Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

138 JEFF EDWARDS
Suddenly, the Sensor Operator shouted. “Launch transient! I’m
getting some kind of launch transient! Same bearing as the POSS-SUB!”
“It’s probably a hydraulic transient,” the pilot said. “Our active pinging
scared them, and they’re diving for the layer.”
“No, sir,” the Sensor Operator said. “This is definitely not hydraulic.
This is … oh shit!” He began pointing emphatically toward the window.
“It’s coming out of the water! We have missile emergence, bearing zerofive-five!”
All three men watched in disbelief as the missile erupted from the
ocean in a fountain of salt water and fire.
“Cruise missile!” the copilot shouted. “It’s gotta be aimed for the
carrier!”
The pilot shook his head. “That’s a SAM, and it’s coming after us!”
He pulled back on the control stick, breaking the helo out of its hover. The
helicopter climbed steeply, snatching the sonar transducer out of the water
where it swung crazily at the end of its cable.
Lieutenant Forester threw his aircraft into a violent series of banks and
turns that were the closest thing to evasive maneuvering that a 22,000pound
helicopter could manage. “Launch chaff!”
Ensign Dillon flipped up a row of red protective covers and stabbed at
two of the buttons underneath. The helo shuddered slightly as two chaff
projectiles blasted clear of the airframe.
Before the chaff pods had even blossomed, Dillon was on the radio.
“Sub-SAM! We’ve got a sub-SAM! This is Wolfhound Eight-Seven. I
say again: we have a submarine-launched surface-to-air missile inbound,
over!”
The Sensor Operator watched the missile blow through the expanding
cloud of aluminum dust without slowing. “It’s not going for the chaff,
sir!” he yelled.
“Heat-seeker!” the pilot said. “Launch a flare!”
The radio warbled with the crypto burst of an incoming message; no
one had time to pay attention to it.
Ensign Dillon reached above his head and flipped up the covers for
another row of protected switches. His finger jabbed toward a button, but
he never made it.
The missile’s infrared seeker rode the heat plumes off the helicopter’s
engines like a railroad track. A fraction of a second before Dillon’s finger
touched the button, the sub-SAM slipped into the exhaust chamber for the
starboard engine as neatly as a key sliding into a lock.
The warhead detonated, blowing the General Electric T700 turbine into
a thousand fragments, each one blasting through the helicopter like a