Target Lock

Off the Syrian Coast 13.7 Miles South of Jablah 0145 Hours, Zone Time: July 27, 2008

Lieutenant Commander Mahmud Shalakar paced the narrow patch of deck available within the wheelhouse of the Syrian navy’s fast-missile corvette Raqqah. Tonight’s operation should have been routine, a standard offshore security sweep such as he must have performed a hundred times in his career. Yet, this had not turned out to be the case.

This night was… haunted. He could not produce a better term for it than that. Intermittently since nightfall, ghosts had stalked his radar screens. Faint, transitory contacts appeared at varying ranges, only to fade before a plot could be established. At seemingly random intervals, blotches of mysterious interference materialized and then dissolved, looking suspiciously like some form of jamming. Likewise, his electronic-warfare receivers recorded mysterious blips and chuckles in the radio spectrum, but never anything that could provide a definite bearing for a direction finder.

The Raqqah’s systems operators were sweating blood from their captain’s repeated and raging demands for more data. So far, they had not been able to produce anything solid enough to act upon.

The Syrian officer fished a buckled cigarette out of his uniform shirt pocket and kindled it with a quick snap of his lighter. All Shalakar had to work with was the sensation that the events were thickest along this particular stretch of coast. Something was going on out there, right under his nose. He could feel it.

But what? And maybe more importantly, who?

Syria’s strategic naval position in the eastern Mediterranean was far from enviable. They were wedged in tightly between Israel and Turkey, both of whom were regional maritime superpowers. What was worse, Shalakar brooded, the damn Jews and the damn Turks had become thick as thieves over the past decade. They were always up to something.

Beyond that, Syrian fleet intelligence reported that a small American task force was lurking offshore, and Allah alone knew what the Americans were going to do next.

Be that as it may. There was nothing for Shalakar to do but to keep all hands at their battle stations and stand ready to act.

“Helm,” he snapped, “reverse course! Bring us about one hundred and eighty degrees and take us half a kilometer closer inshore.”

“As you command, Captain.”

The brass spokes of the Raqqah’s wheel glinted in the CRT glow as they spun to the new heading and the corvette’s sharp-edged prow raked the wave crests as she made her turn.

Three miles closer shoreward, from a position atop a semisubmerged sandbar that paralleled the Syrian coastline, two watchful pairs of eyes caught the flash of reflected moonlight as the bow of the Tarantul IV-class corvette came around.

“He’s repeating his sweep,” Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey “Steamer” Lane commented from the Queen of the west’s pilot’s station. “That guy knows something’s up.”

“Um-hum,” Amanda Garrett agreed from the copilot’s seat. “We can live with ‘something,’ Steamer. Just as long as he isn’t sure about us.”

Amanda twisted around, looking back at the third occupant of the PGAC (Patrol Gunboat Air Cushion) 02’s cockpit. “How about it, Mr. Selkirk? Anything new to report on our Syrian friend out there?”

Seated at the navigator’s console, the intel glanced up at Amanda’s words, the screen glow glinting off the upraised night-vision visor of his helmet. “There are no situational changes, Captain,” he replied with the scholarly sobriety that was his usual operating mode. “Signal intelligence indicates a series of rapid frequency and power shifts on his radars but no scan-rate changes. He’s hunting, but he isn’t finding anything.”

Amanda nodded thoughtfully. Lieutenant Gerald Selkirk was one of Christine Rendino’s pups, hand-raised in the raven’s roost of the Cunningham, Amanda’s old command. If she couldn’t have Chris at her side this night, Selkirk was a strong second best.

“Anything on his communications bands?”

“Nothing detected beyond his standard half-hour radio checks.”

Amanda nodded once more, her eyes narrowing. The Syrian was uneasy, but not yet so uneasy that he was calling for help. They still had time, she judged, at least a little.

“How long do we have until recovery?”

Selkirk checked the time line display hack on his panels. “Seven minutes and forty-five seconds until unit recovery, three minutes and forty-five seconds until we get the boundary warning and approach call.”

Lane chuckled in the semidark of the cockpit. “You have a great deal of confidence in that glorified Frisbee, Ger.”

“There’s no reason not to, Commander,” Selkirk replied stiffly. “We received the deployment verification prompt, right on the dot, and the NSA reports they have good signals from the ground sensors. The Cipher will recover as per the ops plan.”

The intel made it sound as if he would see to the errant machine personally if it failed to measure up.

Lane chuckled again. “We’ll see…. Yo, Scrounge!”

“Yes, sir?” Chief Petty Officer Sandra “Scrounger” Caitlin stuck her attractive brown-haired head up through the ladderway access into the main hull.

“Pass the word to button up and look alive. We’re blowing this pop stand. Initiate main engine-start sequence! Stand by to answer bells!”

“Aye, aye, sir.” The Queen’s chief of the boat dropped out of sight.

“Loud and straight up the middle, Steamer?” Amanda inquired, calling up the copilot’s checklist on her console screens.

“That’s how I’d suggest doing it, ma’am. Sure as hell, we’re going to attract attention when we take Ger’s dingbat back aboard, either from the beach or from that spooky Syrian missile boat. I’d rather have us moving than sitting when we break stealth. Besides, that thing recovers better when we have some wind over the deck.”

“I concur on all points, Mr. Lane. Light us up and get us under way.”

One of the most critical secrets Amanda Garrett had learned during her career was to know when to pass the baton of command to a subordinate. She might be the TACBOSS of the Sea Fighter Task Force as a whole, but Steamer Lane was master of both the USS Queen of the West and of Patrol Gunboat Air Cushion Squadron 1. No officer in the Navy knew more about the capabilities and limitations of the deadly Sea Fighter hovercraft than did the sandy-haired California surfer who sat to her left.

