The Cruiser (14 page)

Dan eased out a breath. “Eye on the ball, Matt. It's only an exercise. Knock them down. They're homing on the carrier. EW?”

“Jamming,”
came over the phone circuit from the SLQ-32 console.
“No visible effect.”

Before they could fire, the dry voice of the anti-air warfare controller crackled over the net, assigning the inbound vampires to a destroyer in the inner screen. Dan cursed;
Savo
had missed her chance. She heeled again, this time reorienting to take on the subs. Voices rose from Sonar and the tracking table as they lined up for a shot. Dan toggled the ASW display on the leftmost screen, squinting. The screen flickered. Then he saw.

“Range, thirty-eight thousand, bearing zero eight zero. Stand by to fire Asroc.”

“Negative!” Dan shouted. “Check fire, check fire! He's too close to the fucking dog box.”

Putting a torpedo in the water there would endanger one of the Blue subs, the friendlies, scouting out ahead of the force. Apparently, due to layer depth, or whatever low cunning the Turkish sub commander had employed, the Blue sub hadn't detected him.

However he'd done it, the Orange sub was using the Blue one like a hostage shield, leaving Dan unable to attack. He keyed the 21MC, then let up on the lever as Mills passed the command he'd been about to give. “Bridge, TAO; come left—”

“Remember you have the tail streamed,” Dan put in.

“Yes sir. —Come left, no greater rudder than fifteen degrees; steady three two zero; go to flank.” He was repositioning
Savo,
placing the cruiser, as a shield between the enemy and the carrier. Blocking the next missile salvo. The hum of the turbines rose to a whooshing scream. The superstructure began to vibrate. A deckplate buzzed like a cicada.

Dan pressed his mike switch. “Sonar, CO: Do you have a solid contact?”

“Bridge, Sonar: Contact tracking one eight five, speed nineteen. CO, Sonar, did you copy?”

“Copy,” Dan snapped. Nineteen knots: top speed for a submerged 209, and not one its batteries could maintain long. One boat was sprinting south. Attempting an end run? Or trying to seduce them off its partner? “Source of that datum?”

“TACTAS, sir. Mainly flow noise, sounds like.”

“Keep an eye on that bearing,” Dan told Mills. “As soon as they clear the dog box, I want an Asroc in the air.”

“TAO aye.” Mills switched to the ASW circuit, and Dan half overheard his side of the conversation as they made ready to fire. He switched back and forth on his headset, watching chat click up his desktop screen, seeing
Arleigh Burke
's Standard splash the drone fifteen miles from
Theodore Roosevelt,
the exercise opening like a flower on the big flat-panel displays. He switched and keyed. “Aegis, CO: Keep an eye peeled up toward Antalya. They could launch a second strike out of there.”

Terranova's Jersey-accented soprano:
“Aegis aye.”

He switched back just in time to catch “TAO, Sonar: Lost contact.”

“What the
fuck
is going on back there?” Mills muttered. “Sonar, TAO: What do you need to regain?… Okay … okay, but we're right at the edge.… Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Bridge, TAO: Left turn, steady up on one eight zero and drop to ten—”

Longley, at his elbow. “Coffee, Captain? And we got, hey, we got oatmeal cookies tonight. Really good.”

Dan blew out, trying to keep his temper. He didn't want more coffee … but he needed more …
so
fucking tired … but his stomach churned. He grabbed a cookie and wolfed it. Typical big, chewy U.S. Navy mess deck cookie. Not much you could find fault with, actually. He chased it with a slug of coffee that turned out to be so scalding he would have spat it back into the cup if both Mills and the steward hadn't been watching him. “Holy
smoke,
Longley, did you brew this with a blowtorch?”

“Ran that straight up from the galley, Captain. Know you like it hot.”

His tongue felt flayed. Dan clicked back to the antisubmarine circuit, wondering why he wasn't hearing anything from Zotcher. But then snapped the dial back to antiair when another voice said,
“TAO, Sonar: Regained contact. Range twenty thousand. Bearing one zero five.”

“Christ, at last,” the CIC officer muttered, on Mills's other hand.

