Sea fighter

by James H. Cobb

  “Cap’n,” his helmsman said nervously. “We gettin’ pretty far out to sea.”

  They were. The American ship had been holding a steady course south at its best speed, and the African coast was now only a streak of cloud along the northern horizon. The Boghammer commander grabbed at the thought. His boats weren’t designed for the open ocean. And he was no longer receiving position updates on the American hovercraft. If his squadron was caught out in open water by one of the monsters, they’d be cut to pieces. And as for the failure of his initial attack, it had stemmed from poor intelligence. No one had known the American radar ships had been secretly armed. He couldn’t be blamed for that. Nor could he be blamed for not wanting to put his squadron at excessive risk.

  “You’re right, helm,” he replied, striving to keep the relief out of his voice. “We are too far out. We’ll have to be satisfied with chasing them off for today: Come about and fire the recall flares.”

  Aboard the Valiant, the sweet chemical stench of gunpowder and rocket propellant dissipated in the sea wind. Spent shell casings glinted as they were swept over the side and the winch deck was crisscrossed with the sooty smears of SMAW backflashes. Up in the superstructure, an ex-San Antonio gang banger watched in satisfaction as the line of Union gunboats retreated toward the distant coast. “Ayyyy macho!” he called after them, his voice lifting in derision.

  PGAC-2 USS Queen of the West 1748 Hours, Zone Time;

  June 29, 2007

  “Talk to me, Chris,” Amanda demanded over the command circuit. “What’s happening?”

  “Good stuff and bad, boss ma’am,” the intel replied grimly. “The good stuff first. The Union Boghammer groups are breaking off and are apparently returning to base. Also, the USS Valiant reports that she has successfully repelled her attackers without damage or casualties and she is returning to station.”

  “What about the Brit minehunter?”

  “That’s the bad stuff. We have lost all communication with the HMS Skye except for her emergency beacons. We have a radar skin track indicating that she’s still afloat, but she’s dead in the water. We also executed a drone pass a few minutes ago, and she looks in pretty bad shape. I’ve ordered medevac and rescue helos launched from both the platform and from Conakry. They are airborne and en route at this time.”

  “Very good, Chris. We’re still about half an hour out from the Skye’s position. What can you give me on the Boghammer groups?”

  “Both squadrons have dispersed. All elements appear to be proceeding independently back to the Yelibuya Sound fleet base. Do you want an intercept bearing on the nearest Bog to your location?”

  Amanda’s jaw tightened. “Negative. What I want you to do is to track as many of those Boghammers as you can back to Yelibuya Sound. I want them followed every inch of the way and I want their return media-documented. Focus every available recon asset on that specific tasking. I want incontrovertible proof that those Union attack groups sortied from the Yelibuya fleet base.”

  “You got it, boss ma’am.”

  A smoke plume rose above the horizon, a pale banner of distress lifting over the crippled derelict of what had been a man-of-war. As the Queen bore closer to the listing hulk, more and more of the havoc became apparent: the upper works charred and fire-blackened, the hull pocked with bullet and grenade strikes, the blood streaks trickling down from the scuppers.

  As each grim detail became apparent, Amanda’s rage grew. Not at Union for performing the attack, but at herself for allowing it to take place.

  “Steamer, take us alongside.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain. Going in.”

  Her long and futile race over, the Queen of the West settled off pad. With her turbines and lift fans fading into silence, she nestled close to her wounded sister. Amanda slid the overhead hatch back and lifted herself up onto the hatch rim. In the growing twilight, faces peered down at her from the minehunter’s rail. Shocked faces, blasted faces, marked by soot and the sudden aging that comes with exposure to war.

  “Ahoy,” Amanda called up through cupped hands. “Where’s your captain?”

  “Here,” one old young man called back. “Leftenant Mark Traynor. Commanding officer of Her Majesty’s ship Skye … or what’s left of it.”

  “I’m Captain Amanda Garrett, U.S. Navy, commanding the Seafighter Task Force. I’m sorry, Leftenant. I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner.”

