Amanda sank down into the desk chair, relishing the chill as the perspiration on her skin began to evaporate. Her first impressions of the PG squadron were good. Oh, they were unconventional, no doubt about that. But it seemed to be the kind of unconventionality that was born out of adaptive and intelligent flexibility. These were the kind of people who carried their discipline around in their guts, not in a book of regulations. She’d be able to use that, granted she could become as adaptable as they were. Please God, let the rest of her command be as promising as well.
Amanda sighed and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk. That forty-eight hours in transit was catching up with her again. Yet there was that urgent drive to get going, to pull things together. But Lord, where to start?
“Hey, yo! Anyone home?” a cheerfully irreverent voice inquired.
Amanda forgot about her tiredness and even about her mission for a moment. Coming out of her chair, she embraced the small figure that had come bursting through her doorway. Christine Rendino returned the hug with equal fierceness. “Hi, boss ma’am. It’s about time you came to the party!”
“I’m here now, Chris. How are you doing?” Her hands still resting on Christine’s shoulders, Amanda stepped back for a moment to fondly study her closest feminine friend. Little had changed over the past few months. The same inquisitive pixie’s face grinned back at her, the skin now golden tanned, the shag-cut hair sun-bleached from ash blond to near white. However, Amanda also noted that the younger woman was wearing her glasses, an old indication that Christine had been putting in a lot of hours in front of a CRT screen. Looking closer, she also noted a couple of new weariness wrinkles notched in around her friend’s blue-gray eyes.
“There’s nothing wrong with me that a twenty-seven-hour day couldn’t fix,” Christine replied. “God, but it’s good to see you. It’s going to be like old times, hey?”
Amanda smiled soberly. “Nope, not at all like old times, my friend. We have a whole new situation. Pull up a chair and let’s talk.”
As Christine did so, Amanda dropped back into her own seat. The office chair was set too high for her comfort, a pointed reminder of another officer who had sat behind this desk not too long before. “Okay, Chris, you’ve been out here long enough for you to get a solid handle on this operation. I need to know what I’m getting into, and I need to know fast.”
Chris took a deep breath and let it trickle out in a hissing sigh. “Okay, but I’d better warn you right now that there are no short forms available out here. Nothing is simple on this job.”
“Then let’s start with the basics. What do you think of the Task Group?”
“Hey, I get along with ’em great,” Christine replied with a quirky grin. “They’re my kind of folks.”
“I had a hunch they were.”
“You’ve got a real mixed bag of personnel out here. Special Boat people, Seabees, the hover crews, my spark heads and drone jockeys. They’re all pretty much new-gen littoral warrior types. Beyond a scattering of older CPOs, you don’t have very many old fleet hands at all.”
“I’ve met one of the old hands already, Chief Tehoa.”
“Oh yeah. I know about him. The PG group’s senior chief is a gentleman who has his shit extremely together. Good folks, boss ma’am.”
“That’s how I read him,” Amanda agreed. “How about the rest of the seafighter people?”
“Very young, very tough, and very hot to show their stuff. This is a NAVSPECFORCE elite unit, at least on a par with the Special Boat Squadrons. These guys and gals all volunteered for this slot. Warfighters all. Especially keep your eye on the squadron commander. Steamer Lane seems to have a good balance of brains and balls going for him.”
“That’s my first impression as well.”
Christine tilted her chair back to the limit of safety. “Beyond the loss of their previous TACBOSS, unit morale and cohesion appear high. This whole outfit’s sort of like a big pack of wolf pups, all supereager and ready to start hunting. In my expert opinion, they only need one thing to bring it all together.”
“And what would that be?”
The intel grinned lazily. “Some cunning old bitch wolf to show them how it’s done.”
Amanda found herself grinning back. “I don’t consider thirty-six old, Chris.”
The warble phone on the desk suddenly cut into their conversation. Amanda scooped up the handset. “Garrett here.”
“This is Commander Lane, Captain. I’m over in the operations van. We have a hot contact.”
“I’m on my way.” Amanda dropped the phone back into its cradle and looked across the desk at her friend. “Okay, intelligence officer. Intel me where the Operations Center is?”
Operations turned out to be located in a semitrailer van parked and lashed to the barge deck not far from Amanda’s quarters module.
“How much enemy activity have you been seeing in-theater?” Amanda inquired as they hastened to it.
“Not much at all recently. The Union’s naval forces have been maintaining their low profile. If this is a real hotshot call, it’ll be the first time they’ve openly challenged us since Conakry.”
“Maybe they’re sending me their compliments.”
Inside of the Operations van, a row of computerized work stations ran down the full left-side length of the big trailer’s interior, a series of multimode flatscreen displays mounted on the bulkhead before them. The van’s integral air conditioners would probably have been holding the internal temperature at a reasonably comfortable level were it not for the crowd of seafighter personnel packed in behind the system operator’s seats. The word had spread that one of their own was in pursuit and all hands wanted to be in on the kill. Amanda noted that Jeff Lane and his little exec were in the center of the huddle.
“Gangway! Make a hole!” Amanda commanded, driving through the excited mob. “I want only authorized duty personnel in here along with the squadron officers and senior chief! Everyone else clear out and give us some working room! Expedite!”
As the onlookers made a hasty, shuffling departure Amanda and Christine reached Lane’s side at the central screen. “Okay, Steamer, what do we have?”
“A pair of Union Boghammers just nailed a police launch off Point Matakong,” he replied. Leaning forward, he aimed a finger at a numbered target hack that glowed scarlet on the computer graphics map display. Even as they watched, the target hack crawled southeastward along the coast, heading for the territorial waters of the West African Union. “The launch got off a distress call before it got clobbered, and now the Bogs are running for home.”
“How are we tracking this?” Amanda demanded.
“Aerostat radar,” Christine replied. “The USS Valiant is on barrier guard duty at Station Guinea East, here, just off the border between Guinea and the West African Union. She has her bag up and she’s able to surface-search about two hundred and fifty miles of coastline.”
“How did those Boghammers get inside Guinean territorial waters without our detecting them then?”
“Probably they’ve been there all along,” the intel said, frowning. “Lying low in one of their boat hides. They can lurk around in those damn salt swamps for days if they want. When a likely target comes along, they zoom out, make their kill, and then either disappear back into the mangroves or bolt for Union waters, like these guys are doing.”
“Yeah,” Lane said excitedly, “only this time they aren’t going to make it. Tony Marlin is out there with the Manassas. He’s going for an intercept, and their collective asses are his!”
On the tactical display, a blue target hack labeled “PGAC4″ was converging on the fleeing Union gunboats from farther offshore, maintaining an obvious pursuit curve. Christine moved down to another workstation within the van and exchanged a few quiet words with its operator. Fingers clattered lightly on a keyboard and a second bulkhead flatscreen lit off, this one filling with a high-definition video image.