One showed hundreds of green lines pointing in seemingly random directions, superimposed on an outline map of central Italy. Air activity from Florence, to the north, to the Strait of Messina, to the south. A second displayed video from a camera installed, as far as he could judge, on one of the Phalanx mounts. The other screens were blank.
Above the large screens a dozen smaller text readouts presented the status of the various combat systems, a weapons inventory, unit daily call signs, and computer status summaries. The older displays were flickering green on black or orange on black. The newer ones had larger screens in full color and didn’t shimmer.
He leaned his weight on the back of the padded leather reclining chair that would be his during general quarters. The days of watching the horizon for an enemy ship, of hours spent maneuvering for tactical advantage before the guns roared, were long gone. Ticos had more armor than the Spruances they were based on — spaced, hardened steel, sandwiched with Kevlar spall liners — but antiship warheads, like armor-piercing shells, were designed to penetrate before exploding. If an enemy ever got in sight, he would most likely already be dead, along with most of his crew, blasted apart, drowned, burned alive, or sliced into ribbons by flying metal.
A twenty-first-century cruiser’s main mission was to shield higher-value units. To knock down all the incoming weapons she could, until her magazines were empty. And then, to position herself between the carrier and the threat, and look as much like that carrier as she could. To absorb the last missiles, and go down, if necessary, protecting the centerpiece of the task group.
There’d be a hell of a lot of information to take in, and he’d have to react fast. Imerson had probably gone through Aegis training as part of his command pipeline. He himself would have to learn on the job, and very quickly indeed. He’d told Roald he had no doubt of his ability to maneuver a Tico-class cruiser. And he didn’t. But as far as fighting her …
He took a deep breath. He couldn’t show his misgivings. No one else felt confident if the CO showed self-doubt.
Survivor guilt, the civilian shrink had called it. Part of what he felt, maybe. But the trouble was, Daniel V. Lenson had always wondered if he was good enough. Sometimes he’d done all right. Sometimes he hadn’t, and the faces of the dead and the accusations of being a modern-day Jonah had corroded like acid. Did every commander have to wall off this doubt and fear? Maybe he was some kind of imposter. Just faking the role of Naval Academy grad, surface line officer, Medal of Honor winner, commanding officer …
“Hey, Dan.”
He turned to confront Donnie Wenck’s bland smile and slightly insane-looking bright blue eyes. The first class’s blond cowlick was sticking up, as usual, and as usual his hair pushed the boundaries of the regs and his blues looked as if he’d slept in them. Dan had worked with him on classified missions to Korea, the Philippines, and the Gulf. Sometimes it was difficult to get through to him. But his aw-shucks demeanor and occasional spaciness disguised a mastery of arcane software fixes, and in a tight spot — such as being trapped by the whole Iranian navy beneath the calm blue Gulf in a stolen submarine — no one remained more coolly riveted to the task at hand.
Behind Wenck, in winter blues, stood a clean-shaven white-haired civilian in suit and tie, and Lieutenant Mills, in khakis. They were reef-knotted around a female second class in the blue one-piece ship’s coveralls, who hunched at a console behind and to the right of Dan’s own battle station. On her screen, four evenly spaced flame-orange spokes clicked around the compass. They didn’t sweep smoothly, like the radar repeaters he was used to, but snapped ahead in minuscule increments, refreshing several times a second. The display was deeply hypnotic and somehow unsettling. He had to tear his gaze away from it back to Donnie. “You’re out of uniform, Chief,” Dan told him. “And you’ll need to call me ‘Captain’ again.”
Wenck frowned, and the hollows beneath his eyes deepened. “Not a chief … sir. You know, the board turned me down.”
“And you’re on my ship now. Which means I can jump you a rate. A command promotion.”
The blue eyes blinked. “Ooh! Goat locker’s not gonna like that.”
“The other chiefs? They’ll live. So don’t give me any grief about it.” Dan leaned in to mutter into his ear, “You’re just gonna have to leave the fucking Game Boy in your duffel, all right? I don’t want to see it in CIC.”
“Well, I brought you something too.” Wenck nodded toward a large gray trunk with the kind of snap locks that meant electronic equipment. “Power-supply cards, signal-processing cards, crossfield amplifiers, IFF cards. The high-failure items.”
Dan traded glances with Mills. “I won’t ask where you got those, Donnie.”
“Good, ’cause I already forgot.” He bent to unspool bubble wrap from porcelain and metal. “And two of these. This is what actually turns your panels on and off. Don’t let ’em clink together, they’ll break.”
“Switch tubes,” breathed the second class. Even Mills looked impressed.
Dan turned to the civilian. At last, someone older than he was. He stuck out his hand. “Sorry, we didn’t get introduced. I’m Dan Lenson. You’d be our VLS groom guy?”
“No. Dr. William Noblos, from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.”
Uh-oh. “Sorry, my mistake. Doctor. That’s right, the commodore told me you were aboard. The Aegis expert.” He gave Noblos’s hand an extra pump, added a pat to the shoulder. He didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with this guy. “I’m very glad you’re with us. You have a stateroom, right?” Noblos nodded. “Wenck and Mills and I can use some high-level help. Have you and Donnie met?”
“Just getting acquainted.”
He looked down at the woman at the console. “And this is—”
“Fire Controlman Second Terranova, sir.” A soft voice, nearly inaudible under the whir of ventilation and cooling. When she glanced up lank brown hair framed a chubby face and chipmunk cheeks. “I’m ya senior SPY tech. They call me ‘the Terror.’”
Dan looked her over doubtfully. The work-center leader for the most vital piece of equipment aboard looked like she should be playing the trombone in a high school band. He started to ask how old she was, then decided he’d rather not know. And no way was he going to call her “Terror.” “Uh, good to meet you, Petty Officer Terranova. Is that New Jersey I hear?”
“Yessir. Just outside ’a Newark.”
Dan cleared his throat. “Don, did you see Rit yet? And Monty?”
“Rit’s still out in town. Monty didn’t make the plane.”
This wasn’t good, about either Henrickson not coming, or Carpenter being loose in Naples. The old sonarman had caused an international incident in Seoul, caught banging a fourteen-year-old Korean girl on the grave of a British soldier in the UN cemetery. “We need to get him aboard. Now. He got a cell?” Wenck nodded. “Call him. I want his ass aboard in two hours, or he can buy his own ticket back to Norfolk. — Doctor, can I quiz you for a couple minutes? I hear you’ve been riding us for a while—?”
“Since Rota.”
He’d read as much as he could find about the TBMD upgrade before leaving Washington. Years before, the Navy had started a program called LEAP Intercept, for low exoatmospheric antimissile projectile. It was designed to uprate Aegis and the Standard missile to the point they could shoot down Scud-type ballistic missiles in the midcourse phase, prior to atmospheric reentry. If it proved out, the Navy would have a new mission: protecting allies from the new missiles North Korea, Iran, and China were deploying. They’d also have a sturdy shield for U.S. operations overseas.