“Hey, yo! Anyone home?” a cheerfully irreverent voice inquired.
Amanda forgot about her tiredness and even about her mission for a moment. Coming out of her chair, she embraced the small figure that had come bursting through her doorway. Christine Rendino returned the hug with equal fierceness. “Hi, boss ma’am. It’s about time you came to the party!”
“I’m here now, Chris. How are you doing?” Her hands still resting on Christine’s shoulders, Amanda stepped back for a moment to fondly study her closest feminine friend. Little had changed over the past few months. The same inquisitive pixie’s face grinned back at her, the skin now golden tanned, the shag-cut hair sun-bleached from ash blond to near white. However, Amanda also noted that the younger woman was wearing her glasses, an old indication that Christine had been putting in a lot of hours in front of a CRT screen. Looking closer, she also noted a couple of new weariness wrinkles notched in around her friend’s blue-gray eyes.
“There’s nothing wrong with me that a twenty-seven-hour day couldn’t fix,” Christine replied. “God, but it’s good to see you. It’s going to be like old times, hey?”
Amanda smiled soberly. “Nope, not at all like old times, my friend. We have a whole new situation. Pull up a chair and let’s talk.”
As Christine did so, Amanda dropped back into her own seat. The office chair was set too high for her comfort, a pointed reminder of another officer who had sat behind this desk not too long before. “Okay, Chris, you’ve been out here long enough for you to get a solid handle on this operation. I need to know what I’m getting into, and I need to know fast.”
Chris took a deep breath and let it trickle out in a hissing sigh. “Okay, but I’d better warn you right now that there are no short forms available out here. Nothing is simple on this job.”
“Then let’s start with the basics. What do you think of the Task Group?”
“Hey, I get along with ’em great,” Christine replied with a quirky grin. “They’re my kind of folks.”
“I had a hunch they were.”
“You’ve got a real mixed bag of personnel out here. Special Boat people, Seabees, the hover crews, my spark heads and drone jockeys. They’re all pretty much new-gen littoral warrior types. Beyond a scattering of older CPOs, you don’t have very many old fleet hands at all.”
“I’ve met one of the old hands already, Chief Tehoa.”
“Oh yeah. I know about him. The PG group’s senior chief is a gentleman who has his shit extremely together. Good folks, boss ma’am.”
“That’s how I read him,” Amanda agreed. “How about the rest of the seafighter people?”
“Very young, very tough, and very hot to show their stuff. This is a NAVSPECFORCE elite unit, at least on a par with the Special Boat Squadrons. These guys and gals all volunteered for this slot. Warfighters all. Especially keep your eye on the squadron commander. Steamer Lane seems to have a good balance of brains and balls going for him.”
“That’s my first impression as well.”
Christine tilted her chair back to the limit of safety. “Beyond the loss of their previous TACBOSS, unit morale and cohesion appear high. This whole outfit’s sort of like a big pack of wolf pups, all supereager and ready to start hunting. In my expert opinion, they only need one thing to bring it all together.”
“And what would that be?”
The intel grinned lazily. “Some cunning old bitch wolf to show them how it’s done.”
Amanda found herself grinning back. “I don’t consider thirty-six old, Chris.”
The warble phone on the desk suddenly cut into their conversation. Amanda scooped up the handset. “Garrett here.”
“This is Commander Lane, Captain. I’m over in the operations van. We have a hot contact.”
“I’m on my way.” Amanda dropped the phone back into its cradle and looked across the desk at her friend. “Okay, intelligence officer. Intel me where the Operations Center is?”
Operations turned out to be located in a semitrailer van parked and lashed to the barge deck not far from Amanda’s quarters module.
“How much enemy activity have you been seeing in-theater?” Amanda inquired as they hastened to it.
“Not much at all recently. The Union’s naval forces have been maintaining their low profile. If this is a real hotshot call, it’ll be the first time they’ve openly challenged us since Conakry.”
