Damage Control

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He was reaching for the radio when he saw the Jaguar, a high glinting in the sunlight, starting its steep descent to imitate a missile heading for its target—the carrier.

USS Thomas Jefferson

“Goblin’s not responding to the tower.”

“Fuck him.” Rafe couldn’t remember an exercise with such dicked-up comms. Was the guy really an asshole, or had someone put out the wrong freqs? Who knew?

“He’s less than a minute out and starting his pop.”

A pop-up was a typical terminal maneuver in most anti-ship missiles. The missile would climb sharply after it chose its target, then come down as nearly vertical into the deck of the target as possible. The Indian pilot was going for realism.

“He’s too fucking close,” from Air Ops.

The Jefferson was still turning, her aft anti-missile systems unmasked and “firing” for exercise purposes, but the rate of turn had slowed and Rafe felt the thunk of a plane launching, almost certainly the second F-18, headed south.

“Get him the fuck out of our airspace!” the same voice in Air Ops shouted.

Rafe glanced around, and something moved in his peripheral vision, and then the world exploded.

AG 703

Soleck was two miles to the north of the stack of the carrier and just turning inbound to establish his refueling track, more attention on his armrest data screen than on his instruments, when movement in his peripheral vision caused his eyes to flick into an instrument scan and out over sea—

“Holy mother of God,” Soleck said.

There was a fireball rising from the deck of the carrier like a Hollywood special effect, orange and white and spreading from the bow to the stern, the violent red pulses punctuated by streaks of white rising from the flames. The fireball itself rose so high that the island, the command node of the carrier, vanished in an orange bloom.

His plane shook, and then a fist of air nearly struck them from the sky.