Sea Strike

by James H. Cobb

  Encourage the sense of perspective.

  "A great philosopher and sage once said, ' who would count the teeth of the dragon must accept a degree of risk.' "

  Amanda cocked an eyebrow. "Who said that?"

  "I did. I was sitting right here. You heard me."

  That called her smile back up again, along with a low chuckle. "If I was the only one doing the counting, lover, it wouldn't be any big deal. But I have to drag all of you people along with me. That's something I still have a degree of difficulty reconciling myself to."

  "It comes with being the captain. That's why you rate all the cool perks, like these sumptuous quarters. That's why you get saluted ... By the way, do you know where the salute really came from?"

  "Where?"

  "It came from some subordinate reaching up to wipe the sweat off of his forehead because his boss had shown up in time to make the really tough decisions."

  He was breaking her down. She was smiling more easily now. "You are not going to be serious here, are you?"

  "I'll be as serious as necessary, when necessary, babe.

  Later tonight, when we're doing the probe, we'll all be as serious as all hell. Especially me, considering I'm going to be Command Officer of the Deck. Because of that, though, I'm not going to prematurely let myself wind up any tighter than I have to."

  "Probably a very sound policy."

  "I think so. You have dinner yet?"

  Amanda shook her head. "No. It's hamburger night down in the wardroom, and I am not going to be able to cope with both this recon run and a government-issue slider at the same time."

  "Then where would you like to have dinner?" Arkady prompted.

  Amanda started to reply offhand, then caught herself. She recognized the invitation to play the game, and her smile ceased being transitory.

  "All right. Let's see. Someplace a little out of the ordinary.

  No sameysamey."

  It was a counterploy to the imposed sterility of their current shipboard existence. Aboard the Cunningham, she and Arkady were lovers in an environment where a love affair's traditional expressions--a touch, a kiss, a caress-- were all inappropriate, if not professionally hazardous.

  However, they were adaptable. The date game was just one of the counters they had developed on this cruise.

  "Ever had roast duck?"

  "Yes. I like it."

  "Good. Then it's the Duck Club at the Monterey Plaza Hotel. It's down there in Steinbeck country, right on Cannery Row. It's the place all of us Monterey boys take our really serious ladies when we want to impress them."

  "Sounds interesting. What's it like?"

  "Very classy San Francisco. The dining room looks right out over the bay. The sunsets are to kill for, and they have this thing where they have sets of binoculars out on the tables.

  You can look out and watch the sea otters playing around in the kelp beds."

  "How incredibly neat! How should I dress for it?"

  Arkady studied her and narrowed his eyes judgmentally.

  "We are going to need a little flash here. Red. Definitely red."

  Amanda gave her head an emphatic shake. "That doesn't work, love. I can't wear that."

  "Sure you can. That ' can't wear red' line was thought up by some brunette who wanted to hog a good thing. Every pretty lady should own at least one little red dress and one pair of red high heels, because she always looks great in them."

  "We'll see."

  "I'll prove the point. I'll pick you up a couple of hours early and I'll take you shopping ... "

  YANGTZE ESTUARY APPROACHES 2331 HOURS ZONE TIME; AUGUST 11, 2006

  It is one of the great rivers of the world. Born on a windswept mountain plateau deep in the Himalayas, it snakes its way down across the central plain of Asia to end in the East China Sea.

  Along the way, it collects the story and the essence that is China.

  Merging into it is the ice melt of ancient glaciers and the rain of ten thousand storms, the fine-worn silt of the tired fields, and the sweat and tears of one quarter of the human race. It is one of the few things that can even briefly challenge the might of the World Ocean. A hundred miles out beyond its mouth, the waves are still stained brown, the smell of the land dominating that of the sea.

  "Stealth protocols are fully closed up. Full EMCON is in effect. All radios and radars are secure and all Faraday screens are engaged."

  "Very good, Mr. Hiro. Quartermaster, systems and positioning check, please."

