Free Damage Control by Gordon Kent Page B

other’s eyes, neither flinching. Finally, Alan said, “You’re out of line with that tone, Chief,” and turned away, exposing his back to the other man and his anger and his weapon. But Fidel was better than that.
    They picked up the two rifles, old British .303s, beautifully maintained and oiled but half a century out of date. Each of the sailors had had a full box magazine and five more rounds.
    “The poor bastards were like mall security guards,” Alan said with disgust. He turned away because flies were already gathering. Thinking,
No safe haven here after we’ve killed three of their guys, no matter who they are.
He looked at the next chain-link fence and then at Ong and the others. “This sucks.”
    “No shit.”
    “We’re going farther down toward the creek. It’ll be crap, but there’ll be no fences and no people.”
And nobody we have to shoot,
he thought, looking at Fidel. “Well?”
    Fidel looked toward the scrub jungle through which the maps said a creek flowed. “I think we’re gonna wind up humping some people on our backs, but—” He shrugged. “O-ka-a-a-y!”
AG 703
    Soleck cycled through the screens on his computer while warming the ISAR—Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar—which used the doppler of a target’s movement to create a two-dimensional digital image, a radar photograph. It was best against targets on the water; it could be cranky, was often attenuated by atmospherics, but when it worked, it could reach over the horizon through ducts and reflections to image a ship that lay hundreds of miles away.
    “Gup, you did leave
us
enough gas to make Trincomalee?”
    Guppy didn’t rise to it. “Roger that,” he said. “And a thousand pounds reserve for whoever needs it. Both planes.”
    Soleck wanted to check the figures but Guppy had a head for math and somebody in Air Ops must have done it, too. Gup was doing very well indeed. In fact, by the end of this flight, he might have shed nugget status forever.
    Soleck had the radar in surface-search mode; he could see the Indian battle group to the north, now well spread out, with elements dispersed over ninety miles of ocean. He overlaid the position of the Tomcats and the man in the water and the ESM cuts, shading his small screen with a hand and trying to work with the minimal inputs available to the front seat.
    There.
Two bananas on the surface-search that corresponded to his ESM cuts. He pressed the image button on the Indian Kashin-class and had the satisfaction of seeing her come up immediately. The image wavered and rotated twice; she was almost bow on. As he watched, the shape of her superstructure developed two major radar returns that showed as bright spikes above her hull.
    Has to be damage,
he said to himself. He also thought he could see her forward turret rotating and something changing amidships.
More damage?
    The ESM told the story—launch parameters for a Styx IIc anti-ship missile. He watched it go to homing and then terminal and then vanish as the Indian Godavari-class’s close-in weapons took it out. He got on the comm.
    “Alpha Whiskey, this is 703. An Indian Navy Mod Kashin fired on 101. That ship is now taking fire from an Indian Navy Mod Godavari. The Kashin has suffered damage. 703 is monitoring via ISAR and ESM.”
    “Copy, 703.”
    Donuts spoke up. “Alpha Whiskey, the mission tankers don’t have enough gas to get 101 to the beach.” Soleck could see him flying a thousand feet above him and a mile away.
    “Roger, 203. Concur. What do you recommend?”
    “Strike Lead recommends Alpha Whiskey advise on sending an SAR helo into a hot zone.”
    “203, I’m hesitant to send an unescorted helo up there.”
    Soleck, his eyes on the computer screen, cut in. “Kashin’s air-search radar went off the air during the last exchange, Alpha Whiskey. Hasn’t come back up. Still taking hits from the Godavari and seems to be listing to port.”
    “Roger, 703, copy all. 203, I’ll risk the helo. What’s on your