Choosers of the Slain

12

They ran the Strait of Malvinas between the Falklands and the Argentine mainland that evening, with the con in CIC and the ship cleared for action.

Possibly it was an unnecessary precaution. Beyond "Pedro" circling at a respectful distance, that stretch of sea miles had proved to be empty. The Duke's sensors reacted only to the vigilant sweeping of search radars far to east and west.

It was near midnight before they passed back into the open waters of the South Atlantic. Running fast over a mild sea, the Cunningham held her course for the approaches to Drake Passage.

After standing the ship down from general quarters, Amanda returned the watch to the duty officer, then headed for her cabin. By rights, she knew that she should be feeling tired. However, the events of the day had built up a massive backlog of nervous energy within her. She had to move before she could rest.

She changed into her old brown leotard and ponytailed her hair with a band. Slipping on a beach jacket, she picked up her portable CD player and disk case and padded forward to the ship's gymnasium.

This was far from her first late-night visit to the gym. She favored this hour because she almost always had the compartment to herself. So she was startled to find the place already occupied as she came through the hatchway.

"What are you doing here?" she blurted out before she could catch herself.

"Pretty much the same as you, Captain," Arkady answered amiably. Clad in those same denim trunks and a T-shirt, he was just straightening up from setting the load lever on one of the treadmills. "Between one thing and another, this is the first chance I've had to get down here for a workout since I came aboard. If you'd like some privacy, I can come back another time?"

"Oh, no, go ahead."

Damn, damn, damn! She never danced in front of anyone anymore. On the other hand, she couldn't just turn around and walk out after lugging all of this paraphernalia down here.

When she had first come aboard the Duke, she had ordered certain modifications made to the gymnasium. All of the exercise and weight machines had been moved over against one bulkhead, leaving the other clear for the installation of a ballet bar and a full-length dojo mat. There had been a little grumbling over that, but then rank has some privileges.

She selected a disk that contained one of the mixed programs she had chosen and edited herself and fed it into the player. Then, feeling shy for the first time in years, she dropped her robe to the deck, took a deep breath, and started her bar exercises. By the time the "Young Prince and Princess" theme from Scheherazade had run its course, she had lost herself to the music and movement and had forgotten the steady whirring of the treadmill at the other side of the compartment.

The program changed from Rimsky-Korsakov to Richard Rodgers and she smoothly translated the sweeping tango of "Beneath the Southern Cross" into classical ballet. The next selection was more difficult, an involved, light electronic jazz piece by Ryuichi Sakamoto. She shifted from ballet to modern improvisational and began working her way through it. Twice she was dissatisfied and twice she replayed that segment of the disk, modifying the patterns she drew with her body until they flowed properly with the feel of the orchestration.

The last cut was another stylistic shift, Belinda Carlisle's old rock hit "Valentine." Amanda accepted the challenge and let herself take on the driving, elemental edge of the music, dancing the song out to final release and freedom.

The music ended and Amanda dropped to her knees, panting softly and coming back into herself.

"You're very good," Arkady said. He was sitting on the end of one of the exercise tables, regarding her intently.

"Not really," she replied, suddenly finding that she didn't feel quite as self-conscious as she thought she would. "I started ballet when I was eight and modem dance when I was in junior high. Ever since the Academy, though, I've just fooled around with it. It's more fun than doing pushups."

"I guess you know more about it than I do, but it sure seems to me like you know what you're doing."

"Thank you."

"By the way, while we're on the subject of talents, the signature on the big painting in the wardroom reads 'Garrett.' Is that another one of yours, Captain?"

"I can't draw a straight line. My father did that. It was a gift from him when I received command of the Cunningham."

"He knows what he's doing too. Ex-Navy?"

She nodded. "Yes, that was his Charley Adams in the picture. We're Navy from way back."

"At least four generations' worth, according to that picture."

"Farther than that. Dad was just recounting the destroyer branch of the family. What about the Arkadys?"

"Hmm, seagoing yes, Navy no. Back when the fishing fleets were a big deal in San Francisco and Monterey, the Arkadys were a big deal in the fishing fleets. Other than an uncle of mine whose claim to fame was being busted from petty officer first to seaman more often than anyone else in fleet history, I'm the first of the clan in living memory to join up."

"You made a good choice. You've run up a very impressive service record." Amanda rested her back against the bulkhead and tucked her feet under her. "There is one thing I'm curious about, though. According to your file, you started out in fixed-wing aviation before going to helicopters. You were near the top of your class when you transferred. Why? This isn't anything official. You don't have to talk about it if you'd rather not."

Arkady shrugged. "No big deal. I did start out intending to be a fighter jock and I was doing pretty good at it, right up to when I had to try my first carrier landing. You ever make one?"

