Damage Control. Gordon Kent

to Rafehausen, Commander Paul Stevens was enjoying his nugget TACCO’s nerves. “Hey, Collins, you got that back end sweet yet?” Stevens tried not to lose an opportunity to give the kid the gears. In fact, as far as Stevens could tell, the “back end”—the big bank of antiquated computers that drove the airplane’s sonar-receiving and tactical displays—was functioning as well as it ever did, but the new LTjg didn’t know that.

      “It’s, uh, it’s up, sir. I mean—”

      “Jeez, Collins, either it’s up or it ain’t. I’m the pilot, not the TACCO. Which way do you want it?”

      “It’s up.” Collins’s voice rose so that the response sounded more like a question than an answer.

      Stevens hit his intercom so that only his copilot could hear him. “Kids ought to be out of diapers before they leave the RAG.”

      “Give him a rest,” she muttered. Lisa “Goldy” Goldstein had fought her way out of the girl jobs in naval aviation and she had plenty of spine to stand up to Stevens, who was a great pilot and an okay squadron CO, but sometimes a total asshole as a human being. “Skipper, you blow that kid’s confidence, we still have to live with him the whole cruise.”

      Stevens smiled. He liked Goldstein, and he liked that she stood up to him. “I can hear the snot in his nose every time he talks.”

      “Yeah, skipper, and I can see the dust when you fart. Can we get this show on the road?”

      Stevens grinned. “Roger that.” He cycled the intercom to the back end. “Collins, if you’ve got us a working computer, you and Whitehorse better start thinking of your sonobuoy pattern.”

      Bobby Whitehorse, the enlisted SENSO Officer, or SENSO, was a shy, silent Indian kid from a reserve in the Dakotas. He listened, said nothing, and started to enter his projected pattern into the computer in front of him. As his facial expression rarely changed, it was difficult for the other troops in the squadron to figure out whether he was sullen-silent or shy-silent.

      Stevens saw the little symbols on his pilot’s display. “Way over there?” he said. “You guys in back trying to run us out of fuel?”

      “That’s where the ASW module told us to go, skipper,” Goldy said.

      “Yeah, yeah. I came out this way to keep that big island between us and their radar.” Stevens was holding the plane about ninety feet off the waves beneath them, flying with one hand and turning his head to Goldy when he talked. One bad twitch and they’d have a wing in the water, but Stevens always flew this way and his crews got used to it. And they had to be under the opposing force’s radar horizon, because they were cheating—flying to a target before startex.

      Stevens pushed the throttle forward and banked to the left, heading for the entry point to the pattern the SENSO had marked twenty nautical miles to the west.

      “I have an ESM cut just beyond the island. Russian airsweep radar, second generation.” Collins sounded less nervous. He was better with the radar detection than with the sonar. “I’m putting it on screen. Second cut. Got a triangulation. See it, skipper?”

      Stevens flicked his eyes from his instrument scan to the little screen on his console and winced. The Indians had at least a radar picket, maybe more, much closer to him than he had expected. This is where he and Rafe and the crotchety bastards in the anti-submarine warfare module had guessed they’d find the Indian sub early in the exercise. Rafe wanted it found and tagged from the get-go. And here the Indians were, with a radar picket right at the edge of the start area, looking out for someone like—

      “Looks like we’re all cheating together,” Goldy said.

      “Jeez, Craik might have warned us the Indians were this far south.”

      Out of the corner of his eye, Stevens saw the flash off her visor as Goldy turned her head and looked at him. Clearly she didn’t agree with his views on cheating, either.

      “Got another cut, skipper. Another air-search radar.”

      “They shouldn’t be seeing us yet,” Stevens said, banking sharply to keep the bulk of the forty-mile-long island between his plane and the radar pickets on the other coast.

      “Startex in one minute,” Goldy said. “I think we may be the first casualties in this thing.”

      “Not if I can help it. Whitehorse, put a long pattern down here.”

      Collins cut in. “We’re still seven miles from the drop—”

      “Let’s put the first line in here and we’ll sneak up the coast low, drop a few more, and see what we get.”

      Collins mumbled something about how far the Indian sub would have to be from her start position to be caught this far west.

      “You got something to say, Mister Collins?”

      “No, sir.”

      Clunk. Each sonobuoy had the passive systems to listen for an enemy sub within a thousand yards or so, and a tiny radio transceiver to broadcast the digital data back to the plane. When the sonobuoy survived the drop to the water and the transceivers worked, it was a great system.

      “Number one in the water and I have a signal.” Whitehorse had a flat, nasal voice.

      Stevens thought it might have been the longest sentence he’d heard out of the boy.

       Clunk.

      “Number two in the water and—live. She’s good.”

      Collins came in again. “Look at the salinity, Whitehorse. Where’s the layer?”

      Stevens cut the nerd babble from the rear seats. He didn’t expect they’d find the sub, but it was an exercise and he didn’t want to be remembered as the first casualty.

       Clunk.

      “Startex,” Goldy said. The game was live; if anyone had seen them, they’d be called with an imaginary missile shot over the radio. Stevens looked at the digital readout on the encrypted comms without thinking, fearing the worst. Nothing came, and he smiled. He looked down where the live buoys from Whitehorse’s drops were matched up with the projected pattern and prepared to turn west toward the island after the next drop. At this altitude, even at low speed, every turn was exciting.

       Clunk.

      “I—uh, skipper? We—shit, there it is again. Maybe a sub?” Collins, from the back seat, with nerves making him sound like a girl.

      Stevens made the turn to put the next buoy in the pattern.

      “Whitehorse? You concur?”

      “It’s a sub,” Whitehorse said. Flat and confident. “Diesel running about five knots.”

      “Well, it’s a pleasure to know they’re cheating harder than we are,” Goldy said. “He’s at least a few miles off his start line.”

      “I got him on two buoys. I got a fix.” Collins’s voice rose an octave. “Hey! There he is!”

      Goldy tapped her helmet and cut out the back seats. “Want me to call him in to the boat?”

      “No. Let’s drop an active on him so he’s dead and then call him in. Those pickets are right over there; we may be under their radar horizon but they’ll be on a broadcast like white on rice.”

      “Roger that.”

      “Whitehorse, you ready with an active drop?”

      “Roger.” Whitehorse sounded interested.

      “Collins, you ready? You going to fuck this up?”

      “No—ah, yes. Sir. No.”

      Goldy reached over and slapped Stevens on the helmet. Stevens