the comer of the room started chattering: INITIATE OPERATION DOOLITTLE.
USS REUBEN JAMES
"Vampire, vampire! We have incoming missiles."
Here we go again, Morris thought. The tactical display was more modem than what he'd had on Pharris--each of the incoming missiles was marked with a velocity vector that indicated speed and direction. They were coming in low.
Morris lifted his phone. "Bridge, Combat. Execute separation maneuver."
"Bridge, aye. Separating now," Ernst said. "Crash stop! All back emergency!"
The helmsman pulled the throttle control back, then abruptly reversed the pitch of the propeller blades, throwing the ship from ahead to full astern. Reuben James slowed so rapidly that men had to brace themselves, and Battleaxe forged ahead, accelerating to twenty-five knots. As soon as it was safe, the British frigate turned hard to port, and Reuben James went to ahead full and turned sharply to starboard.
Any Soviet radar operator who had lingered behind would have been impressed by the deception. The oncoming AS-4 missiles had been targeted on a single blip. Now there were two, and they were separating. The missiles divided their attention evenly, with three opting for either target.
Morris watched his display intently. The distance between his ship and his companion was widening rapidly.
"Missiles are tracking us!" the ESM operator said loudly. "We have multiple missile seeker heads tracking us."
"Right full rudder, reverse course. Fire off chaff rockets!"
Everyone in the Combat Information Center jumped as four canisters exploded directly overhead, filling the air with aluminum foil and creating a radar target for the missiles to track while the frigate heeled violently to port as she turned. Her forward missile launcher turned around with her, a SAM already assigned to the first incoming Russian missile. The frigate righted herself on a northerly course, three miles behind Battleaxe.
"Here we go," the weapons officer said. The solution light blinked on the fire-control console.
The first of the white-painted SM1 missiles shot into the sky. It had scarcely cleared the launch rail when the launcher twisted in two dimensions and accepted another missile from the circular magazine, then turned and elevated again, firing seven seconds after the first missile was launched, then repeated the cycle twice more.
"That's it!" O'Malley said when he saw the first smoke trail. He punched his finger on the blip-enhance button. "Hatchet, shut down your emitter and break left!" Both helicopters went to full power and ran away. Four missiles suddenly had no targets. They kept heading west to look for more, but there were none to be found.
"More chaff," Morris ordered, watching the electronic traces of friendly and unfriendly missiles converge. The CIC shook again as another cloud of aluminum blasted into the air, and the wind carried it toward the incoming missiles.
"We still have missiles tracking us!"
"Hit!" the weapons officer exclaimed. The first missile disappeared from the scope, intercepted sixteen miles out, but the second Soviet missile kept coming. The first SAM sent after it missed, exploding harmlessly behind it, and then the second one missed, too. Another SAM was fired. Range was down to six miles. Five. Four. Three.
"Hit! One missile left--veering off. Going after the chaff! Passing aft!"
The missile struck the water two thousand yards from Reuben James. Even at that distance the noise was impressive. It was followed by total silence in the CIC. Men kept staring at their instruments, looking for additional missiles, and it took several seconds before they were satisfied that there were no more. One by one the sailors looked at their comrades and began to breathe again.
"What modem combat lacks in humanity," Calloway observed, "it more than makes up for in intensity."
Morris leaned back in his chair. "Or something like that. What's the story on Battleaxe?"
"Still on radar, sir," the tactical action officer replied. Morris lifted the radiotelephone.
"Bravo, this is Romeo. Do you read, over."
"I do believe we're still alive." Perrin was examining his tactical display and shaking his head in amazement.
"Any damage?"
"None. Hatchet is checking in. He's all right, too. Remarkable," Captain Perrin said. "Any further inbound traffic? We show none."
"Negative. The Tomcats chased the Backfires off the scope. Let's get reformed."
"Roger, Romeo."
Morris hung up and looked around the CIC. "Well done, people."
The sailors in the room looked at each other, and presently some grins started showing. But they didn't last long.
The TAO looked up. "For your information, Captain, Ivan fired a quarter of his missiles at us. So far as I can tell, the Tomcats got about six, and Bunker Hill got most of the rest ... but we show one frigate hit, and