  “And I’m sorry we failed to heed your warning, Captain,” the Englishman replied with stark resolution. “The fortunes of war.”

  “Acknowledged, Leftenant. How many casualties?”

  “Eight dead, eight wounded. We’ve got the fires out, but our engines are gone. All that’s keeping us afloat are our handy billy pumps. It’s my intention to stay with the ship and save her if we can, but could you take off our wounded?”

  Amanda hesitated a moment before replying. “I’m afraid that will be impossible, Leftenant. We are committed to another operation. However, helicopters carrying medical aid and salvage equipment are on the way. They should be arriving within the next few minutes. Also, I’ve instructed the USS Santana to proceed here with all possible speed. She’ll tow you in to Floater 1, and we can patch you up there. Again, I’m sorry, but there’s nothing more we can do.”

  “Are you going after the bastards that did this to us?” Traynor inquired wearily.

  “That is my intention.”

  “Then there is nothing more I could ask. Good luck and good hunting, Captain, and thank you.”

  Amanda dropped back down into the Queen’s cockpit, drawing the hatch shut behind her. “Okay, Steamer. Light her up and get us under way.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am,” the hover commander replied, beginning his engine start sequence. ”Carondelet and Manassas are coming up fast.”

  “Very good,” Amanda replied, hunkering down between the pilot’s seat. “Have them form up with us.”

  “We also received a message while you were topside, Captain,” Snowy Banks added. “Direct from Admiral Macintyre. He’s on the ground at Conakry Base, and he instructs us to pursue and engage the Union Boghammer forces to the full limits of our capacity.”

  “Acknowledge the message,” Amanda replied curtly. “Steamer, lay in a course for Conakry. Best possible speed.”

  “Conakry?” Lane twisted in his seat to face Amanda. “Captain, Admiral Macintyre has just ordered us to go after those Boghammers, ma’am!”

  “I am fully cognizant of the Admiral’s orders, Commander! However, I will elect the manner in which those orders will be carried out! Now set course for Conakry Base! Best possible speed!”

  The intensity of her words brooked no further discussion. “Aye, aye, Captain,” Lane replied, turning back to the controls. “You’re the boss.”

  “Miss Banks,” Amanda continued with the same grim intensity, “contact logistics at Conakry. There’s a special weapons loadout for the squadron being held in reserve there. They’ll know the one I’m talking about. Tell them to have it standing by on the beach for us when we pull in, along with a full ordnance-loading crew and a set of fuel tankers. Tell them I expect … no, tell them I require the fastest mission turnaround they have ever executed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then contact TACNET and have them give us a data dump on the Union Fleet base at Yelibuya Sound. Everything they’ve got. Especially all of their latest reconnaissance imagery.”

  With her commands issued and the Queen up on the pad and underway once more, Amanda descended into the main hull. Proceeding to the fire-control stations, she rested her hands on the shoulders of both Danno O’Roark and the Fryguy.

  “Gentlemen, if you could join me in the wardroom, we’ve got some work to do.”

  Conakry Base, Guinea 1935 Hours, Zone Time;

  June 29, 2007

  Full
darkness had fallen by the time the Three Little Pigs climbed the beach ramp at Conakry Base. As the seafighters powered down and sank onto their bellies, light-all generators cranked to life around the ramp perimeter, illuminating the scene with their glare. Navy deuce-and-a-half trucks lumbered out of the darkness, bearing plump fuel blivits and pallets of rocket pods. As promised, ready to load.

  Fuel hoses were connected and transfer pumps purred to life. On the back of each hovercraft, the pocket panel hatches over the weapons bays slid back. Ordnance ratings lowered themselves into the magazines and commenced the delicate task of safetying and downloading the onboard missiles. Soon a new, different, and even more deadly cargo would be replacing them.

  An open HumVee roared into the circle of light around the hovercraft. “Is Captain Garrett here?” the rating behind the wheel yelled over the engine and work clamor.

