14
“It looks to me like we’re seeing it all across the board.”
“Yeah. We’re still getting a set level of work transitones off the fishing fleet, but fa’ sure we’re not hearing the engines as much. These guys are falling back on sail and oar power more and more all the time.”
“That would indicate to me that the Reds are stepping up their fuel rationing.”
“Very possible, Jer, but I don’t think we’ve got a long enough baseline to call it for certain sure yet. It could be that the locals are just taking advantage of a long stretch of favorable coastal winds. We’ll cross reference this tomorrow with the net reports from the past couple of weeks and see what we shall see.”
They had been at it in Raven’s Roost for over five hours now. Lieutenant (J.g.) Gerald Selkirk’s eyes felt as if they were lined with sandpaper and a pulsing headache thudded at the back of his skull. His boss, however, seemed to still be going strong. The only clue she gave to the protracted length of this analysis session was the mound of candy-bar wrappers growing beside her on the workstation console. That, and the glasses. Christine Rendino donned her glasses only when she had a massive load of close work. Even then, they were rarely actually looked through. Rather, Chris kept them shoved up onto her forehead, an accessory and an adjunct to her high intensity thinking.
“Okay, Jerry, what’s next on the boards?”
Selkirk fumbled for his personal-computer pad. Lieutenant Rendino apparently wasn’t ready to call it quits for the night yet. Truth be told, he didn’t mind it too much. The Duke’s senior intel might look like his kid sister, but watching her work was a continually fascinating and humbling experience. “Well,” he said, “Fleet intelligence is on the lookout for a Red Chinese coastal convoy. Seems they’ve lost track of one somewhere.”
“Whoa, somebody was a Mr. Fumble-fingers. What got lost?”
“A five-ship group,” Selkirk replied. “One coaster of about six hundred fifty tons’ displacement, two more of about three hundred tons, one two-hundred-tonner, and all escorted by a single Shanghai IV-class patrol boat.”
“What dope do we have on?”
“It formed up at the Port of Quigdao. Loading a mixed cargo of military stores, possibly rations, lubricants, and equipment spares, it sailed on the night of the second, heading south.”
As he spoke, Lieutenant Rendino’s fingers began to clatter across the terminal keyboard in front of her, calling up a theater map out of the navigational database.
“Satellite recon then spotted the convoy at the ports of Shijiusuo, Lianyungang, and Sheyang sequentially during the daylight hours of the third, fourth, and fifth. The ships only appeared to be laying over. No indication of cargo handling.”
The Intel’s right hand shifted over to the workstation’s mouse, clicking off the location points.
“One night track is listed, off Andongwei Point, between Shijiusuo and Lianyungang. The formation was painted on radar by one of our P3E’s flying out of Seoul. Again running south, hugging the coast, at about eight to ten knots.”
“Pretty straight so far,” Rendino commented. “They were playing bunny rabbit, hedge hopping down the coast. They’d lay up in a defended anchorage during the day and steam only at night to duck the Nationalists. What next?”
“Track was lost down around Shanghai. According to this, the two medium-size coasters may have shown up down at Hangzhou Wan, but the other units have disappeared. Fleet wants to know what happened to them and to the stores they were carrying. They’ve queried us as to whether any of our hydrophone buoys may have gotten anything.”
“Could be, Jer. Number one is just north of the Yangtze estuary, right on what should have been their course line. Pull the latest downloads for that hummer and let’s have a look at them.”
Selkirk pushed his chair back the scant foot permitted by the narrow central passage of the intelligence bay and reached over his shoulder to the disc-storage rack. Selecting the appropriate CD case, he rolled into place again. Cycling one of the loading trays, he fed the disc into the system. “Set,” he said, accessing the data from his half of the analysis station
“Okay, call up the audio tracks from the early morning of the sixth. Time reference about 0200 to 0500 hours. Set your search gates for a package of four medium-speed, single screw diesels and one highspeed, multiscrew diesel.”
“Searching.”
The signal processors scanned through the compressed data on the disc, seeking for one specific pattern and, after a few moments, finding it. Another flatscreen lit off, a cascade display showing a pattern of five passive sonar signals. Five bands of shimmering light flowing from the top of the monitor to the bottom, each band carrying the sound signature generated by a specific ship as it had passed by the listening buoy.
Lieutenant Rendino clicked on the audio feed and ran the volume bar full over.
Now they could hear them the churning cavitation of propellers, the rumble of power plant noise, the hiss and slap of hulls butting through the waves. Even without the processing of the cascade display, the trained ears of the two intelligence officers could begin to make out the individuality of the vessels. The clatter of a loose shaft hub, the repetitive chirp of a bent screw blade, an intermittent thud as some poorly secured piece of cargo shifted with the roll of the deck. As clearly as with their eyes, they could see the convoy slipping through the night.
“Okay,” Selkirk reported. “Speed by blade count is between eight and ten knots. No aspect change. They aren’t zigzagging. Exact time index is oh three one oh hours.”
“Yeah” Christine nodded. “That’s just about right. That’d put off the Yangtze estuary at first light. They laid over in Shanghai, and then moved on again. Why’d Fleet miss that?”
“Don’t know, Lieutenant.”
“Jer, call up the Shanghai data annex. Access maritime and naval activity for the day of the sixth and see if anything’s listed that matches up with this outfit.”
“Aye, aye ” Selkirk’s hands played his keyboard, his eyes sweeping across the glowing lines of text that welled up in response It took him perhaps five minutes to be sure. “Nothing. No shipping groups that match up. No individual vessels listed in port at the time that could have been part of the convoy. Damn little activity of any kind.”
“Well, sea-rew! Where did those guys get to?” Rendino frowned, pondering.
“They might have gone upriver. The Yangtze is deep hull navigable for better than a thousand miles upstream.”
“Maybe, but let’s be sure. Load the dump from buoy two. It’s just south of the estuary. If the convoy ducked us somehow and continued on downcoast, number two should have ‘em.”
The disc exchange took only a moment.
“Set!”
“Okay, Jerry. Search for the convoy’s sound signature, twenty one ten hours to twenty-four hundred hours.”
“Searching nothing. They’re not there. “Well, sea-rew again. Widen the search gates. Full scan of the sixth, the entire twenty four hours.”
This time the search took a little longer. Five familiar traces flowed down the Cascade display.
“Got,” Selkirk announced. “The buoy acquired them at time reference oh seven three one.”
“What!” Christine Rendino’s chair slammed upright as she leaned into the screen.
“They bypassed! They bypassed Shanghai altogether and kept running on down the coast in broad daylight!”
“That’s a major change in policy.”
“It sure is, and given their location, it’s a real dumb one as I think these guys are about to find out.”