The senator came in for a whiskey-smelling bear hug. She smiled and pecked his cheek, glad she didn’t have to put up with his sexist crap anymore. It was all a game to him. Push her out on the board, and see if she survived. Yeah. It was a game.
Like the one they were playing with China.
4
Savo’s Combat Information Center was an ice cave lit by screens of data. It smelled like a freshly unpacked television. Four aisles of consoles funneled data to four large-screen, full-color flat-panel displays. With a three-section wartime steaming watch, about half the consoles were manned.
Panting from the scramble down the ladder, Dan slid into the worn leather chair at the command desk. An icy breeze popped gooseflesh on his nape. He shrugged into the foul-weather jacket draped on the chair, squinting up. One screen was a blue blank, except for a blinking tab reading GCCS feed failure. The joint picture, air, sea, and land. Its absence left him blind outside the range of his own task group’s sensors. The middle display was the air picture, from Savo’s own radars, plus shared data from Mitscher via a link.
Two contacts caught his attention. A pulsing yellow trefoil, MIL-STD-2525 Common Military symbology for Unknown Air, glowed to the northwest. Closer, a blue semicircle blinked on and off. The callouts tagged it as a Japanese Air Self-Defense Force antisubmarine patrol plane. Good; they’d have help closing the strait.
The eastern coast of Taiwan walled off the left of the screen. Nearly a straight line, without major ports, bays, or inlets. Behind it glowed an emeraldine sparkle, radar returns from rugged mountains.
The next screen was blank again, and that farthest to the right displayed video from a camera looking aft. The same lens that had nearly caught their rapist, the first time he’d pulled a female crew member into a secluded corner, threatened her with a knife, and masturbated on her. Now it showed only the white, smoothed wake across bright, heaving blue, and a curtain of low clouds.
The yellow trefoil blinked and changed to a red symboclass="underline" hostile. Dan checked the text readouts above the large-screen displays. Flickering green or orange, they presented the statuses of the various computers, combat systems, a weapons inventory, and radio call signs. He knew most of the numbers by heart.
This was his battle station, not the bridge. Ticos had a little armor, mainly around CIC and the computer room, but antiship warheads were designed to penetrate. By the time any enemy got in sight, he’d most likely already be dead, along with his crew. Blasted apart, burned alive, or sliced into ribbons by flying metal.
The sweet musk of sandalwood as the dark-haired woman at his side leaned in. Lieutenant Amarpeet Singhe, Savo’s strike officer. A classic Indian beauty, with huge, dark eyes. But also a Wharton grad, and probably the smartest person aboard. Unfortunately, that had led her into more than one clash with the Chief’s Mess. “See it, Skipper? Up to the northwest. Inbound a couple of minutes ago. Then it doglegged right.”
He averted his eyes from the V in her partially unzipped coveralls. “I see it, Amy. And, look, next time, don’t make it ‘CO, report to CIC.’ Just the situation, and let me decide whether I need to come down or not.”
“Sorry, Captain. I just thought—”
“I know. Never mind. Range?”
“Two hundred miles. No IFF squawk.”
“South of the Senkakus.”
“Yes sir. Where the landing force was reported this morning.”
“Anything from EW?” The electronic-warfare console, where a technician stared at a screen like a rabbit on ketamine. Eavesdropping on every radio and radar emission within hundreds of miles.
Singhe said, “One Type 245 Kobalt I-band surveillance radar. Correlates with H-6 Badger. Maritime recon, but may have a cruise-missile-launch capability.”
The Chinese had picked up a lot of Soviet tactics and equipment for long-range maritime strike. Including antiship missiles. Dan said, “It’s covering the landings. Watching out for someone like us. But he’s in the Japanese air-defense zone. Let’s see how Tokyo reacts before we go to GQ on him. Watch for their fighters, out of Naha.”
A raised voice from the Aegis console. “If we can see him, he already knows we’re here.”
Dan craned around to meet Donnie Wenck’s slightly insane-looking bright blue stare. His blond cowlick was sticking up, and as usual his hair pushed the boundaries of the regs. Dan had worked with him on classified missions to Korea, the Philippines, and the Gulf. His spacy demeanor disguised a mastery of arcane software fixes. Dan had just promoted him to chief petty officer, to the displeasure of some. Wenck added, “All the power we’re cranking out, five megawatts, we’re like a fucking searchlight in a closet.”
“Knowing it and doing something about it are two different things. If you detect a missile seeker, though, Amy, assign a Standard and take the archer down. Copy, TAO?”
The corners of Singhe’s lips curled upward. “Roger that, Captain.”
“Is that encoder gear on the Mark 86 getting fixed?” The fire-control system that controlled the forward and aft five-inchers. Guns were no longer a cruiser’s primary armament, but they’d be useful if he had to take on patrol craft or missile boats. Or the landing craft that were, apparently, beaching troops to the northwest.
One of the ETs took that one. “Yessir, we have it in the micro-min repair shop. We’re short on parts, though.”
The downside of just-in-time inventories. The radars, in particular, were burning through spares. Power supply cards, analog-to-digital coverters, switch tubes, crossfield amplifiers. They’d been radiating at a high-duty cycle and peak power more or less 24/7 since the Indian Ocean… “Did you read Premier Zhang’s ultimatum, Amy?”
Singhe pursed her lips. “I did, sir. One: no American ally will be attacked unless it attacks China, or refuses to provide rights of passage. Two: forces capable of delivering nuclear weapons will be dealt with ‘by any means necessary.’ Three: any act of aggression against Chinese soil will be answered by a similar level of destruction visited on the American homeland.”
“He ‘won’t attack,’ but they’re landing on the Senkakus right now.”
She shrugged, so gracefully he could imagine those smooth brown shoulders naked. “It doesn’t matter what he says. We’re at war.”
“I agree. Do we have Stuttgart and Curtis Wilbur yet?”
“They’re in radar silence. We won’t pick them up until they push over our horizon.”
Dan twisted back toward Wenck. “Donnie, how’s the Terror doing?”
Wenck dropped his gaze. But murmured, “She’s holding up, Skipper. But I’m gonna take her next watch.”
Dan kept the command seat warm for the next hour, watching the screen gradually populate with additional aircraft and small surface units as Savo’s radars could peer farther over the curve of the planet, toward the mainland. Most clustered around the largest island in the Senkaku group, but there was a lot of air activity over the mainland. Anything the SPY-1 could paint at that range had to be at least medium-bomber size, and at a high altitude. So the coastal defenses were at a high state of alert. The EWs were reporting radar and comm activity from those bearings, too.
In contrast, little showed above Taiwan. They were husbanding their effort, no doubt. Like the lull before the Battle of Britain. No point burning fuel and maintenance hours, when their interceptors and fighters — mainly F-5s, F-16s, and Mirages — might soon be the only shield between them and invasion.