Arsenal

TEN

The Joint Chiefs of Staff gathered in the Tank, the strategic planning area into which every intelligence and tactical source provided direct feed. From the Tank, they could watch live satellite transmissions, tap into the database of any ship via high-frequency link, talk to the most remote two-man patrol in Bosnia.

The furnishings, luxurious by Department of Defense standards, couldn’t disguise the tension hanging in the air.

People moved quickly, rapping out orders and requests for information, studying green automated tactical displays, trying to anticipate what one piece of information their bosses would want. As the chiefs convened, the operational pace crescendoed to near panic.

The chiefs gathered at the round table, helped themselves to coffee or tea or their beverage of choice. A small refrigerator remained fully stocked. They exchanged pleasantries, trying to ward off the inevitable.

Even if they’d been inclined to, the fact that this was an election year made it almost impossible for the President to fail to act. Their only option at this point was providing the President with a range of alternatives the military thought they could win.

“Sunday. Why does it always happen on the weekend?” the Air Force chief of staff grumbled. He stirred two sugars into the heavy mug of black coffee. “What, no latte again?”

“I don’t suppose we could persuade all of our enemies to plan their operations around our schedule?” The chief of naval operations was generally the most irreverent of the group, capable of finding a wry or sardonic side to almost every issue. Had his advice not always been so damnably well thought out, the others would have been tempted to ignore him.

“The Cubans aren’t our enemies,” the chairman snapped.

“Could’ve fooled that pilot,” the CNO responded.

“And this isn’t a war, is it?” said the Army chief of staff, finally speaking up. “Could get a lot of people killed, though, couldn’t it?

If we have to go in on the land, that is.”

“Look, let’s put the bickering aside for a minute,” the chairman ordered. “We can posture all we want to, but you know we’re going in.

We have to.” He scanned the table, saw the agreement on each face reluctant on the Army’s part, eager on the Air Force’s, and decidedly neutral on the Navy’s.

“Any guidance from the boss?” Navy asked.

The chairman shook his head. “He wants options. That’s what we’ll give him. Right now, I’m leaning toward using the Arsenal ship.” The expressions on the faces around him mirrored the political maneuvering that continually went on between all the services. The Air Force chief of staff looked as if he was about to speak, to start lobbying for a significant role for Air Force tactical bombers. Navy looked slightly disgruntled. The Arsenal ship had been forced down his throat over his protests that while it was a fine platform, he had better uses for the money. Like training. Like aviation fuel. Like diesel fuel to get his ships out of port and at sea, where they belonged, training and practicing for eventualities they hoped would never come. The Army simply looked envious. The lack of organic air support capable of carrying out the increasingly popular cruise missile attacks ate at him.

“Sounds like it’s been decided already to me,” the Navy grumbled.

“I’ll get my people started on a target list.”

The chairman held up a hand. “Won’t be necessary. Most of the target packages will be decided at the White House.”

“The White damn it, we can’t go backward, not on this issue.” The chief of naval operations stood abruptly.

“You know what it did to us during Vietnam. Political control of military objectives simply gets men killed. Men and women,” he amended quickly. “There’s not a one of us sitting at this table that doesn’t remember how it worked then.”

“Bothers you to be out of the loop, is that it?” the Air Force asked.

A slight smile crossed his face.

The CNO wheeled on him. “That’s not the point and you know it. If it were your forces on the line, you’d be going ballistic. But you let this start now, with this ship, and you’ll be fighting the same battle next time there’s a ground war.”

“The Navy’s always been too damned independent,” the Army shot back.

“Gentlemen!” The chairman’s voice was the cold crack of a whip. “We stand united on this. Is that clear?” All of the other chiefs bristled. No one spoke to them like that, at least within their respective organizations. No one.

“The next thing you’ll be telling me is that the President will be pushing the buttons himself,” the CNO said at last, to break the deadly silence. “Is that about it?” He looked appalled as the chairman nodded in agreement.

“The President will be here for all the major portions of the attack.

It’s the low-risk option.” Every one of his audience could translate that. It meant that with the ship shooting the missiles, there was no chance of an aircraft being downed, no possibility of an American airman being paraded through the streets of Cuba as a prisoner. During this election year, that would be completely unacceptable.

“I’ve got a two-star out there,” the CNO said. “Magruder good man.

Lots of combat experience.”

“Let’s hope we won’t need that, but it’s good to have him on-scene if we do,” the chairman said. “For now, though, you can plan on most of the major decisions being made here.”

As the meeting broke up and the men wandered back toward their respective evening offices, the CNO was grim.

Why was it that his country felt compelled to repeat major operational art lessons they’d learned in previous wars?

Couldn’t they learn? And the chairman’s easy capitulation when he knew damn it, knew better. He felt a sick anger welling up again.

Politics, the chairman’s loyalty to the man who’d approved his appointment where did you draw the line between honor and one’s career?

And as for Magruder well, he knew how he would have felt if he’d been the two-star on scene. This would have looked like a vote of no-confidence, not a political opportunity. He’d better call Magruder right away to make sure he got the news first. No telling how much damage one pissed off two-star could do during an election year.

0845 +5 GMT) The Senate Floor “It’s all set.”

Dailey looked up to see Senator Williams leaning across his desk, resting one hip casually on the corner. Behind them, a junior senator was lecturing the scattered crowd on the merits of easing restrictions on the processing of bee pollen. The only people paying attention were two bee pollen lobbyists seated in the upper tiers.

“I don’t know about this,” Senator Dailey said uneasily.

“I remember it …”

“You remember which side your bread is buttered on,” Williams said sharply. “Nothing else matters right now. You blow this, and every shipbuilder in your district is going to be screaming for your ass.

You got that?” His voice was pitched low, and did not reach to bee pollen advocate who continued to drone on. “It’s the Arsenal-ship show. JCS has already bought off on it, so get with the program.”

Dailey nodded uneasily. He got it. And he hoped the only result would be the tarnishing of his own opinion of himself, that one more small compromise to political inevitability that he’d sworn he wouldn’t make.

Ambassador Wexler surveyed the faces arrayed at the round table. A wide range of colors were represented, ranging from the deep, purple-black of the Bahamian ambassador through the light, coffee-colored ambassador from Antigua to the barely diluted coffee color of the Cuban. So many cultures, so many nations and all gathered with one purpose in mind. Or, she amended silently, at least the majority of them were. None of the small nations that dotted the Caribbean wanted conflict between their northern patron, the United States, and their cultural kin, the Cubans. If pushed, they would come down on her side, she decided.

But the cost would be high. Too high, perhaps.

“We have two points to make. First, we must be allowed to inspect the wreckage of the fishing boat,” she said firmly.

