Sea fighter

by James H. Cobb

  Those were her words, but her expression didn’t match with them. Sandra “Scrounger” Caitlin had something on her mind and under her skin. Tehoa simply stood and looked at the young woman, waiting for the truth to come out.

  “Chief,” she asked hesitantly. “Do you have a second? I need to talk to you about something.”

  “If I don’t, I’ll make one. Come on, let’s hit the ward room.”

  With the seafighter called to quarters, the little mess-room/living space was empty. Tehoa slid into one of the bench seats and waited while Scrounger took a Coke she really didn’t want from the refrigerator. Patiently, he gave her the time she needed to start at her own beginning.

  “Chief,” she said finally, her eyes lowered to the unopened beverage can in her hands, “have you ever heard of ‘The Touch’?”

  “The Touch? You mean where someone gets a premonition that they’re going to be killed on a mission?”

  The girl nodded without lifting her eyes. “Yeah.”

  “I’ve heard the stories. I’ve never seen it happen myself, though. What’s the word, Scrounge? You thinking that maybe you’re going to buy the farm tonight?”

  “I don’t know, Chief,” she replied, looking up, her eyes dark and troubled. “I really don’t know. I just have a really funny feeling about this run. Like nothing I’ve ever had before.”

  “Scared?”

  She shrugged. “Yes … But not much more than usual when we’re guns up. It’s just … I don’t know. I can’t describe it.”

  The CPO studied the little turbine tech’s eyes, looking deep into them and around the corner to where she kept her soul. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before we launched tonight?”

  She shrugged again. “I couldn’t let you and the rest of the crew down, Chief,” she replied softly, “even if it does mean that I’m going to die. I can’t. If it comes down to a choice between being killed and not being able to live with yourself anymore, what’s the difference?”

  Tehoa thought for a long moment. “None, I guess, Scrounge,” he replied finally. “I’ve never felt The Touch or anything like it. No imagination, I guess. Either that or I’m always so busy before a big show I never have the chance to notice.

  “Anyhow, the way I’ve got it figured, when I put on the uniform, the Navy never guaranteed that I’d ever get out of it alive. They just promised that if I did die, it would be for something worth dying for. Now I don’t know if this U.N. job is exactly worth taking the big fall or not. That’s not for the rank and file like you or me to make the call on. I only know that I’m going to try and hold up my end of the deal.”

  Scrounger half-smiled and nodded her head. “Me too, Chief. I guess I only wanted to talk to somebody about it.”

  Tehoa gave the turbine tech a light slap on the shoulder. “Trust in your ship and your crew, and trust in being alive, Scrounge. Like I said, I’ve heard lots of stories about guys getting a premonition, and most of them end up with the guy still alive and well on the other side of it.”

  “I’m going to be fine, Chief.”

  “Damn right you are, sailor!”

  Suddenly, the compartment’s overhead speaker clicked on and Commander Lane’s voice interrupted them. “All hands, we are approaching the engagement area. Close up to action stations! Fire control, arm your pedestals! Surface engagement package! Auxiliary gunners, man your mounts! Power rooms, initiate turbine start sequences! Stand by to go on the cushion!”

  “That’s it, Scrounge. Let’s go!”

  The Chief and Caitlin slid out from behind the mess table. Realizing she still held the unopened pop can in her hand, Scrounger took a second to toss it back into the refrigerator.

  Tehoa gave her a grin and a nod. “See you after the show, Scrounge.”

  The girl replied in kind, “Later, Chief.” Then she was gone, hurrying to her station.

  She’d be fine, Tehoa decided; starting for the ladder to the cockpit.

  Topside, he found the command crew hard at it, Commander Lane and Ensign Banks sweeping through the prestart checklists that were now engraved permanently on their psyches. As always, their palms came up to exchange the ritual high five as the first turbine began to crank.

  Chief Tehoa suddenly understood the meaning of that gesture. His pilot and copilot were making their own wordless promise to see each other alive after the battle.

