Sea Strike

by James H. Cobb

  And finally, to port was the ship's metaphysical heart, a pair of naval aviator's wings sealed in a small glass case-- another commissioning gift presented by another rear admiral, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the Navy's first supersonic jet ace of the Vietnam era and the destroyer's valorous namesake.

  This evening, the wardroom also contained a small group of the Cunningham's, officers. Doc Golden and Dix Beltrain were in whites, obviously preparing to go ashore.

  Ken Hiro, on the other hand, was still in work khakis. Seated alone at the big mess table, he was at the nexus of a solid fan of ship's paperwork. As Amanda entered the compartment, conversation trailed off and all three men rose to their feet in response to a courtesy older than military tradition.

  "Good evening, gentlemen," Amanda said. "Plans being made?"

  "That's right, Captain," Beltrain replied genially. "Doc and I here are getting set to tear up the town tonight. It's his first time on the beach in Hawaii."

  "Haven't you ever been ashore in Honolulu before, Doc?" Amanda inquired.

  "Technically, once, on vacation with my ex-wife, Marilyn.

  Every expensive boutique and every cheap tourist show on the island, that's what I know."

  "Not a very good experience?"

  "Let's put it this way." Doc solemnly reached up and tapped his balding brow with a fingertip. "I lost some of this when a genuine, authentic Polynesian fire dancer over at Don Ho's lost control of his tiki torch."

  Doc Golden accepted the resulting explosion of laughter with dignity.

  Beltrain gave a dubious shake of his head. ' ', I think we're going to have to put some overtime in on you."

  "Just no luaus. It casts a pall over the whole thing if you take someone to a luau who can't eat the pig."

  Amanda chuckled again and balanced her overnight case on the edge of the mess table.

  "All right, Ken. And what are you doing still aboard?"

  "Just taking care of some of the usual, Captain," Hiro replied, looking up distractedly. "By the way, looking good tonight, ma'am."

  "Thank you." She smiled. "But that doesn't get around the fact that you've barely seen your family this week. We're going to be off for West Pac in less than a month. If you don't spend some time on the beach with your wife and kids before then, Misa will poison my yakitori next time you have me over for dinner. There's nothing here that can't wait. Go home."

  Hiro grinned back sheepishly. "Okay, Captain. Just give me another half hour on the watch lists, then I'm out of here."

  "Deal. Half an hour. And I'm holding you to it. Thirty five minutes from now and the duty security team comes in

  here with guns drawn to put you over the side."

  "I have been warned, ma'am."

  ' ' have, Ken. If anything comes up, I can be contacted through my cellular. Good night, gentlemen. Have an interesting evening, but no broken bones and no felony arrests.

  We have work to do tomorrow."

  Amanda was not cognizant of the prolonged gazes that followed her out of the wardroom. Finally, Doc Golden spoke almost reverently. "I was not aware that the Navy issued commanding officers who looked like that."

  "Yup," Dix agreed. "We do not get to see that side of the Skipper too often. Appreciate it while it lasts, Doc."

  "Let's just also continue to appreciate that she is the Captain, gentlemen," the Duke's exec added from the mess table.

  Hiro picked up his pen once more, then hesitated. "However, I will concede that somewhere on-the island of Oahu tonight, there is one extremely lucky son of a bitch."

  The fire-and-gold explosion of an island sunset dominated the western sky. Around the massive fleet base, a growing constellation of work lights were flickering on in response to the oncoming tropic evening.

  Within the complex, trickles of interior traffic merged into a stream that flowed toward the checkpoint at Nimitz Gate.

  Civilian day workers going off shift and military personnel on pass, it was a flow that would reverse itself with the coming of the morning hours--the natural, living inhalation and exhalation of the big naval installation.

  Out on the pier apron, Amanda looked back for a few moments to admire the sleek lines of her ship.

  Because of her outriggerlike propulsor pods and the comparatively delicate RAM jacketing of her hull, the big guided-missile destroyer had to use the "Mediterranean Moor." She was backed in between two piers, her airbag padded stern butted up against the breakwater and her folding gangway extending down to shoreside. A broad V of spring lines braced her in place and her anchor held her bow out toward open water.

