“Not that my boys are all that likely to need any help,” Quillain murmured.
Amanda lifted an eyebrow at the big Marine. “Be that as it may, I’ve got a hunch we’re going to be needing those assault parties before this show is over.”
“I’m not taking bets on any aspect of this operation,” MacIntyre grunted. “Not until we know a lot more about what we may be facing out there. Until then, Captain, what do you propose as your first move? It’ll take a while for State to get you a clearance for your Indonesian port call. By the way, where do you intend to put in, Jakarta?”
She shook her head. “No, Benoa, on Bali. It’s centralized within the archipelago; it’s quieter and some distance away from the military and governmental centers in western Java. It’s also a resort area, it’s laid-back, good for shore leave and more in line for the image of a friendly port call.”
“How do you want to work the approach?” MacIntyre inquired.
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Setting down her cup, Amanda crossed her arms on the tabletop. “If Chris is correct about this piracy cartel, they have a terrific maritime intelligence-gathering network in place in the major ports of the world. As it’s the gateway to the Suez Canal, that likely includes Port Said. So probably they know we’re en route to Indonesian waters. Shortly after our State Department contacts the Indonesian government about our port call, the cartel will know where we’re going and, theoretically, when we’re going to arrive.”
She leaned forward slightly, golden-hazel eyes intent. “What I intend to do is to use their own intelligence-gathering capacity against them. We’re going to let them know exactly where we are, but then, we’re going to also be somewhere else at the same time.”
“Keep talking,” MacIntyre said slowly.
“To begin, we set an arrival date for Bali as well as a routine replenishment stop at our fleet base in Singapore, both timed to match the time frame for a leisurely routine transit across the Indian Ocean for an LPD. The pirates will know a task force can never move faster than its slowest ship. Both of the task-force ships will be scheduled for the replenishment in Singapore, but only the Carlson will show up.
“Once we clear the mouth of the Red Sea, I intend to cross deck aboard the Cunningham with a Marine boarding platoon and half of the Seawolf gunships. From there, the Duke will detach from the Carlson, go full stealth and EMCON, and conduct a flank-speed sprint across to the East Indies. An at-sea replenishment from the Australian navy would be helpful when we arrive in their waters. After that, we start hunting pirates several days ahead of our listed port call in Singapore.”
Another grin cut across Maclntyre’s craggy features. “Damn, I like it! The cartel will likely be circumspect when they know we’re in their waters, but they might try to squeeze in a last operation or two before we arrive on station.”
“Exactly. The Carlson arriving alone may catch them by surprise with some of their raiders still at sea conducting operations. With a little luck we may be able to grab some prisoners for interrogation, along with some hard intelligence and documentation. It may produce a crack we can slip a crowbar into.”
Stone Quillain growled approvingly. “With the Skipper’s permission, I’d like a piece of that action. My company exec can cover the action here aboard the amphib. It’ll do him good.”
“Welcome aboard, Stone. I’ll be glad to have you running point. This first move’s going to be critical.”
“And also with the Boss Ma’am’s permission,” Christine Rendino added, “I’d like to go on ahead, too, but in a different kind of way.”
“How do you mean, Chris?”
“I want to go ashore with the last Saudi helo this afternoon. From Riyadh, I’d like to fly on to Singapore, but under the table, as a civilian tourist.”
“What’s up?” Amanda inquired.
“I think I may have a lead on what you might call a native guide.”
Indian Ocean
155 Miles Southeast of the Yemeni Headlands
0846 Hours, Zone Time: July 30, 2008
Details of the outfitting had changed, but the feel was the same. The ride of the low-set hull through the waves. The whirring whisper of the air through the ventilation ducts. The neutral warm paint and kerosene scent in the passageways ….
Amanda made her way slowly forward through the Cunningham’s superstructure from the helipad, taking the time to savor it all. She had no complaints about her current command, but as any former captain can tell you, there is something very special about that one unique vessel you always remember as “your” ship. At night, her bridge is the one you always return to in your dreams.
