The Passage (19 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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O'Bierne looked at Leighty. “Captain, about the only other thing is to make sure you'll have a boat and crew and a thousand-pound davit available to pick up the UVS—I mean, the drone, after the exercise. It'll soft-land in the water, and we'll send a truck over for it when you get back to Charleston. Are there any questions?”
Leighty deferred to Vysotsky, who asked Dan what his tactics were going to be. Dan said, “Sir, I've checked out NWP-sixty-five and the class tactical manual, but there are no tactics developed yet for the ACDADS. I recommend an adaptation of the
Kidd-
class Block-One tactics as follows … .”
When he was done Vysotsky asked if anyone else had comments. Finally, Leighty nodded. “Okay, George, let's get to it.”
“General quarters, sir?”
“Why not. Let's make it as realistic as possible.”
 
 
“THIS is a drill; this is a drill. General quarters; general quarters. All hands, man your battle stations. Set material condition Zebra throughout the ship.”
The electronic bonging was still echoing through the passageways when he got to CIC. He strapped on gas mask and life jacket, buttoned his sleeves and collar, tucked trouser cuffs into his socks. A seaman handed him the gray helmet stenciled TAO and he swung up into his chair.
CIC was dark now, dark and cold and packed with people. The black bulkhead and overhead disappeared, making it seem like the backlit displays and tote boards floated in interstellar space. From the TAO chair, centered in the compartment, he had a clear view of every plot board and display. Action flowed outward concentrically from the TAO. He could speak in a normal voice to the officers who controlled the sensors and weapons: the surface-subsurface weapons coordinator, the antiair weapons coordinator. They, in turn, were in voice range of the petty officers who ran the launch consoles for Harpoon, Standard, ASROC, torpedoes, and guns. They were tied together by intercoms and screen-to-screen computer links, and if all else failed, there were the time-tested sound-powered phones. A dedicated intercom by Dan's hand gave him direct talk to the officer of the deck, one deck up, so he could maneuver the ship.
If
Barrett
ever went into battle, he would fight her from this chair. No longer did a captain fight his ship from the bridge. From there, he could see ten or fifteen miles. The net of sensors and electronics woven from CIC covered thousands of square miles. And the skipper, though he retained overall command, delegated the actual employment of the ship in combat to younger officers, recently trained in up-to-the minute threats and tactics.
As if conjured up by thought, Leighty appeared out of the dark and swung up into the chair next to Dan. Lenson nodded to him—formalities were relaxed here—and clicked a focused light on above him. He flipped open his wheel book. You could look things up in tac memos and naval warfare publications, but he didn't like to accept cookbook answers. His handwritten notes read:
1.
Place FC radar in sector scan along threat axis.
2.
Detect target.
3.
Designate to a weapons system and launcher.
4.
Launch.
5.
Reengage—shoot, shoot, look, shoot.
He kneaded his forehead, remembering how much calculation it took to get to the seemingly bonehead-simple step five. If a cruise missile was coming down the pipe at you, you didn't fire one missile
and wander happily away with your finger up your butt. An 80 percent kill probability was the best you could hope for. So you figured to fire more than once. But how many times? And how fast? The formula for overall probability of kill with repeated shots was:
Pk
=
1
- (
Pf
)
n
Pf
was the probability of failure and
n
the number of rounds fired. If you fired one round,
Pk
was 80 percent, two rounds would be 96 percent, and three rounds somewhere upward of 99 percent.
But balanced against that was the need to conserve ordnance in battle. Successive attacks would deplete your magazines, letting the attacker break through. Also, you couldn't fire too rapidly; the missiles would interfere with one another's radar. And there wasn't much time to get your rounds out there, not with the enemy missile boring in at ten miles a minute. He'd finally worked out a solution using a system of simultaneous linear equations.
Now Leighty was asking him, “Three-round engagement, Dan?”
“If we have time, sir. If not, we get two rounds off fast.”
“Do we make that decision?”
“Not anymore, sir. The threat-response algorithm is programmed into the ACDADS auto mode.”
Leighty grunted something and picked up a phone. Dan heard him talking to the XO, then tuned out as the airborne intercept controller, who directed aircraft assigned to
Barrett
'
s
control, yelled, “Tango four four reporting in, requesting permission to start runs.”
“That the S-three with the sleeve? Permission granted.”
“Tango four four wants commanding officer's guarantee no live ammunition is loaded.”
Leighty grinned. “Sounds like they've been burned before. Check it out, Dan.”
Dan clicked into the fire-control circuit, confirmed bores clear with the gun mounts, then did the same with the missile launchers. He pointed to the AIC. “They're safe. Give him an initial vector to make the first run in from zero-zero-zero relative. SSWC, place ACDADS in mode two and commence run one.”
The first events went smoothly. The tow aircraft made run after run from ahead, abeam, astern. Behind it, a drogue wobbled through the sky on five thousand feet of cable. At each run, the system gave a threat warning buzzer, assigned a director, and locked on. As the range closed, it assigned launchers, displayed an ordnance selection, and sent train and elevate orders. Shuffert, who was antiair coordinator, kept giving him thumbs-up. They did a quick huddle at the end of the fifth run. “How's it looking, Shoe?” Dan asked.
“Everything seems to be running normal.” The black lieutenant sucked his lip. “I noticed some delay on the bow-on run, though. It was in to fifteen miles before we got a detect signal.”
“It was real low on that run, I noticed,” Chief Dawson put in. “Maybe a hundred feet above the water.”
