He blinked and squinted again. To the northwest, off Cyprus, a red callout had suddenly popped. As he stretched for the keyboard, data bloomed. Dave Branscombe, the comm officer, newly installed in the TAO chair, had leaned forward to bring it up.
“Distress alert, Captain.”
“I see it.” He squinted harder, shading his eyes; damn, were they going fuzzy too? The comm officer’s keyboard rattled. The display zoomed in; the coast of Cyprus enlarged.
“Source of data’s GMDSS,” the lieutenant murmured. The global maritime distress and safety system, a satellite-based international network. “Automatic alert. SS Agia Paraskevi. Cruise ferry. Greek flag. Sixteen thousand tons. Capacity six hundred passengers.” More keys clicked, and an image came up: white hull, swept-back, winged funnel with a smoke deflector. Row after row of portholes, tiered decks, lidos … “Thirty miles off Cape Gata, reporting loss of power and flooding.”
“What the hell’s a cruise ship doing out in March?”
“A cruise ferry. Guess they still run during the winter. I’ll try them on HF distress.”
“Hold on a second, Dave. Exactly how far away are they?”
“Wait one … about a hundred and twenty miles. Course to intercept, 340.”
“Concur,” said a petty officer behind the TAO.
Dan stared at the image. They could be there in four hours at flank speed. No, four and a half, considering the sea state. But he was pinned to his station.
Against that, every tradition of the sea dictated that any ship within radio range had to respond to a bona fide distress call.
“Think it’s for real?”
Dan twisted, to find Ammermann behind him. The civilian staffer had borrowed a foul-weather jacket somewhere. It had the Savo patch on the breast. He’d gotten himself a ship’s ball cap, too. The overall impression was the opposite of what he intended, if he was trying to fit in. “I don’t think they’d put out a false SOS,” Dan told him. “That’s not looked on with amusement. In fact, it’s a criminal offense.”
“GMDSS has experienced a lot of inadvertent Maydays,” the comm officer observed. “It’s a new system. The maintenance is complicated.”
Dan said, “We’re up on International Distress, right, Dave?”
“Always, sir.”
“Jack up whoever’s monitoring. See if they’ve heard anything.”
“You’re not thinking of leaving station, are you, Captain?”
“I’m not thinking of anything right now, Adam. Just trying to stay current on what’s going on around us.”
“We don’t want to get diverted from—”
“Absolutely not.”
The 21MC. “CIC, Radio: Faint distress call on 2182 kiloherz, international marine distress channel. Weak and garbled, but it seems to be from USS Paraskee. We’re in EMCON. Permission to reply?”
Dan blew out. “USS Paraskee” was a reasonable mistake for SS Paraskevi, given a Greek accent and a weak single-sideband transmission. Emission control on the radio circuits was pretty much pro forma, considering Savo was putting out five megawatts of microwaves. So he didn’t have much misgiving about answering the call.
On the other hand, once he did respond, he was legally obligated to render assistance. Of course, it wasn’t that clear-cut. But if it came to an investigation, it would definitely weaken his defense. He grimaced, not liking thinking in those terms, and leaned to the bitch box. “Radio, CO: Anybody else answering up on 2182?”
“No one, sir.”
“Not Lahav?” If Savo was in range, the Israeli frigate should be too.
“No sir.”
He swept the surface display again. Usually hundreds of contacts would be swarming the screen at this zoom level. But the east Med had really emptied out.
Ammermann found a folding chair somewhere and scraped it up beside him. “Could be just to pull you off station.”
“I don’t think so, Adam. And it’s not an inadvertent actuation, like Dave suggested. Not if they’re following it up with a voice call.” Command decision time. But even as he thought it, he’d already decided. “Give me International Distress,” he told Branscombe. The lieutenant reached across his lap and snapped the selector on Dan’s remote to 4.
Right, he knew that. God, he was getting stuporous.… He cleared his throat and unsocketed the worn gray handset. “SS Paraskevi, this is U.S. Navy warship Savo Island. Over.” Too late, he remembered he wasn’t supposed to use their real name in the clear. Oh well.
“Want me to do that, sir?” said Branscombe.
“Thanks, I got it. — Paraskevi, Paraskevi, this is Savo Island, Savo Island. Over.”
Branscombe laid a publication in front of him, open to a page that showed a military joint rescue coordination center in Cyprus and a naval base at Zygi. “They’re a lot closer than we are,” he murmured.
“Are they responding to the call, Dave?”
“I’ll get Radio on their coordination band and see.”
“If they’re not, we can pass data,” he said. Everyone in Radio and Branscombe too already knew that, but he had to say it. Actually, since the distress call was up on GMDSS, they had to have the basic data — lat, long, type of emergency — already on their screens. It took getting used to, this idea of information existing everywhere simultaneously.
“We can’t lose focus on our mission,” Ammermann murmured beside him.
“Goddamn it, we’re focused! I’ve got four people over there full-time! I don’t need you at my elbow telling me what to concentrate on.”
Startled faces turned. “Hey. Hey.” The staffer lifted his hands, palms out. “Take it easy! Didn’t mean to—”
Dan gripped the handrests of his chair. “Keep your advice to yourself until I ask you for it. Otherwise, you’re going to have to stay in your stateroom. All right?”
“You got it, Captain,” the staffer said. But added in a murmur, leaning in, “But I hope you don’t mind my saying, a lot of folks seem to be getting confined to their staterooms aboard this ship. Is this how the Navy does business? Anybody who has a different point of view gets put in the corner for a time-out?”
Dan took a deep breath, close to exploding. “If you mean Fahad Almarshadi, he’s on the bridge right now. Come to see me before you believe the scuttlebutt — what gets passed around word of mouth.”
“I know what scuttlebutt is, Captain. But you can’t both tell me to come to you, and restrict me to my cabin. I came out here to help. Offer access. But you’re not making it easy.” The staffer pushed dark hair off his forehead, looking both put-upon and satisfied. His round cheeks glowed. He waited, obviously expecting an apology.
Too bad. Dan lifted the handset and tried to reach the ferry again, but no answer came back. He resocketed it and turned back to the screen as a piercing buzzer racketed from the EW console. The speaker between the CO’s station and the TAO’s announced tersely, “Radar jamming from bearing zero seven zero. Correlates with Heart Ache. Designate Music One.”
The Heart Ache was a Russian high-power noise jammer, truck-mounted, that was supposed to counter surveillance and observation radars — such as the SPY-1—and jam airborne and nap-of-the-earth flight-control radars, among others. It was fairly effective in beam mode at short distances. But the fact that someone was trying to jam Savo was significant. They were dueling with microwaves, high over Israel and Jordan. A hum of voices from the consoles rose above the eternal rush of the air-conditioning, and the cicada chatter of keyboards sped up too.