The light patterns shifted on the power panels, yellow to green, as the turbine techs brought the Queen’s four massive Avco Lycoming TF 40C fanjet power plants to the edge of life. They’d crept in to ground on this sandbar, running on the Queen’s silent electric auxiliary propulsors. They would blast out to sea again on the eleven-foot ducted airscrews of the primary drive.

Amanda called up the tactical command channel on her helmet lip mike. “Frenchman, Rebel, Possum One, this is the Lady. Royalty is preparing to execute recovery and departure. We are on the time line. Report status?”

“Rebel to Lady. On station. Boards green. Ready to cover.”

Lieutenant Tony Marlin’s hard-edged voice replied from over the horizon. There, the PGAC 04 USS Manassas drifted, standing by to act in support of her squadron leader.

“Frenchman to Lady. Same here. We’re good too.”

The response was milder, easier going, the voice of Lieutenant Sigmund Clark of the PGAC 03 USS Carondelet, the third hull of the Sea Fighter squadron.

“Possum One is standing by. ECM aerostat streamed. All drones on station. Ready to initiate coverage jamming.”

Amanda could not put a face to this voice. It was one of the watch standers in the Combat Information Center of their mother ship, the USS Evans F. Carlson. This was the task force’s first deployment aboard the San Antonio-class LPD and she was still learning this mammoth new addition to her command.

“Lady acknowledges. All elements stand by.”

At the navigator’s station, Selkirk leaned into his screens. “We have the boundary acquisition signal,” he announced.

“Good ’nuff,” Lane responded.

“And right on the mark, too, sir,” Selkirk concluded, aiming his comment at the back of Steamer’s head.

“I’ll buy the dingbat a beer next time we hit Haifa, Ger. Crank ’em up, Captain!”

“Engine start sequence.” Amanda keyed the row of engine initiators with a single press of her fingertips. Blue flame danced behind the blurring blades of the gas turbines, and the still Mediterranean night was cut by the rising kerosene-fired scream of the compressors.

“Cranking… cranking… cranking…” Amanda chanted, watching the tachometer and pyrometer bars. “Ignition! Four green lights. Clean starts. We have power!”

“Put her on the pad!” Lane acknowledged with a new command.

Amanda came forward on the lift throttles. Moan segued in with scream as the lift fans pressurized the plenum chamber beneath the Queen’s flattened, boatlike hull. The Kevlar chamber skirts inflated and, with a flurry of spray and sand, the ninety-foot length of the Sea Fighter lifted off the semisubmerged coastal bank, riding on a thin friction-free surface of compressed air. An armed derivative of the Navy’s LCAC air-cushion landing craft, she had been built to take advantage of waters like these.

“On the pad, Steamer.”

“Acknowledged. We’re movin’ out.” Lane rolled the propeller controls and drive throttles ahead. Twin penta-bladed airscrews dug in and the Queen was under way, slipping off her grounding point and accelerating into the night.

The shadowed smear of the Syrian coast with its scattering of shore light began to fall away at the end of the Queen’s scant wake.

“Steer three-double-oh, Steamer. Let’s get a little range from that Tarantul. Mr. Selkirk, bring our little friend home.”

“Aye, aye, Captain. Initiating recovery,” Selkirk reported, excitement growing in his voice as the automated sequences checked off on his display. “Recall and docking transponder now active…. Drone is responding…. We have good data links!”

Lane’s eyes shifted from his console instrumentation to the night beyond the windscreen and back again in an instinctively repetitive cycle. “Verify the docking speed you want, Ger.”

“Twenty-five knots, sir.”

“Right. Captain, what’s our wind out there?”

Amanda glanced at the meteorology display. “Four knots. Quartering out of the northwest. Holding steady. We are inside the gates for auto recovery.”

She returned her focus to the threat board and the tactical display. Up until this moment on the mission time line, they had been able to rely on unobtrusiveness for survival. All of the Queen’s weapons systems had been retracted inside the stealth envelope of her RAM-jacketed hull, reducing her radar cross section to that of a floating log. She had also been running EMCON with only passive sensors in use and with communications limited to the briefest of transmissions on low-probability-of-intercept jitter frequency channels.

Now, however, the Queen must radiate a beacon signal to toll her recon drone home, a signal that could be detected by Syrian ELINT monitors as well as by the Navy robot aeroform. It was a systems limitation that must be worked around, as with the limited range of the Cipher drone that mandated the tight inshore launch and recovery.

“There she is!” Selkirk called. “Coming right up the slot!”

The laser lock warning on Amanda’s threat board started to flicker intermittently, reacting to the pulse of the drone’s navigation Ladar. She activated a secondary screen on her console, accessing the imaging from the mast-mounted sighting system.

Selkirk had the low-light television cameras atop the sea fighter’s snub mast trained aft, looking out over the stern antenna bar and the airscrew ducts. The Cipher drone materialized out of the horizon shadow, creeping in, its onboard artificial intelligence matching the speed and bearing of its mother ship.

The Queen’s quadruple air rudders flexed as Steamer Lane held her steady against the intermittent brush of a wave crest. A trio of docking probes deployed downward from the rim of the drone, ready to mate with the three sockets set into the hovercraft’s upper deck.

“Easy…” Selkirk murmured. “A little more… you’re lining up… lining up…”

Amanda held her breath as the little robot edged into position over the Sea Fighter’s weatherdeck. It wasn’t alive, but damn it, it was still part of her command.

The Cipher dropped abruptly. There was a thud from back aft and a series of sharp clicking bangs.

“Hard dock!” Selkirk exclaimed jubilantly. “Three probes, three locks, and three green lights! Recovery completed. Drone systems are powering down.”

“All right!” Lane lifted his hands off the air rudder yoke for an instant, fists clenched in victory.

