It was his decision, in the end. As long as she didn’t screw up, it’d probably slide on through a paper drill. But if she did, and his enemies up the chain found out… No, screw that. He couldn’t start thinking in those terms.
The TAO situation was just the tip of the iceberg; the same problem was surfacing in his other departments. He couldn’t steam in hostile seas for days on end without a fully manned watch. Yet he didn’t have enough bodies to man his strike, self-defense, Aegis, sonar, and TAO seats. The only solution was to step up their efforts to qualify lower-rated personnel. And that meant deferring maintenance, so those personnel could spend their time training. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell Matt to set up a board. So, what’s happening?”
“Well, not that much since you were last here, Captain.” Branscombe glanced at the screens. “Still air defense coordinator. Still getting spotty, slow updates on Geeks. But the HF jamming’s stopped. Or maybe we’re just out of range now.”
Dan examined the leftmost screen, which showed the battle group’s steaming formation. The carrier was far to the south, with the logistics ships tucked under her wing and her helicopters probing for any submerged adversaries. The next sphere out were the cruisers and destroyers. The frigates were a hundred miles ahead, tails streamed, searching the long-range, low-frequency bands for the telltale beats of submarine screws. Disagreeable to think of any ship as of less value than another, but when you came down to it, frigates were low-manning and low-cost. That made them the whiskers a strike commander liked to poke out ahead of more valuable platforms.
Also out ahead, and ranging all around the moving force, antisub fixed-wings were laying sonobuoys and working surface surveillance. In this situation, and even more so as they closed in on the strait, the group commander would be sweating bullets about threats in the area of approach.
As to their own submarines, they weren’t on the radar. Obviously. The task force commander’s staff, and SubPac of course, knew where they were, but no one else. Which was how they liked it.
“Merchant traffic?”
“Pretty much stopped, Captain. Everybody who’s in port is staying in port.”
He examined the center display, a fusion of GCCS and task force data, including Savo’s own picture. The few Chinese merchant vessels still under way had either turned around or diverted to neutral ports. An Indian destroyer had intercepted one, in the Arabian Sea, and was escorting it into Jamnagar. “When do we hit chop longitude?”
“Midnight, sir.”
As they steamed east, the strike group was leaving Central Command for the Pacific Command. Another clue to their destination. “And we’re ready?”
“The exec was going over it with us.”
“Us being…?”
“The TAOs, the CIC officers, and the watch team supervisors.”
“I conducted a review of the relevant pubs and ROEs,” Singhe said.
“That’s right, Amy did part of the brief. To help her get up to speed.”
“Good, that’s good.” Dan sighed and massaged his cheeks. He needed a shave. And a shower. And more sleep.
The red phone beeped. Branscombe answered. Listened. Glanced at his watch. Said he’d pass that information, and signed off.
“What is it?” Dan asked.
The TAO started writing in his log. “COs’ conference, on the carrier, sir. Uniform is wash khakis or ship’s coveralls. Helo’ll be here in an hour.”
Following his escort down the vanishing-point passageways of the supercarrier, he fought the urge to throw up. Eighty thousand tons of steel and machinery moved in a seaway, but it didn’t move much, and the change from Savo Island’s faster roll was disorienting. The helo, from Vinson, had hopscotched from ship to ship before returning to the carrier. He’d left Cheryl in charge, feeling a twinge as Savo shrank to a gray dot on the wide blue. But on the whole, confident she’d do as well as he could. Maybe better, without the self-doubt and occasional paranoia he seemed to harbor like a malignant growth in his gut.
The conference wasn’t in the wardroom, as he’d expected. His guide led him and the others from his helo up ladder after ladder until they were far above the flight deck. Headed for the flag level, he guessed.
Two armed sentries scrutinized his ID, checked each CO against a list, and at last ushered them into the tactical flag command center. The TFCC was a conference room and operations center, where the strike group battle watch officers stood duty and conducted planning and briefings. It had red phones, computers, large-screen displays, projectors, and unclassified and classified videoteleconferencing capability. The other skippers were at the far end, gathered around a mess nook with the usual pastries and doughnuts. He valved coffee into bone china, complete with saucer. Shook hands, and introduced himself to captains and commanders he didn’t know. They all seemed to know him. Or at least his name. Which might be good, or might not.
He tucked a hand under the arm holding the cup and slouched, tuning in to the talk and speculation. Picking up bits that could be jigsaw-puzzled together for a general picture, at least, of what was happening.
Since World War II, the Navy had been built around carrier battle groups, or strike groups, as they were latterly called. Each supercarrier was accompanied by its bristling guard of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. In peacetime, the groups relieved one another at sea, in port, and in the yards in a rotation planned many years ahead.
In wartime, those in port could be pulled back together and put to sea, and those in the yard reconstituted. Unfortunately, there was no real reserve anymore. Since the end of the Cold War, appropriations had gone into maintaining the active forces, with the Navy Reserve almost entirely a manpower pool. The Coast Guard was behind them too, but in anything resembling a real war, their lightly armed, sensor-deficient cutters would be just inviting targets.
Now the whole vast machine was groaning into action, and millions of tons of metal and hundred of thousands of seamen were on the move. Nimitz and Washington were already in the western Pacific. Strike Group Eight, Eisenhower, had been ordered out of the Gulf into the Arabian Sea, to replace Vinson as she headed east. In like manner, Strike Group Ten was getting under way from Norfolk to move into the Med. Strike Nine was moving up its deployment date, and Strike Four and Franklin D. Roosevelt had — as Chief Quincoches had mentioned — gotten under way early from San Diego.
A familiar face: Jenn Roald. Her pixieish, sharp-nosed profile homed in through the throng. She looked up and patted his sleeve. “Dan.”
“Commodore. Good to see you.” They shook hands. “I see you’re the screen commander.”
“And you’re our ABM escort. You really shot down a Pakistani nuke?”
“That’s what the Indians say it was.”
“I want to hear about it. Everything you couldn’t put in the message. But not right now. Your crew’s okay? No recurrence on your Legionnaire’s disease?”
“The doc’s still aboard, running tests. But we might just have it licked.”
“And how’s the groper case coming? You’ve got NCIS over there, right?”
“Trying to make the arrangements. Nobody yet, though.”