Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (12 page)

He fidgeted, annoyed. That was their mission. Not hanging out here inspecting sixty-foot fishing dhows. But the shortage of frigates, now that the Perrys had almost all been retired or given away, meant the Navy had to use high-value ships in low-value missions. “This saves money?” he muttered.

“Sir?” Max Mytsalo, the cherub-faced officer of the deck. He was new to the job, but so far, Dan liked the way he stood his watches. A little overanxious, but better that than bored.

“Nothing. Just talking to … nothing.”

He caught the glances from around the pilothouse, and cursed. Exactly what he wanted them to pass around the ship: that the skipper was talking to himself. Still, their patrol area had been shifted farther east, closer to Socotra. Hormuz was only a thousand miles’ steaming from there.

*   *   *

HE
was in his in-port cabin with the light off, trying to conduct a quick eyelid inspection, when the ship heeled in an unscheduled turn, superstructure creaking to a new rhythm. His eyes snapped open. Two seconds later the cabin J-phone and his Hydra went off simultaneously. He got to the radio first. “CO.”

Pardees, for once sounding not totally carefree
. “Captain, got a report from a ro-ro in the IRTC. Shadowed by two boats acting in a suspicious manner. Now under attack with antitank grenades. Plots twenty miles to the east. Coming to course to intercept, increasing speed to flank.”

“Okay, good. Sound general quarters, surface action, and call away the boarding team. I’ll be right up.”

*   *   *

HE
leaned on the splinter shield, in life jacket, flash gear, and the gray helmet stenciled
CO
. The bridge team was buttoning up. Down on the main deck, the five-inch train warning bell began ringing.

“Chain guns, manned and ready.”

“Phalanx in surface mode.”

“Mount 51, manned and ready.”

“Mount 52, manned and ready.”

Pardees leaned out. “All stations manned and ready, Captain. Time: one minute, fifty-two seconds. Material condition Zebra set throughout the ship. Boarding team and boat crew manned and ready.”

“Very well.” Dan glanced aft, to a raised hand from the boatswain’s mate chief, back by the boat falls. The RHIB was swung out; the boarding team, in combat gear, helmets, carrying shotguns and M16s, stood with duffels at their boots, swaying in unison as
Savo
rolled. It was rough for boat ops, but within the margin of acceptability.

First, though, he’d check these guys out visually. If they showed hostile intent, he’d deal with them out of range of the Kalashnikovs and RPGs that typically formed pirate armament hereabouts. He leaned on the coaming again, binoculars searching through the heat shimmer, the red haze. The wind was behind them, and their exhaust added to the seethe of the atmosphere. He hadn’t caught sight of the pirates yet, though radar had two faint pips astern of their assumed quarry.

The tremendous squared-off blue-and-white box was slogging along at ten knots as the fog blew past it like a cavalcade of specters. Dan had talked to its bridge on channel 10, and had messaged MSCHOA, UKMTO Dubai, MIRLO, the NATO shipping center, and CTF 151 that he was going to the assistance of M/V
Mons Neptune,
a Japanese-owned, Caymans-flagged ro-ro. It was enormous, a supership at least a quarter mile long. Ro-ros—roll-on, roll-off—carried anything with wheels, though he guessed this one would be carrying gleaming new Toyotas and Hondas and Lexuses. The pirates would be more interested in what portables and cash they could steal from the crew or by breaking into the safe, as he’d observed off Ashaara, when he’d been deployed to help protect and rebuild that failing country.

“Small-boat contact. Two small boats,” a quartermaster shouted from the flying bridge, above him. He was on the Big Eyes, huge pedestal-mounted binocs with objectives the size of dinner plates.

“Where away?”

“About zero-two-zero relative.”

He refocused and caught one, then the other, as they rose on a swell. Just specks, through haze. But something odd … they were headed in different directions. “What’s CIC say about their course and speed?”

“Wait one … sir, they hold them essentially DIW.”

Dead in the water. Dan frowned. Not what you expected, if they were carrying out an attack. On the other hand, if they’d caught sight of
Savo Island,
they might be turning tail. “Bump her up to flank. Designate to guns, but weapons tight until I give the word.”