Behind her, her aides rustled nervously, passing back and forth the reams of paper, documents, and incomprehensible multinational studies that were the lifeblood of the organization. “Our deep-diving rescue resources have the capability to recover parts of the wreckage if we move quickly, before the currents carry it too far away from the original site. Given the events of the last weeks, we are not prepared to accept Cuba’s unilateral assertion that our forces were responsible for the loss of the fishing vessels, particularly not when we show that no weapons have been extended by any of our aircraft. Without independent verification, it is difficult to arrive at a final analysis of the situation. Second, we will not recognize Cuba’s illegal and provocative no-fly zone and we require the return of the American pilot being held there.” She paused and waited for the storm to break over her.

“Independent? You claim that role for the United States?

You are the ones responsible. No one else.” The Cuban ambassador paused to suck in a deep breath and glare at her.

“The very audacity is” “Entirely within our rights,” she interrupted calmly.

“Under circumstances such as this, we have opened our records at all times to United Nations scrutiny. It is more than reasonable to expect you to do the same.”

“As though you need to inspect it,” he shot back bitterly.

“How many years of study has the United Nations devoted to determining the best way to decimate our poor nation?

We, who only want to be left alone to reach our own glorious future.

. ”

And who desperately need new trading partners, she noted.

“… to pursue our own great destiny and historic traditions of.

.

.”

Tyranny and oppression, building a nation of poverty by stripping out its national resources for the exploitation of the already rich.

“… our role in the Caribbean is one of …”

Fomenting hatred and dissension among your neighbors.

“… peaceful coexistence with the other island nations.

We would extend that same offer of friendship to the United States, but your politics have …”

Prevented you from growing rich on the backs of your wretched workers while simultaneously providing sanctuary to the dregs of your society.

Thugs, criminals, the diseased and insane. All dumped on our shores.

There were, she decided, studying him carefully, advantages to having the United States as a close neighbor, no matter the posturing of Cuba’s ambassador.

“… a truly independent commission, one not tainted by American influences and interests. Composed, perhaps, of nations strong in the rest of the world, areas in which the United States does not bully and strut, thrusting herself into every affair as though anointed of God.”

“And you would propose …?” She let the sentence trail off delicately, knowing that the words were a mistake as soon as they left her mouth.

“Algeria, Libya, Iran, perhaps the Saudis. And, of course, our friends in South Africa.”

“To summarize, any nation with whom we have had a conflict in the last twenty years,” she said sharply. “No, I think there are better choices. The Swiss, perhaps.”

The Cuban ambassador sneered. “The ones who hide so much of your money illegally?”

The debate, she knew, would continue for hours. Neither side would get what it wanted, and in the end, the truth would be hidden even deeper within layers of administrative demands, reckless proclamations, and finger-pointing. Cuba would continue to maintain that America had destroyed the aircraft, intervening in Cuba’s sovereign airspace. The U.S however, knew that it had been a strictly internal affair.

Furthermore, there was no way she could use the one trump card she’d already privately played with the Cuban ambassador. The presence of nuclear weapons on Cuban soil she shivered slightly, then regained control of herself.

To give details and provide proof would simply reveal too much about America’s intelligence capabilities. Like many bits of intelligence, this one was simply too dangerous to use.

Was there any hope for this process? There were days when she wondered. But still, all in all, the United Nations beat hands-down other forms developed for resolving conflict. Answers were slow, cumbersome, and often unworkable, but they represented the best intentions of the nations brought to bear on difficult and insoluble problems. And for that reason, she stayed.

She turned to the Bahamian chairman of the committee and lifted one hand in a gesture of resignation. “We are open to any reasonable proposal, but none has been tendered yet.

I ask you, Mr. Ambassador, as well as the other nations represented here” she glanced around the table, catching each set of eyes in turn” what you think we can achieve.

I beg you to reason with your neighbor to the west.”

Antigua and the Bahamas looked away, the blush barely visible on the Antiguan ambassador.

“You couldn’t have been serious about it?” the British ambassador queried. “I mean, really,” he finished, drawing the last word out in a patrician accent. “We know those people, of course. Colonies for years. Never should have let them declare independence weren’t ready for it, won’t be for centuries.” He shook his head. “You recall, the United States supported that.”

“Cut the crap, Geoffrey,” she said wearily. She reached across the table and fished another of the small, soft rolls out of the woven basket between them. “It won’t help things now. What I need is answers, not more problems.”

“Sometimes I see this relationship as strangely familial,” he said. He pushed the small china dish containing the freshly churned butter toward her. “We’re your older brother, of course, always there with advice and a bit of guidance when you chaps need it.”

“Would you like me to beg?”

He shook his head, a smile twitching at the corners of his normally impassive mouth. “Not this time. But I reserve the right to remind you of this conversation later.”

She nodded. “You know we didn’t do it.”

“Of course not. Play bloody hell with the rest of the world, though, convincing them.” The British ambassador glanced around the room, as though looking for their waiter.

“They’re all watching now, you know. Every last bloody one of them.”

“Tell me about Europe.” She saw him stiffen slightly at her bluntness, and was amused. Surely he was used to it by now, after all his years in the United States. Still, Geoffrey never passed up a chance to be thoroughly and totally British in front of her.

“It won’t be good,” he said, matching her bluntness. “You may have embargoed trade, but many of us still enjoy the best cigar the world has to offer. Among other things sugar, of course.”

“It’s in our backyard,” she pointed out.

“And our backyard economically,” he countered. “Naturally, you’ll have our support, publicly and privately. I suspect Her Majesty wishes that you would just bloody well invade, solve the whole matter once and for all. Tiresome, this nattering back and forth. Ah, our food.” His face brightened as he saw the waiter approach. “Famished, absolutely famished.”

“What if we started giving you guidelines on how to resolve the Irish question?” she said quickly before the waiter arrived. She was silent while the waiter arranged her salmon salad in front of her, carefully setting a small flask of vinaigrette at the left-hand side of her plate. She waited until he’d left before continuing. “I suspect that we’d suggest that you simply quit forcing the issue, withdraw your troops, and let the status quo remain. Or even yield to Ireland.”

“Never. To both your solution and your intervention.” He looked up from the neatly boiled stuffed flounder to shoot her a piercing gaze.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“But the Cuba question is much easier than that, isn’t it?”

Finally, she saw him give up. “You asked me for my advice, and I’ll give you what I know. Europe will be most distraught. Do not count on automatic support from all the Allies. Cuba is an important trading partner to some, and there’s a large reservoir of anti-American sentiment still fomenting about the Continent. The Cuban Missile Crisis, all that sort of stuff. he dismissed it with an airy wave of his hand. “mere recent history. Nothing to compare with many nations’ conflicts. You won’t find much sympathy there, not with U.S. weapons still on European soil.”

“So what do we do?”

“Proceed very carefully. Very, very carefully, and play this very close to the vest.” His expression suddenly turned somber. “It’s not all that difficult to damage a warship, you know. Learned that in the Falklands. Primitive mines and rusting diesel submarines are deuced cheap solutions to a pesky little aircraft carrier or two. The last thing the United States needs right now is international embarrassment over a successful attack on one of her warships. Bear that in mind, Sarah.”