  "GPUs and SINs cross-check and verify to within a ten meter circle of error. Qiantan Island is now bearing zero five degrees relative off the bow at nine thousand yards."

  Amanda refreshed her situational awareness with a glance at the graphics of the navigational display. The Duke was coming in from the northeast at a shallow angle. In a few minutes, they would turn south past the broad island-studded mouth of the Yangtze, running just outside the mine-defense barriers deployed by the Chinese Communists.

  Outside in the darkness, a fine rain sluiced across the bridge windscreen, while within, the light of the instruments and readout screens had been turned down to their lowest settings. Amanda could sense rather than see the others of the bridge crew around her.

  Likewise, she could sense their tensions grow as the range closed with the Chinese coast.

  "Bridge to CIC."

  "CIC, aye."

  "Okay, Chris. How do you want to work this thing?"

  "I'd like to make one slow pass down the perimeter of the outer minefield to chart the entrance and egress channels.

  That'll also give us enough time to run a full cross-spectrum analysis of the local EM environment."

  "Very well. However, I will not take us inside the three mile limit at any point. That means we'll have to reverse out to the northeast when we approach the Maan Liedao group."

  "No problem, Boss Ma'am. If the bad guys are up to anything naughty, we'll know about it by then."

  The Intel went off line and Amanda twisted around in the captain's chair to face the shadow that was her first officer.

  "Ken, I'm going to keep the con on the navigation bridge tonight. I'd like you to take the CIC."

  "Aye, aye."

  "And Ken, keep an eye on what's going on in Raven's Roost. Chris might need the help of an Asian-languages expert."

  "Captain, I'm barely conversational in Japanese and Mandarin.

  I'm a long way from being an expert in either one."

  "You're the closest we've got. Good luck, Ken."

  "Good luck to you, too, Skipper." Hiro moved off into the passageway leading aft.

  There was another shadowy figure behind the central helm console, one foot braced on the throttle pedestal and faintly silhouetted in the back glow of the instrumentation.

  "Officer of the Deck, how's it going?"

  "Pretty good, ma'am. I just can't find the pitch and cyclic on this thing."

  "You'll manage, Mr. Arkady. It does an Airedale good to stand a deck watch now and again, just to remind you what the real Navy is all about."

  "I'll take your word for it, Captain."

  "You'd better. Now, bring her left to one eight three degrees.

  Hold our speed at ten knots and maintain a parallel course to the three-mile limit at a one-hundred-yard separation by the GPUs."

  "Aye, aye."

  That dealt with, Amanda slipped out of the captain's chair and stepped through the hatchway onto the starboard bridge wing. From here, by day, she knew that she could have seen the hills of China, but now there were only the varying textures of darkness apparent to the night-sensitive eye.

  Back in the wheelhouse, she knew that she could have supplemented her sight with the Cunningham's low-light television systems. However, she wasn't ready yet to fall back on such artifices. Instead, she leaned against the rail and tried to push her own senses and intuitions out into the night.

  Her grandfather had sailed these waters once, back in the days of the old Yangtze Patro
l. Now, as the warm, misting rain dampened her hair she sought his counsel.

  Some eight miles to the south, the Five Nineteen boat tugged fitfully at the end of a too-short anchor cable. They were the southernmost boat of the squadron, deployed in a picket line just seaward of the Yangtze mine barrier. With engines off and all systems powered down, they had been on station for over two hours, the continuing drizzle saturating all hands above decks.

  For the hundredth time, Lieutenant Zhou Shan tried to clear the lenses of his night glasses with a bit of sopping cloth. "I can't understand what they expect us to accomplish out here tonight," he grumbled.

  "Without using the radar, we won't be able to see a thing."

  "Perhaps we will accomplish nothing. Lieutenant," Bosun Hoong replied placidly, "but still, here is where they expect us to remain."

  Down in the Cunningham's Combat Information Center, Commander Ken Hiro sat in the captain's chair in the central cluster of command stations; Dix Beltrain was manning the tactical officer's console at his right elbow. Now the TACCO glanced across at the Cunningham's exec.

