But for now, at any rate, he’d be going back to his ship.
The blue screen to the left, which had been audio-silent this whole time, flickered and went black. It must have done so at Ogawa’s location, too, because the admiral seemed to unbend. He murmured, “Good luck, Lenson.”
“Thank you, sir,” Dan said.
“Sly, let’s go to flag chat. Signing off.”
The right screen flickered and blanked too. “Any questions?” the one-star asked him.
Dan blinked at the overhead. He had dozens. They had to rearm, replace a VLS cell in a foreign yard, and get ready to redeploy south. The Arabian Sea. The Indian Ocean. What was going on, that they needed a tired ship so badly?
But it seemed he was still in command. At least for now.
When the aide escorted him back the wardroom was empty, except for a kid in a white paper mess attendant’s cap, running a vacuum over the carpet where the putative board members had gathered. Dan stood watching the young man for a while, mind as blank as a deprogrammed RAM.
Things that had to be done surged up into his consciousness, then faded. He tried to be angry at Blair, then couldn’t be. He’d always told her not to meddle. To please leave the Navy alone. But he was where he still was because of her, or at least partially because of her. The blue screen — that had to have been the deputy CNO, Barry “Nick” Niles himself.
Thanks to the two of them, and the fact that the sea service might actually gain from his act, he was still in the CO’s seat. And, from the sound of things, in line for a follow-on mission.
Leaning against the sideboard, he pressed the heels of his palms deep into his face. Tired as if he hadn’t rested for a hundred years. The yoke of command was settling back on his shoulders. Savo Island didn’t just need voyage repairs. She needed an overhaul, new software, a better missile; his crew had kept falling ill and no one knew why. She was ready to go home, not to extend her deployment.
Instead, he had to take her back to sea.
Had he screwed up, or done the right thing? Not only did he not know, it didn’t seem anyone else did either. From his own command chair in CIC, all the way up to the Oval Office.
What hadn’t gone away, it seemed, was the threat. Defeat it here, and it reared its head elsewhere. Crush it in Iraq, and its bloody jaws snarled again from farther south and east.
But this, too, was nothing new under the sun. It had been the same for the soldiers of Caesar, of Constantine, of Julian. No matter what those at home thought, the legionaries had understood.
The border had to be held. Or all would dissolve back into chaos. All.
He straightened, forcing iron into his weary back. What mattered was not what lay within a man. What mattered was what he did.
Perhaps the cruise of USS Savo Island had only begun.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EX nihilo nihil fit. For this book I owe thanks to Antonio Cobb, John Cordle, Callie Ferrari, Francisco Galvan, Sylvia Landis, Emily Merritt, Christopher Moton, Gail Nicula, Rick Potter, Sarah Self-Kyler, Robert Titcomb, and many others who preferred anonymity. Thanks also to Charle Ricci of the Eastern Shore Public Library; the Joint Forces Staff College Library; the Office of the Chief of Naval Information; the Naval History and Heritage Command; the Library of Virginia; Commander, Naval Surface Forces Atlantic, and his staff; the Naval Criminal Investigative Service; and very much to the crew, chiefs, and officers of USS San Jacinto, CG-56, who welcomed me to sail with them. They resemble the crew of USS Savo Island only in the positive ways!
I write from a complex braiding of memory, imagination, and research. For this book, I used maps, charts, and advice from a meeting with the very helpful Port Ops crew in Naples. Aegis facts and intercept scenarios were spliced from articles in the January 2012 Proceedings by Kevin Eyer and Jim Kilby, interviews aboard USS San Jacinto, and input from Mark “Dusty” Durstewitz and Mark Moore, who both commented on several drafts. They put a great deal of time into helping me! On cracks in the superstructure, see Christopher P. Cavas, Navy Times, December 9, 2010. The information about infections and the death scene were developed with the help of Dr. Frances Williams. The discussion of EMI is from OPNAVINST 3120.32C. That of TLE download difficulty is from an unclassified BMD 3.6 Bulletin article. The fire in the VLS scene began with a tour and briefing by Pablo Yepez.
The data on jammers is from open sources, mainly an Air Power Australia open posting by Dr. Carlo Kopp, April 2012. The power-out figure is from mostlymissiledefense.com.
Chapter 15 is mostly from my San Jacinto embark, plus a 2003 article in Lifeline magazine. Insight into a sometimes prickly relationship is from “US-Israeli Missile Defense,” http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/missile_defense.html. Bill Hunteman helped with the Tomahawk launch scene. The info on force levels is from “CRS Report for Congress, Iraq: US Military Operations,” July 2007. The discussion of ROEs is based on Rules of Engagement Handbook, U.S. Naval War College. Missile specifications are from various open sources.
Joe Leonard read large parts of the book and supplied invaluable perspective from the points of view of a cruiser captain and a squadron commander.
Let’s emphasize that all these sources were consulted for the purposes of fiction. I’m not saying that anything in these references leads to the conclusions my characters reach or voice. Likewise, the specifics of personalities, tactics, and procedures, and the units and locales described, are employed as the materials of fiction, not as reportage. Some details have been altered to protect classified capabilities and procedures.
My most grateful thanks to George Witte, editor and friend of long standing, without whom this series would not exist; to Sally Richardson, Matt Shear, Kenneth J. Silver, Kate Ottaviano, and Sara Thwaite at St. Martin’s; and to Lenore Hart, anchor on lee shores and my North Star when skies are clear.
As always, all errors and deficiencies are my own.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID POYER’S military career included service in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Arctic, Caribbean, Pacific, and Middle East. The Cruiser is the fourteenth novel in his continuing Dan Lenson series. His work has been required reading in the Literature of the Sea course at the U.S. Naval Academy, along with that of Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville. He lives on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.