“Any situational changes, Dix?” Amanda asked.
“Nope. Of the eight radar arrays we’re tasked to take out with our first missile flight, five of them are up and radiating. We’ve got active bearings on them. We’ve also got solid GPU fixes on the other three. Two of those, the Silkworm batteries, are mobile, but the last Darkstar pass gave no indication that they were planning to go anywhere.”
“Good enough.” Amanda nodded. “The Reds are giving us a different reception this time, aren’t they.”
“I’ll tell the world, Captain. You’d think they were worried about company coming.”
Amanda and her TACCO studied the active Elint display currently filling the Alpha screen. The Communist garrison of Shanghai had manned their electronic ramparts. No longer concerned with drawing undue attention to the city, they had set its radar defense net fully alight. Multiple, highpowered search beams now swept the sea and sky in all directions, straining to detect the first hint of an inbound attacker.
The Cunningham’s first task this night would be to blind those searching eyes. Ghosting along just outside of their perimeter of protection, she awaited her moment to strike.
“Any new variables to consider?”
“They’ve got two guard ships outside of the mine barrier. Looks like a Shanghai-class gunboat and a minesweep. I’ve already got a couple of flights of Harpoons dialed into the first launch template. Skriiick!” Dix descriptively drew his thumbnail across his throat.
“Okay, good enough.” Amanda paused, running over her mental checklists to see if there was anything else left to be said. There wasn’t.
“I’ve decided to hold the con on the bridge for tonight’s operation. Commander Hiro will be covering things down here. Remember your mission priorities, Dix. Provide what cover you can for our helos so they can find that boomer, then take the boomer out. I’m putting you guns-free at this time. I’ll trust in your judgment to do whatever it takes to get the job done.”
Beltrain smiled and gave a quick nod of his head. “, ma’am. We’ll take ‘all down.”
Amanda nodded with a smile of her own. “That we will, Dix.”
She rose from the captain’s chair and took a final look around the darkened Combat Information Center. At each workstation, a face was backlit by the cool glow of the monitor screens. Voices were steady. Eyes were level. There might be tension here, concern, quite probably fear. But it was controlled, buried deeply beneath multiple layers of training, self-discipline, and professionalism. This was a United States Navy war crew, and, at times like this, Amanda felt humbled that such people served at her command.
All hands were intent on their duties; none noticed the salute their captain gave them before she departed.
The passageways were nearly empty and red-hued by the battle lighting. The Duke had closed up to general quarters and all hands were at stations, waiting out the final minutes to mission commit.
“Captain!”
The voice spun her around. It was Arkady.
Bulky in his flight gear, he carried his helmet under his arm. The scarlet illumination made his skin ruddy and his black hair flame.
“We’ve completed the hot refuel on the Enterprise’s CSAR helos and they’ve taken departure, ma’am,” he said formally. “We’re moving out now. I just thought you’d want to know.”
There might have been a set of steel bars between them. There was a job on.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Good hunting. Take care.”
“And yourself, Captain.”
He turned abruptly, breaking off the meeting of their eyes, and started back to the hangar bay. Amanda headed forward again, clenching her fists to stop the trembling of her hands.
This was all part of the world she had chosen for herself. But she also knew, deep down in her heart, that she didn’t have many more good-byes like this one left in her.
Reaching the bridge level, she paused at a gear locker and donned her own armor: the foam and Kevlar combat vest and the gray ballistic helmet that bore her rank stenciled on its brow. She twisted her hair up onto the back of her head and settled the helmet over it, containing her mane with the helmet’s inner webbing. Stepping forward again through the light curtain, she heard the old, traditional cry.
“Captain’s on the bridge!”
Four decks down and a hundred and fifty feet aft, stars glittered over the open pit of the hangar bay. Retainer Zero One was on the elevator platform, ready to be lifted topside.
Zero Two stood poised to follow as rapidly as the helipad could be cleared for her. All conceivable preflight checks had been made. With every system double-tested, the AC hands stood back against the bulkheads, awaiting the order to launch.
