“We can be tracked from shore,” Noblos pointed out. “In fact, the EW chief told me we are being tracked — by that coastal radar in Tartus.”
Dan massaged his throat. He’d expected radar surveillance from Syria. After all, they were only about thirty miles off the coast at the north end of their patrol area. But what Noblos was suggesting was more ominous. “You’re saying they might pass cuing to Iraq.”
“Exactly. We share data with our Coalition allies. Why can’t Syria share with Iraq? They have landline connections. They’re both Ba’athist regimes. All they’d need is GPS coordinates and some kind of terminal homing on the missile. If they can take us out, along with Israel’s own BMD capability, Tel Aviv’s defenseless. At that point Saddam says, Yeah, I’m dirty, I do have WMDs — and I’ve got seven million Israelis as hostages.”
Dan slumped in his seat as he thought it through. The Syrians were supposed to hate Saddam. But did they hate him more than they loathed Americans and Israelis? Probably not. The modified Scud-Bs the Iraqis had employed in the Gulf War had been notoriously inaccurate. But since then, according to the informed speculation he was reading, both range and throw weight had been upgraded. Why not accuracy?
He shivered in his chair, but it had nothing to do with the air-conditioning. Actually, they didn’t even need terrific accuracy, in the old sense that the ballistic missileers had inherited from the artillery community. All they’d have to do was bolt on a radar-homing antiaircraft missile — like the ones the French and Soviets had sold them — as the upper stage. Dial in Savo’s track, relayed from the Syrian coastal radar — and fire. Savo Island would light up the path for her own attacker; Aegis was putting out so much energy, a homing warhead could fly right down the beam.
Unfortunately, there was no way to tell, until it was well into endoatmospheric phase, where a ballistic missile was aimed. And with the malfunctioning of her space tracking system, to calibrate against satellites of known altitude and speed, Savo’s track precision was itself in question.
“Doc, what about SCUS? It’s still degraded. The Block 4 warhead guides itself in terminal phase. But to predict point of impact, we’ve got to have track precision.”
“Correct. You can’t predict POI without SCUS.”
Noblos sounded so unconcerned, so lofty, Dan had to turn away and run his hands through his hair. He made himself turn back. “Well, maybe it’s better if we are the target. At least we’ll be decoying the missile away from population centers.”
Noblos shrugged. Looked over Dan’s head. Sniffled, and wiped his nose again. “Was there anything else?”
Dan sighed. “Guess not.” He shook his head at the scientist’s ramrod posture as he stalked away. Fucking … great. He just hoped they had some warning before the first missile lifted off its portable erector-launcher. And that their hastily upgraded Standards worked. A warhead coming in at them, at the velocities they were talking about, would be well beyond the intercept capabilities of anything else the Navy carried.
Someone cleared his throat behind him. The corpsman, Grissett, was holding a clipboard. “Yeah, Chief?”
“Sir, you asked me to let you know if we saw any more respiratory illness. I’ve got a sick-call case with mild fever and a good deal of congestion. One of the helo crew.”
Not without an effort, Dan extracted his head from ballistics and radar. “Uh, right. We’re seeing a lot of that, seems like. Flu? Like what Doc Noblos had?”
“No sir. This looks like just a bad cold. He says he probably picked it up on the carrier. That makes sense. On a long deployment, whenever you have liberty the troops tend to bring back these minor upper-respiratory infections. On a small ship, they burn out quick. On something the size of a carrier, they can pass it around for quite a while. I’m keeping an eye on him.”
“Actually … is there any way we can isolate him until he’s not infectious? We’re so shorthanded up here, even passing a cold around could degrade readiness.”
The corpsman shrugged and said he could check him into sick bay, but it was probably already too late; the mechanic had been walking the passageways for two days now. “But you asked me to report.”
“Right, I did. Thanks, Doc.” Dan checked his watch, suddenly conscious the cinnamon buns had worn off. 0700. “Cher, I’m going down to breakfast. I’ll leave my Hydra on.”
Savo plowed on through the morning, bucking seven-foot seas and the occasional snow flurry. Dan told Almarshadi to scrub all training and relax berthing restrictions. If people weren’t on watch, he wanted them to catch up on sleep or maintenance. He’d love to get his own head down, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards. High-side chat said both Lebanon and Syria had filed protests about Savo Island’s presence so close to their coasts. Dan filed that for reference, but not without wondering why Lebanon was even bothering to get its stick in.
At 1000 Branscombe called to ask if he wanted a CNN feed to the mess decks. After a few seconds’ consideration, Dan said no, at least not for the moment. He wanted everyone’s head on his or her own job, not on what was going on to the east. There, the Army was punching hard into southern Iraq. The Air Force was laying down ordnance across the country, hitting command and control, trying to decapitate the regime.
How would “decapitation,” if they could pull it off, affect his mission? If the Iraqi command structure got turned into shredded meat in a bunker, what were the enemy’s rocket forces’ standing orders? Stand down? Acquiesce in occupation? Or unleash a last spasm of destruction? The last sounded a lot more likely.
He’d just socketed the J-phone when Almarshadi undogged the bridge door, shaking snow off his foul-weather jacket. A few flakes blew in with him. Dan returned his salute gravely. The XO sighed, glanced at the OOD, and sidled close. At some unseen signal the rest of the bridge team drifted to the starboard side, giving them privacy, as long as they kept their voices low.
Which his second in command did. “Sir, we’ve scrubbed down the LAN. That … program … is no longer available on it. And we made sure there’s no backup. At least on the ship’s network.”
“There’s no backup on the LAN? What if the downlink goes … wait a minute. You’re talking about that fucking rape game.”
“Yessir. Sorry, I wasn’t clear.”
“My bad, my head was on something else I have to talk to Dave B. about. If you see him, send him up. So, you don’t think I was overreacting? There seemed to be a lot of resentment among the female crew.”
“No sir, that was probably the right call. Considering … I guess, considering how ready everybody seems to be to jump on anything like that these days.” He pulled paper from inside his jacket. “Here’s the list you wanted. Everyone who accessed or downloaded it. The game kept a players list, so you could see how your, um … scores … compared with the others. That’s the number to the right of the name. Where it says ‘player,’ ‘thug,’ ‘hustla,’ ‘gangsta,’ ‘baller,’ that’s your ranking.”
Dan didn’t want to know how you got points in a game called Gang Bang Molly. He almost said just shred it, but at last accepted it. The list wasn’t as long as he’d feared. Maybe a dozen names, and all junior enlisted. No chiefs. One first-class petty officer. Carpenter, of course, was the high scorer. Benyamin was number two. He grunted. “Okay. What do we do with this?”
“Do you want to take disciplinary action, sir?”
“Of course we do, XO. I don’t give a shit about swimsuit posters in the work spaces, the women can put up beefcake too. But a rape game’s over the line. Tell me if you disagree.”