The Cruiser (18 page)

“Okay, let's get to it,” he told Almarshadi. He looked around one more time; at a gray sea, a spatter of rain that crackled across the windows. The boatswain went around turning on the wipers.

With a last glance at the lowering sky, he went below.

*   *   *

HE
winced. The earsplitting shrill of the boatswain's whistle had caught him in his cabin, logging on to high-side chat.
“Now set the BMD watch,”
the 1MC crackled.
“Now set the BMD watch.”
He hesitated, then closed the log-in and powered his terminal down. Pulled his foul-weather jacket off the hook where he'd hung it after coming down from the bridge. Stuck his pisscutter cap in the pocket, slid down two ladders, and cranked open the door to Combat.

All four large-screen displays were lit. The icy-aired, darkened space creaked as it pitched. Voices murmured as the first watch section took their seats.

Cheryl Staurulakis had drawn up a rubric for how they'd view graphic information for the antiballistic-missile mission. The surface plot, surrounding the ship close in, was up on the leftmost display. The air picture glowed in the center, reaching out three hundred miles into Syria, western Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Cyprus, that queerly shrunken simulacrum of the continental U.S., glittered to the north. A glance told him commercial air traffic was way down. “Business as usual” was coming to an end.

The rightmost display reproduced the outputs on the Aegis consoles. He watched the by now familiar above-the-horizon search beams clicking around. They passed over the flat sea without return, probed a clearly delineated coastline, then etched an eldritch green strewing of mountains. The elongated, depressed shadow of the Dead Sea curled like a fava bean. Past that glowed more mountains. Then the splotches disappeared; the beams flew straight, searching out over the featureless desert. An abyss from whence nothing returned, not even the strobing blips of commercial aircraft. Mordor.

He ran his attention over the displays, checking weapons inventory, combat systems summary, surface summary. On the far right, the summary of summaries, the System Availability. It was green across the board: SM-2s up, guns up, VLS, TLAM, Harpoon up, Phalanx up. A pip throbbed on the leftmost screen. Red Wolf 202, on its way back from the task force. “ETA on the helo, Matt?” he asked Mills, in the TAO's seat.

“Estimate feet dry time five-zero.”

About twenty minutes. Dan sat watching for a few seconds more, then logged in to the high-side chat room for the task force. Most of the chatter seemed to be coming from the screen units. Only now and then did the carrier come up.

DCK CIC: showers coming your way

DYO CIC: haul over all hatch hoods

DCK CIC: ;)

PBG TAO: DYO pls lk at track 8934—see anything suspicious about that

DYO TAO: no looks like com air. Do you not have squawk??

TMN AO: let us know if you want a cap vector

A far cry from the clatter of signal lamps, the flutter of flags as they went up a hoist. He toggled among rooms; the task force, Sixth Fleet, then found what looked very much like the strike groups for Iraq. How different this was from the previous isolation at sea. Oddly enough, though, neither CentCom nor EuCom seemed to be up on chat.

Mills leaned over. “Permission to go into mode, sir.”

“Do it.”

Terranova's all-too-youthful voice in his headphones. “All stations, Aegis control. Stand by for BMD mode … shift to BMD mode.”

Dan sucked air and sat up.

Wenck and Noblos and Staurulakis had all told him, and it made sense in terms of system resources. But seeing it suddenly bottleneck down on-screen was much more sobering.

Although the left two screens stayed the same, in a blink-fraction of a second the rightmost—Aegis's view of the world—suddenly keyholed. From 360 degrees, they now had a cone of awareness maybe 5 degrees in width. Brawny as the SPY-1 was, the theater ballistic defense mission sucked down so much power that over 90 percent of the screen had just gone blank. Only a shade still echoed from the north-south mountain chain, fading as distance increased from the searchlight beam. He felt as if he'd been struck blind. “I don't like this,” he murmured to Mills. “We're losing all our long-range surveillance.”

“Yes sir. But we still have the gunlaying radar, and our surface search radar.”

Great, they were back to 1945. If a swarm of kamikazes attacked, they'd be peachy. A Syrian MiG-29 or Su-24, though … he could be clobbered from behind before they knew what hit them. He fidgeted in his seat, then got up and went over to Chief Wenck, at the console. “Donnie, there's no middle ground? We're just about totally fucking blind everywhere but where you're looking.”

