“And that’s the gist of it,” Lab Rat said, finishing up a summary of his conversation with Mike Packmeyer. “A good source, and it sounds like he knows what he’s doing.”
Tombstone turned to Pamela. “Does he?” he said bluntly.
Reluctantly, Pamela nodded. “He’s been in this area of the world for a long time. He knows the people, knows the normal movements?and what’s not normal. He’s been on a desk for a long time, but Packmeyer has good instincts.”
A guarded expression crept across her face. “Are you going to tell me what he tells you? I mean the next time?”
Tombstone considered the matter. “Maybe. It depends.”
“On what?” Pamela said, pressing the matter.
“On whether or not I decide to at the time,” Tombstone shot back. “No promises, Pamela. I’m not certain about this Packmeyer fellow, but I know what your priorities are. If he’s telling us the truth, then his are a bit different. At the same time, I’m not going to screw him over by feeding his stories to you if it’s going to hurt him.”
Pamela shook her head angrily. “You just don’t get it, do you?”
Tombstone shook his head. “No, I get it. You’re the one that won’t.”
“We’re only five miles from open water,” Batman said. “Five miles?dammit, you can see it from the bridge.”
The staff assembled around the table was silent. They all knew what their status was. Surrounded by a potentially activated minefield, the safest course was to simply sit where they were and wait for minesweeping help before proceeding.
But they didn’t have that luxury?not this time. Activating the minefield by itself was an act of war, and that didn’t even take into account the earlier attack on La Salle. Trapped here, not even moving forward at bare steerage, the carrier had lost its most potent weapon, the ability to launch and recover aircraft. Additionally, there were twenty fighters orbiting forty miles ahead over the Black Sea. Sooner or later, the tankers would exhaust their reserves and the fighters would be running on fumes.
Within the next hour, Batman would have to make the decision whether or not to bingo the fuel-starved aircraft to the naval base in Greece?that is, assuming that Greece would grant them landing rights.
Or Ukraine. He frowned, not wanting to consider that possibility.
Ukraine’s offer of assistance with the catapult had seemed wrong to him from the very first, as it had to Tombstone. Had it not been for the insistence of the State Department, the carrier would have remained in the relative safety of the Med, able to turn into the wind and generate enough airspeed across the deck to launch and recover aircraft. With the bare twenty fighters bingoing back and forth from an airfield somewhere, the carrier was almost completely exposed. Exposed, and trapped.
“Admiral, at least the Shiloh is with us,” his Chief of Staff said. “She’s a pretty potent ship.”
Captain Daniel Heather, CO of the Shiloh, who had ferried over by helo for the conference, nodded. “If we let the Spy One run the engagement, we can target and engage more incoming missiles and aircraft than any ship in the Navy.”
He frowned. “Of course, you all know the problem with sea-skimmers. The probability of kill is high?but not that high.”
“And this close to land, the odds go down dramatically,” the Air Operations officer chimed in. “Admiral, we need air cover?there’s no way around it.”
“I know that,” Batman said heavily. “We need our deck back.”
He turned to Captain Heather. “And as much as I hate to say it, there’s only one way I know to do that?break out of the Strait and get into the Black Sea.”
Captain Heather was a tall, muscular man. Pale blond hair cropped short topped blue eyes and a genial open face. He stared at Batman for a moment, a puzzled expression on his face. Then he paled markedly. “You’re serious?” he said, reading the admiral’s mind. Heather’s soft Georgia accent made the question sound mild. “We can do it, Admiral, but the cost is going to be hellacious.”
Batman nodded. “I know. But we’ve got no options right now. None at all. We can’t go back the way we came?that’s too far. Clear water lies five miles ahead, and there are no minesweepers around. As much as I hate to say it, the priority at this point is on the carrier. That means Shiloh takes point. You’ve got minesweeping duty, Captain.”
Captain Heather tried for an optimistic look. “It could be worse. Most of these are older mines, tethered near the surface. Some good lookouts, the motor whaleboat going out ahead, sonar will probably pick up most of them. The fifty-caliber-gun crews can detonate some of them, and we’ll vector around them if they can’t.”
Batman recognized and silently applauded the man’s courage. He was overstating the odds by a good deal, but you had to give him credit for recognizing the situation and realizing that Batman had only one possible choice. “You’ll want to get back to your ship soon, Captain,” Batman said gravely. “You have some preparations to make. For starters, I’d recommend having everyone up above the waterline.”
The captain nodded. “We’ll be buttoned up completely, you can count on it. If I may take my leave, Admiral?”
Batman nodded. “Godspeed. We’ll see you in the Black Sea. Be ready to get underway in twenty minutes.”
Precisely twenty minutes after his conversation with Admiral Wayne, Captain Heather began inching Shiloh forward. Two motor whaleboats as well as his own gig were in the water, arrayed in a loose half-diamond formation in front of the Aegis cruiser. They were each manned with a boat crew, and were proceeding slowly ahead, carefully scanning the water in front of them. Gun crews were just inside the skin of the ship, waiting to try their skills on any mines.
Shiloh herself was buttoned up for battle, setting full General Quarters stations. The ping of the sonar reverberated throughout the hull as she searched the water ahead with her underwater sensors, trying desperately to generate an active return off any mines ahead.
Captain Heather was on the bridge, pacing back and forth, adding his own eyes to the barrage of faces turned toward the water ahead.
The Shiloh was tough, built for survivability, especially against EMP?but not that tough. Even an ancient mine, cheap and easily obtainable by any nation in the world, could do her serious damage. At the very least, if it hit the forward part of the ship, it would blind her, ripping off the massive sonar dome that protruded down into the water from her bow twenty-eight feet.
“Another possible,” the OOD announced. It was the third alert in the last five minutes. “They’re vectoring to check it out.”
“Anything from sonar?”
The captain tried to keep his voice calm, but despite his best efforts, tension edged up on the bridge. “No, Captain. Not a thing.”
“Warn the gun crews. We’ll detonate it if we can.”
He took a moment to watch the others on the bridge, noting the stark concentration and fixed gaze on every man and woman’s face. This was one of the most deadly effects of a mine, much like the effects of a submarine?the sheer terror, the gut-wrenching uncertainty that it evoked in any surface ship. There was danger beneath the waves, unseen and undetectable. The small metal casings of the mines were generally below the ship’s detection threshold. A minesweeper, equipped with an SQR-14 sonar set, a high-frequency, specialized piece of gear designed specifically for this purpose, could ferret them out of their hidey-holes.
If he had one. That, and a Special Forces team to disarm the ones too deep to reach with the fifty-cals.
But they didn’t. All they had was the Shiloh, and the aircraft carrier two thousand yards behind her that
