For once, no one called him, and when he finally regained consciousness he blinked into the dark, confused. His watch said five but he wasn’t sure if it was morning or evening, local or Zulu. Finally he clicked the reading light on: 1700, by the twenty-four-hour clock on the bulkhead.
Afternoon, then. He pulled on coveralls, went down two decks to CIC, and worked at his command desk for a while. Caught up on his e-mail, though nothing was super hot. Anything flash came up hard copy, hand-carried. Routine material was scanned automatically in Radio for key words and routed on the ship’s network. He also had a secure intership high-level chat function at his battle station.
He was there when an update scrolled up. A Republic of Korea frigate had been hit by a torpedo, or possibly a mine, in the South China Sea. He came to attention in his seat and searched for a name. Hoping it wasn’t Chung Nam, wasn’t Commander Hwang or Captain Hung or Commodore Jung. They’d hunted the tiger together, when SATRYE 17 had turned from an exercise into a live-fire barrier operation. He didn’t get a name for the ship, but the Chinese premier, Zhang Zurong, had issued a statement: China would defend its ally, North Korea, against Western aggression.
Topside the rain-laden clouds were darker, the squalls passing north and south of them. The wet decks gleamed like varnished lead. A huge chemical tanker was passing, looming through the patchy mist, then fading back into it. More contacts stretched behind it on the radar, lined up to enter the IRTC like airliners stacked up to land. Van Gogh was the officer of the deck. Dan had only reluctantly approved the quartermaster chief as one of his OODs, but so far, he hadn’t done badly. He and Dan and Matt Mills, the operations officer, discussed the Somali Current, which hit six knots just a few miles east of here.
“If we get orders north, we can ride it up and save fuel,” Mills said. Tall, blond, good-looking enough to star on the cover of a steamy romance, he’d been loaned to Savo from the squadron staff. The loan seemed to have become permanent, and Dan had slotted him in as ops when he’d bumped Staurulakis up to exec.
“So far, they just want us at the eastern entrance to the IRTC.”
“Why, when most of the pirate activity’s farther west? Shouldn’t we be edging that way?”
Dan nodded rather grumpily. “Yeah, but we don’t want to anticipate commands. If there’s a piracy event to the west, it could take us too long to get there.”
Someone cleared his throat behind them. “Captain?”
When he turned, the radioman presented the clipboard with the red-and-white-striped cover sheet. “Flash message, Skipper.”
It was from CTF 150. The news he’d expected. The Iranians had announced the strait was closed. But not to commercial vessels and tanker traffic, their usual assertion.
Their diplomatic note quoted the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and argued the Iranian position with fine logic. It even agreed that Hormuz was open to transit passage, which permitted warships to cruise through territorial waters, as long as they remained within an area used for international navigation. The Iranians, though, stated that the UNCLOS-protected right of passage could legally apply only to nations that were actually party to UNCLOS.
The United States had never signed. Therefore, though it wasn’t stated explicitly, it was implied that U.S. warships could enter the Gulf only after securing permission from Iran.
There was more to it, Dan was sure. And the diplomats were no doubt arguing the fine print. But as it stood, the declaration was tantamount to closing the Persian Gulf to the United States Navy, unless it stood hat in hand at the door. Since there was no other force capable of countervailing power in the region, that meant Iran would hold 50 percent of the world’s energy traffic hostage.
National Command Authority — meaning, no doubt, Ed Szerenci — had decided to send a high-value unit through to assert the right of passage. Savo would be relieved on station by an Italian frigate, and rendezvous with USS Mitscher off Hormuz. Dan would take command of both ships as commander, Task Group 151.7.
He scribbled his initials, and lifted his gaze to find both Staurulakis and Mills regarding him. “Read this, Cheryl?”
“Yessir. It doesn’t say so, but this will be an opposed transit.”
“I agree. Essentially, a combat operation,” Dan said. “I know we’ve been training hard, but if there’s anything remaining to spin up or tune, we’ve got forty-eight hours. Chief Van Gogh! As soon as we’re clear of this next guy, come to a course for the rendezvous and kick us up to full. Cheryl, set a meeting, mess decks, twenty hundred. Brief the weather, course in, choke points, enemy order of battle, the whole schmear. I want everybody to know exactly what kind of hornet’s nest we’re sticking our head into.”
“I’d like to convene a combat systems working group before that,” the exec murmured as the bridge started to bustle. “Maybe have Amy chair it, as strike officer—”
”Make it so,” Dan said. “Weps, Strike, Wenck, Terranova, whoever else Singhe needs. Schedule a damage-control locker inventory too. Have the chief engineer see me as soon as possible. The last fuel state I heard was 82 percent. Cheryl, draft a reply, asking for an unrep before we go in. I want to be above 90 percent when we hit Hormuz.”
The duty quartermaster said from the nav console, “Course to rendezvous, zero-two-eight true.”
“Where will you be, sir?” said the exec, head down over her BlackBerry. “CIC?”
Dan nodded as the 21MC said, “Bridge, Combat: Skunk Oscar bears zero-five-five, range seven thousand yards. Closest point of approach, close aboard to port. Recommend come right to zero-nine-zero.”
“Shit,” Van Gogh muttered. Dan stood back as he dipped his face into the hood. When the chief lifted it he said, “That’s gonna take us way to the south, when we need to come northeast. Okay if I cut left in front of him, Cap’n?”
Dan glanced out the window. Nothing but fog, sewn by dancing silver needles of rain. “As long as you put on enough speed.” Crossing in front of an oncoming contact was frowned on, but warships had enough reserve power and maneuverability that some risk could be accepted. “But keep a close eye on him.”
Mills hit the 21MC. “Bridge, Combat, coming left to cross Oscar’s bow. Putting on power to get across expeditiously. CO concurs.”
“Combat, aye,” said the watch team supervisor, sounding doubtful.
He’d intended to go below and start getting read in for the linkup, but lingered. Both Mills and Van Gogh had their binoculars leveled out the window as the wipers flailed like dying cicadas. The light was dimming as the monsoon sealed off the sky like wax on a jar of preserves. The whole Indian Ocean would be this way for months: high winds, mist, heavy seas, rain.
What would it be like at Hormuz? If it was this socked in, he’d have trouble detecting, much less engaging, the small craft the Iranians stationed there. The Navy had war-gamed their tactics. In some games, the Red side had won. In others, American firepower had mowed them down like infantry advancing against Maxims in the Somme. Success or failure mainly depended on how closely the attacks could be sortied from different ports and concentrated on a single, though in this case moving, schwerpunkt: the U.S. penetration.
The rain increased still more, drumming on the overhead, sheeting the windows. The wipers labored, but didn’t help much. The junior officer of the deck was off to starboard, binoculars aimed into the fog. Dan glanced that way. “See him yet?”