Wenck blew a lock of too-long blond hair off his forehead. He didn't look disturbed. “Wussywug.”

“What?”

“What you see is what you get, sir. Only so much wattage to go out, so much processing power in the blades. We got Sea Whiz looking, right?”

“Yeah. And the gun. But everything else is shut down.”

“What you see,” the tech said again, a shrug in his voice.

Big help. Dan took another deep breath and sighed it out. Shit, oh dear.

“Flight quarters, flight quarters,”
the 1MC announced as he was pulling on his jacket. Followed a moment later by the air-side controller calling out, “Helo control reports: Red Wolf 202 inbound, four souls onboard.”

It took a moment before this registered. He swung on his heel and stalked to the far side of the space, where the air picture consoles kept track of, among other things, their own helicopter. “I heard
four
souls,” he asked the petty officer, who removed one of his headphones politely.

“Yessir, Captain. That's what the pilot reported.”

“There were three outbound. Pilot, ATO, sensor operator. And … well, three live souls. Why's it four coming back?”

“I dunno, sir. I asked, but didn't get an answer.”

“Tell them it's me asking this time.”

“Helo in final approach,”
the 1MC announced.

“Uh, I'd wait a couple minutes, sir, if it's okay with you,” the controller said. “He's got a lot on his plate right now. The pilot, I mean.”

“Sure. As soon as he's got both wheels on deck.”

When Dan got back to his seat he realized he'd left his classified chat screen up. He'd been only a few steps away, but he logged off quickly, before anyone could notice. Then examined the rightmost display again. Damn. That eye could see so far, but only in such a narrow slice; all else was obscurity. Like the Norse god—Heimdall, Hendall, something like that—who could see a hundred leagues and hear the grass growing. Guarding the gates of Asgard, waiting to announce the battle that would end the world with a blast of his horn. Funny, how whenever any religion contemplated the End of Days, there was always a horn involved. Looking back at the Aegis display, he couldn't shake his apprehension, as if something bad had to be lurking in that huge pie of unsearched space.

“Helo on deck. Secure from flight quarters. Now commence XO's messing and berthing inspection.”

The helo control petty officer. “Sir, pilot on the horn for you. Click to thirteen.”

Dan fitted the headset on again, adjusted warm plastic, snapped to 13. To hear a voice he didn't recognize. A young-sounding, eager male voice, with maybe a touch of somewhere in New England.
“Captain? Is that you?”

“Yeah, this is Lenson. Who's this?”

“Adam Ammermann, Captain.”

He blinked and massaged his forehead. Then checked the dial, wondering if he'd wandered in on some other frequency. “I'm sorry. Am I on the line with Red Hawk 202?”

“We're shutting down, sir. Please secure that,”
someone said in the background, maybe the copilot; and the voice said,
“I've got to get off, I'll be there shortly.”

Dan stared at the handset, then slowly put it down.

*   *   *

A
tall, round-cheeked man with a slash of dark hair above an oval, open face swung down out of the chopper. He wore a Mae West over a blue blazer with a white button-down oxford shirt and a maroon tie with a repetitive pattern of small red … seals? His smile lit up the flight deck as he bounded toward Dan, palm outstretched, lurching as the deck tilted. “Captain Lennon? Dan Lennon?”

“The name's Lenson.” Dan freed his hand as soon as he reasonably could and waved toward the hangar. “Let's get clear of the flight deck, okay?”

“Right, right,
Lenson
. Adam Ammermann. Just call me Adam, please. Or, my friends call me Jars.”

Inside the hangar the maintenance crew stared. Dan led the guy out of the way as the hangar door clanged and began powering upward.
Jars?
“Look, Mr.… Ammermann, there's obviously been some mix-up. This is a U.S. Navy warship. I assume you're a reporter, or—”

“Oh, no.” Ammermann's wide innocent face fell. He needed a shave. “They told me they'd notified you—you'd know I was coming. They didn't? Look, I—”

“Who's ‘they'?” Dan interrupted. It might not be the guy's fault, but he didn't have time for the press. He got the Hydra off his belt. “Bridge, this is the CO, back at the hangar. I need the master-at-arms here, right now. —Sir, I don't mean to be unwelcoming, but we're not exactly open to drop-ins. So I'm going to ask you to stand by here until we can get this aircraft refueled, and then—”

But Ammermann had drawn a paper from the blazer and was holding it out. Dan accepted it reluctantly. The letterhead was familiar: dark blue serifed font under the impressed seal. He looked up reluctantly to a forthright grin, teeth so perfect they had to have undergone long-term orthodontia, so white they must be capped. Only the five o'clock shadow marred the impression, and a whiff of sweat mixed with cologne. “The White House.”

