The gunner, an electrician’s mate by the ratings badge on his dungaree shirt, activated his targeting scope and gun-mount drives, the gyrostabilizers coming on line with a mosquito whine. His loader, a signalman, hogged reload cases closer to the gun while the yeoman/talker fitted a headset over her ears. “Tower four manned and ready,” she reported into the lip mike. She listened for a moment and then enunciated forcefully, “Three targets incoming… Bearing three… one… zero.”
The gunner nestled his shoulders into the curved rests of the Bushmaster and pressed his face into the night-vision sight, the pale green light leaking from the eyepieces drawing a luminescent raccoon-mask pattern on his face. Twisting the control grips, he drifted the long, wicked-looking barrel of the autocannon onto the bearing. Amanda lifted her own glasses to her eyes and acquired the Union vessels.
There they were again: the rakish, boxy silhouette of the Promise, the cabin-cruiser sleekness of the Allegiance, and the spare minimalism of the Chinese-built Unity. The three big Union gunboats were running in line astern, parallel to the platform at about a two-thousand-yard range. Amanda’s binoculars had enough magnification and light-gathering power to show that the gunboats had their main batteries trained outboard and leveled at the platform.
But then, they had done the same on all of the other nights as well.
A carrier clicked in Amanda’s command headset and Lieutenant Tony Marlin whispered in her ear. “Captain. Do you want us to get the Manassas ready for launch?”
“Negative, Tony,” she replied, lowering the glasses and keying her mike. “Continue with your maintenance. That’s a priority. Although I’m afraid that you and your sea crew will be doing all the work tonight.”
“We’ll manage, Captain. But it’ll sure be great to get back out on patrol again so we can get some sleep.”
A sputtering streamlet of sparks arced upward from the lead gunboat, bursting in midair between the Union flotilla and the platform. A magnesium flare glared down from the sky. The gunner jerked his head back from his sights as the photomultiplier overloaded momentarily before ramping down. “Dammit all,” he swore under his breath. “This is the fourth night in a row for this shit! What do these guys think they are doing out here?”
“They’re trying to wear us down, Carlyle,” Amanda replied. “Harassing us. Keeping us awake. Trying to make us get sloppy and careless. It’s an old trick. Back during the Second World War, during the Guadalcanal campaign, the Japanese had a couple of big seaplanes that they’d fly over our positions at night. Our people nicknamed them ‘Louie the Louse’ and ‘Washing Machine Charlie.’ They’d circle for hours on end, running their engines out of synch and dropping small nuisance bombs, just to deny our people sleep.”
“We going to let these guys get away with it, Captain?”
“There’s nothing much we can do, except take it. We’re still at fire only if fired upon. They get to make all the faces at us they like.”
The gun boss muttered under his breath into his gunsights. Amanda smiled briefly. “Don’t worry,” she added. “They can’t keep this up forever. Those gunboats burn diesel every time they come out. We can catch up on our sleep on our next leave, but there’s no way for Belewa to replace that oil.”
The Union warships continued their deliberate intimidating circuit, keeping their range and circling the platform. A second rocket flare arced over the platform, bursting and raining down its harsh metallic light. By it, Amanda could see the mounts atop the other gun towers tracking silently. On the roof of the PG hangar, the Marines had deployed Javelin and Stinger antitank and antiair missile launchers. Amanda recognized Stone Quillain’s rangy silhouette as he hunkered beside one of the missileers.
Other navy gun parties crouched behind sandbag revetments along the platform edges, manning Mark 19s and Ma Deuce 50s. Marine fire teams warily prowled the decks as well, alert for stealthy boarding attempts. As Amanda looked on, one Marine unhooked something from his MOLLE harness. Cocking back his arm, he threw an object into the sea.
A dull thud sounded off the platform and a jet of spray shot into the air, sparkling in the fading flare light. A concussion grenade hurled to discourage any sabotage-intent combat swimmers attempting to approach the platform underwater.
Amanda keyed her headset. “Command Tower, this is Captain Garrett. Let me speak with Commander Gueletti, please.”
“Gueletti here, Captain.”
“Looks like it’s going to be another long night, Steve. I suggest we go to a fifty percent stand-down at battle stations. Let’s let our people get what rest they can.”
“I concur, Captain. Going to fifty percent stand-down at battle stations. I’ve got the cooks working on battle rations and hot coffee as well. We’ll get some out to you presently.”
“Good thinking, Steve. Thank you.”
Amanda glanced over at the young female talker on the gun crew. “Give me the headset, Yeoman. I’ll be up here for a while, so you might as well get some rest.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” Amanda exchanged her light mobile headset for the heavier hardlinked earphones the young rating passed to her. The enlisted hand then curled up in a corner of the platform, using her heavy foam and Kevlar battle vest as a pillow. Over on the other side of the mount, the loader stretched out on the deck as well; Carlyle, the gunner, elected to stand to.
The TACBOSS and the electrician’s mate maintained the silent watch.
The night wind brushed lightly at Amanda’s cheek. Distractedly she noted that it was blowing from the northeast, an unusual point of the compass for this part of the world. The trades along the African Gold Coast usually came up from the diametric opposite, the southwest. Amanda frowned for a moment, then shrugged the puzzlement away, returning her attention to the circling gunboats.
Washed out in the glare of the falling star shells, a faint flicker backlit the clouds along the seaward horizon. Lightning stirred far away.
Beyond Amanda Garrett’s awareness, a vast but subtle convulsion of nature was taking place as she kept her watch that night.
The first of a series of exceptionally strong high-pressure ridges was marching across the North Atlantic, not only initiating a series of savage winter storms in western Europe but also temporarily distorting the entire global weather pattern. The Atlantic Intertropical Convergence Zone, the perennial low-pressure belt that separated the westerly trade winds of the Northern Hemisphere from the easterlies of the Southern, was being pushed southward by almost a thousand miles. From its usual African landfall at Cape Verde, it was shifting to a point along the coast of Gabon.
While the convergence zone, once known to the world’s mariners as “The Doldrums,” is generally known as a region of still airs and light winds, it is also recognized as a generator of sharp and angry squall zones and raging thunderstorms. One such tropical depression began to form off the Gabonese coast. Trapped between the trade-wind zones and unable to push inland over the continent, it hovered sullenly over the equator for the next ten days, a vast clot of stagnant cloud cover, absorbing moisture and thermal energy like an overcharging battery, growing steadily in size and strength.
Then, as abruptly as it had come into being, the extensive high-pressure area over the North Atlantic dissipated and the standard global weather patterns reasserted themselves. The Atlantic convergence snapped back to its apportioned place and the southern Trades swept northward to the Gold Coast once more, shouldering the Gabon depression ahead of them.