The Command

The boatswain’s mate brought out his gas mask and their new anti-flash gear. Not Navy issue, but heavy, clumsy hoods improvised out of fiberglass cloth and gloves that were meant for aircrew. Wearing them in the heat meant pouring sweat and itchy rashes. But Dan had seen too many men die from burns to worry about comfort.

He rubbed his face. Wondering if he was asking too much, if he was projecting on the outer reality the shadow that lived now within. Was it forehandedness? Or paranoia? The world was at peace. Why should he expect his people to train in the dark, taking mock casualties, taking hits, losing power, drill after drill till they were ready to drop?

But he couldn’t help the suspicion, intuition, that somewhere under that eastern sky they’d come face to face with something they’d best be ready for. Not a test, or a drill, or an exercise. Something real. Something menacing. Something powerful.

He didn’t even know what it might be.

Only that it was there.

* * *

Zero-nine-thirty. He picked up the rolling shape in his binoculars. A government-leased survey ship, flying for the purposes of the exercise the flag of a “hostile neutral,” the People’s Republic of Micara. It was idling three miles ahead, in what his scripted geography chart showed as the Strait of Benaventa. Horn’s embarked helicopter had completed the threat assessment and was drawing a smoke line back in their direction, coming up on bingo fuel state, when low fuel compelled her return. Yerega watched him. When Dan nodded, the boatswain’s hand was already on the 1MC switch.

“Now flight quarters, flight quarters, all hands man your flight quarters stations. Stand by to receive Blade Slinger 191. No hats are to be worn on the weatherdecks. No eating, drinking, or smoking aft of frame 292. All unauthorized personnel stand clear aft of frame 292. Now flight quarters.” He released the switch, then depressed it again. “Away the visit, boarding, and search team. Deck division stand by the port RHIB.”

Horn heeled beneath them, turning into the wind, and he watched the incoming machine grow and grow and at last pass behind the hangar, too close to see.

The boarding and search went well at first. One of the RHIBs, the twenty-foot rigid-hull inflatables that had replaced the old motor whaleboats, cast off and half-planed, half-wallowed across the green swells. It circled the other vessel for a visual check, then closed to board over the stern. They found the stowaways. But one crewman had a rifle concealed under a windbreaker on his lap, and none of the boarding crew bothered to search him. The chief observer said he could have mowed down every man on deck before they could get their pistols out of their holsters. Also the boarding team had no climbing gear, no keys to their handcuffs, and so on down a long list of shortcomings and miscommunications.

* * *

Twelve hundred, noon, after a wolfed lunch of grilled cheese and fries that felt like it had wedged six inches down his gullet. “Range to the carrier?”

“Forty-one miles, sir.”

“Captain, we have a low-flying contact just popped up 031 nine miles, outbound.”

“Bridge, TAO, hold air contact bearing 005, range 32 nautical miles… Come to 160 for two minutes, then come back to base course.”

The Combat Information Center. “Combat.” Sitting in the blue leather elevated chair while around him in a space no bigger than a good-sized living room eighteen people worked in dim blue light. Five different conversations were going on over sound-powered phones and radio headsets. Helo land/launch, battle group common, fleet anti-air warfare control net, the surface control circuits, and screen commander circuits.

Combat was laid out concentrically, though it took familiarity to distill that arrangement from the dozens of screens, circuits, tote boards, and comm gear that festooned every flat inch above the green rubber decking. His chair overlooked the tactical action officer’s station, the surface weapons controller, and the Harpoon and Tomahawk engagement planners. To his left, tote boards listed the ships involved in the exercise, the day’s call signs, and Horn’s comms status. Behind him was the dead-reckoning tracer — dark at the moment, since no antisubmarine play was scheduled. Those could be considered the inner ring. Farther out, along the bulkheads, were the underwater fire control panel and the helo controller’s station, with a grainy black-and-white TV that showed the flight deck, empty, at the moment, as just now a refueled 191 was twenty-five miles distant, checking out a contact suspected to be USS Briscoe. To the left were the fire control radar consoles, gun control consoles, and, along the forward bulkhead, the electronics warfare stack, nav table, and the Tomahawk launch console. On the far side of the bridge ladderway was the curtained-off alcove of sonar.