“Maybe they’re sending me their compliments.”
Inside of the Operations van, a row of computerized work stations ran down the full left-side length of the big trailer’s interior, a series of multimode flatscreen displays mounted on the bulkhead before them. The van’s integral air conditioners would probably have been holding the internal temperature at a reasonably comfortable level were it not for the crowd of seafighter personnel packed in behind the system operator’s seats. The word had spread that one of their own was in pursuit and all hands wanted to be in on the kill. Amanda noted that Jeff Lane and his little exec were in the center of the huddle.
“Gangway! Make a hole!” Amanda commanded, driving through the excited mob. “I want only authorized duty personnel in here along with the squadron officers and senior chief! Everyone else clear out and give us some working room! Expedite!”
As the onlookers made a hasty, shuffling departure Amanda and Christine reached Lane’s side at the central screen. “Okay, Steamer, what do we have?”
“A pair of Union Boghammers just nailed a police launch off Point Matakong,” he replied. Leaning forward, he aimed a finger at a numbered target hack that glowed scarlet on the computer graphics map display. Even as they watched, the target hack crawled southeastward along the coast, heading for the territorial waters of the West African Union. “The launch got off a distress call before it got clobbered, and now the Bogs are running for home.”
“How are we tracking this?” Amanda demanded.
“Aerostat radar,” Christine replied. “The USS Valiant is on barrier guard duty at Station Guinea East, here, just off the border between Guinea and the West African Union. She has her bag up and she’s able to surface-search about two hundred and fifty miles of coastline.”
“How did those Boghammers get inside Guinean territorial waters without our detecting them then?”
“Probably they’ve been there all along,” the intel said, frowning. “Lying low in one of their boat hides. They can lurk around in those damn salt swamps for days if they want. When a likely target comes along, they zoom out, make their kill, and then either disappear back into the mangroves or bolt for Union waters, like these guys are doing.”
“Yeah,” Lane said excitedly, “only this time they aren’t going to make it. Tony Marlin is out there with the Manassas. He’s going for an intercept, and their collective asses are his!”
On the tactical display, a blue target hack labeled “PGAC4″ was converging on the fleeing Union gunboats from farther offshore, maintaining an obvious pursuit curve. Christine moved down to another workstation within the van and exchanged a few quiet words with its operator. Fingers clattered lightly on a keyboard and a second bulkhead flatscreen lit off, this one filling with a high-definition video image.
“We’ve also got one of our Predator drones covering the barrier station,” Christine said. “Now we can get a real look at what’s going on out there.”
As they watched, the airborne television camera panned down across a vividly tinted coastscape: an expanse of almost emerald-green forest separated from an azure sea by a slash of white sand and surf. Pulling back, the image scanned across a broad and open bay where a pair of rivers emptied into the sea on either side of a narrow central peninsula. Two white streaks of wake could be seen cutting across the mouth of the bay, heading east. A graphics targeting box materialized around the wake tips.
“That’s them,”
Christine commented. She glanced back toward the drone systems operator. “Close the range with the target and give us full magnification on video.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
The television image swerved and bobbled for a moment as the reconnaissance drone came around to its new heading. Then the camera zoomed in and the targeting box windowed up to fill the entire display.
The Boghammers were a matching pair of open Fiberglas shells, outboard driven and bristling with automatic weapons and grenade launchers. Half a dozen Union sailors manned each speeding craft, their ebony skins gleaming with spray as they rode their pitching and bucking sea mounts with a consummate ease and surety.
As Amanda and her squadron officers looked on, a crew man in the seaward gunboat spotted something in the distance. An arm came up and pointed and the other members of the gunboat’s crew fixed their attention on the bearing.
“That’s it,” Lane commented. “They’ve spotted the Manassas coming in on them.”
“Let’s have a look at how she’s doing,” Amanda replied. “Systems operator, shift to the Manassas.”
