desperately needed open ocean.
“Sir?” The OOD turned toward him, his eyes fixed on the water ahead.
“There may be counters,” he concluded quietly, “and we might not see them in time.”
“I know. Let’s just make sure we find them before we have to worry about that.”
He tried to smile.
“We’ll get’em, Captain.” The OOD’s voice was firm and clear. He took a deep breath, turned back toward the watch crew, and issued a stream of orders and encouragements that steadied them.
A good man?how the hell do we build them like that?
Not a one of them over thirty, most of them are under twenty-five, and they’re doing a job that no one else in the world can do.
In that moment, the Captain of the Shiloh, a man with twenty-five years in the Navy and five at-sea commands, was so proud of his crew he could have cried.
He turned away from the OOD to hide the expression on his face. Just as he did, the ship rocked violently to starboard. Seconds later, water geysered up on the port side, spewing against the bridge window glass and splashing against the closed bulkheads.
The captain lost his balance as Shiloh pitched further and further to starboard, and loose gear and sailors slid across the deck toward the starboard side. He felt himself skid, and hit the deck hard with his right hip.
His eyes sought out the inclinometer. Twenty degrees, twenty-five?the red needle tipped toward thirty, then passed it.
Thirty-five degrees, forty. He knew a moment of despair, and yelled, “Come on, Shiloh! You can do it, you can do it,” urging the ship to recover from the roll.
The screams from the crew on the deck and throughout the ship almost drowned him out. Even braced as they were for the possibility of a mine, sailors would be thrown free, rammed into gear, and pinned by sliding equipment. Shiloh was built to take punishment, but serving as a minesweeper had never been in her design specs.
The moment lasted forever. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, he felt the ship hesitate in her downward swing. She hung there, suspended between water and sky, the ocean clearly visible through her starboard hatch porthole, far closer than it had any right to be.
The heel back to port started slowly, the barest shift in her deck evidence of her center of gravity taking control of the problem. The rate of change accelerated markedly, and Shiloh rocked violently to port, almost as far as she had to starboard. Injured sailors slid back across to the other side of the bridge, frantically grasping for a handhold, arms flung around the radar repeater, the corner of the plotting table?anything to stop their mad plummet from side to side as the ship rocked.
It seemed an eternity, but three minutes later the Shiloh settled into a five-degree list to starboard. Damage-control reports began pouring in from the outlying teams.
The captain swore violently and turned to the OOD, who was just regaining his feet. The OOD had his weight all on one leg, the other one trailing oddly behind him. He clutched his arm close to him, white and pasty- faced.
“Are you okay?” the captain asked.
The OOD started to crumple. The captain darted forward, grabbed him, and laid him out flat on the deck. He turned to the boatswain’s mate of the watch. “The corpsman?get him up here as soon as you can.”
“Aye, aye, Captain?but Damage Control just reported he’s down in the mess decks with two critically injured sailors.”
The captain turned to the junior officer of the deck. “You have the deck, mister. Get me a damage-control status.”
He glanced at the JOOW?the junior officer of the watch. “You still have the conn.”
Noting that both men looked stricken and shaken, he added, “Just do it the way we’ve trained. That’s all I ask. If you have any questions, speak up. But for now, you have my complete trust and confidence. Get hot.”
He turned his attention away from the ship and back to the frantic messages from the damage-control teams being relayed over the sound-powered telephones. They’d taken a hit to port and the mine had opened up a two- foot, almost circular jagged hole on the forward bow. Sonar had dogged the compartment down. They reported there was little chance of repairing the damage, but that they would simply maintain watertight integrity.
“Did everyone get out?” the captain asked tersely. He could see it in his mind, one of the moments he dreaded and saw in his nightmares?men trapped behind a dogged-down hatch, struggling against rising water, drowning while still within the confines of the ship. He shuddered, trying to think.
“They all got out, Captain.”
The Damage Control phone talker looked as relieved as he felt. Instead of cheering, however, the captain nodded. “Very well.”
He dismissed the matter and turned his attention to the next crisis.
“What are they doing, Bird Dog?” Gator demanded. “Dammit, I can’t see from back here.”
“Hold on, I’ll give you a look.”
Bird Dog’s voice was grim. He put the Tomcat into a tight circle, edging closer to the mouth of the Bosphorus. “We could overfly.”
“No way.” Gator’s voice was firm. “That Aegis is going to be one pissed-off cruiser, and we’re not getting anywhere near the edge of her engagement envelope. You’re not anyway?not as long as I’m in the backseat.”
The two aviators gazed down at the ship ten miles from them. Aside from the cloud of dirty, debris-laden water churning around her starboard side, there wasn’t anything apparently wrong with her. Sure, there were no sailors on the weather decks, and she was not making any way. That and the motor whaleboats arrayed out in front of her would alone have been enough to cause them concern.
They listened to reports Shiloh made to the carrier on the mine strike, each one silently thanking their higher powers that they were aviators instead of surface sailors. If they were going to die in battle, let it be in freedom, in airspace, and by their own mistakes?not trapped in a ship, maybe even below the waterline.
“Dammit, I wish there was something we could do to help,” Bird Dog muttered.
“Not a thing except keep the bad guys off them,” Gator said. He shook his head. “That ship?hell of a captain on her.”
“Lead, Two.” The quiet voice over the tactical coordination circuit was from Skeeter. “Is there anything we can do?” he asked, unconsciously echoing Bird Dog’s comment just moments earlier.
“Not a thing, Two. You heard the report. How’s your fuel state?”
“Seven thousand pounds?enough for now.”
“Roger. Don’t waste it, Skeeter. The tanker’s still out here, but those Hornets suck down gas like it’s going out of style. Loiter speed, most conservative airspeed?you know the drill, straight out of the books.”
“Just like you did a little while ago?” Skeeter asked innocently.
Bird Dog sucked in a hard breath at the young pilot’s audacity.
Evidently, his wingman was not going to quickly forget about his dash on afterburner. He started to answer, then gave it up as a lost cause as Gator howled in the backseat with laughter. “Whose side are you on anyway?”
Gator ripped off his oxygen mask, choking and spluttering. “Dammit, it’s about time I saw that?that young’un’s gonna give you a taste of your own medicine, Bird Dog. Oh, shit, I can’t believe he said that-“
Gator’s voice broke off as a new peal of laughter ripped through him.
“Yeah, well?it’s about teamwork, isn’t it?” Bird Dog muttered.
The squeal of the RHAWS ESM warning gear cut through Gator’s jocularity. The RIO swore and reached for the silent switch. “F-14’s inbound, Bird Dog?and they ain’t ours. Based on their direction, I make them from Turkey.”
“Concur,” Bird Dog said crisply. He flipped over to the tactical circuit. “You getting it, Skeeter?”
“Got it.”
“High-low?I’ll take high.”
Bird Dog goosed the jet up, settling in the classic high-low combat spread that was the favorite fighting
