“Correct, but I don’t think they can see us either,” said Nagata.
That possibility had not occurred to Hopper. “Why’s that?”
“Because we’re still floating,” said Nagata.
“Good point. So the radar jamming works both ways,” said Hopper. Then he added reluctantly, “Of course, they could have blown us to hell before the sun set. Why didn’t they?”
“Conserving resources. Maybe they used up their firepower. Maybe they have to recharge or reload their missiles.”
“Which they’ve probably had enough time to do by now. And that brings us back to the theory about their being as blind as us.”
He stared up at his screen, an empty battlefield. Nagata stared at it as well. But where there was just a sense of hopelessness on Hopper’s face, a frustration over the challenge he was facing with no real answer presenting itself, the wheels that were turning in Nagata’s head were practically visible. “There is a way,” he said after a time.
“A way?” said Hopper.
“A way of seeing them, without seeing them.”
Hopper had had a brief surge of hope, but when Nagata said that, it was like the air going out of a balloon. “Is this going to be some kind of Art of War reference? Fight the enemy where they aren’t? ‘Move like the water’…? ’Cause I have to be honest, I’ve read that book and it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”
“The book is Chinese.” There was mild annoyance in Nagata’s voice.
Hopper couldn’t have given a damn at that moment.
“Yeah, well, I don’t understand the damned thing. Not a word of it.”
“My way is much more simple,” said Nagata.
“And what would that be?”
“We’ve been doing it to America for twenty years.”
Now Hopper’s attention was firmly engaged. He leaned forward in his chair, his eyes narrowing. “How?” he said so slowly it became a three-syllable word.
“Water,” said Nagata. He said it with a touch of pride, as if quite pleased with himself that he was having the opportunity to inform some dumb-ass American about something the Japanese had pulled over on them.
“Water?” said Hopper slowly. It didn’t make any sense to him.
“Water displacement. We can tell where your ships are by the amount of water displacement.”
Hopper felt as if he were being left further and further behind. “How do you trace water displacement?”
“Tsunami buoys.”
“Tsunami buoys?” That actually sounded vaguely familiar to Hopper, but he couldn’t quite place where he’d heard it.
“You have them surrounding your islands,” said Nagata. “Transmitting displacement data. We hack into their transmission. Form a grid and identify military ships based on displacement signature.”
Hopper stared at him. He felt a degree of grudging admiration. “You sneaky bastards.”
“We would practice it as a contingency plan should we lose fire control radar.”
Hopper waggled a scolding finger at him, as if chastising a child. “Sneaky, tricky, dirty playing.”
Nagata didn’t seem the least bit chagrined. “Rough world,” he said indifferently.
“I like it. Can you do that? Here? Now?”
“Possibly.”
Without any hesitation, Hopper got up and gestured sweepingly toward the captain’s chair. “Captain Nagata, my CIC is your CIC.”
The rest of the crew could not have been more stunned if Hopper had peeled off his face to reveal he was one of the aliens. The words “Who are you and what did you do with Alex Hopper?” certainly occurred to more than a few of them. Here he was turning his baby over to a stranger—no, not even a stranger, a guy he’d had a major punch-out with that might well have wound up scuttling his career.
Right now, though, his long-term career plans could not have been further from Hopper’s mind. All he cared about was finding the best man for whatever tasks were necessary to get his people out of this situation alive. As far as he was concerned, if that meant Nagata in the captain’s chair while they took on the aliens, so be it. He had neither the time for, nor the luxury of, pampering his ego.
Even Nagata was astounded, although his was not the reaction of wide eyes and gaping jaws as was seen from the rest of the sailors in the CIC. He merely arched a single eyebrow as he stared at Hopper. The unspoken question was easily discerned: Are you sure about this?
Hopper replied even though the question hadn’t been voiced. “It’s what my brother would have done,” he said with a small shrug, as if it was so obvious, it didn’t need to be spelled out.
Nagata’s arms were stiff at his sides as he bowed crisply from the hip, and he kept his eyes fixed on Hopper’s. Hopper bowed in response.
The Japanese officer wasted no more time as he sat down in the captain’s chair and began working on the John Paul Jones computer system. As he did so, he said softly, “Your brother was a good man.”
“Yes.”
“I heard his younger brother was an idiot.”
Hopper froze, scowling. Was this all some sort of joke to Nagata? Was he going to take the grand gesture that Hopper had just made, trusting his ship to him, simply so he could make a few more snide remarks at Hopper’s expense?
Then Nagata looked up. “But it appears I was misinformed. I will be sure to remember that in the future.” With that pronouncement, he went back to work.
Hopper smiled for the first time since the death of his brother.
He hoped he would have further opportunities.
It took Nagata about half an hour to thoroughly master the differences between the John Paul Jones’s computer system and that of his late, lamented vessel. There was tense silence during that time, only broken when Nagata had a question, which would quickly be answered by Hopper or one of his crew. While Nagata worked, everyone was braced for the possibility that maybe the aliens could, in fact, perceive them, and that any moment they might be fired upon.
Nothing happened, though, lending further credence to the notion that they were as invisible to the aliens as the aliens were to them. But after thirty minutes of working on the problem, Nagata had gone a long way to remove that differential.
The main computer screen was now alight with a massive grid that presented the locations of all the buoys floating in the ocean within miles of the area. It was more than they required, but there was no point in doing this in half measures. Besides, if more ships landed anywhere nearby, or even not that nearby, they wanted to be able to know immediately.
Hopper leaned in near Nagata, staring at the complex grid system of hundreds of buoys, all of them transmitting water displacement. “Now what?” he asked.
“We’re looking for patterns of water displacement,” said Nagata.
Hopper studied the grid for another few seconds. A buoy had been activated. He pointed and said with satisfaction, “There.”
“Maybe,” said Nagata noncommittally.
Another buoy grid two hundred yards south was activated. “It’s moving,” said Hopper.
“Maybe.”
A third buoy was activated. “That’s a ship,” Hopper said with growing excitement. A trajectory line was being established. That meant if they could determine a heading, then they could line up a shot and be one step ahead of the enemy.