She undogged and pushed through another thick fire and soundproof door into the hangar deck. Down the double-football field length of the huge workspace, the hurly-burly of aircraft maintenance and servicing was ramping back to its usual brisk levels.
The elements of the helicopter wing sat parked in long, angled rows down either side of the bay: the sleek Navy SPEED Cobras of the attack squadron, the husky Air Force MH-60 SPEED Hawks of the assault and lift group and the spidery AH-6 “Little Birds” of the Army Scout/recon section.
Painted stark white and Day-Glo orange, the two sleek Agusta Bell A-109s of the Coast Guard utility flight stood out amid the double phalanx of gray-black fuselages. One already bore the logos of a prominent Indonesian aero-tourism company, while the other was receiving the decal sets of a Red Crescent air ambulance service.
Squeezed in between the helos, or slung from the overhead beams with their wings and rotors folded, were the smaller aerodynamic shapes of the ship’s drone complement. Beyond the twenty-six manned aircraft of the air group, Shenandoah carried an equal number of Unmanned Air Combat Vehicles configured for a variety of missions.
The faded denim blue of the Navy and Coast Guard dungarees intermingled with the camo patterns of Marine Utilities, Army BDUs, and Air Force tigerstripes.
On one of the great transverse beams above the hangar deck a placard had been mounted:
THINK PURPLE!
Purple was the color created when all of the United States service colors were blended together. It was an appropriate tint for the Shenandoah. She was a commissioned vessel of the United States Navy, but she sailed under the aegis of the Joint Special Operations Command. She was a multi-service platform, with elements of all the services serving on her deck. As the need for “jointness” relentlessly battered down the walls and rivalries between the military branches, this commando carrier pointed the way toward the unified defense forces of the future.
Amanda knew she must build on this concept, stitching these diverse elements into a unified whole. “Us vs. Them” must apply only to the enemy.
She continued forward, adding a personalizing word or two to her morning’s greetings whenever possible. “Good morning, Sergeant. Mr. Devin, good morning. Carry on, ladies …”
Aircraft had been pre-spotted on each of the three hangar deck elevators. A SPEED Cobra armed for air-to air with Sidewinders sat on number three aft. An MH-60 with Penguin antiship missiles under its wings had been positioned on number two amidships and an Eagle Eye tilt-rotor drone mounting reconnaissance pods was poised on number one forward. All were ready to be lifted topside through the deck hatches at a moment’s notice.
Air operations would not be routinely undertaken during daylight hours, nor with another ship or aircraft above the horizon – but Arkady was still holding a strike set to launch, configured to cover any eventuality.
Amanda was pleased. Arkady had always referred to himself as just another rotorhead, but her former lover and current CAG was showing every sign of maturing into a very capable senior officer. As for how that maturity would apply to their personal lives, they’d still have to see. To date, neither of them had been given the time to worry about such matters and likely just as well.
Amidships, Amanda descended deeper within the massive hull. Barring the big nuclear fleet carriers, the Shenandoah was the largest combatant in the United States Navy – but she was still cramped. Her air wing, her landing force, her weapons systems, and ninety-nine per cent of her crew compliment, had to be concealed inside her hold spaces, the bow and stern having to remain configured as those of a standard merchant vessel.
Most of the time, the vast majority of her personnel couldn’t indulge in shore leave or even be allowed a breath of fresh air on deck. Amanda recognized the potential for morale problems would be enormous. She must hit this problem hard right from the start. Maybe she could begin a rotating “ship leave” to the passenger cabins in the stern house whenever they were underway.
Two levels down, she dropped through a hatchway into a humid steam bath. She was on the berthing and training deck for the landing and assault force. Down here, the environmental control system could be reset separately from the rest of the vessel, allowing the euphemistically titled “Composite Development Group” to acclimatize to whatever environment they would be projected into. Stone Quillain was obviously preparing her Sea Devils for the tropic dankness of Indonesia.
From down a side passage, a roaring chorus of harsh shouts echoed from the ship’s gymnasium, intermingled with a crash of heavy boot soles on steel decking.
