The Cruiser: A Dan Lenson Novel (12 page)

Scenario T-03 was based on Country Orange attempting to seize an island chain from Country Green. Scenarios no longer used real nations’ names, though usually they were fairly transparent. But he couldn’t quite see who this one was designed to emulate. At any rate, the task force commander had fragged
Savo Island
in place of
Oscar Austin
as the assistant fleet antiair warfare coordinator. This meant he’d be the fallback in case of any equipment failure or damage. His station was twenty miles east of the main body, making
Savo
part of the outer screen—those units most likely to be engaged first.

Which meant he and Cheryl Staurulakis had to have these twenty pages essentially memorized by midnight.
Arleigh Burke
was designated firing ship, an artificiality, but you had to have some sort of setup when playing with live targets. Which they would be. The Orange navy was being simulated by a mixed force, two Turkish subs currently some sixty miles to the southeast, and a surface action group of two Dutch Provincien-class frigates to the north.

He flipped through the red-bound references, then through the heavy blue volume of
Jane’s,
mentally marking the frigates for a Harpoon strike, if they ventured close enough. His main worries were the two German-built Type 209 submarines, and the Kormoran antiship missiles that Turkish F-5 fighter-attacks out of Izmir, playing the Orange air force, would be carrying.

In the dimly lit confines of Sonar, an oddly spacious compartment just off CIC, the lead sonar technician, Albert Zotcher, was coughing into a tissue when he looked up from the display. He grabbed the armrests and started to rise before Dan pressed his shoulder down. “Got a copy of tonight’s scenario, Chief?”

“We’re running tapes on 209/1400s now, Captain.” Zotcher, a studious-looking little guy who Dan thought looked like old pictures of Grossadmiral Karl Doenitz, nodded at the sonarmen on the stacks. They glanced incuriously at Dan, then back to the patterns that played spellbindingly before their eyes, like ripples on tangerine silk. “We’ll have to watch them. There’s a fifty-mile danger circle on the Sub-Harpoon.”

Dan pinched his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. Cruisers weren’t traditionally that hot at the antisubmarine skill set. Usually stationed close to the carriers—the “1 shell,” if the carrier was the nucleus and the screening ships were electrons—their primary responsibility was stopping air threats. But once on her lonely station to the east,
Savo Island
would be on her own. For sheer self-defense, he wanted the ship as sharp as possible in every area. Unfortunately, looking over the last combat systems assessment report, he hadn’t been impressed.
Savo Island
’s ASW gang had graded in the bottom 30 percent.

“What’s this the XO’s telling me about water vapor in the transducers, Chief?”

“Could be, sir. It’s not easy to tell.”

“Could that be grounding damage?”

Zotcher said, “It might be, sir. Then again, it might not.”

O
-kay, Dan thought. “Is Rit Carpenter any use to you? Where is he anyway?”

“Should be up in an hour, sir. Yes, he’s pretty … old-school, right?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Yeah.”

“Like the crusty old guys I learned from. But he knows his way around a sonar stack.”

Dan nodded. “Yeah, he does that. And how about … Lieutenant Singhe?”

He got a dull-eyed glance. “How about her, sir? What do you mean?”

“She seems to have some new ideas. I wondered if you had an opinion on them.”

“I’m not sure I get what you’re asking me, sir. She hasn’t discussed nothing with me.”

“Okay, just thought I’d ask. What can I expect for detection ranges?”

They discussed mixing layers and propagation for some time, doing several runs on the sonar mode assessment system, before Dan felt he had a solid fix. The two U.S. subs attached to the TF, both Los Angeles–class nuke boats, would be running submerged, at slow speed, ahead of the task force. It was plain they’d have to depend on them, and ASW air from the carrier, for long-range detection. Dan rubbed his forehead. “What’re we getting from the array?”

“The TACTAS? I’d like to stream it as soon as we can, Captain.”

The towed array was a mile-long cable studded with very-low-frequency hydrophones that spooled out of the stern. Deployed, it not only could pick up a sub’s pumps, motors, prop, and flow noise from many miles away, but could even provide an approximate range. Once it was trailing, though, the ship’s maneuverability was severely restricted. More than one skipper had forgotten it was out there, turned too sharply, and cut the tether, irretrievably shitcanning four million dollars’ worth of microphones into the tender custody of Davy Jones. But not using it wasn’t cost-effective either. “I thought it was out there already. That should be standard operating procedure in ASW play. Check with the bridge and let’s get it deployed. You’ll need to stabilize and background before COMEX.”