  “Right here, sailor,” Amanda yelled down from the Queen’s back. “What’s up?”

  “Admiral Macintyre wants to see you up at headquarters,” the enlisted driver called back. “Right away, ma’am.” The youthful sailor displayed the nervousness appropriate to a minor functionary caught in the blast radius of an upper-echelon explosion.

  Amanda smiled grimly. “Excellent,” she replied. “I want to see the Admiral right away as well. I’ll be right down.”

  “Steamer,” she called back over her shoulder to the cockpit. “I should be gone no more than twenty minutes. I want the fuel and ordnance transfer completed and the squadron ready to start engines again when I get back.”

  “We’ll be set, ma’am,” the muffled voice replied.

  Amanda started down the exterior ladder. “That’s granted, of course,” she added under her breath, “that I come back.”

  To say that Vice Admiral Elliot Macintyre looked displeased would be an understatement. The craggy flag officer looked ready to hurl thunderbolts. Ushered into the small office he was using in the U.N. headquarters building, Amanda came to a parade rest before his desk, her spine straight, her features neutral and immobile.

  “I presume, Captain,” Macintyre began coldly, “that since you acknowledged my orders instructing you to pursue and engage the Union Boghammer force, you did, in fact, receive them.”

  “I did receive them, sir.”

  “Then, Captain,” Maclntyre’s voice rose an increment, “will you kindly explain to me why you did not elect to carry them out?”

  “Begging the Admiral’s pardon,” in contrast, Amanda lowered her own tone, “but I am in the process of carrying those orders out at this time.”

  One of Maclntyre’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s going to be quite a trick, Captain,” he replied tartly, “considering our real-time intelligence indicates that every single Union gunboat has safely returned to base.”

  For the first time, Amanda lowered her eyes to meet Maclntyre’s hard gaze full-on. “I’m cognizant of that fact, sir. And that is exactly where I want them to be.”

  The Admiral scowled and hesitated. “Proceed, Captain,” he said after a moment. “What’s your intent?”

  Amanda let a little of the steel ease out of her spine. “Sir, I did not initiate an immediate pursuit of the Union Boghammer force because such a pursuit would have been an act of futility. Obedient to classic guerrilla-warfare doctrine, the Union flotillas scattered after their attack upon our vessels, each gunboat following an independent and evasive course back to base. We might have been able to hunt down two or three of them before they reached coastal cover, but we wouldn’t have been able to strike any kind of decisive counterblow.

  “Instead, I elected to allow the Union gunboat groups to return to their home base unmolested.” Amanda crossed to the chart that was the office’s sole wall decoration. Her finger stabbed at a point on the western coast of Sierra Leone. “Here, at the Union naval station on Yelibuya Sound.”

  She turned to face Macintyre once more. “As you have indicated, sir, they have done so. Now, I have them all concentrated at one fixed location. The reason I brought PGAC-1 into Conakry Base at this time was to rearm with full war loads of surface-to-surface bombardment rockets. Upon taking departure, it is my intent to proceed directly to Yelibuya Sound and to wipe out both the Boghammer squadrons and the naval base they stage out of.”

  Macintyre was startled out of his anger. “Good Lord, Amanda, you can’t be serious?”

  “I’m deadly serious, Admiral. We have an opportunity here to blow the entire western campaign wide open, and I don’t intend to pass it by.”

  “We’re authorized by our U.N. mandate to maintain the maritime exclusion zone and to act in defense of ourselves and of the nation of Guinea. Defense! We don’t have any kind of authorization to take offensive action against the West African Union.”

  “I look on it as a matter of semantics, sir.” Amanda returned to the desk, leaning against it with her hands braced on its edge. “The Union naval base at Yelibuya is the real threat to both our forces and to the Guinea coast. The Boghammers that stage out of it are just the bullets fired from the gun. Tonight Belewa shot that gun at us. Within that definition, destroying Yelibuya Base is an act of self-defense and thus is within our mandate.”

