Shattered Trident - Страница 49

The intercom came alive and Trung ducked back into the bridge. He’d been expecting Mai’s voice, but not his report. “Sir, our patrol aircraft reports the container ship has probably weighed anchor. She is no longer stationary. Speed is three knots and increasing.”

“Tell Miss Tham they’ve got five minutes, and recalculate the time on target.”

Mai answered quickly, “Understood.”

Trung tried to put himself on the merchant ship’s bridge. They did not have the acceleration of a warship, but all they needed was to get to ten knots or so. The wind had them facing west at anchor, and he would have to turn to sail around to the south side of the island, where the pier was located. Once the island was in the way, one of Trung’s two primary targets would disappear. But merchant ships turned slowly, especially at low speeds. Was there time to reprogram the Uran missiles on his ship? If he added waypoints…

“Sir, Miss Tham is ready, all launchers at the vertical. If we launch in sixty seconds, she launches sixty seconds after that.”

That matched his own rough calculations. Trung ordered, “Launch in sixty seconds, then.” He released the intercom key, then stepped over and closed the door to the port bridge wing. A watchstander on the other side did the same thing with the starboard door. As Trung dogged it down, a siren howled, loud even over the wind.

Trung stepped over to a small console next to the captain’s chair. As he waited, a large red button, engraved in white letters with PERMISSION TO FIRE, lit up. He immediately pressed it, holding it down for the required count of three, then walked over to the intercom. “Permission to fire confirmed.”

The Uran tubes were located midships, in the gap between the stack and the after mast. Even muffled by the wind, and through the closed doors, the roar of the rocket motors was loud, and seemed to go on forever.

Missiles burst out from the launch tubes at three-second intervals, climbing and immediately turning sharply east. A rocket booster, with a flame as long as the twelve-foot missile, burned for a moment before the missile’s turbojet engine took over. At that distance, Trung could only make it out as a small black shape, skimming the water.

The frigate’s eight missiles were all gone within ten or fifteen seconds, by his watch, and as Trung undogged the starboard door, the missile officer’s voice came over the intercom. “Launch successful, all eight weapons functioning normally.”

Trung used his glasses to check the Molniya missile craft closest to him, HQ-375. She was still launching. The Molniyas carried sixteen missiles instead of eight, in four quad launchers on either side of the ship, and each missile appeared on a column of flame as it erupted from the launcher, followed seconds later by the next one. The wind of the ships’ passage swept the exhaust off the ships’ decks, but it formed a billowing gray smoke trail behind each vessel. The beginning marked when each ship had started firing, and its abrupt end showed when it was complete.

A radio speaker on the bridge let him hear the reports as the four missile craft reported successful launches. Keying the intercom, Trung ordered, “Mai, execute turn to two two five, all ships flank speed.” They’d done their duty for the Socialist Republic, and now it was time to look to their own welfare.

Lanzhou

Admiral Sun was still speaking to General Tian. With the pier cleared, the container ship would dock, and Tien had sufficient troops to unload it, so…

“Low-altitude contact to the northwest! Missile alert!”

“Engage!” That order had come from Lanzhou’s weapons officer, and almost before he finished saying it, Sun heard the roaring forward as the destroyer’s vertical launchers rapidly salvoed air-defense missiles. Seconds mattered.

The radar operator passed information without wasting time on extra words. “Forty-five kilometers, eight contacts, supersonic! Speed… 1,320 knots—Mach 2.” The operator was speaking quickly, but the attackers had already covered half the distance to the ship during his report.

Sun watched the display, symbols moving almost too quickly to follow. Their outbound interceptors were even faster than the attackers, and the two groups came together as if pulled by strings. A string of characters appeared next to the hostile missiles—“Yakhont.” Sun grimaced. He knew what that meant, and could only hope they were lucky.

Three, then four of the oncoming missiles disappeared. It was a good result, out of five engaged, but there was no time for another salvo.

