"I mean I take Retainer Zero One out along the incoming flight path of this next Sierra strike. Once I get out about where I figure they'll be running their refueling operation, I'll go stealth and wait for them to overfly me. Then I pop up underneath them and kill the tanker.
"That should not only break up this strike, but given their limited air-to-air refueling assets, it should go a long way toward screwing up any future ops they might want to launch against us."
Amanda frowned again. "How are you going to know what their line of approach is going to be?"
"I won't for sure, but I can make a pretty good educated guess. I figure the Argys will apply the KISS principle on this next strike just like they did before. When they launch, they'll fly a straight bearing out from the Isla Grande navigational beacon to our last fixed position. I just have to fly north, back along that bearing far enough, and I should be in pretty good shape to bushwhack 'em.
"While I'm running the intercept, we'll have Retainer Zero Two up with an Airborne Early Warning pod. She'll transmit an open-band downlink of what her radar is imaging that both the Duke and Retainer Zero One will be able to patch into passively. I'll be able to build a tactical display out of that without having to give away my position. The Argys won't know I'm there until they run right over me."
Amanda suddenly found herself wishing that he weren't making so much sense.
"All right, then," she said, "how do you plan to get out afterwards?"
"Same way I got in. Fully stealthed, and down on the deck. With a little luck, by the time they sort out what's happened, I'll be over the hill and far away."
"If you're not lucky, you'll end up alone out there with a bunch of very angry Argentine fighter pilots."
He gave her a half-grin. "If you don't bet, you can't win. That's how the game's played."
"Okay," she replied, grabbing for a last argument, "answer one more thing, then. What's the advantage of risking an aircrew over doing the same job with the LORAINs?"
"Surprise, and the probability of success. We have to assume that the Argys will be paying close attention to their threat boards as they come in. They probably won't worry too much about our air-search sweeps, but the second you bring up the fire-control radars, they'll scatter. Even a C-130 can do a whole lot of shuckin' and jivin' during the couple of minutes it would take for a SAM to get out that far. With my way, they won't realize they've got a problem until it's too late to do anything about it."
Arkady watched as Amanda slipped into what he was coming to recognize as her "heavy studying" posture: her arms crossed over her stomach, her head tilted down with her thick fall of hair flowing along her jawline, her lower lip lightly bitten in thought.
Finally she looked up. "Okay, Arkady, we go with it."
22
They committed to the intercept. The Duke held her course to the southeast as the Argentine spy satellite arced overhead. The moment it dropped below the horizon, however, she came about to the north, closing the range with her potential foes with every beat of her racing propellers.
Both of her helos scrambled, each lifting into the sky on its assigned mission. Retainer Zero Two, with the radome of a Clear Water Airborne Early Warning pod bulging beneath one snub wing, took up its point station twenty miles ahead of the destroyer's bow, matching her course and speed. From here, serving as a mini-AWACS aircraft, her radar coverage would provide the sole link between the Cunningham and Retainer Zero One as the latter ranged ahead along their enemy's potential line of attack.
The Cunningham's first team was fully closed up in the Combat Information Center. Amanda slouched in her command chair and used the sidearm keypad to flip the Large Screen Display from augmented computer simulacra to live radar and back again. The image being received from the hovering helicopter lacked the range and definition of the ship's big SPY-2 A arrays. They were just barely pulling in, the ghostly outline of the coast of Isla Grande and Cape Horn.
Dix Beltrain rested his hand on the back of her chair and quietly asked, "Captain, may I speak with you privately for a moment?"
Her normally amiable tactical operations officer had been quiet and indrawn ever since the Argentine attack. Amanda had sensed the crisis building and she'd been preparing for it.
"Sure, Dix," she replied, sliding out of her chair. She led Beltrain to the quiet rear corner of the compartment next to the ubiquitous Navy-issue coffee urn.
The younger officer was holding himself almost at parade rest as he began to speak in a low voice. "Captain, I need to confer with you about something that happened! during the Argentine air strike."
"Presumably the total hash you made of our ESSM area defense during the engagement?"
"That's it, ma'am. I bitched it! I bitched it really bad. I saw that those Exocets were crossing into the point defense zone. The warning flags had come up on my tactical screen. I knew that they were passing out of a successful engagement envelope and I still tried to set up a shot instead of shifting fire to the Rafale flights. I… I have no excuses or explanations, Captain."
"You don't, Lieutenant?" Amanda replied mildly. "I do. It's a phenomenon my dad would have called 'buck fever,' probably mixed with a little whiff of raw terror."
"Not just a whiff, ma'am. I was scared shi— I was scared so badly that I made a critical error and I endangered the ship. I believe it's my duty to point this out to you, and to give you the option of pulling me out of the command loop."
"Dix, a short time ago, some very capable people were trying very hard to kill us. They came very close to succeeding. The individual who wasn't scared under those circumstances would be the one I'd be inclined to pull out of the loop, primarily because it would be plain that they'd become detached from reality."
Beltrain shook his head emphatically. "That isn't the point. I locked up so bad that I fumbled it. I should have been engaging those other bomber elements. I could have broken up the strike before they got within kill range. Instead, all I could see were those damn missiles coming in on us. I screwed up, ma'am!"
Amanda shrugged. "I won't argue the point, Mr. Beltrain. You most definitely screwed up. Realistically, though, wouldn't that same potential have existed for anyone I might have put on the main console?
"Someday, when you and he both have a little spare time, ask Chief Thomson about his experiences during Desert Storm. He was aboard the old Sacramento at the time, and he will vividly describe to you what it was like tending a fire room in the Red Sea in one-hundred-and-twenty-degree weather for six straight months. He's the closest thing to a combat veteran we have aboard this ship.
"Come to think of it, I believe this was the first instance of a United States naval vessel coming under air attack since the Persian Gulf tanker war. So, if I pulled you off the main console, I'd be bouncing the most experienced missileer currently serving in the United States Navy. That would be a rather stupid thing to do, in my opinion."
Beltrain ran his hand through his perspiration-damp hair. "That doesn't cover for the fact that I still committed a major error, ma'am."
"Join the club. I imagine that when we conduct a post-action analysis on this furball, we're going to discover that a lot of people made errors. I'm willing to concede that I made mine. The thing is, we survived and we learned. We're blooded now. We won't make so many mistakes next time.
"Don't get me wrong, Dix. I'm not tossing off what happened today. I just believe that you're still the best man available for the job. Now, push all of the guilt-trip cow hockey aside and give me a straight answer. If I leave you on the main console, will this happen again?"