Attack of the Seawolf

As the missile rose out of the sail a tiny relay designed to measure acceleration registered two g’s, twice normal gravity. The missile then armed its rocket motor ignition circuits as it prepared to light off its own solid rocket fuel. The bubble of steam rose steadily toward the surface, taking less than two hundred milliseconds to go from the top of the sail to the waves above. When the missile reached the surface the momentum of its upward journey threw it clear of the water until all its eight feet were completely out of the water and rising. At ten feet the missile froze as its upward velocity gave in to the downward acceleration of gravity. At that point the zero-g relay closed, completing the rocket-motor ignition circuit.

Before the missile had fallen backward an inch the thrust from the rocket motor had climbed to ten g’s, taking the missile from being motionless to Mach 1.2 in seconds, its path straight up. The heatseeker in the missile’s nose cone activated as it sought a target, any target, as long as the target emitted heat and was at least ten feet above the ground level. Immediately the seeker identified two targets, each coming from the hot exhaust of the turbines of the jet-powered helicopters.

The missile switched the seeker from omni-mode to target-vector mode, the onboard microprocessor moving the control surfaces at the missile’s tail to turn the unit toward the stronger of the two signals. The flight time to the target was approximately a second, the target-vector seeker keeping the helicopter’s exhaust pipe in sight, and at the end of the missile’s supersonic journey everything happened at once.

The missile flew into the hot tailpipe of the target, making the seeker blind, as if it had looked into the sun. The seeker going blind was the signal the microprocessor had waited for. It sent a faint twenty milli amp signal to the high explosive in the missile’s forward section just aft of the seeker in the nose cone

By the time the signal reached the detonator the nose of the missile had actually flown some six inches into the helicopter’s tailpipe.

When the missile had traveled another two inches the explosive detonated, no longer a solid mass, but exploding in a furious fireball of a chemical reaction that blew the helicopter to pieces, its remains raining down on the water of the bay below.

* * *

Aircraft Commander Yen Chitzu adjusted the collective, keeping the Hind helicopter in a stable hover, waiting for Ni Chihfu to fire the Spiral missiles at the sail of the listing submarine. Out his plastic windshield he could see down into Ni’s cockpit and make out the green light on Ni’s status panel that indicated the missile was ready for launch.

Yen was not aware of the launch of the Mark 80 SLAAM missile behind him, and since it approached his aircraft at supersonic speed, there was no sound as the missile’s nose cone entered his port turbine’s exhaust pipe. There was, however, a loud noise as the missile exploded, blowing the Hind apart and igniting its fuel. Yen felt the cockpit of the helicopter disintegrate around him. He had been looking downward toward Ni’s cockpit, but now down at his legs, and by the light of the aircraft’s fireball he saw his body being torn apart, his torso leaving his legs behind in what had been the seat of the helicopter. He had the briefest impression of being thrown away from the exploding aircraft, of a rotor blade whipping by him, its rotating velocity throwing it away from the fireball, and then a view of the blood erupting from his severed midsection. Gradually the light of the fireball faded as Yen began to pass out from loss of blood pressure and from the nerve overload of trauma. By the time Yen’s upper half hit the water of the Go Hai Bay, he had been dead for almost five milliseconds.

* * *

At the top of Pacino’s periscope view four small heatseeking missiles flew toward the horizon, as if they were in formation. One hit the Hind helicopter on the right, blowing it into a hundred-yard-diameter fireball.

The other three impacted the Hind on the left at about the same time, likewise blowing that aircraft into several large pieces. As the fragments of the helicopter splashed into the water they exploded into flames, probably, Pacino thought, the result of a delayed secondary explosion of an onboard rocket.

Pacino rotated the periscope to look at the trajectories of the Javelins, trying to determine if they had flown true. Off to the left a bright trail of fire marked the first missile’s takeoff. Pacino turned the scope to the right, where another smoke trail showed the liftoff of the second unit. The missiles should be turning around about now, Pacino figured, to return and find the frigate, which had decided to leave the Tampa alone and come for him. That made sense, since Tampa wasn’t going anywhere, and an intruder submarine had just launched two more cruise missiles.