Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (46 page)

*   *   *

STRIKE
One scrubbed that evening’s exercises, and set EMCONs, emission controls, which restricted both radars and communications.
Savo
ran silent, except for her sonars. They were headed north as quietly as possible, then. He guessed taking down Object 20404 had been intended to help cover their advance. The Chinese had to know they were out here, but without a more exact localization, the battle group would be impossible to target. Red Hawk was out again after refueling and crew rest, taking turns with
Hawes
’s helo “sanitizing” the intended track for submarine threats.

He was sitting at the coffee table in the wardroom that night, holding a copy of
Undersea Technology
but not looking at it, just sitting blankly staring at the big Tom Freeman painting of the Battle of Savo Island, when Staurulakis plumped down next to him. “Hate to interrupt, Captain.”

He sighed. “What is it, XO?” Then, seeing “Sheriff” Toan behind her, he put the magazine aside.

Leaning in, the exec told him one of the female petty officers had reported she’d been raped. “She was on the way to her berthing area when the overhead lights in the passageway went off. Someone grabbed her from behind, pressed a pointed object to her neck, and steered her into an equipment room.” Staurulakis paused, then added, “He made her undress, and raped her. He’s gone all the way now.”

“Oh, no,” Dan said. “So, it
wasn’t
Shah, or the other Iranians. Is she okay? I mean, not is she
okay,
but he didn’t wound her, did he? This knife—”

“Superficial cuts. But she’s in shock. Grissett and Dr. Schell are treating her. Hermelinda’s there too.” Staurulakis looked at the magazine, and turned it facedown on the table. Added, softly, “It was the Terror.”

For a second he didn’t understand. Then, to his horror, did. “You mean, Beth … Petty Officer Terranova?” She nodded. “My God, I…” He abandoned the sentence. There was nothing adequate to say. “I’ll come right down.”

“If you don’t mind, Captain, better to give her some privacy. It might just be the shock speaking. But let’s let the medical people handle this for now. Get her calmed down, gather the evidence—”

The wardroom door banged open. Amy Singhe, cheeks livid. She stalked toward them between the tables, fists clenched. “I told you this would happen, Commander!” she shouted at Staurulakis. “I told you we weren’t safe aboard this fucking ship.”

Staurulakis bolted to her feet. She was smaller-boned than Singhe, but not much shorter. “Not here, Lieutenant. And watch your language.”

Singhe looked past her at Dan. “You’re telling
him
? Nothing changes. The chiefs still treat the women like peons. They still get groped, down in the working spaces. They come to me, not the command. Because the
command
does nothing. This has been on the way for a long time. And now it’s here.”

Another slammed-open door; Chief Tausengelt’s leathery visage was stormy. He rolled in fast, only to be whirled on by a furious Lieutenant Singhe. “Here he is. Tell the captain what you said,
Master Chief
.”

“All I said was—”

Singhe curled her lip. “All he said was, ‘She shouldn’t have been alone.” That ‘they all deserve it.’
Tell him!
” She was almost screaming, jabbing a finger in the old chief’s face.

“You heard me wrong, sir. I mean, ma’am. That’s not exactly what I—”

“Amy,” the XO said warningly. “Better cool it. Lieutenant.”

Dan was on his feet. “We are
not
doing this here! My cabin,
now
!” This was getting out of hand. “We don’t have time to split the crew up over this. We’re headed for a hostile coast, coming in range of enemy air. We could be in action at any time.”

“You think the crew’s not already split, sir? That the chiefs can do no wrong? As if they don’t know who’s doing this. And maybe, even,
shielding
him?”

Dan kept from shouting, but not by much. “You’re really disappointing me, Lieutenant. Are you alleging some kind of conspiracy? That some people
know
who the fondler, I mean, the rapist, is, and aren’t sharing that with the command?”

Singhe just shook her head and looked away, folding her arms. “I’ll save it for the NCIS. That’s our only chance to get the maggots out in the sunlight.” She glanced at him, dark eyes both angry and, somehow, pitying. “It was part of the command climate, before you arrived. But now it’s taking place on
your
ship. Sorry if the fallout hurts you. I tried to tell you. But you wouldn’t listen. So now it’s all going to hit the fan.”