  "Commander, GPU fix indicates we're closing with the mine barrier. It might be advisable to bring up the thirty-two, sir."

  "I concur. Make it happen."

  Beltrain shifted his attention to one of the secondary workstations lining the CIC bulkhead. "Okay, Devega, lower your dome and light her up. Set your sweep arc for zero degrees relative off the bow to ninety degrees to starboard."

  Long before the keel of the Cunningham had ever been laid, it was realized that she would be operating in a new kind of military environment, that of littoral warfare. She would have to work in close to potentially hostile third-world coastlines. Accordingly, in addition to her powerful SQQ-89 antisubmarine sonar suite, she mounted an SQQ-32

  mine hunter set as well.

  "SQQ-32 is on line, sir. Initiating antimine sweep."

  Hiro and Beltrain moved in unison, dialing up the sonar imaging on their workstation repeaters. In moments, a dark spherical mass materialized and began to drift slowly across the flatscreen a computer generated simulacrum of the sys tern's echo return ' ' contact, sir Bearing zero eight five relative Range eight hundred yards Range is constant Target is treading aft System data annex identifies target as a moored contact mine consistent with standard Red Chinese marks "

  The old horned horror The basic design was more than a century old, and yet was still almost as deadly as the day it was conceived Its sheer, iron age crudity was its greatest advantage Unlike more sophisticated ordnance, it could not be foxed, fooled or neutralized from a distance It merely bobbled sullenly at the end of its tether and exploded if anything as much as brushed against it Disposing of them required the use of a cumbersome and dangerous mechanical sweeping process only slightly less archaic than the mines themselves or the time-consuming and dangerous task of countermining and detonating them one at a time, using divers or ROVs

  The tactical officer produced the briefest of whistles "Yeah, glad we didn't let that go for much longer "

  "It's good to know your place in the world, Mr. Beltrain "

  Hiro keyed his headset microphone "Bridge, we have contact with the Chinese mine barrier "

  "Acknowledged, Ken," Captain Garrett's voice sounded in his earphone

  "We see them on our repeaters We'll hold at about this range from the barrier facing If you people spot anything that we miss, don't hesitate to override our helm control"

  Topside the rain grew heavier Like the rest of the watch, Amanda had donned helmet and combat vest She had come in from the bridge wing, and now prowled slowly along the line of glowing monitor screens, her eyes flicking from readout to readout

  "Captain," one of the lookouts said quietly, "it's getting pretty murky out there We're losing visual definition on the low-light television "

  "Very well Switch to FLIR "

  Throughout the bridge, vision systems were toggled over from standard to thermographic imaging

  Utilizing heat radiation rather than visual-spectrum light, the Forward Looking Infrared Scanners should have easily been able to cope with the deteriorating visibility However, out in the night, an unusual convergence of environmental phenomena was taking place As the low grade tropical storm saturated the environment with heat and humidity, an exceptionally dense concentration of water vapor was accumulating in the atmosphere--water vapor that absorbed infrared energy Concurrently, the heavy, blood-temperature rain and quiet, windless sea allowed a thin layer of warmer fresh water to form atop the ocean's surface, reducing the contrast between the sea and air temperatures As these curves of absorption and ambience closed with each other, the Cunningham's FLIR

  scanners began to lose efficiency

  The effect was subtle With no specific object within immediate visual range, the bridge lookouts observed no change on their softly glowing screens They had no comprehension that their ship was slowly going blind

  "Anything, Tina?"

  "No, ma'am If the locals are doing any communicating they're sending Candy grams "

  Christine Rendino hovered over the shoulder of the scanner operator as the young enlisted woman systematically swept across the electromagnetic spectrum "Nothing at all."