Someone else waited as well. Christine Rendino leaned in the hatch frame, her arms crossed, an unusually somber expression on her face.
“Hey, sis, seeing me off?” Arkady said.
“Yeah,” she replied quietly. “I need to tell you something.”
“Like what?”
“Like this. Don’t push it! You are going to be going downtown on this job. Right where all the bad boys live. If it looks too hot, or if things start to go strange on you, abort! Don’t play Mr. Hero. Don’t stretch the envelope. Just tell the Chinese you don’t want to play and get your ass out of there.”
“Aw, shucks, I didn’t know you cared.” Arkady grinned back.
Christine looked up, the battle lights flashing in her eyes.
“This is a no-shitter, man!” she whispered fiercely. “You are staying alive for another person now! You no longer have the right to do stupid! You hear me?”
Startled by the intensity of her words, the aviator stepped back a pace.
The arch came out of the Intel’s spine and a rueful humor came into her voice. “She can’t tell you stuff like this, but I can. Okay?”
Arkady suddenly understood what she was saying. “I hear you, sis,” he replied with a smile.
They exchanged a silent thumbs-up, putting a seal on their corners of the new pact, then the aviator moved on to his waiting mount.
Gus Grestovitch was already aboard the Sea Comanche, running his preflights. “Good morning, Mr. Grestovitch,” Arkady said, lifting himself into the forward cockpit. “All ready for your moonlight tour of the mystic Yangtze.”
“None of this is my idea, sir.”
“You just lack imagination, son.” Arkady’s harness buckles clicked as he locked them down. “Let’s hear that stores list one more time.”
“Fuel cells, flare and chaff dispensers: full, full, and full. SQR/A1 dunking sonar pod on port-wing mount. Magnetic Abnormality Detector on starboard. Internal weapons bays, two Hellfire rounds, and two seven-round Hydra pods.”
They would be doubling in brass this night. Not only would the Duke’s Sea Comanches be hunting the Chinese boomer but, should a strike aircraft be downed in the Shanghai area, they would be tasked with flying cover for the Combat Search and Rescue mission.
“Check, check, and check. DTU is coming back.” The aviator passed the loaded Data Transfer Unit over his shoulder to the S.O. Grestovitch, who in turn socked the cassette into the helicopter’s systems access slot, downloading the mission profile into the onboard computer. Telescreens lit off, computer graphics sketching out the environs they would be operating over and the flight path they would follow.
“We’re set.”
“Roger D.”
Arkady caught the eye of the waiting pad boss. “Take us up,” he said, gesturing with a quick vertical jerk of his thumb.
The elevator moaned under its burden and Retainer Zero One was borne smoothly to deck level. The lift pad sealed off the red light of the hangar bay, leaving the helo isolated in the night.
“Ready for the engine-start checklist, Lieutenant … Lieutenant? You okay, sir?”
Vince Arkady had been given a few seconds to think during the elevator ride.
“Yeah, Gus. I’m okay. I was just studying all of the different ways life can get complicated on you.”
“Do fuckin’ tell, sir.”
On the bridge, the time hack repeater metered away the passage of seconds. A column of digital clock readouts on the CRT screen, it counted down the scheduled events on the Stormdragon time line. Amanda looked on as the uppermost hack approached zero.
Back aft, the howl of aircraft turbines became intermingled with the growling drone of rotors grabbing for lift. The lead hack zeroed out and disappeared.
“Retainer Zero One taking departure,” an emotionless voice reported over the intercom.
Amanda stepped out onto the bridge wing and watched as a thundering shadow swept past the flank of her ship, momentarily hiding the stars as it climbed away into the night.
Zero Two followed within five minutes.
“Communication, this is the Captain,” Amanda said into the command mike. “Advise Task Flag that our helos are away on schedule and that we are proceeding to the next phase.”
Lifting her thumb from the transmit key, she turned to the watch officer. “Come right to two seven zero. Close the range with the Chinese coast.”