A red light flickered near Amanda’s right knee and an audial warning from the threat board demanded her attention. “I’m very pleased to hear that, Mr. Selkirk, because we’ve just been painted by a Plank Shave search radar. The bearing is from the south, and it has to be our friend the Syrian Tarantul… and he has just gone to tracking sweep interval. He’s getting a return off of us!”

Selkirk wiped his telescreens clear of the drone recovery displays, calling up the Queen’s ECM systems. “He’s got more than that, ma’am. Bass Tilt fire-control radars coming up now. He’s trying for a firing lock!”

The decks of the Raqqah shuddered as her CODAG propulsion system rammed its maximum output through her three racing propellers.

“All engines answering ahead flank, Captain,” the helmsman yelled over the combined diesel roar and turbine howl. The glowing numerals of the iron log on the helm console registered thirty-five knots. The little Russian-built warship was giving her all to close the range with the intruder.

“Where in damnation did he come from, Taluk?” Shalakar gripped the bridge grab rail, holding himself in place beside the radar operator.

“From inshore, sir. From inside our patrol line. A single, very small, fast surface contact. I thought for a moment that there were two… an airborne as well… but now there is only the one.”

“How did he get inside of us? Identify!”

The SO shook his head. “Impossible to say. It is a very faint return. Possibly a Zodiac-type small craft…. Speed holding steady at twenty five knots. Range closing…. He’s cutting across our bow at five kilometers.”

“Acknowledged. Lookout! Do you have a visual sighting?”

“No visual at this range, Captain!”

Shalakar’s fist slammed against the side of the radar cabinet. “Zodiac or not, I want target locks! Lieutenant Sadrati! Arm the SSN 22s and the bow 76 turret both! Prepare to engage on my command!”

“We’ve got missile-seeker heads activating.” The tension level in Selkirk’s voice rose a notch. “SSN 22 Sunburns, arming for launch. He’s getting serious about this, ma’am.”

“Understood, Mr. Selkirk. Stand by on your chaff launchers and decoys. Mr. Lane, I think it’s time we get out of here.”

“I’m good with that, ma’am. Jumping to light speed!”

Steamer’s lips peeled back in a fierce, tight grin. His palm shoved the propulsion power levers forward to their check stops. The roar of the airscrews grew into a frame-shaking thunder, and acceleration shoved all hands back into their seat padding.

“This is the Lady to all elements,” Amanda called over her command circuit. “Initiate broad-spectrum countermeasures. Commence! Commence! Commence!”

“Captain”—the radar operator’s shout was half strangled with surprise—“the target is greatly increasing its speed. Forty-five knots… fifty… fifty-five and still accelerating! It is now opening the range, sir!”

Shalakar glared down into the screen. The bogey wasn’t just opening the range, it was pulling away effortlessly, turning almost twice the Raqqah’s best rate of knots.

“That’s no Zodiac!” he growled. “Missile Officer! Clear master safeties on all cells! Stand by to fire!”

“Captain,” the SO cried out again, “look at the screen.”

From a broad arc all along the western edge of the radarscope, flickering cartwheels of light strobed and intermeshed, blanketing the screen image. A myriad of smaller sparks and blobs of illumination crawled and danced between the pulsing spokes. The faint, spectral image they had been pursuing began to melt into the electronic chaos.

“Captain,” another urgent voice cut in from the overhead squawk box, “this is communications. All voice channels and datalinks have just gone down. High-intensity cascade jamming all across the range. Multiple sources!”

Shalakar’s dry throat resisted his swallow. What is out there? Blessed Allah, what is out there?

“Captain!” His missile officer wouldn’t give him time to pray or to think. “Targeting systems no longer have acquisition! Missile-tracking locks broken! Switching missiles to independent proximity homing…! Captain, we can still fire on the bearing…! Captain, what are your orders?”

In the Queen of the West’s cockpit, Amanda accessed a data link from one of the Carlson’s Eagle Eye Remotely Piloted Vehicles. A distant cousin of the Cipher reconnaissance drone the Queen had just recovered, a trio of these little robotic tilt-rotors had popped up over the horizon a few moments before. The jamming modules they carried, combined with the integral electronic countermeasures (ECM) of the Sea Fighters, wreaked havoc with the local ether.

The onboard radars of the Eagle Eyes themselves, however, were unaffected. Tuned to peer through a narrow crack in the scrambled electromagnetic spectrum, they could be used to develop a tactical display of the developing engagement. Amanda did so now.

“Bass Tilt and Plank Shave locks broken, Captain,” Selkirk reported. “We’re below his return strengths.”

“Very good, Mr. Selkirk. Stay on the ECM. Steamer, bring us left to two-seven-zero. Let’s get off his last bearing.”

“Steering two-seven-zero, aye.” Lane eased the wheel over, slipping the hovercraft. onto its new course. “Think he might try a blind shot anyhow? Should we elevate the weapons pedestals?”

Amanda stared into the cool glow of the tactical screen, considering the target hack of the Syrian corvette and the man who commanded it. She’d been watching him all evening as he had trudged up and down the coast on his patrol line. Doing everything the book said should be done, but never anything more.

Would he have it in him to go for broke, attempting a literal shot in the dark against an unidentified and inassessable foe? Slowly she shook her head. “No. He’s past it. I think we’re clear.”

All hands in the Queen’s cockpit held themselves alert for another two minutes. Then, as the range continued to open and the threat boards remained clean, there came the mutual release of held breath and tautened muscles. Amanda settled back into the copilot’s seat and spoke into her lip mike. “This is the Lady to all Little Pig Elements. Form up on Little Pig Lead and proceed to Point Item for recovery. Possum One, Little Pigs are inbound. Maintain coverage jamming for another five minutes, then stand down and secure the operational time line. You may inform NAVSPECFORCE the mission is accomplished. All elements, well done.”

“Rebel, raja.”

“Frenchman, aye.”

“Possum acknowledges.”

