"Latest metsat download indicates that we should be through the worst of this heavy stuff by about zero four hundred."
"Good. We'll call up a work crew and strike the helo below just as soon as the seas moderate." Amanda straightened from the chart table. "Sorry about taking so long to get back up here," she said, rubbing the small of her back. "After that session on the helipad, I had to defrost a little."
"No problem," Hiro replied sympathetically. "It didn't look like much fun on the monitors. Want me to keep an eye on things tonight?"
"No, I'll take it for a while. You can have the middle watch. Go get some rest and be back up here at twenty-four hundred."
"Aye, aye. Good night, ma'am. Captain has the con!"
Amanda made the circuit, checking with each of the duty watch and with the rows of data repeaters. That done, she settled into the captain's chair, wincing slightly. She'd just discovered a few aches and bruises that her shower had failed to erase. Deliberately, she kept her eyes away from the glowing screen faces, letting her natural night vision develop.
"Earl Grey, one creamer, two sugars," a voice said quietly.
The cup materialized from over her shoulder. After a moment's hesitation, she accepted it.
"Thank you, Arkady."
"No. Thank you." She felt his weight come onto the back of her chair as he leaned against it. "I never would have made it to that Russian base tonight. I was running scared because I couldn't figure out anything else to do. You did. Gus and I are alive because of it. I owe you, Captain."
"No, we're even," she replied, looking out into the night. "If you hadn't shaken some sense into me, I wouldn't have made it up to this bridge. And my only excuse would have been that I'd started to buy in to the myth that a commanding officer is supposed to be all-enduring and indestructible."
"Yeah, well, I guess we all have our moments. Tell you what, though. If you bale me out of any further bonehead stunts that I might get involved in, I'll do the same for you."
Amanda sipped the tea. It was just as she liked it, and its comforting warmth began to radiate through her. She closed her eyes and let her breath trickle out in a protracted sigh.
"Deal," she said.
BUENOS AIRES
1440 HOURS: MARCH 27, 2006
Dr. Towers pushed aside the curtain and peered out.
"That's funny," she commented.
"What, Doctor?" Steve Rosario inquired from across their sitting room/office.
"Pardon me if I'm making a cultural assumption here, but I'd always believed that South Americans were a bit more ... volatile in matters of politics and statesmanship. I was expecting to see something like the anti-British demonstrations during the Falklands War. But for us, nothing. No rock throwing. No 'Yankee go home!' The streets are almost deserted."
"There's a reason for it."
The State Department man joined her at the window. "Take a look at the roof of the building down at the corner. The one on the other side of the intersection."
Dr. Towers spotted the two men crouched down behind the roof parapet. One was armed with a scope-sighted assault rifle. The other was systematically scanning the surrounding area with a pair of binoculars.
"National Police antisnipers. There's one on every facing block around the Embassy."
Rosario smiled grimly. "I took a little walk earlier this afternoon. I saw at least ten plainclothes officers down at ground level, and I probably missed about twice that number. There's a SWAT team and a couple of armored cars stationed over on the other side of the park, and if you go out a little farther, you start to see the Army patrols. Sparza's brought in an entire airborne regiment equipped for antiriot work. The entire city is locked down tight."
"I didn't think we were that scary."
"I think it's being done for our benefit, and indirectly for the Argentine plan of operations. Sparza is smart enough to know that it's in his best diplomatic interest to maintain a state of extreme propriety when it comes to American citizens just now. If you were local, you'd probably be jumped for raising your voice on the street."
"Could that explain the very low-keyed editorial stance of most of the local media?" Dr. Towers said, turning back into the room. "Government censorship?"
"I suspect so," Rosario replied, lingering at the window. "I also suspect that's why neither we nor the Argentines have gone public with the word that we're already shooting at each other. Everyone wants a nice, quiet, little war."
A black Lincoln town car turned into the Embassy gates, preceded and trailed by a pair of mud-colored Ford Explorers, the ubiquitous "war wagons" of the Secret Service.
"Secretary Van Lynden is back."
The Secretary of State passed through the door of the suite a few minutes later. Setting his briefcase down beside one of the room's easy chairs, he sank down into it, his head cradled in his hands.
"What's the word from the United Nations, Steve?"
"Ambassador DeSantis reports that it looks as if we have a solid majority block assembled for a condemnation vote against Argentina. The downside is that the Argentines have gotten the extension on their recess. All votes on the Antarctic issue have been put off for another two days."
"Aah, God. Why not?"
"Could I get you a drink, Mr. Secretary?" Dr. Towers asked, with sympathy.
"Yes, Doctor. Thank you. You could. A rye on the rocks, please."
"How did it go, sir?" Rosario inquired.
"I've spent the past five hours sitting across the table from the Argentine Minister of State and, for all intents and purposes, we've just been staring at each other. We've hit the wall, Steve. Everybody's made their brag, and now they're stuck with it."
"What happens next?" Dr. Towers asked from the suite's small wet bar.
"Good question. Diplomatically speaking, we've entered a holding pattern. Both sides have established a set of absolute crisis parameters they won't go beyond. Until somebody yields on a point, we've got nothing to talk about. We'll just have to wait until some outside event changes the scenario and kicks the door open again."
