"Admiral," one of the radio operators interjected. "Report from Retainer Zero One. They are taking small-arms fire from the bank of the estuary."
"Goddamn it all to hell! Acknowledge signal to Zero One." Tall man paced off the length of Pri-Fly, seeking to vent some of his growing frustration in movement. Macintyre 298 James H. Cobb could only silently empathize with him. There is possibly no worse situation in the world than to be a military commander who senses that he is falling behind the curve. To know that events are creeping out of your control in a headlong slide into bloody chaos.
"Hang in there, Jake," Macintyre said. "You've got some good people out there working the problem."
"That's true, sir," Walker interjected. "And if we're not careful, we could have some more of those good people in the water as well. It may be necessary to cut our losses."
Tall man only grunted in reply, staring out into the darkness beyond the windscreen.
"Admiral," the communications liaison spoke up again.
"Message coming in from the Cunningham. ' on station at mouth of channel through Yangtze mine barrier. Request permission to proceed upriver to recover downed pilots.' "
"My God," Walker exclaimed. "What in the hell is that woman thinking of!"
The radioman's voice continued, slightly bewildered.
"There's something else as well, sir. ', chapter eighteen, verse twelve.' "
"What's that all about?" Walker said.
"I know," Macintyre replied slowly. " ' think ye? If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, cloth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which has gone astray?"
Macintyre found that Jake Tall man's attention was suddenly focused totally on him.
"What do you think, Eddie Mac?"
"Jake, this is your show. I am just an observer here."
"Fine! Then make an observation! Could she pull it off?
Could she get my people out of there?"
So much for being out of the loop. "I don't know if it's feasible or not, Jake," Macintyre replied. "But I suspect that if it can be done, Amanda Garrett is the one who can do it.
If you're asking my opinion, I'd say ride with her."
"Admiral," Walker interjected urgently. "If you send the Cunningham into that river estuary, you will be placing a multibillion-dollar warship and two hundred Navy personnel in extreme peril. We've lost one plane and two aviators. If we lose the Cunningham in trying to get them out, we will
SEA STRIKE 299
literally be compounding the disaster a hundredfold. Taking a risk like that isn't logical, sir."
Tall man shook his head slowly. "Nolan, you're absolutely right. It's not logical at all. But then, we're not talking about logic here, son, we're talking about the commitment we've made with our people.
"It's not logical for these kids to go out there and lay their necks out on the line purely at my command, so I can't afford to be all that logical about getting them back again.
"Make a signal to the Cunningham. ' with rescue operations. You are authorized to enter the Yangtze.' "
"Attention, all decks," Amanda Garrett's voice rang out of the 1 -ME.
The watch in the Combat Information Center instinctively looked up at the overhead speakers, awaiting the word.
"Here is the situation. We have a Navy aircrew down in the Yangtze River estuary. The helo on recovery station has been disabled, and those pilots won't last until another can be brought up. We are going to have to go upriver after them.
This ... is not going to be easy, but we are going to take care of our own. Good luck to us all."
"Ohhh, brother," Dix Beltrain murmured under his breath.
"Status of the SQQ-32, Mr. Beltrain," Ken Hiro asked flatly.
"System is up, sir. Diagnostic checks are green."
The mine-hunter display windowed into one corner of the Alpha screen.
Within it, clear water was indicated dead ahead of the ship. But on the outer perimeters of the sweep, ominous shadowy outlines could be made out guarding the flanks of the channel.
"Stealth systems." Amanda's voice again: cool, imperturbable.
"Stealth, aye."
"Activate the deck sprays, Mr. Mckelsie. That may help us if the Reds have FLIRs covering the mine passages."
"Will do."
"Very good. We're going into the passage now."
"Engines now going ahead slow, Mr. Hiro," the battle 300 James H. Cobb helmsman reported from his station. "Making turns for five knots."
Slowly, the mine contacts began to drift astern, out of the scan field.