Out in the night, two sleek, finned shadows converged on the Queen of the West. Riding on hazy streaks of starlit mist, the Queen’s two sisters pulled into echelon formation with their leader. Reunited once more, the squadron ran free for the open sea.

Amanda slid her seat back on its rails. Unbuckling her safety harness, she popped the latches on her combination life jacket /flak vest. Lifting off her helmet, she shook her sweat-matted hair out over her shoulders. Scrounger Caitlin, with the instincts of a good chief of the boat, leaned in between the pilots’ stations, passing her captains a couple of cans of Orange Crush, fresh from the galley refrigerator.

Amanda took a long pull at the soft drink, relishing the cleansing chill in her tension-soured throat. Glancing at the tactical display once more, she noted that the Syrian corvette had broken off its pursuit and had turned away. Humiliated, it crept back toward the coast.

I suspect I may have destroyed your career out here tonight, she thought, beaming her words through the darkness to the nameless Syrian commander. I’m sorry it had to be done, but such are the fortunes of not-war.

An hour later and fifty miles farther offshore, the Sea Fighters reached “Point Item.”

Ever since their departure from the Syrian coast, the threat boards of the Sea Fighter group had been reacting to the vigilant radiating of a powerful SPY-2A Aegis radar array. Now a pale slash of phosphorescent wake could be made out along the median between the black velvet sea and midnight satin sky. Fast ships moving through the darkness, their running lights extinguished.

Amanda smiled and lowered the nite-brite visor of her helmet to watch the closing with the two-vessel task group. For her, this was more than just a return to base. In a way, she was coming home, and she still savored the experience.

The lead ship, the escort, ran closer inshore, poised ready to interpose itself between its charge and the hostile coast.

Amanda knew this ship the way she might know the body of a long favored lover. So much was the same, the great angular shark fin of the freestanding mast array, the low, slope-sided deckhouse, and the uncluttered sleekness of the silhouette against the sky glow, the great radically raked bow slashing open the sea.

The only readily visible difference were the deck guns, below the bridge amidships and on the well deck aft of the helipad. Replacing the smooth, hemispherical bumps of the old OTO Melara 76mm Super Rapids were the larger “ax blade” stealth turrets of her new and vastly more potent 5-inch.62-caliber ERGM systems.

The changes within that rakish hull were too numerous to catalog however.

Once upon a time designated as a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Cunningham had served as the Navy’s advanced test-bed hull for navalized stealth technology. Now, with that mission accomplished, she carried a new designation at her bow, CLA (Cruiser Littoral Attack)-79, and a new tasking, the proving of the evolving technologies of the fleet’s “Force from the Sea” battle doctrine.

But still, she was the Duke. In Amanda’s heart, she was still “her” ship.

When she had started to assemble this new littoral-warfare unit, Eddie Mac MacIntyre had given her a free hand at drawing from the available NAVSPECFORCE resource pool. When it had come to selecting a heavy-firepower escort for the Sea Fighters, Amanda hadn’t hesitated for a second.

High up on the Cunningham’s signals deck, an Aldis lamp blinked a brief signal: All’s well, Captain.

Commander Ken Hiro, her old exec, held sway on the Duke’s bridge now. But he remembered the old days too.

Holding in their echelon formation, the Sea Fighters cut around the stern of the cruiser sequentially ski-jumping her wake. Ahead, the faintly glowing sea track of a second, even larger vessel cut across the Mediterranean.

The USS Evans F. Carlson was both one of a kind and one of many, for LPD (Landing Platform Dock) 26 was the bastard child of the San Antonio class.

Originally the Navy had wanted only an even dozen of this new model amphibious assault ship, one for each of the fleet’s twelve Marine-hauling amphibious warfare groups. But somewhere in the pitch and toss of congressional monetary and political wrangling, an undesired thirteenth of the design had become wedged immovably into the Defense Department budget, a slab out of the pork barrel with no home and no mission.

However, Elliot MacIntyre had a saying: “When confronted with pork, make gravy.” Under his astute machinations, this thirteenth orphan found a home within Naval Special Forces, undergoing conversion into the Navy’s largest and most potent seaborne Special Operations platform. In honor of this distinction, the Navy had “broken class” with her naming. Instead of an American city, she bore the name of an American hero, Brigadier General Evans F. Carlson, the bold and radical creator and commander of the legendary 2nd Marine Raider Battalion of the Second World War.

Given her mission, it was an honor suitable for ship and man alike.

As the Queen of the West swept in behind the Carlson, Amanda scanned the chunky lines of her new flagship through the night-vision visor, comparing them for the hundredth time with her beloved Duke.

It was rather like matching a massive, stocky Percheron with a lean and long-lined Thoroughbred. Yet, much was similar as well. Although built for entirely different missions, the Carlson and the Cunningham were sisters, or at least cousins, under the skin.

At 684 feet in length, the Carlson was not as long as the Cunningham. However, at 25,000 tons, the LPD displaced almost three times as much. While she had a far greater beam and a more massive superstructure than the Duke, the Carlson had a similar geometric, art deco simplicity to her design that denoted a ship with an integrally low radar signature.

Both vessels carried their sensors in clean-lined freestanding mast arrays or built into their angled superstructures as “smart skin” segments. Both were cutting-edge military technology and neither could be taken for granted in any kind of a fight.

Unlike their predecessors, the San Antonio-class LPDs were not mere helpless naval auxiliaries. Their mission would take them close inshore, into “Indian country,” where a fight was something to be expected. Accordingly, these “auxiliaries” mounted more firepower than three quarters of the world’s dedicated surface combatants.

Beyond that, the Carlson possessed a few special surprises unique unto herself.

Steamer Lane eased the Queen of the West in astern of the LPD. Decelerating to twenty knots, he bumped the hovercraft into the trough of the larger vessel’s wake.

“Little Pig Lead to Little Pigs,” he murmured into his lip mike, “prepare for recovery. Formation change. Echelon to line astern… go.”

