“Yes, si—” Williams stopped talking, aware that all he could do was get in more trouble at this point.
“I’m sending down a couple of guys to help secure the hangar bay doors. We’ve got a report of some small craft in the area.”
Williams’s heart sank. With the hangar bay doors shut, the entire area would feel like a tomb. “Roger,” he acknowledged. “Standing by.”
“Yeah, right. Just do what they tell you.”
Fireman Apprentice Audrey Smith was no more thrilled with her Navy adventure than Airman Williams was. She had followed a similar track to the ship, the difference being six months of Engineman A school rather than Data System, and she’d done two more months in the galley than he had. Unlike Williams, she was already used to her operational watch station as a lookout. She had been rotated through the various stations, and tonight was on the starboard bridge wing, sound-powered phone clamped over her ears and binoculars making circles around her eyes.
Smith preferred the late-night watches to the daytime ones. There were fewer people around, which meant fewer people to mess with her and fewer witnesses if she screwed up. Standing outside now on the bridge wing, scanning her assigned sector of the horizon, she felt at peace with the world. Behind her, through the open hatch, she could hear the small noises coming from the bridge: the occasional rudder or engine order from the conning officer, a complaint from engineering about the lineup of boilers and reactors and machinery, and the routine reports that kept track of all radar contacts in the area.
With no moon overhead, the horizon and sky blended into nothingness. The blackness was broken only by the running lights of the cruiser and other escorts, and the occasional light configuration from a commercial ship. There were a few small boats out here as well, and the crews on both the bridge and in Combat kept track of them to ensure that the carrier stayed well clear.
Suddenly, she stopped her smooth scan of the water. What was it? Something had caught her attention, although she couldn’t exactly see what. She moved her binoculars in a slow, oscillating motion back and forth, trying to see what it was that had distracted her.
There it was again. A small area of darkness against the water, something that looked out of place. Odd. If it was a boat, it should be showing at least one light for safety of navigation. But then again, not all of the fishermen in this area found it necessary to comply with good seamanship practices. She had been warned that there were also smugglers in the area, and they would certainly show no lights.
Smith keyed her sound-powered phone. “Surface Plot, Starboard Lookout. I think I have a contact to the starboard, a small one. Relative bearing 030, showing a slight right-bearing drift. No lights.”
“You sure, Starboard? I’m not holding anything there.”
“Not entirely sure, Surface,” she acknowledged. “If it’s anything, it’s a small boat running without lights.”
The voice of the Surface Plot petty officer sighed. “OK, keep an eye on it. I’ll take another look in the area and see if there’s a possibility. Could be one of the smugglers we were briefed on. Good work.”
Behind her on the darkened bridge, Smith heard the operations specialist airman pass her information to the officer of the deck. “Sir, possible unidentified small contact on the starboard bow.”
“Range?” asked the OOD, Lieutenant Commander Fred Brisco.
“Close aboard, within two miles, sir. Low-confidence visual contact.”
Brisco walked out on the starboard bridge and propped his elbows on the railing next to Smith’s companionably. “You getting Surface stirred up over something, Andrea?”
Smith relaxed. Brisco was a good sort, not one of the screamers. He even used her first name sometimes when nobody else could hear him. It made her feel like she was part of the team, even when she screwed up.
“I’m not certain, sir,” she allowed. “I thought I saw something, but I can’t pick it up now. It was right there.” She pointed in the general direction where she’d seen the patch of blackness.
Brisco had his own binoculars up now and was scanning the area carefully. She felt a shiver of relief — she’d reported it, and the officers were taking a look. Now, no matter what it was, it was no longer her sole responsibility. And maybe he could see something that she couldn’t.
“I don’t see — wait.” Brisco abruptly stopped scanning the area and kept the binoculars fixed on one spot. “Yes, I think you’re right. A small boat, running without lights. Tell Surface I see it, too.” Without dropping his binoculars from his eyes, he raised his voice and said, “Conning Officer, bring us twenty degrees to the left. We’ve got a small boy up ahead who doesn’t seem to realize that tonnage counts.”
“Surface Plot, Starboard. OOD says he sees it, too, and we’re changing course to avoid,” Smith said into her sound-powered phone.
“Roger, keep track of it. We’re still not getting anything on the radar.”
And that was exactly why they had lookouts, wasn’t it? Because very small wooden vessels were difficult to pick up on radar even in the best of conditions. Keeping a visual eye on the ocean as well as an electronic one only made sense.
“Security, close the hangar bay doors,” Brisco said suddenly, his voice sharp. “Come on, people — move it!”
“What is it, sir?” she asked, now alarmed.
“Probably nothing,” he said. “Just something seems to — hell, I don’t know, Andrea. Call it a gut feeling.”
It only took a few minutes for the reinforcements to show up and find Williams. At the same time, the 1MC announcing system boomed, “All hands not actually on watch in the vicinity of the hangar bay report to security team leader to close hangar doors.” The technicians working on the E-2 Hawkeye in the forward part of the hangar bay dropped what they were doing and trotted over.
The doors could be opened and closed electronically, but sufficient hands had to be on station in case something went wrong and they had to be closed manually. The hangar bay filled with a hard, grating noise as the massive metal watertight slabs of steel grated along their tracks. The breeze died down as they started to close.
“So what is this all about?” Williams asked.
“Probably just an OOD with a hair up his ass,” said one of the petty officers. “Sometimes I think they do this just to see how fast we can move.”
That pretty much fit in with what Williams knew so far about the Navy. Every evolution, no matter how trivial, was practiced, timed, and graded ad infinitum. Why should closing the hangar doors be any different?
Suddenly, a star low on the horizon flared into brightness. Williams brought his binoculars up to take a look at it. Beside him, the senior petty officer said, “Oh, shit. Move it!”
Brisco leaped from the bridge wing to the bridge and slapped the General Quarters alarm toggle switch, simultaneously picking up the microphone for the whole ship-announcing system. As the insistent gong of the General Quarters alarm started, he said, “All hands, General Quarters. Small boat on the starboard quarter launching Stingers!”
“The hangar bay,” she breathed, her voice full of horror. If a Stinger got inside the hangar bay, it could cause