The unexpected use of her first name jarred her for a moment, then she assessed it for what it was a diplomatic exclamation point, a way of insuring he had her total and complete attention, as well as conveying the close and personal support the United States would always enjoy from Great Britain. It was a familiarity that encompassed a compliment, as well as an expression of trust. “Have you heard anything?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

He shook his head. “I don’t need to.”

“Welcome aboard. Admiral,” Batman said, taking two quick strides toward his old lead. “Good to see you again, sir.”

Tombstone grasped the other man’s hand in a hard, warm grip. Life on board the USS Jefferson looked like it was taking its toll on his old wingman. A touch of gray, some lines around the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there a year earlier.

Still, the changes were more than physical; he could see it in Batman’s eyes. There was a new air of security and determination, the kind of command presence that only comes from single-handedly wielding the most powerful assets in the United States military inventory.

Commanding the squadron now, that had been sheer pleasure. A chance to finally shape a group of disparate people from an array of backgrounds into a single fighting force. But command of a carrier group was different, both in purpose and in its span of responsibility. Batman would have had to make the same shift he had, from a tactical perspective concentrating on fighter furballs and enemy weapons’ envelopes to a broader viewpoint. An operational viewpoint, one step above and encompassing tactics. It was a tricky transition, and some never made it. He’d known admirals who’d never gotten past that tactical focus, never been able to successfully integrate tactics to execute strategy, the heart of operational art.

And it was an art, not a science. It never would be, not as long as wars were started by people and ended by them.

“We’ve set aside the V.I.P quarters for you,” Batman said carefully.

Tombstone felt Batman’s eyes searching his face for any sign of disapproval. “Of course, my own quarters are always at your disposal.”

Tombstone waved aside Batman’s concerns. “No, you stay just where you are. You’re still in command of this carrier battle group. Admiral Wayne. You remind me if I forget that.” The corner of his mouth twitched. On any other man’s face, the movement would have been meaningless, but it was as close to a smile as Batman had ever seen Tombstone sport in public.

Some tension melted out of Batman’s face. “Maybe we’ll have a chance later to discuss exactly how you would like this task force organized.

Admiral. My people have a couple of ideas.”

“I’d welcome their help,” Tombstone said quietly. He let his eyes drift back to survey the faces arrayed behind Batman. “Bird Dog,” he said. “You’re still on board?”

The young lieutenant commander shifted uneasily. “I’m back, sir. I spent a year at the War College. Just reported back on board two months ago.” He hesitated as though about to add something, then fell silent.

“This is right up your alley, then. You make sure you share that expensive education with the rest of the staff, understand?”

Two years earlier, when Tombstone had had command of this very carrier battle group. Bird Dog had been a nugget pilot. Events had thrust him into the thick of the combat in the Spratly Islands, and later he’d played point man in a careful game of cat and mouse over the Aleutian Islands.

Yes, Tombstone thought, studying Bird Dog’s face, still young, still feeling his way through this mess. His first staff tour, of course, and he’s anxious to make a good impression.

And, remembering his own tour of staff, not getting enough flight time.

Tombstone let his eyes move on, careful to keep any trace of his thoughts from showing in his face. He greeted other staffers by name, reestablishing the bonds that had once drawn them together.

Finally, he turned back to Batman. “You got some time to talk?”

“At your disposal, of course. Admiral.”

Tombstone took a quick step closer to him and spoke in a low voice pitched for his ears only. “Don’t be polite, Batman, I know this job almost as well as you do. If you’ve got stuff that needs doing, let me know. We owe each other that much courtesy, don’t we? After all we’ve been through together?”

The final traces of nervousness melted away from Batman’s face. “Now would be very convenient. Admiral.”

The small tugboat churned through the gentle waves like a thrashing, injured fish. She was bow on to the swells now, making steady headway but heeling from port to starboard in a rapid motion designed to discomfort all but the strongest stomachs. Waves battered her gunwales and the deck was slippery and damp from condensing spray and early morning mist.

It had been dark when she had left port, the sky obscured by the perpetual mist and fog. Later, as the sun had burned it away, the sailors had peeled off their shirts and donned hats, weathered brown backs giving evidence of their experience with this climate.

This mission was more important than fishing for tuna, or pursuing any of the myriad activities that they used to supplement the income generated by their legitimate occupation. Jaime Rivera, the master of the vessel, stood in the pilot house, staring aft at the small contingent of Cuban navy officers on board. So like them, the arrogance with which they’d commandeered his vessel. The drug running, the smuggling, or even the normal routines of trolling for fish were merely memories now. The officers had arrived at 0500, in a battered, rusted jeep. Two deuce-and a-half trucks, on their last set of brakes and their suspension springs merely a distant memory, had followed.

Their cargo had been quickly loaded onto the aft of the fishing boat and then covered with canvas. What had been a surprisingly precise arrangement of mines was now a massive, dirty tan lump occupying most of the fantail.

“Now,” the officer in the pilothouse ordered. “We are at the first position.”

Rivera nodded. It would do him no harm to make friends with the naval officers, people who might one day in the future look the other way at just the most opportune moments. No, despite the loss of immediate profits, it was worth complying with these requests.

As though he had any choice.

He stepped outside of the pilot house to the aft weather deck and shouted down at his men. A Cuban military officer accompanied each one of them and carefully supervised the operation.

It should be more difficult than this, he thought, watching the massively muscled sailors wrestle a mine out of its wooden crate and onto the deck. From there it was a short heft, two grunts, and a groan to heave it off the back of the ship. He watched the first one throw up a gout of seawater, drenching the men near the fantail.

“Five hundred meters, then another.” The officer’s voice was curt.

Rivera nodded, smiled pleasantly. “Coffee?” he asked politely, gesturing toward the large thermos sitting next to the chart table.

“My wife made it this morning. Very strong.”

The officer seemed to unbend slightly, and a flick of annoyance was replaced by a more neutral expression.

“Thank you. It would be appreciated.”

As he poured two mugs, one for each of them, Rivera thought that getting along with people was not so difficult after all. They were the same almost anywhere you went.

And after a cold, damp morning on the water, anyone would welcome a hot cup of coffee, especially the dark and bitter brew his wife made.

“Five minutes,” the officer said. “Perhaps if you perform this mission satisfactorily, we will give you others in the future.

Ones that are much more lucrative. I have an uncle …”

Rivera sighed as the officer launched into a tale of the excellent cigars produced by his uncle that could not be marketed in the United States. An enterprising man, one who was willing to take a few risks, one who knew the waterswell, there were always possibilities. The master smiled, nodded, and began counting his profits. Smuggling cigars and other illegal cargo into the United States was much more profitable than laying mines this close to an aircraft carrier.