Before heading up to officers’ country, she took a moment to stick her head into the wardroom. Here, beyond the freshened outfitting, nothing had changed at all. Her father’s commissioning portrait of the Cunningham still graced the starboard bulkhead beside the entry, while the naval aviator’s wings presented to the ship by her namesake, Admiral Randy “Duke” Cunningham, rested in their glass case to port. No, Ken wouldn’t let that change.
One level up in the superstructure, she dropped her seabag and brief case off in the ship’s minute guest cabin. The Duke’s accommodations didn’t run to flag quarters, and she’d flatly refused to have any of the cruiser’s officers shift living spaces for her.
With that done, she made the familiar climb up the ladder to the bridge level.
“Commodore on the bridge!”
“Stand easy,” she replied by rote; then for a long minute she just stood in the entryway, looking over the shoulders of the helm team seated at the central console and down the long, open stretch of foredeck to where that sharp-tipped bow cut the waves.
She’d briefly been back aboard on other occasions since the shift of command, for planning sessions and tours of inspection. But this was different: This was at sea and not bound to a dock somewhere. Here, she and the ship were both fully alive.
“Welcome aboard, ma’am.” Ken Hiro stood at her shoulder, a Cunningham baseball cap tugged low over his dark eyes. The Japanese-American’s usual reserve was totally shattered by the wide grin on his face.
Amanda quirked an eyebrow at him. “You two make a lovely couple, Ken. I knew it would be a good marriage.”
“The best, ma’am.”
“I’m pleased for you both. Ready to take departure?”
“Give the word.”
“Then make it so, Captain Hiro. Make signal to the Carlson that we are proceeding independently.”
“Very good, ma’am.” Hiro lifted his voice slightly. “Helm, engage Navicom. Select departure heading Easting one on your course presets. Lee helm, all power rooms to fast cruise. All engines ahead two-thirds. Make turns for thirty knots.”
Skilled eyes and hands played across the master console and power pedestal, calling up systems, rolling throttles and propeller controls forward, and verifying responses.
“Sir, Navicom engaged and the ship is tracking on course plot Easting one.”
“Sir, main engines and power rooms are indicating fast cruise. Ship is coming to thirty knots.”
The Duke trembled from her keel up, gaining way with each beat of her twin sets of contra-rotating propellers, and Amanda found herself reaching for a seat-back grab bar to steady herself against the surge of acceleration.
The cruiser’s bow wavered briefly as her autopilots and navigational systems hunted and found the great circle course that would take her across the Indian Ocean. Smoothly she swung to the new heading, the foam V streaming back from her cutwater deepening as she impatiently brushed the waves out of her way.
Hiro fired his net volley of orders into the command headset he wore. “Combat Information Center, this is the captain. Disengage Cooperative Engagement links and reconfigure for independent operations. Signals, you may inform the Carlson we are executing breakaway.”
Amanda drifted over to the port bridge wing door and peered aft. The Duke was pulling rapidly away from
the Carlson, cutting across the LPD’s course line and leaving her to make her own more leisurely way east to the Indies. A dazzling point of light danced at the larger ship’s signal bridge, outshining even the glare of the Indian Ocean sun. No doubt the reply to Ken’s departure notice. To her surprise Amanda found she was going to miss the looming presence of the big amphib. Coming back aboard the Cunningham was like returning to visit the hometown where you grew up. The Carlson was where her tomorrows rested.
“What’s the word, ma’am?” Ken inquired, coming up behind her as she lounged in the hatchway. “I never had the eye for blinker code.”
“Let’s see: ‘Godspeed and good … hunting…. Break…. See … you … in … Singapore…. Break…. Leave … some … for … us.’ ”
Hiro chuckled. “I didn’t think Carberry would loosen up that much.”
