They patrolled through seven- to eight-foot seas black as gangrened flesh. Long, deep seas, along the troughs of which he could look for hundreds of yards. Squalls spattered on the windscreen. The wipers whipped the raindrops away. Everyone on the bridge was in heavy sweaters or bulky green foul-weather jackets. Around noon the lead helo pilot, “Strafer” Wilker, came up to give him his cap, which Dan had apparently left on the mess decks, and to brief him on whether they were going to be able to operate. Dan watched him sway to the roll in his flight suit, palms clamped over elbows, and wondered why pilots were so different from surface officers. Perhaps their DNA was the same, but that was about all. “So, why ‘Strafer’?” Dan couldn’t help asking.
“Oh, I happened to come in a little too low once, on a pass over a reviewing stand.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “I see. Well, we might need you in an antiship role.”
Wilker looked out toward the corvette. Savo was plodding south, so the distant dot winked on and off out on their port beam. “We got Hellfires. Like, you mean, this guy? Or is he a friendly?”
“Him? I think he’s more of a … well, I don’t really know yet.” Dan explained his argument with the Israeli. “My impression is, he’s waiting for orders. The main threat I’m looking at is antiship missiles from shore. But we might see small boats, a leaker.” He massaged his eyes. “Even a Syrian patrol boat.”
“Coffee, Captain?” The boatswain, Nuckols, stone-faced, with the stainless-steel ovoid of the bridge pot.
“Yeah, top me up. — Main thing that worries me is a trawler. Like what happened to Horn.”
“Not sure I recall that, sir. Heard something about it, but—”
“A dirty bomb in a trawler. It looked like a plain old fishing boat. But it wasn’t.” He blinked and swallowed, looking out to sea. Hell, was that a swirl of snow? No, just spray. The bridge heaters clanked and popped, but he still shivered. Having a helo patrolling out there with infrared vision, a laser designator, 50 cals and five-mile-standoff missiles, even if the warheads weren’t quite big enough to take out a ship, would definitely make him sleep better. “How close are we getting to your wind limits?”
Strafer broke out a blue plastic-backed NATOPs manual from a cargo pocket and went over the diagrams. The limiting factor was pitch and roll. Savo had the RAST sled, a car that ran on rails on the flight deck. It was designed to winch the helo down out of the sky if they had to land in heavy seas. Dan had seen it get very white-knuckled at times. “I know this isn’t the best weather we could have. But I’ve got to launch you,” he told the pilot.
Strafer shrugged. “I’ll tell you if I think it’s not safe. But you’re the guy who bottom line says go or no go. If it’s an operational necessity.”
“Well, I definitely want your input on that. Ideally, I’d like two missions per twenty-four-hour cycle. One starting an hour before dawn. The other, at dusk. That’s when we’ll be most vulnerable. Fly a circle, but with the wider radius to shoreward. The rest of the time, maintain as close to a five-minute standby as you can get.”
“When we launch. Armed? Hellfire?”
“Absolutely. Hellfire, EW, and FLIR. But stay data-linked. And I retain positive control. Weapons are tight unless specifically released. Unless you’re attacked, of course — that’s in your rules of engagement.”
“How long? Our endurance is four hours.”
“If you can do two four-hour patrols a day, that’d be great. But I won’t hold you to that. Two hours at dawn, two at dusk would make me happy. Don’t push so hard you degrade. Clear?”
Wilker nodded and left. Dan mused for a while, then crooked a finger at the OOD. “Hermelinda?”
“Yes sir.” She came over, still clutching her binoculars to her chest.
“I was down on the mess decks this morning, and I saw the same kid scraping trays in the scullery as last time I was there. That duty gets rotated, right?”
“I’m not sure who you mean, sir.”
“I mean, make sure your crank duty gets rotated, okay? Don’t let the divisions send you the same bodies over and over. Some of ’em’ll do that if you don’t stir the pot.”
He settled back into the padded seat, and the next thing he knew, he didn’t know anything at all.
He woke with a snort and a flinch, realizing he’d been snoring. He cleared his throat and swung down, catching sidelong glances from the bridge team. Not sharp, Dan. A skipper was human, he needed to sleep, but it didn’t help to do it in front of the crew. “Captain’s off the bridge,” he heard as the door closed, and waited, listening for chuckles, or any comment loud enough to hear.
But neither came, and he stopped at his cabin and shaved, then nosed himself and decided he could use a quick washup, too. A Navy shower: a quart to wet down, the shower turned off; lather up thoroughly; one last quart to rinse off. He threw his coveralls back on and rattled down the ladder to Combat. He was pulling up the SH-60B Tactical Manual on the LAN for a quick review when his Hydra beeped. He snatched it, heart instantly accelerating. “Skipper.” Beside him Mills glanced over from the TAO position.
“Sir, this is Sid Tausengelt. Where are you right now?”
“In CIC.”
“Be there in five.”
“What’ve you got, Master Chief?”
“Better in person, Captain.”
What fresh hell? He checked the vertical displays. Air and surface traffic had vanished east of Cyprus. Even the regularly scheduled commercial airlines had cancelled or diverted. The shadow of war lay across the Mideast. He checked the stats on Aegis. The system was at 87 percent. Not great, but not quite mission-compromising, either.
Tausengelt’s seamed visage appeared, lit from below, back by Sonar. He peered around the darkened space uncertainly, then felt his way forward. Dan wondered if the older man was losing dark adaptation. Then he oriented, homed in, lifted his chin, and Dan saw that Chief Van Gogh was behind him. Zotcher as well. The sonar chief was in an ivory plastic neck brace. He glowered at Dan.
“Captain,” the command master chief muttered, “you real busy?”
Dan wanted nothing less than to go into this, but nodded and got up. But Tausengelt motioned him back down and sidled past. He said a few words to Amy Singhe, who was perched on a stool in the Aegis area. Dark eyebrows knitted; she looked past him at Dan; her face darkened. She nodded abruptly, and stood.
“What is all this, Master Chief?”
The ship’s senior enlisted said, “Can we talk out in the passageway, sir? And I wanted the lieutenant there too. ’Cause, basically, it’s mostly about her.”
“Have you taken this up with Commander Staurulakis, Master Chief? She’s the department head. And the XO?”
“Sir, with all due respect, I think this is becoming a CO-level matter,” Tausengelt said with great dignity. The others, behind him, nodded.
Dan told Mills where he’d be, and followed the command master chief and the others to an equipment room. A petty officer was hunched over a pulled-out rack with a tester. Tausengelt asked him gravely if he’d give them a few minutes. Wide-eyed, he slotted the computer blade back into place and left. Singhe stood with arms folded, glaring with such dark intensity that she seemed to be radiating in the far infrared. The three chiefs ranged themselves opposite her. “What’s this little kangaroo court?” she said harshly, before anyone else could speak. “Should I have representation?”