The Edge of Honor (43 page)

“CO and XO both want to be called if we get something going, Mr. Holcomb?”

“Yup. Austin, too. And we have to remember to get the BARCAP out of the way if we decide to try an engagement.”

“Ain’t no problem, there,” said the AIC, who had been listening in. “You start talkin’ Talos, I’ll salvo them sumbitches outta there in a flash.

Ain’t no CAP ever argues with a salvo order from a G-ship.”

“That’s good,” said Brian. “We won’t have a lot of time to screw around once we get into this little deal.”

He walked over into surface to make sure the cruiser was not drifting in on them. With her radars silenced, the big cruiser could not keep station on Hood in the darkness, so it was Hood’s job to keep the two-thousand-yard distance. The cruiser was still onstation. The surface guys were glad to have something to do; other than for the monthly run down to Yankee Station for replenishment, there had not been another ship within fifty miles of Hood for weeks.

At 0520, Fox made the call everyone was waiting for.

“Unknown air, three-three-five for one hundred twenty-five miles!

Estimate composition two.”

Brian peered down at the scope over Fox’s shoulder.

Fox had assigned the unknown symbols right away.

There appeared to be two Migs, loitering north and west of Hanoi, where there were several military airfields. The video blips were tiny, but they were definitely there.

“The geometry feasible?” he asked.

“Not yet, but they usually drift down to the capital on their way to altitude. After that, anything under one hundred miles is feasible; we should wait till they climb to altitude, though.”

“We need to alert Long Beacht’

“No, sir. They’re in the link, passive. They already know these guys are up. We should probably creep ahead of her, though, so they don’t have to fly those things over top of us.”

“Good thinking,” Brian said. He gave the orders to surface for relay out to the bridge, then began his calls to the CO, XO, and the Ops officer.

By the time they arrived in CIC, the two Migs had climbed out to nearly thirty thousand feet and a small crowd was gathering in D and D. The Migs continued to circle lazily, coming closer on each orbit to the data point on the screens marking the North Vietnamese capital city. Brian saw that the AIC was practically gnashing his teeth; with two slow-moving Migs on his screen, he would have loved to dispatch the BARCAP, even though it was against the rules to go after Migs near Hanoi. But he could not say anything over the uncovered air-control circuits that might alert any listeners ashore.

Although Brian was technically the evaluator, Austin began acting as evaluator as soon as he had absorbed the tactical picture. Brian found himself being eased to the back of the crowd of khaki bunched around the SWIC console. The captain asked Fox Hudson for an update.

“Two bogeys as candidates for Long Beach, Captain.

Tracks zero-three-two-three and zero-three-two-four, currently in the system as unknowns. Our intentions are to convert them to hostiles and place them under special track.”

The captain leaned closer to study the scope. “We got a shot here?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. They seem to be operating in a pattern that brings them between ninety-one and a hundred and five miles from our position, so this’ll be a max-range shoot. Long Beach will fire on command guidance when we give the word, and we’ll continue to track with the Spooks.

At mark intercept minus twenty seconds, we’ll key Long Beach to bring up her own tracking beams and illuminators, and she’ll release the missiles to semiactive homing.

After that—”

“After that, it’s ‘Good Morning, Vietnam,’ as that DJ says,” the exec finished.

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, inform Alfa Whiskey we’re going to start the program, and let’s do it,” said the captain, climbing into his chair.

“Aye, aye, sir.” Fox punched some buttons, converted the two tracks to hostiles, and sent the engage order to weapons control. Brian headed for the weapons module when he heard the order. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Garuda Barry come into Combat. When something goes down up here, the word sure gets around, he thought. The alerts were buzzing at FCSC by the time he stepped into the module. The FCSC made the assignments and the directors swung around overhead to flash the tracking beams onto the two aircraft orbiting over the North Vietnamese capital.

“SWIG, FCSC, System One tracking.” A pause.

“System Two tracking.”

Brian tried to envision the sequence on the cruiser: The link tracking data from Hood would be feeding into their Talps missile fire-control computers. Their own EC would give the load command, and the two-story high launcher on the cruiser’s fantail would line up with blast doors, lock the track latches, and then the forty-two foot-long missiles would slide out onto the launcher rails like a brace of Dobermans on a wire.

