“Excellent,” the captain said. “You kids have done your homework.
One final question before recess …” Something caught his attention: the sound of approaching footsteps. He held up a hand. “Just a second.”
Lieutenant (junior grade) Mitchell Hayes walked up to the little group.
He came to an abrupt stop about two paces away from Bowie, drew himself up to attention, and snapped out a salute. “Sir! All equipment checks and communications checks are complete. The boats are ready and at the rail. VBSS teams Blue and Gold are manned and ready to deploy.”
Captain Bowie returned the salute. “At ease, Mitch.”
Lieutenant (jg) Hayes relaxed his posture a notch and held a radio headset out to Bowie. “Your crypto is loaded and keyed, sir.”
The captain nodded and took the headset. “Thanks. Your teams can stand easy for a few minutes. We have to establish comms with our suspect vessel.”
“How are we going to do that, sir?” Ensign Harvey asked.
“We’re going to give them a little technical assistance in repairing their radio,” the captain said. He pulled the radio headset over his ears and positioned the throat mike in front of his mouth. When he was satisfied with the setup, he keyed the mike. “TAO, this is the Captain, over.”
The Tactical Action Officer’s voice came back in his ear a second later.
“Captain, this is the TAO. Read you Lima Charlie. Standing by for orders, over.”
Bowie keyed the mike again. “TAO, this is the Captain. Lay a 5-inch round across the bow of motor vessel Lotus Blossom. You have batteries released, over.”
“Captain, this is the TAO. I copy — lay a 5-inch round across the bow of suspect vessel. I understand I have batteries released, over.”
The captain reached into the pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a pair of flanged rubber earplugs: a standard part of the at-sea uniform.
“Well, kids … I suggest you put your hearing protection in.”
A few seconds later, the 5-inch gun mount spun ninety degrees to the left with a speed that seemed impossible for so large a machine. The rifled barrel of the large-bore cannon locked instantly on the bridge of the Lotus Blossom and tracked it with an eerie electro-mechanical precision, continuously making minute adjustments to compensate for the pitch and roll of the Towers and of her target. It hung there for a few seconds, and then suddenly it swung forty degrees to the right and fired. The ninety-six — pound steel projectile rocketed out of the barrel with a flash and a thunder that would have shamed a Norse god. Bowie knew that it had broken the sound barrier before it was even clear of the gun.
The shell impacted the water less than fifty yards off the Lotus Blossom’s bow, throwing up a surge of spray that looked like a golden fountain in the failing sunlight.
The spray had barely settled back to the wave tops when a voice came over Bowie’s headset radio. “Captain, this is the TAO. Apparently the motor vessel Lotus Blossom has repaired her bridge-to-bridge radio. Her captain is on Channel 16 screaming his head off in Arabic, over.”
Bowie smiled and keyed his mike. “TAO, this is the Captain. Put our interpreter on bridge-to-bridge Channel 16 and ask the motor vessel Lotus Blossom to kindly heave-to and drop anchor, over.”
“TAO, aye.”
Bowie looked at his small group of junior officers. Every one of them was grinning from ear to ear. “I do believe,” he said, “that those boys have managed to repair their radio.”
Forty minutes later, Lieutenant (jg) Hayes stood on the starboard bridge wing of MV Lotus Blossom and looked out across the five hundred yards of water that separated the old freighter from his own ship. The destroyer’s phototropic PCMS tiles were darkening steadily in response to the failing sunlight, making the warship’s squat angular profile increasingly more difficult to see as the sun went down. On the one hand, it was impressive to witness the technology at work. On the other hand, this mission was making Hayes nervous enough, without having to watch the vessel that represented home and safety pull a slow-motion disappearing act. Although the logical side of his mind was well familiar with the limitations of phototropic camouflage, his imagination harbored a tiny (and admittedly irrational) image of the ship continuing to fade until it vanished completely, perhaps with a tiny plop, like a soap bubble bursting.
Hayes turned his eyes back to the ship he was standing on and keyed the mike built into his headset, “Towers, this is VBSS Team Leader, over.”
Captain Bowie’s voice came back in his left earphone. “VBSS Team Leader, this is Towers. Standing by for your report, over.”
Hayes keyed the mike again. “Towers, this is VBSS Team Leader. VBSS Gold Team has secured the bridge and engineering spaces. The vessel’s crew is assembled on the fantail, under guard. The head-count is fourteen, that is one-four. VBSS Blue has completed an initial sweep of all spaces with the exception of the cargo holds, over.”
The captain’s voice came back. “Towers, aye. Say again your head-count for the crew, over.”
“Towers, this is VBSS Team Leader. Head-count is fourteen, that is one-four personnel, over.”
There was a brief pause before the reply came. “VBSS Team Leader, this is Towers. Be advised, the vessel’s paperwork indicates a crew of seventeen, that is one-seven personnel, over.”
“VBSS Team Leader, aye. My interpreter has been questioning Captain Isam on the matter. Supposedly, two of the crew jumped ship in Jakarta, and the third was medically evacuated at sea due to an apparent heart attack. We’ve asked for documentation on the changes to the crew manifest, but Captain Isam is putting a lot of effort into carefully misunderstanding our questions, over.”
“Towers, aye,” Captain Bowie’s voice said in his ear. “I’d say the good captain is giving you the runaround. His vessel is based out of Singapore.
Unless he’s fluent in Cantonese, it’s a pretty safe bet that he speaks English, over.”
Hayes wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a sleeve and grimaced when some of the stinging liquid found its way into his left eye.
He squinted and rubbed at the eye. “Towers, this is VBSS Team Leader, copy that and concur. GSM3 Rashid tells me that Captain Isam switches back and forth between Farsi and an Egyptian dialect of Arabic, depending on whichever gives him the best opportunity to be obscure and difficult.
The man is definitely taking us for a ride, over.”
“Towers, aye,” the captain said. “That’s why we’re boarding his vessel in the middle of the night, over.”
Lieutenant (jg) Hayes nodded to himself. “Roger that.”
Yusuf Isam, the captain of the Lotus Blossom, had been acting suspiciously almost from the second his ship had appeared on the Towers’ radar scopes. The issue of the three missing crew members was just the latest in a whole string of evasions, accidents, and deliberate misunderstandings on the part of the Arab captain and his crew.
In view of Isam’s evasive behavior, Hayes was in total agreement with Captain Bowie’s decision not to wait until morning to board the Lotus Blossom, despite the fact that he didn’t care for nighttime boardings. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the last sliver of the sun sink behind the horizon. He did not like this at all. The fact that he agreed with the necessity did not make him any more comfortable about being on an unfamiliar ship in the dark. Factor in the thinly veiled hostility of the crew, three of whom were missing, and the situation became even sketchier.