“That's where an Exocet's gonna fly. Do you want to tweak some more, try to get more energy out there?”
“No, it's in parameters. Let's go with it.”
“Shoe?”
“Concur.”
Dan said to the captain, “Sir, we're ready for a firing run.”
The jet drone was carried by another plane, call sign Lima two six, which had reported in during the tracking runs and was now orbiting thirty-five miles to the north. He called O'Beirne, up on the bridge, and advised him and the OOD this would be a firing run, for grade. Next he checked the surface track console, making sure there were no stray fishing boats or crossing merchants in range. Except for the trawler to the east, the sky and sea were empty. He told Shuffert to signal event 0608.
“Time to find out if all this shit we bought works,” said Leighty. Dan glanced at him. It was the first time he'd heard the fastidious captain use a four-letter word.
He looked at Shuffert, sitting tensely at the weapons-control console; at Dawson, at the systems-monitoring panel, one earphone slipped off. Both were watching him, hands hovering over the proper switches. The door from the bridge undogged. It was O'Beirne, the observer.
“Archer turning inbound. Now bears zero-zero-four, range sixty-eight thousand yards.”
Dan said quietly, “Put her in auto.”
“Automatic, aye … mode three enabled.”
Leaning forward, he could see the glowing symbol that was the launch aircraft, thirty miles out. He and Dawson and Harper and Williams had done all they could. It was up to the computers now.
“Lima two six reports drone separation … engine start … control test … drone under control. Commencing run.”
“Have we got a separate paint on the drone?”
“Yes, sir.”
The deck shuddered beneath their feet, and he tensed before he remembered the computers were controlling the helm now, too—controlling the engines, controlling everything.
“ACDADS has identified an incoming threat, level two, bearing zero-zero-six, range fifty-two thousand yards, speed four hundred and sixty knots. Altering course to unmask weapons.”
He looked out across the room, feeling ice touch his spine. No
one was
doing
anything. Dawson turned his palms outward, eyebrows up, a “Look, Ma, no hands” routine.
The ship was moving, thinking, acting on its own.
The rudder-angle indicator swung to counteract the momentum of the turn, then centerlined. The gyro repeater steadied, presenting
Barrett
's port beam to the incoming drone. Designation lights blinked on. “Threat level one. Locked on,” a petty officer called. “Very well,” Dan murmured, thinking, Next they'll give it a voice. All we'll be good for then is typing up the after-action reports.
“Target bears zero-zero-eight, range forty-five thousand yards, speed four hundred and eighty knots, altitude, three hundred feet.”
Dan watched the second hand of his watch creep around. It wasn't all peaches and cream, having the ship think for you. You had all the same worries, but there was nothing you could do.
The intercom at his elbow said, “Uh, TAO, Bridge: Why are we training the guns out to starboard?”
“Say again, Bridge? This is a missile run, to port.”
“Well, the guns are training out to starboard.”
He was opening his mouth to ask Dawson what was going on when he heard the unmistakable slam of a five-inch going off, then, a second later, another from astern. “Cease fire! Cease fire!” he yelled. “Abort the run. Break track. Take back control. Centerline all the launchers,
now.
”
A minute later, a jet engine howled past overhead, muffled by the superstructure. The observer shook his head, making a note on a clipboard. Dan wiped sweat off his face. He felt Leighty's look like an icicle laid across his cheeks.
“I thought the guns were unloaded, Mr. Lenson.”
“Sir, they
were
. Adamo checked the bores himself. They shouldn't have fired, anyway; this was a missile run.”
“Okay, obviously something's hosed. Can we refire? Or should we scrub the trial? How much longer have we got the drone for?”
“One second, sir, I'll check … .” To Shuffert and Dawson, he said tightly, “Okay, something's screwy.
What?
Think fast; we only got this drone for another fifteen minutes.”
Neither seemed to know. He picked up the FC circuit and barked, “Why did you fire?” But as far as the gunner's mates knew, the guns had done exactly what the computers were telling them to. He made a fast decision.
“Okay, forget full auto. Put ACDADS in mode two.”
“You're going to try again?”
“Yes, sir, but in semiauto this time. It'll give us a threat buzzer and recommend action, but the console operators actually designate targets and approve loading ordnance to fire position.”
“I know that, Dan.”
“Yes, sir, I know you do. Just making sure everyone's using the same dance card.”
Leighty nodded, approving another firing run. Dan told the AIC, who relayed it out to the drone operator on the plane.
“Commencing run two. Target inbound.”
At fifty thousand yards, the threat buzzer triggered. “Designate to forward launcher,” Dan said, leaning forward to watch the big SSWC screen.
This seemed to work better. The system locked on in semiauto and tracked. It assigned the incoming threat to the forward missile launcher, with the aft launcher in backup. When it recommended fire, he glanced at Leighty, who nodded curtly. Shuffert flipped up the switch cover and depressed the red switch.
The drumming roar made them all jump. Caught up in symbology, procedure, drill, you forgot there were real weapons out there. The first missile was on its way. Dan scratched itchy armpits as another bellow announced the second round had leapt off the aft launcher. The angular separation meant they could fire round two from there a second and a half sooner than a refire from the same launcher.
“Bird one away … bird two away.”
“Check fire bird three. Stand by.” He'd see if two would do it, maybe save the expense of an extra instrumented Standard. On impulse, he hit the intercom. “Bridge, TAO: Can you guys see the drone yet?”
Vysotsky's hoarse voice. “Negative, got our glasses on the bearing but no joy yet.”

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