The two symbols neared, then flashed. When the flashing stopped one had vanished. Dan shook his head; it had been their missile, not the incomer.
“No kill, no kill.”
“Three-four is leaker, leaker!”
“TAO, Sonar: We have tube opening sounds from Kilo. Torpedo firing imminent.”
“Fuck,” Staurulakis murmured. “Mount 51, engage.”
“Tell the bridge to come right, unmask mount 52 as well,” Dan told her. “But remember to minimize your radar cross section.” He told her to prosecute the submarine contact with torpedoes, and to stand by to fire their two antisubmarine-rocket-launched torpedoes out of the vertical launchers if the fish failed to connect. They had no more missiles; the next layer of defense was guns, and last, the rapid-fire automatic 20mm of the Phalanx. If the enemy sub put a torpedo in the water, the situation would become desperate. She nodded tersely and snapped into her boom mike, “Batteries released, mount 51 and 52, mount 21 and 22, arm CIWS and deselect hold fire.”
“System in high power.”
“Range, fifteen miles and closing. Speed seven hundred.”
“Watch for a pop-up maneuver at five miles. Reduce your radar cross section. Stand by for jamming. And don’t forget chaff,” Dan told her. She nodded without replying.
“PASS loaded … RCS control … AAW autoselected.”
He leaned back and combed fingers through hair soaked with sweat despite the blast of icy air. Behind him and stretching back into CIC the tactical team squinted into screens, each intent on his own lines in the drama. An occasional cough was the only sound, and now and then a murmur into a voice circuit, though most of their interaction was via the keyboard.
There was, of course, no submarine, and no supersonic missile turbojet-howling toward them yards above the waves, its silicon brain fighting off Savo Island’s jamming. The missile firing keys didn’t hang around his neck on their beaded steel chain, but were in the weapons safe in his at-sea cabin. There was an aircraft, a Falcon configured to emulate various enemy missiles. Out of NAS Sigonella, for two hours of area/own-ship exercise. The contacts and landforms on the right three displays were a virtual-training scenario, carefully firewalled from the actual surface and air picture on the leftmost screen: the slowly passing coast of Sicily and the crooked, horned toe of the Italian boot at Capo Vaticano.
The scream of a jet engine outside. “Playmate, mark on top,” someone said in his headphones. He took them off and massaged his eye sockets with the heels of his hands. Someone had said you could reset eyestrain by doing that.
“Dinner, Captain.” His steward slid a napkin-covered tray in front of him and snatched away the napkin like a conjurer. “Wednesday’s slider day.”
“Sliders. Great.” For some reason this had become the Navy word for burgers, conjuring an image of pink patties skidding in hot grease when a ship rolled. The fries were still warm, and there was even a shaker of salt on the tray. “Thanks, Longley.”
“What I’m here for, sir.”
He ate slowly, one eye on the screens. The ship’s tactical action officer sat atop a reporting pyramid. Below him or her was the antisubmarine-warfare coordinator, the antiair coordinator, the antisurface coordinator, and the bridge team, all feeding information and recommendations. The TAO controlled the ship’s weapons and radars, fighting in concert with friendly, “blue,” forces in his or her area. The TAO actually fought the ship; if he or she was skilled, the CO’s can in the next seat was nice, but not essential.
Dan was using this exercise to evaluate his three school-qualified TAOs, Mills, Staurulakis, and Almarshadi. So far the operations officer would be his first choice in actual combat. Petite, pale-haired, sharp-faced, unflappable, Staurulakis tended to be faster on the trigger than he liked, but she read a scenario quickly and her solutions were as good as his own. A few more hours together and they’d be one dangerous beast with two brains.
Savo Island was still headed east, but he hadn’t wanted to arrive at Point Hotel without a firm idea of just how sharp was the blade that had been thrust into his hands. So far, Engineering had reported no problems, and his bridge team seemed to be on top of things. Their test would come late that night, as they transited the Strait of Messina, a choke point dreaded by everyone since the Greeks had ventured to challenge Scylla and Charybdis.
“Captain?” He looked up at Fahad Almarshadi, who was slightly bent, smiling radiantly. The exec’s smile lessened as Dan didn’t return it. “The, uh … thought I’d give you an update.”
“Cheryl, I’m going offline, talk to the XO. — What have you got, Commander?”
“The results of the sonar self-noise test you asked for.” He swallowed visibly. “It’s … not as good as I’d hoped.”
Dan flipped through the report. “Why’s our throughput so low?”
“One thought is, there might be water vapor in the transducers.”
Which could trace back to the grounding damage; his decision to bypass a dry-docking might be coming home to roost. He grimaced. “We checking it out?”
“Yessir, the STGs are doing that.”
“Rit Carpenter made it aboard, right? He on it?”
“He’s down there with them, sir. A big help, from what I hear.”
“Good. Have him come up and … no, belay that. What else?”
Almarshadi went over their progress on testing the other cooling hoses in the electronics, then on how the Aegis team was doing against their proficiency milestones. When he paused, Dan lowered his voice. “No joy on finding that missing pistol, I take it?”
“No sir. It just … disappeared. I’ve got the loss report ready for you to sign out.”
Great. “Fahad, why exactly do I get the impression that, like, something’s not exactly right aboard this fucking ship?”
The exec’s dark brown eyes slid off his as if Teflon-greased. “I’m not sure I … understand what you’re referring to. Captain.”
“I went over the records. We had liberty misconduct in Gibraltar. The Command Climate Survey … it’s pretty obvious there was a hostile work climate in some of the departments. I also saw that the commander master chief, I mean, the previous one, not Tausengelt, had a request in for transfer. How did all that connect to what happened coming into Naples? That’s a symptom, not the cause. Or am I pissing up the wrong rope?”
“I wasn’t on the bridge then, Captain.”
“Which leads to the question, why were you below decks, Fahad? Why was the XO not on the bridge, coming into port in poor visibility?”
Another visible swallow. “Captain Imerson did not like me in the pilothouse when he was there.”
Aha. Dan put his next question in the least judgmental phraseology he could think of. “I see. Okay. And why do you think he felt that way?”
Almarshadi seemed to grab his gaze and steer it, consciously, like a radar beam, back up into Dan’s face. A spark of — anger? resentment? — flared in those dark pupils. “I believe it might have had to do with my being an Arab.”
Dan contemplated this, along with the gold cross he’d glimpsed underneath Almarshadi’s T-shirt. There were a lot of Christian Arabs, although the uneducated didn’t seem to grasp this. It was true, a few individuals didn’t leave prejudice behind when they put on a uniform. On the other hand, he’d run into his share of minorities who played the race card when they were just plain incompetent.
He let the silence rubber-band, not meeting the XO’s gaze, just staring up at the display. Staurulakis was cat-and-mousing three Houdong-class patrol boats. Houdongs were Chinese-built, part of the progressively closer alignment of that country with Iran. They were filtering in, jockeying for the classic noon, four, and eight o’clock positions. Faced with that, she’d fight at a disadvantage, since warding off an attack from one sector left her vulnerable in the others. He realized Almarshadi was still gazing at him expectantly. “Uh, okay. Anything else?”