Executive Orders by Tom Clancy

“Radford, Valetta.”

“WE HAVE YOUR contact on radar. Looks like he’s coming down hard.” The voice was that of a junior-grade lieutenant who had the CIC duty this night. Radford was an aging Spruance-class destroyer heading for Naples after an exercise with the Egyptian navy. Along the way she had orders to enter the Gulf of Sidra to proclaim freedom-of-navigation rights, an exercise which was almost as old as the ship herself. Once the source of considerable excitement, and two pitched air-sea battles in the 1980s, it was now boringly routine, else Radford wouldn’t be going it alone. Boring enough that the CIC crewmen were monitoring civilian radio freqs to relieve their torpor. “Contact is eight-zero miles west of us. We are tracking.”

“Can you respond to a rescue request?”

“Valetta, I just woke the captain up. Give us a few to get organized here, but we can make a try for it, over.”

“Dropping like a rock,” the petty officer on the main scope reported. “Better pull out soon, fella.”

“Target is a Gulf-Four business jet. We show him one-six-thousand and descending rapidly,” Valetta advised.

“Thank you, that’s about what we have. We are standing by.”

321

“What gives?” the captain asked, dressed in khaki pants and a T-shirt. The report didn’t take long. “Okay, get the rotor heads woke up.” Next the commander lifted a growler phone. “Bridge, CIC, captain speaking. All ahead full, come right to new course–”

“Two-seven-five, sir,” the radar man advised. “Target is two-seven-five and eighty-three miles.”

“New course two-seven-five.”

“Aye, sir. Coming right to two-seven-five, all ahead full, aye,” the officer of the deck acknowledged. On the bridge the quartermaster of the watch pushed down the direct engine-control handles, dumping additional fuel into the big GE jet-turbines. Radford shuddered a bit, then settled at the stern as she began to accelerate up from eighteen knots. The captain looked around the capacious combat information center. The crewmen were alert, a few shaking their heads to come fully awake. The radar-men were adjusting their instruments. On the main scope, the display changed, the better to lock in the descending aircraft.

“Let’s go to general quarters,” the skipper said next. Might as well get some good training time out of this. In thirty seconds, everyone aboard was startled into consciousness and running to stations.

YOU HAVE TO be careful descending to the ocean surface at night. The pilot of the G-IV kept a close eye on his altitude and rate of descent. The lack of good visual references made it all too easy to slam into the surface, and while that might have made their evening’s mission perfect, it wasn’t supposed to be that perfect. In another few seconds they’d drop off the Valetta radar scope, and then they could start pulling out of the dive. The only thing that concerned him now was the possible presence of a ship down there, but no wakes were visible before him in the light of a quarter moon.

“I have it,” he announced when the aircraft dropped through five thousand feet. He eased back on the yoke. Valetta might note the change in descent rate from his