Dan twisted in his chair, to see Amy Singhe’s hawk-nosed profile bent over, green-lit, peering past Terranova’s rounded babyish features. Beside him Branscombe was on the SPY-1 coordination circuit. “Is that giving her any problems, Amy?… Good … good.” The TAO signed off. “We’re shifting to an anti-jam waveform, and freq-hopping. The jammer’s trying to follow, but its response time’s lagging our shifts. Probably older-model equipment.”
“I know the brand. Syrian, you think?”
“The bearing would say so.”
The speaker said, “Second jamming emitter. Bearing zero six eight. Designate Music Two.”
Dan slapped his cheeks to wake up. Two jammers? This was getting serious. “Tell Bart we need both shafts and all engines back on the line for battle maneuvering. Check your illuminator coverage. Check all doctrine statements.”
Branscombe was acknowledging when the EW warning speaker stated, “Third emitter. Bearing zero six nine. Designate Music Three.”
“Something in the works?” said Ammermann, getting up from the chair and questing back and forth like an alerted bird dog. God, the guy was annoying. Dan made a pushing-off gesture. He concentrated on the rightmost screen, where a launch would show up. Mobile jammers were, of course, mobile. But still, they were fat targets for U.S. antiradiation missiles. So they usually didn’t start transmitting unless there was a good reason.
And he could think of only two reasons for a coordinated jamming attack on Savo Island’s main radar.
One: An enemy missile was about to launch.
Two: An attack was imminent on Savo herself.
Regardless, the duel was on. His own beam was more powerful, and far swifter, a rapier to the daggers of the truck-mounted shoreside jammers. But many daggers could defeat one rapier.
Again: It was a duel of light sabers. At each point the beams clashed, the SPY-1’s radar picture was distorted, even obliterated. If the threat originated within those jammed regions, she couldn’t see it. No matter how powerfully her own beam burned.
The 21MC. “CIC, Radio: Voice transmission from Cypriote joint rescue coordination center at Zygi. They don’t have a ship available to render assistance. M/V Paraskevi is foundering. Four hundred and eighteen souls. Lifeboats available, but seas are heavy. They request we render assistance, at the following position. Latitude thirty-four degrees, twelve minutes north. Longitude, thirty-two degrees, fifty-nine east…”
The voices faded. Heads lifted across the compartment, swung in his direction.
Data existed everywhere. Simultaneously. But decision, power … was that what he had? It didn’t feel like it. It felt as if he had no choice.
The hoary sea, cold and remorseless. The vessel you’d trusted to keep you safe, slipping beneath the waves. Leaving you alone, helpless … Instead of power he felt impotence. Instead of choice he felt locked in. His trachea seemed to be closing again. He kneaded his neck, tried to slow his breathing from a pant.
He could not leave his post to help them. It was as simple as that.
He depressed the metal lever on the bitch box. “Radio, captain here. Tell Zygi: Regret unable to leave station. Urgent operational commitment.”
“Unable to respond, sir?” said the TAO petty officer behind them. “But … that’s a Mayday. And if it’s coming from the coordination center—”
“I agree, it’s probably a valid SOS,” Branscombe said quietly. “But it’s up to the CO to make the call.”
“You all heard the skipper,” Ammermann said. “That’s the right decision, Dan.”
“Adam, I don’t need your backup. I told you, keep quiet or get out.”
The 21MC said, in a different voice, “This is the chief of the watch. Captain, confirm what the petty officer just told me? That we’re not going to respond? I have to log our answer.”
Dan pressed the lever again. Said, as evenly as he could, “That’s correct, Chief. Savo Island heard the request for assistance, but cannot leave station. Log that the commanding officer made that decision personally. I’m sorry … and may God keep them all.”
There. The decision was made. And now that it was, he had to pretend it was right. That was what a leader did. No matter what guilt, or regret, gnawed at his throat.
He frowned, worrying at some tenuous wisp of memory. It struggled to escape even as he seemed to grasp it.…
Then he remembered. His dream. The words he’d said to the ragged men and women as they passed through the gate, never to return.
And may God keep you all.
What he’d just said, leaving four hundred helpless passengers to the mercy of a winter sea.
“CIC, EW: Radar illumination from shore. X-band radar. Consistent with illumination from missile-tracking radar.”
His gaze went to the clock above the vertical displays. 0211 local. He bent forward, clutching his stomach, gagging on coffee-flavored acid as he tried again and again to pull air through a narrowing windpipe.
The battle had begun. And already, the casualties were starting to mount.
15
Three Musics, jamming from Syrian soil. Lagging Savo’s frequency-hopping but still, inevitably, degrading the ship’s already constricted coverage. And an X-band illuminator from not far away. Aircraft? Patrol boat? Shore battery of Chinese-made C-802s? Hunched over the command table, Dan wiped his mouth, squinting through aching eyes at the rightmost display. The beam clicked back and forth, sous-chef-dicing mountains and desert into tiny digital wedges. Savo Island groaned as she leaned. In the darkness outside, the sea raged, and in the infrared images transmitted from the gun cameras snow streamed across the screen.
“Sir, I’d like to get Strafer in the air.” Branscombe looked pale, but his voice was firm. “Get Red Hawk out there. I know he’s probably in the sack, but if the balloon’s going up, we need his sensor package active.”
“It’s awful rough … but, yeah, you’re right. But have him call me before he launches.” Dan searched the slanting space, for what, he wasn’t sure. “Also, call Lahav. Inform Captain Marom we’re being illuminated and jammed. He probably already knows, but pass the heads-up anyway. He’s next to us on the bull’s-eye.”
“Put Sea Whiz in auto, Captain?” called Slaughenhaupt.
“Not just yet, Chief. Make sure you got a doctrinal cutout in there so we don’t fire at Lahav, or our own fucking helo. Okay? — Petty Officer Terranova. What kind of gates you got set? If they’re going to launch, it’s probably going to be now, while the Syrians are jamming us.”
Her voice rose high, clear, soft as a child’s. “Sir, got a user-defined script running, approved by Chief Wenck. Acoustic alert for anything over a thousand knots between angels five to angels ninety. That automatically trips as a space track and gets designated hostile.”
“Very well.” He rose slightly to squint across at her saffron-lit, almost Madonna-like countenance. She was twenty-three. Not just his fate but that of thousands of others might shortly ride on her competence. But she’d been cool under criticism. Maybe she was just ice under pressure — even if she looked like she belonged in the Toms River High Marching Band. Wenck stood behind her, hair sticking straight up; and at her other shoulder hovered Amy Singhe, like Kali the Dark Mother come to earth for battle. And back in the abyssal shadows of the darkened space, Dr. Noblos. Miniature screens glowed, reflected in his glasses.