Lieutenant Commander Charles Dunway, company operations officer on board Jefferson and senior surface warfare officer on board the ship, glanced nervously over at the glassed-in bridge way on the starboard side of the ship. The captain and the XO, along with the most senior aviation officer on the ship, were gathered there discussing the intricacies of underway replenishment. Aside from flight operations, it was perhaps the most dangerous evolution the ship engaged in. Making the approach on the oiler, easing up on her from behind seen parallel, exactly matching course and speed with the smaller ship with only 180 feet separating the two vessels was never a routine operation.

At least not to the surface ship sailors. He snorted in disgust. The aviators, though that was a different matter.

Aviation captains followed two career paths in their quest to accumulate stars on their collars. After a tour as a squadron commanding officer, they shifted their focus to being assigned as either the commanding officer of an aircraft carrier or as carrier air wing commander, both senior captain billets. Of the two, command of an aircraft carrier was the preferred track to the stars. But that meant completing the Navy’s grueling Nuclear Power School, as well as prototype reactor training in Idaho. Along the way, the aviator was expected to become at least minimally proficient in ship handling, and that meant taking the conn of an aircraft carrier during underway replenishment.

For surface sailors, conning the ship through an underway replenishment operation meant careful coaching from their own commanding officer and close scrutiny every moment the ship was tied up alongside the oiler.

The evolution was intricately orchestrated, and the surface warrior’s tendency to sweat the details was profoundly in evidence.

Not so with aviators. They figured that if they’d managed to live that long during formation flights at Mach 1, they damned well sure could coach an aircraft carrier through an underway replenishment op at fifteen knots.

No memorizing the standard commands, turning radiuses, and knots per turn of the shaft. No, not for them. All of the important details were written down on a three-by-five card and passed from one to the other as each took his turn at the conn.

Generally, senior surface officers aboard the ship casually turned up on the bridge, keeping a close eye on the evolutions that their seniors in rank but not in experience strived to master. It was never an overt thing, no. The touchy ego of a jet jock would hardly tolerate supervision by a surface warfare officer, but Dunway damned well knew he felt better being below decks when his colleagues were keeping a careful eye on the Airedales.

At least it wouldn’t happen on his watch. The underway replenishment was scheduled for 2100 that night, long after he would have gone off duty. This was merely a briefing session to make sure all of the jet jocks could find their way to the bridge and successfully locate the glassed-in area from which they would supervise the evolution. He sighed.

Life just wasn’t fair.

He looked forward and stared at the ocean in front of the carrier. The seas were running light today, maybe a sea state of two or so, he estimated. Just a few whitecaps, enough to make every detail of the swells visible. Not that heavy seas would have bothered Jefferson.

she was capable of launching aircraft and fulfilling her missions in all but hurricane force winds and seas. Even then, the ship would be in no danger, unlike her smaller brethren.

“Sir! Ready to commence flight operations.” Dunway turned toward the conning officer, who had just received that notification from the air boss.

“Very well. Any contacts in the area?”

The conning officer shook his head. “A few small pop up contacts to the south, that’s about it. Our current course puts us with thirty knots of wind across the deck at zero-zerozero relative.”

Ideal winds for flight operations. The extra wind across the deck would give all aircraft the additional lift they needed to get airborne off the cat shot. Any more, and they might have control problems immediately after the shot; any less, and the heavier aircraft such as the Tomcats wouldn’t be happy.

“Very well,” he repeated, and turned back to the SPA250 radar repeater located in the middle of the bridge. He was certain the conning officer had checked with Combat, but it never hurt to verify the tactical situation oneself.

It was as the conning officer had said. There were two intermittent contacts to the south, carefully annotated and being tracked by the junior officer of the deck, who was standing nervously at his side, white grease pencil clutched in his sweaty palm.

Up ahead, the sea looked clear. Excellent. While a fine ship, even if under the command of aviators, Jefferson was hardly as nimble and maneuverable as her battle group escorts. The 120,000 tons of steel took more than a few minutes to veer from her course. While she would be flying the Foxtrot pennant to indicate she was conducting flight operations, thus giving her the right-of-way over other ships on the ocean, it was common for smaller foreign vessels to ignore the danger signs. He wondered sometimes at the sanity of the other ships and boats, tracking nonchalantly and brazenly across her path. Didn’t they realize that this ship could no more avoid them than a train could stop in time to miss a car parked on the tracks directly ahead?

Something caught his attention on the screen, and he looked back down at it. What was it there. A small fleck of green flickered dead ahead.

He frowned and motioned to the JOOD-Junior Officer of the Deck.

“What’s that?”

“It’s not very solid for a contact, is it?” the ensign said, nervousness in his voice. “Combat’s not reporting anything.”

“Don’t rely on Combat,” Dunway said sharply. “That’s why we have a repeater here two sets of eyes are always better than one. Get on the horn and ask them what they’re seeing on raw video.”

The JOOD nodded and reached for the toggle switch to the bitch box. He posed the question to the senior officer in Combat and waited for a reply, tapping his fingers nervously on top of the gray box that housed the interior communications circuits. Finally, he looked back at Dunway. “Combat says it might be a contact.”

A shrieking roar rose from the flight deck nine stories below them. An aircraft a Tomcat, by the sound of it turning on the catapult. With a green deck and permission to launch aircraft, the air boss had moved ahead smartly. Dunway had only seconds left to stop it. He lunged for the bitch box.

It wasn’t enough time. Just as his hand touched the toggle switch, he heard the roar increase, then the sound of an aircraft accelerating down the catapult. It was followed four seconds later by the gentle thump of the steel piston ramming against the stops in the bow as the aircraft broke free of the shuttle and was hurled into the air. He looked over the small ledge that ran around the ship immediately under the windows and saw a Tomcat dip down out of view briefly, then rise up to grab altitude and speed.

“Red deck!” He turned the toggle switch loose without explanation.

That phrase alone would stop all flight operations until they had a chance to ascertain whether or not there was a contact immediately in their path.

He turned to look for the JOOD. The young man had disappeared from beside the radar repeater and was standing in the port bridge wing, binoculars glued to his eyes.

Dunway saw his face turn pale. The JOOD dropped the binoculars, turned, and shouted, “Small vessel dead ahead, sir!”

“What’s her course?” He hoped against hope that it would clear their path by the time they got to it.

“Bearing constant, range decreasing. She’s bow-on to us, sir.”

“Hard right rudder.” Dunway whirled toward the conning officer. “Now, mister!”

The conning officer repeated the order, uncertain as to exactly why it had been given but instantly knowing this was no time for discussion.

Dunway stepped behind the helmsman, saw him spin the giant wheel quickly to the right to the stops.

Dunway moved forward again, positioning himself immediately underneath the course repeater located in the center of the ship overhead. He watched the needle, praying for it to move faster, knowing it wouldn’t.

Turning the ship, even at maximum rudder, was like maneuvering an office building.

He looked back ahead again. There. Finally visible to the naked eye, the small, rickety craft came into view. It was no more than a dot, a black mark against the blue waves and whitecaps. Dunway reached for his binoculars and held them to his eyes. A rust bucket. She was riding low on the water, an open vessel with no powerhouse or other cover in her. Little more than a lake boat, he would have thought.