Two matter-of-fact “Rogers” came back out of the dark as Carondelet and Manassas smoothly folded in to trail behind their squadron leader.

“Permission to recover, Captain?” Lane inquired with a glance in Amanda’s direction.

Amanda nodded. “Proceed, Mr. Lane. Take us in.”

She flipped up her nite-brite visor to watch the procedure with conventional vision. This was by now a routine evolution for the squadron, but she still found it impressive.

“Okay ma’am. Doin’ it…. Possum One bay control, this is Little Pig Lead. On station for recovery and ready to come back in the pouch.”

“Acknowledged, Little Pig Lead,” the radio-filtered voice of the BAYBOSS replied. “Initiating recovery. Little Pigs, welcome home.”

A streak of dull scarlet light cut across the top of the Carlson’s broad, square stern. Widening rapidly, the streak grew into a ruddy glowing rectangle in the night as the LPD’s huge boarding ramp swung down, its trailing edge touching and flattening the ship’s boiling wake.

Revealed was a huge double-leveled internal bay that ran far forward within the hull of the amphibious ship. Under the blood-colored illumination of the battle lights, the docking crew and the Sea Fighter service teams could be seen jogging to their stations along the gantryways that lined either side of the bay. For her current tasking, the Evans F. Carlson had been optimized for “dry deck” hovercraft operations. There was no need for ballasting down at the stern to flood her internal well, as would be mandated by the use of conventional landing craft. Thus, she was something new, not an aircraft carrier, but a seacraft carrier.

With a masterful jockeying of air rudder and throttle, Steamer Lane eased the Queen’s foreskirt over the edge of the stern ramp. A surge of power to the airscrews then kicked the Sea Fighter upslope and into the bay, her wailing turbine song folding in around her, reverberating within the steel-walled cavern.

Steamer came back on the airscrew throttles and killed the main propulsion turbines, shifting his right hand to the T-stick “puff port” controller on the central console, A deck guide stepped out in front of the idling hovercraft, beckoning forward with his glowing wands. With bursts of the puff port thrusters, Lane taxied the Queen deeper into the bay, clearing the boarding ramp for the Carondelet.

As they trundled forward, Amanda glanced up at the bold artwork mounted above the gantries on the bay bulkheads. In pride, the different elements that made up the Sea Fighter task force had mounted man-tall copies of their unit shields there.

She checked them off in her mind as each badge crept past. Portside… the bamboo-lettered GUNG HO! crest of the Carlson.… Starboard… the ghost-ship silhouette and STRIKE IN STEALTH battle cry of the Cunningham.… Port… the ferociously Disneyesque trio of African warthogs of PGAC 01, THE THREE LITTLE PIGS…. Starboard… the rampant sea dragon of the 1st Marine Raider Company (Provisional)…. Port… a raider-boat silhouette butted into a dagger hilt for Bravo detachment, Special Boat Squadron 1…. Starboard… the all-seeing eye and crossed lightning bolts of Tactical Intelligence Group Alpha…. Port and lastly, the twinned gold and blue Oceanhawk helicopters of Heloron 24.

Each of these elements had been drawn from the NAVSPECFORCE unit pool or, in some instances, created specifically at Amanda’s request to fill out her visualization of the task force. Eddie Mac MacIntyre had given her a blank check to create a “best of the best,” a balanced and self-supporting Navy, Army, and Air Force in miniature that could deploy rapidly to any littoral hotspot in the world and deal with any low- to mid grade threat.

One empty shield space remained to starboard, one unit left to merge into the whole. Then it would be time to see how correct her vision had been.

For Amanda Lee Garrett, ex-destroyer driver, it was a new way of war. But then, there had been a great deal of newness in her life of late. New technologies, new doctrines, new relationships, and new ways of thinking as a task group TACBOSS instead of a single-ship captain. Much had changed over the past year.

At least that sense of frustration and lack of purpose that had once plagued her as the dockside captain of a crippled ship had dissipated. Amanda had come to like this current command and the revised place she had carved for herself in her trade.

But with the gaining of the new, there is frequently a loss of the old. There were lingering thoughts of a youthful, dark-haired lover, a last perfect golden day off Cape Hatteras, and a conversation that had never been finished.

Still, if certain lonely holes remained in her personal life, she could live with them for the time being. Maybe with her career back on track and the task force coming together, she could start to think about patching them up.

“Anything wrong, ma’am?” Lane asked, glancing across from the pilot’s station.

“Nothing, Steamer,” she smiled. “Not a thing in the world. Stand on.”

Captain Stonewall Quillain stood six foot three in his custom Danner Fort Lewis combat boots and was shouldered and muscled to look mountainous instead of merely tall. He considered Valdosta, Georgia, to be the best place in the world to be from, just as he considered the United States Marine Corps the best profession a man could have.

His features were an accumulation of blunt wedges assembled in a way that could never be called handsome, a scowl settling onto them far more readily than a smile. In fact, it was said among his Sea Dragons that “the skipper never actually looks happy, just less pissed off.”

Still, though no one would dare accuse him of it to his face, Captain Stone Quillain had a broad streak of sentimentality in his makeup. Neither he, nor the unit he commanded, had any direct role in this night’s operation, but he had people he called friends who did. Accordingly, he would see them home.

The guts of the Carlson rang with concentrated sound, like the interior of some gigantic brass horn. Quillain had to press the earphones of his command headset closer to his skull to make out the words being passed through it.

“Hangar bay, level two. Prepare to receive and spot hovercraft.”

Below him. at the foot of the interior vehicle ramp, the Queen of the West reached the head of the boarding bay. Voluminous though it was, there was spotting room for only two of the three hovercraft gunboats on the lower entry level. Accordingly a deft piece of deck-ape choreography was required.

