"Well, that's kind of problematical at the moment. I'd like to get one more sweep off before dawn, but it looks like we may not have an operational helo. We've got some servicing problems."
"God, that had to be next." She leaned forward again on the table and rested her forehead on her crossed wrists, her hair flowing down to curtain her face. "How bad is it getting with your people, Arkady?"
"It's starting to back up on us a little. This semipolar environment makes for a lot of extra man-hours of maintenance work, and we just don't have the men to produce the hours.
"I think we can keep things glued together for a couple more days while maintaining an adequate safety margin. Beyond that, we're going to have to start cutting back on flight time."
"Give me that couple of days more, Arkady," she asked, her voice muffled. "That's all I'll need."
"How are you doing, Captain?"
She straightened and looked across at him sharply. A spark of anger flared in her eyes, an instinctive denial of her own weaknesses. Arkady met her gaze levelly. Yeah, dammit, I am going to ask.
After a moment, she softened and produced a slight wry smile. "Fraying a little around the edges, but still all here. It's been kind of a heavy-duty few days. Beating that bistatic search system took care of our most immediate tactical problem, though. Now, if I can just get Erikson out…" She let her voice trail off.
"You sound like you're taking this kid personal, Skipper."
"That's because I am, Arkady. If I'd just stuck under weather cover like I should have on the day of that first Argentine air strike, he'd never have been wounded."
"And if your aunt had balls, she'd have been your uncle. The past is the past, good, bad, or indifferent. Monday-morning quarterbacking is a great way to drive yourself crazy with no concrete return out of it."
"No, Arkady. Sometimes the past hangs on, just like that boy is doing down in sick bay."
40
Much to his disgust, Admiral Elliot MacIntyre found that his backlog of hackwork had been accumulating in direct proportion to the time he was spending on-line with the Antarctic crisis. In the end, it forced him, muttering and snarling, away from Operations and to his desk for a few hours to deal with the worst of it.
Accordingly, he was rather grateful when the toning of his desk intercom interrupted the chore.
"Admiral, do you have a second?" his Chief of Staff inquired.
"Not really, but don't let that stop you. What's up, Maggie?"
"An unusual situation. I've just received a call from main gate security. Wilson Garrett is down there requesting to see you, sir."
MacIntyre wasn't exceptionally surprised. To hell with the paperchasing for a while.
"Clear him through, Maggie. VIP treatment."
MacIntyre waited for his guest in the operations-room access corridor. When he finally appeared, striding along at Captain Calendar's side, the CINCLANT found himself flashing back to certain old days in the Pacific. Wilson Garrett had been his immediate superior then, the man who had taught him just how a real skipper went about running a taut ship.
Garrett's brush cut was whiter now, but his spine was still as straight, his eyes just as sharp, and his nylon windcheater was worn like a suit of blues. Somewhere, someone had royally screwed up when this tough and capable little man had failed to get his second star.
"Welcome aboard, sir," MacIntyre said, extending his hand.
"Sir?" Garrett responded with a short, strong handclasp. "You're doing better than I ever managed, Eddie Mac."
"I don't know about that. You were smart enough to get out while you could still fly your flag off of a ship and not a brick shithouse."
Garrett smiled and replied wryly, "Maybe so. The hacks up in D.C. will probably want to put the whole fleet up on blocks one of these days. They'll figure to save some money."
The retired officer grew serious again. "Look, I know you people are busy, so I'll get right down to it. I'm here to pull strings, demand privileges, and beg favors. I'd like to find out what's happening to my kid, Eddie Mac."
"I figured as much. Come on, let's go down to Fleet Ops."
A few minutes later, Wilson Garrett was standing at the rail of the command balcony looking down appreciatively at the Large Screen Display and at the ordered ranks of workstations down in the worry hole.
"I wouldn't knock this setup. I would have killed to have this kind of C3I available back when I was trying to run CruDesRon Four from the flag plot of the old Callahan."
"You get the output, all right," MacIntyre replied. "Frequently, more than you want. We're still developing an analysis-and-utilization doctrine that'll allow us to make the best possible use of the data flow. This system can put you right in the hip pocket of your task force commanders. You really have to buck the urge to micromanage. If you're not careful, you can find yourself playing them like they were characters in some kind of a video game. Now, what do you know?"
"About as much as your average civilian puke," Garrett replied. "The Argentines have invaded the South Pole and we don't like it. We're blockading the Argentines and they don't like it. The Brits are gearing up for 'The Falklands, Part II,' and we've got a carrier group burning a hole in the water trying to get south. There's also scuttlebutt that the shooting is either about to start or has already started, but that nobody is ready to admit it yet."
Garrett ran a worried hand through his short-trimmed hair. "Hell, I'm not even sure if Mandy's ship is involved. I just know that the Duke was in Rio, and that she caught a sortie order. The only other thing that I'm certain of is that I've got a CNN camera crew camping in my front yard, waiting for the casualty-notification team to show up."
Maclntyre decided that there was no reason to beat around the bush. "The shooting has started and your daughter is right in the middle of it, Wils. Truth be known, at the moment she's damn near all we've got down there."
"Hell!"
"That's the bad news," the CINCLANT continued. "The good news is that she and that hypertech tin can of hers have been fighting the whole damn Argentine military establishment to a standstill."
"Yeah?" Something bright and hot flared in the older man's eyes. "Well, that's not surprising. Mandy never did have much back-down in her."
"So the Argentines are finding out," MacIntyre said dryly. "To date, she's closed down their sea lines of communication with the Antarctic and damn near put their naval aviation wing out of business. Eight confirmed surface-to-air kills so far. She's also knocked down their only military reconnaissance satellite and taken a chunk out of a sub they sent after her. She's more than holding her own, Wils."
"Has she taken any damage?"
"A little, during the Argentines' first strike on her. The Cunningham's still fully operational, though, and they've only taken one serious casualty. I understand they're currently trying to set up some kind of medevac for him through the British."
Garrett looked intently across at the Large Screen Display.
"What's her current position?"
"Good question. Half the time we can't spot her ourselves. This stealth business is more effective than even we expected. Generally, we get our best fixes when she interrogates a reconsat for an intelligence download."
MacIntyre glanced over to his Chief of Staff. "Maggie, when's our next bird due in over the Drake Passage area?"
"We should have a realtime link with Key Hole Thirteen Charley in just a couple of minutes, sir."
"Sounds good." The Admiral returned his attention to Garrett. "We'll be able to get a position on her for you then."