“Two black balls. Senior Chief.”
“You bet, two black balls, indicating a ship in distress, would be a good decision for a ship suffering the desperate misfortune of having a DEMOCRAT as her Captain. But there would hardly be much point in hoisting them at night would there? Especially since we’ve spent the last half hour talking about using navigation lights at night. So, double around the helicopter deck
repeating slowly and reverently ‘I will only have two black balls when I am out of control in daytime’ until I tell you to stop.
“Now, where were we. You hoist black balls in daytime when your ship is out of control, for example, the steering gear breaks down or the Navigating Officer gets rabies.”
“How about when you are refueling at sea, Senior Chief?”
“Good point, a very good example. The ship would not be under control and would be attached to the oiler by hose or line so, yes, hoisting black balls would be appropriate. Also when we’ve got our docking bay open, and are launching our landing craft, then we’re really not responsible for our actions. We should hoist them then as well. Now, back to lights at night.”
Helicopter Deck, USS Austin LPD-4, Eastern Mediterranean
Captain Pickering saw the lonely figure doubling around the helicopter deck. As the man passed the Captain, he saluted, “Sir, I will only have two black balls when I am out of control in daytime” and carried on his solitary tour. Captain Pickering turned to his Exec.
“I wonder what he did to annoy our Senior Chief?” he said pensively. The Senior Chief was giving one of the training lessons and this sailor had probably made an idiot of himself. Pickering shook his head, he knew now what he hadn’t when he’d been an Ensign, that he had an irreplaceable chance to learn. It was the Senior Chief who’d taught him how to run the accounts of the Officer’s Mess at a profit without being court-martialed for fraud and he was very sure that lesson wasn’t written down anywhere
“I thought he was a Marine at first, Sir, they’re usually the ones doubling around this deck. They certainly train hard sir.”
“Yes Exec.” Pickering’s voice was doubtful. He was worried about the Marines, oh not the ones on this amphibious group, they were as fine a force as a man could wish for. His worries went deeper, about the whole amphibious force itself. Perhaps it was time to talk. “Our Marines train as hard as they can and they’re as good as they get. What worries me is that for all the training and for all the quality, the whole doctrine we use for amphibious warfare is untested and unused. It’s all theory, all put together from the book. We’ve never tested it out under fire.
“You know the history as well as I do. We formed the Marines and the Fleet Amphibious Force for a landing in Europe in the event The Big One failed. As it all worked out, it didn’t and we never made those landings. Damn it, the only assault landings we ever made were the ones in the Azores and the Portuguese had agreed to be attacked and ordered their garrison to surrender without firing a shot before we ever put the first man ashore. If their position in Iberia hadn’t been so precarious, they’d have been in on our side before that. We bought the Azores from Portugal for Heaven’s sake.
“We’ve got all this doctrine, all this equipment, all these men and ships, and we really don’t know if any of it works. All we’ve done is a few in-and-out rescue missions, a few groups of citizens rescued from assorted riots, insurrections and various other examples of civilian nausea. The SEALS have done more actual operations than our Marines and they operate on the squad level. One day, we’re going to have to go into a hot beach in force and we have no real idea whether what we will do is going to work or not. That day might be a lot sooner than we think.”
“Trouble Sir?”
“You heard about the Caliphate taking over in Egypt and points south. The refugees are all over the sea around here, trying to get clear. A couple of Caliphate gunboats tried to take out an Italian corvette helping them and SAC blew them out of the water. Or so the story goes. Nobody in their right mind threatens SAC so the Caliphate’s going to try something else to get even. And we happen to be the closest American units to their coast.”
The Ruling Council Conference Room, Jerusalem, The Caliphate.
Once, many years before, when the most junior of cadets, Model had learned to go to sleep with his eyes open and sitting erect. He wasn’t quite asleep now, but he had tuned out most of what was going on around him. He’d finished the transportation of his people to Gaza, and he’d found himself in the middle of a major Caliphate base.
Gaza Harbor was the base for a whole fleet of the modem FAC-Ms, there were 18 already based there and more due to arrive. There were a pair of anti-ship missile bases with a battalion each of the long-range supersonic missiles that were arriving from Chipan. There were three anti-aircraft missile bases as well, and the missiles there were also new. So new, nobody quite understood how they worked yet. They had Chipanese experts manning them and those experts, living manuals Model called them, were training Model’s troops. And right in the middle of the complex was Model’s community. His troops, their families, everybody. There was better news. The Einsatzgruppen, sorry, the Guardians of the Faith, were elsewhere, working in Egypt to “cleanse” the country. That was what had made Model turn off.
In the middle of a major expansion with the deadly danger of facing the Americans looming, what was the Caliphate leadership discussing? Geostrategic imperatives? Operational requirements? Tactical lessons? Future concepts? Plans for consolidation or expansion? No. They’d spent two hours complimenting themselves on blowing up the Sphinx. As if blowing up a piece of rock a few thousand years old was any great achievement. Then they’d discussed more plans to blow up the tombs along the Valley of Kings. And then they’d talked about how to blow up the great Pyramids. Model wasn’t even sure it was possible to blow them up, he honestly doubted if even the American Hellburners could do the job. Well, perhaps, if one was put inside.
That didn’t make any difference to the Council of course. They’d discussed the destruction with expressions of almost orgiastic delight, with the same sort of glee that Model had seen on the faces of his men when setting off for a brothel. There was a moral there, something a psychiatrist would be able to explain. Was the sexual repression that dominated the Caliphate the root cause of their insatiable urge for destruction? Good question.
Model stirred and turned his ears on. The discussion had shifted to the recent events in the Mediterranean. There were long, gloating reports of the numbers of refugees who had been intercepted at sea and killed. That was mad too, why not just let them go? They weren’t wanted in the Caliphate and looking after them would drain the economic resources of whichever country took them in. But no, the Caliphate wanted them dead. As usual, the discussion made no sense at all. Each person would make grandiose claims, strike theatrical poses and issue bloodcurdling threats. Then one of them would quote something from the Koran he claimed supported his position and that settled it.
That wasn’t the problem, the trouble was that they’d done the impermissible. They’d had a confrontation with the Americans. Listening to the story, it seemed that a pair of their fast attack craft had engaged an Infidel ship that was helping refugees. They’d sunk it but a vast fleet of American aircraft had arrived and attacked the FACs. The Caliphate’s ships had shot the unbelievers down in their dozens of course but one of them had sunk an FAC. So revenge was needed and quickly.
Model had to work hard to stop himself laughing. If they really had shot down dozens of American aircraft, the Caliphate would be a radioactive wasteland by now. Just like Germany, Model reminded himself. The Americans did not make war upon their enemies, they destroyed them. And there was no word of any American ships being sunk, or anybody else’s for that matter. No, the whole story was fiction, except for the loss of the FAC. That was true enough. Once again, Model reminded himself, believe nothing these people say. They will say and do anything rather than admit defeat or failure.