“Retainer, we’re getting fire from the shore again.”
“Roger, Moondog. Tuck your head in. We’re layin’ it on ‘em. Retainer Zero Two. Suppressive fire in the beach. Select target and fire. One round Hydra each.”
“Roger, Zero One. On the way.” Save your powder, Hoss, Arkady thought grimly, for the death hug’s a-comin’.
He laid the helo’s thermal sights in on a reed bank along the muddy shore. He’d been seeing stealthy movement in there for the past couple of minutes, and he doubted that it was a beaver colony. The Hydra blazed and the wall of reeds shredded and flattened as if under the sweep of some gigantic scythe. Zero Two’s round kicked up a haze of muddy spray farther downstream.
“How’s that, old buddy?”
“That’s put the fear of God back in‘, Retainers. Thanks.”
That weary voice on the other end of the CSAR circuit sounded as if it was coming from the loneliest place on Earth.
Arkady groped for something valid to say under the restrictions of radio discipline, just to keep him talking.
“How’s your S.O. doing, Moondog?”
“Bub’s still breathing, Retainer. She’s still hangin’ in there.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“You won’t be so glad to hear this, Retainer. I think we’re drifting in closer to shore.”
Arkady swore under his breath. “Stand by, Moondog. I’m going to see what’s holding up the cab.” He toggled over to the air operations channel. “Gray Lady, Gray Lady. We need an ETA on that recovery helo. Things are getting tight out here!”
“There isn’t going to be a helo, Retainer,” Amanda Gar rett’s voice came back levelly. “We are going to have to come upriver and make the recovery ourselves. We are transiting the mine barrier now. Barring delays, we should be up with you in about another forty-five minutes. You will have to hold until then.”
“Roger, Gray Lady.” There was nothing else to say.
“Bearing is still three hundred degrees true, Captain,” the bridge helmsman announced. “The passage corridor is still trending north.”
“I see it,” Amanda said, peering over his shoulder into the navigation screen. “The Reds put a dogleg in the corridor to make things difficult. Watch for the turn. And watch for the shallows. We’re going to start running tight on water as we get over to the far side of the channel.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Even a Red Chinese ship, with a port minesweeper running interference and a pilot with a marked set of mine charts at the helm, would find this tricky maneuvering. Not to mention that a Communist vessel would not have to worry about being fired on.
The windscreen wipers were hissing softly, just as they had been the last time they had penetrated into these waters. Only, this time the mist engulfing the Cunningham was of her own creation. High-pressure water jets on her weather decks and upper works were soaking down her decks and hazing the air around her, hopefully smothering any thermal signature that she might be leaving.
“Stealth systems.”
“Stealth systems, aye.”
“How does the local radar environment look, Mr. Mekelsie?”
“Still sterile. We’ve killed ‘all, Captain. Nobody out there is looking for us.”
“Acknowledged.”
He was wrong, of course. The Cunningham was just starting to creep past the southern headland of the estuary. There would be a lot of hostile eyes out on the dark bulk of that headland. Eyes that would be alert and staring into the night for the next indication of their enemy.
Don’t pay any attention to us, Amanda silently said to them. We’re just a shadow on the sea.
They were spotted because they were a shadow on the sea.
No radar detected them. No high-tech thermographic spotted their passing. But there was a sentry at his station in a bunker on the southern headlands. Ever since the start of the bombing raid on Shanghai, he had been peering warily into the night.
There was little to be seen. The only light anywhere within his field of vision was a single flickering patch of illumination low to the north-northwest. The sentry had seen the flash of manmade lightning that had given birth to it. A cruise missile hit on the radar station on Jiuduan Sha Island. Now a fire burned in the wreckage.
As the sole spark in the darkness, it had the tendency to draw the sentry’s attention. Thus, he noticed instantly when the spark went out. Something moving at sea level had just occulted it. After a few moments, it reappeared as that something moved on. The sentry picked up his field phone and began to speak urgently into it.
Elsewhere in the night, gleaming steel gun barrels lifted out of camouflaged emplacements. With a predatory howl of hydraulics, they began to index across the sky.
“Bridge!” Ken Hiro’s voice barked from the overhead speaker. “Channel is turning to port!”
“We see it, Ken!” Amanda dashed back behind the steering station. “Helm, come left to two six … make it two six five. Smartly, now!”
“Coming left to two six five, Captain!”
“Okay, we’re coming around … Two seven five … two seven zero … Okay, meet her! Steady as you go! Watch it! You’re off-angling in the channel!”
Amanda’s hands flashed to the throttles and propeller controls, trimming the propulsor pod outputs, kicking the Duke’s stern over. With agonizing slowness, the Duke’s position hack realigned itself between the rows of wide-set mines.
Amanda and both of the hands at the helm console shared a shaky breath. Straightening, Amanda rested her hands on their shoulders for a moment.
“CIC, this is the bridge. We’re around the dogleg and back in the groove. How much more of this?”
“Maybe another half a click,” Christine Rendino replied.
“This minefield is humongous! There must be thousands of them out there!”
“And all it takes is one,” Amanda whispered under her breath.
Abruptly, the mines became the least of her worries.
Something rumbled in the distance. A few seconds later, a whispering whine began to grow in the air, building swiftly into an express-train roar that swept overhead. The roar terminated in a series of crackling thuds and a flickering glare that shredded the night.
Someone on the bridge swore as the harsh metallic light stabbed at their eyes. A row of four meteorlike balls of flame were arcing down into the river off the destroyer’s starboard bow.
“Bridge! This is the CIC. Our night optics just went down! Captain, what’s going on up there?”
“Starshells, Ken,” she snapped into her command mike. “Someone just put a pattern of starshells over us. We’re spotted, sure as anything. Lieutenant Beltrain, can we increase speed while maintaining image clarity on the mine hunting sonar?”
“No way, Captain. We push it and we’ll start to degrade from flow noise.”
“Dix. Bring up Sea SLAMs and Oto Melaras. Stand by to initiate counterbattery fire. There’s going to be a fight.”
The guns were old, coastal-defense twin mounts forged over fifty years before in the Soviet Union. They had been adequately maintained, however, and their current generation of gunners had drilled for long hours for this moment. To a shouted loading cadence, hydraulic rams drove a second set of 152-millimeter illumination rounds into their chambers.
Breechblocks slammed shut and the tubes lifted and traversed again.
Cannoneers fell back and pressed gloved hands over their ears. Triggers were squeezed and another shell group shrieked on their way.