The Cruiser: A Dan Lenson Novel (8 page)

“Liked things the way they were?”

“Pretty much. I guess so.” She glanced aft again, then ducked back inside to bend over the radar screen. He blinked after her, absently noting blue cloth stretched tight over all-too-easily imagined curves and indentations. Where could moisture be coming from in the CRP shaft? No doubt Danenhower and McMottie were right; it was minor. But a full backing bell for fifteen minutes would surface any problems. Better to have it break now, than when they were on station, responsible to CentCom.

Which was odd, come to think. He massaged his forehead, blinking down into the jade and cream that seethed below. He needed to read his orders again. Jen Roald had passed them to him in hard copy; they were locked in his safe, along with the 9mm Beretta he’d checked out from the gunner’s mates.

Every Navy ship, whether deployed with a task force or on an independent mission, had three masters. The first was her type commander, who levied requirements based on maintenance, repair, manning, and logistics. The second was her operational commander, in his case Sixth Fleet, which reported to EuCom—European Command—more specifically, to Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe. The third was her tactical commander, usually the commander of a strike group.

But
Savo Island
’s orders for Operation Stellar Shield specified that CTG East Med—in effect, Dan himself—was assigned
not
to EuCom, but to Central Command. CentCom’s area of responsibility was the Mideast. Confusing, for it divided his responsibilities in a way he’d never seen before and wasn’t sure he liked.

Not that liking it had much to do with it. That was why they were called “orders,” after all.

*   *   *

A
quarter hour later. So far, no reports of damage. The gently heaving sea lay void all around them. Across the bridge, Singhe was head down in the radar again. He averted his gaze from her shapely derriere under the cotton coveralls.

The 21MC said,
“Bridge, Main Control: coming up on completion of fifteen-minute flank three ahead.”

“Very well,” Singhe said. She dipped back into the radar, then looked around. Located him, and smiled again. “Captain, next on the training schedule is Event 0124, rudder trials. Nearest contact, skunk papa. Range, twenty thousand yards. Bearing, two two zero. Course, one four five, speed ten. Past CPA and opening. No other contacts. No failure or lube alarms from the engine room. Permission to conduct rudder trials.”

He shaded his gaze out to starboard, remembering Ike Sundstrom’s nagging insistence that someone always go out and look in the direction you were going to turn. He’d seen his share of crotchety COs. Actually, more than crochets. But you picked up what seemed good from those you served under, and tried not to copy what didn’t. Passing the best practices on to your juniors. One contact, away to the southwest. From the speed and course, a coaster, plodding its way from Cagliari down to Sicily or Malta. He checked in with Danenhower on the Hydra. The engineer said everything sounded fine at his end. Do the rudder tests, and it’d be a wrap.

“Permission granted,” he told Singhe. “But make sure someone’s out on the wing, or check there yourself, before you put that rudder over.”

She sent the junior officer of the deck out, a fresh-faced ensign named Eugene Mytsalo. “Clear to port,” he reported back.

The pipe shrilled. “
Commencing rudder tests. All hands stand by for heavy rolls.
” Dan took his fingers out of his ears and felt for his seat belt. Snapped it closed, and braced an elbow against a steel ledge. Around the bridge, men and women sought nooks between the helm and the remote operating console for the 25mm, or reached up to the woven bronze cable that stretched across the pilothouse, a handhold when the world tilted far out of vertical.

“Speed?”

“Thirty-five knots, sir,” said the navigator from his position over by the chart console.

“This really fast as we go, Bart?” Dan said into the Hydra. “No rocket boosters you can kick in?”

“This is it, sir. Do it now, while we got everything cranked up.”

He nodded to Singhe, who grabbed the overhead cable. “Hard right rudder,” she ordered.

“Hard right rudder … my rudder is right hard, ma’am.”

For a long second
Savo Island
did not seem to respond. She plunged ahead at the same velocity, seemingly unaffected.

Then she began to lean.

Dan tightened his grip, unable to discontemplate the hundreds of tons of weight the additional decks in the superstructure added, and what that meant for stability. For a moment the deck under him seemed to lean left. Or maybe he was just braced for it. If she leaned
out,
that was bad.
Very
bad. If she leaned
in
to the turn, she’d be fine.

