target.”
“Us,” Tombstone said.
“That’s about the size of it. But Orlando’s squat in their baffles, and
the Russkis don’t even have a clue.”
Brandt grinned. Jeffries handed the printout to him and he glanced over
it, then handed it to Tombstone. It was a terse and to-the-point message
from Commander Lang, captain of the Los Angeles attack sub Orlando. Most
of the message consisted of numbers and code groups, but the gist of the
thing was that Orlando was still tracking the Russian sub that she’d
picked up shortly after Shiloh had entered the Black Sea late yesterday.
The data had been recorded an hour earlier and sent to the surface in a
message buoy, which had waited its programmed twenty minutes for the
Orlando to get well clear of the area before squirting its coded and
compressed digitized warning to the Jefferson by way of one of the Aegis
cruiser’s SH-3 helos.
The tail was inevitable, of course, and the discovery of the sub had
come as no surprise. Orlando’s orders were to stick tight to the Victor,
to report on its position occasionally. If the Victor made a hostile
move, such as opening her torpedo tubes, Lang was under orders to kill
her.
It was a damned precarious position to be in. The American battle
group’s orders from both Washington and the UN officials in charge of
Sustain Hope were explicit on at least one point: Under no circumstances
were Russian units to be fired upon unless the Russians fired first.
Further bloodshed, the politicians thought, would only make the peace
process more difficult, and a unilateral, watchful truce by the
Americans might convince the Russian factions to back down and let the
UN step in with a negotiated settlement.
Those were tough orders to obey in modern warfare, however, where
ship-killer weapons could be deployed in seconds, and where a mistake
rarely permitted a second chance.
“So,” Tombstone said. “What are we going to do about friend Victor?”
“Do? Not a hell of a lot we can do. We keep track of him with Vikings
and Sea Kings and trust Orlando to nail the bastard if he so much as
looks hard at the Jeff. Other than that. ..” A shrug.
“Hell of a way to run a war.”
“It would be, if this was a real war. Who knows? Maybe the Russians just
want to make sure we stay clear of their bases in the Crimea. And you
know, that Victor could be a Ukrainian boat, too, out of Odessa.”
Tombstone nodded. “Russians and Ukrainians, they’ve both got to be a bit
nervous with us here. About the way we’d feel if a Russian battle group
steamed into Chesapeake Bay.”
“Nah. There’s a difference. Chesapeake Bay is U.S. territory, right down
to the last soft-shelled crab. The Black Sea is international waters,
whatever the Russkis and Ukes might think about the matter.”
A telephone rang, and an enlisted rating picked it up.
After a moment, he looked at Brandt. “Captain?”
“Yes.”
“Commander Nelson, in Ops, sends his respects and says that all vessels
are clear of the Bosporus now, and the battle group is in a standard
port-heavy deployment.”
“Very well.”
Tombstone looked out the bridge windows. He could see two other ships,
both very small and on the horizon. Decatur was to the north. Leslie was
a gray smudge to the west, just off Jefferson’s starboard bow. The sea
appeared empty otherwise. So long as the Jefferson was hugging the
Turkish coast, the bulk of her screening ships could be thrown out to
north, east, and west, giving an added layer of defense across the most
likely direction of an enemy’s approach, a protective net that extended
across the surface of the water, in a broad bubble in the air overhead,
and beneath the waves as well.
Not that they ignored the southern flank. In these waters, the CBG had
no friends, and no one else to trust.
“Wishing you were on a smaller target, Tombstone?” Brandt asked,
twinkling.
“To tell you the truth, sir,” Tombstone said, jerking a thumb toward the
overhead, “I’d feel better up there. With my people.”
“Now, now,” Brandt admonished. “When you grow up, you put away your