“He’s not so bad, just different. And I seem to recall a certain exec of mine who tended to be a little bit stiff at times as well.”
“Well, that was before a tough lady captain knocked the starch out of me.”
They withdrew into the cool of the wheelhouse. “Any further orders, ma’am?” Hiro inquired.
“Not for the moment, Ken. Carry on. I’ll just lean back in a corner and watch some water for a while if I may.”
“Would you care to take the captain’s chair, ma’am?” Ken nodded toward the elevated seat on the right-hand side of the bridge, traditionally sacrosanct for the ship’s commanding officer. Amanda had lounged there for many a watch and sea mile.
She shook her head. “No, Ken, that chair belongs to the skipper of the Duke, and that’s you. I’m just a high-ranking hitchhiker at the moment.”
“Acknowledged and understood, ma’am. In that case, may the captain of the Cunningham respectfully request that the task force commander grace his personal chair with her presence for the remainder of the watch … just once, for old times’ sake?”
Amanda chuckled. “Request granted.”
She crossed to the captain’s chair and lifted herself into it. There was new padding and a revised bank of chair arm controls; yet the flick of her heel on the base ring still rotated it that forty-five degrees relative to the bow that permitted her to brace her feet comfortably on the bridge grab rail. Crossing her arms, she tilted the seat back and lounged. It still felt just right.
Maybe they were wrong. Maybe you could come home again, if only for a little while.
Flag Quarters, USS Carlson
180 Miles Southeast of the Yemeni Headlands
0944 Hours, Zone Time: July 30, 2008
It had been some time since Elliot MacIntyre had shared quarters with a woman, even when the lady herself wasn’t present.
Amanda had insisted that MacIntyre take over her flag cabin while she was away aboard the Cunningham, pointing out that it made no sense whatsoever to leave accommodations empty aboard a living-space-starved man-of-war. Having refused her proposal that she turn her cabin over to him altogether during his stay aboard, he had to allow her to win on this point.
Still, it felt damn peculiar, and Eddie Mac couldn’t define exactly why.
There was nothing overtly feminine about the two-room suite with its connecting private head. Nor was there anything especially extravagant about them beyond the fitted navy-blue carpeting on the deck and the artificial pine paneling on the bulkheads. The overhead was still raked with the naked conduits and cable clusters of a warship.
The little office/living space had room enough for a large gray steel desk and computer terminal, along with a small leather-and-steel-tube couch and a rather battered and mismatched leather recliner chair that MacIntyre remembered as Amanda’s favorite from the wardroom set of the Cunningham.
The paintings mounted on the bulkheads were definitely worth a look. Amanda had several thousand dollars’ worth of original maritime art here, all of it done by Wilson Garrett, Rear Admiral, USN, retired—Amanda’s father.
MacIntyre grinned reminiscently. Back in the Persian Gulf aboard the old Callahan, they’d always thought the Old Man was just a little eccentric with his sketchpads and easels.
Two of the paintings were also transfers from the Duke, the one of Amanda’s first command, the fleet ocean tug Paigan, and the other of her Cape Cod sloop, the Zeeadler. But there was a third he had never seen before, a painting of a young girl looking out to sea from the top of a rocky beachside bluff. Clad in blue jeans and cradling a toy Sailboat in her arms, the child gazed at the distant horizon, a yearning dream in her eyes.
“Damnation,” MacIntyre murmured. There was no mistaking who the girl might be. A lot of father’s love had gone into that picture.
MacIntyre crossed to the door that led into the sleeping cabin. The blue carpet and pine panel motif held over here as well, a blue blanket drum-taut on the bunk-inset in the bulkhead. Again, not a trace of overt femininity, and yet, there was something….
The scent! That was it! The soft sweetness of cologne and talc over rode the usual warm metal neutrality of a ship’s atmosphere. He remembered now how it would strike him when he entered his bedroom back home after a long stint at sea. The scent of his late wife and the promise it held. The ways they would make up for their time apart.