  "I'm hearing what sounds like an elementary police radio dispatch net and a couple of AM radio channels full of music to kill capitalists by The only military traffic of any kind is some very limited air-traffic-control stuff The Reds are being real quiet out there "

  "Okay Stay on it "

  They were twenty minutes into the recon pass and things were crawling under Christine's skin This wasn't right This was so not right that the Intel's finely drawn nervous system was resonating to it like a plucked violin string

  Unable to be still, she stepped from the confines of the intelligence systems bay and into the central space of the Combat Information Center Pausing for a moment behind the cluster of central command stations, she peered over Dix Beltrain's shoulder at the big Alpha screen on the forward bulkhead.

  The side-scan sonar was sketching out the perimeter of the estuary minefield, hacking each mine detected with a GPU position fix that would be stored in the navigational database.

  At least that was working out right.

  Moving on, she crossed over to the stealth systems bay.

  Normally, for her this would be enemy territory. But now, with an operation on. her perpetual feud with Frank Mekelsie was in abeyance.

  "Are you guys getting anything here that we might be missing over in Raven's Roost?"

  The stealth boss was hovering over the backs of his own systems operators, much as she had been doing. He didn't take his eyes from the shimmering banks of oscilloscopes even for an instant as he replied.

  "Nothing but what's on the program, Rendino. Air-search stuff and one surface-search unit out on the southern tip of Jiuduan Sha. Low powered, probably a Fin Curve. I'd say navigational-assistance radar."

  "Any return risk?"

  A tinge of contempt crept into Mckelsie's voice. "That sucker's practically tube technology, Rendino. They'd have a better chance of spotting us by standing out on the beach with a flashlight."

  Starboard side forward in the central cluster of command workstations, the Aegis systems manager methodically ran the Cunningham's primary radar through a repetitive series of readiness checks. The mighty SPY-2A emitter arrays that belted the destroyer's superstructure were powered down while running in stealth mode, but the receptors were active, stealth and intelligence divisions both accessing them for data input on the local signals environment.

  The systems operator had just initiated a frequency-scan sequence into the system when he hesitated. He had had a test display dialed up on one of his repeaters and, just for a second, a series of faint ghost targets seemed to dance across the screen. The radar specialist frowned. That sure as hell was not supposed to happen when they were not radiating.

  He started to troubleshoot.

  It didn't occur to
him that, for that instant, the operating frequencies of the Cunningham's radar receiver had exactly matched that of the Red Chinese Fin Curve transmitter. If it had, the operator would have paid considerably more attention.

  He was aware of the phenomenon of UAF reflection: the receiving of a return produced by someone else's radar wave.

  They were thirty-five minutes into the run. "Raven's Roost.

  This is the bridge. How is it coming, Chris?"

  "The mine charting is going good," came the cautious reply, "but the Elint scan hasn't developed too much. We're still working it."

  "Let's not take all night about it, Lieutenant. We can't hang around out here forever."

  Rain sheeted across the bridge windscreen now. Multiple windshield wipers slashed at it futilely, while along the inside curve, blowers rumbled, struggling to keep the humidity haze at bay. The bridge air-conditioning was losing the fight against the sauna bath exterior environment.

  Moving around to the bridge-wing door again, Amanda popped the latch and slid back the pocket panel. Inhaling deeply, she strove for one real breath amid the growing oppression.

  Out in the night, the Five Fifteen boat of the Red Chinese hydrofoil squadron rocked deeply at its mooring. Her skipper peered over the side and frowned. That had almost felt like a wake effect. For a long minute he peered out into the rainswept darkness, then shrugged the thought away.

  Lieutenant (j. g.) Charles Foster appeared at the entrance of Raven's Roost. "Hey, Lieutenant, you want to come over to Sonar Alley for a second? We might have something for you."

  "Right with you." Christine Rendino hurriedly followed the junior officer.

  Sonar Alley was one of the four subsystem bays that angled off the Combat Information Center. It was located port side forward, diagonally across from the Intelligence center.

  "Okay, Chuck, give me a thrill. Whatcha got?"

  The sonarman adjusted his glasses in a quick nervous gesture.

  With brush haircut and a perennial air of boyish earnestness, Foster was a submariner doing a tour in the surface forces as part of the branch officer exchange program. Currently, he held sway over the Duke's extensive ASW suite.