“As you command, Captain.”
The brass spokes of the Raqqah’s wheel glinted in the CRT glow as they spun to the new heading and the corvette’s sharp-edged prow raked the wave crests as she made her turn.
Three miles closer shoreward, from a position atop a semisubmerged sandbar that paralleled the Syrian coastline, two watchful pairs of eyes caught the flash of reflected moonlight as the bow of the Tarantul IV-class corvette came around.
“He’s repeating his sweep,” Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey “Steamer” Lane commented from the Queen of the west’s pilot’s station. “That guy knows something’s up.”
“Um-hum,” Amanda Garrett agreed from the copilot’s seat. “We can live with ‘something,’ Steamer. Just as long as he isn’t sure about us.”
Amanda twisted around, looking back at the third occupant of the PGAC (Patrol Gunboat Air Cushion) 02’s cockpit. “How about it, Mr. Selkirk? Anything new to report on our Syrian friend out there?”
Seated at the navigator’s console, the intel glanced up at Amanda’s words, the screen glow glinting off the upraised night-vision visor of his helmet. “There are no situational changes, Captain,” he replied with the scholarly sobriety that was his usual operating mode. “Signal intelligence indicates a series of rapid frequency and power shifts on his radars but no scan-rate changes. He’s hunting, but he isn’t finding anything.”
Amanda nodded thoughtfully. Lieutenant Gerald Selkirk was one of Christine Rendino’s pups, hand-raised in the raven’s roost of the Cunningham, Amanda’s old command. If she couldn’t have Chris at her side this night, Selkirk was a strong second best.
“Anything on his communications bands?”
“Nothing detected beyond his standard half-hour radio checks.”
Amanda nodded once more, her eyes narrowing. The Syrian was uneasy, but not yet so uneasy that he was calling for help. They still had time, she judged, at least a little.
“How long do we have until recovery?”
Selkirk checked the time line display hack on his panels. “Seven minutes and forty-five seconds until unit recovery, three minutes and forty-five seconds until we get the boundary warning and approach call.”
Lane chuckled in the semidark of the cockpit. “You have a great deal of confidence in that glorified Frisbee, Ger.”
“There’s no reason not to, Commander,” Selkirk replied stiffly. “We received the deployment verification prompt, right on the dot, and the NSA reports they have good signals from the ground sensors. The Cipher will recover as per the ops plan.”
The intel made it sound as if he would see to the errant machine personally if it failed to measure up.
Lane chuckled again. “We’ll see…. Yo, Scrounge!”
“Yes, sir?” Chief Petty Officer Sandra “Scrounger” Caitlin stuck her attractive brown-haired head up through the ladderway access into the main hull.
“Pass the word to button up and look alive. We’re blowing this pop stand. Initiate main engine-start sequence! Stand by to answer bells!”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The Queen’s chief of the boat dropped out of sight.
“Loud and straight up the middle, Steamer?” Amanda inquired, calling up the copilot’s checklist on her console screens.
“That’s how I’d suggest doing it, ma’am. Sure as hell, we’re going to attract attention when we take Ger’s dingbat back aboard, either from the beach or from that spooky Syrian missile boat. I’d rather have us moving than sitting when we break stealth. Besides, that thing recovers better when we have some wind over the deck.”
“I concur on all points, Mr. Lane. Light us up and get us under way.”
One of the most critical secrets Amanda Garrett had learned during her career was to know when to pass the baton of command to a subordinate. She might be the TACBOSS of the Sea Fighter Task Force as a whole, but Steamer Lane was master of both the USS Queen of the West and of Patrol Gunboat Air Cushion Squadron 1. No officer in the Navy knew more about the capabilities and limitations of the deadly Sea Fighter hovercraft than did the sandy-haired California surfer who sat to her left.
The light patterns shifted on the power panels, yellow to green, as the turbine techs brought the Queen’s four massive Avco Lycoming TF 40C fanjet power plants to the edge of life. They’d crept in to ground on this sandbar, running on the Queen’s silent electric auxiliary propulsors. They would blast out to sea again on the eleven-foot ducted airscrews of the primary drive.
Amanda called up the tactical command channel on her helmet lip mike. “Frenchman, Rebel, Possum One, this is the Lady. Royalty is preparing to execute recovery and departure. We are on the time line. Report status?”
“Rebel to Lady. On station. Boards green. Ready to cover.”
Lieutenant Tony Marlin’s hard-edged voice replied from over the horizon. There, the PGAC 04 USS Manassas drifted, standing by to act in support of her squadron leader.
“Frenchman to Lady. Same here. We’re good too.”
The response was milder, easier going, the voice of Lieutenant Sigmund Clark of the PGAC 03 USS Carondelet, the third hull of the Sea Fighter squadron.
“Possum One is standing by. ECM aerostat streamed. All drones on station. Ready to initiate coverage jamming.”
Amanda could not put a face to this voice. It was one of the watch standers in the Combat Information Center of their mother ship, the USS Evans F. Carlson. This was the task force’s first deployment aboard the San Antonio-class LPD and she was still learning this mammoth new addition to her command.
“Lady acknowledges. All elements stand by.”
At the navigator’s station, Selkirk leaned into his screens. “We have the boundary acquisition signal,” he announced.
“Good ’nuff,” Lane responded.
“And right on the mark, too, sir,” Selkirk concluded, aiming his comment at the back of Steamer’s head.
“I’ll buy the dingbat a beer next time we hit Haifa, Ger. Crank ’em up, Captain!”
“Engine start sequence.” Amanda keyed the row of engine initiators with a single press of her fingertips. Blue flame danced behind the blurring blades of the gas turbines, and the still Mediterranean night was cut by the rising kerosene-fired scream of the compressors.
“Cranking… cranking… cranking…” Amanda chanted, watching the tachometer and pyrometer bars. “Ignition! Four green lights. Clean starts. We have power!”
“Put her on the pad!” Lane acknowledged with a new command.
Amanda came forward on the lift throttles. Moan segued in with scream as the lift fans pressurized the plenum chamber beneath the Queen’s flattened, boatlike hull. The Kevlar chamber skirts inflated and, with a flurry of spray and sand, the ninety-foot length of the Sea Fighter lifted off the semisubmerged coastal bank, riding on a thin friction-free surface of compressed air. An armed derivative of the Navy’s LCAC air-cushion landing craft, she had been built to take advantage of waters like these.
“On the pad, Steamer.”
“Acknowledged. We’re movin’ out.” Lane rolled the propeller controls and drive throttles ahead. Twin penta-bladed airscrews dug in and the Queen was under way, slipping off her grounding point and accelerating into the night.
The shadowed smear of the Syrian coast with its scattering of shore light began to fall away at the end of the Queen’s scant wake.
“Steer three-double-oh, Steamer. Let’s get a little range from that Tarantul. Mr. Selkirk, bring our little friend home.”