“Well. I just wish…” Tombstone’s voice broke off.
His uncle laid a reassuring hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “I miss her, too. She was good for you.”
His last, shattering memories of Tomboy came flooding back. Her face, the feel of her skin next to his, the way she had of continually challenging him, making him better than he’d ever thought he could be. God, but he missed her. And to be denied even the cold comfort of burying her — well, it didn’t bear thinking about. Nothing could change what had happened.
“So tomorrow,” Tombstone said at last. “I better get some sleep, then.” Another question occurred him. “Who’s my backseater?”
“Some good news, there,” his uncle said. “The aircraft you’re taking was originally configured as a trainer, so you’ll have dual flight controls. You can have a pilot instead of an RIO, if that’s what you want.”
“I’ll take Jason,” Tombstone said promptly.
Jason Greene was the newest addition to their team, a hotshot young F-14 pilot who had leaped at the opportunity to join up. He had already foreseen the way his career would go, that eventually responsibilities and duties would take him further and further away from the cockpit. All Jason wanted to do was fly — he didn’t care about additional responsibility, about command, or any of the other things that a good naval officer should care about. That made him perfect for Advance Solutions.
“Jason’s a good choice,” his uncle said approvingly. “I don’t think you’ll have any difficulty convincing him.”
“Difficulty? Hell, I’d have to shoot him to take off without him.”
FOURTEEN
Captain Chang gazed out over the relatively placid Yellow Sea. He knew this body of water like he knew his own house, its moods, the peculiarities of its sound velocity profile, and had developed an almost instinctive feel for how sonar propagation curves would look. He glanced up at the sky and took a careful look at the horizon. Everything he saw agreed with his gut feeling. There would be no storms today, none of the sudden squalls that could lash the sea into unbelievable chaos. And a good thing, too. While a storm might not bother the massive aircraft carrier off its port now, the crew of the small frigate would definitely feel the effects. Even worse, increased sea state would definitely degrade their USW capabilities.
But even a body of water he knew well could hold surprises. Somewhere over the horizon, the Chinese surface task force was supposedly conducting a training exercise. Their intentions worried Chang, but not as much now as they had earlier. Within a few hours, the aircraft carrier would be within range to deliver antisurface missiles, should the need arise, and Chang found the prospect of a snowstorm of Harpoon missiles immensely reassuring.
What bothered him more than the surface ships was what might be below the surface. The latest intelligence reports showed that one Chinese diesel submarine was missing from its berth in port. Yes, Chang had held them, tracked them, even simulated killing them. But who was to know just how much of that was realistic? It would not be beyond a Chinese to feign incompetence in order to induce a false sense of confidence in the Taiwanese.
Oh, he knew them too well. They had ancestors in common stretching back over time on a scale that these Americans could not even contemplate. These Americans — the new toys, their advanced electronics, the brash, abrasive way they had of dealing with each other. Such a young nation, with officers like children — it could be, at its very best, simply annoying. At worst, the differences in their culture led to serious misunderstandings that took much patience and tolerance to work through.
Chang walked back onto his bridge, noted that all was going well, and then proceeded aft to Combat. The quiet murmurs inside there fell silent as he walked in, a mark of respect. His watch officer, a young man from a good family, stood and bowed politely.
“All is well?” Chang asked.
“Yes, Captain. We maintain our station, and have been transmitting reports regularly on our contacts.” The lieutenant hesitated, as though deciding whether to speak further.
For just a moment, Chang felt nostalgic for the days when it had been just the Lake Champlain and the Marshall P’eng in this part of the world. The arrival of the aircraft carrier USS United States had complicated life by a factor of ten, not the least by the micromanagement of his own USW patrol area.
Oh, Chang understood the reason behind the sudden rudder orders and the polite requests that Marshall P’eng be somewhere other than where she was headed. The carrier usually pleaded pending flight operations or replenishment evolutions with the USS Jefferson. After all, it wasn’t like they could order him out of certain areas of his own sea, but he could tell that that was just what they’d like to do.
There was an American sub somewhere around, there had to be. There was a sub in his water, and no one wanted to tell him about it. Nor did they want him accidentally stumbling across their sub and prosecuting her.
Chang conducted a few careful maneuvering evolutions to determine exactly when and where the Americans got nervous. By careful observation, he had a pretty good idea what the boundaries of their sub’s operating area was, and he confirmed his suspicion by noting that no American ships ventured into that particular square of water.
But the American submarine was not his only problem. Even with the aircraft carrier’s escorts a few days out, the tension had already started to affect his crew in more subtle ways. No longer were they the premier warship in the water, a pretense they’d been able to maintain with only the Lake Champlain around. The massive bulk of the aircraft carrier, the sheer volume of radio traffic and aircraft and everything else that she threw into the air brought home to each Marshall P’eng sailor just how powerful the other ship was.
That was the down side, as the American’s said. The up side was that the Chinese task force seemed to have stopped dead in the water. They remained approximately two hundred miles off their own coast, ostensibly conducting training operations, perhaps to draw attention and resources toward the surface ships and mask covert maneuvers by their submarine. Chang felt a flash of pity for the ground troops sweltering in the close confines of the troop transport ships.
“And?” Chang prompted gently, waiting for the watch officer to continue.
“I am not sure they listen to our reports, sir. Oh, they are quite polite on the circuit — sometimes I must repeat numbers and names, but eventually they understand. But look at the display,” he turned to point at the newly installed tactical data system.
Unfortunately, it was a one-way system on their ship. They received an integrated tactical picture from the battle group, but could not manually input their own contacts. “Why have they a need of our reports when they have all this?” the watch officer asked.
Chang had wondered the same thing himself, but the decision had been made at higher levels. “It is to develop coordination,” he explained, hoping to sound like he meant it. “We will get used to working together, now, when there is time. There may not be time later.”
“Yes, Captain.” His watch officer said nothing further, but his eyes mirrored a shadow of doubt.
Lieutenant Commander “Bird Dog” Robinson clicked down on his mouse again, this time punching it harder. Nothing happened. His JTIDS, or joint tactical information display system screen remained infuriatingly locked on what the sailors called “the eagle prompt,” meaning that the giant American Eagle logo was displayed. A nice logo it was, indeed, with the eagle well drawn and suitably fierce, but no substitute for the array of tactical data that should have been there.