Sea fighter

by James H. Cobb

  Snowy Banks tilted her head and lifted a hand to her ear phones, listening. “Ma’am, there’s a call coming in for you from TACNET. Commander Rendino on the command channel.”

  “Thanks, Snowy. I’ve got it.” Amanda caught up her head set and accessed the com. “Amanda here, Chris.”

  “We got trouble, boss ma’am.” Christine’s urgent words crackled over the circuit. “Big trouble.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “We have a mass sortie from the Union Boghammer base at Yelibuya Sound.”

  “How many?”

  “All of them! Seventeen boats! Both squadrons launched everything they have that’s operational.”

  Amanda’s heart lurched in her chest.” How long ago?”

  “Within the last fifteen to twenty minutes. Our Predator made a routine pass over Yelibuya base at 1630 hours and everything looked butt normal. When it made its return sweep—bam, every pier was empty. They must have been standing by to scramble the second our RPV passed out of range.”

  “Do we have a track on them?”

  “Yeah, the Valiant, out on Guinea East station, has acquired the Union formation on its surface-search radar. The Bogs are headed straight for them.”

  “Launch the Carondelet and the Manassas immediately! Have them follow us! Order Valiant to go to general quarters and have her head straight out to sea with all possible speed. Get me drone coverage over that Bog formation, then have a couple of helos prep-loaded with damage control and medical aid gear.”

  Amanda snapped out the string of orders like a burst of autocannon fire. then she twisted around in her seat to issue another command to the hover pilot. It was unnecessary. Steamer Lane had already smashed the drive throttles forward through the wire check stops to full war emergency power. Picking up her skirts, the Queen of the West hurled herself shrieking across the sea.

  Mobile Offshore Base, Floater 1 1710 Hours, Zone Time;

  June 29, 2007

  “Commander Rendino, you’d better have a look at this, ma’am.” One voice lifted over the low headset babble within the TACNET command trailer. Christine hurried down the line of workstations to the Electronic Intelligence console. “What’s the problem, Murphy?” she demanded, hunkering down beside the systems operator.

  “Radio transmitters. A whole lot of them,” the Elint specialist replied. “We knew the Union had a coastwatcher network, but according to the signal intercepts I’m getting, it’s a lot more extensive than we ever imagined. Take a look.”

  On the Elint graphics display, an area box blinked into existence just off the Union coast, a radio transmission detected and triangulated on by TACNET’s direction finder arrays. Flanked by a row of code letters and numerals, the target hack joined a row of three similar boxes.

  “See. There goes another one. Whenever the Queen gets within visual range, bleep, another transmitter fires up with a position report. The set emission signatures all match the same make of Indonesian civil sideband transceiver that’s standard issue for the Union coastwatcher net.”

  The S.O.’s finger traced the course of the hover squadron flagship down the coast. “They’re tracking her damn near as well as we can, ma’am.”

  “Why in the hell haven’t we monitored any of these outposts before?” Christine growled.

  “They’ve been sleeper stations, ma’am. Not a single one’s transmitted until today. The Union must have been holding this net layer in reserve for special operations.”

  “Shit! Signal intelligence,” Christine lifted her voice, “what are you bringing in from the Union coastwatcher net?”

  “Short transmission verbal numerics,” the operator at the next console in line replied. “A station designation and a four or five-numeral data block. Probably a target ID and a heading and speed. They’re using some kind of simple tear-sheet cipher. No way to crack it.”

  “Right. We’re not going to get anything worth anything from that. ECM controllers, bring up your countermeasures arrays! All nodes! Set frequency gates to cover the civil sideband channels. Initiate cascade jamming! Broad spectrum! Maximum output!”

  The Elint operator looked up, startled. “Ma’am, if you light up all those big burners like that, we’re going to kill all civil sideband traffic from here to Marrakech!”

  Christine shot a single icy glance down at the S.O. “Mr. Murphy, do I look like a person who gives a howl in hell about the radio reception in Marrakech? Shut ’em down!”

