Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

SEA OF SHADOWS 187
The pilot keyed the mike again. “Antietam, this is Firewalker Two-Six.
Copy all. Your numbers look good. Request green deck, over.”
“We’re going the wrong way,” Captain Bowie said. He spoke softly,
and it was difficult to hear him over the wail of the twin turbine engines
and the syncopated thump of the helo’s rotors.
Chief McPherson leaned closer to him. “Sir?”
The captain looked up. “Just thinking aloud,” he said. He jerked a
thumb over his left shoulder toward the tail of the helo—toward the
southern end of the Arabian Gulf. “My ship is back that way, steaming
toward the bad guys at top speed.” He pointed in the direction of the
helo’s nose. “Meanwhile, I’m flying this way—away from my ship and
away from the threat—so that we can go drink coffee and make polite
conversation with the man who’s about to snatch the rug out from under
us.”
The chief thought for a few seconds and said, “We don’t know that, sir.
Captain Whiley may be planning to leave you in command of the SAU.
That’s certainly the smart thing to do.”
“He’s going to take command,” Captain Bowie said. “That’s why
we’re being summoned to his ship. He wants to do this on his turf, where
he is the captain, and I’m just a visiting commander.”
That, Chief McPherson knew, was likely to be true. According to naval
custom, there could only be one captain aboard any warship, and that was
the commanding officer. The instant Captain Bowie’s foot touched the
deck of Antietam, he would revert to his actual rank of commander and
remain as such until he departed the ship.
Captain Bowie cocked one eyebrow. “Of course, if I were in a position
to do the same thing to him, this is probably how I would do it. It’s
actually a half-decent piece of political maneuvering, even if it does piss
me off.”
Chief McPherson nodded once and turned back to look through the
windshield again. After a few seconds, she spotted the Antietam, still
steaming south toward her rendezvous with the other ships in the Search
Attack Unit. From a thousand feet up, the aging Aegis guided missile
cruiser looked like a bathtub toy—a trick of perspective that would soon
change, the chief knew. In fact, at 566 feet, the cruiser was 37 feet longer
than the Towers.
Approaching from the cruiser’s bow, the pilot flew down the ship’s
starboard side and made a tight buttonhook turn to the right, lining up with
the flight deck and shedding unneeded altitude with the same neat
maneuver. The toy-sized ship began to grow rapidly in the helicopter’s
windshield.