Zotcher nodded, fingers kneading a tissue as he sniffled, already back into the patterns the sea wove before his eyes. Dan watched him for a minute, then another. And at last, realized the man had nothing further to say.

*   *   *

HE
watched from the hangar as the helo lined up, grew, hovered above the slowly tilting flight deck, then finally settled to squat its tires nearly flat as the turbines whined down. The lead pilot and detachment commander, Lieutenant Commander Ray Wilker, nicknamed “Strafer,” introduced himself and his crew. Dan showed them their spaces and gave the “welcome aboard” talk. The SH-60B, call sign Red Hawk 202, had as its main mission the extension of its host ship’s sensor range. They had night vision and electronic eavesdropping equipment, sonobuoys, and a data link, along with a limited selection of weapons. Dan felt reassured having a helo aboard. It would be a definite boost to his own-ship protection capability, once they were close inshore.

*   *   *

HE
grabbed a green tray, trying to remain impassive amid the curious glances of those around him in the serving line.

“You go on ahead, Captain,” one young man said, waving him on into the mess decks. His dark hair was cut very short on a bumpy, long, rather unattractive skull. His coveralls, of the exact same fabric as Dan’s, were worn sky blue at the knees; his rolled-up sleeves showed the pale blotches of lasered-out tattoos. A ripple went down the line to the steam tables as one sailor after another turned to see what was going on. Every word Dan said in this line would be over the ship by morning.

“That’s all right. I’m in no hurry.” He pushed out a hand. “Dan Lenson.”

“Oh. Yessir! DC3 B-Benyamin,” he stammered.

Dan kept smiling, recognizing now the man whose cap had blown off as his new captain was being piped aboard. “That’s right, I remember you. So, how’s it going in Repair Three?”

Benyamin gaped. “You know I work in…? Sorry, sir … I was just surprised to hear you…”

“Relax. I see your name every day in the POD. Junior sailor of the month? Too bad that reserved parking space isn’t doing you any good in the Med.”

“Yessir. Uh, nosir.” Benyamin looked right and left, as if seeking someone else to step in and help him out. None of his shipmates did. “Uh, where’d you serve before, sir?”

“My last ship was USS
Horn
. Then I was at the Tactical Analysis Group before coming out here.”

“
Horn,
” someone murmured, and the name fizzed down the queue like a burning fuze. The faces changed, as if confronted by some figure they’d considered up until now mere legend—the dog-wolf of Minnesota, or Vlad Dracula himself.

He wondered exactly what they’d heard. But no one seemed to want to ask anything more, and if they had, he couldn’t have elaborated. So he just nodded in what he hoped was a friendly way and slid his tray along stainless rails. Mexican day: chicken fajitas, enchiladas, beef and bean burritos, Spanish-rice-and-tortilla soup. He carried his meal out into the dining area and found a table at random, noting the mess decks master-at-arms heading his way. A flash of memory: the first day in junior high, or maybe high school, looking for a place in the clattering shouting throng. A metaphor for life itself, maybe. Each man and woman had to … not so much find, or discover, or be given that spot in the world, but rather elbow and pry one out from amid the seething multitude of those already here.

“Mind if I join you?”

Startled faces looked up. “Captain,” one sailor said. Benyamin hesitated, then put his tray down opposite.

A heavyset black man muttered, “Come down to sample the chow, Skipper?”

“It’s exactly the same in the wardroom, Seaman Goodroe. Except cold, since they have so far to carry it up.” He started on the enchilada. Not bad.

The master-at-arms set a glass of bug juice the color of brake fluid beside him. Dan nodded thanks. Benyamin murmured tentatively, “They say, Captain—they say you have the Medal of Honor.”

“That’s what’s in the official bio,” Dan said, trying to make a joke out of it. “But I still can’t walk on water.”

The buzz of talk, the jangle of silverware, gradually welled up again to fill the low compartment. Up in front a row of crewmen watched satellite-televised basketball as they ate, abstracted gazes six thousand miles distant.

