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“SAM coverage is too tight. He’d never get close enough.”
Max looked crestfallen, and his voice was a little sulky when he asked, “All right, smart guy, what’s your idea?”
Juan peeled back the naval drawings. Beneath them was a chart of the Libyan coastline due south of their current position. Juan tapped his finger on a spot ten miles west of them. “This.”
Max looked from Juan down to where he pointed and back up again. His smile was positively demonic. “Brilliant.”
“Thought you’d like that. It’s the reason we’re delaying the attack for a few minutes. We need them close enough for this to work.” Cabrillo added, “If there isn’t anything else, we should all get into position.”
“Let’s do this,” Mike Trono said.
The men descended the outside stairs to get to the main deck. Juan and Max lingered a moment.
“You still look a bit peevish,” Cabrillo said to his best friend.
“You’re going into the lion’s den, Juan. This isn’t like when we sneak into some warehouse in the middle of the night by knocking out a couple of rent-a-cops. There are some real bad apples on that ship, and I’m afraid as soon as they realize something’s up they’re going to kill her straightaway, and this’ll all be for nothing.”
A glib reply died on the Chairman’s lips. He said somberly, “I know, but if we don’t try they’ve already won. In a way, this war started in these waters two hundred years ago. We as a nation stood up back then for our core principles and said enough is enough. Wouldn’t it be something if we end it here, too, fighting for the very same things?”
“If nothing more, it would be rather poetic justice.”
Juan slapped him on the back, grinning. “That’s the spirit. Now, get down to the op center, and don’t hurt my ship when I’m gone.”
Max shook his head like an old bloodhound. “That’s one promise you know I can’t keep.”
Once they gave Captain McCullough the signal, the massive tanker altered her course southward toward the Libyan frigate. It was done subtly and without warning, but inexorably the distance between the two vessels shrank. On her original course, the Aggie Johnston would have passed the Sidra with a five-mile separation, but as the trailing distance closed so, too, did the range. Staying tight to her flank, the Oregon, too, closed in on its prey.
The radios stayed quiet until the tanker was a mile astern and two miles north of the frigate. Juan had a portable handset as he waited in the shadow of the gunwales with his men. With the sun beginning to set behind them, the worst of the day’s heat had abated, and yet the deck was still too hot to touch comfortably.
“Tanker approaching on my stern, this is the Khalij Surt of the Libyan Navy. You are straying too close for safe passage. Please alter your course and increase your separation before coming abeam.”
“Khalij Surt, this is James McCullough of ULCC Aggie Johnston.” McCullough had a smooth, cultured voice. Juan pictured him standing around six-two and, for some reason, bald as an egg. “We’re experiencing a rogue ebb tide right now. I have the rudder over, and she’s starting to respond. We will comply with your directive in time, I assure you.”
“Very good,” came the curt reply from the Sidra. “Please advise if you continue to have difficulties.”
McCullough had stuck to Juan’s script, and the first act of the play had gone perfectly. Of course, the tanker’s captain would maintain his headin
g and, in the process, buy the Oregon more time.
Ten minutes went by, and the speeds of the ships relative to each other had narrowed the gap by another half mile. Juan thought the Libyans would have called much earlier. He considered it a good omen that there didn’t seem to be any alarm.
“Aggie Johnston, Aggie Johnston, this is the Khalij Surt.” The man’s tone was still cool and professional. “Are you still experiencing difficulties?”
“A moment, please,” McCullough radioed back as if pressed for time. When he didn’t respond for two minutes, the Libyans repeated their request. This time, a bit more forcefully.
“Yes, sorry about that. The ebb intensified. We’re coming out of it now.”
“We did not experience this tidal action you seem to be facing.”
“That’s because our keel is forty feet down and stretches for three football fields.”
Easy, Jimmy boy, Juan thought.
Juan and the captain had worked it out so the next call originated from McCullough. Two minutes after the last comment, he was on the horn again. “Khalij Surt, this is the Aggie Johnston. Please be advised our steering gear just failed. I have ordered an emergency stop, but at our current speed it will take us several miles. I calculate I will pass down your port beam with a half-mile clearance. May I suggest you alter your speed and heading.”
Rather than slowing, the tanker began a steady acceleration, her single prop churning the water into a maelstrom at her fantail. This wasn’t in the script, and Juan knew that McCullough was ignoring his own preset conditions in order to get the Oregon in as tight as he possibly could. Cabrillo vowed to find the man and buy him a drink when this was over.
The Sidra had begun to turn away and gain speed, but she was still going slow enough that her maneuvers were sluggish. The tanker dwarfed the warship as she started to cruise past, moving at eighteen knots only a third of a mile off the Libyans’ rail.