Over the next ten minutes they made up so swiftly on the tossing boats that it was clear neither had way on. They grew into dark craft with complexly curved, lofty prows, not a bit like the high unwieldy dhows of the Gulf. No masts, and apparently no deckhouses either. The housings of outboard motors gleamed at their sterns, but cocked up, propellers dipping into the water as the bows rose and fell violently, throwing spray. At Dan’s direction, Pardees made an upwind pass at five hundred yards, while the Big Eyes and Dan’s own binoculars studied them. Five souls in one craft, six in the other. Bare-chested, dark-skinned men, in white turbans or headdresses. They waved frantically.

“Sucking us into range?” the exec said, beside him. The issue helmet was far too big on her and looked faintly silly. Her holstered 9mm looked less jolly, though.

Dan had been wondering the same thing, and fighting apprehension. This was how
Horn
had died, sucked in close to a small ship that had then, inexplicably, detonated into light too hellish for the human eye. How to separate emotion from logic, experience from fear? “Maybe. Noah, let’s do another pass. No closer than two hundred yards.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

On the second pass Dan, on the flying bridge now, bent to peer through the mounted optics. He could see the crews now as well as if they were beside him. They looked emaciated and desperate. No weapons, but they could be lying in the ceiling boards, or otherwise concealed. The tanker had specifically mentioned an RPG being fired. According to his ROEs, he could take them under fire and sink them based solely on that.

He took a deep breath, aware he was asking men to run a risk. When he looked up, the clouds were fleeing across the sky, and a squall grayed the horizon to the southwest. “Cheryl, I want you in CIC. Maintain a three-sixty awareness while my head’s in this situation. And make sure we’re taping from the gun cameras. Noah, park us upwind, and put the boat in the water.”

*   *   *

SAVO
rolled two hundred yards off. As the gray rigid-hulled inflatable motored past, the first few heavy drops of cool rain spattered on the deck like thrown pebbles. Dan looked down. At young Max Mytsalo, the boat officer. SK3 Kaghazchi, their designated Farsi speaker, who’d admitted a few words of other local languages. Braced at the stern, Seaman Peeples. They were hanging on as the RHIB skipped across the waves, rising and falling on the swells, then altering course to circle the nearest boat. The whine of the engine dropped, and the RHIB fell from its plane and its bow wave rolled on without it. The hulls surged in off-rhythm, then, for the briefest moment, matched. At that moment the squall-line swept over
Savo
and they vanished in a downpour that cascaded all around Dan, cold as a mountain stream, wetting him to the skin.

The noise all but blotted out the next radio call.
“Matador, this is Matador One.”

Dan retreated into the signal bridge, clicked his Hydra as the windshield wipers flailed and jerked. The rain was noisy in here, too, and he turned the volume up. “What’ve you got, Gene?”

“Five skinnies. Extremely agitated. Screaming and crying. No guns I can see.”

“Take up the floorboards. Conduct a thorough search. Look for ladders and grapnels, along with weapons. You got rain coming your way. We’re in a heavy downpour right now.”

“Not much to search, sir. Pretty bare bones. They might have dumped them overboard when they saw us coming.”

That was possible. Or they might not have been armed at all. Dan kept his eyes on the other boat, just in case. Too close for the five-inch, but below him on the main deck, and beside him on the wing, the 7.62s, 50-cals, and chain guns rose and fell as the crew kept the sights on their targets.

The ensign again
. “One of these guys talks a little English. He says they had a rifle, to defend themselves, but they threw it overboard when they saw us. He says they’re out of water and gas. They’ve got a flare pistol. One of those plastic things.”

“Smell it,” Dan said. “Over.”

“Sorry, sir? Over.”

“The pistol. Smell it.”

“Got it, sir. Yessir, it’s been fired. Recently. The guy here is nodding like hell. Pointing to it, then the sky. Over.”

“All right. Good.” He clicked off, reconstructing the scene. The boats adrift, out of gas, out of water. The massive ro-ro shouldering up over the horizon, first a blue-and-white dot, then filling the sky. The pistol had been their last despairing chance. Unfortunately, the bridge team on the tanker had taken the lofting flare for the launch of an antitank grenade. He was a little in awe of these guys anyway. Two hundred and fifty miles out at sea, in a thirty-foot boat without even a deckhouse?

The downpour eased and he strolled out again. Staurulakis joined him, tucking her hair under her cap. “Take them into custody, sir?”

