Sea Strike

5

The big ship was quiet, her passageways empty, her crew dispersing to the pleasures of a Honolulu night.

Following the conflagration drill, they had brought the Cunningham back to her shoreside moorage at the Pearl Harbor Fleet Base. Today they had finished with the grind of their requalification exercises. Tomorrow, the work of preparing for West Pac would begin. But for this evening, Amanda Garrett had decreed a well-earned stand-down for all hands.

In her cramped sleeping cabin, she admired herself in the small bulkhead mirror as best she could. The ex-pat Hong Kong seamstress she patronized here in the islands had been right. The azure Egyptian cotton did highlight the golden hazel of her eyes. Sleeveless and slit-skirted, the cheongsam fit as only a tailored garment could, its high collar adding an extra touch to the natural authority of her carriage. Amanda gave an approving nod.

She stepped out into the cabin’s office space. Checking the batteries in her cellular phone, she clipped it into place on the end of her purse. Slipping the strap over her shoulder, she picked up her small overnight case and turned for the door.

There were four icons in the Cunningham’s wardroom. The first was mounted on the forward bulkhead, where it would be the first thing seen by anyone coming through the main entryway. A foot-high capital E, done in white-enameled metal, it signified the Pacific Fleet E for Excellence the destroyer had earned the previous year. It denoted that the Duke had scored in the top ten percent during her initial qualification exercises.

Below it was the second icon, an enlargement of a campaign ribbon, the ice blue, frost white, and sea gray of the Antarctic blockade. It was a unique honor. Only the USS Cunningham and her crew could wear it. On a conventional vessel, these badges of accomplishment would have been displayed prominently on the bridge wing. On a stealth hull, however, even a few inches of nonspec paint would have made a difference in the ship’s radar cross section.

To starboard of the entryway, mounted on the redwood paneled bulkhead, there was a magnificent oil painting of the Cunningham. It was a commissioning gift presented to the ship by Amanda’s father, Wilson Garrett, retired rear admiral turned noted maritime artist.

And finally, to port was the ship’s metaphysical heart, a pair of naval aviator’s wings sealed in a small glass case — another commissioning gift presented by another rear admiral, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the Navy’s first supersonic jet ace of the Vietnam era and the destroyer’s valorous namesake.

This evening, the wardroom also contained a small group of the Cunningham’s, officers. Doc Golden and Dix Beltrain were in whites, obviously preparing to go ashore. Ken Hiro, on the other hand, was still in work khakis. Seated alone at the big mess table, he was at the nexus of a solid fan of ship’s paperwork. As Amanda entered the compartment, conversation trailed off and all three men rose to their feet in response to a courtesy older than military tradition.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Amanda said. “Plans being made?”

“That’s right, Captain,” Beltrain replied genially. “Doc and I here are getting set to tear up the town tonight. It’s his first time on the beach in Hawaii.”

“Haven’t you ever been ashore in Honolulu before, Doc?” Amanda inquired.

“Technically, once, on vacation with my ex-wife, Marilyn. Every expensive boutique and every cheap tourist show on the island, that’s what I know.”

“Not a very good experience?”

“Let’s put it this way.” Doc solemnly reached up and tapped his balding brow with a fingertip. “I lost some of this when a genuine, authentic Polynesian fire dancer over at Don Ho’s lost control of his tiki torch.”

Doc Golden accepted the resulting explosion of laughter with dignity.

Beltrain gave a dubious shake of his head. “I think we’re going to have to put some overtime in on you.”

“Just no luaus. It casts a pall over the whole thing if you take someone to a luau who can’t eat the pig.”

Amanda chuckled again and balanced her overnight case on the edge of the mess table.

“All right, Ken. And what are you doing still aboard?”

“Just taking care of some of the usual, Captain,” Hiro replied, looking up distractedly. “By the way, looking good tonight, ma’am.”

“Thank you.” She smiled. “But that doesn’t get around the fact that you’ve barely seen your family this week. We’re going to be off for West Pac in less than a month. If you don’t spend some time on the beach with your wife and kids before then, Misa will poison my yakitori next time you have me over for dinner. There’s nothing here that can’t wait. Go home.”

Hiro grinned back sheepishly. “Okay, Captain. Just give me another half hour on the watch lists, then I’m out of here.”

“Deal. Half an hour. And I’m holding you to it. Thirty five minutes from now and the duty security team comes in here with guns drawn to put you over the side.”

“I have been warned, ma’am.”

“Have, Ken. If anything comes up, I can be contacted through my cellular. Good night, gentlemen. Have an interesting evening, but no broken bones and no felony arrests. We have work to do tomorrow.”

