Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

8 JEFF EDWARDS
The corners of Bowie’s mouth curled up in the faintest hint of a smile.
“Relax, son, I believe you. I was just wondering if anyone saw a laser
from the second boat.”
A speaker crackled in the overhead. “Captain? This is the TAO. Are
you watching these guys on MMS?”
The voice belonged to the ship’s Combat Systems Officer, Lieutenant
Terri Sikes, currently standing duty as the Tactical Action Officer.
Bowie pressed the talk button on the comm box. “Not yet, Terri. Give
us half a sec to get it punched up.” He nodded toward his OOD.
Lieutenant Parker tapped out a rapid-fire sequence of keys on his
wraparound control console. A burst of video static blossomed on one of
the three display screens and then instantly resolved itself into a coherent
image: a direct video feed from the mast-mounted sight, a high-definition
video camera mounted near the top of the mast.
The video was black-and-white, but the picture was exceptionally crisp.
The camera was locked on the nearer of the two speedboats. It was a
cigarette boat: long and dagger-shaped, very fast and very low to the
water. A continuous rooster tail of spray shot out from under the stern of
the narrow fiberglass hull. The image jerked occasionally as the boat took
a dip or a roll that the Towers’ optical tracking computer hadn’t
anticipated.
Suddenly, the image froze and the Tactical Action Officer’s voice came
over the speaker. “There!” she said. “Right there, sir. Do you see that?”
Bowie pressed the talk button on the comm box. “What am I looking
for?”
A pixelized oval appeared on the screen, drawn in by the TAO using a
light pen. The area inside the oval magnified itself to show a grainy image
of the interior of the cigarette boat. Two men were visible, or people,
anyway—it was impossible to tell more from the frozen image. One of the
figures was hunched over a console, obviously driving. The second figure
was half-crouched, hanging on to the windscreen with one hand. His other
hand was wrapped around a rectangular object draped over his right
shoulder.
Bowie’s stomach tightened another notch. “Got it.”
The oval disappeared, and the image leapt back to life. “Sir,” the
TAO’s voice said, “that’s got to be a missile launcher. I think those
bastards are going to light us up. Request permission to engage.”
Bowie watched the screen. “Not yet,” he said.
The boats were circling back around for another pass at the ship.
“Two boats,” Bowie said to himself. “No markings. They’re not
terrorists, or they would have shot at us on the first pass. There’s no way