“Officer of the Deck, come left to zero nine zero,” she commanded. “All engines ahead full. Make turns for thirty knots.”
Tightly gripping the ready mike, Ken Hiro leaned in over the communications console, totally focused on the speaker.
The command team in the Combat Information Center had reconfigured to deal with the situation. Dixon Beltrain covered both the tactical officer’s and the captain’s stations while Christine Rendino hovered at Hire’s elbow, ready to relay status reports or instructions as needed.
“Flag boat to all squadron elements, initiate surface search sweep to the east. Flag boat to Five Nineteen. We do not show any uncoordinated targets on our screen. Can you verify your contact?”
Hire’s mind raced.
“Nineteen to Squadron Flag. We believe that the target was an American … ” Jesus God! What was the Mandarin word for “stealth”? “… low-observability warship. Target has broken contact at this time. We are endeavoring to relocate visually.”
“What’s going down, sir?” Christine Rendino whispered.
“The Reds were wondering why they weren’t picking up any bogeys on their radar. I explained it away by saying we were in pursuit of a Cunningham-class stealth destroyer.”
“Too radical! We’re chasing ourselves out here.”
The Duke raced away from the mouth of the estuary, holding pace with the search line of Communist fast-attack boats, an elephant using technological guile to merge in with a herd of gazelles. Vince Arkady maintained his over watch position behind the helm station. Looking ahead, he saw Amanda silhouetted against the glow of the repeater banks, studying the tactical displays with a fierce intensity.
“CIC to bridge. Mr. Hiro reports that the Reds are increasing speed to thirty-five knots and are going up on their hydrofoils.”
“Acknowledged,” Amanda curtly replied to the speaker call. “Mr. Arkady, make turns for thirty-five knots. Stealth systems, bring a blip enhancer on line. Increase apparent RCS and return strength by fifty percent.”
Arkady quietly relayed the engine command to the lee helmsman. Just as the radar cross section of the Communist fast-attack craft would increase as they became foil-borne, so would the Cunningham as she bent on speed. Their masquerade would hold a while longer.
Arkady circled the helm station and moved up alongside Amanda at the repeater bank. Leaning forward as if to study the displays, he let his forearm brush lightly against hers for a moment.
“I’ve blown it, Arkady,” she whispered. “I’ve blown it big time.”
“Keep rolling the dice, babe. We’ve still got money on the table.”
“Five Nineteen boat, shore stations have detected a radio distress beacon near your initial sighting location. Do you have further information on this?”
“They’re asking about a transponder signal,” Hiro reported. “It must be the one off the raft we dropped.”
“If in doubt, play stupid, sir,” Christine said.
“Yeah. Five Nineteen to Squadron Flag. We have no information on this.”
“Five Nineteen boat, can you yet confirm your sighting report?”
“Nineteen boat to Squadron Flag. We have not reacquired contact. Continuing to the east.”
Even through the filtering effect of the radio circuit, the Duke’s exec could detect the growing suspicion in the tone of the speaker at the far end.
“Nineteen boat, are you positive on your target identification?”
“Yes, Squadron Flag.”
“I think this guy suspects something’s screwy,” Hiro growled.
“Just watch it if he starts asking about who won the Chinese World Series, sir.”
“Nineteen boat, let me speak to Lieutenant Kang.”
“Ah, hell. The Lieutenant is on deck and unavailable at this time, sir.”
There was a decisive click over the loudspeaker.
“We’ve lost the carrier, sir,” the radioman reported. “The Reds have started to jump frequencies.”
“That’s it,” Hiro said, straightening. “They’ve burned us.”
“The penny just dropped with a loud, resounding clang, Skipper,” Christine Rendino reported regretfully. “They’ve figured out that we’ve been faking them.”
“Acknowledge. Kill the blip enhancer. Resume full stealth.”
Amanda gazed down into the bridge tactical display. A repeater of the big Alpha screen down in CIC, it provided her with a full visualization of the tactical environment. Even though the Duke was currently running radar silent, her direction-finder arrays were providing the next-best thing, the range and bearing on every Chinese energy emitter radiating in the area.
On that display, Amanda could see the Chinese fast-attack craft peeling off of their search line like fighter planes, angling south toward them.
“Officer of the Deck, come right to one three five degrees. All engines ahead flank.”
“Engines answering all ahead flank, ma’am. Heading one three five degrees.”
There were damn few ships in the world, large or small, with legs long enough to overtake the Cunningham when she was running flat out. Unfortunately, a Huchuan-class hydrofoil was one of those that could. More unfortunately still, so could the big Type 53 homing torpedoes they carried.
Amanda had ordered the turn to the southeast in an effort to gain distance on her enemies. However, even as she watched, the Red hydrofoils matched the course change and continued to close the range.
A touch of the repeater’s keypad and the call-up of a set of radar return strengths verified what she suspected. The Cunningham was well below the return minimums of the comparatively primitive “Skin Head” surface-search systems aboard the fast-attack craft. The hydrofoils were being vectored in by the more powerful Communist shore-based radars. Soon they’d have a solid enough bearing to start launching fish.
And there was absolutely nothing Amanda Lee Garrett could do about it.
She was constrained by the Fleet’s current operational Rules of Engagement, the ones that stated in effect, “Thou shall not return fire until fired upon.”
Violating ROE was a sure way for a naval officer to guarantee a court-martial. But, then again, what kind of career did she have left? She had just initiated a world-class international incident. All that remained now was the Duke and the safety of her crew.
Amanda smiled in cold self-irony and spoke into her headset mike. “Tactical Officer, bring up your HARM flights. We’re going to be killing some radars here in a second.”
Down in the CIC, Dix Beltrain made his ordnance-load selections, heating up the missile rounds and listening as the system-support operators verbally verified the opening of the cell doors in the Vertical Launch Arrays. As he prepared his birds to fly, he also prepared his own mind set.
Dix had badly fumbled the first live-fire engagement in which he had ever taken part. By self-admission, it had been due to a combination of fear and buck fever. Since then, though, he had developed his own method of overcoming himself.
It was the same kind of mental conditioning he had used in college when he was quarterbacking for Alabama’s Crimson Tide. Take up all of your fears, one at a time — the fear of death or injury, the fear of making a mistake, the fear of failure. Study each one until you are sure you recognize it for what it is. Then put it into a little box in the back of your brain, and don’t take it out again until after the crunch is over.
It worked for him. Dix had just finished locking the lid down when the threat boards on his console lit up.
“Square Tie radars shifting from search to target acquisition mode,” Frank Mckelsie announced from the stealth bay “We are being painted. HY 2 batteries preparing to fire.”