Getting Real

“Um, the second one ... I think.” That the CPO wasn’t sure made her feel better. He waved to the bank of sensors she monitored. “You sing out like Timberlake if anything looks even a little bit weird. Even a little, hear?”

“Will do, Chief,” Hillary promised. And she would, too. Her one and only personal, irreplaceable ass was on the line, same as everybody else’s.

Goosed hard, the Rumsfeld could make sixty-three knots. The captain was goosing the hovercraft extra hard. Shoot and scoot. That was what she had to do. If she didn’t, she’d never see Long Beach again.

Hillary’s gaze flicked from one dial to another, restless and random as a hummingbird buzzing a blooming hibiscus. Most of the sensors were passive: they warned if somebody else’s search beams went by. Chances were the skipper would turn on the active sensors only after he knew the enemy had already detected the Rumsfeld. Yes, they could see farther and in more detail than their passive counterparts. But they also shouted Here I am! Here I am! at the top of their electronic lungs.

She just hoped the passive detectors could pick up everything the Chinese would throw at them. People said they used electronic and acoustic bands American gear couldn’t find. People said some of the bands they used weren’t electronic or acoustic at all. Then again, people came out with all kinds of bullshit. If you had any sense, you bozo-filtered most of it.

But she did worry about why neither the military nor the media said more about the American air strikes against the Channel Islands. There’d been all that hot video of the Strike Peregrines taking off. Anybody could see they were loaded for bear. All those bombs and missiles hanging down ... And they would have had Wild Weasels flying cover missions for them, to make sure the enemy couldn’t detect them till too late.

Much fanfare about the takeoffs. Not word one about what the F-27s had done. Hillary might be young, but she hadn’t come to town on a turnip truck. She could see what the likely answer there was. She didn’t like it, not for beans, but she could see it.

Well, if the planes hadn’t done the job, the Rumsfeld would just have to. Hillary reached out and patted the displays in front of her. A ship could carry a much more comprehensive electronics suite than an airplane. They had the most up-to-date gadgets the USA could manufacture or buy. Of course they’d get through.

Not getting through was too grim to be worth thinking about.

None of the displays had so much as hiccuped when the 105mm gun in the forward turret started banging away. “The fuck—?” Hillary said. They weren’t close to Catalina yet. As far as she could tell, they were alone on the Pacific. So why was that 105 firing, for Chrissake? Had somebody flipped out? That would be just what they needed!

“Battle stations!” the intercom shouted. The horn call that went with the words started—but then cut out. But the displays still had power. What a weird glitch, Hillary thought.

She didn’t have to move. Her battle station was right here. That was the good news. The bad news was, she was stuck monitoring display screens and she couldn’t see one goddamn thing besides them. If it hit the fan, she wouldn’t know till it all landed on her.

The engines slowed. By the way they sounded, they went into full emergency stop. Something had hit the fan, damned if it hadn’t.

“Anything on the threat displays?” The skipper’s voice came out of a brass speaking tube, not the intercom. You needed backups, but....

“No, sir.” Hillary shouted her answer up the tube. “Uh, sir—what’s going on?”

“We’re about to run into a giant brick wall that just sprang up out of nowhere,” the skipper answered.

“That’s impossible, sir,” Hillary said.

“Yeah. I know,” the captain said bleakly. The Rumsfeld smashed into the wall a split second later.

Hillary was wearing a seat belt. When you went into combat, you never could tell what would happen. She ended up on the deck anyway. She didn’t go face-first into the screens. That was something, but not enough, not when she ended up clutching one wrist with the other hand. Was it broken? If it wasn’t, it might as well have been—it sure hurt enough.

She heard running feet in the corridor. “Did we get the abandon-ship order?” she called.

“We’re sinking,” the other sailor answered. “If you want to hang around, be my guest.”

Deciding they wouldn’t court-martial her or keelhaul her or whatever the hell, Hillary went up to the main deck. The Rumsfeld was built light—she was made for boogying. The bow looked exactly as if it had run into a brick wall at high speed. It was all smashed in, in other words.

But where was the wall? Yeah, it was night out there, but Hillary thought she would have seen a brick wall big enough to smash in a warship’s bow. All she saw were a whale of a lot of ocean and a million stars overhead.

“Boy, are we gonna have fun explaining this one,” a sailor said gloomily.