Then the launcher would train out to the firing bearing over the ship’s port quarter and elevate to boost position. Within seconds, internal power warm-ups would begin and the missiles would assign their guidance packages to command guidance.

Brian could see that Austin was talking on the secure UHF circuit to the cruiser. He nodded once and hung up the handset.

“Long Beach says they’re ready, wants us to give the shoot order the next time the Migs get out to max range of their orbit and turn inbound,” he told the captain.

There was a hushed silence in D and D as Fox studied the screen, watching the unsuspecting Migs.

“Ignorance is bliss,” muttered the exec.

“But they know we’re tracking them, don’t they?” Brian asked from the door to weapons.

“Yeah, but they don’t care about us. We track those guys all the time.

As far as they’re concerned, we’re forty-five miles out of range.”

“But the eight-hundred-pound gorilla next door isn’t,” offered Garuda.

“Give him a one-minute standby,” said Fox softly.

Austin passed it over the secure circuit. Sixty seconds passed, then another fifteen.

“Okay,” said Fox. “They’re turning. Give him shoot.” Austin the key and simply said, “Shoot.”

Almost at once came the bellow of a Talos solid-rocket booster from somewhere on the Hood’s starboard quarter, a huge noise that transitioned into a sustained thundering roar as the Talos howled out into the dawn sky, followed seconds later by its twin. The sound of the two missiles rattled the bulkheads in CIC for a full minute.

“Probably should have alerted the crew,” observed the exec. “Some guys are going to be jumping out of their racks with all that racket.”

“What’s the time of flight, Count?” asked the captain as the thunder of the boosters died away.

Austin turned around and looked at Brian as if to say, That’s a Weapons question.

Brian had worked it out with the FCSC. “About a hundred and ten seconds, Captain. We should bring them on the air in thirty-five more seconds,”

Brian answered, looking at the countdown clock on FCSC’s console.

The Captain nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Your call, Brian.”

Brian stared at the clock while he recomputed the math in his head.

Eighty-five miles, final velocity of three thousand miles an hour, but some seconds required to accelerate up to that speed. Yeah, about that.

“Mr. Austin, stand by, ten seconds to light-off.”

Austin keyed his handset. “Long Beach, this is Hood. Stand by”—he waited until Brian started to mouth the word ten—”ten, niner, eight, seven, six”—a pause to avoid using the word five, which in Weapons parlance could be confused with the word ./are—”four, three, two, energize. I say again, energize.”

The intercom panel on the evaluator table squawked into life.

“Evaluator, EW, Long Beach missile-tracking beam is on the air!”

Brian watched the little A-scope on the side of the EC console as the rest of the officers bunched in around SWIC’s console. In theory, the warning lights in the Mig cockpits would already be alight because of Hood’s tracking beams; hopefully, they would not notice the addition of the Talos tracking beams to the radiation being bounced off their aluminum skins.

“Evaluator, EW, Talos continuous wave illumination is on the air.”

“Okay, shut down,” ordered Brian. FCSC took the Terrier radars off the two Migs to avoid creating mutual interference. There was a flurry of conversation in D and D as the altitude readings on the Migs began to unwind in the SPS-48 readouts.

“Lookit them boogers head for the deck!” exclaimed Garuda. “They know what’s comin’ or what!”

Suddenly, the altitude readings stopped, at 18,500 feet.

“SWIC, Forty-eight Special Tracker: no video. I say again, I’ve lost video on track numbers zero-three-two three and zero-three-two-four!”

There was a chorus of cheers in D and D. For the first time, a transmission from Long Beach came over the secure-voice radio speaker, now that radio silence was no longer needed.

“Hood, this is Long Beach. Mark intercept, mark intercept. Video in the gates. Got the bastards. Two for two.”

“Awright!” exclaimed Garuda, doing a little victory jig behind the SWIC chair. The captain and exec were grinning broadly, and even Count Austin was smiling.

“Hood, this is Long Beach. We will be ready for turnover ops at first light. Request first helo to me at oh seven-thirty.”

The Captain nodded and Austin acknowledged. Brian walked back out into the D and D area from weapons, and the captain motioned for him to come over to his chair.