"Like the outcome of things down south?" The scientist crossed the room and passed Van Lynden a bar tumbler.
"Exactly," he replied, swirling the glass and staring at the ice as it danced in the amber liquor.
DRAKE PASSAGE
1912 HOURS: MARCH 27, 2006
Lieutenant Commander Carl Thomson surfaced from Main Engine Control for the first time in over forty-eight hours. The Duke's chief engineer had been living on station ever since the first Argentine attack, alternating long stretches in front of the master console with short naps taken on the deck plates beside it.
Eventually, though, even he had to get away from the incessant whining song of the turbogenerators.
"Anybody get the word on the playoffs?" he asked, coming through the wardroom door.
"Vegas over Philly by eight points," Christine Rendino murmured in reply. The intel was stretched limply out on the couch, her eyes closed and her deck shoes kicked off. Across from her, Frank McKelsie sprawled in an easy chair, eyes open but staring off into nowhere in particular. The wardroom itself was being haunted by sea poltergeists. The edges of the cloth covering the central table swayed in a slow rhythm, cabinets creaked, and the cup rack clinked in time to the movement of the ship.
"Somebody must have bribed the damn referees."
"Tell me about it."
Thomson went over and selected a battle ration from the box sitting on the serving counter. Drawing a cup of coffee from the urn, he sat down at the table and investigated the "bat rat." Little more than a sack lunch run up by the galley for distribution when the ship was holding at battle stations, Thomson tore into the processed chicken sandwich with more relish than it probably deserved. The coffee was good, though, the minute difference in flavor between the engine room and wardroom percolators being a welcome change.
"Feels like she's slacking off a little," he commented.
"Uh-huh," Chr
istine replied, "we're getting out of the worst of it. Be nice to have the deck quit walking around for a while."
"Just as long as the Captain doesn't decide to go sunbathing again," McKelsie grunted.
"What's that supposed to mean?" the intelligence officer demanded.
"Hell, Rendino. We were caught way out of position by that first Argentine strike. The Captain left us wide open for that one."
"In case nobody bothered to mention it before, that was a surprise attack, McKelsie. Nobody expected the Argentines to pull a totally off-the-wall stunt like that. Not even the Captain ... or me."
"She violated basic stealth doctrine. She let herself get caught outside of weather cover. She damn near got us all blown away, and if you weren't so busy kissing up after her, you'd admit it."
Christine opened one cold, blue-gray eye. "McKelsie, fa' sure medical science has discovered cures for cholera, clap, and the black plague. What are you still doing here?"
"That's enough," Thomson said. "Lieutenant McKelsie, I believe that you'll discover that bad-mouthing your superior officers is not a sound way to get ahead in this man's Navy."
"Shit, Chief! I'm stating a fact! The Captain made a mistake out there the other day."
"Maybe she did," Thomson agreed, rummaging around in the bat-rat sack again. "I've served under a lot of captains, under a lot of different circumstances. Sooner or later, every one of them made some kind of mistake or other. How they reacted to it, and corrected it, marked the difference between a good skipper and a bad one."
The engineer removed a doughnut from the sack and deliberately gestured toward McKelsie with it. "This tells me that the Lady is good."
"How's that supposed to work, Chief?"
"Simple. This tin can has fought its way through three major engagements in two days, and I am sitting here eating this doughnut and some damn fish isn't. That, sonny boy, counts for a whole lot in this trade."
DRAKE PASSAGE
0401 HOURS: MARCH 28, 2006
Amanda stirred restlessly in the lounge chair. Looking out into the darkened and deserted wardroom, she wearily recalled a rather pompous lecture she had sat through back at the Academy. It had concerned an officer's need to draw up a "sleep schedule" that would guarantee them an adequate amount of rest under all circumstances.
It was a reasonable concept. However, the lecturer never quite got around to explaining how you were supposed to keep to this schedule during a developing tactical situation. Or how you were supposed to shut your mind off during those scraps of downtime that you might find.
Recurling herself more tightly in the lounger, she suppressed a shiver. She couldn't seem to shake the aftereffects of her brush with hypothermia, and no place seemed warm. Finally her eyes grew heavy, and she began to close out the world.
"Captain to the Combat Information Center, please."
She was through the hatchway and halfway down the ladder to the CIC before she was fully awake again.
Christine Rendino and the current OOD, Frank McKelsie, were waiting for her by the center consoles. They both looked about as burned out as she probably did, and they also looked worried. Amanda shot a glance past them to the tactical displays.
Some of the secondary monitors had been dialed to exterior view on low-light television and infrared. It was still dark out there, the clock readout indicating that they had some ninety minutes to go before first light. There was nothing to be seen but rolling, oily-backed swells and a low, broken overcast. They were still at full EMCON and the primary Aegis systems were down, the Alpha Screen currently showing a computer-generated signal intelligence display.
A flickering red air-target hack showed the position of a possible hostile some eighty miles to the northeast. Four additional air targets, each surrounded by a pinkish circle indicating an indefinite position fix on the contact, appeared to be running in line abreast ahead of it.