As Stone looked on, two seamen dropped down from the overhead gantries onto the Queen’s broad back. Safety-lined against the tug of the lift fan intakes, they pulled the locking pins at the base of the swept-back snub mast just aft of the cockpit bulge, folding it flush with the Sea Fighter’s deck.

Simultaneously, another handling team dared the air blast boiling from beneath the plenum skirts to hook a heavy steel cable into a pad eye in the Queen’s stubby bow. Hauling clear, they gave the high sign to the winch operator in the bay overhead.

With the whir of its electric drives buried in the turbine howl, the cab of the traveling winch drew back along its tracks. Still riding on her air cushion, the Queen was cranked up the vehicle ramp into the midships hangar bay, a grade too steep for the hovercraft to climb under her own power.

In a Baseline San Antonio, a pair of garage decks would have occupied this space, storage for the trucks and AFVs of a Marine expeditionary unit. Aboard the Carlson, however, bulkheads and overheads had been removed and restructured to stretch the parking “foot” for the Sea Fighter squadron.

Stone pressed back against the bulkhead, holding his headset in place against the warm tornado blast of the Sea Fighter’s lift fans. Moving with ponderous deliberation, she squeezed past between the deck guide curbs, her bulging plenum chamber skirts and outwardly sloping underhull looming above the Marine and squadron service bands.

The Sea Fighter was painted in a mottled camouflage pattern that would show as a dusty low-rez gray in normal light. All, that is, except for the phantom-outline lettering of her name and hull numbers and for the black snarling shark’s jaws painted across the full face of the bow and the two leering eyes just below the stubby forepeak.

The pressurized skirts sagged as the Queen’s nose lifted above the curve of the ramp lip, the air pad partially collapsing as she “burped the cushion.” The top of the cockpit almost brushed the overhead winch tracks, then the Sea Fighter flumped level again, bobbling slightly as she eased onto her parking slot behind the single, standard Landing Craft Air Cushion assigned to the task force.

A few moments later her lift throttles were closed, and the Queen sank down with a whining metallic sigh, her deflating skirts making a crumpled nest of black rubberized Kevlar.

Quillain nodded approvingly. The Sea Fighters weren’t his particular area of expertise or authority, but he could appreciate any kind of military evolution well and smartly done.

Below, in the main landing bay, the Manassas and Carondelet completed recovery. Creeping to their tie down spots, they, too, powered down in sequence. The sudden silence seemed perturbingly empty — so much so that the voice that thundered over the MC-1 circuit was almost startling.

“Hovercraft recovery completed and stern gate secured. All hands, stand down from recovery stations. Be advised, ear protection is no longer required in the hangar or recovery bays.”

The bay lighting snapped from night red to standard white and the service hands moved in.

Like an aircraft, each sea fighter had two crews responsible for her: the onboard conning crew, who actively handled the hovercraft at sea, and an equally vital team of base service personnel who looked after her technical well-being.

Tie-down hands belayed the Queen to deck hard points, while access gangways swung out from the bayside gantries to her weather decks. Grounding wires were connected, auxiliary power cables were plugged in, and refueling hoses were hauled across the deck to filler points. Not an instant was wasted in readying the big war machine for its next call to arms.

Stone could appreciate that as well.

Keeping close to the bulkhead and out of the way of the bustling service hands, the Marine walked forward along the flank of the hover craft to the midship side hatch.

It swung open just as he reached it.

“Good morning, Stone,” Amanda called down from the open hatchway.

“How did it go tonight, Skipper?”

“As per the mission profile,” she replied. “We had a brush with a coastal patrol, but things never went beyond swapping electrons.”

Without waiting for the portable ladderway to be hooked in place, Stone’s redheaded (well, pretty much redheaded; there was some brown and blond in there that made an exact color hard to call) CO made the five-foot jump down to the antiskid decking. Sinking almost to her knees on landing, she accepted Stone’s extended hand to help lift her to her feet again.

Once, to Stone’s chagrin, there had been a time when he’d been extremely dubious about accepting this lady as a commander and a comrade.

That had been in West Africa. He’d wised up considerably since then.

Steamer Lane thumped to the deck a moment later, another veteran of Africa and another proven friend.

“And how’d the flying saucer do?” Quillain asked.

Amanda glanced up toward the Queen’s weather deck. Lieutenant Selkirk was already out of the cockpit hatch and hard at work examining the docked Cipher drone.

“The sensor pods are on the ground and Mr. Selkirk indicates that they seem to be working as advertised. From here on out, it’s in the hands of our friends in the NSA.”

Quillain’s perpetual frown deepened. “I guess remotes are all well and good, but I still think I should have taken some of my boys in there for a real look around.”

Amanda arched her eyebrows. “Be careful of what you wish for, Stone. It may come to that one of these days. If the Syrians get serious about their plutonium play-pretties, we might have to do a covert plug pulling on that operation. Neither the Israelis nor the Turks would take a Syrian bomb attempt casually, and the last thing this corner of the world needs is another excuse for a war.”

At that, a corner of Quillain’s mouth quirked up, just slightly. Stone could appreciate many things, but none more than a challenge, “Now, that,” he said, “could be a real interesting job of work. There are things this old boy could do with an atomic reactor… or to it.”

Lane chuckled and aimed a thumb at Quillain. “You know, ma’am, this guy scares me sometimes.”

Quillain did smile then, a grin that could only be described as wolfish. “Only sometimes?”

Amanda Garrett laughed and stretched luxuriantly, working the mission tension out of her muscles. “I’m sure our Mr. Quillain will try harder, Steamer. Now, would you gentlemen care to join me in the wardroom for a cup of coffee before—”

The MC-1 speakers cut her off.

“Now hear this. The TACBOSS is requested to contact the bridge immediately. I say again, the TACBOSS is requested to contact the bridge immediately.”

