Without remorse - Tom Clancy [245]
If they were dumb enough to put their radars and guns on hilltops, that wasn't his lookout. The master chief firecontrolman was in 'Spot 1,' the forward fire-director tower that made the most graceful part of his ship's profile. His eyes were glued to the eyepieces of the long-base rangefinders, designed in the late 1930s and still as fine a piece of optical gear as America had ever produced. His hand turned a small wheel, which operated not unlike the focusing mechanism of a camera, bringing a split-image together. His focus was on the radar antenna, whose metal framework, not protected now with camouflage netting, made a nearly perfect aiming reference.
'Mark!'
The firecontrolman 2/c next to him keyed the microphone, reading the numbers off the dial. 'Range One-Five-Two-Five-Zero.'
In central fire-control, a hundred feet below Spot 1, mechanical computers accepted the data, telling the cruiser's eight guns how much to elevate. What happened next was simple enough. Already loaded, the guns rotated with their turrets, coming up to the proper angle of elevation calculated a generation earlier by scores of young women - now grandmothers - on mechanical
calculators. On the computer, the cruiser's speed and course were already set, and since they were firing at a stationary target, it was assigned an identical but reversed velocity vector. In this way the guns would automatically remain locked on target.
'Commence firing,' the gunnery officer commanded. A young sailor closed the firing keys, and USS Newport News shook with the first salvo of the day.
'Okay, on azimuth, we're short by … three hundred ...' the master chief said quietly, watching the fountains of dirt in the twenty-power rangefinders.
'Up three hundred!' the talker relayed, and the next salvo thundered off fifteen seconds later. He didn't know that the first salvo had inadvertently immolated the command bunker for the radar complex. The second salvo arced through the air. 'This one does it,' the master chief whispered.
It did. Three of the eight rounds landed within fifty yards of the radar antenna and shredded it.
'On target,' he said over his own microphone, waiting for the dust to clear. 'Target destroyed.'
'Beats an airplane any day,' the Captain said, observing from the bridge. He'd been a young gunnery officer on USS Mississippi twenty-five years earlier, and had learned shore-bombardment against live targets in the Western Pacific, as had his treasured master chief in Spot 1. This was sure to be the last hurrah for the Navy's real gunships, and the Captain was determined that it would be a loud one.
A moment later some splashes appeared a thousand yards off. These would be from 130mm long guns the NVA used to annoy the Navy. He would engage them before concentrating on triple-A sites.
'Counterbattery!' the skipper called to central fire-control.
'Aye, sir, we're on it.' A minute later Newport News shifted fire, her rapid-fire guns searching for and finding the six 130s that really should have known better.
It was a diversion, the Captain knew. It had to be. Something was happening somewhere else. He didn't knew what, but it had to be something good to allow him and his cruiser on the gunline north of the DMZ. Not that he minded, the CO said to himself, feeling his ship shudder yet again. Thirty seconds later a rapidly expanding orange cloud announced the demise of that gun battery.
'I got secondaries,' the CO announced. The bridge crew hooted briefly, then settled back down to work.
'There you are.' Captain Mason stepped back from the periscope.
"Pretty close.' Kelly needed only one look to see that Esteves was a cowboy. Skate was scraping off barnacles. The periscope was barely above water, the water lapping at the lower half of the lens. 'I suppose that'll do.'
'Good rainstorm topside,' Esteves said.
'"Good" is right.' Kelly finished off his coffee, the real Navy sort with salt thrown in. 'I'm going to use it.'
'Right now?'
'Yes, sir.' Kelly nodded curtly. 'Unless you plan