The image on the monitor blurred into a silver shimmer as the drone’s autotrack system traversed the camera turret around to bear on its new target.
It was Amanda’s first opportunity to see one of the hover craft under way from the outside. True to the impression she had received aboard the Queen, it skimmed effortlessly over the sea’s surface, brushing over the wavetops rather than ripping through them. The seafighter also ran enclosed in a cloud of shimmering, rainbowed mist, the spray whipped up by the blast of her lift fans and drive propellers.
“The best those Bogs can do is about forty-five knots,” Lane said, glancing at Amanda. “The Rebel has a twenty-knot edge on them.”
“Yeah,” someone else commented from the back of the lit tle crowd. “We got these guys in the bag.”
As if to emphasize the point, the panels over the hover craft’s gun tubs slid back and her weapons pedestals lifted into firing position, the autocannon and missile pods indexing around to bear on the prey she pursued.
And it was at that moment that the first phase of Amanda’s campaign strategy gelled in her mind.
“Get me a radio link to the skipper of the Manassas. On the double!”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.” One of the systems operators passed her back a headset with an attached lip microphone. Adjusting the earphones to fit, Amanda settled them over her head as they filled with the hum and hiss of an active carrier wave.
“You’re up on the command frequency, Commander. Lieutenant Marlin is on line.”
Amanda nodded. ”Manassas, Manassas, this is Floater 1. Do you copy?”
“Roger, Floater! This is Manassas. We have the hostiles in sight! I say again, we have the hostiles in sight! We are closing the range and preparing to engage!”
A hunter’s voice, taut and excited, lifted an octave by the adrenaline rush of the chase. Over the open mike and beyond the words of the hover commander, she could hear the howl of racing turbines and another voice calling out the closing range. This would have been the first blood for this crew, and she almost regretted what she had to do next.
“Lieutenant Marlin, this is Captain Amanda Lee Garrett. I’m the new Tactical Group commander. I have just arrived on station, and I have new instructions for you.”
“Amanda Garrett? Uh, acknowledged, Captain. Uh, be advised that we’re a little busy out here, ma’am. We are making intercept on a couple of gunboats and we’re just getting set to make challenge—”
“No you are not, Lieutenant,” Amanda replied firmly. “Break off the intercept and shut down.”
“What? Floater 1, say again!”
“I repeat. Break off your intercept and shut down your engines. Shut down and drift! Those are orders, Lieutenant. Execute immediately!”
There wasn’t a sound, either over the radio link or in the operations van.
“Manassas, acknowledge!”
”Manassas to Floater 1,” the cold reply came back. “We are powering down and are off the cushion. Hostiles are escaping into Union territorial waters. Awaiting further … orders.”
“Do you have any white-smoke candles on board, Lieutenant?”
“White-smoke candles?”
“There’s no need for a readback … Lieutenant Marlin. Yes or no is adequate:”
“Yes, ma’am,” a gritted reply came back. “We have them aboard.”
“Very good, Lieutenant. Light one off on your afterdeck. Open some of your topside access and inspection hatches as well. Make it look as if you’ve suffered a major engineering casualty and are dead in the water. Put on a show for the locals. Beyond that, just drift around in that bay until we can get someone out there to tow you in.”
“Acknowledged, will comply.” There was still anger and disappointment in the hover commander’s voice, but now also a degree of intrigued curiosity. “Anything else, ma’am?”
“Yes. My apologies to you and your crew. I have no doubt you would have been able to finish the job, Lieutenant You’ll get another chance soon enough. You have my word on it. This is Floater 1, out.”
Amanda slipped the headset off and turned to face the small crowd of squadron officers and CPOs who still clustered in the back of the command van. They eyed her in silent judgment, waiting. Only Christine stood by with a sly and knowing look on her face.