Before the amplified voice of the quartermaster faded, Quillain had snatched off his command headset, passing it to Amanda. Holding one of the earphones to the side of her head, she adjusted and keyed the lip mike.

“Bridge, this is Garrett. Go.”

Lane and Quillain looked on as Amanda’s features underwent the subtle transformation from relaxed comrade to alert and wary commander.

“Understood. You may inform the captain I’ll be joining him immediately on the bridge. In the meantime, bring the task group to general quarters.”

As the overhead Klaxons began to squall out the call to battle stations, she passed the headset back to the Marine. “Gentlemen, we may have underestimated the Syrian’s level of irritation. We’re being sharked by an unidentified aircraft. Steamer, get your crews back aboard the Little Pigs. Stand by for a combat launch. Stone, set your point defense procedures. Let’s move!”

“TACBOSS on the bridge!”

Amanda brushed past the light curtain, entering the star- and telescreen-lit dimness of the LPD’s bridge. As with everything else aboard the Carlson, this, too, was of cutting-edge sophistication.

The helmsperson, lee helm engine controller, and duty quartermaster sat at computerized workstations in comfortable airliner-style seats. A score of additional repeater monitors glowed in a double row above and below the broad bridge windscreen. Continuously updating, they kept the officer of the watch apprised of ship’s operations, the status of the surrounding environment, and the developing tactical situation.

Lack of information was no longer a problem. With a single sweep of her eyes, Amanda could access more information than she could ever dream of gaining from a ship’s phone talker. The new naval officer’s challenge was not in accessing. but in assessing and using this wealth to build a true situational awareness.

The input flowed in not only from the Carlson’s sensors, but from the Cunningham’s as well. The two warships were symbiotically connected via the multiple data links of their onboard Cooperative Engagement Battle Management Systems.

Cybernetically speaking, the task group was a composite fighting entity, capable of reacting to any perceived threat as a single focused force. Should it be necessary to launch Sea Fighters, LAMPS helicopters, or RPVs, they, too, could be merged into the Cooperative Engagement net, magnifying their fighting capacity.

Commander Lucas Carberry, the Carlson’s commanding officer, looked up from the central tactical display, his pink-jowled face underlit in the graphics glow.

“Captain,” he stated formally, “the task force has been brought to general quarters.”

Over the prior month of deployment, Amanda had come to find Carberry a bit too formal for the likely propagation of a real friendship. Likewise, she found his personal command style a touch too autocratic for her tastes. However, she did acknowledge the chunky, dapper little officer to be a master of the unique and highly specialized field of amphibious warfare.

Effectively driving a “gator freighter” is not a task for just anyone. In addition to requiring both a capable naval officer and a superb ship handler, the position demands an individual who has the nerve and the cold blooded steadiness required to take his vessel and crew into a high-risk situation and keep it there until the task at hand is accomplished.

Amanda had ascertained Carberry to be such a man, and she could forgive him a great deal because of it.

“Very good, Commander,” she replied, joining him at the tac table. “What’s our situation.”

“The Cunningham is currently our actively radiating vessel and is defense coordinator. Commander Hiro reports we have a single aircraft coming in from the southeast.” Carberry’s blunt fingertip indicated a yellow graphics track crawling up the display toward the blue task-force hack in the center. “He is requesting instructions, Captain.”

Amanda nodded. The Duke, with her more potent radars and weapons systems, usually served as the task force’s stalking horse, permitting the more vulnerable Carlson to run emission-silenced and fully stealthed, the link between their Cooperative Engagement systems maintained via intercept-proof laser com.

“Put me through to Commander Hiro.”

Carberry glanced at the battle-management specialist standing by silently at the far end of the tac table. Snapping his fingers softly, he pointed to one of the overhead screens. The enlisted woman’s fingers danced briefly over her keypad, calling up the hot talk-between-ships channel.

The flatscreen filled with the image of Amanda’s former executive officer, lounging back in what had been her captain’s chair in the center of the Cunningham’s Combat Information Center.

The seat suited the stocky Japanese-American, as Amanda had known it would. It was very much non-reg for an officer to directly move into the command slot of a ship he had served aboard as an exec. However, when Amanda had been called to serve with the Sea Fighters, she had pulled the strings required to ensure her ship would be left in hands she approved of.

“Good morning, Ken. What do you have for us?”

“Morning, ma’am,” he replied, nodding back. “We have an Aegis contact. A slow mover. Speed one hundred and forty knots. Altitude fifty feet. The Bogey is running under full EMCON. No IFF transponder. No radio. No radar. We have no absolute target ID at this time but we’re getting a rotor flicker off him. I’d call it a big ASW helicopter, maybe a Syrian Super-Hip.”

“Um-hum.” Amanda glanced down to the tactical display, studying the bogey’s track. Sub-hunter helos could be a threat to more than submarines. They could also carry antishipping missiles — big ones. “Any chance this fellow could just be passing through?”

“I would doubt it, Captain. He knows we’re out here and he’s coming for us. Shortly after he popped over the horizon, he turned onto a direct bearing with the task force. As he’s not radiating himself, he must be homing in on our radar emissions.”

Amanda looked up again, this time at the low-light television monitor covering the Carlson’s foredeck. One level below the LPD’s bridge, the hexagonal box launcher of bow RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile) system was autotracking on the approaching aircraft, guided by the targeting relay being received from the escorting cruiser. Farther forward, in the sixteen-cell Vertical Launch System inset into the main deck, a silo door had swung open, revealing the dark plastic water seal over a quad pack of Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missiles. Farther forward still, at the peak of the Carlson’s forecastle, a Marine missileer team crouched, the gunner holding the tube of a Stinger shoulder-launched SAM at the ready.

Beyond that, the nonreflective shadow of the Cunningham could be made out occulting the stars along the horizon. A look at yet a third screen verified that the cruiser’s bristling Standard IV batteries and five inch mounts were also on line and armed to fire. All told, her task force could throw up a five-layered defense against any air-launched attack.