They were entering the single, narrow corridor that led through the barrier.
"Quartermaster," Hiro ordered. "Execute a series of GPU checks at thirty-second intervals and lock down a series of navigational datum points in the Navicom. I want us to be able to find our way back out of here if we lose the sonars."
"Aye, aye, sir." The quartermaster's reply sounded as if he were being lightly strangled.
Christine Rendino emerged from Raven's Roost and came to stand at Beltrain's side, her attention fixed on the mine hunter display. "Fa'
sure, I hate it when she does stuff like this," she whispered.
"Scared?"
The Intel nodded. "But that's only half of it. The other half is a feeling of inferiority. I'd never have the guts to try something like this in a million years."
"Yeah. I wonder if I ever will."
A building and two vehicles burned on the riverbank, with the firelight more of an interference then an aid to the two hovering helos. Retainer Zero One and Zero Two sidled downstream, covering the drifting dot that was the aircrew of Moondog 505.
Vince Arkady mentally reviewed his munitions list for the hundredth time. He still had both Hellfires on board, but only five Hydra rounds were left. There were troops and Armed People's Police out there in the straggle of boatsman's shacks and saltgrass. The two Retainers had taught them the folly of swapping shots with a Sea Comanche.
Unfortunately, they had found an easier target.
"Retainer, we're getting fire from the shore again."
"Roger, Moondog. Tuck your head in. We're layin' it on 'em. Retainer Zero Two. Suppressive fire in the beach. Select target and fire. One round Hydra each."
"Roger, Zero One. On the way." Save your powder, Hoss, Arkady thought grimly, for the death hug's a-comin'.
He laid the helo's thermal sights in on a reed bank along SEA STRIKE 301
the muddy shore. He'd been seeing stealthy movement in there for the past couple of minutes, and he doubted that it was a beaver colony. The Hydra blazed and the wall of reeds shredded and flattened as if under the sweep of some gigantic scythe. Zero Two's round kicked up a haze of muddy spray farther downstream.
"How's that, old buddy?"
"That's put the fear of God back in ', Retainers.
Thanks."
That weary voice on the other end of the CSAR circuit sounded as if it was coming from the loneliest place on Earth.
Arkady groped for something valid to say under the restrictions of radio discipline, just to keep him talking.
"How's your S.O. doing, Moondog?"
"Bub's still breathing, Retainer. She's still hangin' in there."
"Glad to hear it."
"You won't be so glad to hear this, Retainer. I think we're drifting in closer to shore."
Arkady swore under his breath. "Stand by, Moondog. I'm going to see what's holding up the cab." He toggled over to the air operations channel. "Gray Lady, Gray Lady. We need an ETA on that recovery helo.
Things are getting tight out here!"
"There isn't going to be a helo, Retainer," Amanda Gar rett's voice came back levelly. "We are going to have to come upriver and make the recovery ourselves. We are transiting the mine barrier now. Barring delays, we should be up with you in about another forty-five minutes.
You will have to hold until then."
"Roger, Gray Lady." There was nothing else to say.
"Bearing is still three hundred degrees true, Captain," the bridge helmsman announced. "The passage corridor is still trending north." "I see it," Amanda said, peering over his shoulder into the navigation screen. "The Reds put a dogleg in the corridor to make things difficult.
Watch for the turn. And watch for the shallows. We're going to start running tight on water as we get over to the far side of the channel."
"Aye, aye, ma'am."
Even a Red Chinese ship, with a port minesweeper running 302 James H.
Cobb interference and a pilot with a marked set of mine charts at the helm, would find this tricky maneuvering. Not to mention that a Communist vessel would not have to worry about being fired on.
The windscreen wipers were hissing softly, just as they had been the last time they had penetrated into these waters.
Only, this time the mist engulfing the Cunningham was of her own creation. High-pressure water jets on her weather decks and upper works were soaking down her decks and hazing the air around her, hopefully smothering any thermal signature that she might be leaving.
"Stealth systems."
