The Cruiser: A Dan Lenson Novel

by David Poyer

  No mark on that ever-changing, ever-unchanging surface testified to it, but they were on station at last. A misshapen arc thirty miles north to south and slightly narrower east to west, centered west and south of Tel Aviv. He watched the rounded neon numerals of the Fathometer rise with each flicker: 998; 1010; 1023. Crossing the thousand-meter line. The navigator and the chief quartermaster, Van Gogh, were having a muted argument at the far end of the bridge. A petty officer murmured into his handheld next to Dan. He was there to relay word from the helicopter control station aft, an armored, fireproofed mini–control tower set to one side of the squared-off flight deck.

  “Bridge, Helo Control. From the pilot: Can we come fifteen to twenty degrees left. He’s got turbulence across the deck. We’re just about at the wind limit.”

  Dark eyes gave Dan a level look; a sleek head inclined. Crossing to stand beside him, Lieutenant (jg) Noah Pardees murmured, “Skipper, range is clear to port. Closest contact fifteen hundred yards and opening. No other threatening CPAs.”

  Pardees, the deck department officer, was even taller than Dan, and so West Coast laid-back and so very meager he seemed barely to inhabit his coveralls. Dan nodded. “How about that fuel-pressure caution light? And will we still be within ship motion limitations if the wind increases?”

  The petty officer said, “They say they got that addressed, Captain. The caution light. Green board, ready to fly. On ship motion: remember they go by their onboard gyros, not ship’s inclinometers.”

  “Okay … I guess. If they’re happy. What about this rain? Looks as if it could close in.”

  “Scattered showers. And no problem if the wind comes up another ten knots. After that, could get dicey.”

  Pardees murmured languidly, “That’s not in the fleet weather prediction, sir.”

  “Bridge, Helo Control: Request green deck.”

  Dan resisted the impulse to get down from his chair and check the radar one last time. Pardees had his binoculars up, peering out to port. The junior officer of the deck, little apple-cheeked Gene Mytsalo, was out on the wing. He had to trust. Trust the weather prediction, the pilots’ judgment, the mechanics who’d repaired the fuel pump or pressure switch or whatever had triggered the caution light. He was the captain, not God. The OOD lowered the glasses and shot him a glance. He nodded.

  “Helo Control, OOD: Deck is green,” Pardees said into his Hydra.

  “Green, aye … stand by.”

  Dan gripped the arms of his chair, then made himself relax back into it. Feign serenity, at least, if he couldn’t actually achieve it. He’d seen a helicopter explode once, on its approach to the deck. Not a Sea Hawk; one of the older aircraft, a Sea Sprite. A good bird, despite the accidents, but the Navy had retired them when it got rid of the last Knox-class frigates.

  At last the rising roar from aft, shifting to starboard, testified to the launch. “Red Hawk 202 away,” the petty officer relayed.

  Red Hawk was the squadron name, 202 the airframe number. The slate-gray minke bulk of the aircraft, tilted slightly forward, swept past, vibrating the heavy shatterproof windows. A ghostly smoke-trail spinnereted behind it, pressed down by rotorwash but not dispersed. It shrank slowly, outbound, then banked left and tracked across their bow, in and out of the low scud of clouds.

  “Navigator recommends continuing left to course one seven zero, and reducing speed to ten knots to commence port leg.”

  “Very well,” Pardees said, turning away. “Left fifteen degrees rudder. Come to course one seven zero. Engines ahead two thirds; indicate fifty-five rpm at eighty percent pitch for ten knots.”

  The orders and responses came and went, ebbing in the endless litany that had never, probably, been interrupted since the Phoenicians had begun voyaging across this very sea. Dan squinted, followed the aircraft until it became a speck, winking into and out of existence, until he couldn’t be sure he was actually seeing it any longer or only imagining it. Then it was gone.

  And Goodroe with it. The iced-down remains were headed back to the task group, which would do a preliminary investigation—they had an MD and a fairly sophisticated operating room aboard the carrier—then ship it onward, via Italy and Germany, back to the States. He hadn’t heard any rumors about bad luck. Maybe the superstitions of the sea were vanishing along with so many other taboos; women aboard ship, for one thing. More and more, life at sea reflected life ashore. But sometimes he wasn’t sure that was an improvement.