  From the transmitters aboard Floater 1, and the two aerostat carriers and from the TACNET land stations at Conakry and Abadjan, a focused electronic scream radiated out across the ether, burying a massive slice of the radio spectrum under a deafening blanket of white noise.

  In the control center, several TACNET operators snatched off their headsets to escape the piercing jammer warble, an action no doubt being repeated at Union coastwatcher posts all up and down the Gold Coast. Christine Rendino gave a curt, satisfied nod. “And that goes for you, my pretty,” she snarled under her breath, “and your little dog, too!”

  “Commander Rendino,” another S.0. called out urgently from the Predator control station. “We have a situational change with the Union Boghammer force.”

  The intel hastened down to the new crisis point. “What’s happening?”

  The drone pilot called up a wall screen, displaying the video output from the RPV he was holding over the Union gunboat group. On the monitor, a multitude of white wakes could be seen combing across the azure blue of the sea. As they looked on, the massive Union squadron divided, roughly half of the gunboats peeling off to assume a new heading.

  “Eight Bogs maintaining an intercept vector to the Valiant, ma’am. Nine are now on a heading of three one zero true.”

  “Access tactical! What’s out there on that bearing?”

  “Nothing, ma’am. Wait a second … nothing except the HMS Skye, that British minesweep!”

  “Oh my God! Notify Captain Garrett immediately. Then get on the horn to the Brits and tell them they’re going to have company for tea!”

  Guinea East Station 1731 Hours, Zone Time;

  June 29, 2007

  Lieutenant Mark Traynor, the commanding officer of Her Majesty’s Sandown-class minehunter Skye, backhanded the scalding sweat from his eyes and lifted the binoculars once more. They were coming in line abreast, nine patches of white wake on the horizon, each with the dark dot of a Boghammer hull centered in it.

  “Radar has a plot, Captain,” the quartermaster called out from inside the Skye’s wheelhouse. “Range to Union craft, three thousand meters and closing. Speed thirty-five knots.”

  “Very well. Maintain the plot.” The young Englishman strove to keep his voice mature and steady, as he had always imagined it should be at times such as this. Likewise, he strove to suppress the tremor in his hand as he lifted the bridge-wing phone from its weatherproof case.

  “Radio operator, any reply yet from Atlantic Command?”

  “No response yet, sor,” the Yorkshire-tinted response came back.

  Traynor dropped the phone back into its cradle. Damn the admiralty and damn the tenuous two-thousand-mile long line of communications that linked him to their will. He needed instructions now.

  He recalled the urgency in the communication he’d received a quarter of an hour before from the American TACBOSS:

  HMS Skye. Be advised Union gunboat group en route to your location. Believe attack on your vessel imminent! Advise you divert course immediately. Advise you proceed to seaward and close with USS Valiant for mutual protection! Expedite, repeat, expedite!”

  But then Traynor also had to recall the conversation he’d had with his own squadron commander. Remember, lad, beyond all this United Nations humph, you’re still a Royal Naval officer and you’re still working for us. Especially, watch yourself with
this bit of fluff the Yanks have running their piece of the show down there. She’s a bit of a wowser who likes to go looking for trouble. Just do your job and obey your orders and you’ll be fine.

  Since arriving on station, however, it had appeared to Traynor that the aforementioned “bit of fluff” had more than amply demonstrated that she knew what she was talking about. Still, he had hesitated, banging off an advisory and a request for instructions to admiralty HQ before acting.

  It had been the equivalency of yelling into a deep and echoing void. It was after five in London, and no doubt his communication was sitting on someone’s empty desk. It was too late now anyway.

  At least he’d been able to go to Action Stations on his own recognizance. For what that was worth, at any rate. Traynor leaned forward and yelled down over the bridge rail. “Gun crew, load and stand by.”