But jam-packed with people, hanging all over each other and even spilling over the sides to hold on to the gunwales, their legs dangling in the water. Badly overloaded, hardly seaworthy, and directly in their path.

He glanced back upward, saw the course repeater notch slowly to the right, gave another order. “Starboard engines, back full. Port engines, ahead full.” The combination of a backing bell on the starboard shaft and a full-ahead bell on the port shaft would steepen their turn. Not by much this early in the evolution, but perhaps by enough.

But even engine orders aren’t instantaneous. They were given to the lee helmsman, who relayed the command down to his counterpart in main Engineering. Then, the steam valves were slowly rotated to adjust the speed of the turbine on that shaft, again introducing a delay.

Furthermore, the giant turbines that drove the four shafts of the ship did not respond instantaneously either. It all took time. Too much time.

“What the hell’s going on?” the CO of the ship snapped.

When had he left the bridge wing, Dunway wondered.

How long had he been standing there? The man’s face was now suffused with rage, his training session interrupted and emergency maneuvers taking place on his bridge without his having been informed.

“Contact directly in our path. Captain,” Dunway said quickly. He ran through the normal litany of course and speed, pointing the contact out to the captain, his eyes still fixed on the course repeater as it clicked over one more notch. Maybe enough maybe not. If it weren’t, it didn’t matter what the captain of the ship thought of him. His career was dead.

The captain snapped his gaze forward, finally spotting the small craft.

His jaw dropped. Dunway noted the look of horror on his face with sour satisfaction. It was time the aviators realized that life at twenty knots could be just as dangerous as life at Mach 1.

Dunway could see the faces now, make out the details of clothing and expressions. The ship was still turning.

Finally, as it drew closer, the small ship disappeared from view, the line of sight to it blocked by the massive flight deck. Had it been enough? Maybe, just barely. If it had been, the ship was just now scraping down the port side of Jefferson, a tiny gnat against the giant gray wall of the ship.

He wheeled on the operations specialist maintaining the plot board at the aft of the bridge. “Reports from lookouts?”

“Port lookout reports that oh, dear, sweet Jesus.” The man’s voice trailed off. “Sir, we hit them.”

“You’ll send the message now.”

Santana glared at Pamela Drake, daring her to defy his order.

“I won’t.” She remained seated, staring up at him. Even if she’d been standing, he would have towered over her, and she had no intention of allowing him to feel one iota of superiority. Best to stand her ground where she was. “You can’t force me to broadcast this report. Not while I’m being held hostage. Aguillar promised me that I could report the facts as I saw them. Quite frankly, I’m a bit fed up with being shuttled around under guard.”

Santana slammed his hand down on the table. “You are not in the United States, Miss Drake. We agreed to allow you to come here, but you were informed there would be certain restrictions on your ability to pursue matters independently. You took advantage of our hospitality, yet refused to acknowledge those conditions. Is this your idea of integrity?” He turned angrily away from her, staring out the window.

“I’ll report the story, but not some trumped-up fabrication you’ve prepared for me. And without access to witnesses, the ability to see the story developing myself, I have no way of judging the truth of what you’re telling me. You want your story told, fine. I’ll tell it. But my own way.”

Santana muttered something to his aide in a quick, staccato voice, the Spanish too rapid for her to follow. The aide nodded, walked out of the room, and returned shortly bearing a videotape. He inserted it into the VCR, turned the power on, then turned back toward Santana.

Santana wheeled on her. He pointed at the television screen. “Perhaps this will be a sufficiently important story for you to reconsider.” He gestured at the aide, who punched the play button.

The picture started out grainy, then gradually resolved into a clear pattern of light and dark. As the cameraman found his focal length, the dark shape in the middle of the screen became a small boat crammed with people. It plowed up and down the waves, rolling from side to side in the gentle swells and threatening to capsize even in the relatively calm seas. The camera panned to the right and refocused, and a large aircraft carrier came into view.

The shot was taken from almost sea level, and the ship looked like a massive, towering gray cliff. The cameraman zoomed in, focusing on the number on the side of the steel superstructure jutting up from the flight deck, the island.

Pamela recognized the number immediately. The USS Jefferson. Even if she hadn’t known that it was on presence patrols in the Caribbean, the hull number was indelibly ingrained in her memory.

The camera panned back to the small boat. The people in it now were standing up, gesturing, and Pamela could see their mouths opening as they screamed. Panic and as the cameraman zoomed back to include both the aircraft carrier and the small boat in one frame, she understood the reason why. Jefferson was bearing down on the small boat with all the inevitability and imponderability of an avalanche. In a battle between two ships for right-of-way, tonnage always wins, and there was no doubt in her mind as to the outcome of this encounter.

As she watched, the distance between the two ships gradually decreased.

The Jefferson’s aspect changed, becoming slightly more bow-on to her, but still Pamela could see that there was no way it could miss the other ship. She imagined the panic that must be taking place on Jefferson, as frantic in its own style as the terror of the people in the small boat. To die, or to be responsible for others’ deaths?

She knew which was worse.

It was like watching the O. J. Simpson car chase, with the white Bronco rolling slowly down vacant interstates. Minutes passed, and if it had not been for the impending tragedy, it would have been almost as boring.

Finally, the inevitable. Jefferson’s clean-cut bow rolled over the midsection of the small boat, cutting it cleanly in half. The damage drove the small ship underwater immediately, dumping the horde of passengers into the sea. She could see a few of them churning up, tiny white flecks next to the skin of the ship; then those too disappeared.

It was over just seconds after it began.

The aide punched the stop button, freezing the video on the last scene.

There was no evidence of the encounter in the curling water around Jefferson’s hull, in the gentle arc of the bow waves that rolled off her steel sides.

“You wish to see it again?” Santana asked. The aide began to rewind the tape.

She shook her head. “When did this happen?” she asked, grasping for details to avoid acknowledging the horror of what she’d just seen.

“Where?”

“Just north of our coast. And the time? About two hours ago, I think.

Maybe more.” He regarded her sardonically, evil cruelty in his look.

“Is that timely enough to be newsworthy for you. Miss Drake? I assure you, there is no other network in the world that will have firsthand coverage of this event. And the United States Navy’s own message traffic will support the occurrence of the actual event. If you would like to wait for that, for some other network to attend a stateside briefing and scoop you on this matter, we will be glad to oblige. We had just thought …” He let his voice trail off delicately.

“No. I want it. It’s something it’s something the American public needs to see.” Already the words were taking shape in her mind, the damning indictment of Tombstone’s old ship callously running down a group of people seeking freedom. She would get three minutes, maybe even four the lead story, at any rate. Excerpts from the videotape, along with her narrated coverage, would be replayed hourly at the top of the hour until some other critical world event bumped it off the schedule.