  Captain Garrett held her station at the navigator’s console, her slim figure swaddled in the bulk of a battle vest and her fine-lined features partially concealed by her Kevlar helmet and headset. Not relaxed, but totally controlled, she focused on the tactical screens, no world existing for her beyond them.

  As Tehoa watched, she inserted a CD disk into the communications deck and pushed a key. A moment later, her recorded voice issued from the radio loudspeakers, broadcasting over the Union standard military bands:

  Attention, attention. This is the United States Navy, operating under the mandate of the United Nations African Interdiction Force. All craft, heave to and prepare for boarding and search. All craft, heave to and prepare for boarding and search. If we are fired upon, we will return fire. I repeat, if we are fired upon, we will return fire.

  Amanda Garrett had just presented their letter of intent to the Union.

  Tehoa donned his own armored vest and his helmet with the integral night-vision goggles. Unlatching and swinging back the overhead hatch, he hoisted himself up into the gunner’s saddle with a grunt. God, maybe he was getting too old for this. Maybe Mary was right and he should take his twenty-and-out next year. The girls were growing so fast. Soon he would miss the whole joy of their childhood. It was something to think about.

  Once in the saddle, he took a look around, his night-adapted eyes making good use of the moonlight even without the intervention of the AI2 visor. The low African coastline flowed darkly along the northern horizon, dividing the silver-tinged sea and the starblaze of the sky. Astern, the streamlined shadow forms of the Carondelet and the Manassas trailed in the Queen’s scant wake.

  The lift fans of all three hovercraft spooled up to speed, puffs of pale spray escaping from beneath their inflating skirts as they lifted off the surface. Airscrews flickered over in a contrarotating blur of power, assuming propulsion from the retracting underwater propellers. The Queen of the West trembled like a nervous thoroughbred before a race, the self-generated breeze of her growing speed whipping the flag and burgee streaming from her snub mast.

  Tehoa jacked in the phone link of his headset and the power lead for his night-vision visor. Then he tested the electric drive motors of the gun ring, traversing the mount a few degrees to port and starboard. He also verified that the heavy rocket flare called for in Captain Garrett’s mission plan was ready within reach. Finally he pulled the Velcro tabs of the gun covers, stripping away the water- and spray-proof nylon shroud, baring the two big Browning heavy machine guns and their brassy, gleaming belts of shells.

  As he stuffed the cover down into the cockpit, Tehoa felt the flow of the slipstream shift across his face. He looked up again to find the squadron turning in toward the coast, their formation shifting from a cruising line astern to their staggered combat echelon.

  Aiming their stubby bows at the Union flotilla, the seafighters started to close the range. The showdown at OK Corral had begun.

  Off the Coast of the West African Union

  Seven Miles West-Southwest of Cape Palma 0207 Hours, Zone Time;

  August 22, 2007

  “Maintain speed at twenty knots until order for blow through.” On the command circuit Amanda spoke over the unmuffled squall of the turbines. “Forget the smuggling craft. Keep between the Boghammers and the coast. I say again, stay on the Bogs! I want hard kills!”

  “Frenchman, acknowledging.”

  “Rebel, rajah.”

  Up
forward, Steamer Lane lifted a hand in a dimly visible OK sign. He and Snowy had shifted their instrumentation lighting from standard night red to the filtered blue-green compatible with the night-vision visors they now wore.

  Amanda’s fingers played over the controls of her own multimode telepanels as well. Shifting the radar and tactical displays to secondary screens, she accessed fire control, a targeting recticle snapping up on her main scope. If one of the main control stations went down during the engagement, she had to be ready to assume direction of a weapons pedestal. Likewise, should the fight go long range, an extra designator might be needed for the Hellfire missiles. During their long hours on patrol, she’d had Danno O’Roark teach her the gunnery drills just for such situations. She rechecked each panel setting with careful deliberation. This time it would be no drill.

  She depressed a key and a ranging laser lashed out.

  “Operations, range to target six thousand yards and closing. Do we have any reaction yet?”

  The Boghammers had radios; they must be hearing the challenge. At least some of the gunboats should have night bright binoculars as well; they should be able see the American hovercraft converging on their formation.

