"I'd done it. I could do it again once, twice, a couple of hundred times. The thing is, I knew that sooner or later I'd let my concentration slip for that one-tenth of a second necessary to kill myself. Probably I'd take some other guys and a big chunk of ship with me. No way. I got out while the getting was good."
"Did you find helicopters an easier go?" Amanda asked.
"It's not easier. Rotor-wing aviation, especially off of a small-surface platform, is just about as hairy a way to make a living as you can find. It's just that there are a different set of operating parameters. Like the Brit Harrier pilots say, 'It's easier to stop the airplane and land on the ship than it is to land on the ship and then stop the airplane.'"
"This time, I won't argue the point with you. It takes two Tylenol washed down with a stiff brandy and soda just to get me on the D.C.-to-Norfolk shuttle. At any rate, that was a tough call to have to make."
"Hell, it was just common sense."
"I find that 'common sense' is a rather rare commodity these days."
Amanda used the bar to pull herself to her feet, took a step away from the bulkhead, and not quite fell flat on her face. A muscle had knotted up in her right leg and was screaming in white-hot agony. She clung to the bar, trying to maintain her balance. Arkady was up in a second, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, are you okay?"
"Just a cramp. Ow… ouch, dammit that hurts!"
"You cooled off too fast and you're locking up," Arkady said, guiding her down to the end of the exercise table. "Lay back and I'll work it out for you."
"No, it'll be okay. I just have to stand on it."
"If your leg doesn't fall off first. Captain, ma'am, will you please just lie down!"
He gave her a gentle push on the shoulder while lifting her legs. Amanda overbalanced and thumped back on the soft foam padding. Arkady swiftly positioned the heel of her cramp-stricken limb against his shoulder.
"Okay now, push with your leg. Not hard, just a steady
pressure."
Arkady encircled her thigh about midway down with the thumb and forefinger of each hand. Then, slowly and deliberately, he drew upward, coming back over her knee and then down to the ankle. Returning his hands to their starting place, he repeated the process.
Amanda wasn't exactly certain how she found herself in this position, and she wasn't exactly sure if it was a proper one for her to be in. On the other hand, in an amazingly short time the knotting muscles began to relax and the burning pain subsided.
"That's better." She sighed. "Where in the world did you learn how to do that?"
"Well, I could say that my old high-school football coach taught me, but actually it was this Japanese girl I was going with when I was stationed at Yokosuka. She was a professional masseuse and she knew how to manipulate muscles that medical science hasn't even discovered yet. Okay, switch sides."
Arkady released her right foot and brought her left up to his shoulder.
"Pardon me, Lieutenant, but I don't have a cramp in that
one."
"Preventive maintenance."
"Oh."
As he set to work, he said, "Now can I ask one, Captain?"
"One what?" The strong and sure movement of his hands was making it a little difficult to concentrate.
"A question?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"I was looking through the latest issue of Naval Institute Proceedings down in the wardroom, and in the letters section I noticed that a couple of carrier officers were taking your name in vain.
"They seemed to be taking strong exception to an article you'd written. I couldn't find the number they were talking about, though, and I was just wondering what you'd said to kick their puppy so hard."
"Oh, that." Amanda shrugged as best she could from her horizontal position. "It was an article relating to a doctrine paper that I did for the Naval War College. Basically, I was saying that the United States can no longer depend on the aircraft carrier as its first line of overseas crisis intervention."
"Is that all? My, you do enjoy spitting in other people's holy water."
"Those two airedales missed the point entirely. I was talking in economic and operational terms, not in tactical effectiveness. The classic flattop is still a very viable weapons system, although this may be the last generation that this will be true. The problem is that there just aren't enough of them to go around anymore.
"Currently, the United States maintains a ten-carrier active-duty fleet. That's just barely enough to regularly forward-deploy one task force each into the Atlantic, western Pacific, and Mediterranean. The new Sea Control Ships we're building will help, but that'll be offset by the decommissioning of the Enterprise and the last of the oil burners. We're losing the ability to cover all of the potential global trouble spots with a fast-reaction carrier force."
"So, what's the fix?"
"What I call 'raider deployment.' We use stealth ships like the Cunningham, operating alone or in small, widely dispersed task groups. They'll cover the forward-deployment zones while the carriers are held back in reserve in a centralized oceanic area.
"For example, say with the Seventh Fleet. The raiders would deploy out and cover the current hot spots-the Persian Gulf, the Maldives, and the China coast. The carrier would park itself somewhere — say, off the north coast of Australia. If a flare-up occurs, the raider vessel on station will hold the line until the carrier can move up in support." Arkady released her leg. "Sounds interesting, but what if the natives get really restless? Given the firepower available to third world states these days, one ship wouldn't have much of a chance. Flip."
Distracted by their developing conversation, Amanda obediently rolled over onto her stomach. "Not necessarily. Up until the Second World War, a fast ship operating alone and trying not to be found was a hellishly hard thing to do anything about. Oh, Lord, that feels good!"
Arkady was firmly running the heels of his hands up either side of her spine from the small of her back to her shoulder blades. Amanda abandoned her last lingering concerns about propriety and considered learning how to purr.
"I guess that ended when radar and long-range search aircraft came along?" he commented.
"Hmm? Oh, yes, and later recon satellites were developed and made things even worse. If they can see you they can hit you, and if they can hit you they can kill you. The surface Navy became locked into a big-fleet mentality. You assumed that eventually you would be spotted, and that the only way to survive was by the massed area defense of a big-ship formation, backed by a carrier air group."
"Sounds reasonable to me."
"Not necessarily." Amanda semi-stretched and tucked her hands under her chin. "A single ship that can strike, disappear, and then strike again at will can raise havoc out of all proportion to its size. Read your history; Sir Francis Drake and the Golden Hind shattered the Spanish Imperial economy with their raids on South America. During the American Revolution, England was thrown into a panic by the presence of a single U.S. sloop-of-war off of their coasts. And right in these waters during the Second World War, the German pocket-battleship GrafSpee kept an entire Allied fleet pinned down for months hunting for her.
"The key to the whole thing is stealth technology, and the ability it gives you to escape and evade long-range detection. If the seas become a place you can hide in again, then, as the saying goes, the solitary raider can once more kick ass and take names."
"That sounds sort of like sub doctrine."
"True. The submarine was the first stealth warship. The thing is that undersea craft have inherent problems with their ability to collect and react to data outside of their primary operating environment. Their main sensors are effective only under water. The surface ship has the edge because it can fully interact with all three of the maritime combat environments: air, surface, and subsurface."