Some small part of her mind kept insisting there was more to the story than this. The American ship must have tried to avoid the small boat; she’d seen that from the way the angle on the bow changed in the course of those few minutes. Tried, but hadn’t been able to.

She knew from Tombstone’s long discourses on operations at sea that small craft were difficult to detect, even harder sometimes to pick out from the ocean by visual observation. That was why the rules of the road gave the larger, less maneuverable ship the right-of-way in most circumstances.

The truth, but a rotten story. Atrocities sell better than tragedies.

She’d learned that lesson years ago in Bosnia, in Desert Storm, in a thousand other combat venues around the world. No, even if she didn’t report it this way, her competitors would. And their ratings would outstrip hers in a New York minute.

“Who took this video?” she said suddenly. Santana smiled. Her gut churned as she considered the full implications of the matter. Not only had Jefferson plowed over the ship, but Santana had been somewhere within observation range, watching, and doing nothing to warn either the carrier or the small boat containing his countrymen of the danger.

She wondered whether the story she would report could ever begin to match the horror of the reality.

She took a deep breath. “Get my cameraman.”

“Incoming signal,” the operations specialist snapped. He kept his eyes glued on the screen and repeated the information over the secondary channel. “Captain, it’s a firing order.”

Seated in his tactical action officer chair, the captain stared at the display in front of him. It shivered, shifted, then resolved itself into a mirror image of the display in front of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A red pip targeting indicator popped into view next to the missile site the carrier SEALs had found.

“Helluva thing, not having control over your own missiles,” the chief petty officer of the watch said, his voice tight with disgust. “We’re no better than a goddamned bunch of monkeys to them.”

The captain turned. “Let’s keep that quiet. Chief. We’ve done our job, getting weapons into the firing basket. If Washington wants to control the weaponeering themselves, we’ll let them. It’s not like we have a choice.”

The chief pursed his lips and scowled. “Helluva way to run a war.”

“Weather deck secure,” the OOD reported over the bitch box. “Standing by to enable launching circuits.”

“Enable the circuits,” the captain echoed, nodding at the tactical action officer.

The TAO nodded, reached across the console, and gave his key one quick twist to the right. The captain did the same on his console. He sat back in his chair, sighed, and waited for the shot.

Moments later, he felt the dark rumble start down in the bowels of the ship, creep its way up the girders and strakes that made up the hull, and vibrate underneath his feet. The ship was ready; he could tell even without the weapons status indicators flashing warnings in front of him. The first shot fired by the Arsenal in anger, and it wouldn’t even be at his command.

Suddenly, the hatches centered in the video camera popped open. Within seconds, a ripple of Tomahawk cruise missiles heaved themselves out of their vertical launch slots, seemed to hesitate above the deck in midair, then blasted the nonskid with fire. They gained altitude quickly after that, the noise and smoke from their propulsion systems blackening the deck and obscuring the picture on the camera.

Even deep inside Combat, he could hear the missiles scream away from the ship and toward their target.

“That’s it, folks,” he announced as the noise finally faded.

“Weapons away.”

He saw the crew glance around at each other, puzzled looks on their faces. They’d all come from different ships, had been used to the routine of firing missiles, acquiring bomb damage assessments, and firing again. Many of them had served on the potent Aegis ships, working in Combat with a vast array of weapons under their direct control.

There was something unnatural about this, giving up control of their very essence to someone they couldn’t see, touch, or even be certain existed.

Yet, this was the very mission for which the Arsenal ship had been constructed. The captain stood and walked back out on the bridge to reclaim his coffee cup. As much as he might understand that, he didn’t have to like it.

A thin, high-pitched whine cut through the air like a buzz saw, at first barely audible, then quickly increasing in pitch and volume until it dominated the entire world.

Pamela shrank back against the cement wall, panic overriding her trained reporter instincts, desperately wishing that she were anywhere in the world other than at ground zero for this attack. How many times had she been near military actions?

Hunkering under bushes, darting around ruined buildings, following other freedom fighters on perilous missions against opposing forces whose ideologies seemed not too much different from that of the men she watched kill their relatives. Yet, never under any other combat conditions had she felt she was in imminent danger of dying. Why, oh why had she let her ego, her determination to get the best story before anyone else, lead her into this situation?

A Mach 2 missile gives its intended recipients barely enough time to appreciate the danger they’re in. The precision guided munitions flashed into view, barely discernible gray-white streaks on the horizon, then became clearly visible almost before her terror could reach its peak.

They moved too quickly for the eye to follow, streaking in over the gently rolling terrain to find their targets.

Two thousand meters away, the world exploded. One moment there was only the demanding keen of the missiles, the next a cacophony of noise and flame and fire. The earth blew up, shooting gouts of dirt and foliage into mushroom clouds of debris speckled with fire and metal.

Shrapnel shot out at all angles, slamming into the structures and vehicles around the missile sites.

The compression wave from the explosion caught her first, even before the noise had a chance to deafen her. It slammed her against the concrete, smashing the back of her head against the rough-laid surface.

She felt consciousness fade, and wavered on the edge of sanity. The microphone dropped from her hand unnoticed, and she paused for a minute, held against the building by the shock wave before sliding down to join it in a graceful heap.

Consciousness returned sometime later. She opened her eyes slowly, feeling raw and scratched, barely able to make sense of the images her eyes were transmitting to her brain.

Around her, the world was silent. The green fields, the awkward and ungainly missile launchers, were gone. In their place, huge craters spattered the landscape, and a thick dust made the air almost unbreathable.

She groaned, tried to shove herself up on her knees with one hand.

There was a sharp pain in her ribs, followed by the realization that every part of her body was dull and aching. She let it overwhelm her for a moment, then shoved it away, grim determination flooding her.

Along with it came a strange euphoria, a gratitude that she’d survived.

Life seemed sweet. Precious even, in a way it never had before.

The men scattered around her were starting to move as well, their groans and involuntary yelps of pain echoing her own. She felt along the ground, searching for her microphone, then looked for the substitute cameraman. She found him finally, still unconscious, his body wrapped around the old equipment protectively. She crawled to him, grabbed him by the shoulder, and shook.

“Get up.”

The man moaned, then his eyes fluttered. He stared off into the distance until finally his eyes focused on her.

“Que?”

“Get up,” she repeated. “We’ve got work to do.”

Ten minutes later, after gulping down tepid water from a canteen, she was ready. Her hair was pushed back out of her eyes, but she could feel it springing around her head in an unruly mess. She’d avoided looking in a mirror. It didn’t matter, not now. If there were streaks of dirt and blood on her face, so much the better.

She waited until she was relatively certain that the cameraman was functioning enough to depress the transmit button on his equipment, then stared steadily at the camera.

“This is Pamela Drake of ACN, reporting live from the western coast of Cuba. The United States has just completed a missile strike against this naval base not one mile from where I am standing.” She gestured behind her, hoping the cameraman had enough sense to pan the damage.

