usable information by pairing it with a physical movement. Her eyes were slightly unfocused. He felt as though he were eavesdropping on some private conversation between Green and her innermost self.
Amazing, the amount of information that must be stowed beneath that pretty face. Anything she’d ever seen, anything she’d ever heard, it was still lodged in there somewhere, just waiting for her to call it up. For a moment he wondered whether it would be overwhelming.
“Here goes nothing,” she said finally. Her fingers curled around the shutter mechanism, rock steady on the handle. She started blinking the light off and on.
At first, the lookout thought it was just the tropical sun glinting off the ocean. The pattern was irregular, but there was definitely a pattern to the short flashes that caught his eyes as he scanned his sector of the ocean. Then he noticed that the flashing seemed to shift in a linear pattern, proceeding in a straight line directly for
“Combat, starboard lookout. I’m holding a contact,” and he reeled off a relative bearing and range, and then added, “Can’t see anything yet except the sun reflecting off anything.”
“Roger, starboard lookout, wait one.” Silence on the line for a moment, then, “We hold a small contact doing 22 knots along that bearing. It looks to be headed directly for us.”
The lookout felt a small shiver of disappointment. Not a submarine — but the next words perked up his spirits again.
“She’s BCRD — bearing constant, range decreasing. Keep a close eye on her. Could be a terrorist attack of some sort.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m seeing. It’s not changing bearing much but it’s getting stronger,” the lookout said, now excited again. Then he heard “Conn, Combat. Recommend you deploy the surface gunners. Small boat, potentially hostile, inbound BCRD.”
“Roger,” the officer of the deck acknowledged. Seconds later, the lookout heard the 1MC spring into life.
“Secure from flight quarters. Red deck, I say again, red deck. Now man all fifty-caliber gunnery stations for surface action on the starboard bow.”
“Combat, I’m coming left slightly to open up gunnery stations,” the lookout heard the OOD say. “Keep me advised.”
For a brief moment, the lookout wished that he’d taken his recruiter’s advice and gone into a weapons specialty instead of a deck rating. If he had, he could be one of the people racing through the passageways right now to get to the fifty-caliber gun stations.
Not that being a deck rating was that bad. With some time and study, he’d probably become a quartermaster or a signalman. Hell, he was already making good progress on learning —
“Combat, starboard lookout!” he shouted, forgetting to push the button down. When no one answered, he repeated the call up, this time activating the button. “This flashing — I don’t know for sure, but it looks like it could be flashing light.”
Silence for a moment, then, “Lookout, Combat. Hold on, we’re getting the signalmen on it.”
“You can’t shoot at him until you know,” the lookout blurted out. Sure, he was just a junior seaman, but this was
“Stand fast, lookout,” a new voice said over the circuit, slightly amused yet chiding. “You did a good job. Now let us do ours. TAO out.”
The tactical action officer. A shiver of pride ran up the lookout’s spine. Usually he only talked to the petty officer running the surface plot, maybe occasionally the chief if he screwed up. But an officer!
“You getting anything, honey?” he asked.
“Nope. The radio’s clobbered,” she answered. “Everybody with a radio’s screaming for information. Even if the carrier’s listening, she’s not going to be able to pick us up out of the noise.”
He swore silently. Maybe they should just head back into port. But no, he couldn’t see that as an option, not until they knew what was going on. They had food, water, enough fuel to survive out here for a week if they had to. He’d head for another island before he’d put in to home port.
“I see the carrier,” he said out loud. “She’s headed toward us. And something else — there’s a small craft headed directly toward her. And what the hell — is that flashing light I see?”
“Does the carrier see it?”
“She has to by now. They’ve got a lot more lookouts that we do.”
“You complaining about my performance, Skipper,” she asked with a slight smile.
“Of course not. It’s just that — ”
“I know. You want to do something and you can’t.”
“Yeah. Listen, let’s make another circuit a little closer in to land. Try to gather some intelligence. With a little luck, a lot of these weekend boaters will start heading in and clear the frequency,” he said.
TEN
It had only taken a quick look at the entrance to the harbor to dissuade Captain Tran from even considering entering it. If the long-range view of smoking ships half-sunken in the water and otherwise empty piers had not convinced him, the message traffic that they downloaded from the satellite would have. One message sent over the battle group’s dedicated circuit was of particular interest — and oddly enough, rather than go through the communications facility on the island, it came over the LINK.
None of the higher-level planning made much difference to Otter and Renny. Searching one piece of ocean was pretty much like searching any other spot, except for a few local differences. For the most part, it was as exciting as watching grass grow.
After another hour on the sonar stack, Jacobs finally heard a sound that brought him bolting upright in his chair. He shut his eyes and concentrated for a moment. “Bilge pump,” Jacobs announced confidently. “No doubt in my military mind.”
“Let me double-check with engineering,” the chief said, nodding his agreement. “Make sure they haven’t got something lit off we don’t know about.”
“I think I’d know if it were ours, Chief,” the sonarman said, his voice slightly offended. “I mean, after all.”
“I know, I know. But it never hurts to double-check.” The chief turned away and spoke quietly into the sound-powered phone. A moment later, he left the sonar shack for a few moments, then returned with a satisfied look on his face. “General Quarters and quiet ship,” he said. “Skipper wants to track this baby down and get her moving. If it’s a nuke, it’ll make enough noise for us to get a good classification on her. And if it’s a diesel, we’ll force her to suck down some battery power. Sooner or later, she’ll have to snorkel and light off her engines to
