The signature tracks on the display began to broaden and waver slightly.
“Blade count is increasing and we’re getting aspect changes. They’re tacking on speed and starting to zigzag.”
“Fa’ sure I’d guess so. This should be interesting.”
For a full three minutes they watched the weaving traces. Then one of the five lines abruptly terminated in a spherical blob of greenish luminescence.
“Hold it,” Christine snapped. “Backtrack thirty seconds. Replay and bring up the audio.”
This time they listened to the desperate hammering of racing propellers as the convoy lumberingly sought to evade, then the hollow reverberating slam, like a giant’s fist driving into the side of a fifty foot oil drum. The lighter, faster beat of the escorting patrol boat’s screws ceased. As the reverberations of the blast faded, they heard the thud of secondary explosions and the crack and squeal of tearing metal. The sound of a ship starting to break up.
“Quiz time, dude. What did we just hear?”
“An above-the-waterline hit on a small hull.” Selkirk answered promptly, accustomed to this kind of drill from his division officer. “Size warhead. Single detonation. A precision guided munition of some kind, probably an antishipping missile. Since the buoy wasn’t picking up on any other surface or submarine sound sources in the area, it was probably air launched.”
“Very good. Now that they’ve killed the guy with all the antiaircraft guns, it’s playtime.” Lieutenant Rendino extended her hand and indicated one of the remaining tracks on the cascade display with her forefinger. “He’s next.”
As if in response to the tap of her fingernail, the track flared out into another death blossom. The crash of the missile hit echoed from the speaker.
“There went the biggest coaster.” Christine squirmed a little in her chair. “God! Watching a real pro at work always makes me hot.”
Reaching forward again, she aimed the finger of doom at another track
“Now this guy In about one minute.”
It was ten seconds short of a minute when the first harsh burp of sound issued from the speaker, a baritone snarl like the ripping of canvas.
“Can you call that one, Jer!”
Selkirk shook his head regretfully. “Cannon fire hitting the water,” Christine continued. “They’re strafing the smallest coaster.”
They listened on as the aerial predators slashed at their prey. The steady thrum of the coaster’s propeller began to stagger like the beat of a failing heart and then stopped. There were no further fireworks, and the screws of the two surviving Communist vessels began to fade in the distance. Lieutenant Rendino switched off the recording. “You’re going to be writing this up for Fleet, Jer. What are you going to say about it?”
Selkirk took a deliberate breath to buy himself a couple of seconds of thinking time. “Red convoy was engaged south of the Yangtze estuary by a Nationalist Air Force antishipping sweep. Given the position and timing of the engagement, the Nationalist strike presumably consisted of two Ching Kuo fighter-bombers, staging out of their air base at Chilung in northern Taiwan.
“This would match the performance and range envelope of the Ching Kuo operating with a Standard antishipping load-out consisting of one Hsiung Feng II antishipping missile plus drop tanks. The targeting and fire template of the strike itself appears to match this load out as well.
“Three bogeys were killed — the escort, the six hundred and fifty-ton coaster, and the two-hundred-tonner. The two surviving coasters proceeded on to the anchorage at Hang zhou Wan. All targets accounted for.”
Lieutenant Rendino nodded approvingly. “Not bad. But you missed three points that Fleet may be able to make some use of. Point one, the Nationalists were using air-to-air refueling. Yeah, a Ching could reach the engagement point from Chilung on one strike load, but just barely. These guys were boogyin’ around at low altitude for an extended period of time as if they were running fat on gas.
“Point two.” The blond Intel ticked it off on her fingers. “This was a full four-plane flight, not a two-plane element. Again, these guys were hanging around down on the deck, without a care in the world, within a few miles of a major Red air base. This says to me that they had a couple of little buddies up on high, ready to do nasty things to any party crashers.”
“Yeah, I can see that now. ” Damn! Why couldn’t I see it before?”
“What’s the third point”?”
“That a real old salty dog was leading this pack. He took his tune, eyeballed the tactical situation, and killed the sole immediate threat with his first shot, then apportioned his remaining ordnance out to the maximum amount of damage to the surviving targets. Bet he was at least the squadron exec, maybe even the old man himself.”
Selkirk shook his head in wry self-abasement. “Why do I even try. Nobody can touch the master.”
Christine Rendino grinned and shrugged. “Hey, what can I say? Being just totally cool comes naturally to me. It’s one of those genetic things. Seriously, though, Lieutenant, if you’re planning to stick with intelligence work as a career track, you’ve got to remember one key thing. It’s not enough to just go around cataloging what the other guy is doing. You’ve got to be able to crawl inside his brain and figure out why he’s doing it before you’ve got the whole package.” A thoughtful expression suddenly passed over her face. “Like, for example, why did those poor damn Chinese decide to commit suicide the way they did?”
“You mean by running in daylight?”
“Yeah. Admittedly, darkness isn’t as much cover as it once was, but it’s still something. That convoy was right outside of Shanghai, the most heavily defended port facility the Reds have. Why didn’t they lay over again and wait for nightfall, like they’d been doing along the rest of the coast?”
“They had a delivery deadline to meet?”
The senior Intel shook her head. “No. If they’d had to shave some time by running during the day, they would have done it up north, farther away from the Nationalist bases.
“They must have been ordered to bypass Shanghai for some reason, a big enough one so that the Reds were willing to risk an entire convoy of critical military stores for it. Now, what could be going on in Shanghai to justify something like that?”
Selkirk didn’t have an answer for her. He suspected that she wasn’t expecting one.
Christine Rendino reached into the paper bag that sat on the deck at her feet and removed another Milky Way. Peeling down the wrapper, she leaned forward onto the console and took a deliberate first bite, taking on a refueling load of sugar and caffeine.
All the while, she stared at the glowing map of the Shanghai approaches with the fixed intensity of a cat in front of a mouse hole.
15
The vista from the climbing helicopter was one Amanda could appreciate. If the Cunningham was the cutting edge of the U.S. Navy’s presence off China, then this, Fleet Task Force 7.1, was the bulk and the strength of the blade.
Ahead, slotting the horizon at precise ten-degree intervals, were the wakes of the ASW destroyers, foam white against ocean blue as they sanitized a path for the formation. Out on either flank were the two Aegis cruisers tasked with throwing their antiair shield of radar and guided-missile firepower over their comrades.
Looking back, past the Sea Comanche’s fenestron, she could make out her own ship nestled close to the Task Force’s big Sacramento-class AOE. The Duke and the fast combat support ship were running side by side, their wakes merging behind them into a trailing snowy train. Fuel and cargo-handling lines bridged the meager 150-foot gap between the two vessels as the destroyer executed an UNREP, an under-way replenishment of critically needed supplies.