As a solution, a seagoing barge platform had been anchored in international waters just inside the Straits of Hormuz. From this strike base, U.S. Navy SEALs, Special Boat Squadron flotillas and U.S. Army “Black Helicopter” flights sortied nightly to wage a secretive and ultimately successful war against the Iranian Boghammer groups.
Now, given the reduced size of the United States Navy and the shrinking number of foreign bases available to the American armed forces, the concept was being expanded upon again. A new generation of military “cities at sea” was being designed, utilizing the same technology used in the construction of offshore oil installations. Floating base complexes were on the drawing boards, artificial islands that could be towed into position anywhere in the world, each capable of supporting an entire Navy task force and an embarked Marine brigade garrison, complete with airstrips large enough to accept fighter and transport aircraft.
That was still for tomorrow, however. Floater 1 merely marked another step along that path.
The offshore base consisted of nine oceangoing super barges, each four hundred feet in length by one hundred and fifty in width, intermoored to form one gigantic rectangular platform better than three football fields long by one and a half wide.
Elevated helipads had been constructed atop the four corner barges, the “bastions” of the fortress, each large enough to accept several helicopters or VTOL aircraft. Spaced between them were the smaller gun towers of the platform’s defensive armament. A tall glass-walled structure similar to an airport control tower rose from the central barge, adjacent to a towering tripod mast studded with aerial arrays and rotating antenna.
These were the only fixed installations on the platform. A polyglot village of housing modules, trailers, and cargo containers took up the rest of the extensive deck area, a dully spectrumed patchwork of white, Navy gray, and camo pattern.
“Circle the platform once please, Steamer. I’d like to look the place over.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
As the range closed, Amanda noted the bustling activity aboard the facility. A Cyclone-class Patrol Craft and a pair of LCU landing craft nestled against the platform’s lee side, toy like against its bulk. The little PC, as sleek and rakish as a miniaturized destroyer, took on fuel from one of the barge’s internal cells while a crane methodically hoisted cargo pallets from the well decks of the LCUs. As she continued to look on, a Boeing-Textron Eagle Eye reconnaissance drone lifted off from one of the helipads. The automobile-size tilt-rotor air craft hovered like a wary hornet for a moment before transitioning to horizontal flight mode, flashing away toward the heat-hazed green line of the coast.
“How close to the beach are we?” Amanda asked, thoughtfully eyeing the drone’s destination.
“A little over thirteen miles offshore,” Lane replied. “Just clear of the twelve-mile limit and hanging right on the edge of the continental shelf.”
Snowy nodded soberly. “If you look off to the northwest at night, you can see the lights of Monrovia. They anchored us here because of the shallows and because this is almost the exact center of our patrol line. But boy, it does put us right in the laps of the bad guys.”
Amanda nodded as well. “And what happens if General Belewa objects to our familiarity?”
“Then,” Steamer replied grimly, “there is going to be one hell of a fight. We have eight Mark 96 over-and-under mounts in the gun towers. We also have RAM launchers and Stinger teams in case of an air attack and chaff launchers and ECM in the event he scares up some antiship missiles somewhere. Like I said, one way or another, it’ll be one hell of a fight.”
Amanda noted the curtains of Kevlar armor drawn along the sides of the barge hulls and gun towers and the sand bagged hardpoints on the deck edges. Indeed, should the Union attempt to storm the platform, “one hell of a fight” might be an understatement. This was no Arabian Nights fairy castle. A more apt comparison would be to a frontier Army post deep in Apache territory.
Backing off steadily on his throttles, Lane completed his circle of the platform. The middle barge in the downwind, or “stern,” tier of the platform had been cut down and modified to provide for a two-hundred-foot ramp shallow enough for a hovercraft to climb. Lane nosed the Queen in toward this now, humping her up and over the ramp edge. With another consummate coordination of thruster, throttle, and rudder, he and Snowy taxied their command up-ramp to the platform deck and to the waiting reception crew.
Three large open-sided hangars were located beyond the broad turnaround pad at the head of the ramp, one of which was already occupied by another parked seafighter. “That’s the PG-03,” Lane commented over his shoulder, “the Carondelet. The Manassas is out on barrier patrol this afternoon.”
Leaning into the air blast issuing from beneath the hover craft, a pair of wand-wielding ground guides assisted Lane as he rotated the Queen around a hundred and eighty degrees, backing her into her servicing bay. Deck baffles shielded equipment and personnel alike from the howling turbulence produced by the seafighter’s lift fans.
The wand men executed the crossed-arm “cut” gesture as the hovercraft was properly spotted and Lane came back on the throttles. The wail of the turbines faded and the Queen sank down into the nest of her deflating skirts with a protracted sigh.
“We’re home, Captain.”
“Thank you for the introduction, Steamer,” Amanda replied, releasing her seat belt. “Now I have some idea of what I have to work with.” She mused for a few moments, then smiled. “The three little PGs. The Three Little Pigs. I like them. I like them a lot.”
“They can ruin you for the big ships, ma’am.”
As the pilots continued their shutdown procedures, Amanda levered herself out of the jump seat. She started aft, then paused for a moment. “Oh, and by the way, Lieutenant Banks, I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about certain modifications you’ve made to your uniform.”
Snowy stiffened in her seat. “Uh, yes, ma’am?”
“They make good sense in this climate. I’ll have to get some of my khakis cut down like that too.” She slapped the younger woman lightly on the shoulder and dropped down the ladderway into the main hull.
Her quarters were located in one of the housing modules sited near the hovercraft hangars. Utilitarian in the extreme, it was the end cabin in a stark white aluminum-sided shoe box secured to the platform deck by a foundation of scarred 4 × 4s. Plumbing connectors and electrical umbilicals drooled openly from the box’s belly, vanishing down scuttles into the barge’s interior. The sole luxury bestowed by rank would be that she would have the space to herself.
After her guide had set her luggage inside the door, Amanda released him to return to his duties. Standing in the center of the little cabin, she examined her new living space.
It didn’t take long. Three chairs, one behind a desk, a locker, and a stripped cot with its thin mattress rolled up at its head. Two small louvered windows flanked the entryway and a second narrow doorway opened into a minute combination head and shower. That was all.
The bare walls — somehow the nautical term “bulkhead” didn’t feel right — were a use-dingy white, the battered linoleum on the floor, gray. The fixtures and furnishings all bore the mark of long government service.
The temperature in the room was volcanic. Amanda noticed the small air conditioner mounted in one of the windows and, rather anxiously, she stepped across to it and hit the start button. To her relief, a stream of cool and comparatively dry air began to flow out of its grille after a few moments, albeit with a grinding roar.