The exercise lulled. Dan stretched, tried to fight his eyelids up again. Shivered, and resolved to bring a sweater the next time he came up here. Checked his watch: 0413. Considered calling Almarshadi to take it, but didn't. The XO needed sleep too.

Finally he stood, and stretched again, touching the overhead with the tips of his fingers. He bent and snagged his toes a couple of times, just to get the blood moving again. Something popped in his back. He glanced over at the Aegis display. Past Wenck and Terranova, their heads together, the electronic warfare consoles flickered a weird graveyard green. It might not just be that the Patriot battery could mistake
Savo
's SM-2 for the incoming Scud. Could there also be mutual interference, from the Patriot's and Aegis's own radar guidance? Had anyone ever thought to deconflict the spectra between the Army's antimissile system and the Navy's? They freq-shifted, sure. But would the
bands
they swept overlap? It sounded all too much like the kind of thing no one in either service had bothered to check out, and that you'd find out too late. He'd have to ask Noblos. Investigate—

“Datum: Bearing two seven three, nine thousand yards.”

The red diamond of a hostile sub ignited on the screen. At the same instant, the cool tones of the exercise coordinator murmured in Dan's headphones, “
Simulated Orange Vampire launch, two seven zero, nine thousand.
”

“Vampire, Vampire, Vampire!”

On the chat screen:
SJC TAKE TRACK 7895

Frozen, Dan watched as USS
San Jacinto
veered left to place herself in front of the carrier, locking on the rapidly nearing sub-launched missile. “The fucking sub's in the inner screen,” Mills said, incredulous. “His little buddy went south to fox us. We had him all the way. But how in the hell did the
other
bastard sneak past us?”

Dan slammed down his headset and stormed back through Combat.
Savo
slanted, hard, as she slewed around again. If the sea had been pavement, rubber would have been smoking. He slammed his shin into the steel frame of a chair and ripped the blue Sonar curtain aside.

In here the darkness was almost total; the only lamps were the wavering orange curtains on the screens, a Northern Lights cat's-cradle that wound the gaze seamlessly into them. He put a hand out to avoid any stray stanchions. “What the hell's going on back here? We can't track a nineteen-knot sub at nine miles' range?”

No one answered, though one of the sonarmen flinched. The other was just as hypnotized as before. To Dan's astonishment, though, Zotcher's head was back against his headrest at an awkward angle. And … he was
snoring
.

When he seized the man's shoulder and shook it, he might have been rougher than he meant to be. Zotcher's head snapped forward and back. His eyes jerked open; he blinked groggily, sniffling. “Goddamn it, Chief! What the hell do you think you're doing!”

Zotcher flinched and rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh—ah—sorry, Captain. Just resting my eyes—”

“Resting your eyes, hell! You were asleep! On watch, in the middle of an exercise.” Dan lowered his voice with an effort. “We're not up to standard in our ASW readiness. And now I see why.”

Zotcher seemed to realize what was going on. He struggled out of the chair. “Sir, you got to understand. I don't feel—”

“I don't want to hear it. Who's your relief? The off-watch sonar supervisor?”

“Sonarman First Skelton, sir. But I don't—”

“Call him. When he gets here, brief him. Then I want you out of the sonar shack, Zotcher. You're restricted to the chiefs' mess until I decide what to do about you.”

The chief grimaced, still massaging his nape. “You hurt me, sir. Hurt my neck, when you did that.”

“Oh, really? Well, I don't give a—”

He halted himself, suddenly aware of other faces at the ripped-open curtain, of a murmur outside, men and women looking in. Suddenly remembering the anger of other captains, and how it had spread fear instead of confidence. A commander without self-control had no control.

“Chiefs' quarters, until further notice. Call your relief.” He spun on his heel and walked out. Back to the air-conditioned cool, the gossip-whisper of ventilation, the muted prattle of keyboards. Smoothing his hair, blotting sweat from his scalp, he sank into his chair once more. Blinking at the never-sleeping screens streaming with new data, and trying to force his weary mind back to the problem at hand.

