Sea of Shadows

made the ship functionally invisible to infrared sensors or heat-seeking missiles. And in this age of three- dimensional Battle Space Management, stealth was paramount.

His ship, USS Towers, had been built from the keel up with stealth in mind. She was 529 feet long, 66? feet wide, and (if the media hype was to be believed) virtually invisible. The fourth (and last) ship in the heavily modified third “Flight” of Arleigh Burke Class destroyers, Towers was an example of cutting-edge military stealth technology. She was not, however, the “ghost ship” suggested by news magazines and Internet Web sites. In fact, from his vantage point running circles around her deck, it was difficult for Bowie to imagine how the destroyer even rated her official classification as a “Reduced Observability Vessel.”

The low pyramid shapes of her minimized superstructure and the severely raked angle of her short mast gave her a decidedly strange profile, but she was far from invisible — up close anyway. From a distance of a few thousand yards, however, that began to change. Ninety-plus percent of her exposed surfaces were covered with polymerized carbon-fiber PCMS tiles. Although designed primarily to absorb enemy radar, this newest generation of the Passive Countermeasure System had another handy feature: the rubbery tiles were impregnated with a phototropic pigment that changed color in response to changes in lighting. In bright sunlight, the tiles were a dusty blue-gray that blended into the interface between sea and sky remarkably well. As the light dimmed, the PCMS tiles would darken accordingly, reaching a shade approaching black when the ship was in total darkness.

Although the cumulative effect was a far cry from invisibility, it camouflaged the ship’s outlines enough to make her hard to see at a distance, not only reducing the range at which she could be detected visually, but also making it difficult for any optically based sensor — from the human eyeball to high-resolution video cameras — to determine her size, course, or speed.

A state-of-the-art thermal suppression system performed similar magic for the ship’s infrared signature, while the radar-absorbent PCMS and the carefully calculated geometries of her hull and superstructure gave the long steel warship a radar cross section only a little larger than the average fiberglass motorboat.

Every cleat, chock, and padeye was designed to fold down and lock into its own form-fitting recess in the deck when not in use. Although intended strictly as a means of shaving another fraction off the ship’s radar cross section, the hide-away fittings made for a remarkably uncluttered deck — which in turn made it a pretty good place to run.

The high-tech razzle-dazzle extended to the ship’s acoustic signature as well. Seventh-generation silencing, including an acoustically isolated engineering plant, active noise-control modules, and the venerable (but still effective) Prairie and Masker systems, made Towers a difficult target for passive sonar sensors. Popular rumor held that she, and her sister ships in the Flight Three Arleigh Burke Class, were quieter cruising through the water at twenty knots than most warships were tied to the pier. That was an exaggeration, but not by much.

When he came to the aft end of the superstructure, Bowie curved to his left, dodging a pair of Gunner’s Mates engaged in lubricating Mount 503, the aft-starboard .50-caliber machine gun. The arc of his improvised running track took Bowie around the aft missile launcher and back to the starboard side of the ship. The aft missile launcher marked the halfway point for each lap.

Only four more laps to go. Bowie’s daily routine called for twenty-five and a half laps, which he had worked out to be about three miles. Once upon a time he’d done five miles a day, but then he’d discovered that while on board ship he didn’t eat the right kinds of foods to fuel that sort of regimen. The extra mileage had pushed his metabolism into the catabolic zone, burning up muscle tissue as well as fat.

Maybe when he returned to shore duty he’d need to crank back up to five miles a day to keep away the nearly inevitable swivel-chair spread.

But that was in the future, a future that he wasn’t quite ready to think about. A future in which he would no longer command what he considered to be the finest warship in the Pacific Fleet.

Bowie increased his stride a little as he turned up the starboard side.

The ship’s motion through the water generated relative wind, and running toward the bow, he was headed back into it.

Off to his right, an oil tanker was passing down the starboard side. It was an enormous thing — a supertanker — nearly twice as long as Towers, with an unloaded displacement of about three hundred thousand tons, rising maybe fifty feet above the water and obscuring his vision to starboard. The paint on its orange hull and white superstructure was bright and well maintained. It rode low in the water now, a sure indication that its tanks were full. Based on its size, Bowie estimated that it was carrying somewhere around two million barrels of oil.

The supertanker was about fifteen hundred yards out and nearing its closest point of approach. Bowie already knew that the big ship would pass Towers with a comfortable safety margin, but he couldn’t stop himself from rechecking its position and heading every time he came around the deck for another lap. He knew that the Officer of the Deck had the situation well in hand, but — when it came to collision avoidance — it never hurt to have another pair of eyes open.

In the distance astern of and beyond the tanker, a pair of oil platforms squatted on the horizon, their images wavering like mirages in the desert-heated air. The larger of the platforms belched enormous plumes of fire into the sky as its flare tower burned off the natural gas that accumulated as a natural consequence of the oil-pumping process. It was a routine procedure that the local oil rig crews referred to as “off-gassing.” The Middle Eastern oil fields were so productive that it was marginally cheaper to incinerate natural gas than to containerize and ship it.

The wind was hot in Bowie’s face, and he was beginning to look forward to the brief stretch of cool air he would find in the starboard break.

He checked an urge to put on a burst of speed. Running in the heat was all about pacing yourself. Patience, he thought. Patience.

He glanced at the supertanker again. Oil. In the end, everything came down to oil. The light-sweet crude that these fields held in such abundance was easily fractionalized into kerosene, diesel fuel, and gasoline — the very lifeblood of the industrialized world.

Bowie had done an experiment with a globe once. He had discovered that he could cover all of the Arabian Gulf and most of the OPEC nations under the tips of two fingers. The idea that such a disproportionately small area had the power to influence events all over the planet was frightening.

When you factored in the region’s political instability, the whole situation got scary as hell.

Bowie reached the boat deck and ran past the RHIBs, the ship’s two Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boats.

Suddenly, an alarm sounded: a jarring electronic klaxon that pounded its discordant rhythm out of every topside speaker. Bowie’s easy jog turned instantly to a sprint. He was already into the starboard break and opening the outer door to the airlock when the alarm was replaced by the amplified voice of the Officer of the Deck.

“General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations. Set Material Condition Zebra throughout the ship. Commanding officer, your presence is requested on the bridge.”

Five seconds later, Bowie was climbing the first of the four steeply inclined ladders that would take him to the bridge. He passed a dozen Sailors, all headed in different directions, toward their battle stations.

Those who got caught in his path were quick to leap out of the way. One did not delay the captain under the best of circumstances, and certainly not when he was headed toward the bridge for General Quarters.

Bowie’s running shoes pounded up the aluminum steps two at a time.

He hadn’t approved any training drills for this morning, so the emergency (whatever it was) had to be real.

He nearly ducked into his at-sea cabin to grab a set of coveralls and a pair of boots, but the OOD’s amplified voice came over the 1-MC speakers again. “Away the Small Craft Action Team. Now set Tac-Sit One. This is not a drill.”

Bowie put on a burst of speed as he hit the last ladder. Screw the coveralls. If the OOD was declaring Tactical Situation One, he was expecting immediate combat. Something was getting ugly fast, but what in the hell could it be?

* * *

The bridge on board Towers was a break with a centuries-old tradition in shipbuilding. In place of a customary “walk-around” style pilothouse that ran from one side of the ship to the other,