“WHEN WAS THE LAST EASY DAY?”
“YESTERDAY, SIR!”
“WHEN’S THE FIRST HARD DAY?”
“TOMORROW, SIR!”
“GIMME FIFTY!”
“HOOYAH, SIR!”
The Sea Devils were yet another great experiment, an amorphous company-strength organization of Green Beret A Teams, Army Ranger Squads and SEAL and Marine Force Recon platoons, the very best of the best, with a permanent shipboard command-and-control cadre caged over them. The Composite Development Group was designed to be intensely flexible, fluidly altering its makeup to adapt to the ship’s current mission and relying heavily upon the inherent professionalism and discipline of the Special Forces operatives involved.
Could it be made to work? Stone Quillain would let her know. If the experiment failed, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.
Amanda felt the first prickle of perspiration forming on her skin and she moved on to deeper and cooler realms. Another level down, she entered the Command-and-Control Block.
“Captain in the CIC!”
“As you were,” Amanda replied to the traditional call as she pushed through the light curtain into the blue-lit dimness of the Shenandoah’s primary Combat Information Center.
It was a large workspace, commensurate with the size of the ship and of the decisions that would be made here. The overhead was low and cluttered with cable ducts and control clusters, while three of the four bulkheads were lined with rows of imaging and data display flatscreens.
Workstations ran down the port and starboard sides of the compartment, manned currently by the quietly efficient duty watch. The forward bulkhead was dominated by the glowing, four by two-meter topaz expanse of the Alpha tactical display.
Amanda scanned the displays, bringing herself up to date on the status of her ship and the world within a two-hundred-mile radius.
At the submersible operations console, a live video feed was running of the recovery of the Remora, the carrier’s Advanced SEAL Delivery Vehicle. The stumpy conning tower of the minisub was just breaking the surface of the ship’s moon pool while wetsuited divers plunged into the water around it, rigging the cable slings that would lift Remora into its servicing hangar.
At drone control, a slowly rotating overhead image of the US Embassy compound in Jakarta played across the display. They were keeping a stealthed Mariner RPV in a permanent sentry orbit above the Embassy, watching for untoward developments.
Forward, on the Alpha display, an antlike swirl of position hacks crawled around a map of Java. A real-time track of every sea and air vehicle on the move around and over the island was being maintained – not by direct radar imaging, as with an Aegis cruiser’s SPY-1 arrays, but via passive sensor scans from remote sources. Air Force Global Hawk recon drones circling above the archipelago, and NSA and Naval surveillance satellites arcing high in their polar orbits, fed a continuous data stream to the carrier’s battle management systems.
This cascade of information could be both exhilarating and a little overwhelming.
Amid all of the cold, cutting edge technology, there was a human link to a heroic tradition. A plastic display box had been mounted on the bulkhead just above the Alpha screen. The model of a sleek nineteenth century war steamer was silhouetted in the screen glow; the Confederate States Ship Shenandoah, the USS Shenandoah’s namesake and the greatest, most successful surface raider in the history of naval warfare.
Masquerading as a merchant vessel and sailing under the flags of half a dozen nations, the C.S.S. Shenandoah had been the relentless scourge of the Union merchant marine during the Civil War. The boldness, dedication and sheer audacity of her captain and crew made her admired even by the men sworn to destroy her.
In her Phantom paper, Amanda had sought to harness this same kind of audacity, applying it to a world where any nation or terrorist organization had instant access to the global infonets and to one-meter real-time imaging of the planet’s entire surface.
The Commando Carrier Shenandoah was a sea wolf in sheep’s clothing, armed as a multi-mission warship but maintaining the outward appearances of a merchant vessel. She was heir apparent not only to the Civil War’s Shenandoah but also to the German surface raiders and the British Q-Ships of the World Wars, vessels that relied on camouflage and guile for survival as well as firepower.
Amanda had viewed the merchant raider as another form of “stealth” technology, one that could be used to secretly insert an appreciable military force and all of its supporting elements – air power, ground transport, logistics and C3I – into the heart of an enemy stronghold where it could be unleashed with devastating effect.
