“Here,” one old young man called back. “Leftenant Mark Traynor. Commanding officer of Her Majesty’s ship Skye… or what’s left of it.”
“I’m Captain Amanda Garrett, U.S. Navy, commanding the Seafighter Task Force. I’m sorry, Leftenant. I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.”
“And I’m sorry we failed to heed your warning, Captain,” the Englishman replied with stark resolution. “The fortunes of war.”
“Acknowledged, Leftenant. How many casualties?”
“Eight dead, eight wounded. We’ve got the fires out, but our engines are gone. All that’s keeping us afloat are our handy billy pumps. It’s my intention to stay with the ship and save her if we can, but could you take off our wounded?”
Amanda hesitated a moment before replying. “I’m afraid that will be impossible, Leftenant. We are committed to another operation. However, helicopters carrying medical aid and salvage equipment are on the way. They should be arriving within the next few minutes. Also, I’ve instructed the USS Santana to proceed here with all possible speed. She’ll tow you in to Floater 1, and we can patch you up there. Again, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do.”
“Are you going after the bastards that did this to us?” Traynor inquired wearily.
“That is my intention.”
“Then there is nothing more I could ask. Good luck and good hunting, Captain, and thank you.”
Amanda dropped back down into the Queen’s cockpit, drawing the hatch shut behind her. “Okay, Steamer. Light her up and get us under way.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” the hover commander replied, beginning his engine start sequence. ”Carondelet and Manassas are coming up fast.”
“Very good,” Amanda replied, hunkering down between the pilot’s seat. “Have them form up with us.”
“We also received a message while you were topside, Captain,” Snowy Banks added. “Direct from Admiral Macintyre. He’s on the ground at Conakry Base, and he instructs us to pursue and engage the Union Boghammer forces to the full limits of our capacity.”
“Acknowledge the message,” Amanda replied curtly. “Steamer, lay in a course for Conakry. Best possible speed.”
“Conakry?” Lane twisted in his seat to face Amanda. “Captain, Admiral Macintyre has just ordered us to go after those Boghammers, ma’am!”
“I am fully cognizant of the Admiral’s orders, Commander! However, I will elect the manner in which those orders will be carried out! Now set course for Conakry Base! Best possible speed!”
The intensity of her words brooked no further discussion. “Aye, aye, Captain,” Lane replied, turning back to the controls. “You’re the boss.”
“Miss Banks,” Amanda continued with the same grim intensity, “contact logistics at Conakry. There’s a special weapons loadout for the squadron being held in reserve there. They’ll know the one I’m talking about. Tell them to have it standing by on the beach for us when we pull in, along with a full ordnance-loading crew and a set of fuel tankers. Tell them I expect… no, tell them I require the fastest mission turnaround they have ever executed.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then contact TACNET and have them give us a data dump on the Union Fleet base at Yelibuya Sound. Everything they’ve got. Especially all of their latest reconnaissance imagery.”
With her commands issued and the Queen up on the pad and underway once more, Amanda descended into the main hull. Proceeding to the fire-control stations, she rested her hands on the shoulders of both Danno O’Roark and the Fryguy.
“Gentlemen, if you could join me in the wardroom, we’ve got some work to do.”
Full darkness had fallen by the time the Three Little Pigs climbed the beach ramp at Conakry Base. As the seafighters powered down and sank onto their bellies, light-all generators cranked to life around the ramp perimeter, illuminating the scene with their glare. Navy deuce-and-a-half trucks lumbered out of the darkness, bearing plump fuel blivits and pallets of rocket pods. As promised, ready to load.
Fuel hoses were connected and transfer pumps purred to life. On the back of each hovercraft, the pocket panel hatches over the weapons bays slid back. Ordnance ratings lowered themselves into the magazines and commenced the delicate task of safetying and downloading the onboard missiles. Soon a new, different, and even more deadly cargo would be replacing them.
An open HumVee roared into the circle of light around the hovercraft. “Is Captain Garrett here?” the rating behind the wheel yelled over the engine and work clamor.
“Right here, sailor,” Amanda yelled down from the Queen’s back. “What’s up?”
“Admiral Macintyre wants to see you up at headquarters,” the enlisted driver called back. “Right away, ma’am.” The youthful sailor displayed the nervousness appropriate to a minor functionary caught in the blast radius of an upper-echelon explosion.
Amanda smiled grimly. “Excellent,” she replied. “I want to see the Admiral right away as well. I’ll be right down.”
“Steamer,” she called back over her shoulder to the cockpit. “I should be gone no more than twenty minutes. I want the fuel and ordnance transfer completed and the squadron ready to start engines again when I get back.”
“We’ll be set, ma’am,” the muffled voice replied.
Amanda started down the exterior ladder. “That’s granted, of course,” she added under her breath, “that I come back.”
To say that Vice Admiral Elliot Macintyre looked displeased would be an understatement. The craggy flag officer looked ready to hurl thunderbolts. Ushered into the small office he was using in the U.N. headquarters building, Amanda came to a parade rest before his desk, her spine straight, her features neutral and immobile.
“I presume, Captain,” Macintyre began coldly, “that since you acknowledged my orders instructing you to pursue and engage the Union Boghammer force, you did, in fact, receive them.”
“I did receive them, sir.”
“Then, Captain,” Maclntyre’s voice rose an increment, “will you kindly explain to me why you did not elect to carry them out?”
“Begging the Admiral’s pardon,” in contrast, Amanda lowered her own tone, “but I am in the process of carrying those orders out at this time.”
One of Maclntyre’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s going to be quite a trick, Captain,” he replied tartly, “considering our real-time intelligence indicates that every single Union gunboat has safely returned to base.”
For the first time, Amanda lowered her eyes to meet Maclntyre’s hard gaze full-on. “I’m cognizant of that fact, sir. And that is exactly where I want them to be.”
The Admiral scowled and hesitated. “Proceed, Captain,” he said after a moment. “What’s your intent?”
Amanda let a little of the steel ease out of her spine. “Sir, I did not initiate an immediate pursuit of the Union Boghammer force because such a pursuit would have been an act of futility. Obedient to classic guerrilla-warfare doctrine, the Union flotillas scattered after their attack upon our vessels, each gunboat following an independent and evasive course back to base. We might have been able to hunt down two or three of them before they reached coastal cover, but we wouldn’t have been able to strike any kind of decisive counterblow.
“Instead, I elected to allow the Union gunboat groups to return to their home base unmolested.” Amanda crossed to the chart that was the office’s sole wall decoration. Her finger stabbed at a point on the western coast of Sierra Leone. “Here, at the Union naval station on Yelibuya Sound.”