Eddie Mac gave an impatient shake of his head, stuffing those memories back in their box and slamming the lid down. That was past now, and not returning.
Brusquely he turned to the lockers and drawers built into the bulk head across from the bunk, checking to see how the steward’s mate had his gear secured. However, the third drawer he pulled open revealed an explosion of filmy femininity. MacIntyre slammed the drawer hastily shut.
A totally inappropriate set of images involving Amanda Garrett and a small handful of black lace raged behind his eyes. Eddie Mac lifted a hand to his forehead and massaged his temples. This … was going to be difficult.
Seeking to refocus his attention, MacIntyre turned back toward the bunk. An inset shelf railed against wave action ran above it for its full length. Here MacIntyre found his diversion. An expensive portable CD player had been racked at its center along with a long row of music disks.
And there were books.
The admiral noted that a disk was already loaded in the player. He reached over and tapped the Start key. After a few moments the haunting strains of a familiar movement of music issued from the speaker. “The Song of the High Seas”; he should have expected that.
Intently he studied the row of book titles over the head of the bed. One of the surest ways of learning what was in an individual’s heart and mind was in having a look at what they read. Amanda had another bookcase full of professional reading out in the office space, but these were old friends, comfort books, battered and worn from many rereadings.
Not surprisingly there was a strong maritime orientation. There were a few Foresters, The Ship, The Good Shepherd, Gold from Crete. No Horn-blower, though: MacIntyre recalled Amanda once saying that she found the character’s incessant mullygutsing over his own inadequacies annoying. There was also a Jack London, The Adventures of Captain Grief, and Jan de Hartog’s Call of the Sea anthology.
There was humor as well, a couple of Admiral Dan Gallery’s “Cap’n Fatso” books and a massive reprint volume of the “Tugboat Annie” stories from the old Saturday Evening Post. On a hunch, MacIntyre took down the latter volume and flipped it open to the title page. Sure enough.
To THE SKIPPER:
MERRY CHRISTMAS
WITH REGARDS, RESPECT, AND AFFECTION,
THE OFFICERS AND CREW OF THE USS PAIGAN
MacIntyre returned the book to its place. Finally, there were two real old-timers that must have come from Amanda’s father’s collection, Lowell Thomas’s Count Luckner, The Sea Devil and The Sea Devil’s Fo’c’sle.
The former had a bookmark tucked in it. Amanda must have been rereading it just over the last couple of days. MacIntyre smiled and took down the venerable hardcover. Propping the pillows up to a good reading angle, he
stretched out on the bunk and turned to the first page.
Curtin Royal Australian Air Force Base
The Kimberley, Northwestern Australia
0723 Hours, Zone Time: August 2, 2008
In the lexicon of the Australian military, it was called a “bare base.” That is, it had no assigned squadrons, no garrison, no base section, no guards. It was only a naked, sun-scalded strip of concrete and a scattering of empty buildings between the shimmering waters of King Sound and the distant rusty-gold peaks of the King Leopold range. Its sole advantage over the surrounding thorn scrub pans being that airplanes, large and fast ones, could take off and land and be staged from it.
Curtin’s mission was simply to he there on this, Australia’s loneliest coast. Just in case. Just so there might be a place to stand should a threat again arise from beyond the seas.
This morning began much as many others had, with the parching winds swirling across the empty parking aprons and taxiways and the heat shimmer starting its day’s dance over the runway. A small herd of kangaroos clustered around one of the capped wellheads near the main compound, jostling with one another to lick at the precious drops of water leaking from a defective seal.
Abruptly, the ’roos looked up as a thudding drone rolled across the desert. Seconds later they broke into a mad scramble for the brush as Curtin received its first incoming flight.
An Australian army CH-470 Chinook helicopter lumbered slowly down the flight line, its big twin rotors kicking up a small tornado of sand as it settled onto its undercarriage trucks beside the empty control tower.
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