Then the incline began, the rudder digging in, the deck tilting faster and faster to starboard. Pencils and small objects rolled and clattered to the deck. The helmsman, a small spare woman with blond braided hair, clung grimly to the console. Dan nailed his gaze to the clinometer. Forty degrees. Forty-five. Forty-seven. A rushing roar came through the starboard door, and he glimpsed past Mytsalo a rolling roar of seething sea. The bow wave, crowding into a jostling welter of foam as the bow turned into it.

Fifty degrees.

They clung and watched. The needle hung there, and then, all too deliberately, retreated. The cruiser rolled back upright and Dan relaxed. “Speed?”

“Two-niner by GPS, Captain.”

Right, they didn’t have a pit sword. “Very well. —Bart, everything cool down there?”

“Rudder bearings’re fine. No vibration. No indication of stress.”

“Make absolutely sure. If we had any damage from the grounding—”

“Everything’s okay so far, sir. Tell you for sure after the port turn.”

He nodded across the slanting air to the woman whose almond-eyed smile sought his, and Singhe sang out, “Rudder amidships. Steady course three four zero.”

The helmswoman was echoing the order when a bell cut loose on the bulkhead. Sudden. Peremptory. Strident. At the same moment a detonation shook the ship’s fabric. A soft one, not that distant, and not that loud. A second later, a ghostlike waft of pale smoke breathing out from the ventilators brought the dense, chemical stink of an electrical fire.

5

“
ENGINES
stop!” Singhe shouted, just as Dan opened his mouth to give the order himself. Smoke was blasting out of the ventilator, thicker, whiter. The stink of burning insulation and something else, acrid and poisonous, filled the bridge.

“On the bridge: Don gas masks. 1MC: Set damage-control status Zebra,” Singhe shouted, her tone slicing through the chatter and hubbub like a cleaver. “Sound general quarters.”

“Belay that,” Dan snapped. Then, as the helmsman reached for the throttles, added, “Not the all stop—but stand by on the general-quarters alarm.”

Nuckols had reached up and secured the ventilation; both wing doors were open; the smoke was streaming outside, thinning. Singhe glanced at Dan through the lenses of her mask; then stripped it off and stuffed it back into its case.
“Fire, fire, fire,”
came over the 1MC. Not from the bridge; from Damage Control Central.
“Class Charlie fire in SPY-1 equipment room, compartment 03-138-1-C. Fire, fire, fire. Repair Two provide.”

Dan leaned to toggle the 21MC. “Combat Systems, bridge: captain. What’ve you got?”

“Electrical fire, Captain. Equipment Two. The Combat Systems rover opened the door and it’s a sheet of flame in there. We’re securing power.”
With the last syllable the bridge powered down. Fans whirred down the scale. Screens went blue, then blank. Silence welled up from wherever it had lurked all this time. The ship … creaked. The wind sighed. Something topside went
clunk
.

Equipment Two was a couple decks down. Dan tried to dismount from his chair but got hung up on the seat belt. Unstrapped, he headed for the ladderway. The door was dogged. He hesitated; placed the back of one hand against it. The steel was cool. He barked to Singhe, “Shift to sound-powered circuits. Shift to manual backup. Keep those lookouts alert.” Then sucked a deep breath, heeled the dogs free, and jerked the door open.

A puff of white smoke welled up. He slammed and dogged it again and stood shaking, trying to regain control. But … but … No. He did
not
want to breathe that. Icy sweat broke across his back. The nav team regarded him curiously. He shot a glare at them, then instantly looked away, not feeling proud. In fact, deeply shamed.

“All right, then. General quarters,” he said.

*   *   *

AN
hour later he stood in the passageway outside his sea cabin. Contemplating the fact that if he’d been in there, he’d have been trapped. The firefighting team had used water fog to fight their way into the radar compartment, and CO
2
to douse the flames. Fortunately they’d contained the fire. The repair team leader stood panting and smoke-stained, mask dangling, sooty gloves tucked into his belt, talking to the Combat Systems watch officer. Past them, through a half-open door with a wavy, melted plastic warning placard that read
CAUTION DO NOT ENTER VOLTAGE DANGEROUS TO LIFE
, equipment steamed and smoked. “A coolant hose,” a chief missile fire controlman named Slaughenhaupt was saying. “We’ve got six megawatts of power out through here. As much as your typical shoreside power plant. So there’s a lot of heat generated. At an incredible voltage. Come in here while it’s operating, it’s like standing in the presence of Zeus.”