  Harbormasters hated to see the Mediterranean Moor used, because a Cunningham took up twice the moorage space of a conventional vessel of her 8,000-ton displacement. Shipmasters hated doing it as well, because it was a damn finicky piece of ship handling.

  However, with the rose-tinted gaze of a proud skipper, Amanda was willing to overlook this minor foible of her command.

  With the rakish sweep of her finlike mast array, the long open foredeck running almost half the length of her hull, and her low, streamlined superstructure, the Cunningham more resembled the creation of some imaginative yacht designer than she did the classic image of a man-of-war. The two small Oto Melara autocannon turrets fore and aft only hinted at the massed firepower concealed by her stark sleekness.

  Her exotic design was mandated by the strict parameters of stealth technology. She was the lead vessel of the U.S. Navy's first class of blue-water low-observability surface combatants all but invisible to the probing radar beams of a potential enemy.

  This quest for stealth ranged into the visible spectrum as well. The only flash of true color anywhere about the Cunningham was the Stars and Stripes flipping lazily at her jack staff like the tail of a contented cat.

  Instead of the conventional Navy gray, she was painted in the dustier low-observability hue used on the latest generation of U.S. carrier aircraft. The name across her stern and the big ID numbers under the flare of her radically raked clipper bow were done in outlined "phantom"

  letters and numerals.

  A darker, tiger-striped pattern was also overlain on the base color: wavering, sooty bands that ran vertically down the length of the hull and horizontally up the height of the mast array. A computer-designed derivative of the First World War's "dazzle" camouflage, it served to confuse electro-optical targeting systems and to break up the Duke's distinctive silhouette, rendering her harder to identify.

  Even pier side, the Duke's outline had a tendency to merge into the growing background shadows in odd ways, as if she were a specter preparing to fade into the night.

  Much as Amanda was about to do herself.

  She smiled wryly and unlocked the door of her leased automobile, releasing a puff of the day's retained heat. A few minutes later she was part of the traffic stream flowing toward the main gate at Pearl.

  She headed east along Nimitz Highway, staying with it even after it changed into Kalakaua Avenue and plunged into the heart of downtown Honolulu. Following the shoreline of Mamala Bay past the tourist kitsch of Waikiki, she circled around to Sans Souci and the other quiet beaches below Diamond Head. It was a moderately long drive from Pearl Harbor, but that was the price that had to be paid for a degree of privacy.

  Amanda pulled into the small oceanside restaurant that had the big, leafy hau tree shading the out-of-door tables on its lanai. A Pontiac Banshee sports coupe was already parked in the lot, its driver leaning back against its fender, waiting for her.

  A few moments more and Amanda was exchanging her first night's kiss with Vince Arkady.

  During the trial by fire of the Antarctic campaign, they had become comrades and confidants. That they would also become lovers had been a given long before they had been able to act upon the possibility.

  Amanda had frequently told herself that getting romantically entangled with one of her own junior officers was possibly the single most stupid thing she had ever done.

  Ho
wever, she had always received the same answer: that the only thing more stupid might have been not getting involved at all.

  HONOLULU, HAWAII 2120 HOURS ZONE TIME; JULY 15, 2006

  The Hau Tree Lanai was at the same time both a premier and a pleasantly understated restaurant. American-style prime steaks and seafood were offered, with outdoor seating, a sea breeze, and superb view of both Mamala Bay and the Honolulu beachfront.

  It was a wonderful place to lounge with a cool drink on a warm night and watch the lights of the city. Especially in good company.

  Amanda took a sip from her after-dinner sherry and soda, lightly pressed Arkady's hand against her thigh beneath the shelter of the table.

  "Congratulations," he said.

  "Hmmmm? For what?"

  "Scuttlebutt has it that we aced our exams today. We keep the E."

  "That isn't official by a long shot ... but I think we did all right."

  Amanda allowed herself to preen just a little.

  "As if there would be any doubt." Arkady grinned at her.