"Once, in a C-2 COD transport. There weren't any windows in the cargo bay, so you couldn't really see anything. I just remember a long period of being scared silly followed by an almighty crash. My first priority after disembarking was a dry pair of panties."

"Seeing what's going on doesn't help matters much. When I tried it, it was in a T-45 out of Jacksonville with an instructor in the backseat, and I was shooting my first trap on the old Kennedy. That was a real interesting experiment in reverse optical physics. The closer you got to the flight deck, the smaller it looked."

Arkady angled his arms behind him and leaned back against the tabletop. "An actual carrier landing is like nothing else in the world. You can do all of the dry-land training, all of the simulator hours you want, but until you are actually out there, in the slot, riding the meatball down to the deck, you don't know what it's all about.

"The old-timers tried to explain it to us. How you have to put everything you have into getting from Point A, approach, to Point B, touchdown. Total concentration, zero error, no room for anything but absolute perfection."

Arkady chuckled. "I didn't do too bad. I nailed both of my traps first time around. No problem with my catapult launches, either. Then we flew back to Jacksonville, and that night I turned in my request for transfer to helo training."

"Why?"

"That's what my senior instructor kept asking. He also kept trying to tell me that everyone was a little scared during their first carrier op.

"I kept trying to tell him that fear had nothing to do with it. I've never been scared of, or in, any aircraft in my life. It was a matter of knowing myself and my own capabilities. Once I'd actually shot a carrier landing, I realized that I'd never be able to maintain the necessary mental focus to fly fixed-wing off of a flattop day in and day out.

"I'd done it. I could do it again once, twice, a couple of hundred times. The thing is, I knew that sooner or later I'd let my concentration slip for that one-tenth of a second necessary to kill myself. Probably I'd take some other guys and a big chunk of ship with me. No way. I got out while the getting was good."

"Did you find helicopters an easier go?" Amanda asked.

"It's not easier. Rotor-wing aviation, especially off of a small-surface platform, is just about as hairy a way to make a living as you can find. It's just that there are a different set of operating parameters. Like the Brit Harrier pilots say, 'It's easier to stop the airplane and land on the ship than it is to land on the ship and then stop the airplane.'"

"This time, I won't argue the point with you. It takes two Tylenol washed down with a stiff brandy and soda just to get me on the D.C.-to-Norfolk shuttle. At any rate, that was a tough call to have to make."

"Hell, it was just common sense."

"I find that 'common sense' is a rather rare commodity these days."

Amanda used the bar to pull herself to her feet, took a step away from the bulkhead, and not quite fell flat on her face. A muscle had knotted up in her right leg and was screaming in white-hot agony. She clung to the bar, trying to maintain her balance. Arkady was up in a second, steadying her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"Just a cramp. Ow… ouch, dammit that hurts!"

"You cooled off too fast and you're locking up," Arkady said, guiding her down to the end of the exercise table. "Lay back and I'll work it out for you."

"No, it'll be okay. I just have to stand on it."

"If your leg doesn't fall off first. Captain, ma'am, will you please just lie down!"

He gave her a gentle push on the shoulder while lifting her legs. Amanda overbalanced and thumped back on the soft foam padding. Arkady swiftly positioned the heel of her cramp-stricken limb against his shoulder.

"Okay now, push with your leg. Not hard, just a steady

pressure."

Arkady encircled her thigh about midway down with the thumb and forefinger of each hand. Then, slowly and deliberately, he drew upward, coming back over her knee and then down to the ankle. Returning his hands to their starting place, he repeated the process.

Amanda wasn't exactly certain how she found herself in this position, and she wasn't exactly sure if it was a proper one for her to be in. On the other hand, in an amazingly short time the knotting muscles began to relax and the burning pain subsided.

"That's better." She sighed. "Where in the world did you learn how to do that?"

"Well, I could say that my old high-school football coach taught me, but actually it was this Japanese girl I was going with when I was stationed at Yokosuka. She was a professional masseuse and she knew how to manipulate muscles that medical science hasn't even discovered yet. Okay, switch sides."

Arkady released her right foot and brought her left up to his shoulder.

"Pardon me, Lieutenant, but I don't have a cramp in that

one."

"Preventive maintenance."

"Oh."

As he set to work, he said, "Now can I ask one, Captain?"

"One what?" The strong and sure movement of his hands was making it a little difficult to concentrate.

"A question?"

"Sure, go ahead."

"I was looking through the latest issue of Naval Institute Proceedings down in the wardroom, and in the letters section I noticed that a couple of carrier officers were taking your name in vain.

"They seemed to be taking strong exception to an article you'd written. I couldn't find the number they were talking about, though, and I was just wondering what you'd said to kick their puppy so hard."

"Oh, that." Amanda shrugged as best she could from her horizontal position. "It was an article relating to a doctrine paper that I did for the Naval War College. Basically, I was saying that the United States can no longer depend on the aircraft carrier as its first line of overseas crisis intervention."