She wheeled and stalked out. Tausengelt grabbed Dan’s elbow. “That bitch … I mean, the lieutenant … she’s gone over the edge, Captain. I swear to you, if any of the chiefs knew anything about this, we’d have the guy in irons. We know this shit is tearing the ship apart. Taking it to the NCIS isn’t going to help.”

Another woman had come in: Petty Officer Redmond, hair up in braids; one of Terranova’s friends, Dan recalled. Deathly pale, she met no one’s eyes. “Sir? Ma’am? I heard, I heard that Terror—”

“Just a moment, Redmond. Only one thing will help,” Cheryl Staurulakis said. “Finding out who did it. Until then, everybody’s a suspect. And we don’t have any choice about calling in the NCIS. They’d have been here already if we hadn’t been in wartime steaming, with ship-to-ship transfers limited to operational necessity.”

Dan barely restrained himself from covering his face with his hands. “Shut up, all of you!” he shouted. They went quiet instantly, turning shocked faces to him. “Now listen up. I’m going down to see Terranova. Exec, draft a message to the carrier, requesting they send their agent at the first possible opportunity.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Master Chief, we’re locking down. Everyone who doesn’t need a knife in the performance of his work, turn it in to the chief master-at-arms. I don’t care what the regs say, I want
all
knives turned in,
all
lockers searched for compromising materials. All unmanned spaces will be locked when not in use. Passageways outside berthing spaces will be random-patrolled by the master-at-arms force.”

“Got it, Captain.”

“Have Dr. Schell see me as soon as he’s done treating his patient. Any other measures to prevent this happening again that you can think of, bring them to me, and I’ll approve them.” He stared at the stony faces, their sidelong glares, and despaired. How could he fight his ship, when the lead Aegis petty officer had just been raped? Take
Savo
into battle, with the chiefs and the female officers at loggerheads? While some faceless evil slithered among them, anonymous, unknown, corrupting morale and trust?

For a moment, he contemplated just giving up. But that was futile. No one else could fill his shoes. Perhaps Singhe was right. Maybe he
hadn’t
listened closely enough. Been proactive enough. Whatever had happened, he was to blame.

He was the captain.

He looked at their faces again, at Staurulakis’s rapidly blinking eyes, the old chief’s leathery careful nonexpression, the female petty officer’s trembling outrage, the master-at-arms’ dropped gaze. Cleared his throat. “Now go. And let’s try hard not to make this even worse than it is.”

20

Off the China Coast

GCCS
crashed again at 0130 the next morning. Dan learned about it when the TAO called an hour later.
“We thought it’d come back up again. But so far it hasn’t. And, to be honest, we figured you needed the shut-eye, Skipper.”

Dan cupped the handset against his pillow, in that singular half-awake state where his brain could give rational answers while the rest of his body stayed asleep. “Uh, that’s fine, Dave. But … it never came back up, I take it.”

“Not yet, sir. And now our last satcomm path’s intermittent. Unless it gets well, that takes down VTC, SHF, EHF, UHF. That’s POTS, e-mail, chat, video, browsing. Essentially, everything.”

He sat up in the bunk, grinding sleep off his eyeballs. Remembering, with a sinking heart, last night’s conversation with Petty Officer Terranova, in sick bay. She’d avoided his eyes. Saying, in flat sentences, that she didn’t know if she’d be able to go back on duty. He hadn’t tried to persuade her. Just told her to take what time she needed. For now, Donnie and the assistant radar system controller, Eastwood, would have to share the watch, with Noblos backing them up. Though not being military, the physicist couldn’t do military things.

But … no chat, no data? Emission control had silenced radar and bridge-to-bridge radio, but usually commanders left satellite-mediated comms up. The servers were almost always ashore, and signals basically just went up and down from individual ships to the satellites. It would be difficult for an enemy to pick up such highly directional, ultra-high-frequency signals. And of course data and voice transmissions were scrambled.

Unfortunately, the Navy hadn’t drilled in a non-data-linked environment for so long, it was an open question whether they could operate without it. It had meant less independent operations, more hands-on control by Higher, and a zero-tolerance mentality for any misstep.

But, philosophy aside, without satellite data, the fleet wouldn’t have a threat picture, or over-the-horizon targeting capability. “We still have receive-only comms, right?”