"Stealth systems, aye."
"How does the local radar environment look, Mr. Mekelsie?"
"Still sterile. We've killed ' all, Captain. Nobody out there is looking for us."
"Acknowledged."
He was wrong, of course. The Cunningham was just starting to creep past the southern headland of the estuary. There would be a lot of hostile eyes out on the dark bulk of that headland. Eyes that would be alert and staring into the night for the next indication of their enemy.
Don't pay any attention to us, Amanda silently said to them. We're just a shadow on the sea.
They were spotted because they were a shadow on the sea.
No radar detected them. No high-tech thermographic spotted their passing. But there was a sentry at his station in a bunker on the southern headlands. Ever since the start of the bombing raid on Shanghai, he had been peering warily into the night.
There was little to be seen. The only light anywhere within his field of vision was a single flickering patch of illumination low to the north-northwest. The sentry had seen the flash of man-made lightning that had given birth to it. A cruise missile hit on the radar station on Jiuduan Sha Island. Now a fire burned in the wreckage.
As the sole spark in the darkness, it had the tendency to draw the sentry's attention. Thus, he noticed instantly when the spark went out.
Something moving at sea level had just SEA STRIKE 303
occulted it. After a few moments, it reappeared as that something moved on. The sentry picked up his field phone and began to speak urgently into it.
Elsewhere in the night, gleaming steel gun barrels lifted out of camouflaged emplacements. With a predatory howl of hydraulics, they began to index across the sky.
"Bridge!" Ken Hiro's voice barked from the overhead speaker. "Channel is turning to port!"
"We see it, Ken!" Amanda dashed back behind the steering station. "Helm, come left to two six ... make it two six five. Smartly, now!"
"Coming left to two six five, Captain!"
"Okay, we're coming around ... Two seven five ... two seven zero ...
Okay, meet her! Steady as you go! Watch it!
You're off-angling in the channel!"
Amanda's hands flashed to the throttles and propeller controls, trimming the propulsor pod outputs, kicking the Duke's stern over. With agonizing slowness, the Duke's position hack realigned itself between the rows of wide-set mines.
Amanda and both of the hands at the helm console shared a shaky breath.
Straightening, Amanda rested her hands on their shoulders for a moment.
"CIC, this is the bridge. We're around the dogleg and back in the groove. How much more of this?"
"Maybe another half a click," Christine Rendino replied.
"This minefield is humongous! There must be thousands of them out there!"
"And all it takes is one," Amanda whispered under her breath.
Abruptly, the mines became the least of her worries.
Something rumbled in the distance. A few seconds later, a whispering whine began to grow in the air, building swiftly into an express-train roar that swept overhead. The roar terminated in a series of crackling thuds and a flickering glare that shredded the night.
Someone on the bridge swore as the harsh metallic light stabbed at their eyes. A row of four meteorlike balls of flame were arcing down into the river off the destroyer's starboard bow.
304 James H. Cobb "Bridge! This is the CIC. Our night optics just went down!
Captain, what's going on up there?"
"Starshells, Ken," she snapped into her command mike.
"Someone just put a pattern of starshells over us. We're spotted, sure as anything. Lieutenant Beltrain, can we increase speed while maintaining image clarity on the mine hunting sonar?"
"No way, Captain. We push it and we'll start to degrade from flow noise."
' '. Bring up Sea SLAMs and Oto Melaras. Stand by to initiate counterbattery fire. There's going to be a fight."
The guns were old, coastal-defense twin mounts forged over fifty years before in the Soviet Union. They had been adequately maintained, however, and their current generation of gunners had drilled for long hours for this moment. To a shouted loading cadence, hydraulic rams drove a second set of 152-millimeter illumination rounds into their chambers.
Breechblocks slammed shut and the tubes lifted and traversed again.
Cannoneers fell back and pressed gloved hands over their ears. Triggers were squeezed and another shell group shrieked on their way.