  “Damn it all entirely, Amanda.” Macintyre shook his head in dogged denial. “I know you’re a radical operator, that’s why I pulled you in for this job. But if you try this stunt, they’re going to say that you deliberately stretched your rules of engagement to pick a fight with Belewa.”

  Amanda lifted her hands from the desk edge. “Well, of course. Because that’s exactly what I am doing.” She took a step back from the desk. Her arms crossed over her stomach, she began to pace the length of the dank little workspace, her head lowered. “Damn it, sir. We simply do not have the resources to fight this conflict conventionally. The attack on our aerostat carrier and that British minesweep just proves the point. If we give Belewa the advantage of choosing only his own battlegrounds and times of engagement, we are handing him the victory. I can’t win a war of attrition against an enemy of Belewa’s caliber. I have got to go on the offensive. If the U.N. rules of engagement block me from doing so overtly, then I have to stretch those rules when I counterpunch. That’s my only remaining, valid option.

  “Tonight, I have been given an opportunity to counterstrike within a broad definition of my operational mandate. I have to hit him hard enough, now, to change the basic strategic equation. I can’t pass on this chance!”

  Macintyre sighed heavily and shook his head. “Lord, Amanda, I see where you’re coming from. And from a purely military standpoint, I can agree with it. But there are other factors to be considered. An escalation of this nature takes us beyond the shooting war and up to the diplomatic interface.”

  “I am fully aware of that, sir.” Amanda paused in her pacing. “And the diplomats, statesmen, and potentates are welcome to it. However, I was brought here specifically to deal with the shooting war, and I am endeavoring to do so to the best of my ability. All of my experience and all of my instincts tell me that going for the base at Yelibuya is the one best possible action we take at this time, given the current operational and strategic situation.”

  She sought for and met Maclntyre’s gaze with her own. “Speaking frankly, sir, I wish you hadn’t been on the ground here tonight. As senior tactical officer on station, I’d have kicked off a UNODIR advisory to you, then I’d have gone ahead and executed the strike and let the cards fall where they may. After all, what’s one captain pro tem in the greater scheme of things.

  “However, you are senior on site and this mess falls into your lap now. I understand fully that as CINCNAVSPECFORCE you have larger considerations and responsibilities to deal with than I do. Accordingly, you can’t afford to play the game quite as fast and loose as I can. As the situation stands, though, I can only urge you in the strongest possible manner to allow me to commit the stri
ke on Yelibuya Sound. It is what needs to be done if we are serious about bringing this conflict to a successful outcome.”

  Macintyre studied the slender, tanned figure before him. “Tell me something, Captain,” he said after a moment. “What happens if I elect to not carry through with the strike on Yelibuya?”

  “Then, Admiral,” she replied quietly, “I will formally accept responsibility for both the Union attack this evening and for PGAC-1’s failure to intercept the Boghammer force following the attack. I will also formally request to be relieved of this command. I have no interest in fighting a war that I am being ordered to lose.”

  In his younger days, he might have taken that statement as a threat, a challenge, or a bluff. Damnation, even now he would take it as such coming from certain officers of his acquaintance. But not from this one. From Amanda Garrett, it was a simple statement of fact. Asked for and given.

  The laugh was born deep inside of him, a rumbling chuckle that rose from deep in his chest. “Lord, and I asked for this,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “Thank you, Captain.… Thank you, Amanda, for reminding me that, theoretically at least, victory is what this is all supposed to be about.”

  He straightened in his chair, his mirth fading to a glint of self-derision in his eyes. “And thank you for also reminding me that, in a world that is more comfortable with a muddled mediocrity, there are still certain people who do not accept the concept of compromise. You are correct on all points, Captain. Operation approved. Carry on. And forgive my momentary lapse into micromanagement. I’ll mind my own business in the future, which will be dealing with those assorted diplomats, statesmen, and potentates you mentioned. In the mean time, you go on and win their war for them. Whether they like it or not.”