  Rakishly handsome and with dark hair pushing the Navy's length standards, the helo pilot looked a little more pirate than naval officer tonight. His appearance was enhanced by the casual safari shirt he wore tucked into his brushed denim slacks.

  "I never promote overconfidence, Arkady," she replied, "in either myself, or in anyone else. And that brings up something I need to talk to you about."

  "Okay, shoot, babe."

  Amanda set her glass down and sighed. "It's no big deal, really, but you got a little sloppy on the ship today."

  "Sloppy?" He frowned. "Was there a problem with air division?"

  "Oh, no." Amanda shook her head emphatically. "The air group was fine.

  No problems. It's just that when we were talking in the hangar bay during the conflag drill, you got a little familiar. You reached out and patted me on the shoulder.

  It was just a little deal. And God knows I didn't have a problem with it personally, but I did have an inspection officer on my tail. It wouldn't have been a good thing if he'd seen that."

  "Hell, I know that, babe. But we were in zero-zero visibility.

  Nobody saw anything. I'm sure of it."

  "I hope not. But we can't afford to get lax. Especially aboard ship. You know how the Navy feels about relationships inside a chain of command. I could get you in so much trouble over this--" She was by a snort of laughter. Arkady bent forward over the table, trying to control his spontaneous explosion of mirth.

  "I'm pleased that you find the imminent disintegration of your career so amusing," Amanda said with pointed irony.

  "Babe, that's not it at all. It is just that you are so damn predictable in some ways."

  She cocked an eyebrow. "Others have told me that on occasion. But what do you mean exactly?"

  The aviator lifted her hand to the tabletop and squeezed it gently between his. "It's like this. It takes two to run a romance, and if I remember right, I was the one who wanted to push the point when we first met in Rio.

  "For two, the Navy always comes down a lot harder on the senior member of a liaison like this than they do the junior. You're the one who's putting her neck on the line because of me.

  "Nonetheless, there you go, dragging all the blame over onto your side of the bed. For God sakes, lady, can't you just sit back and enjoy an illicit love affair without taking the weight of the world on your shoulders?"

  Amanda gave the minutest shake of her head. "Nope." It felt very good to laugh with her young lover just then. During some of her introspective moments, Amanda had tried to analyze what Vince Arkady's role was in her life. Possibly it was that he made her remember there was a world beyond the parameters of naval regulations.

  That, plus other things. Amanda drew his hand to her face, lightly nuzzling it for a moment. It was a good hand, strong when it needed to be, but likewise gentle, and roughened by honorable service.

  "Babe, there's a question I've never asked you before."

  "What?"

  "What made you decide to become a naval officer?"

  That was an interesting question. Amanda reached for her drink and took another thoughtful sip.

  "I really couldn't say exactly," she replied. "I can't recall making any kind of concrete decision about it. I've always loved the sea more than just about anything else I can think of. And around our house, you just sort of absorbed Navy through your pores."

  "Your dad, the rear admiral?"

  "Um-hmm." Amanda nodded. "Thirty years on the line, including the Persian Gulf Tanker Wars and Desert Storm.

  And then there was my grandpa Marshall. He served aboard just about everything from the China river gunboats to the USS Missouri.

  "I wish you could have met him, Arkady. Grandpa did Neutrality Patrol duty in the Atlantic before World War Two, the Doolittle Raid, the Aleutians, the Solomons, the Philippines, and Korea. He had seen it all and done it all, and when I was a kid I was sure that he was just one pay grade below God. I would sit and listen to him and Dad yarn for hours.

  "Somewhere along the line, I just started knowing that I wanted to be like them. And that someday I wanted a ship of my own."

  She looked out across the beach below the restaurant lanai, watching the waves angle along the sand.

  "I suppose," she said after a few moments of reminiscent silence, "that it was something of a shock to my father when he found out that his baby girl wanted to be a hairy, smelly sailor, just like he was."

  The corner of Arkady's mouth quirked up. "I don't know, it seems to me that he was pretty proud of his ' girl' when he pinned the Navy Cross onto her back at Norfolk."

  "Yeah." She smiled to herself in the twilight. "I guess he was."

