Part 1 (2/2)
Va.s.ska shook his head and said, ”Won't it be wonderful if our enemies are so cooperative as to never fire more than one missile at a time?”
Reykov shrugged his big shoulders and said, ”We're working on it. It'll be good enough if we can scramble the guidance systems one by one. Let's not ask for trouble. Just don't make fools of the designers.”
Va.s.ska nodded to Myakishev, who relayed the order out into the distance.
”Inbound,” came the dry announcement a few moments later. ”One Teardrop missile, heading four-zero true.”
”Visual range?”
”In six seconds, sir.”
”When it becomes visible, we'll fire the E.M.P. on my order.”
”Yes, Comrade Captain. Visibility in three ... two ... one ... mark.”
They squinted into the crisp blue atmosphere and saw the incoming dummy missile. Hardly more than a silver glint against the sky, even the dud caused a hard ball in the pit of every stomach. Reykov imagined the dignitaries' skin crawling right about now.
”Fire the E.M.P.”
Myakishev touched his control panel, and below them on the tower a twelve-foot-wide antenna swiveled toward the inbound. They all flinched when the pulse fired- There was a near-simultaneous snap and a white flash. At first it seemed the snap came first, but now that it was over they weren't sure.
In the distant sky, the Teardrop skittered on its trajectory, corkscrewed to one side, and plunged into the sea far off its mark, victim of a fizzled guidance system.
The bridge broke into cheers.
Reykov pumped a sigh of relief from his lungs. ”Reenergize the pulse, Comrade Va.s.ska.”
”Recharging now, Comrade Captain.”
”Good boy, good boy ... ” Reykov inhaled deeply and tried to make the sensation of trouble go away. He wasn't really nervous, but for some reason his hands were cold.
”Comrade Captain ... ” Myakishev bent over the officer's shoulders at the radar screen.
”Comrade?” Reykov prodded, his hands dropping to his sides.
Va.s.ska, having heard something in Myakishev's tone, was also bending over the radar station.
”We have an inbound ... and it's not one of ours.”
Va.s.ska dove for the TBS phone and had it to his ear as Reykov barked, ”Contact the Vladivostok.”
”Sir, Captain Feklenko reports they did not fire. They did not fire on us.”
”Then what is it?”
”I don't know.”
”What is it? Is it American?”
”Doesn't appear to be.”
”Then what? Is it French? Is it British? Albanian? Do the Africans have missiles? Whose is it?”
”Sir, there's no log of this ... I'm not even certain it's a missile,” Va.s.ska said, snapping his fingers to other manned positions in silent orders.
Reykov pressed up against Myakishev's shoulder. ”Billions of rubles for you geniuses and you can't tell me what it is. I want to know whose it is. What is coming in?”
”It's headed directly toward us!”
Reykov straightened, his eyes narrowing on the distant sky. For the first time in his life, he made the kind of decision he hoped never to have to make.
”Turn the E.M.P. on it. Fire when ready.”
The wide rectangular antenna swiveled like the head of some unlikely insect, and once again the terrible snap-flash came as the electromagnetic pulse pumped through the atmosphere with scientific coldness.
It should have worked. It should have scrambled the guidance controls on any kind of missile or aircraft, any kind at all.
Any kind at all.
”It's homing in on the beam-accelerating now!” Myakishev's voice clattered against his throat.
Va.s.ska whispered, ”Even the Americans don't have anything like that ... ”
Reykov twisted around and plowed through the bridge crew to the chilly windowsill. He stared out over the Black Sea.
There was something there. It wasn't a missile.
On the horizon, making child's play of the distance between itself and Gorshkov, was a wall.
An electrical wall. It sizzled and crackled, made colors against the sky, shapeless and ugly-the phenomenon looked, more than anything, like an infrared false-color image. Colors inside colors. But there was no basic shape. It was crawling across the water, the size of a skysc.r.a.per.
Behind him, Myakishev choked, ”Radar is out. Communications out now-we're getting feedback-”
Reykov gasped twice before he could speak. ”Full about! General quarters! General-”
His voice went away. Around him, every piece of instrumentation went dead. As though mola.s.ses had been poured over the bridge, all mechanisms failed. There wasn't even the rea.s.suring sound of malfunction. In fact, there was no sound at all.
Then a sound did come-an electrical scream cutting across the water and swallowing the whole s.h.i.+p as the false-color bogey roared up to the carrier's starboard bow and sucked the s.h.i.+p into itself. It was three times the size of the s.h.i.+p itself. Three times.
Reykov's last move as a human being was to turn toward the radar station. He looked at Timofei Va.s.ska, who straightened up to stare at his captain, both hands clasped over his ears, and the two men were locked in a gaze, frozen, held. It felt as though all their blood were clotting at once.
Reykov's last perception was of Va.s.ska's eyebrows drawing slightly together as the two men shared the wholeness of that final moment before obliteration.
Then Va.s.ska's face was covered with the false-color image, and Reykov's mind, mercifully, stopped operating.
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