“Cheryl. Um, no, I don’t see any need to do that.” He ambled to the side of the flying bridge and looked down. Rainwater gleamed, bent streams rainbowing from the scuppers. Pardees looked up from the wing. “Noah, bring us alongside. And ask Hermelinda and Ollie to come up.”

*   *   *

THE
stench of unwashed men and fish and heaped damp nets rose from the boats. The dark wet faces stared up with hope, fear, awe, resentment. Dan surveyed them as Jacob’s ladders went over. It looked like a hard way to make a living. Watching the huge powerful ships parade past … He could understand why a penniless and desperate fisherman might turn pirate.

The boatswain yelled orders, and blue plastic water containers and bags of rice and beans went down into the boats. Also a compass. Unfortunately, Ticos no longer carried any gasoline, so he couldn’t help them with fuel.

Dan clattered down the ladder and back into the bridge to check the radar picture, keep from being sucked into the micro. The wind was kicking up. As soon as Uskavitch reported water and food offloaded, Dan ordered the RHIB back aboard.

He went out onto the bridge wing and looked down again. A very tall Somali was standing in the prow of the nearest boat as it pitched heavily.

Dan pointed south. “Three hundred kilometers,” he shouted down. The Somali squinted, then grinned unpleasantly. He pointed, as if mimicking Dan, but to the southwest. “Okay, you don’t need a compass,” Dan muttered. He raised his voice into the pilothouse. “Let’s get back on track. Fifteen knots.”

When he looked back, the boats were specks again under a swiftly darkening sky. Then the mist, or fog, moved in again, freight-trained on the endless wind, obliterating them.

*   *   *

THE
room was small, square, low-overheaded. A green curtain hung across the door to the berthing area. By long and honored tradition, no one entered the Chief’s Mess, also known as the Goat Locker, unless invited. Including the skipper.

Ushered in, Dan shook hands with Tausengelt, Wenck, Van Gogh, Quincoches, Toan, Anschutz, Zotcher, Grissett, McMottie, and others. He knew them all, though some, like the chief corpsman, the sonar chief, the quartermaster, and the assistant navigator, he worked with more closely than others. He slid onto the picnic-style bench, taking in the bug juice machines, the patriotic posters, the swimsuited near-nude that skirted official acceptability.
Savo
had no female chiefs yet. He needed to look into that.

A messman brought in aluminum trays. Italian day: caesar salad, spaghetti and meatballs, cheese, tomatoes, fresh hot bread with crunchy crust, butter in ice. Everything was piping hot, and as soon as it hit the table the chiefs dug in like starving wolves, hardly talking, though perhaps his presence cast a pall.

The U.S. Navy was built on its chief petty officers. The sobering thing was that now, when he looked around, their faces seemed unmarked, young, nearly childlike. Only Tausengelt was Dan’s age, and compared to the E-7s, the master chief looked ancient as lava. Did he look that old too? Was he the Old Man in fact as well as in name?

He asked Grissett, “Chief, how’s our binnacle list?”

“The, uh, crud seems to’ve slacked off, sir. Maybe getting out of that fucking dust helped.”

“It knocks you down for a long time. You feel like lying down every couple of minutes,” Zotcher said. The little sonar chief, who looked like Doenitz, had always struck Dan as less than a hard worker. He’d actually caught the guy asleep on watch, though he’d pleaded illness, and kept finding reasons to mention it. But Zotcher had taken a bullet for the ship when the former exec had cracked, started waving a pistol and threatening people in CIC. “We headed for Hormuz, Captain?”

“Waiting for word. But get your people ready for shallow-water work. And some strange currents.”

“That’s what’s giving us this fog. The Ekman Spiral. A monsoon phenomenon, east of Socotra. The southwest winds push the surface water offshore. The cool water comes up from below. You get boundary layer saturation and fog and low stratus development. Extending the mixed layer, and pushing the thermocline down.”

Dan nodded, registering its impact on possible submarine detection ranges. “Be there in two days, at flank speed,” Van Gogh said. The quartermaster.

The ship’s channel was rebroadcasting a baseball game. “Who’s playing?” Dan asked.

“Orioles and Tigers.”

“Wait a minute. How the heck are we getting that?”

Donnie Wenck said, through a mouthful of meatballs, “Pulled it off a commercial satellite. There’s some DC-2 encryption you got to unscramble, but—”

“Captain don’t need to know that,” Tausengelt put in.