Executive orders - Tom Clancy [568]
In every combat information center, people hovered over scopes and charts, talking in whispers lest they somehow be heard. Those who smoked wished they could in the antiseptic spaces, and those who'd quit now wondered why. Something about a health hazard, they remembered as they contemplated surface-to-surface missiles mounted in emplacements about fifteen thousand yards away, each of them with a ton of explosives right behind the seeker-head.
Coming left, new course two-eight-five, the officer of the deck reported on Anzio.
On the main plot, there were over forty targets, as RADAR contacts were called, each with a vector showing approximate course and speed. The number of inbounds and outbounds was about the same. Some of them were huge, the RADAR returns of supertankers being about that of a medium-sized island.
Well, we've made it this far, Weps said to Captain Kemper. Maybe they're asleep.
Maybe there really is a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
Only navigation RADARs were turning now. The Iranian/UIR-ians had to have ESM gear over there, but if they were standing a patrol in the Strait of Hormuz, they hadn't spotted it yet. There were unexplained targets. Fishing boats? Smugglers? Somebody in a pleasure craft? There was no telling. Probably the enemy was a little reticent about sending their vessels too far over the centerline of the strait. The Arabs were as territorial as everyone else, Kemper imagined.
The ships were all at battle stations. All combat systems were fully powered up, but on standby. If somebody turned toward them, they would first try to get a visual. If somebody lit them up with a targeting RADAR, then the ship on the clearest bearing would step up her alert level somewhat and make a few sweeps with the SPY RADARs to see if there might be an inbound track. But that would be tough. Those missiles all had independent seeker-heads, and the strait was crowded, and a missile just might acquire something unintended. The other side couldn't be all that trigger-happy. They might even end up slaughtering a few thousand sheep, Kemper thought with a smile. As tense as this part of the mission was, the task for the other side wasn't all that easy.
Course change on track four-four, coming left, a quartermaster said.
That one was a surface contact just inside UIR-ian waters, seven miles away and passing aft. Kemper leaned forward. A computer command showed the contact's course-track for the last twenty minutes. It had been moving along at mere steerage speed, about five knots. It was now doing ten, and had turned toward the trailing decoy group. That data was linked to USS O'Bannon, whose captain was the senior officer for the group. The range between the two ships was 16,000 yards and closing.
Things got more interesting. Normandy's helicopter closed on the track from behind, keeping low. The pilots saw a green-white bloom as the unknown craft increased power, stirring the water and disturbing more of the organisms which somehow survived all the pollution here. A sudden burst of power meant
That's a gunboat, the pilot reported over the data link. He just goosed it. Target has just increased power.
Kemper grimaced. He had a choice now. Do nothing, and maybe nothing would happen. Do nothing, and maybe give the gun/missile boat the first shot at O'Bannon and her group. Do something, and risk alerting the other side. But if the enemy craft shot first, the enemy would know something anyway, right? Maybe. Maybe not. It was a complex set of data for five seconds. He waited five more.
Target is a missile boat, I see two launchers, target steadying down on course.
He's got