She saw him move, squint, refocus, and smiled. She let the time pass, waiting a few beats too long to increase the tension. Finally, she cut her hand down sharply and he snapped the camera back to frame her.

“This is the area from which I made my last live report. As you can see, the effect of the missiles has been devastating. The structures that were here before, which I postulated were missile sites a fact that was never denied by the present authorities in power are destroyed.

I have no word on casualties, but it seems” All at once her voice failed. I could have been one of them. Not minutes ago, it was…

“Casualties are yet to be determined,” she finished finally. She stared at the camera, letting her image speak for itself.

Twenty Miles North of Cuba Captain Heather paced uneasily back and forth on the bridge, staring out over the horizon at the barely visible land. Immediately following the launch the USS Arsenal had been ordered to assist other battle group assets in searching for survivors of the Jefferson’s collision with the small refugee boat.

Almost an hour after the attack, he still had no idea of how effective the attack had been. That was one of the problems of using cruise missiles alone, he reflected. At least when the battle group struck with aircraft and air-launched missiles, they had immediate feedback on the effectiveness of the attack. Not so with his ship.

He turned back to the OOD. “Any word yet?” It was unnecessary to ask, he knew even as the words left his mouth. The bda bomb damage assessment would be conducted by the USS Jefferson. Two F-14s specially equipped with TARPS camera units were orbiting in a starboard marshal even as he spoke. Accompanying them would be two EA6 Prowlers armed with HARM missiles, capable of attacking any radar installations or any antiaircraft sites that were foolish enough to radiate their radars.

Without knowing exactly how effective the attack had been, the aircrafts’ mission was only slightly less dangerous than an actual bombing run.

“No, Captain.” The OOD’s voice was impassive.

“I guess we’ll both hear at the same time, won’t we?” the captain said. The battle group’s circuit was wired into both the bridge and Combat. As soon as they knew anything, the carrier would let him know.

Or would they? He mulled the thought over for a moment. The political battle going on in Washington was making itself felt even down here.

Admiral Wayne, commander of the carrier battle group, and Admiral Magruder, force commander, were both naval aviators. Would it be to their advantage to delay the BDA information’s getting to the Arsenal ship? More important, even if it was, would they do such a thing?

From the few meetings he’d had with the two men, he suspected not.

They were made of stronger stuff than their counterparts that he’d met, both fleet-seasoned aviators with a clear, sharp understanding of how a battle group worked, what it could and couldn’t do.

“I’ll be in Combat,” Captain Heather said abruptly. He strode off the bridge, hoping that the dim light in Combat would mask his growing uneasiness.

“A very effective report. Miss Drake,” Santana said. His uniform was streaked and spattered with mud and dirt, and there was a haggard look to his face that hadn’t been there an hour ago. “I hope they believed you.”

Pamela flung out one hand and gestured toward the area of devastation to her left. “Why the hell wouldn’t they? I sent them pictures, after all.” Her voice was cold and bitter.

This was the man who’d exposed her to grave danger, who had made her a pawn albeit a willing one in this entire political struggle. In all the conflicts she’d covered, she’d never been used like this against her own country. Not intentionally, at least. Her mind wandered back over the other conflicts, to theaters around the world where she’d watched nations struggle for domination over soil. There’d been allegations, sure. The military never liked the press intruding, and was continually speculating that their very presence and reports influenced the course of the battle. The criticism had become markedly more raucous after Desert Storm and Desert Shield and Grenada.

Especially Grenada, where a team of reporters had illuminated an incoming SEAL mission just as she had done earlier on the beach.

But the country had the right to know, didn’t it? And how would it get information if the media didn’t report it? Rely on the military officials?

She snorted. Not likely. The military’s main concern was funding and power. Not so different from their civilian counterparts, but with even more at stake, what with the security of the nation entrusted to them.

All of them? An image of Tombstone Magruder flashed through her mind.

She’d seen him agonize through tactical and operational decisions too often, felt the pain that tormented him over a mission gone wrong, and watched him suffering over the loss of life in his battle group.

Somehow, when she put a face to it all, her distrust of the military’s intentions seemed a little less solid.

“Now what?” she asked, suddenly tired of theoretical ethical speculations. She needed to focus her attention on what was next on leaving this blasted country, she hoped.

“With the missile launchers destroyed, that’s the end of it.”

A look of satisfaction backlit the weariness in the Cuban colonel’s face. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

She pointed again at the devastation. “I think the United States solved the issue once and for all.” She was surprised to feel a sense of satisfaction at the statement. God, what had happened? Was she turning into a raving patriot just like Tombstone? No, her responsibility was to more than just one nation it was to the world, to report accurately and precisely just what was occurring around the globe.

“It would be, if that’s where the missiles were.” He shook his head slightly, all at once looking more relaxed. “But they weren’t.”

“What do you mean? I saw ” He interrupted her. “You saw a stack of shipping crates and some construction equipment wired together to look like something else. In other words, you saw what we wanted you to see. And what you wanted to see, if you will admit it. Isn’t that so?”

Her mind reeled, trying to take it all in. The dangerous journey across the sea, the mistreatment in confinement, capped off by the very real missile attack she’d just witnessed for what? As she looked up at him, his meaning became clear, sank into her mind with a dreadful clarity.

“I was part of the deception,” she whispered. “You used me.

He sighed. “No more than you used us. Miss Drake. No more than you used us.”

The ship finally finished the last section of its quartered search pattern. The special crew was starting to get tired, having started the evolution more than seven hours ago, frantically hunting for survivors of the collision between Jefferson and the small boat, their enthusiasm and hopes dimming over the ensuing hours. The crowds of off-duty sailors who had lined the weather decks, adding their eyes to the designated search teams’, had started to drift away four hours into the search as the cruiser methodically quartered the ocean farther and farther away from the original collision. By now, they all knew, there was virtually no chance of finding any survivors.

“That’s it. Captain. We’re on the last leg of the pattern.”

The officer glanced down at the hastily scribbled sequence of course and speed used to bring the cruiser within visual range of any people in the water. “I wish we could have found one. At least one.”

“Many times you don’t.” Captain Heather paused, deciding whether to launch into a discussion of some of the other rescue operations he’d been involved in, to place the whole event in perspective for his crew.

No, he decided, better not to. They would learn in their own time and way the inevitability of death, how often the water that made up 90 percent of the earth’s surface won in the battle between flesh and sea.

“Get us headed back toward the carrier. We’ll take up our former station on her starboard quarter.”

As the call went out to relieve the special team and set the normal underway watch. Captain Heather walked over to his brown leatherette chair on the starboard side of the bridge. Now that the sailors were being relieved wearied men and women with feet aching from almost eight hours of standing along the lifeline he felt he could at last sit down.

It was one of the peculiarities his crew worshipped about him his unwillingness to have them do anything he was not capable of doing himself.