"Is that all? My, you do enjoy spitting in other people's holy water."

"Those two airedales missed the point entirely. I was talking in economic and operational terms, not in tactical effectiveness. The classic flattop is still a very viable weapons system, although this may be the last generation that this will be true. The problem is that there just aren't enough of them to go around anymore.

"Currently, the United States maintains a ten-carrier active-duty fleet. That's just barely enough to regularly forward-deploy one task force each into the Atlantic, western Pacific, and Mediterranean. The new Sea Control Ships we're building will help, but that'll be offset by the decommissioning of the Enterprise and the last of the oil burners. We're losing the ability to cover all of the potential global trouble spots with a fast-reaction carrier force."

"So, what's the fix?"

"What I call 'raider deployment.' We use stealth ships like the Cunningham, operating alone or in small, widely dispersed task groups. They'll cover the forward-deployment zones while the carriers are held back in reserve in a centralized oceanic area.

"For example, say with the Seventh Fleet. The raiders would deploy out and cover the current hot spots-the Persian Gulf, the Maldives, and the China coast. The carrier would park itself somewhere — say, off the north coast of Australia. If a flare-up occurs, the raider vessel on station will hold the line until the carrier can move up in support." Arkady released her leg. "Sounds interesting, but what if the natives get really restless? Given the firepower available to third world states these days, one ship wouldn't have much of a chance. Flip."

Distracted by their developing conversation, Amanda obediently rolled over onto her stomach. "Not necessarily. Up until the Second World War, a fast ship operating alone and trying not to be found was a hellishly hard thing to do anything about. Oh, Lord, that feels good!"

Arkady was firmly running the heels of his hands up either side of her spine from the small of her back to her shoulder blades. Amanda abandoned her last lingering concerns about propriety and considered learning how to purr.

"I guess that ended when radar and long-range search aircraft came along?" he commented.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, and later recon satellites were developed and made things even worse. If they can see you they can hit you, and if they can hit you they can kill you. The surface Navy became locked into a big-fleet mentality. You assumed that eventually you would be spotted, and that the only way to survive was by the massed area defense of a big-ship formation, backed by a carrier air group."

"Sounds reasonable to me."

"Not necessarily." Amanda semi-stretched and tucked her hands under her chin. "A single ship that can strike, disappear, and then strike again at will can raise havoc out of all proportion to its size. Read your history; Sir Francis Drake and the Golden Hind shattered the Spanish Imperial economy with their raids on South America. During the American Revolution, England was thrown into a panic by the presence of a single U.S. sloop-of-war off of their coasts. And right in these waters during the Second World War, the German pocket-battleship GrafSpee kept an entire Allied fleet pinned down for months hunting for her.

"The key to the whole thing is stealth technology, and the ability it gives you to escape and evade long-range detection. If the seas become a place you can hide in again, then, as the saying goes, the solitary raider can once more kick ass and take names."

"That sounds sort of like sub doctrine."

"True. The submarine was the first stealth warship. The thing is that undersea craft have inherent problems with their ability to collect and react to data outside of their primary operating environment. Their main sensors are effective only under water. The surface ship has the edge because it can fully interact with all three of the maritime combat environments: air, surface, and subsurface."

"Interesting," Arkady commented. "It looks like your doctrine is about to get a field test with this Argentine job." Amanda abruptly rolled over onto her side, a thoughtful expression coming to her face. "You know," she said slowly, "it hadn't struck me before, but you're absolutely right. That's funny."

"Not really," Arkady replied. "It's like me and that first carrier landing. Things can look a whole lot different than you expect when you make the transition from theory to reality. How do you feel?"

Amanda stretched again experimentally and yawned. "Pretty good. I think you've got all the kinks worked out. Thank you."

"No problem. Anything I can do for the Captain." He gave her a slow smile, and she felt his gaze linger on her for a moment. "I guess I'm about ready for a shower and some sack time," he continued." 'Night, Skipper, see you in the morning."

"Good night, Arkady."

He tossed off a quick half-salute before ducking out the hatch.

She put off her own leaving for a while. Instead, she lay back on the exercise table and drowsily considered the last few minutes. She wasn't quite sure if her new air group leader had just taken advantage of the situation or had just taken advantage of her.

On the other hand, she had been the one who had allowed herself to be massaged — no, damn it, practically caressed — in that fashion. And, shame the devil, she'd enjoyed it, along with the surge of physical desire that had accompanied Arkady's touch.

He was an extremely attractive man, that she couldn't deny. She also suspected that he was unwilling to abandon what they'd inadvertently started back in Rio. Sooner or later, she would have to clear the air with him.

However, as she savored the fading warmth of Arkady's hands on her back, she decided that she wasn't going to worry about it for the moment.