Vince Arkady shoved his chair back. “Captain, maybe I’d better get out there and have a look.”
Amanda caught him with a quick shake of her head.
“Hold it. Let’s see if this firms up a little more first.”
The remnants of lunch forgotten, they waited through the slow crawl of the minutes, sipping their beverages or toying with dessert as a nervous mess man began to clear the table.
The overhead speaker clicked again. “Wardroom. Sonar is reporting an underwater explosion.”
“Ours or theirs?” Someone quietly voiced the question.
Ken Hiro answered a moment later.
“Captain, we are receiving a distress call from the Po Yang. They have just been torpedoed. Position, twenty-two miles south-southwest of us.”
“Right! Ken, sound general quarters. Close the range with the Po Yang. All engines ahead full!” Amanda continued to snap out her stream of orders against the backdrop of the alarm klaxons. “Communications Room, make signal to the Po Yang: ‘Hold on. We are coming to assist you with all possible speed.’ Then get on line with Seventh Fleet. Repeat the sighting report and inform them of our intent. Ask if they can get us some additional support out here.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Her officers were poised around the table, awaiting her command. “Mr. Arkady, you’re with me for a second. The rest of you, stations! Let’s go!”
They scattered. The aviator was on his feet, straining at the leash, ready to move.
“Arkady, given the rate of knots we’re going to be turning, our passage noise is going to take our sonar arrays off line. We’ll be going in deaf. Get out there with both of the helos, assess the situation, and sterilize the area. Find me that sub!”
“Will do!” He gave her the briefest of nods, then he was gone, heading away to the hangar bay aft.
“Captain, this is the Communications Room. The Po Yang has just reported that she has been hit by a second torpedo. She’s gone off the air, and we’re receiving life-raft transponders on that bearing.”
“Acknowledged. I’m on my way down.”
In the hangar bay, the helipad elevator descended with a howl of hydraulics and a flare of warning lights.
“Go! Go! Go! Put your shoulders into it!”
Aviation ratings rolled Retainer Zero One forward out of its servicing spot and onto the lift. The Sea Comanche had been undergoing mission maintenance and other AC hands sidled along the helicopter’s flanks, securing access panels.
“Gus! Where are you?” Arkady bellowed as he ducked in through the entry hatch.
“Here, Lieutenant!” AC-1 Gregory “Gus” Grestovitch, Arkady’s systems operator, was already at his gear locker donning his flight equipment.
“What’s the pod status?”
“We’ve still got the package from this morning. MAD pod and a sonobuoy dispenser. Fifty-fifty mission mix: passive and active.”
“Okay. Have‘ upload a Mark 50 and a life raft. Expedite!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” The lanky AC snagged his helmet from the locker and dashed off to confer with the ordnance handling team. Arkady geared up himself. Moving onto the lift pad, he swung into Zero One’s forward cockpit and started his preflight.
He knew full well that his handling crews were working as rapidly as possible, but the Lady was counting on him.
Impatiently, he twisted around in his seat and watched as the life-raft pod and the little Barracuda antisubmarine torpedo were trundled into position under the helo’s snub wings. The ordnance hands were still shackling them up as the elevator began its rise to deck level.
The skies were clear, their blue paled by the blazing sun of a summer noon. A single cumulus dome rose on the north horizon. Its white color matched the occasional flash of foam on the wave crests and the long plume of wake trailing behind the Cunningham.
The Duke moved out. Heat shimmer boiled the air over the exhaust stacks and the decks shuddered as the propeller revs climbed. Amanda was driving her ship hard to reach the distressed crew of the Taiwanese frigate.
She was also stretching her tactical safety envelope right to the limit as well.
Dammit! He was supposed to be out there covering her.
“Come on! Let’s get this bird off the deck! Let’s move!”
The rotors were being swung out and locked into position.
The ordnance hands were backing away, waving the safety pin streamers overhead to verify that the stores were cleared to drop.
Grestovitch dropped into the rear cockpit and the canopy was slammed down.
“Gus, what’s Zero Two’s position within her search quadrant?”
“Lieutenant Delany was way out to the northeast, sir. Air One has got her turned around and headed for the contact now.”
“Ah, nuts! Stand by for engine start.”
“Set. The word is we’re going after a Chinese sub, sir.”
“We are, pal.”
“Word also is that they’ve already blown another can away.”
“They have.” Arkady flipped his throttles to the start detent and energized the starters. “Crank!”
“Captain’s in the CIC!”
“Okay, Ken. I’ve got her.”
“Captain has the con!”
Amanda dropped into the command chair and whipped it around to face forward toward the Alpha screen. “What’s our status?”
“The ship is at general quarters,” Hiro replied crisply from his position at her shoulder. “Steering one nine oh degrees true. All engines ahead full. Making turns for thirty seven knots.”
“Tactical Officer. Ordnance status?”
Dix Beltrain looked up from the master weapons station at Amanda’s right. “Port and starboard torpedo bays armed, ma’am. Vertical Launch ASROC flights are hot. The problem is, we don’t have a target.”
The story was written on the topaz expanse of the Aegis system’s Large Screen Display. The position hack of the doomed Nationalist frigate glowed dead ahead along the Cunningham’s course line. A graphics circle was looped around it, its radius being the maximum range of a Red Chinese Type 53 torpedo. Somewhere inside that line, the hunter-killer boat that had destroyed the Po Yang very possibly still lurked, silent and invisible. They would be sharing that space very soon.
A single Y-shaped helicopter symbol marked with a Cunningham ID hack hurried southward toward the zone. It would arrive in the target area ahead of the destroyer, but not by much.
“How about the Nationalist LAMPS helo, Dix?”
“It was apparently caught on the deck, Captain. He didn’t get off.”
“Zero One’s status?”
“Air One reports he’s arming up now. Arkady should be launching within the next couple of minutes.”
“Other available assets.”
“JSDF Orion has been diverted south, and Task Force 7.1 will be launching a Viking as soon as they can get one turned around and refueled. Both units should become factors within the next three quarters of an hour.”
“Damn, damn, damn. That’s not going to be soon enough.” Amanda tapped her fingernail on the arm of the captain’s chair. “Ken, before you head up to the bridge, I’d like your assessment of the situation. Yours too, Dix. Are the Reds going to hang around out there waiting for us, or are they going to beat it?”
Her exec shrugged. “That Red wolf pack is trying as hard as it can not to be found. When that Nationalist frigate chanced across them, they killed it. Now their primary concern is going to be to get lost again. They’ll go deep and try to clear the area running at good quiet.”
“That makes sense, ma’am,” Dix Beltrain added. “But on the other hand, they could have left a rear guard behind. One of the two attack boats might have dropped out of the formation. He could be hanging around out there in the surface duct, covering the withdrawal of the other two guys.”