Dan asked him, “And it’s water cooled?”

“Yessir, the system runs chilled water through the chassis plates. You’ve got a seawater loop and a secondary distilled-water loop. Looks to me, the hose worked loose. So when we took that heel, it comes off. Shoots water all over, and
bam
—major-league fireworks.”

Dan leaned in. Steam eddied up from scorched metal. It stank of pyrolysis and what smelled like burnt chicken feathers. “How long will it take to get everything back in operation?”

Slaughenhaupt glanced away as Donnie Wenck joined them. Lifted his shoulders, then dropped them. “Don’t think that’s gonna happen, sir. See that silver stuff all over the deck? That’s solder. This is gonna take a complete rebuild.”

Dan sucked air, looking down at the smoking pools of hot metal. “So we can’t radiate.”

“Well, not true, sir. This is one driver-predriver. We got six. Three forward, three aft. You need two to operate a transmitter at full power. You leave the other in standby; that’s your backup.”

“So we can run the forward radar?”

“Yessir. We just don’t have the backup”—he nodded at the steaming equipment—“in case another DPD goes down.”

Dan frowned. “But we’ve got two arrays forward. Port and starboard. Are you saying we can only operate one?”

The chief said patiently, “No, sir, you don’t pulse both arrays at the same time. We shoot one beam at a time from one array at a time.”

“So we’re, basically, down a sixth of our radar capacity. How about the cooling system? How do we run without that?”

The chief said they had redundant cooling, too. “I’m telling you, sir, we can run degraded. Everything’s got a backup.”

“Well, maybe for air detect-to-engage. What about BMD?” He caught uncertainty in the other’s eyes, and pressed in. “Let’s say we get degradation in one of the other predrivers. Can we detect-to-engage on an incomer? Out to three hundred miles? Or will our power-out not be enough?”

A hesitation told him all he needed to know. He turned to find Almarshadi teetering a step above on the ladder. “Commander? Can you shed some light?”

The little XO looked uncertain. “Who we really need is Terranova. What do—”

Dan cut in: “Have you been listening, Exec? How much degradation is losing one of our predriver groups going to inflict on us? How much capability can we lose before we’re out of the missile defense business? And what kind of maintenance lets a coolant hose, a
coolant hose,
get so loose a fifty-degree angle makes it let go? Those are the first questions I’d like to have answered. If you have the time, that is.”

“I … believe I’ll have to get back to you on that, Captain.”

“Good, do that. Within an hour.” Dan nodded once, to them all. He didn’t need to make his expression any harder than it probably already was. And he was already sorry he’d unloaded on Almarshadi. He almost added a word of apology, then thought savagely: Let him take it. He’d certainly had to, when he’d been Jimmy Packer’s second in command. “Where’s Lieutenant Mills?”

“CIC, Captain.”

“I want him in my inport cabin too. No later than 1400.”

*   *   *

AS
he was powering up his computer in the large bare captain’s suite down on the main deck level, someone knocked. “Come in,” Dan yelled.

“Lieutenant Mills, sir.”

“Come on in, Matt. Get a look at the equipment room?”

“Yessir. CASREP’s on the LAN. You should have it.”

“Is Hermelinda coming?” The supply officer. Mills nodded. Dan said to the screen, “We need to make some decisions. Higher needs to know our capability’s degraded.” He glanced at Mills, unsure if the newly arrived officer would be able to help with what really concerned him. Namely, how could they go to war with a system that wasn’t just experimental, but now significantly degraded vis-à-vis their primary mission. “My question is: How badly? I’m getting conflicting opinions.”

Another knock, and they filed in: Almarshadi, looking even more apprehensive than usual; Donnie Wenck; the supply officer, Garfinkle-Henriques; and the chubby-cheeked petty officer from New Jersey, Terranova. Wenck was still in a first class’s dress blues. Dan was pointing to chairs when his Hydra clicked.
“CO, Bridge.”

He unclipped it. “CO.”

“Sir, Lieutenant Staurulakis.”

“What’cha got, Cheryl?”

“The chief engineer reports full power and rudder trials completed satisfactorily.”