  His reflection stared back from the slanted bulletproof glass. He shook his head and bent to the morning traffic.

  He’d signed off on the arrival message at 0600, assuring both CentCom and EuCom, and the subordinate commanders in the chain, including Jen Roald, that Savo Island had taken station at Ballistic Missile Oparea Adamantine. Now he looked at a response to that message—or no, its originating date time group meant it had been drafted before. It was from CentCom, a frag order—a modification to a previously issued op plan. Instead of operating alone, commanding officer Savo Island would command Task Group 161, made up of his own ship and a Los Angeles–class nuclear submarine, USS Pittsburgh. The sub would join tomorrow. Which meant it was speeding toward them now.

  He flipped pages to the Early Bird, the daily Pentagon news summary. He’d asked Radio to print it out each day, and to forward it to Almarshadi to excerpt for the crew. Iraq had threatened again that if the U.S. attacked, the war would spread. This was getting to be old news. He’d heard it before, during the Gulf War. But as it turned out, it hadn’t been a bluff. Not then. He and a small team of Marines had only barely managed to abort mass destruction in the final minutes, deep beneath Baghdad.

  He shook that memory off and read on. China was claiming several islands that up to then had been considered Philippine territory. A three-star Army general had been indicted for contract fraud. Two more Navy COs had been relieved. The reasons weren’t released, but he guessed sexual harassment or misconduct, since no collisions or groundings were mentioned. Terror attacks in northwestern India had killed seventy-five and wounded hundreds. The terrorists had been identified as Pakistani nationals, with an al-Qaeda–affiliated group in Waziristan. India had promised retaliation—

  The bridge J-phone went off. Mytsalo flourished the handset. “Captain. Mr. Danenhower.”

  The chief engineer wanted to know how long they’d be at this speed. “I’d like to water-wash one of the turbines, sir.”

  “How long will you have it down?”

  “Two hours to cool, maybe an hour to do the washdown and checks. Three hours?”

  Dan searched the horizon. “We’re out here by our lonesomes, Bart. Be poking around this track for a while, I imagine. Do your maintenance. Leave one engine on each shaft.” He squinted across the pilothouse to see Pardees listening. He hoisted his eyebrows; the Californian nodded casually. “I notified the OOD. Go ahead.”

  “Will do, Skipper.”

  He hung up and leaned back again. Revisiting once more just why they were out here, and what he could expect.

  Was it a bluff? Their presence here argued someone thought it wasn’t. The Iraqis had been under international sanction. But no one knew how far their military rebuilding had progressed. The administration thought they possessed weapons of mass destruction. That, after all, was the rationale for the attack. You could argue the ethics of preemptive war if you wanted, but he didn’t feel like it. As far as he and Savo were concerned, their mission was clear. Difficult … but clear.

  He reread an article excerpted from Foreign Affairs. It pointed out that this invasion aimed to do something no government had ever tried before: destroy a regime that possessed weapons of mass destruction. In 1945, of course, only the United States had actually developed nuclear weapons. In the two cases since, where countries with WMDs had engaged in hostilities, both had been only skirmishes: China versus the Soviet Union along the Ussuri River, and India and Pakistan over Kargil. Both had been limited, and in neither case had a regime’s existence been th
reatened, as Saddam’s would be following a Coalition victory.

  He frowned. If the administration feared whatever WMDs Iraq supposedly possessed enough to attack it, presumably its enemy would have no scruples about using these weapons when actually attacked.

  Put that way, it made eminent sense to have Savo Island on guard.

  He only hoped precautions were in place to protect the continental U.S., too.

  “Good morning, sir.” Almarshadi, looking hangdog, as if he had to muster all his courage to speak at all. Dan returned the exec’s salute and accepted the papers he offered. He wished he could buck the XO up, give him whatever it was the guy was missing. The morning reports were summarized recaps of equipment status, what was broken and repair-time estimates. He flipped through, asked a couple of questions, then focused on the DSOT.

