The Cruiser: A Dan Lenson Novel

by David Poyer

  He paced, then stopped himself. A bad habit picked up from too many hours on the bridge. “Our destination is the East Med, a combat deployment on a national strategic mission executing a presidential directive. I can’t share what that directive is yet. But my philosophy is, the more you know, and the more our crew knows, the better. At the same time, I trust you to keep classified information within the skin of the ship. I’ll be discussing ways and means of doing that with the Comm-O.

  “We’ll have to be combat ready again in as short a time as possible. I depend on you to do your jobs and do them well. If you feel that for any reason you can’t manage that, come and see me and I’ll arrange your transfer before we leave Naples.”

  He looked from face to face. “I’m dead serious about that. If you don’t want to be aboard, or feel you’re being tasked beyond your capabilities, you don’t belong on Savo Island.

  “I expect you and the chiefs’ mess to set high standards. Listen to your people; keep them focused; emphasize safety. Let me worry about the big picture. I want you obsessed with the details.

  “Above all, I believe in meeting our operational taskings. Mission accomplishment has to come first. That’s what we’re sworn to do, and that is what we will do.

  “But balanced against that is the welfare of the crew. All too often, we in the Surface Navy are tempted to meet our commitments at the expense of our people. And we can, for short periods of time. They understand. But if we keep shortchanging them, eventually our readiness bleeds away.

  “So if you have a problem that affects combat readiness, bring it to your department head’s, or the XO’s, attention. But also if it’s an issue of crew safety, or crew health, or even elementary fairness, and you don’t think it’s being addressed adequately, or we’re not cutting someone the slack he or she deserves, come and see me personally. Night or day.”

  He paused. What else? There was so much. Jimmy John Packer’s remarks about command. Old Captain Ross’s story of the three envelopes, when Dan had taken over Horn from him. No, he wasn’t interested in blaming anything on Imerson. That was in the past. Yeah, he’d beaten that to death.

  But maybe those were the important things. Get her afloat—check. Get her inspected and under way—that was next. He coughed into his fist and glanced at the door. A curious face lurked outside the porthole, squinting in. “So, get ready to get under way. And once again, if you want off, see me today. After that, I’ll expect everybody to be on the team.”

  He nodded once, curtly, and the exec darted like an alert starling to open the door.

  * * *

  HE climbed to the bridge again and ate lunch in his chair, looking out over the bay. His steward was named Longley, a pimply young mess crank who seemed tongue-tied in his presence. The anchor watch spoke in whispers. Around 1400 Danenhower, the chief engineer, came up to hand Dan his combination cap, which he’d left in the wardroom, and to report that the forward pump room was flooding. Either the grounding or the retraction had torn off the pit sword, a tube that sensed flow past the hull and thus speed through the water. His guys were pouring a patch, and they expected to have it under control in a couple of hours. Dan asked if he saw any problem getting under way without a pit sword; they could get speed off the GPS. Danenhower said he agreed, they could replace it later. Dan told him he wanted a full-power run if they were cleared to get under way and to start setting up for it. Danenhower nodded as if he’d expected it. He seemed to be the kind of chief engineer a skipper appreciated: not too creative, despite the locomotive engineer’s hat, but detail oriented and, above all, candid. You didn’t want any surprises from the engine room.

  No one came up to ask to leave. He hadn’t expected anyone to, but the offer was on the table until midnight.

  At last he climbed down and strolled aft along the weather decks, looking out at the harbor, then examining the horizon. The seas marched in from the open Med, and the wind was bracing but not so cold he wanted a jacket. He paused at the vertical launcher, rows of hatches set flush just aft of the helicopter hangar, and discussed VLS readiness with the groom team. No problem there, at any rate; both launchers were fully loaded out and ready to go.

  Fahad Almarshadi was on the fantail, shivering as he discussed the inspection with a dripping wet-suited diver amid tanks and suits and regulators laid out on a sheet of green canvas. He fell silent as Dan came up. Dan looked over the side, down into turbid green water. Should he borrow a set of fins? Mask? No, they knew what to look for. “How’s it going?”