Out on the headlands hooded concrete director towers perched atop the low hills, looking out over the estuary approaches.
Inside them, forward observers swiveled their twin headed panoramic range finders around, bringing them to bear on the distinctive shark's-fin silhouette revealed out in the main estuary channel. New ranges and bearings were barked into the phone lines that led back to the battery control center.
In the CIC, they couldn't hear the shells coming in. But they could see the geysers erupting out of the river on their television monitors and they could feel the thudding impact of the shock waves against their hull.
"Lieutenant Rendino, what's the word on these shore batteries?"
Ken Hiro demanded.
' ' twin mounts. Eight guns in all. Six-inchers in concrete pop-up emplacements," Christine replied, rattling the facts off from her memory. ' ' on the southern headland."
SEA STRIKE 305
"They're only dropping four-round salvos in on us.
They're holding back some of those tubes."
"No, sir," Beltrain replied. "They're alternating fire, using half of the battery at any one time to keep us illuminated.
Mckelsie, are we being painted?"
"Negative!" the stealth boss yelled back from his systems bay. "The EM
environment is still clear. No radiation detected on any frequency."
"Sweet Jesus," Dix muttered, "they're going to kill us with antiques."
"Clarify that, mister," the Exec snapped.
"Old-fashioned iron munitions aimed by optical sights!
World War-vintage stuff. In this particular tactical situation they nullify every advantage our stealth systems and ECM give us. It's an even field, sir."
"What would the old-timers do in a situation like this?"
"Go fast and zigzag like crazy!"
Ken Hiro looked back at the mine-hunter screen and at the ominous, shadowy spheres that hemmed them in. "I hope that there's an alternative to that," he said.
From his station upriver, Arkady saw the sudden glare of the starshells to the east.
"Damn, Gus, what's going on back there?"
"I dunno, sir. The Duke's Aegis system just came up, though. I'm getting a tactical display over the datalink."
That wasn't right. That
really wasn't right. The Cunningham must have been spotted. That would be the only reason Amanda would clear away for a fight like that. Shit! Shit!
Shit! This was going to hell.
His thumb moved to the channel control switch on the collective lever, on the verge of switching over to the Duke's air-operations frequency when his S.O. yelled a warning.
"Lieutenant! Surface contact on the tactical display! Proceeding down river toward us. Speed, twenty knots. Range to this datum point, fifteen thousand yards and closing. Threat board data annex identifies one Skin Head military surface search radar."
"Goddamn it! Moondog 505, we have a problem. We are departing covering pattern, but we will be back. Hang in there, guys!"
306 James H. Cobb "We aren't going anywhere, Retainer."
"Rug. Retainer Zero Two, this is Zero One. Depart covering pattern and form up on me. Stand by for Hellfire engagement.
We got a gunboat coming in on us."
Floating in his life jacket, Digger Graves heard the rotor growl of the two covering helos begin to fade out over the broad reaches of the river. There was still sound out there in the light. The rumble of artillery, the ghost of a siren wail out toward the city.
But around the two drifting fliers, there was a momentary pocket of stillness. Graves could hear the trickling ripple of wind wavelets, and the whisper of his unconscious S. O.'s breath. Thoughts of his wife, his past, and his future tumbled disjointedly through a mind made sluggish by his growing hypothermia.
God! Was there anyone left alive in the world?
Accordingly, when someone touched his arm, Digger's heart nearly stopped.
Graves lunged forward, dragging Bubbles with him. There was something else in the water, a dark unmoving mass.
Almost without conscious volition, he went for the survival light clipped in his sleeve pocket. He snapped it on in its flashlight mode, letting the narrowest of beams leak through the fingers of his working hand.
It was someone else who had met their destiny on the great river: a coverall-clad Chinese seaman, dead, the open eye on the unshattered side of his face staring past Graves into the night. Digger switched the flash off and watched as the body merged back into the blackness.
Slowly, the current carried the body off downstream, heading in the same direction as his S.O.
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