  Suddenly, there was a shrill electronic trilling. Diverted, Amanda reached into her shoulder bag and the cellular clipped to it. She had the professionalism back in her voice by the time she had flipped open the phone.

  "Garrett here."

  "Hey, Boss Ma'am. This is Chris. Sorry to interrupt whatever I'm interrupting, but I think we have a kind of situation developing."

  "What's happened, Chris?" Amanda tried to identify the odd murmur of sound she heard behind her intelligence officer's voice.

  "Do you have your encryption on?"

  Amanda glanced at the switch and the check light of her cellular's security option. "Yes, I'm secure. Go."

  " '. Here it is. There has been a major national security event somewhere within the Seventh Fleet zone of operations. Seventh Fleet and naval Special Forces elements are being mobilized, and the Duke can expect an alert-to-deploy notification in the immediate future."

  Again that odd burst of noise interrupted Christine.

  "Chris, where are you? Aboard the ship?"

  "Uh, well, no. Actually, I'm speaking to you from the ladies' John of Haole Joe's Sports Bar."

  Amanda knew that Christine Rendino, unconventional though she might be, was not prone to making prank phone calls to a superior officer. Nor was she in the habit of becoming dysfunctionally intoxicated. There would be an explanation, and Amanda waited for it.

  "We've got a lot of base people over here watching the night game from stateside. The Mariners are dying in agony in the seventh inning, in case you're interested ... "

  "I'm not. What's your point, Chris?"

  "Anyway, starting about forty-five minutes ago, pagers and cell phones started going off all over the place. Four people from the Seventh Fleet Operations Center, a couple of guys from NAVSPECFORCE, even a couple of civilian ONI analysts, all of ' scorched out of here like tomcats going over the wall at a neutering clinic.

  "Shall we say that this aroused my curiosity. I retired to the ladies'

  relief facility here and set off a few pagers of my own. I can confirm that this isn't a localized phenomenon.

  Command and operations personnel are being pulled in from all over the island."

  As she followed Christine's words, Amanda gestured across the tab
le to Arkady, motioning him to come around and listen in on the conversation.

  Swiftly, he circled the table and hunkered down beside her chair, leaning close to listen in.

  Christine continued. "Finally, I called a friend of mine who is standing a port watch out aboard the Yellowstone tonight. They can see both Seventh Fleet Ops Center and NAVSPECFORCE HQ from their moorage. Both places are lit up like a dance club on Saturday night and have a steady stream of traffic going into their lots. Fa' sure we have an event on."

  Amanda nodded slowly. "Is there any chance at all that this could be some kind of readiness exercise?"

  "No," Christine responded decisively. "I don't think so, Boss Ma'am. The vibes coming off this are wrong."

  Amanda nodded again. Christine's "vibes" were something that she trusted implicitly. She was not only a friend, but she was also one of the rising stars of her field. Behind that carefully cultivated Valley Girl persona, there was a cool and crystal-clear intellect of formidable capacity. A perusal of personnel records would have shown that Christine Ren dino had the highest IQ of anyone aboard the Cunningham. And that, Amanda had to admit, included the captain.

  "What's your best guess on the crisis point?"

  "I don't have to guess; I know. I had them switch over to CNN during the seventh-inning stretch. They've just announced that the Nationalists have dealt themselves into the Chinese civil war. Taiwan has launched an invasion of the Chinese mainland."

  "You are kidding me!"

  "Kidding not. They went across the beach this morning.

  And fa' sure, this is going to have some people freaking out."

  "And you think we're going to get a piece of it?"

  "Our new lords and masters over at NAVSPECFORCE are already getting a piece of the action. We're the only stealth hull they have in the Pacific just now, and we've just passed our requals. Add it up, Boss Ma'am."

  "I see your point, Chris." "I just thought you'd like the word. Do you want me to keep digging on this?"

  Amanda stared unseeing across the restaurant lanai, her thoughts accelerating. As always, Christine's logic was impeccable.

  If there was a flare-up looming in the Pacific, the Cunningham, as one of the fleet's most capable surface combatants, would be going. She had gained a few hours, possibly a day, on her deployment notice. How to spend it best?