  “Acknowledged, Little Pig Lead.” Christine Rendino’s voice sounded stone cool in Amanda’s headset, stone cool. “They’ve got you spotted. We are monitoring a traffic spike on the Union radio channels … Be advised the Union battle line is increasing speed.”

  Amanda noted it as well. Wakes flashed in the moonlight as engines throttled up. Rooster tails lifting behind them, the line of gunboats accelerated, coming up onto the plane.

  “Little Pig Lead!” Christine spoke sharply. “Targets are turning in on you!”

  With the synchronicity of a sparrow flock, the Boghammer flotilla pivoted ninety degrees to port. The line-astern formation became a wave front, a maritime cavalry charge thundering toward the seafighter group.

  “We see it, Operations,” Amanda noted, pleased with the stability of her voice. “Range now five five double zero. Rate of closure forty-five knots.” Her eyes flicked up from the targeting scope to the radar display. “We’ve given them their setup for the Buffalo. Let’s see if they go for it.”

  “Acknowledged. Watching for it …Yeah! End squadrons are continuing to increase speed. We got a Buffalo. Confirm we got a Buffalo!”

  On the radar screen, the Union line-abreast formation became concave, the ends curving inward toward the seafighter group, the “chest” lagging back to confront the foe, while the swiftly moving “horns” swept around to converge on the seafighter’s flanks.

  A grim smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. For a long time she had considered how to best evade this favored maneuver of the Union gunboatmen. In the end, however, she elected not to evade the Buffalo but to embrace it. Amanda keyed her headset mike.

  “Little Pigs, power up!”

  Snowy Banks leaned in over the central console. One small hand shoved the drive throttles forward, the other coming back on the propeller controls, pulling pitch from the prop blades and killing their grip on the air. Even as the turbines spooled up to their maximum output, the speed of the hover craft increased only slightly, the augmented horsepower wasted by the futile flailing of the airscrews. A heavy vibration and an agonized metallic wailing grew from back aft. The hovercraft’s power plants shuddered on their bedplates, threatening an imminent overrev.

  “Little Pigs, designate targets!”

  The death pips of the sighting systems crawled across the tactical display and settled on the two Boghammers directly ahead of the Queen, the same fire template being set simultaneously aboard both the Manassas and the Carondelet.

  Others were seeking targets in the night as well. Shooting stars streaked up from the sea, converging overhead. Parachute flares burst alight over the American formation, silvery magnesium flame glaring. The seafighters stood on across a shadowless sea of shimmering mercury.

  Amanda could see that the encirclement was almost complete, the hovercraft driving ever deeper into the horseshoe shaped bucket formed by the Boghammer group. In moments, the Union gunboats would be at an effective firing range.

  And yet she could not open fire, in spite of the longer range of her own force’s weapons. The U.N. rules of engagement were clear. The interdiction forces were authorized to use deadly force only in self-defense. The enemy must fire the first shot, or in this instance, barrage. Be damned that none of your own people would be left alive to reply.

  “Little Pigs,” she snapped over the command channel. “Stand by flares!”

  But then, in her own conscience, Amanda had long ago resolved that quandary. When confronted with rules of war that unnecessarily put one’s own people at risk, one became tactically innovative.

  Or, to put it bluntly, one cheats.

  “Little Pigs, fire flares!”

  The cockpit gunners aboard all three hovercraft released their illumination rounds. Only instead of firing the projectiles vertically into the air, they aimed their launch canisters horizontally, at the line of onrushing Boghammers.

  Harmless though they were, the balls of multicolored flame looked most impressive streaking toward the Union gunboats. And all it required was a single nervous finger on a single trigger.

  From off to starboard, a tracer stream licked out of the darkness.

  “Little Pigs! We are under attack! Guns free! Guns free! Engage, engage, engage!”

  Six weapons pedestals screamed hoarsely and spat rocket salvos into the sky. Six swarms of Hydra rockets arced through the night like hornets from hell and the six Boghammers at the apex of the Buffalo formation were engulfed, dying amid thunder and spray.