  The Daily Systems Operability Test was a series of checks the computers ran on the missiles stowed beneath the hinged hatches of the vertical launch system. For a short period each day they were awakened and quizzed. The module they lived in was locked and sealed; no one entered alone, or without an officer present and a “screamer,” a CO2 detector, on his belt.

  He’d looked into both the forward and aft modules during his initial inspection. The entryway was doored with heavy fireproof steel. The interior of the “cell” had two levels, with spidery metal catwalks between the missiles themselves. Dim and claustrophobic, it smelled of metal and rubber—unlike the gun magazines, with their heavy odors of alcohol and powder. The narrow gratings, so insubstantial one could look down past one’s boots to the bottom of the cell far below, labyrinthed banks of metal canisters packed so closely a fat man would have had to turn sideways to slide through. Harpoon, Standard, Tomahawk, Asroc, nestled in eight-celled miscegenation, their somnolent brains wired with black rubber-coated data and power cables. Those umbilicals were a primary point of failure. If their connections came loose, human beings lost comms with the missiles. And without comms, the proper firing permissions, they wouldn’t, of course, launch.

  Failure to launch, when an enemy missile was coming in … he didn’t like to think about that. But the chief gunner’s mate had assured him the connections were tight. And any discontinuity or intermittent would show up on the daily tests. He hoped.

  “It looks good. All rounds check out,” the XO offered.

  Dan glanced at him, looked around: the same gray sky, the same featureless sea. “Okay, but what’s this? The SBC system?”

  Almarshadi brightened. “That’s the space-based calibration system. See, we use Aegis to track space junk to calibrate the sensors.”

  “And it’s down?”

  “Not completely, but the signal rate return isn’t up to par. They’re checking it out.”

  “And how about this … this flow rate sensor in the chill water system? I didn’t see that under engineering. It’s under Aegis too.”

  “Yessir, that part of the chill water system cools the signal processor.”

  Dan hitched himself erect in the chair. “Another cooling problem? I thought we checked all those systems out.”

  “The hose connections, yes sir, we did. This is a flow sensor. Different issue.”

  “Have we got people on it?”

  “Yessir, the HTs. I’ll go down right after this, check on progress.”

  Dan went down the list, not really reassured. Between software problems, the less-than-great Aegis team performance against their benchmarks, and the reduced redundancy because of the fire, he was less than confident Savo Island was fit for her mission, if called on to execute. No skipper wanted to fumble the ball. But failure in this case wouldn’t be like blowing an exercise. If he couldn’t goalie, civilians would die. “Have you talked to Dr. Noblos about our intercept team performance?”

  “Uh, no sir. I know he’s been under the weather—”

  “For how long now? I’d like to get our heads together. How about 09? In the unit commander’s cabin. I’d like the FCs and strike team there too. Let’s take this whole thing through the cleaners.”

  Almarshadi said he’d set it up. Dan hesitated, still looking off to where he’d thought for a moment he’d seen a dash of white, like a periscope feather, breaking the surface. The sonar was still crying out every few seconds, but after their performance in the exercise he had less confidence in their ability to detect any subsurface threat. Still—and this lifted his spirits—having Pittsburgh around would give them more protection. Yeah, whoever had organized that, he was grateful.

  “Okay, let’s get to it,” he told Almarshadi. He looked around one more time; at a gray sea, a spatter of rain that crackled across the windows. The boatswain went around turning on the wipers.

  With a last glance at the lowering sky, he went below.

  * * *

  HE winced. The earsplitting shrill of the boatswain’s whistle had caught him in his cabin, logging on to high-side chat. “Now set the BMD watch,” the 1MC crackled. “Now set the BMD watch.” He hesitated, then closed the log-in and powered his terminal down. Pulled his foul-weather jacket off the hook where he’d hung it after coming down from the bridge. Stuck his pisscutter cap in the pocket, slid down two ladders, and cranked open the door to Combat.

  All four large-screen displays were lit. The icy-aired, darkened space creaked as it pitched. Voices murmured as the first watch section took their seats.

