“Think he’s bugging out?” Max asked, his unlit pipe between his teeth.
“Out, no. Off a little, yes. He’s going to zig northeast and then zag southeast to get back into interception position.”
They were eavesdropping in on the Navy’s rescue attempt. A Seahawk helicopter was over the area where the Super Hornet had augured into the sea twenty minutes after the event, but then the Oregon received a direct call.
“Attention to the ship at”—the female voice rattled off the Oregon’s exact longitude and latitude down to the second—“you are about to enter a restricted military zone. Please be advised to alter your course.”
Before Juan could reply, Linda informed him that one of the patrolling jets had broken off its CAP and was headed their way.
“How long till he’s here?”
“About three minutes. The honchos gave him permission to light the fires. His airspeed’s close to a thousand knots.”
The inbound Hornet would need to drop out of the clouds for a visual and that meant he’d have to slow down also. That bought another couple of minutes. The Oregon was traveling at a hair over forty knots. That, in and of itself, was unusual. But that kind of speed from a broken-down rust bucket like her would raise even more hackles. He could bluff his way with the destroyer, since they were only looking at a radar return. Once the jet had eyes on them, the cat was out of the bag. Juan needed to slow, but he needed the speed in order to catch the stealth ship.
“It’s variable,” Mark Murphy said.
“What?” Juan asked him irritably. He didn’t need the distraction.
“The magnetic field. It’s variable up to fifteen miles, but, at that range, the ship is still invisible—well, mostly—but the sheering forces we experienced after rescuing Linda are negligible.”
“Is the ship armed at all?”
“Not as far as I can tell, but there’s a mountain of info here, and we’re just scratching at the foothills.”
Cabrillo didn’t think it would be armed. The magnetic field was the weapon and to work effectively it needed to get in close.
“‘Foothills of data’?” Max scoffed. “Wordsmith, you are not.”
Cabrillo was about to answer the radio hail when the woman’s voice filled the op center for a second time. “Unidentified vessel, this is the USS Ross. We are a guided missile destroyer and you are entering a restricted military area. Turn back at once or we will take steps to compel you to leave this region. Do you copy?”
Juan knew this was mostly bluff. They were still a good distance from the carrier, although the Ross might be protecting the crash site as well as the Stennis. Either way, they were still a long way from resorting to any kind of violent confrontation.
“Chairman,” Linda cried, “they just launched two more planes and they’re vectoring on our position.”
The Navy was reacting a lot more aggressively than he’d anticipated. No doubt those two planes would be armed with antiship missiles, probably Harpoons. He keyed his mic. “USS Ross, this is Captain Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo of the Oregon. Please repeat.”
Cabrillo didn’t know how to handle this. He doubted he could talk his way into letting them pass, but he didn’t think telling the truth would get him much either.
“You are about to enter a restricted military exclusion zone. You must turn at least ninety degrees from your current heading.”
“That F-18 is going to be here in about thirty seconds,” Linda informed him.
They still had miles to go before reaching where he thought the stealth ship would be hiding. It suddenly occurred to him that the ship had cloaked itself prematurely because its crew knew an American spy satellite was passing overhead. The new generation had no problem peering down from the heavens through cloud cover as dense as what they had hovering over them now. So the Chinese knew they would be spotted and had to cloak to avoid detection.
“Radar lock!” Mark Murphy called out.
“The Ross?”
“No. The first inbound fighter.”
Juan cursed. He’d been relying on the American reluctance to shoot first and ask questions later. Having the F-18 lock on weapons was no bluff, since a civilian ship wouldn’t be able to detect it. They either thought the Oregon was a Chinese warship or they didn’t care if they sank a civilian.
The mast camera zoomed in on a speck dropping out of the swollen sky that grew into the sleek fighter. She was just below the speed of sound, so her roar enveloped the ship a few seconds before the jet streaked over low enough that even down in the op center they could feel it.
“This is Viper Seven.” The Oregon’s onboard computer decrypted the transmissions so quickly, it was almost like listening to the pilot in real time. “It’s not a warship but some old rust bucket freighter.”
“Our radar shows it doing forty knots,” the flight controller countered.
“It’s not lying,” the pilot called back. “She’s showing a huge wake and has one hell of a bone in her teeth.”
“Oregon, this is the USS Ross. Come about immediately. This is your final warning.”
“Linda, how far out are those other jets?”
“Five minutes.”
“Viper Seven,” said the air controller. “You are weapons free. Put a burst over her bows. That’ll show these idiots we’re serious.”
“Wepps,” Juan called to Mark Murphy, “stand down.”
“Roger that.”
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 cannon in the Hornet’s nose and unleashed a string of slugs that came so close to the old freighter’s prow—the last two singed paint. He hit afterburners and screamed past in an angry display of military might.