  “Little Pigs! Execute blow-through!”

  Snowy slammed the propeller controls forward. Racing prop blades shifted pitch and caught air. With one hundred percent of their propulsion power instantly onstream, the Queen lunged forward with a neck-snapping surge of acceleration, her sisters following suit as they raced for the gap they had blasted in the Union line of battle.

  Around the perimeter, Union boat commanders bellowed futilely at their gunners and a ragged curtain of tracers swept across the kill zone mere seconds too late. The seafighters had cleared the fire stream nexus, the converging storm of autoweapons fire only chopping the water in their wakes.

  At fifty knots and with their speed still increasing, the hovercraft flotilla streaked through the ruptured “chest” of the Buffalo formation and into the clear. Behind them, the “horns” began breaking up, the Union squadron’s leaders confused and dismayed at the failure of their trap.

  Escape and evasion for the American craft would have been a simple thing at that moment, but that wasn’t why Amanda had brought them here. “Little Pigs! Echelon turn to starboard! Hard about one hundred and eighty degrees! Independent targeting! Fire as you bear! Take ’em down!”

  Steamer locked the air rudders over, bringing them around in a sweeping turn to the east, reversing their course and bringing the Queen of the West in line with the disintegrating left horn of the Union formation. Smoothly ski jumping across the Queen’s wake, the Carondelet and Manassas re-assumed their formation slots, clearing their firing arcs. The hunted had turned and had become the hunters.

  There had been no time for Danno and the FryGuy to recycle the pedestal mounts and reload with fresh rocket pods. It was all gun work now. On her tactical screen, Amanda saw the death pips of the two 30mm mounts converge on the first Boghammer in the Union line.

  The autocannons raged, the Queen’s frame shuddering with their recoil. The cockpit machine guns joined in an instant later. Chief Tehoa might have lacked the computerized fire control of the pedestal mounts, but his tracers stitched into the target with near-equal accuracy.

  The Boghammer writhed, the water around it leaping and boiling. The explosive cannon
shells tore away chunks of Fiberglas and flesh, while the higher-velocity machine-gun slugs simply drilled through. Fuel cells and ammunition boxes yielded to the torment, flame smeared across the surface of the sea, ending in a burgeoning explosion.

  The Carondelet destroyed a second gunboat, the Manassas a third. A fourth perished as its panicking helmsman cranked his wheel over too hard in a wild effort to turn away from destruction. The Boghammer capsized, its pale belly flashing in the moonlight as it dumped its crew into the sea.

  Then the free kills were over. The gunboats of the western horn came screaming across to aid their comrades in the eastern half of the Union formation. The Little Pigs turned again to face the new threat, tracer tentacles lashing and intertwining across the wavetops as the range closed. Converging at a cumulative speed of near a hundred knots, seconds-brief broadsides were exchanged as the two formations intermeshed and drove through one another once more.

  In the cockpit of the Queen, Amanda grimly braced herself in the navigator’s chair. Her part in this fight was finished for the moment. Each side had executed its carefully preplotted gambit against the other. Now the battle had dissolved into a chaos beyond all leadership and direction. Now it was in the hands of the pilots and gunners, the sole question left being who could kill the fastest and most efficiently. She was only along for the ride.

  For Steamer Lane, the battle of Cape Palma would be a series of frozen impressions strung like beads along a central cord braided of panic and terror. There was the sound of the guns, the syncopated hammering of the 30 mikes, the sharper, angrier stutter of the machine guns, and the deliberate cough of the grenade launchers. Propellant smoke filled the cockpit like the cigarette haze in a crowded bar, thick, sweet, and powdery on the tongue. His neck ached from the weight of his helmet and vision visor as he wildly twisted his head, maintaining his situational awareness.

  Lastly he would recall the face of Snowy Banks. She leaned in over the center console, her lips curled in a snarl of concentration and her eyes fixed on the movements of his hands on the main wheel and throttle. Using the puff-port controller, she augmented the air rudders, helping to hold the hovercraft into their repeated snaking turns.