He gave Ammermann one last tight smile, and patted his arm. Said, teeth bared in mock politeness, “Excuse me, Jars. Right now, I seem to have a battle to fight.”
20
An hour after dawn the lookouts reported black smoke far to the west. Dan made up on it cautiously, electronic ears pricked, studying what gradually rose into view over the sawtoothed horizon with gun cameras at full magnification. He kept calling, on international distress, bridge to bridge. And on what intel said was an Iranian navy freq like the old USN Fleet Common. No answer. Not a peep. The other attacker, the missile boat, had disappeared from radar. Pittsburgh’s periscope check had found scattered debris, nothing more. He asked her to clear to the south and stand by, just in case.
The battle proper, last night, had lasted for no more than twenty minutes. A close-in, all-out knife fight that at its height had forced him to switch Aegis into full-auto self-preservation mode. At near-supersonic speeds, with multiple incoming threats, human beings could no longer react swiftly enough to fight.
Gradually, decade by decade, war — like manufacturing — was becoming the province of the robot.
However, people were still doing the dying. He hove to a mile off and studied the hulk for a long time through his 7x50s, bracing his elbows on the varnish of the bridge coaming. The wind remained keenly cold, but the sky was brighter, if still overcast. Only an occasional flake of snow blew past. The situation brought back uncomfortable memories. Of another ship, in the South China Sea, doomed and sinking. Of oil-smeared, helpless arms raised for help; of desperate voices pleading, far away on the wind.
He shivered. And then came another, even deeper memory, nearly three decades back now: of the disastrous night a superannuated destroyer had died in the Irish Sea, when he himself had had to jump into a raging ocean; and no one had come to their rescue.
No. He wasn’t going to steam away again.
Mytsalo cleared his throat beside him. Under the helmet, chest bulky with flak jacket, the ensign didn’t look as pink-cheeked and boyish as at the start of their cruise. He was thinner, his cheeks sunken. Dan met his eyes, and didn’t like the haunting in them. God willing, he’d not impose on this boy what had been imposed on him.
He’d reported to Jen Roald on high-side chat around 0400. She’d made supportive noises, but so far, everyone above her was silent. No reaction yet. No official comment at all. Though he’d made sure to info absolutely everyone he could think of. They wouldn’t be able to reproach him for an attempted cover-up, at any rate.
He sucked a breath, let it out. In the face of what they looked out on, it seemed petty to worry about whether he’d be left in command, or summarily relieved. But still. “What you got, Max?”
“Captain, Radio’s picking up something on one-fifty-six five. Channel Ten.”
Dan took the offered handset. Looked across again to where the gray ship rolled, inky smoke still streaming up from aft, then thinning to a brazen haze against the lightening sky as it blew away downwind. He told the officer of the deck, “Man the portside thirties and fifties. No — both port and starboard. Sea Whiz in local control. But keep weapons tight.”
The frigate’s mast and antennas were wrecks, bent, twisted, scorched. Cables swung to a slow roll. Fragment-gashes gleamed here and there, and all the windows in her pilothouse were broken. At least one missile had guided in for a mission kill on her sensors. The other, or others, must’ve impacted farther aft. Including, Dan was pretty sure, at least one of the four 802s fired from Syria, but spoofed away from Savo and redirected by some electronic sleight-of-hand Donnie Wenck had explained twice, but Dan still didn’t fully understand. As they drifted downwind the changing angle was gradually revealing the Iranian’s stern. It looked as if she’d caught a missile there, too. An explosion had caved in the helo pad, and the hangar was still burning, streaming up that oily black smoke that towered like a beacon above the sea-horizon. Threatening whatever fuel storage they had back there, no doubt.
Which explained, of course, both the lack of comms, and being dead in the water. But he didn’t see anyone fighting the fire, or really any activity at all. Lying doggo? Playing dead, to sucker him in close? He didn’t like to think in those terms, but he and this ship had encountered each other before. And he’d come close to dying then.
He angled the radio to his lips. “INS Alborz, this is USS Savo Island, Savo Island. Off your starboard beam. Over.” He snapped to the OOD, “Petty Officer Kaghazchi to the bridge, please.”
The blast of Nuckols’s pipe over the 1MC. “Now Petty Officer Kaghazchi, lay to the pilothouse. On the double.”
Dan moved a few feet forward to give the M60 crew room. The gunner dropped the wing 7.62 onto its mount with a thunk. His assistant snapped open the loading gate and draped a belt of cartridges into it. The gunner racked the bolt and swiveled the muzzle to cover the slowly nearing, ominously deserted wreck as Dan depressed the transmit button again. “INS Alborz, INS Alborz. This is USS Savo Island, Savo Island. Over.”
The voice was scratchy, lagging, faint. “This is INS Alborz. Over.”
“This is USS Savo Island. U.S. Navy cruiser, off your starboard side. About a kilometer away. Do you require assistance?”
A short pause. Then, heavily accented, “We … do not … ask help.”
Dan kept watching the bridge, but they were either under cover, or the pilothouse was abandoned. “This is Savo actual. This is the captain. Request speak to your commanding officer direct. If possible. Over.”
A new voice came up about a minute later. “This is captain of … of Iranian ship. Do you require assistance? Over.”
“Ha-ha. Nice one,” said Mills, beside him. The TAO was in a green nylon foul-weather jacket, the collar snugged up. He held another coat out to Dan. “Thanks,” Dan said. He was getting chilled.
He shrugged into it as he considered how best to play this. When he glanced into his own pilothouse the petty officers were at the consoles that operated the 25mm chain guns, gripping the game-type toggles. Red lights and lit screens told him both guns were live. Down on the bow, the long tapered barrel of Savo’s forward five-inch rose and fell, correcting for the roll, pointed at the smoking wreck that now heaved slowly only a few hundred yards away. On the wing, the machine gunners were sharing a cigarette, hunkered below the coaming. They looked unconcerned, as if none of this was their business.
He said into the heavy little radio, “This is Savo Island. Thank you for your offer. We were attacked during the night by missiles from shore. I do not require assistance. However, I see you are fighting a fire. It is a tradition of the sea to offer help to other mariners in distress. Do you require assistance?”
Another long pause. Finally the other voice, a rough lagging one he assumed was her CO’s, came back. “We too were attacked by missiles from the shore. They were Israeli. Assistance is not required. I repeat, not required. However, if you wish, close on my starboard side and help fight the fire.”
“He’s doing us a favor. Letting us help,” said Mills, straight-faced.
“Whatever,” Dan said. The guy was trying to save his ship and his men the best way he could, given a regime that was by all accounts ruthless with anyone who stepped over its fundamentalist, anti-American line. He straightened, noticing their own Iranian, or rather Iranian speaker, waiting just inside the wing door. Muster the damage-control teams aft. Fire hoses, laid out on the port quarter. He probably won’t let us board, but we can lay some A-triple-F into that smoke. Petty Officer Kaghazchi, just stand by, please; the other side seems to speak English.”