“White House staff. Right.”

“You're what … military?”

“Oh, no.
You
were military staff, right? Dr. Szerenci said you were.”

“You know Edward Szerenci? The national security adviser?”

“Oh, yeah. I've met him several times. At least.”

The master-at-arms, out of breath. “You wanted me, Skipper?”

“Yeah. Just stand by a minute, Chief. —This letter doesn't say anything about
Savo Island,
uh, Adam.”

“That was in the message. You didn't get a message?”

Dan blew out. “Let me check. Meanwhile just stand by, all right? Go back aft, back there, out of the way.”

The crew chief. “We refueling, sir? Or putting her in the barn?”

“Just stand by. —Chief, escort Mr. Ammermann to the ready room.” He turned away, tried to shield his ears from the noise, and failed. He slammed the starboard door behind him and stalked forward along the main deck, until the engine whine receded enough so that he could get through on the Motorola. He asked Radio if there were any messages about an incoming political visitor, an Adam Ammermann.

“When would it have come in, Captain?”

“I don't know. Can't you do a global search or something?”

The radioman came back within sixty seconds. “Nothing under that name, sir.”

Dan pivoted on his heel.

Back in the hangar he nodded to the civilian, but spoke to the chief. “Chief, there's obviously been some mix-up. Mr. Ammermann here must have been slated to go somewhere else. Somehow, the carrier put him on our helo. We've got a maintenance hold on the bird, so I'm going to place him in your custody until we figure out where he's supposed to go and how we can help him on his way. That okay, sir? Sorry about this, but this kind of stuff does occasionally happen. In the Navy, like everywhere else.”

But Ammermann said earnestly, “Sure, but this is
Savo Island,
right? And you're Lennon—I mean, Lenson? This is where I'm supposed to be.”

Dan studied him again. He didn't look like anyone who ought to be drifting around the fleet. Or maybe, just like one of the young profs you occasionally saw in the College Afloat program. “What exactly are you supposed to be doing here, Adam?”

“Jars. Please. The message explains it. But since you don't have that yet, well—I'm your liaison.”

The MAA looked from one of them to the other. “Liaison with who?” Dan asked.

“With you. Office of Public Liaison. I've got an ID.”

Dan scratched his chest as he examined it. He vaguely remembered Public Liaison from when he'd worked in the West Wing. They were fervent and ambitious but inexperienced and sometimes too full of themselves, and the military staffers had tried to avoid them whenever possible, especially since they tended to look down on anyone in uniform. Or at least they had during the previous administration.

“You're absolutely sure it was
Savo Island
? Well, if you knew my name … Look, I'll stash you in a stateroom until we figure this out. Okay? But until we do, I'm going to ask you to stay there. Don't leave that cabin. We have a lot of high-voltage equipment and this is an industrial environment. We're busy and we're on a … Anyway, I just want you to stay put for the time being, okay?”

Ammermann said sure, absolutely, whatever Dan said. A crewman hustled over carrying an expensive-looking leather suitcase and a hanging bag. Dan drew Chief Toan aside. “Take him to the unit commander's suite, and put somebody you trust on the door. I don't want this dude wandering around. We still don't really know who he is.”

“Gotcha, sir.”

“Be courteous. Get him coffee, put a movie on for him, but don't let him roam unescorted. In fact, don't let him out of the stateroom.” The chief nodded, and Dan forced an Official Smile at Ammermann, who was standing by his luggage. The staffer kept glancing from the suitcase to the chief. Only when it was perfectly obvious that no one else was going to pick it up did he make a little quirk of the mouth and bend for it. As he did so pens and a smart phone fell out of his jacket, bouncing away over the nonskid. The crew chief was on it in an instant, yelling, “FOD alert! Get this shit off the deck, ASAP!” and slamming a boot down on the phone as Ammermann winced and plastic cracked.