKV #2 performed the task for which it had been built.

The Air Force personnel held their collective breath. They needed a miracle. And maybe … just maybe … they were going to get one.

A dozen or so seconds later, EKV #5 scored a bull’s-eye, bringing the score to a perfect four out of four. Just two more successful intercepts, and the nightmare would be over. Just two …

EKV #6 slammed home, and another of the Russian reentry vehicles disappeared in a flare of thermo-kinetic destruction.

If the unfolding situation had been an Ian Fleming movie, James Bond would have clipped the red wire at the last possible instant, staving off the threat of nuclear desolation until the super-spy’s next on-screen adventure. If it had been a Tom Clancy novel, President Jack Ryan would have ridden out the attack aboard a guided missile cruiser, lending moral support to the crew and cadging cigarettes as the plucky Sailors blotted the falling warhead from the sky.

But this was not a movie, and it wasn’t an adventure novel. EKV #3 missed its target by less than ten meters. It might as well have been ten million miles.

* * *

R-29R:

The last reentry vehicle fell tail-first into the atmosphere, streaking across the darkened sky like a shooting star.

Within the fat little cone of the heat shield, a relay clicked open, routing electrical power to the ring of high-voltage capacitors that encircled the core of the warhead. The capacitors began ramping up to full charge as the Soviet-built nuclear warhead armed itself for detonation.

* * *

Latitude 21.37N / Longitude 157.95W:

As the warhead fell past the 3,000-meter mark, ninety-six electrical initiators fired simultaneously, detonating ninety-six trapezoidal charges of high explosive encapsulating a hollow sphere of plutonium 239. Driven inward by the implosion, the shell collapsed toward its own center, super-compressing an envelope of tritium gas and triggering the secondary stage of the bomb.

The local time was 2:38 AM and seven seconds. Dawn was still four hours away, and a yellow three-quarter moon was just climbing above the horizon, when the air above Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was shattered by a flash more than ten times as bright as the sun.

Every eye that happened to be looking toward that portion of the sky was instantaneously blinded. Tourists taking moonlight strolls on Waikiki beach saw an instant of unbearable brilliance and then their vision went dark as their retinas were cauterized. Cab drivers, homeless people, college students, dogs, and seagulls were struck blind without warning. There wasn’t even a sound yet, as the nuclear flash traveled at the speed of light, but the noise of the explosion was limited to the speed of sound, which was many thousands of times slower.

The aircrew of a Qantas 737 were facing directly toward the detonation as their plane was on climb-out from Honolulu International Airport. The sightless captain scrambled to set the automatic pilot by touch, while his First Officer made frantic mayday calls over the radio. Their efforts were useless. The electromagnetic pulse from the detonation fried every microchip and transistor on the plane.