“Cheryl. How’s the arm?”
“Greenstick fracture. Apparently I’ll live.”
“Good. How long till we have comms back?”
“Not getting a solid on that, Admiral.” She lifted a liter bottle of water and drank off half. He held out a hand and she passed it over. “Right now… well, you know the ship as well as I do.”
Dan rubbed his mouth. Ticos had no emergency generators, just the three main gas turbine generators. All three were online in Condition One, in case of a casualty. Backup power now would have to be manually switched to alternate power at the panels. Some vital circuits were on automatic bus transfer — vital lighting, some comms — but not high-current-demand circuits like the radars. But with all three GTGs offline, Savo was dark until one could be restarted, either remotely, or locally with the remaining high-pressure air… since bleed air wasn’t available for restarting while the GTMs were offline too.
She blinked at something past his shoulder. “Trouble is, one hit took out the power panel. Three dead, three more injured in Main One. We’re routing casualty power, but it’s not going to happen fast. And we’ve got a main space fire. Halon and CO2 dumps have been manually tripped. And flooding, and all our fire pumps are electrical…” She blinked again, this time meeting his gaze. “We’re out of the battle, Admiral. If I could hoist a white flag, I’d be thinking about it.”
“Anybody in visual range? Somebody we can signal, who can see our smoke at least?”
The phone talker yelled, “OOD! Radio reports emergency transmitter is up. McClung answers on 2182 kilohertz distress frequency.”
“Thank God,” Dan said, looking around. “Where’s Bart? We need reports. We need whoever’s still got propulsion to stand by those who’ve lost power.”
But no one seemed to know. He removed his helmet and scratched his head. It was good they had distress connectivity, if they kept taking water and couldn’t get ahead of the flames, or couldn’t get power back. But he couldn’t suck data, and issue commands, through a straw that narrow. He had to either transfer command, or…
“Red Hawk 202 reports on deck Sejong, awaiting orders,” the talker said.
“Good. Can we patch them to… no, we can’t. No power.” He paced the bridge port to starboard, glancing out each time he turned. The haze was still thickening. The fires were eating deeper into Savo’s guts. He coughed into his fist, then spat a dark wad into a bucket in the corner. Shit, he had to make a fucking decision. The rest of the task force could be under attack right now, somewhere else under this tranquil blue dawn.
Say he turned over command, since he couldn’t exercise it himself. But to whom? The only other flag officer out here was Min Jun Jung. He couldn’t turn over U.S. forces to a Korean, could he?
The truth was, he didn’t want to hand off the task force. Not just yet, and not to Jung. He couldn’t shake the memory of how, in the Taiwan Strait, the Korean had galloped straight for the guns, and almost taken them all to their doom. Dan had had to yank hard on the reins, and even then, the other admiral had nearly gotten away from him.
What if Jung decided to immolate Task Force 76 on the pyre of killing Chinese, or of his ambition, or of his desire to relive the exploits of some medieval admiral who’d defeated a fleet many times the size of his own? No. The guy was just too aggressive.
Well then, could he turn it over to the next senior captain, Tom Wescott on Hampton Roads? No. That would be a slap in the face Jung would never forgive.
Or was all this just Daniel V. Lenson, admiral for a day, rationalizing keeping command for himself? “Fuck,” he mumbled, and caught a glance from the helmsman. Everywhere he turned, it was Catch-22. But he had to do something.
“Red Hawk 202 calling again. Requesting orders,” the phone talker said.
Dan seized the seaman’s shoulder, shouting above the growing roar of the fire aft. “Tell him… is that Wilker?… tell him, return to home plate. For personnel transfer to Hampton Roads.”
Cheryl jerked her head up, almost rotating it like an owl to look back at him. “I’m shifting my flag,” he told her. “Bring 202 back in. Get the two — no, the three worst-wounded back to the flight deck.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Shifting my flag. I can’t fight from here.”
“You’re leaving us, Admiral?” Van Gogh said, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Dan turned away, suddenly furious. He wasn’t only responsible for Savo, but for the rest of the force too. Without sensors and comms, a task force commander was as useless as a rifleman without cartridges. “Going below, to get ready,” he snapped to Staurulakis. Then turned away, crossed to the door, and slid down the ladder, gripping the worn-smooth handrails to brake his descent.
Was that a disgruntled murmur behind him, as the door sealed? The inner voice that always questioned him formed it into words, though he probably hadn’t really heard them.
The big hero put us on the bull’s-eye. Now, when it gets too hot, he’s jumping ship.
Fifteen minutes later, on the flight deck. Savo was still without propulsion, though Staurulakis’s parting report said McMottie hoped to get #2B turbine and the port shaft in operation, and the #3 generator was being manual-started with bleed air. The rudder was still jammed, though. He’d promised to send help as soon as he figured out who was nearest. The ship had swung, slowly, the sail area of her forward superstructure catching the wind. Now she rode stern to the west, and morning shadows reached across the flight deck. The midships area was still on fire. A huge tower of black smoke leaned to the west, heading for Japan.
Dan gazed into an azure sea with a two-foot chop. Savo was down by the stern. Sinking, unless they could get power to the pumps. He remembered a day in the Persian Gulf, when a ship had slipped away under him, and finally gone down. Leaving two hundred men in the water, abandoned…
He shook the memory off, squinting up as 202 descended. The downblast from its rotors lashed spray off a ruffled sea. Strafer Wilker, the pilot, had done a slow orbit, checking out the damage, before lining up for his approach. He flared out, hovered, hanging there. Then dropped, planting the tires on the worn nonskid with a squeak and a thump.
First out on the flight deck were the casualty team, toting litters. Dunkie Ryan trotted alongside, holding up an IV bag. These perhaps might be saved with CAT scans and trauma surgery. With a hot refuel on Hampton Roads, Wilker could hopscotch east to the carriers, which had surgeons and operating rooms.
“Min Su, we ready?” Dan yelled to the reedy officer beside him. Hwang nodded. Others had offered to go too. Ron Gault, his self-appointed bodyguard. Captain Enzweiler. He’d refused them with a curt shake of the head. Just him, the ROKN liaison, and the wounded. The Korean clutched his briefcase and a carry bag.
Dan’s own baggage was even lighter. His notebook, and the clothes on his back. The damage-control leader had halted him in the passageway when he’d tried to reach his cabin. It had been in the blast area from one of the missiles. Thank God he’d been in CIC when the warheads blew through. More serious, though, was that the unit commander’s cabin was just forward of SPY Radar Room #3, where all signal processing took place. If that had been wiped out too, Savo would have been sidelined for months.