The Command

He turned and saw the others looking around shakily. And yelled, “What’s the fucking holdup? Sweep one, bridge. I saw one scumbag up there. Clear him, zip-tie him, and get him down to the bow. Two, secure the engine room. Three, follow me.”

The Aussie was mumbling, but he ignored him. Cassidy had his pistol out, too, and was covering him as he went forward, zigging from behind the mast to a stack of the same tires that were slung over the side. The deck was empty. Except for the flies and the sand. The light was turning a deep bloody scarlet, like during an eclipse, and the greasy sand on the hull had grated his face down to hamburger. He wished he had a bandanna, or goggles. Damn, he should have thought of that.

His eyes noted something strange ahead. A line, or a wire. His conscious mind recognized it only as he was on his way to the deck, as the claymore went off above him with a crack and flash that cut through the hissing sand.

* * *

Twenty miles to the north, the clock clicked over. Dan and McCall and the chief had moved up to huddle as the first class called the information on the missions they were tasked to shoot. They were focused, in their team mode. Dan confirmed the time against his watch and felt in his shirt pocket for his key as the combat systems officer said tensely, “Initialization complete.”

The Remote Launch Enable Panel was a holdover from the nuclear-capable days. Two keys had to be inserted to launch. Dan held his out. McCall took it, almost reverently, and matched it with her own. Her Waspish fine-boned face was flushed, hands trembling. She weighed them for a moment, then handed them to the chief.

“Load complete.”

McCall blinked, cocked her head, coming out of whatever momentary state she’d experienced, and moved to stand behind the console operator.

“Start missile alignment.”

“Watch the INS switchover. WSN-5 in manual switchover mode.”

“Final review Plan One. Do not change course more than five degrees.”

McCall repeated that to the others, then pressed the lever to inform the pilothouse. The bridge said they were about three minutes from the launch point at his current speed.

“Okay, when we’re five hundred yards out, slow to just above steer-ageway.”

Bridge rogered that, and McCall said, “Final review complete. Time until first launch — eight minutes.”

“Now set material condition Zebra throughout the ship. I say again, set material condition Zebra throughout the ship. All personnel topside, lay within the skin of the ship. First launch, seven minutes.”

The commodore said, “I understood you had to report in before launch—”

“Doing that now, sir.” Dan had the red handset poised. “Terminator, Lone Gunman, this is Blade Runner. First launch seven mike. Over.”

“Blade Runner, Terminator. Copy. Out.”

“Lone Gunman, copy, out.”

Terminator was the strike coordinator at COMFIFTHFLT headquarters in Bahrain. Lone Gunman was the Joint Task Force, Southwest Asia, in Riyadh. Any cancellation/hold fire message would come from them.

“Five mike.”

“Roger.”

The 21MC said, “Combat, bridge: booster drop zone clear to starboard.”

The 1MC said, “First launch, five minutes.”

But then it all went to shit. The launch controller cried, “Nav alignment failure. Mode regression plan two, missile F51.”

“Backup plan,” Dan said anxiously.

“There’s no backup for that, sir.”

McCall said, louder than he’d expect a woman who looked like her would, “Shit! Is that an overridable fault?”

“No, ma’am!”

“Captain, we have a problem. Plan two has a nav alignment failure and—”

Dan cut her off. He knew what was going on.

Somewhere in the missile nestled in cell F51 a relay had gotten hot, or a board had shorted. Its little brain wasn’t agreeing with the location data the ship’s computers were feeding it.

For the bird to get where it was going, it needed to know where it was starting from. And since Tomahawk had originally been designed as a nuclear-capable weapon, it had been written with a very restrictive code. If it wasn’t sure it could navigate, it wouldn’t launch. Once one missile in a salvo went, if another had a glitch, the computers would skip over it and fire the third. But as a double safety measure, if the first round in a salvo hung up, none of them would fire.

But at the same time something was tickling his thoughts. Something about nav alignments. What was it? “Okay, let’s calm down and think this through. Lieutenant McCall. Which plan shoots first? How long to first launch, how far are we from the launch point?”

“Plan two shoots first. Four and a half minutes to launch, and about five hundred yards away.”

His mind was racing. What was it, damn it, what was he trying to remember? Something about a serpentine maneuver… an S turn… How long did it take to go from steerageway to flank for a Spruance?

He reached over Strong and tabbed the 21MC. “Central, Captain. How many mains on line?”