Balance of Power: A Novel by James W. Huston Page B

anything else, just find them. Total, complete failure.
    Billings summoned his staff, the air wing commander, and all the squadron commanders to his wardroom. The group gathered around the table and took the offered coffee.
    “That it?” he began with no introduction, no preliminary statements. “We done looking?”
    Captain Bradford spoke in his deep voice. “We’re not done, sir, we’ll continue to look. But the circle of howfar these guys could have gotten in”—he looked at his watch—“twenty-three hours, is a big one. They could have had a mother ship that craned them aboard, they could have been refueled, they could have scuttled the boats and climbed aboard a steamer, they could be tucked in some cove or cave somewhere waiting for time to pass. It’s hard to know.”
    “Wrong answer,” Billings said, leaning back in his chair. “What am I going to tell the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs? That we failed? That the most dangerous battle group since World War II, maybe ever, can’t find three shitty little motorboats?” His eyebrows angled angrily down toward his nose.
    “Sir,” said Drunk, “it’s a needle in a haystack, and it’s their haystack. They could be anywhere.”
    Admiral Billings shook his head and looked into the eyes of each officer present, one at a time, slowly. “Anyone got any more ideas? I think I’ve heard enough for this morning on how hard this is. What I want to hear is how to find them.”
    The skipper of VAW-121, the E-2C squadron, spoke. “I think we should keep our surface search radars active in the area all day. Carpet coverage. They’ve got to know we’re looking for them, but they probably don’t appreciate how well we can pick them out if they go too fast. They will be more inclined to rely on their speed than on hiding. And if they’re hiding, we wait for them to make a move.”
    “You all concur?”
    Bradford nodded, and put up one finger. “I’m changing the entire day’s schedule into surface search, so every airplane will still be devoting its entire flight to looking for these boats. That’s all we can do, unless you want to go full out, get every airplane airborne we can, and keep them airborne as long as we can.” He hesitated. “But that will exhaust the air wing and the planes in a day and we’ll have to cut back.”
    Billings shook his head. “No, no point in getting someonekilled.” He thought to himself. “Anything else?”
    Captain Black, his chief of staff, spoke. “Admiral, even though we don’t know where these guys have gone, I think we should prepare contingency plans, so when we’re asked to do something about this, which seems likely, we’re as ready as we can be.”
    Admiral Billings glanced at him and nodded quickly. “I agree. Prepare a message to the Amphib group, give them an update. I want the Marines ready to go ashore on any beach within five hundred miles of here. Make it seven hundred. And from looking at the chart, that’s a lot of beaches. Tell them to find out what beach studies they have, and start working on the rest. I don’t care if there are ten thousand of them; start at number one and keep going until I say to stop.”
    He looked around for his intelligence officer, Commander Beth Louwsma. “I want every chart of this area pulled out and pored over by every intel officer on board, down to the lowest ensign. I want the charts all over the walls in CVIC, and I want all the aircrew studying those charts like their lives depend on it. I want everyone to look for where you’d hide if you were in a small fast boat and an American battle group was looking for you. We have to know this area like the back of our hand, and I mean every island.”
    Admiral Billings stood up, his juices flowing. “Beth, I want you to get messages off to whomever you need to—I’ll sign them—asking for imagery of every suspicious inlet, bay, cove, and port within seven hundred miles of here. We’ll send the Tomcats