Amanda smiled wryly and smoothed her hair back. “Well, as you probably overheard, my name is Amanda Garrett and I am your new TACBOSS. If we could retire to somewhere with a little more elbow room, I’ll officially read in my orders. I’ll also endeavor to convince you all that your new C.O. is not totally, screaming out of her mind.”
Transients’ Mess,
Conakry Base, Guinea 1207 Hours, Zone Time;
May 18,2007
“What in the beck is this?” Scrounger Caitlin asked, warily prodding the contents of her dinner tray.
Dwaine “Fryguy” Fry looked over and down critically. “Today,” the lean, black missile tech said, “that is your basic White Universal Generic Vegetable Substance. Tomorrow, it will be your Yellow Universal Vegetable Substance. On Wednesday, it will be your Green Universal Generic Vegetable Substance, and on Thursday, it will be your Brown Universal Generic Vegetable Substance. Then the Brits will wait forty-eight hours and serve it on Sunday as ‘meat’.”
“Thank you ever so much for sharing that with us, Mr. Fry,” Scrounger replied with a withering look.
Gunner’s Mate 1st Daniel “Danno” O’Roark slammed his tray onto the table and swung his feet over the bench. “Whose shit-for-brains idea was it to come up here anyway, when we know that the British cooks have the duty this week?” the burly blond Philadelphian demanded.
“Mine,” Lamar Weeks, the senior turbine tech of the Queen of the West’s starboard power room, replied grimly. “If I have to eat one more MRE, I’m going to drop to the deck and die in my own puke.”
“I dunno, Lam,” his partner, Machinist Mate 2nd Slim Kilgore, interjected, eyeing his dripping fork. “I’d say this is more like making the choice between the gas chamber and a hangin’.”
“This is what I’m thinking, cowboy,” Eddy Kresky, portside power’s number-two hand, interjected. “Am I hearing any votes here for just starving to death?”
“Maybe this will make you guys a little grateful for our own chow when we get back aboard the Floater,” Chief Tehoa commented, taking his own place at the table.
“Leave us not get crazy here, Chief.” Kresky sighed, returning his attention to his meal.
Located in a barn-size tent a short distance off the main flight line, the transients’ mess at Conakry Base was an easy place to loathe. Its screened sides were only marginally successful at keeping the hordes of flies at bay while the African sun baked r
eadily through the thin canvas roof. In counter point, the blast revetments surrounding it were most effective at sealing out the faintest trace of a breeze while the few grumbling floor fans failed to provide an adequate artificial substitute.
Here were gathered the displaced persons of the base: the Guinean security and labor troops, the French and U.N. advisers in from the field, the Red Cross personnel en route upcountry to the refugee camps, and the foreign military elements too small to maintain mess services of their own.
Lackadaisical in the heat, they straggled in to consume the bland selection of rations from a menu that compromised for all of the involved ethnic backgrounds while satisfying none.
“I’m with the Chief,” Scrounger agreed. “Right now, the old Floater would look like Fort Lauderdale at spring break to me.”
Danno nodded. “Yeah, that’d be good with me too. Come on, Chief. When in the hell are they letting us out of this hole?”
The big CPO answered the gunner’s plea with a cool and disapproving stare. “You know the answer to that as well as I do, mister. We’ll get the Queen off the beach just as soon as we get all of our maintenance problems licked.”
“Hey, American. When will that be, American?”
As one, the crew of the Queen stiffened and looked around. A cluster of French Navy personnel, clad only in boots, shorts, and raffish pom-pomed berets occupied the adjacent mess table. Sun-bronzed and grinning, the French men eyed them back, especially Scrounger Caitlin as the sole female rating among the group of American sailors.
“We are from the frigate La Fleurette,” the spokesman of the French contingent continued. “Already we have been on station a month. Already we have stop and searched many ship. All that time we have not seen any American. Have not heard of any American Navy doing any stopping.” The speaker jabbed his immediate companion, the tallest and most muscular of the group with his thumb. “My frien’, he would like to know when we see you American out at sea.”
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