"What do we have, Mr. McKelsie?"
"We're not sure, Captain. We think the Argys might be cooking up something new."
"Specifics."
"Rendino's got the dope. Her gang's putting most of it together."
"We've got multiple aircraft contacts on the Sigint monitors and they are acting in a totally wacko manner." Christine took over, nodding toward the big screen. "Target Alpha came over our horizon about fifteen minutes ago. He's at twenty-five thousand feet, cruising at three hundred knots. However, he's weaving so his actual speed-overground is about one hundred and seventy. He's conducting a continuous air search with a fairly low-powered multi-mode radar. I'm pretty sure he's one of those converted 737s the Argentines use as a kind of half-assed AW ACS."
"Yeah," McKelsie added, "nothing we have to worry about at this range."
"The thing is," the intel continued, "that bird seems to be acting as a command-and-control node for some other kind of setup. According to my people over in Raven's Roost, he's got data downlinks going with at least four other systems in that immediate area. We're also getting a lot of voice traffic, mostly station-keeping stuff and intermittent UAF reflections off him from multiple sources below our horizon. I think probably they're Atlantique ANGs."
"It looks like they might be running a very tight antisubmarine sweep," Amanda commented. "Maybe they think we have underwater reinforcements."
"It looks like it, but I don't think it is. The leakage we've been able to read off their data-link sidelobe doesn't look like any sonar sweep I've ever seen. Matter of fact, it doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before, period."
"Yeah, Captain," McKelsie added. "Rendino and I are both tight on this. The Argys have something new going and they're going to hit us with it."
Interesting, Amanda thought, put a load on these two and they dropped their bristling antagonism for each other and became a pretty good team.
"Okay, Mr. McKelsie. What are you doing about it?"
"The Argys are sweeping from east to west, so I figured our best bet was to get out of their immediate line of advance. I've brought the ship around to a hundred eighty degrees true and increased speed to twenty-five knots to open the range. I haven't gone to full general quarters, but helm control has been shifted to CIC and both the bridge and CIC duty watches have been put on alert. Maintaining full EMCON and full stealth and all passive sensors are up full."
"Very good, Mr. McKelsie. I have the con," Amanda replied, dropping into her command chair. "How soon before we know anything more?"
"Pretty quick, I'd guess. Just as soon as those low-riders come over our horizon."
They waited in the blue-lit semidarkness. The Combat Information Center was warm and quiet, the low voices of the systems operators almost soothing. Amanda found her head sinking back against the padded seat rest. Paradoxically, now the urge to slip back into sleep was overwhelming.
No! She snapped her eyes open and gave her head an angry shake. These were the last hours before dawn. The hours when the body's resources were at their lowest ebb. Traditionally, the hours when a military unit was at its most vulnerable to surprise attack. She would not yield to her traitorous biological rhythm now.
Abruptly, the graphics on the Large Screen Display altered. The four possible target hacks of the hypothetical aircraft were replaced by the sharp, red, vee symbols of hostile air targets, each with a yellow conical scan pattern radiating ahead of it.
The patterns overlapped and the Cunningham's position point marker was engulfed by the southern edge of the sweep. Christine and McKelsie stiffened and each peeled off toward their respective subsystems bays.
"Confirm multiple radar-emission sources," Christine called out a moment later. "Confirm aircraft type as Atlantique ANG Two. Confirm radar type as Ignasie B, surface-search mode, maximum output. Frequencies and scan rates appear to be synchronized. The range is closing!"
"Shit!" McKelsie snarled from his side of the compartment. "They're running a bistatic search on us!"
Amanda's jaw tightened. Stealth technology was built around the co
ncept of reducing the target's radar image by either absorbing the incoming radar beam, or by widely and erratically dispersing it so that a clear return or "echo" was not reflected back to the receiver. Hence the Duke's coat of Wetball metallic-polymer paint and her sleekly angle-less design.
However, such a shield could potentially be broken by bistatic radar. Have several powerful radar systems sweep the same block of space while operating on the same frequency and at the same coordinated scan rate. Anything within that block of space would be hit simultaneously by several different beams, all converging at slightly different angles, producing a vastly larger number of fragmentary returns than would be produced by a single beam.
Have multiple radar receivers tuned to pick up these returns, again far more than could otherwise be detected by a single receiver. Data-link your output from all of the systems into a central point where a computer would analyze and reassemble these fragments like a cybernetic jigsaw puzzle until a true, composite image was produced. If your transmitters were powerful enough and your receivers were sensitive enough and your computer processors fast enough, you might just catch yourself a stealth.
"Mr. McKelsie, do they have a return off us yet?"
"Negative, we're still below the limits, but their signal strength is building rapidly."
"Can you phase us in to the wave clutter?"
"I can try, but this is the flattest sea state we've been in for days. I don't have a helluva lot to work with."
"Do what you can."
The Argentines must have had every hacker south of Venezuela working around the clock to cobble together the software for this. The question was what to do about it. Should they make a fight of it now, or should they try to huddle under the rags of their cloak of invisibility? Slowly and deliberately, Amanda tapped the nail of her right forefinger against the plastic arm of the command chair three times.
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