Amanda was not cognizant of the prolonged gazes that followed her out of the wardroom. Finally, Doc Golden spoke almost reverently. “I was not aware that the Navy issued commanding officers who looked like that.”

“Yup,” Dix agreed. “We do not get to see that side of the Skipper too often. Appreciate it while it lasts, Doc.”

“Let’s just also continue to appreciate that she is the Captain, gentlemen,” the Duke’s exec added from the mess table.

Hiro picked up his pen once more, then hesitated. “However, I will concede that somewhere on-the island of Oahu tonight, there is one extremely lucky son of a bitch.”

The fire-and-gold explosion of an island sunset dominated the western sky. Around the massive fleet base, a growing constellation of work lights were flickering on in response to the oncoming tropic evening. Within the complex, trickles of interior traffic merged into a stream that flowed toward the checkpoint at Nimitz Gate. Civilian day workers going off shift and military personnel on pass, it was a flow that would reverse itself with the coming of the morning hours — the natural, living inhalation and exhalation of the big naval installation.

Out on the pier apron, Amanda looked back for a few moments to admire the sleek lines of her ship.

Because of her outriggerlike propulsor pods and the comparatively delicate RAM jacketing of her hull, the big guided-missile destroyer had to use the “Mediterranean Moor.” She was backed in between two piers, her airbag padded stern butted up against the breakwater and her folding gangway extending down to shoreside. A broad V of spring lines braced her in place and her anchor held her bow out toward open water.

Harbormasters hated to see the Mediterranean Moor used, because a Cunningham took up twice the moorage space of a conventional vessel of her 8,000-ton displacement. Shipmasters hated doing it as well, because it was a damn finicky piece of ship handling.

However, with the rose-tinted gaze of a proud skipper, Amanda was willing to overlook this minor foible of her command.

With the rakish sweep of her finlike mast array, the long open foredeck running almost half the length of her hull, and her low, streamlined superstructure, the Cunningham more resembled the creation of some imaginative yacht designer than she did the classic image of a man-of-war. The two small Oto Melara autocannon turrets fore and aft only hinted at the massed firepower concealed by her stark sleekness.

Her exotic design was mandated by the strict parameters of stealth technology. She was the lead vessel of the U.S. Navy’s first class of blue-water low-observability surface combatants all but invisible to the probing radar beams of a potential enemy.

This quest for stealth ranged into the visible spectrum as well. The only flash of true color anywhere about the Cunningham was the Stars and Stripes flipping lazily at her jack staff like the tail of a contented cat.

Instead of the conventional Navy gray, she was painted in the dustier low-observability hue used on the latest generation of U.S. carrier aircraft. The name across her stern and the big ID numbers under the flare of her radically raked clipper bow were done in outlined “phantom” letters and numerals.

A darker, tiger-striped pattern was also overlain on the base color: wavering, sooty bands that ran vertically down the length of the hull and horizontally up the height of the mast array. A computer-designed derivative of the First World War’s “dazzle” camouflage, it served to confuse electro-optical targeting systems and to break up the Duke’s distinctive silhouette, rendering her harder to identify.

Even pier side, the Duke’s outline had a tendency to merge into the growing background shadows in odd ways, as if she were a specter preparing to fade into the night.

Much as Amanda was about to do herself.

She smiled wryly and unlocked the door of her leased automobile, releasing a puff of the day’s retained heat. A few minutes later she was part of the traffic stream flowing toward the main gate at Pearl.

She headed east along Nimitz Highway, staying with it even after it changed into Kalakaua Avenue and plunged into the heart of downtown Honolulu. Following the shoreline of Mamala Bay past the tourist kitsch of Waikiki, she circled around to Sans Souci and the other quiet beaches below Diamond Head. It was a moderately long drive from Pearl Harbor, but that was the price that had to be paid for a degree of privacy.

Amanda pulled into the small oceanside restaurant that had the big, leafy hau tree shading the out-of-door tables on its lanai. A Pontiac Banshee sports coupe was already parked in the lot, its driver leaning back against its fender, waiting for her. A few moments more and Amanda was exchanging her first night’s kiss with Vince Arkady.

During the trial by fire of the Antarctic campaign, they had become comrades and confidants. That they would also become lovers had been a given long before they had been able to act upon the possibility.

Amanda had frequently told herself that getting romantically entangled with one of her own junior officers was possibly the single most stupid thing she had ever done. However, she had always received the same answer: that the only thing more stupid might have been not getting involved at all.