  The dive supervisor nodded respectfully. “Captain. So far, you’ve got some little cracks on the leading edge of your blades on number two.”

  “How serious?”

  “Well, hard to say. We’ll finish the inspection, then get out of the water while you turn your screws at low speed. If there’s no vibration, there might not be major damage.”

  “How about the sonar dome? I know we snapped off the pit sword.”

  “Well, mostly what you got on your dome is scraped paint. She must have come in right between two bumps in the bottom. There might be damage we can’t see, though.”

  “What’s your recommendation, Chief?”

  “Well, sir, the safe thing would be to dry-dock, check everything out.”

  Both men fell silent, watching him. Almarshadi fidgeted, almost dancing in place. Dan looked up past them at Savo’s towering superstructure. High on it the shieldlike SPY-1 arrays stared aft. They didn’t rotate, like conventional radars; their powerful beams were steered electronically, one array to each ninety-degree quadrant. “I need to get under way. Not spend two weeks in the yard.”

  The diver looked away. “Well, sir, you’re the skipper. Way it works, I make my report, you decide what it means.”

  “Okay, that’s fair. But if you don’t find anything worse than what you just briefed … Fahad, I want to get under way tomorrow at 0800.”

  Almarshadi blinked. “Yes sir, but we’re still fueling. And we’re going to need to load food. They’re holding that for us. And a couple of days’ liberty for the crew would be—”

  “We don’t have time for liberty. And we can get our loggies replenished from the strike group. I want a full-power run tomorrow. If no problems surface, we’ll press on toward our patrol area.” Dan looked at the radars again. “Which reminds me, do we have any superstructure cracks?”

  “Cracks? No sir. Not that I’m aware of.”

  He pointed up. “That’s an aluminum-magnesium alloy. Over time, salt water leaches the magnesium out. Once we’re under way, I want a structural-integrity inspection on everything from the main deck up. I also want some kind of steel plates fabricated—armor—around all our deck machine-gun mounts. There are four or five other safety and readiness items I want taken care of right away. I’ll do messing and berthing inspection with you tomorrow.”

  Almarshadi nodded, hand trembling as he jotted rapidly in a green wheelbook. Dan thanked the diver, took a last look over the side, and headed forward again.

  * * *

  THE Combat Information Center smelled like the inside of a brand-new refrigerator. It looked strange with all the lights on and a seaman in blue coveralls rearranging dust with a push broom. Savo Island’s CIC was much larger than Horn’s had been. Four long lines of seats and consoles funneled toward four large-screen full-color flat-panel displays to port.

  The overheads dimmed as Dan strolled toward the displays, flicking off one by one. He stood before them for some time, examining the presentations as a steady rush of icy ventilation stirred the hairs on his nape.

  One showed hundreds of green lines pointing in seemingly random directions, superimposed on an outline map of central Italy. Air activity from Florence, to the north, to the Strait of Messina, to the south. A second displayed video from a camera installed, as far as he could judge, on one of the Phalanx mounts. The other screens were blank.

  Above the large screens a dozen smaller text readouts presented the status of th
e various combat systems, a weapons inventory, unit daily call signs, and computer status summaries. The older displays were flickering green on black or orange on black. The newer ones had larger screens in full color and didn’t shimmer.

  He leaned his weight on the back of the padded leather reclining chair that would be his during general quarters. The days of watching the horizon for an enemy ship, of hours spent maneuvering for tactical advantage before the guns roared, were long gone. Ticos had more armor than the Spruances they were based on—spaced, hardened steel, sandwiched with Kevlar spall liners—but antiship warheads, like armor-piercing shells, were designed to penetrate before exploding. If an enemy ever got in sight, he would most likely already be dead, along with most of his crew, blasted apart, drowned, burned alive, or sliced into ribbons by flying metal.

  A twenty-first-century cruiser’s main mission was to shield higher-value units. To knock down all the incoming weapons she could, until her magazines were empty. And then, to position herself between the carrier and the threat, and look as much like that carrier as she could. To absorb the last missiles, and go down, if necessary, protecting the centerpiece of the task group.