  Cheryl Staurulakis had drawn up a rubric for how they’d view graphic information for the antiballistic-missile mission. The surface plot, surrounding the ship close in, was up on the leftmost display. The air picture glowed in the center, reaching out three hundred miles into Syria, western Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Cyprus, that queerly shrunken simulacrum of the continental U.S., glittered to the north. A glance told him commercial air traffic was way down. “Business as usual” was coming to an end.

  The rightmost display reproduced the outputs on the Aegis consoles. He watched the by now familiar above-the-horizon search beams clicking around. They passed over the flat sea without return, probed a clearly delineated coastline, then etched an eldritch green strewing of mountains. The elongated, depressed shadow of the Dead Sea curled like a fava bean. Past that glowed more mountains. Then the splotches disappeared; the beams flew straight, searching out over the featureless desert. An abyss from whence nothing returned, not even the strobing blips of commercial aircraft. Mordor.

  He ran his attention over the displays, checking weapons inventory, combat systems summary, surface summary. On the far right, the summary of summaries, the System Availability. It was green across the board: SM-2s up, guns up, VLS, TLAM, Harpoon up, Phalanx up. A pip throbbed on the leftmost screen. Red Wolf 202, on its way back from the task force. “ETA on the helo, Matt?” he asked Mills, in the TAO’s seat.

  “Estimate feet dry time five-zero.”

  About twenty minutes. Dan sat watching for a few seconds more, then logged in to the high-side chat room for the task force. Most of the chatter seemed to be coming from the screen units. Only now and then did the carrier come up.

  DCK CIC: showers coming your way

  DYO CIC: haul over all hatch hoods

  DCK CIC: ;)

  PBG TAO: DYO pls lk at track 8934—see anything suspicious about that

  DYO TAO: no looks like com air. Do you not have squawk??

  TMN AO: let us know if you want a cap vector

  A far cry from the clatter of signal lamps, the flutter of flags as they went up a hoist. He toggled among rooms; the task force, Sixth Fleet, then found what looked very much like the strike groups for Iraq. How different this was from the previous isolation at sea. Oddly enough, though, neither CentCom nor EuCom seemed to be up on chat.

  Mills leaned over. “Permission to go into mode, sir.”

  “Do it.”

  Terranova’s all-too-youthful voice in his headphones. “All stations, Aegis control. Stand by for BMD mode … shift to BMD mode.”

  Dan sucked air and sat up.


  Wenck and Noblos and Staurulakis had all told him, and it made sense in terms of system resources. But seeing it suddenly bottleneck down on-screen was much more sobering.

  Although the left two screens stayed the same, in a blink-fraction of a second the rightmost—Aegis’s view of the world—suddenly keyholed. From 360 degrees, they now had a cone of awareness maybe 5 degrees in width. Brawny as the SPY-1 was, the theater ballistic defense mission sucked down so much power that over 90 percent of the screen had just gone blank. Only a shade still echoed from the north-south mountain chain, fading as distance increased from the searchlight beam. He felt as if he’d been struck blind. “I don’t like this,” he murmured to Mills. “We’re losing all our long-range surveillance.”

  “Yes sir. But we still have the gunlaying radar, and our surface search radar.”

  Great, they were back to 1945. If a swarm of kamikazes attacked, they’d be peachy. A Syrian MiG-29 or Su-24, though … he could be clobbered from behind before they knew what hit them. He fidgeted in his seat, then got up and went over to Chief Wenck, at the console. “Donnie, there’s no middle ground? We’re just about totally fucking blind everywhere but where you’re looking.”

  Wenck blew a lock of too-long blond hair off his forehead. He didn’t look disturbed. “Wussywug.”

  “What?”

  “What you see is what you get, sir. Only so much wattage to go out, so much processing power in the blades. We got Sea Whiz looking, right?”

  “Yeah. And the gun. But everything else is shut down.”

  “What you see,” the tech said again, a shrug in his voice.

  Big help. Dan took another deep breath and sighed it out. Shit, oh dear.