Still, trusting implicitly in a line of defense, no matter how formidable was an act of military imprudence Amanda Garrett had long ago grown beyond.

The unknown was crossing the twenty-mile line on the tactical-display range scale. Who or whatever he was, there was no time left for dithering.

“Gentlemen, if our friend out there is listening to us, let’s give him something impressive to listen to. Commander Carberry, bring up your fire-control radars. Ken, have the task force designate the bogey. All effective systems.”

A yellow targeting box blinked into existence around the bat-shaped air target hack.

The threat boards on the approaching helo must have screamed in agony as the interlocking guidance beams of multiple gun and missile radars fixed onto the aircraft. In the international military lexicon, it was a demand, succinct and unmistakable.

“Account for yourself! Now!”

A few seconds later, a double line of transponder coding blinked into existence beside the outlined target hack. The tactical systems operator tilted her head, listening to the voice within her headphones. “CIC reports Contact Able is now emitting both Israeli Air Force and NAVSPECFORCE IFF codes.”

“NAVSPECFORCE,” Carberry murmured in puzzlement. “Captain, are we expecting a rendezvous with anyone out here?”

Amanda shook her head, frowning. “I certainly wasn’t.”

The SO tilted her head again. “CIC reports Contact Able has established voice radio communications. The pilot identifies his aircraft as an Israeli Air Force CH-53 operating under their special operations executive. He states he has a VIP passenger aboard for us and he’s requesting approach and landing clearance.”

“That would explain the wave hugging and the EMCON,” Hiro commented from the overhead screen. “An Israeli special-ops helicopter operating alone off the Syrian coast wouldn’t want to be obvious.”

Carberry stared balefully down at the target hack on the table display. “But what would one of our people be doing trying to come aboard like this?”

Amanda shook her head. “Gentlemen. I haven’t got an answer for you, but I intend to get some. Commander Carberry, notify your AIRBOSS that the Israeli is cleared for landing. Put your ship across the wind and stand by to recover aircraft.”

“Very good, ma’am.” Carberry lifted his voice: “Watch officer! Aviation stations! Clear the helipads and lay to all aircraft-handling details. Inform the tactical air control center they are to bring that helo aboard on the double!”

“Shall we secure the task force from general quarters as well, ma’am?” Hiro’s screen-filtered voice inquired.

“No… not yet, Ken. Cease targeting designation but keep the group at battle stations. I want to find out a little more before we stand down.”

The LPD’s commodious flight deck, capable of handling half a dozen VTOL aircraft simultaneously, took up the full rear third of the Carlson’s topside length. Turning ponderously, the big amphib put the prevailing wind across deck at the prescribed forty-five-degree angle for a helicopter approach. Night vision-filtered strobe lights began to pulse at the corners of the helipad, beckoning the newcomer aboard.

On the bridge, they waited out the last minutes of the approach.

“Visual contact,” one of the lookouts called out from his low-light monitor. “Bearing two-nine-oh relative. Range two thousand meters and closing. Target is confirmed as a CH-53.”

The big Sea Stallion swept in literally at wave top height, the down blast of its five-bladed main rotor flattening a path through the whitecaps. Avenging himself for the radar painting he had received, the Israeli pilot aimed dead on for the Carlson’s bow. Pulling up at the last second, the thunder of his passage made the windscreen panes buzz in their frames.

With the mast cameras tracking it, the Stallion circled the LPD, lining up on the helipad, the extended-range drop tanks readily apparent on its sponsons.

Extending its landing gear, the Stallion flowed down onto the deck with an amazing delicacy for a flying machine its size. As Amanda and Carberry looked on, a side hatch on the helicopter popped open and a single passenger dropped to the flight deck. Clad in khakis and a dark navy Windcheater, the individual exchanged a cranial flight helmet for the computer bag and single suitcase handed down by the Israeli crew chief

With a farewell wave, the small form ducked clear of the rotor blast. Within seconds of its touchdown, the Sea Stallion was ramping back up to flight power.

“Passenger transfer complete, Captain,” the bridge systems operator reported as the helo lifted off into the night again. “Israeli aircraft now taking departure.”

Amanda frowned up at the deck monitor. There had been something about that passenger…

“Commander Carberry,” Amanda murmured, “resume prior speed and heading and inform Commander Hiro that we’re standing down from general quarters. I’m going down to the flight deck.”

The personage in question was waiting for her in one of the hangar bay passageways, and no, it had not been Amanda’s imagination.

“Request permission to come aboard, ma’am?” Christine Rendino said solemnly, firing off a picture-perfect salute.

“Permission granted,” Amanda replied by rote, her hand starting to lift in response. Before she could complete the gesture, however, the smaller woman was on her, locking her up in a fierce hug.

“Hi, Boss Ma’am. You miss me?”

Amanda returned the embrace of her old shipmate and dearest of friends with an equal fierceness. “Chris, my God! What are you doing out here?”

“I flew out with Eddie Mac.” The Intel took a step back, grinning up into Amanda’s face. “The Old Man’s in Saudi Arabia right now, hand shaking with assorted sheiks and potentates to borrow an air base.”

Amanda struggled to catch up. “An air base? For what?”

“It’s a long story, and I’m here to tell it to you. Personal briefings for you and for all senior task force officers. First things first, though. Get us headed for Port Said four bells and a jingle. The Egyptian navy will refuel us, then we head through the Suez Canal tomorrow night on a priority passage. We rendezvous with Admiral MacIntyre somewhere in the Red Sea day after tomorrow.”

“The Red Sea? Chris, slow down. Where are we headed, and why?”

“Indonesia, Boss Ma’am. It seems that some bad boys over there are sailing ‘on the account’ again and we have the job of closing it.”