A slight pale kid with the beginning of a mustache cleared his throat. “So, Captain, I hear we’re gonna pull into Haifa for a week.”

“Really? Guess it’s possible, but there’s nothing like that in the schedule.”

“Can’t you put in for a port visit?”

“It doesn’t work that way, exactly. Not with the … op schedule the way it’s looking.”

A pixie-faced Hispanic-looking girl said, “Is it true we’re attacking Iraq?”

He shrugged. “Above my pay grade, seaman … Colón. Our job’s to be ready if we do.”

“But it’s a possibility? Sir?”

“Looks more like it every day. But like I said, we’re only going to know once we get the tasking.”

“Captain Imerson never told us shit,” the heavyset seaman said. “We’re out there on the deck, and we don’t know where we’re going, or how long we’ll be out, or what we’ll have to do. Is it gonna be like that the rest of this deployment, sir? Any way we could sorta get, like, more in the picture?”

Dan felt ashamed. Amid all the things he had to catch up on, he’d overlooked including his shipmates. Who did the work. Whose blood would pay the price if he screwed up, made a wrong decision. “That’s a great suggestion, Goodroe. Tell you what: I’ll get with the XO, see if we can have him do a daily ops brief over the 1MC.” He got out his BlackBerry and made a note, their gazes following his finger.

“Hey, let’s let the skipper eat his lunch, dudes,” the master-at-arms suggested. From that point on the talk subsided, though the side glances continued; and all that was heard was the murmur of conversation at the other tables, the rattle of crockery and silverware, and the clatter from back in the scullery when he pushed his tray through the opening and met the startled gaze of the aproned, bespattered mess crank immured back there in heat and steam and stinks. To him too Dan gave a solemn nod of recognition and thanks, and received it back with a graceful inclination of the head.

*   *   *

LONG
after midnight, in CIC, he nursed yet another paper cup of sonar shack joe, fighting a headache and blinking tiredly at the large-screen displays.

COMEX—commence exercise—had been promulgated three hours before. The Orange surface action group had kicked off with a Harpoon attack on the northern screening units, followed by a Tomahawk salvo targeted on
Roosevelt
. They were overwhelmed by a Blue missile and air counterstrike, but Dan figured that if anything, this first attack was a diversion. Trying to anticipate the land-based threat, he’d moved
Savo
up to the outboard edge of her station and concentrated his team’s attention on the northeast quadrant, letting his gun-laying radar handle the all-around watch.

For half an hour nothing had developed. He’d begun to wonder if he’d been suckered out of position when the F-5s had suddenly popped up, not out of Izmir, where Terranova had been looking, but low and fast out of the mountains of Caria. “They’re trying to hide in among the islands,” the FC had said, hooking three pulsating squares and turning them to carets. “But see how clearly the Doppler lock picks them out?”

“Range?”

“Hundred and ninety miles.”

Dan leaned closer, marveling. The vibrating spokes of the radar clicked around as if escapement-driven. For each of the hurtling contacts a profile read off elevation, speed, course, and electronic identification. “We can do an alert script,” the FC2 murmured. “Write it into the doctrine from the console. Specify elevation, speed, and course, and the system will alert and track automatically. You get the buzzer if it classifies hostile. In self-defense mode, the system takes it from there through firing. Once we tell it what we want to guard against, Aegis doesn’t actually need us in the loop anymore.”

For some reason this reminded him of what Amy Singhe had said in his cabin the night before. “Doctrine is preset. It resides in our computers.” He scratched his head, turning this over like some clumsy piece of tool-flint with a brain designed hundreds of thousands of years in the past. He’d watched commanders dither. Try to sort dozens of variables, match them against doctrine, and all too often make bad calls. Or at least suboptimal decisions. Against supersonic threats, a mistake left no second chance. Maybe they had to depend on silicon and code, then. But it still didn’t sit well.

“I think we want to be,” he said. “In the loop, that is.”

“Sir, that’s your decision as CO. But Captain Imerson had no problem running everything in automatic.”

“Let’s not go through that again,” said Matt Mills. The lieutenant had come in and stood by now to take over on the nickel-and-dime, five-on-and-ten-off schedule the TAOs were standing. “Evening, Captain.”

“Matt. Say, you run into Dr. Noblos? Haven’t seen much of him the last couple of days.”