  There’d be a hell of a lot of information to take in, and he’d have to react fast. Imerson had probably gone through Aegis training as part of his command pipeline. He himself would have to learn on the job, and very quickly indeed. He’d told Roald he had no doubt of his ability to maneuver a Tico-class cruiser. And he didn’t. But as far as fighting her …

  He took a deep breath. He couldn’t show his misgivings. No one else felt confident if the CO showed self-doubt.

  Survivor guilt, the civilian shrink had called it. Part of what he felt, maybe. But the trouble was, Daniel V. Lenson had always wondered if he was good enough. Sometimes he’d done all right. Sometimes he hadn’t, and the faces of the dead and the accusations of being a modern-day Jonah had corroded like acid. Did every commander have to wall off this doubt and fear? Maybe he was some kind of imposter. Just faking the role of Naval Academy grad, surface line officer, Medal of Honor winner, commanding officer …

  “Hey, Dan.”

  He turned to confront Donnie Wenck’s bland smile and slightly insane-looking bright blue eyes. The first class’s blond cowlick was sticking up, as usual, and as usual his hair pushed the boundaries of the regs and his blues looked as if he’d slept in them. Dan had worked with him on classified missions to Korea, the Philippines, and the Gulf. Sometimes it was difficult to get through to him. But his aw-shucks demeanor and occasional spaciness disguised a mastery of arcane software fixes, and in a tight spot—such as being trapped by the whole Iranian navy beneath the calm blue Gulf in a stolen submarine—no one remained more coolly riveted to the task at hand.

  Behind Wenck, in winter blues, stood a clean-shaven white-haired civilian in suit and tie, and Lieutenant Mills, in khakis. They were reef-knotted around a female second class in the blue one-piece ship’s coveralls, who hunched at a console behind and to the right of Dan’s own battle station. On her screen, four evenly spaced flame-orange spokes clicked around the compass. They didn’t sweep smoothly, like the radar repeaters he was used to, but snapped ahead in minuscule increments, refreshing several times a second. The display was deeply hypnotic and somehow unsettling. He had to tear his gaze away from it back to Donnie. “You’re out of uniform, Chief,” Dan told him. “And you’ll need to call me ‘Captain’ again.”

  Wenck frowned, and the hollows beneath his eyes deepened. “Not a chief … sir. You know, the board turned me down.”

  “And you’re on my ship now. Which means I can jump you a rate. A command promotion.”

  The blue eyes blinked. “Ooh! Goat locker’s not gonna like that.”

  “The other chiefs? They’ll live. So don’t give me any grief about it.” Dan leaned in to mutter into his ear, “You’re just gonna have to leave the fucking Game Boy in your duffel, all right? I don’t want to see it in CIC.”

  “Well, I brought you something too.” Wenck nodded toward a large gray trunk with the kind of snap locks that meant electronic equipment. “Power-supply cards, signal-processing cards, crossfield amplifiers, IFF cards. The high-failure items.”

  Dan traded glances with Mills. “I won’t ask where you got those, Donnie.”

  “Good, ’cause I already forgot.” He bent to unspool bubble wrap from porcelain and metal. “And two of these. This is what actually turns your panels on and off. Don’t let ’em clink together, they’ll break.”

  “Switch tubes,” breathed the second class. Even Mills looked impressed.

  Dan turned to the civilian. At last, someone older than he was. He stuck out his hand. “Sorry, we didn’t get introduced. I’m Dan Lenson. You’d be our VLS groom guy?”

  “No. Dr. William Noblos, from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.”

  Uh-oh. “Sorry, my mistake. Doctor. That’s right, the commodore told me you were aboard. The Aegis expert.” He gave Noblos’s hand an extra pump, added a pat to the shoulder. He didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with this guy. “I’m very glad you’re with us. You have a stateroom, right?” Noblos nodded. “Wenck and Mills and I can use some high-level help. Have you and Donnie met?”

  “Just getting acquainted.”

  He looked down at the woman at the console. “And this is—”

  “Fire Controlman Second Terranova, sir.” A soft voice, nearly inaudible under the whir of ventilation and cooling. When she glanced up lank brown hair framed a chubby face and chipmunk cheeks. “I’m ya senior SPY tech. They call me ‘the Terror.’”