He put one foot on the footrest and eased himself up into the chair, letting the hard-cushioned back support the small muscles in his back that were knotted and tense. He took a deep breath, watching the OOD guide the ship through the maneuvers to bring her back around toward the carrier, noting with one part of his mind that the young lieutenant was showing ever-increasing proficiency in his ship handling. Six months ago, there had been a certain tentativeness in his voice, a slowness in making critical decisions. During workups in the latest deployment, that had vanished, and what Captain Heather saw now was a more competent man, one surely and certainly on the track to commanding his own vessel someday.

Was he already seeing that? Did the young OOD look over at his captain now and wonder how it would feel to sit in his chair, feel the fear and eagerness that every captain felt in the pipeline? Heather hid a smile, remembering his own fantasies as a junior lieutenant officer of the deck, wondering how in the hell the Old Man managed to look like he knew what he was doing at every second, knew what was going on in parts of the ship he hadn’t visited in hours.

Those were other tricks of the trade that his OOD would pick up along the way, the captain showing him the ropes as he took more and more responsibility for the operation of the ship.

“All special teams secured and normal underway watch set,” the OOD reported. “Captain, I’ve extended the chow hours below to allow the outgoing crew to get a hot meal before they turn in. Most of them will be back on watch at midnight.”

“Very well.” He acknowledged the OOD’s decision neutrally, hiding the small thrill of satisfaction it brought him.

The man showed concern for his troops, another sign of good leadership to take note of.

The submarine chugged along, operating at snorkel depth, sucking in air through its masts to power the diesel engines below. The captain was uneasy, and his mood was reflected in that of his crew. It had been too long since they’d put to sea, despite his insistence over the past years about maintaining some minimum level of proficiency in submarine operations.

The crewmen on board were rusty; more than rusty almost dangerous.

Still, the mission was not terribly complicated. With any luck, they’d be back in port late that night.

“Captain, I have it.” The sonar man spoke loudly, then immediately clapped one hand over his mouth to warn himself to be more quiet.

“She’s only a few miles away,” he said in a lower voice.

“Bearing?”

“Three-two-zero true.”

The captain wheeled to the conning officer. “Three-two zero true, then.

And warn the weapons crew to stand by.”

“Si, Capitdn.” The OOD gave the new orders slowly, haltingly, desperately trying to refresh his memory for the mission that had been planned only the day before.

“Stand down from battle stations,” the captain ordered, “and make sure the crew gets fed. It’s been a long day.”

The announcement sounded throughout the ship minutes later, securing the vessel from General Quarters. He could hear the tread of feet down the corridors as the minimally manned vessel stood down. Crewmen would be crowding into the galley, gulping down coffee, and chattering excitedly over the day’s events.

“We’re setting the normal underway watch now,” the OOD reported. “Any special instructions?”

The captain shook his head. “Just the standard. And watch out for small boats that’s about all they could throw at us.”

The captain retreated into his wardroom and sat down for dinner with the small group of officers manning the Arsenal ship. At least it was over, the first operational test of this awesome platform. Now they would wait.

“Launch the first one,” the captain ordered. He waited, growing increasingly impatient as the crew moved sluggishly to obey. Finally, he felt the pressure change within the boat, followed by a shudder as the first mine was shot out of the torpedo tubes.

Mines. Not the torpedoes that any self-respecting submarine would have been armed with. Parts had been too hard to obtain, and the fuel and warheads on the ones they’d received from the Soviet Union had gradually deteriorated into rusting piles of metal and toxic liquid.

But mines-ah, now there was a weapon. Stable for decades with minimal maintenance, and capable of wreaking immediate destruction on anything they hit. Even the oldest Soviet models were still potent weapons.

Forty minutes later, they were done. A double line of mines ten miles long stretched out in the path of the Arsenal.

On the forward most portion of the weather decks. Seaman Fred Dooley took his lookout station. After a quick discussion with the sailor already standing the watch, he accepted the sound-powered phones, the binoculars, and the life jacket.

At least the weather was clear, a great improvement over the previous week. He shucked his foul-weather jacket, tossing it over the anchor chain. He doubted that he’d need it tonight.

He turned forward and lifted the binoculars to his eyes.

The cruiser was headed west, directly toward the setting sun. It dazzled him, and he tried to look to either side instead of gazing directly at the sun, to use his peripheral vision to pick up shapes and objects more clearly. Dooley was learning, just as the OOD was.

Something off to the right caught his attention, and he quickly focused the binoculars in on it, tweaking the small focus knob to sharpen the image. He tensed for a moment, wondering if he would be the one to spot the only survivor of the wreck.

Being first mattered on the USS Arsenal and mattered to Dooley more than most. Joining the Navy last year had been the best decision he’d ever made in his short life. A job, training, a steady paycheck and a way out of the grinding poverty of inner-city New York.

A few seconds later, Dooley’s hopes were dashed. It was merely a dolphin frolicking with a wave, trying in some odd fashion to complete a circle both above and below it. He watched it for a few moments longer, trying to decide exactly what sort of game the dolphin was playing.

Guiltily, aware that he’d let his attention be diverted by the eternal distractions of the sea, Dooley resumed his scan, carefully examining each area of the water in front of the ship. Another movement directly ahead caught his attention.

A dolphin, he figured; nothing else-should be moving out there.

He squinted, trying to make the object pop into view without refocusing the binoculars, which were set for dolphin length. The object was still unclear. Sighing, he focused again, then stared in horror.

It couldn’t be-no, wait. He pressed the button on the sound-powered phone that hung around his neck, his eyes still glued to the object.

“Bridge, forward lookout mine, in the water; I say again, mine, dead ahead in the water. It’s directly in front of us.”

“He said what?” The OOD wheeled on the operations specialist manning the sound-powered phone. “What the helm, hard right rudder. Lee helm, starboard engine back full, port engine ahead full.”

Captain Heather shot bolt upright in his chair, hit the deck in one motion, and was at the quartermaster’s side in a matter of seconds. He slapped down the collision alarm toggle switch, and seconds later the harsh buzz echoed throughout the ship. The bosun’s mate of the watch took that as his cue, and began passing, “Stand by for collision. Mine to port” He never had time to finish the announcement. The cruiser heeled violently to starboard, throwing the entire bridge team across the pilothouse. The captain hit the bulkhead just next to the hatch leading onto the bridge wing.

The officer of the deck hurtled past him, cleared the bridge wing railing, and was in the water before the ship had even finished its downward motion.

The captain tried to scramble to his feet, only to discover that his legs wouldn’t move. One of them, at least. He looked down, touched the raw, shattered bone protruding from his pants leg in horror, then groaned as he tried to twist around and survey the rest of the damage.

Six feet away, the bosun’s mate of the watch was struggling to his feet. He looked dazed, disoriented, but at least mobile. “Boats! Get the TAO up here. Man overboard, port side.” Captain Heather struggled to get the words out, relieved to see that the sailor appeared to understand. “And tell the exec ” As darkness overwhelmed him, he let the sentence slip away from his consciousness.