Choosers of the Slain

21

Lieutenants Rendino and McKelsie were hunkered down together in front of a computer terminal as Amanda reentered the dimness of the CIC, their close proximity giving them an odd air of intimacy.

"What's the situation?" she inquired sharply as she joined them.

"It looks like we might have to eat another air strike," Christine replied.

"Why? We've broken contact."

"It's that damn Argy satellite. It'll be making its next pass in about" — Christine glanced up at the digital clock on the overhead—"forty-five minutes. The spook meister here figures it's going to tag us."

"What about it, McKelsie? Are they that good? Can't we stealth it?"

He shook his head. "I've been running some computer models on the capabilities of the Argentine sat, specifically its thermographic scanning. It doesn't look good. We got a real contrast problem going here."

"More than our insulation and Black Hole systems can cope with?"

"Yeah, a lot more. We've got a still-air atmospheric temperature of nineteen degrees Fahrenheit out there and a surface-water temperature of thirty-one degrees. Even if we start an immediate emergency drawdown of our internal temperature and cut power completely while the sat is overhead, we're still going to show up like a lightbulb on black velvet on any kind of halfway decent infrared imager. The only way we can kill that kind of temperature differential is by using the misting system."

McKelsie referred to the system of high-pressure water jets built into the Cunningham's weather decks and upper works. Primarily intended as a purging mechanism to clear the destroyer's topsides of radioactive or biochemical contamination, it could also be used to mask her thermal signature under a cooling and concealing cloud of spray.

"I can't use the water jets now," Amanda protested. "I'd have six inches of solid ice built up on the weather decks inside of half an hour. We'd have to use the deck heaters to clear it off."

McKelsie nodded. "Yeah, and that would magnify our heat signature so much that a nearsighted rattlesnake could track us."

Christine rose from behind the terminal and stretched. "Here's how I figure it. We've got about three hours of daylight left and about forty minutes until the next satellite pass. The Argys probably have another strike armed and on the runway, ready to launch the second they get a fresh fix on our position. Give them twenty minutes to the strike airborne and an hour's flight time from Rio Grande Base. That will put them over our last known location with an hour of daylight left.

"Currently, we've got two thousand feet between the bottom of the available cloud deck and the ocean's surface. Probably they'll drop down through the overcast at our last position fix and spiral outward in a visual search pattern. Figuring that they use a tanker on the way in, they'll have enough light and gas to have a pretty good chance of spotting us."

Amanda let the breath trickle out of her lungs in a soft hissing sigh. "They've got an absolutely solid chance of spotting us. If they can work in that close, we don't dare maintain full EMCON. We'll have to bring up the air-search radars to keep from being bushwhacked entirely, and they'll home in on our emissions. Unless we can find some little localized snow squall or fog bank to hide in, you're right, we will have to eat the strike."

"Maybe we could avoid a whole lot of unpleasantness by doing something about that reconsat before it can spot us," the intel pointed out hopefully.

"The Zenith round? It takes a minimum of two hours to stack it and prep it for launch. We just don't have enough time now. Later tonight, though, I intend to make good use of it."

Granting we're still afloat, Amanda added silently.

"I think we have an alternative."

Vince Arkady had been standing back in one of the bay's shadowy corners. Now he pushed away from the bulkhead and stepped forward. He was clad in full flight gear, including survival suit and Mae West life jacket, and his helmet was clipped to his harness by its chin strap.

"May I talk with you for a moment, ma'am?" he asked formally.

"Of course." Amanda nodded to her intel and her countermeasures man and moved over to the waiting pilot. "What have you got, Lieutenant?"

"It's not a good idea to let them move in on us like that, Captain."

"Tell me about it. More importantly, tell me what we can do about it?"

"We go after them."

"An ambush?" Amanda frowned thoughtfully. "We could run north and try to set up an over-the-horizon missile trap with the LORAINs."

"That could work, but I was thinking of something more up close and personal."

"Such as?"

"I want to try an intercept with an air-to-air armed helo."

Amanda's eyebrows shot up. "Arkady! Going after a fighter-bomber strike with a helicopter is turning macho into foolhardy."

"Not the fighter-bombers, Captain. The tanker."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I take Retainer Zero One out along the incoming flight path of this next Sierra strike. Once I get out about where I figure they'll be running their refueling operation, I'll go stealth and wait for them to overfly me. Then I pop up underneath them and kill the tanker.

"That should not only break up this strike, but given their limited air-to-air refueling assets, it should go a long way toward screwing up any future ops they might want to launch against us."

Amanda frowned again. "How are you going to know what their line of approach is going to be?"

"I won't for sure, but I can make a pretty good educated guess. I figure the Argys will apply the KISS principle on this next strike just like they did before. When they launch, they'll fly a straight bearing out from the Isla Grande navigational beacon to our last fixed position. I just have to fly north, back along that bearing far enough, and I should be in pretty good shape to bushwhack 'em.

"While I'm running the intercept, we'll have Retainer Zero Two up with an Airborne Early Warning pod. She'll transmit an open-band downlink of what her radar is imaging that both the Duke and Retainer Zero One will be able to patch into passively. I'll be able to build a tactical display out of that without having to give away my position. The Argys won't know I'm there until they run right over me."

Amanda suddenly found herself wishing that he weren't making so much sense.

"All right, then," she said, "how do you plan to get out afterwards?"

"Same way I got in. Fully stealthed, and down on the deck. With a little luck, by the time they sort out what's happened, I'll be over the hill and far away."

"If you're not lucky, you'll end up alone out there with a bunch of very angry Argentine fighter pilots."

He gave her a half-grin. "If you don't bet, you can't win. That's how the game's played."

"Okay," she replied, grabbing for a last argument, "answer one more thing, then. What's the advantage of risking an aircrew over doing the same job with the LORAINs?"

"Surprise, and the probability of success. We have to assume that the Argys will be paying close attention to their threat boards as they come in. They probably won't worry too much about our air-search sweeps, but the second you bring up the fire-control radars, they'll scatter. Even a C-130 can do a whole lot of shuckin' and jivin' during the couple of minutes it would take for a SAM to get out that far. With my way, they won't realize they've got a problem until it's too late to do anything about it."

Arkady watched as Amanda slipped into what he was coming to recognize as her "heavy studying" posture: her arms crossed over her stomach, her head tilted down with her thick fall of hair flowing along her jawline, her lower lip lightly bitten in thought.

Finally she looked up. "Okay, Arkady, we go with it."