Dick Couch - Out of the Ashes

Laurie Phillips was new to all this, and as they jogged around the flight deck the previous afternoon she had asked Sandee Barron about all the grousing going on aboard the ship.

“Sailors bitching. Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty normal,” Sandee had reassured her.

“But they seem really upset,” Laurie had replied. “I mean, my entire four-hour watch rotation in CDC, all I heard was them moaning and complaining about not getting to pull liberty while the crews of all the other ships are ashore.”

“Listen, Laurie. First of all, if sailors ever stop bitching, then it’s time to worry. It’s just part of who they are. Hell, you’ve probably heard them say being on a ship is just like being in jail, except you can drown.”

“Yeah, I have to admit, I had heard that, even before all this ‘we’re not getting any liberty’ carping began,” Laurie had replied.

“Just the nature of the beast, we roll with it.”

Now at her watch station in CDC, Laurie reflected on the conversation with Sandee and how it had helped put things in perspective. What she also noticed was the increased tension and vigilance aboard the ship now that they were in the Gulf.

Weapons stations aboard Normandy were now manned constantly, extra watchstanders were stationed in CDC and on the bridge, and drills were conducted with more purpose. The captain’s secret battle orders were read aloud by the tactical action officer, the TAO, at the beginning of every watch rotation. Laurie had been inserted in the watch rotation to monitor Global Hawk video. Now as a part of the A-team in CDC, she felt a great sense of pride. Despite that, the hours were long. As she viewed the hours of video, often showing nothing as the Global Hawk transited seemingly endless desert expanses, she allowed her mind to wander. She reflected back to her earlier work at the National Reconnaissance Office and Center for Naval Analyses with UAV technology and recalled her relationship with Charlie Bacon, who worked on that technology with her at NRO. Their relationship ultimately crashed upon the rocks of professional competition. Bacon remained at NRO and she left for CNA. She knew he was still at NRO and had been promoted in the wake of her leaving. It was yet another relationship she had bungled. With a concerted effort she focused on her scope and put off thoughts of Charlie Bacon.

“What is it?” Jawad Makhdoom asked as one of his assistants brought the satellite cell phone to him.

“It’s Prince Ali,” the man whispered, as he held his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.

Makhdoom took the phone. “Yes, yes. We will do it immediately, Your Excellency. Yes, we are ready in all respects. No, Your Excellency, we are ready right now,” was all his assistant could hear as he listened to Makhdoom’s end of the conversation. The man knew what was happening.

He knew the prince was telling them to take the camouflage netting off the site they had so laboriously built and to activate their system and begin sending time-delay and positioning signals to the sensors on the Global Hawk as it streaked overhead at sixty-five thousand feet above the Saudi desert. As the bird flew on its preprogrammed route, its cameras snapped continuously and recorded precisely what they saw, a ballistic missile site on the desert floor below.

However, when they activated the system, the Global Hawk received a signal, this one from the nondescript blockhouse near the mock DF-21D missile site. This caused the Global Hawk to put the 26.47 second time delay signal into its memory. When the missile site appeared on the monitors of anyone watching the Global Hawk video, it would appear not in the Saudi desert, but at a position east of Damascus, Syria, and hundreds of miles away from where the bird was. That position was where Hibah Nawal’s kinsmen had just finished their assembly project.

Still at sea while the other strike group ships remained in port for repairs, Normandy ’s watchstanders had remained at a heightened state of alert as the group’s air warfare and missile defense ship. Captain Pete Blackman worked mightily to ensure his watch teams didn’t lose their edge, but the new “eight-on, eight-off” watch rotation was beginning to take its toll.

It was five hours after the prince’s chief engineer activated his system. Aboard Normandy, a senior enlisted watchstander in the Combat Direction Center saw it first and called out for Lieutenant Junior Grade Mike Clark.

“Lieutenant, come look at this,” the man shouted, barely able to contain his excitement. Clark was quickly at his side.

“It’s right here. I’ve played it back twice. This video is from Global Hawk Two Bravo, and it wasn’t something that was there when it made its normal transit a day ago. It just sprang up out of nowhere,” the man said, seeking reassurance he was not misinterpreting what he was seeing.

“TAO, we need you over here!” Clark said, calling for the tactical action officer.

Soon, almost every watchstander in CDC was huddled around the screen looking at the replay of the Global Hawk video. What the video showed was unmistakable; there was a DF-21D ballistic missile emplacement in the Syrian Desert east of Damascus. Not only that, but it was a missile no one knew the Syrians had, and there were buildings adjacent to the missile launchers that looked like they had been hastily constructed!

Maybe their captain was right about this region being a powder keg ready to explode. This put a new urgency on what they were doing, and on what they were preparing to do.

“Mr. Clark, call the ops officer and get him down here,” the TAO said.

“Yes, sir,” Clark replied.

Laurie Phillips was one of those huddled around the console. She wasn’t on watch and didn’t want to preempt a senior watchstander, so she kept quiet as the entire CDC watch team stared at the Global Hawk video replay as if hypnotized by it.

“What have you got?” the ship’s operations officer shouted as he burst into CDC.

“Sir, this video from the Global Hawk is troubling. Have a look, sir,” the TAO said.

“Lemme up there,” the ops officer said as he pushed past the others to stand right behind the senior watchstander. He sounded exasperated. Normandy ’s junior officers had called him dozens of times on this deployment and it always was some false alarm or something they shouldn’t have bothered him with. Still, it went with the territory as ops officer.

“OK, Chief, what ya got?” Watson asked as casually as he could. He’d show some interest, then leave and get back to doing what he was doing before they interrupted him. Everyone else in CDC was silent as the man patiently explained what he was seeing on the Global Hawk video while he replayed it for the ops officer. Watson showed no emotion as he looked at the video. Nevertheless, when he turned around and looked toward the assembled CDC watch team, his wide eyes betrayed his alarm.

“TAO, pass this to the battle watch staff on Truman, ASAP!” he nearly shouted.

“Mr. Clark, start writing that OPREP Three Pinnacle message now!” Watson commanded, referring to the highest priority emergency Operation Report naval message they could send, and one that “bumped” lower priority messages already in the queue. “I’m going to see the captain!”

Laurie’s head was spinning. DF-21D missiles suddenly appeared in the Syrian desert and during one of the worst periods of tension between the United States and Syria? In any case this was happening at the same time U.S. Navy ships were in port and unable to defend themselves from ballistic missiles. What did it all mean, and what were they going to do about it?