  Forward, on the forecastle, the gun team cranked their first round into the breech of the Skye’s single 30mm autocannon. On the bridge wings, the duty machine gunners also fed belts of 7.62mm NATO into their GPMGs. The teenaged rating who shared the port-side bridge wing with Traynor fumbled for long, nervous seconds before he managed to close the breech of his weapon.

  “Steady,” Traynor murmured.

  “Yes, sir, Captain. Do you think there’ll be a fight, sir?”

  “No, seaman, I think they’re just running a bit off a bluff on us,” Traynor replied with far more confidence than he felt. “I don’t think the local lads are quite ready to tackle the Royal Navy yet.”

  Twelve miles to the southeast, the Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force aerostat carrier USS Valiant fled for her life. With a jade wake boiling behind her and the silver torpedo of her antenna balloon glinting high overhead, the squat, low-countered little vessel waddled desperately out to sea, running in a race she could never hope to win.

  “You have the helm, Sergeant. If we can help by maneuvering, you just pass the word to the bridge.”

  “Thanks, Captain,” Gunnery Sergeant Enrico DeVega replied into his headset. “Will do. Just keep heading out to sea for now.”

  DeVega stood at the aft end of the Valiant’s superstructure, while below on the long, open winch deck, his twenty-man Marine guard detail stood to their battle stations. Ma Deuce 50s and Mark 19 grenade launchers were mounted onto their low-set tripods along the rails, while right aft, the SMAW teams laid reload rockets out on the deck for their Israeli-designed antitank weapons.

  A tight, feral grin arced across the noncom’s swarthy features. Ten years before, he had been a young pachuco living on the bad side of San Antonio. He had escaped a juvenile record by dumb luck and the grace of the Holy Mother and had graduated from high school more by intimidating teachers than by studying. But then had come the day when he had strutted into his mother’s house, sporting his first gang tattoo and feeling like a man.

  His uncle Jaime has been visiting, his Marine uncle with the medals from Grenada and Lebanon and Desert Storm. Without speaking a word, he had grabbed Enrico by the collar and had thrown him out into the front yard. There, Uncle Jaime had beaten him in front of the entire neighborhood until Enrico had lain on his belly and begged for mercy. “You want to join a gang!” his uncle had roared down at him. “Fine! But you’re gonna join my gang, see! Then we’ll find out how much of a tough guy you are!”

  The next day, Uncle Jaime had marched him down to the Marine Corps enlistment office and had slammed him into the chair in front of the recruiter’s desk.

  What would Uncle Jaime say now if he could see his pachuco nephew about to command an entire naval engagement?

  DeVega lifted his binoculars to his eyes, acquiring the white wake streaks closing on the Valiant from astern. “Gunners,” he bellowed, “lock and load!”

  “Union craft altering formation, Captain!”

  “I can see them, Quartermaster.” Traynor swept his glasses across the line of gunboats. The central group of three Boghammers were holding their course and speed dead on toward the Skye. The two end groups were accelerating, however, going wide around on the flanks of the minehunter, the line abreast altering into an engulfing arc.

  There was something about the maneuver, something Traynor had read once in a book about Africa. The Buffalo! My God, they’re using the Buffalo!

  The Buffalo was the classic tactical maneuver of the Impis, the old Zulu battle regiments. The central group, the “chest” of the buffalo, took the direct impact of the enemy, while the flanking units, the “horns,” swept around to strike from the sides. It was a doctrine that had once conquered half of Africa, and now, applied in a maritime format, it was being used against the Skye.

  “Gunners, stand ready!”

  Aboard the Valiant, Sergeant DeVega watched as the Union Boghammers swung in, half circling his ship just outside of accurate gunnery range. DeVega had never heard of the Buffalo or of the Zulu Empire. However, he recognized a flanking move when he saw one and he understood the intent behind it. He unslung his M-4 carbine, cradling it in his arms. He had thirty rounds of tracer in the magazine for directing the fire of his gunners and an M-203 grenade launcher clipped under the barrel should the opportunity present itself to get personally involved.

