Tom Clancy - Executive Orders

But not out of range for John Paul Jones, ten miles to the north of the main body. In the space of three seconds, her main radar went active, and then the first of eight missiles erupted from her launch cells, rocketing skyward on columns of smoke and flame, then changing direction in skidding turns to level out and burn north.

The fighters hadn't seen Jones. Her stealthy profile had not shown as a real target on their scopes, and neither had they noticed the fact that a fourth SPY radar was now tracking them. The series of white smoke trails came as an unpleasant surprise when the pilots looked up from their own radar scopes. But two of them triggered off their C-802s just in time.

Four seconds out from their targets, the SM-2 missiles received terminal guidance signals from the SPG-62 illumination radars. It was too sudden, too unexpected for them to jink clear. All four fighters were blotted out on massive clouds of yellow and black, but they'd managed to launch six antiship missiles.

"Vampire, vampire! I show inbound missile seekers, bearing three-five-zero."

"Okay, here we go." Kemper turned the key another notch, to the «special-auto» setting. Aegis would now go fully automatic. Topside, the CIWS gatling guns turned to starboard. Everywhere aboard the four warships, sailors listened and tried not to cringe. The merchant crews they guarded simply didn't know to be scared yet.

Aloft, the F-16s closed on the still-intact flight of four. These were also antiship-missile carriers, but they'd looked in the wrong place, probably for the decoy group. The first group had seen a close gaggle of ships. The second hadn't yet, and never would. They'd just turned into the signals of the Aegis radars to their west when the sky filled with down-bound smoke trails. The four scattered. Two exploded in midair. Another was damaged and tried to limp back northwest before he lost power and went in, while a fourth, missed entirely, reefed into a left turn, punched burner, and jettisoned his exterior weapons load.

The four Air Force F-16s had splashed six enemy fighters in under four minutes.

Jones got one of the sea-skimmers on the way by, but none of them had locked into her radar return, and the resulting high-speed crossing targets were too difficult to engage. Three of four computer-launched attempts all failed. That left five. The destroyer's combat systems recycled and looked for additional targets.

They'd seen Jones'? smoke and wondered what it was, but the first real warning that something was badly wrong came when the near trio of cruisers started launching.

In Anzio's CIC, Kemper decided, as O'Bannon had, not to launch his decoy rockets. Three of the inbounds seemed aimed at the after part of the formation, with only two at the lead. His cruiser and Normandy concentrated on those. You could feel the launches. The hull shivered when the first two went out. The radar display was changing every second now, showing inbound and outbound tracks. The «vampires» were eight miles away now. At ten miles per minute, that meant less than fifty seconds to engage and destroy. It would seem like a week.

The system was programmed to adopt a fire-control mode appropriate to the moment. It was now doing shoot-shoot-look. Fire one missile, fire another, and then look to see if the target had survived the first two, and merit a third try. His target was exploded by the first SM-2 and the second SAM self-destructed. Normandy'? first missile missed, but the second nicked the C-802, tumbling it into the sea with an explosion they felt through the hull a second later.

Yorktown had an advantage and a disadvantage. Her older system allowed launches directly at the inbound missiles instead of forcing the missiles to turn in flight before they could engage. But she could not launch as fast. She had three targets and fifty seconds to destroy them. The first -802 splashed five miles out, killed by a double hit. The second was now at its terminal height of three meters, ten feet over the flat surface. The next outgoing SM-2 missed high, exploding harmless behind it. The following missile missed as well. The next ripple from the forward launchers obliterated that one three miles out, filling the air with fragments that confused the guidance of the next pair, causing both to explode in the shredded remains of a dead target. Both of the cruiser's launchers swiveled fore and aft and vertical to receive the next set of four SAMs. The last -802 passed through the spray and fragments, heading straight into the cruiser. Yorktown got off two more launches, but one faulty missile failed to guide at all, and the other missed. Then the CIWS systems located on the forward and after superstructure turned slightly, as the vampire entered their targeting envelope. Both opened up at eight hundred yards, missing, missing yet again, but then exploding the missile less than two hundred yards off the starboard beam. The five-hundred-pound warhead showered the cruiser with fragments, and parts of the missile body kept coming, striking the ship's foreright SPY radar panel and ripping into the superstructure, killing six sailors and wounding twenty more.

"WOW," SECRETARY BRETANO said. All the theoretical stuff he'd learned in the past weeks was suddenly real.

"Not bad. They've launched fourteen aircraft at us, and they're getting two or three back, that's all," Robby said. "That'll give them something to think about for the next time."

"What about Yorktown?" the President asked.

"We have to wait and see."

THEIR HOTEL WAS only half a mile from the Russian embassy, and like good parsimonious journalists, they decided to walk, and left a few minutes before eight. Clark and Chavez had gone a scarce hundred yards when they saw that something was wrong. People were moving listlessly for so early on the start of a working day. Had the war with the Saudis been announced? John took a turn onto another market street, and there he found people listening to portable radios in their stalls instead of moving their wares onto the shelves.

"Excuse me," John said in Russian-accented Farsi. "Is something the matter?"

"We are at war with America," a fruit vendor said.

"Oh, when did this happen?"

"The radio says they have attacked our airplanes," the fruit seller said next. "Who are you?" he asked.

John pulled out his passport. "We are Russian journalists. Can I ask what you think of this?"

"Haven't we fought enough?" the man asked.

"TOLD YOU. THEY'RE blaming us," Arnie said, reading over the intercept report off Tehran radio. "What will that do to the politics in the region?"

"The sides are pretty much drawn up," Ed Foley said. "You're either on one side or the other. The UIR is the other. Simpler than the last time."

The President checked his watch. It was just past midnight. "When do I go on the air?"

"Noon."

RAMAN HAD TO stop at the Maryland-Pennsylvania line. A good twenty or so trucks were waiting for clearance from the Maryland State Police, with the National Guard in close attendance, and they lined up two by two, completely blocking the road at this point. Ten angry minutes later, he showed his ID. The cop waved him through without a word. Raman turned his light back on and sped off. He turned on the radio, caught an all-news AM station, but missed the top-of-the-hour news summary and had to suffer through all the rest, largely the same thing he'd been hearing all week, until twelve-thirty, when the network news service announced a reported air battle in the Persian Gulf. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon had commented on the alleged incident. Iran claimed to have sunk two American ships and shot down four fighters.

Patriot and zealot that he was, Raman couldn't believe it. The problem with America, and the reason for his mission of sacrifice, was that this poorly organized, idolatrous, and misguided nation was lethally competent in the use offeree. Even President Ryan, he had seen, discounted as he was by politicians, had a quiet strength to him. He didn't shout, didn't bluster, didn't act like most «great» men. He wondered how many people appreciated just how dangerous SWORDSMAN was, for that very reason. Well, that was why he had to kill him, and if that had to come at the cost of his own life, so be it.