Sea of Shadows

the Towers’ design offered a small angular module that protruded from the leading edge of the superstructure like a faceted bump.

Seen from the inside, it resembled the cockpit of a jumbo jet. Two contoured chairs, each surrounded by instrument-packed control consoles, dominated the small amount of floor space. The forward-most of these chairs belonged to the Helmsman, a junior petty officer whose primary duty was to steer the ship and issue speed commands to its engines.

Behind the Helmsman sat the Officer of the Deck; his chair was mounted on a platform to give him an unrestricted view through the angled bridge windows. In another break with nautical tradition, there were no chairs for the commanding officer, or his second in command, the executive officer.

Bowie stepped through the last watertight door and edged into the cramped control room. The Helmsman’s voice announced his presence before he had closed and dogged the door. “The captain’s on the bridge!”

Bowie squeezed in next to the OOD’s chair and grabbed the overhead handrail that was the only real provision for visitors. He began to shiver almost instantly as cool air from the circulation vents hit his sweat- drenched skin. “What have you got, Brett?”

Lieutenant Brett Parker looked up from his console. His boyishly good-looking features were taut, his normally mischievous green eyes dark and intense. He pointed out the window toward a pair of dark shapes skimming rapidly across the water: small boats, moving fast. The Bridge Heads-Up Display projected targeting symbols on the inside of the windows, superimposing red diamond-shaped brackets around each of the rapidly moving boats. “Sledgehammers, sir. Two of them, off the starboard bow — about a thousand yards out. Looks like they came in on the far side of that tanker and pretty much used it for cover until they got in close.”

Sledgehammer was the current Navy code word for a motorboat armed with an over-the-shoulder missile launcher.

Bowie felt his stomach tighten a fraction. “Damn.” He stared at the target symbols, and then at the small boats behind them. “Are you sure they’re Sledgehammers?”

“Pretty much, sir. They’ve made two high-speed runs on us already, sheering off suddenly both times. It looked like they were practicing missile approaches. And my Helmsman thought he saw a laser flash on the last pass.”

“I did, sir,” the Helmsman said. “A red dot, dancing on the side of the gun mount. I think it was a targeting laser, sir.”

Bowie nodded and looked around. “Did anybody else see it?”

The OOD shook his head. “I don’t think so, sir.”

“I saw the tanker when I was out there,” Bowie said. “But I didn’t see anything else.”

The Helmsman piped up immediately. “With all due respect, Captain, I know what I saw.”

The corners of Bowie’s mouth curled up in the faintest hint of a smile.

“Relax, son, I believe you. I was just wondering if anyone saw a laser from the second boat.”

A speaker crackled in the overhead. “Captain? This is the TAO. Are you watching these guys on MMS?”

The voice belonged to the ship’s Combat Systems Officer, Lieutenant Terri Sikes, currently standing duty as the Tactical Action Officer.

Bowie pressed the talk button on the comm box. “Not yet, Terri. Give us half a sec to get it punched up.” He nodded toward his OOD.

Lieutenant Parker tapped out a rapid-fire sequence of keys on his wraparound control console. A burst of video static blossomed on one of the three display screens and then instantly resolved itself into a coherent image: a direct video feed from the mast-mounted sight, a high-definition video camera mounted near the top of the mast.

The video was black-and-white, but the picture was exceptionally crisp.

The camera was locked on the nearer of the two speedboats. It was a cigarette boat: long and dagger- shaped, very fast and very low to the water. A continuous rooster tail of spray shot out from under the stern of the narrow fiberglass hull. The image jerked occasionally as the boat took a dip or a roll that the Towers’ optical tracking computer hadn’t anticipated.

Suddenly, the image froze and the Tactical Action Officer’s voice came over the speaker. “There!” she said. “Right there, sir. Do you see that?”

Bowie pressed the talk button on the comm box. “What am I looking for?”

A pixelized oval appeared on the screen, drawn in by the TAO using a light pen. The area inside the oval magnified itself to show a grainy image of the interior of the cigarette boat. Two men were visible, or people, anyway — it was impossible to tell more from the frozen image. One of the figures was hunched over a console, obviously driving. The second figure was half-crouched, hanging on to the windscreen with one hand. His other hand was wrapped around a rectangular object draped over his right shoulder.

Bowie’s stomach tightened another notch. “Got it.”

The oval disappeared, and the image leapt back to life. “Sir,” the TAO’s voice said, “that’s got to be a missile launcher. I think those bastards are going to light us up. Request permission to engage.”

Bowie watched the screen. “Not yet,” he said.

The boats were circling back around for another pass at the ship.

“Two boats,” Bowie said to himself. “No markings. They’re not terrorists, or they would have shot at us on the first pass. There’s no way to tell if they’re Siraji or Iranian, but it’s a decent bet that it’s one of the two. I don’t think anybody else around here is mad enough to shoot at us.”

Lieutenant Parker cleared his throat. “Uh, Captain … I have to agree with the TAO. Those boats are showing classic Sledgehammer attack profiles. We need to take them out before they get off a shot at us.”

An enunciator on the Helmsman’s console beeped once, lighting a green tattletale on his display panel. A second later, it beeped again, lighting another tattletale. “Material Condition Zebra is set throughout the ship,” the Helmsman announced. “All gunnery stations are reporting manned and ready for Tac-Sit One.”

Bowie kept his eyes on the black-and-white video. Something was funny here. If the cigarette boats really were Sledgehammers, why hadn’t they attacked yet? “I’m not sure that’s a missile launcher.”

“What else could it be, sir?”

Bowie glanced up for a half-second into the eyes of his Officer of the Deck. “It could be a video camera, Brett.”

The OOD’s voice nearly squeaked. “But they trained a laser on us. They’re targeting us, sir. It’s obvious.”

Bowie shook his head. “What’s obvious is that they’re trying to provoke us.”

The TAO’s voice came over the speaker. “Sledgehammers are inbound. I say again, Sledgehammers are inbound. Request permission to engage, sir!”

Bowie watched the video screen as the cigarette boats raced through the water toward his ship. The conditioned air of the bridge was turning his sweat-dampened skin to ice.

Sledgehammers were every skipper’s nightmare. They were the poor man’s navy: a boat, a shoulder- launched weapon, one idiot to drive, and another to shoot. Presto: instant navy. Not enough firepower to take out a warship, but more than enough to damage it. And even modest damage to a U.S. warship would be an incalculable propaganda coup for a third-rate nation.

Of course, if he blew the boats away and it turned out that they were not armed, then that would be a propaganda coup against the United States as well. The local nutcases weren’t above sending out boats armed only with bulky old-fashioned video cameras and harmless laser pointers, hoping to spook a warship into attacking them.

Bowie’s mouth felt suddenly dry. His intuition told him that the boats would have attacked by now if they were going to. He hoped like hell that his intuition wasn’t about to get somebody killed. “Negative. Do not engage.” Bowie could feel the crew on the bridge stiffen.

A flicker of red light shot through a side window and played around the interior of the bridge for a split- second before vanishing.

The Helmsman shouted, “Targeting laser!”

“Do not engage!” Bowie repeated. He waited about two heartbeats and then added, “I have the Conn. All engines ahead flank! Right full rudder!”