  Somewhere someone snapped an order into a radio microphone. Outboard engines howled and the Boghammer groups lunged, the half-circle formations collapsing inward toward their prey.

  Traynor and DeVega. Two good men. Two well-trained and capable warriors at a moment of crisis. Each with the same critical decision to make in the same split second, but each coming from a different school and philosophy of war fare.

  “Radio operator! Challenge those gunboats! Warn them off!”

  “To hell with this shit! Waste the cocksuckers!”

  Right down to the last second before, Lieutenant Mark Traynor couldn’t bring himself to believe that it was actually going to happen. And after, he couldn’t believe that it was, indeed, happening.

  Suddenly, the nine Boghammers surrounding his vessel unleashed single, synchronized blasts of automatic weapons targeted on the Skye’s upperworks. Eighteen heavy machine guns delivering more than three hundred rounds of armor piercing 14mm per second.

  “Warn them off.” That futile command would haunt Mark Traynor for the rest of his life.

  Something smashed into Traynor, something hideously wet and mangled that knocked the British officer to the deck. It was the body of the young rating that had been manning the bridge-wing machine gun, disemboweled and blasted away from the gun mount by half a dozen slug strikes.

  Forward, the Skye’s 30mm mount crashed out a three round burst. But there was only the one before the gunner slumped bullet-riddled in his harness, his loaders crumpling dead to the decks beside him.

  The Skye’s thin aluminum and composite superstructure provided no shielding at all from the storm of heavy high velocity projectiles that raked it. Men fell in the wheelhouse, in the passageways, in the engine rooms, bewildered by the sudden savagery that struck them down.

  On the bridge wing, Traynor could only lie dazed and agonized in a pool of blood, partially his own, partially the young gunner’s. With nothing that could be done to save either his ship or his crew, he could only pray to God for the mercy of a Union bullet.

  The Boghammers circled and closed the range, the rifles and submachine guns of the Union gunboatmen coming into play along with the heavy mounts, ravaging the helpless minesweep from bow to stern. Risking the fire of its squadronmates, a single Bog darted in close alongside the Skye. The first hand grenade was hurled up onto the decks. Then the second. Then the third …

  To the southeast, a very different scenario played out. There an intact and undamaged Valiant continued its trudge to seaward, with a battered and bewildered Boghammer group milling in her wake.

  In his premission briefing, the Union squadron commander had been told that the Ameri
can aerostat carriers were unmanned. That had been why his, the smaller and less intensively trained of the two gunboat groups, had received this specific tasking.

  However, upon their attack, their “unarmed” objective had bared its fangs and had unleashed a broadside that would have done credit to a young battle cruiser. None of the Union Boghammers had been sunk in the initial furious volley, but the formation had been broken and the momentum of their attack had been lost. Turning away with rocket and grenade bursts spouting in their wakes, the gunboats had hastily scurried back out of range.

  Now the Boghammer leader considered his options and alternatives, none of which seemed particularly attractive. Individual boats of the squadron had gingerly probed at the flanks of the American vessel, and each probe had met with the same response, an angry and concentrated storm of gunnery.

  The Boghammers had attempted to return fire, but at the longer ranges the Americans had the advantage. The converted TAGOS ship was an exceptionally stable and seaworthy firing platform when compared to the bucking cockleshell hulls of the Boghammers, giving the Valiant’s defenders a decided edge in hit probability.

  The Union naval officer forced down a dry swallow. To effectively bring the enemy to battle, the Boghammer group would have to charge in to a closer range, and in the running of that gauntlet, there were going to be casualties. Possibly many of them.

  The Boghammer commander had acquitted himself well in the adrenaline-charged rush of the initial charge. However, that charge had been broken and the flame of the assault had been replaced with the cold-bellied reality of the standoff. He was a brave and dedicated young man in the conventional sense, but it requires a special and unique kind of courage to rally in the face of the unexpected and to lead into the face of assured death for your men and possibly for yourself.