The comm officer sounded uneasy.
“Problems with that, too, sir. Chief’s speculating TADIXS, the strike data system, may be getting jammed or phase-shifted. We’re trying to get up on the old HF broadcast, but it’s a goat-rope. The pool of people who remember those legacy systems is pretty small. And it’s only about a thousand-baud data rate.”

“Okay, well, press on. Oh, and check the Inmarsat—we might be able to use commercial comms, at least, if the military systems go down. Status of Red Hawk?”

“Relieved on station by
Hawes
’s bird. Crew rest and maintenance.”

Dan signed off. He hung up and lay back, but after a few minutes sat up again, clicked the light on, and reached for the J-phone. The watch supervisor in Radio had a different explanation for the comm problem. She said they actually were getting transmissions from the satellites, but couldn’t break them.
“All we get is a hiss, as if we’ve got the wrong key. But we’ve checked eight or nine times. Something’s off, but we don’t know what.”

“We had problems with scrambled voice before … that delayed-sync issue. Could there be a common point of failure?”

“If it was only on our end, the other ships’d be receiving. And they’re not.”

“How do we know that, Petty Officer? If we can’t talk to them?”

“We’re reading maintenance discussing the issue, sir. It’s not just Strike One. It’s PacFleet. Maybe worldwide. Something even weirder—staff comm-oh got Strike One to send
Mitscher
out to the east, she’s already pretty far out there toward the Philippines, to see if she could upload, without revealing our location. Guess what?
Mitscher
uploaded fine. It’s the download that doesn’t break into clear data, when we get it.”

Just peachy. Approaching the Paracel Islands, two hundred miles off the Chinese coast … where coastal radars, air defenses, and cruise missile batteries would be waiting for them … and they couldn’t talk to each other, or pass targeting data. Other than by signal flags or flashing light.

“Sir? You there?”

“Yeah. Thanks. Carry on, and call me if anything changes.”

He lay there worrying. A Vietnamese naval infantry brigade was joining the strike group, embarked in a World War II LST, to provide the ground assault force. They were being escorted by Vietnamese light units, frigates, corvettes, and missile boats. But they couldn’t carry out a landing in data silence; the American covering force would be blind to any riposte from the mainland.

Which meant that sooner or later, probably sooner,
Savo
was going to get the order to light off her SPY-1 again, and report what she saw.

Which would make her the target for every enemy aircraft, ship, and submarine in the South China Sea.

*   *   *

AT
0500 his Hydra chirped. This time it was Danenhower, calling from Main Control with the news that the machinery control system was being flexed. Dan muttered, “Okay, CHENG, it’s ‘flexed.’ Tell me what that means.”

“Okay, well, you know each system’s controlled at three levels: on the bridge, in a central control station, and locally, in each machinery space. MCS lets ’em all talk to each other. So if we lose control on the bridge during battle, say, we have to press throttle commands and steering down to the local level.”

“We’re going to have a slower response time, again? Is that the bottom line here?”

“Not exactly. I’m saying we got bugs in our software, sir. We’ll have additional asses in the chairs down here, to be ready to take over if you lose control. I’m not saying it’s gonna happen, just that we’re making sure we’re ready, if it does. Since … we
are
at war, right?”

Dan said they seemed to be, and he appreciated the thinking ahead. He hung up, then looked at the bulkhead clock. Almost dawn. No point trying to sleep any longer.

*   *   *

SINCE
almost everyone was at his or her battle quarters, the exec had arranged for breakfast on station. Dan made the rounds as gritty light oozed over the edge of the world. He drank coffee and ate sausage and egg patties clamped between fresh-baked biscuits, perched on a stack of wooden dunnage with one of the damage-control teams in the passageway outside the forward five-inch magazine. They were suited out, with tools, helmets, and masks ready to hand. No one mentioned the rape, and he didn’t bring it up.

A paper-cup refill in hand, he strolled aft the length of the ship until he reached the huge enclosed drum on which the low-frequency tail spooled. Discussed replacing one of the transducer elements with the sonar tech getting the tail ready. Then walked forward again up the port side, greeting everyone he met, and let himself down one deck for a chat with Chief McMottie in Main Control.