A harsh rattling sound carried through the bulkheads. The ship’s 30mm point-defense gun had opened fire, and a BANG! from the bow showed even the 100mm gun was firing, for all the help it would be. Again, no order had been given after the first one. There was no time…

Someone called “Brace!” and Sun tried to comply, then discovered he’d already done so. He barely had time to think about finding a better position when the first shock came, a crash that turned into a rumble under his feet. The deck jerked suddenly, but that was all, and Sun was starting to think about damage control when the second and third missiles slammed into the ship within seconds of each other.

This time the shock was brutal enough to knock Sun and everybody else to the deck. A pressure wave passed over him, and the stench of burning metal and plastic made him cough, then gag. One deafening crash followed another and another, and his mind gave up trying to understand what was happening.

The crashing stopped, but was replaced by a roaring sound—it was a fire, a big one, and close by. Sun could also hear screams and moans, and then metal bending and tearing, as if under great stress.

Sun pulled himself up, first kneeling, then standing, although a sharp pain ran up his left leg into his back. Battery-powered lights were the only illumination, making white beams in the haze. He could still see through the smoke, although his eyes burned.

The admiral drew a breath, coughed, then drew another and managed to croak, “Everybody topside.” Most looked at him dumbly, and he said, a little louder, “We’re finished here.”

Ly Thai To

The report from the targeting systems matched the patrol plane’s exactly. At the same moment the aircraft’s radar showed the incoming Yakhont missiles reaching one of the Chinese destroyers, the signal from the Dragon Eye radar had abruptly ceased. “The contact also appears to be slowing,” the radar operator reported.

Trung let them cheer for a moment. The linchpin of the Chinese defense, a Type 052C guided-missile destroyer, had been disabled. Perhaps it would sink, if they didn’t beach it on the island. It might limp home and eventually be fixed. But it was out of the fight.

Their own Uran missiles were only moments away.

Trung moved to the Monolit console. The combat center was much less crowded now, since they didn’t have to track the Chinese formation so closely. Instead, they watched the radar picture data-linked from the aircraft, and compared what they saw with the Monolit operator’s report.

At this point, Trung was as much a spectator as the rest of his crew. He’d made all the decisions before launching his missiles. All that was left was reporting the results and defending his ship.

“I’m getting new radars,” the operator reported. “Type 354, Type 344G, Russian MR-123 radars—those last ones are point defense.”

Mai pointed to a pair of blips. One was the stricken destroyer, the other a missile frigate. “That’s the only ship directly in their path. For everyone else, our missiles will be crossing targets.” A missile passing across a ship’s line of sight, instead of holding steady, was harder to shoot at—much harder.

With the most powerful missile ship out of action, the patrol plane had been able to get closer to the formation. Its radar was sharp enough to actually provide rough images of the different ships, and could see the Uran missiles as they closed. It was also smart enough to identify ships by class, and labels appeared next to different blips as the radar’s computer identified the vessels: two Type 054A missile frigates, a Type 052B missile destroyer, the Type 071 landing ship, a Russian-built Sovremennyy guided missile destroyer, the container ship, and two older frigates, not counting the crippled destroyer.

His eyes were on the two targets: the landing ship and the container ship. Altogether, his force had launched seventy-two missiles, an unholy amount of firepower. He’d been tempted to use part of them to attack the frigate, but it was a moving target in its patrol zone. The two primaries were stationary, or had been, and that made for easier targeting. The moving container ship was a worry, but with luck, it would not have time to get too far from the aim point.

Trung knew they wouldn’t be able to see the defender’s fire, but he could watch their Uran missiles disappearing, as defending missiles and guns had their effect. The Type 054A had a good SAM system, and it was well placed. The Urans wouldn’t attack the frigate because Trung had ordered the missiles’ radar seekers to stay off until they were past the ring of defending ships.

He tried to count, and quickly lost track. He knew that analysts would play these recordings later and count the losses, refining their estimates of the Chinese weapons systems. All he cared about now was seeing enough missiles reach their destination.

He saw an older frigate in between the missiles and the container ship. It was close enough to absorb some of the missiles. Had the captain done it deliberately?