8

East Med

DAWN
, and still without sleep. He felt twinned from reality, stuck in a parallel universe that existed on some separate brane from the one he was probably supposed to be in. Exhausted, yet jittery from too much caffeine. “We should've had 'em both cold,” he muttered, shifting in his bridge chair. The newly risen sun burned like a forest fire directly in their path. Low clouds mounded like foam in a bug-juice cooler, orange and cotton-candy pink, while blue heaving swells tore apart into a salmon froth on either hand. They'd detached, and now southeasted over a lumpy sea toward the arced sector where they'd take station. Awaiting the starting gun … He kneaded his stomach; was that sensation hunger, or something else? He grabbed his freshly charged Hydra and slid down.

“Captain's off the bridge.” The hollow pressed steel of the bridge door thump-clanged closed. He dogged it, then slid down the ladder, gripping handrails polished glossy-smooth by a decade of horny-palmed sailors. Enlisted in coveralls stepped aside as he slammed down, spun the corner, vaulted down the next ladder.

“Attention on deck!”

“Seats.” He took his place as the rest of the officers found chairs. Apparently the previous CO had preferred the head of the table, the traditional arrangement, but he liked the center. It was less intimidating, and he could talk to more of his JOs face-to-face. Still, it took a few minutes before the ensigns and jaygees resumed discussing whatever it was they'd been talking about. He checkmarked the slip for eggs and bacon and rye toast. Pushed away the coffee the attendant put beside him. He had to relax. Detoxify. Maybe today he could get back to the weight room—

As he forked the first bite the J-phone beeped. The mess attendant said, “Captain, for you.”

Dan rattled the handset out from beneath the table. Mumbled through a full mouth, “Cap'n.”

“Sir, Radio here. We have the quick-look report on last night's VANDALEX. Do you want it in your in-box, or—”

“Hard copy to the wardroom.”

“Aye, sir, on its way.”

As he scanned the clipboarded message, the junior officers stood and excused themselves in muted voices. He grunted, skipping the boilerplate, looking for the name of his ship. At last he found it.
Savo Island
had let the Orange sub through the outer screen, and two hits on
Theodore Roosevelt
had reduced the carrier's strike capacity to 70 percent. He all but snarled aloud. He scribbled his initials, and slammed the clipboard on the table. Then snapped his Hydra on. “XO, you up? Fahad? You there?”

“Yessir, on the bridge.”

How had he and Almarshadi missed each other? “Have you seen this quick-look? From last night?”

“Um, no sir, I—”

“Are you reading your traffic? Look it over. Or, wait, I'll send the messenger up with the hard copy. Read it. Then call me back. I found our sonar chief sleeping on watch last night. I want to—” He caught the mess attendant's wide-eyed gape and cursed himself.
Shouldn't
have said that. “Anyway, call once you've read it.”

The exec said he would, and Dan hung up. He exhaled, and drank half the cup of coffee before realizing what he was doing. Slammed it down, just in time for a heave and roll to splatter it over the tablecloth. He sucked at a tooth, trying to sort through it. He was disappointed. Dissatisfied. Yet the anger felt
good
.…

A tap at the door. Tausengelt stuck his head in. “Skipper? A word, sir? After you're done?”

“I'm finished.” He crammed half a piece of buttered toast, jammed his napkin into the ring. Tilted his head at the rear of the wardroom, where a settee and bookcases around a central table gave at least the illusion of privacy.

An ensign poring over a coffee-table book on the
Titanic
got up hastily and excused himself. Dan waved the elderly command master chief to the sofa. “Want some coffee?”

“No thanks, sir.”

“What's on your mind, Master Chief?”

“Basically couple problems, sir. First off, I think, is what happened this morning.”

“This morning?”

A quizzical glance. “Al Zotcher, sir. You and him. In Sonar. Here's the version I have so far. Basically, Chief Zotcher's hard down with a respiratory bug. He was thinking about putting himself on the sick list when he got the word about the exercise. Knew that was important, so he took the watch. You came in, found him with his eyes closed, and jerked his head back. With considerable force. Now he's got whiplash, maybe some kind of disc problem.”

Dan snorted. “That's what he's saying? He had his
eyes closed
? He was fucking
snoring,
Master Chief. He's sea-lawyering both of us.”

“Well, sir, that does put a different light on it. But, basically, he's still got neck issues. Were you planning on taking him to mast?”