“That was a good piece of work, Weps. Tell your people ‘Well done.’ Your guys can paint one of those Migs on a barbette. Long Beach was the shooter, but we were the scope.”

“Thank you, sir. It was kind of neat.”

The captain leaned back in his chair, apparently well satisfied with the outcome of the operation. Brian, standing right next to his chair, felt like he ought to say something. He suddenly thought of Marcowitz. He cleared his throat while glancing quickly around D and D to see whether the exec was nearby. The exec was talking to Austin in the doorway to the surface module.

“Uh, captain, I was wondering what’s going to happen to Marcowitz.”

“Marcowitz?” The captain turned to look at him, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Yes, sir, FROM Two Marcowitz—the guy I caught in missile plot the other night.”

“Well, you’ve caught me somewhat off base, Brian.

The exec hasn’t briefed me on anything to do with a Marcowitz. Is there some problem I should know about?”

At that moment, Brian saw the exec turn back into D and D and he almost panicked.

“No, sir,” he said hastily. “It’s routine. I guess my mind just turned to admin matters now that we’re going back into port.” The exec walked over to the captain’s chair.

The captain smiled. “Well, I’m sure there’s lots of admin waiting on the pier for all of us.” He looked at his watch. “Breakfast time,” he said with a yawn and a stretch. “Then we have to do turnover. XO, this was a pretty good morning’s shooting.”

The captain and the exec then launched into a conversation about the Mig shoot-down while Brian withdrew to the weapons module. He didn’t know!

He didn’t know a damn thing about the Marcowitz drug bust! Brian thought hard. The exec had clearly told him that the captain wanted to hold off prosecuting Marcowitz until they got to Subic. And here was the captain completely in the dark on the whole incident. What the hell was going on?

The captain and the exec left Combat a minute later after voicing another round of congratulations to the watch team. The exec did not appear to have any inkling that Brian had asked about Marcowitz. And what would happen if the captain mentioned the name to the exec?

Brian did not want to think about that possibility. He walked over to the SWIC console, feeling more than a little uneasy. Hudson looked over his shoulder at him.

“Got the watch back?” he asked.

“I guess now that all the luminaries are leaving, I’ve become the evaluator again, huh?”

Fox laughed. “Roger that. But you’ll get used to it.

Anytime we do some big deal, you’ll usually find the Count and the CO and XO gravitating to D and D. It used to really piss off the engineering officer when Austin would come in and just start issuing orders. One day, he announced that Mr. Austin had the watch and walked out.”

“What happened?”

“Old Man fanged him.” Fox looked over his shoulder to see whether the big three were in hearing distance.

“See, there’re insiders and then there’re insiders, if you get my drift.

Nothing personal, just the way this command operates.”

So I’m finding out, Brian thought. “Okay. So what’s left of our watch?”

Fox looked at his watch. “We ought to have the Wager Bird checking in pretty soon; I saw a track coming in from the east before we went Mig hunting. Rest of the Heavenly Host will be along shortly. But the big deal for us today is turnover; we’ll start handing over our participating unit symbol in the link right away, then transfer Big Mother, the BARCAP control, the TACAN channel, and finally the call sign. When they start answering up as Red Crown on all the nets, we’re gone.”

“I’m ready. I think I’ll sleep through Subic.”

“Bet you don’t, sir.”

With turnover day finally over, Brian Holcomb was relaxing on the bridgewing, shooting the breeze with Jack Folsom, when Chief Jackson found him. The Sheriff hung back, staying on the catwalk that led aft from the bridgewing. He appeared to be enjoying the afterglow of the sunset, but he was obviously waiting to talk to Holcomb.

A fine breeze streamed over the bull rail as the ship plowed through the South China Sea on her way to the Philippines, some six hundred miles to the east.

Folsom finally noticed the chief master-at-arms.

“Sheriff,” he called. “Ready for Subic?”

“Not hardly, Mr. Folsom,” said Jackson, moving over to join them on the bridgewing. “Liberty nights in Subic are great for the troops but hell on the Sheriff. You figure: two hundred, three hundred guys discovering each night they like beer all over again.”

Folsom laughed. “Sailors belong on ships, and ships belong at sea, right, Chief?”