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 Stennis.”
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 Stennis?”
“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.
“Lan
g, 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 Stennis were loitering about twenty miles away, but their missiles could cover that distance in seconds.
“Captain Cabrillo of the Oregon, this is Commander Michelle O’Connell of the USS Ross. Will you turn about now?”
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’Connell asked. There was a hint of concern in her voice. “Is there anyone there? This is the USS Ross calling the freighter Oregon.”
Juan let her stew.
Over the military net, he listened in while O’Connell discussed options with the battle group’s CO, Admiral Roy Giddings. In the end, the F-18 was ordered back around for a reconnoiter to see if there was anyone on the bridge. So the plane closed in, now flying at just above stall speed.
“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 running she’d be down by the head in minutes.
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’Connell aboard the Ross giving the order, and there was no countermand from the admiral aboard his flagship. “I knew this guy was a black hat.”
Cabrillo felt the blood drain from his face. There was nothing they could do. Nailing one of the Harpoons with the Gatling was what the system had been designed to do. There would be seven missiles inbound. If they were lucky, they could take out four of them. Damn lucky at that, but three would still make it through, penetrate deep into the ship, and explode with enough force to peel her hull apart like an overripe banana. They had mere minutes.
But still they drove on, water blowing through the Oregon’s drive tubes with unimaginable force, the prow cleaving the sea, shouldering aside two symmetrical curls of white water.
“Chairman, I don’t have a target,” Mark said.
“You will in just a minute.” Juan studied the display, noting the exact position Linda had seen Viper 7 disappear.
“You do realize we’re between the proverbial rock and hard place,” Max said.
“It’s going to get worse. I intend on hitting the rock.”
“We didn’t fare so well last time,” Hanley reminded him.
Cabrillo keyed on the shipwide intercom. “Crew, this is the Chairman. Prepare for impact.” He then looked over at his oldest friend. “Last time, we grazed the field. That’s its deadly power. At an angle, it will capsize a ship with no problem, but if we hit it head-on, we should slice right through it. Isn’t that right, guys?”
Mark and Eric exchanged a few words before Stone deferred to Murph to answer. “In theory, that’s a good idea, but we’re still going to feel the sheering effects. It won’t capsize us, but it could drive the bows so deep that the ship sinks, driven under as if pushed.”
“See,” Juan said with an optimistic uptick to his voice.
The sound of canvas ripping on an industrial scale reverberated throughout the Oregon as the Gatling engaged one of the incoming Harpoons. No one was paying the slightest attention. Everyone watched the forward camera. They were getting nearer and nearer the invisible field.
Juan double-checked their position, calculating angles and drift, wind, and a few other factors. “Helm, another point to starboard.”
The ship was just beginning to respond when the entire hull lurched as though the sea had been sucked out from under the bow. It was the sensation of going over a waterfall. They had reached the dome of optoelectronic camouflage hiding the Chinese warship, and as the Oregon passed through, the magneti
c forces attacked the hull with varying degrees of intensity. The stern felt nothing, while the bow was being enveloped with unimaginable force.
Then the noise hit, a transonic thrum that drove deep into the skull. Juan slammed his palms over his ears, but it did little good. The sound was already in his head, it seemed, and it echoed off the bones, trying to scramble his brain. Above this came the high-pitch scream of tortured metal. It sounded as though the keel itself was bending. The angle grew steeper still. Max clung to the back of Juan’s seat to keep from being thrown to the deck. Loose articles began to roll toward the forward bulkhead. The lights flickered and a few of the computer screens went dead, their circuitry not sufficiently hardened against the magnetic waves and other forces that came and warped light around the stealth ship to make it invisible.
The main view screen exploded without warning because the metal wall behind it flexed past the glass’s tolerance. Mark and Eric were peppered with shards, but both had been bent over so the cuts were limited to a few on the nape of their necks.
The Oregon was pitched so far forward that her drive tubes came free from the ocean, and two great columns of water were shot into the air like massive fire hoses blasting with everything they had. Another couple of degrees more and the Oregon would be driven under with no hope of ever recovering. Juan had gambled and lost. His beloved ship was no match for the forces she had been asked to overcome. She’d given it everything she could, but it was just too much.
The motion was so sudden that Max almost hit the ceiling. The ship had bulled its way through the invisible edge of the dome of optomagnetic camouflage and popped back up onto an even keel with the frenetic energy of a bath toy. The sound that had so tortured them passed as though it had never struck. The Oregon lurched when the force of her motors was once again fighting the resistance of the seas.
Unbeknownst to the crew, the six remaining Harpoon missiles struck the barrier seconds later and all six experienced catastrophic failure due to electromagnetic pulse overload. They fell harmlessly into the ocean in her wake.
“Everyone okay?” Juan called out.