"No, ma'am. There just wasn't any time. I was barely able to recycle and reload the system and get the round off."
"I see. And what made you sure that our systems would be interactive with theirs?"
"I've been reading up on the briefing package for the mission, ma'am. The Argentines use a Thomson CSF designation system. It's fully NATO standardized and operationally compatible with all of our stuff. It had to work."
"No, it didn't. Not if the aircraft in the second flight had been carrying an ordnance load other than laser-guided munitions."
Amanda watched the play of expression across the seaman's face. First the moment of confusion, then the gut-lurching realization. She let him dwell for a while on the image of a gutted and blazing ship. It wouldn't be necessary to crucify Lyndiman further. He was a conscientious and intelligent young man and he was doing a fine job of it on his own.
"I'm sorry, Captain. I thought I was doing the right thing," he said miserably.
"You were. You thought clearly and quickly in a crisis situation and you spotted a potential vulnerability in an enemy. You knocked down an attacking aircraft and you just possibly saved this ship.
"It's my belief that one of the strengths of our Navy has always been that our ships have been crewed by intelligent, innovative people who can think for themselves in an emergency. I do not want or need mindless robots aboard the Cunningham.
"However, what you did down there today was a classic calculated risk. When you call something like that right, you get to be the hero. But if you call it wrong, you get to watch your shipmates die. Should you ever have to make another call like that, you make sure that you are as right then as you were today."
"Okay, Captain," he replied, giving her a sober nod. "You got it."
"Very well. Chief, this gentleman here seems to think he needs a little more responsibility in his life. We will oblige him. Gunner's Mate Second Lyndiman is now a gunner's mate first. He's also our new first-stringer on the forward gun. Please inform Mr. Beltrain about it and see that the paperwork gets to my desk when the opportunity presents itself."
"Aye, aye, Captain."
"Is that suitable for you, Mr. Lyndiman?"
"Yes, ma'am! Thank you!"
She cocked an eyebrow. "Thank you. Dismissed."
After the two men had disappeared back out into the passageway, Amanda had just enough time for another gulp of cooling tea before her headset phones went active.
"Captain, you'd better get back down here to the CIC."
"What's happening, Chris?"
"Offhand, I'd say we're up shit creek and the guy who's rented us the boat has just called time."
21
Lieutenants Rendino and McKelsie were hunkered down together in front of a computer terminal as Amanda reentered the dimness of the CIC, their close proximity giving them an odd air of intimacy.
"What's the situation?" she inquired sharply as she joined them.
"It looks like we might have to eat another air strike," Christine replied.
"Why? We've broken contact."
"It's that damn Argy satellite. It'll be making its next pass in about" — Christine glanced up at the digital clock on the overhead—"forty-five minutes. The spook meister here figures it's going to tag us."
"What about it, McKelsie? Are they that good? Can't we stealth it?"
He shook his head. "I've been running some computer models on the capabilities of the Argentine sat, specifically its thermographic scanning. It doesn't look good. We got a real contrast problem going here."
"More than our insulation and Black Hole systems can cope with?"
"Yeah, a lot more. We've got a still-air atmospheric temperature of nineteen degrees Fahrenheit out there and a surface-water temperature of thirty-one degrees. Even if we start an immediate emergency drawdown of our internal temperature and cut power completely while the sat is overhead, we're still going to show up like a lightbulb on black velvet on any kind of halfway decent infrared imager. The only way we can kill that kind of temperature differential is by using the misting system."
McKelsie referred to the system of high-pressure water jets built into the Cunningham's weather decks and upper works. Primarily intended as a purging mechanism to clear the destroyer's topsides of radioactive or biochemical contamination, it could also be used to mask her thermal signature under a cooling and concealing cloud of spray.
"I can't use the water jets now," Amanda protested. "I'd have six inches of solid ice built up on the weather decks inside of half an hour. We'd have to use the deck heaters to clear it off."
McKelsie nodded. "Yeah, and that would magnify our heat signature so much that a nearsighted rattlesnake could track us."
Christine rose from behind the terminal and stretched. "Here's how I figure it. We've got about three hours of daylight left and about forty minutes until the next satellite pass. The Argys probably have another strike armed and on the runway, ready to launch the second they get a fresh fix on our position. Give them twenty minutes to the strike airborne and an hour's flight time from Rio Grande Base. That will put them over our last known location with an hour of daylight left.
"Currently, we've got two thousand feet between the bottom of the available cloud deck and the ocean's surface. Probably they'll drop down through the overcast at our last position fix and spiral outward in a visual search pattern. Figuring that they use a tanker on the way in, they'll have enough light and gas to have a pretty good chance of spotting us."
Amanda let the breath trickle out of her lungs in a soft hissing sigh. "They've got an absolutely solid chance of spotting us. If they can work in that close, we don't dare maintain full EMCON. We'll have to bring up the air-search radars to keep from being bushwhacked entirely, and they'll home in on our emissions. Unless we can find some little localized snow squall or fog bank to hide in, you're right, we will have to eat the strike."
"Maybe we could avoid a whole lot of unpleasantness by doing something about that reconsat before it can spot us," the intel pointed out hopefully.
"The Zenith round? It takes a minimum of two hours to stack it and prep it for launch. We just don't have enough time now. Later tonight, though, I intend to make good use of it."
Granting we're still afloat, Amanda added silently.
"I think we have an alternative."
Vince Arkady had been standing back in one of the bay's shadowy corners. Now he pushed away from the bulkhead and stepped forward. He was clad in full flight gear, including survival suit and Mae West life jacket, and his helmet was clipped to his harness by its chin strap.
"May I talk with you for a moment, ma'am?" he asked formally.
"Of course." Amanda nodded to her intel and her countermeasures man and moved over to the waiting pilot. "What have you got, Lieutenant?"
"It's not a good idea to let them move in on us like that, Captain."
"Tell me about it. More importantly, tell me what we can do about it?"
"We go after them."
"An ambush?" Amanda frowned thoughtfully. "We could run north and try to set up an over-the-horizon missile trap with the LORAINs."
"That could work, but I was thinking of something more up close and personal."
"Such as?"
"I want to try an intercept with an air-to-air armed helo."
Amanda's eyebrows shot up. "Arkady! Going after a fighter-bomber strike with a helicopter is turning macho into foolhardy."
"Not the fighter-bombers, Captain. The tanker."
"What do you mean?"