  Dan looked her over doubtfully. The work-center leader for the most vital piece of equipment aboard looked like she should be playing the trombone in a high school band. He started to ask how old she was, then decided he’d rather not know. And no way was he going to call her “Terror.” “Uh, good to meet you, Petty Officer Terranova. Is that New Jersey I hear?”

  “Yessir. Just outside ’a Newark.”

  Dan cleared his throat. “Don, did you see Rit yet? And Monty?”

  “Rit’s still out in town. Monty didn’t make the plane.”

  This wasn’t good, about either Henrickson not coming, or Carpenter being loose in Naples. The old sonarman had caused an international incident in Seoul, caught banging a fourteen-year-old Korean girl on the grave of a British soldier in the UN cemetery. “We need to get him aboard. Now. He got a cell?” Wenck nodded. “Call him. I want his ass aboard in two hours, or he can buy his own ticket back to Norfolk. —Doctor, can I quiz you for a couple minutes? I hear you’ve been riding us for a while—?”

  “Since Rota.”

  He’d read as much as he could find about the TBMD upgrade before leaving Washington. Years before, the Navy had started a program called LEAP Intercept, for low exoatmospheric antimissile projectile. It was designed to uprate Aegis and the Standard missile to the point they could shoot down Scud-type ballistic missiles in the midcourse phase, prior to atmospheric reentry. If it proved out, the Navy would have a new mission: protecting allies from the new missiles North Korea, Iran, and China were deploying. They’d also have a sturdy shield for U.S. operations overseas.

  “Uh-huh. Well, can you background me on where we stand? Or—first, I guess, how about weapon loadout?” he asked the rider.

  But Mills answered him. The lieutenant—originally on Roald’s staff, now seconded to Savo—nodded toward one of the overhead readouts. “Captain. That screen shows four SM-2 Block 4A theater missile defense missiles in your vertical launchers, along with Tomahawk, Harpoon, and Asroc.” It was carefully phrased, as if this were a diplomatic reminder; that Dan really knew all this.

  “Okay, I see the callouts for those. But … there are only four Block 4As? The antimissile rounds?”

  “The first four off the production line,” Noblos put in.

  “I see.… So, what’s our system status?”

  The white-haired scientist said, “Well, to background you, Captain �
�� that would take some hours to do properly.”

  “We can sit down later. And I want to. But give me the broad-brush now.”

  “Well, you have a long-range surveillance and track function added to your AN/SPY-1. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the earlier baselines? The downside is, your install is a preproduction model. Not even really a beta version. So far the program’s had only two successful intercepts in five attempts. Also, several of your radar parameters are degraded and the rest are nominal.”

  Dan glanced at Terranova. There was no greater insult to any sailor than to say his equipment was poorly maintained, and the stereotype of a typical shipboard fire controlman was one of a fairly temperamental person, both extremely intelligent and something of a prima donna. Essentially, a grossly underpaid Silicon Valley software geek. Surely there was no way she’d let such a direct insult go unchallenged.

  But to his surprise the girl did not object, respond, or even look up. She just made a slight adjustment to a knob that did not seem to alter the display as far as he could see. Noblos too had paused, as if for a rebuttal, but now went on. “Mr. Mills and I can get into that, your transmitter power out versus your phase/frequency band. Along with Petty Officer … with Chief Wenck. But to summarize, your maintenance has not been kept up and your operator proficiency does not seem to be where it will have to be for a successful intercept.”

  Dan looked at Terranova again; they were criticizing her; but still she didn’t respond. “Can we get up to those spec and proficiency benchmarks fairly soon? Or is this the kind of problem where I need to send a CASREP?” A CASREP meant that the ship’s capabilities were degraded; that it might not meet its assigned commitments.

  Noblos cocked his head. “Well, it’s inherently a tough problem, hitting an incoming missile at a combined closing rate of over twenty thousand miles an hour. In my opinion—and this is not Johns Hopkins’s, just mine—this capability is being fielded too soon. It needs additional testing, and additional development. Which I gather is ongoing, aboard USS Monocacy at the Pacific test range.