China Sea (Dan Lenson Novels)
David Poyer
Language: English
Pages: 416
ISBN: 0312974507
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Dan Lenson was taking the USS Gaddis on her final journey, turning her over to the Pakistani Navy. But things didn't go according to plan. Now Dan finds himself commanding an undermanned, under-gunned, strife-filed ship on the China Sea--and cut off from Naval command. The Gaddis is supposed to be patrolling against pirates. But with a monsoon bearing down on his ship, and his crew ready to explode, Dan knows the Gaddis has been turned into a renegade itself: to engage in a violent, secret shoot-out against the second most powerful nation on earth.
For Dan, a bizarre, treacherous mission has become a desperate journey of honor, character, and courage. For not only has the Gaddis been forced into a covert mission against China, she now has a murderer on board...
the deck and the conn.” “Sir, I have the deck and the conn. I’m going to break Chief Mellows here in as JOOD, since Chief Tosito’s hard down.” Dan told them, “Very well,” and added a couple of encouraging words to Zabounian. Dave said, “Yessir, well, it’s my first big storm as OOD.” “You’re doing a super job, Dave. You and Roy go below and try to get your heads down. We’re going to be in this awhile.” The jaygee hesitated, gauging the motion of the deck, then let go Dan’s chair and slid the
think it through coldly as a classroom problem in seamanship and damage control. Faced with heavy weather, topside icing, and a light ship in an Arctic storm, Jimmy Packer, his CO on his first ship, had flooded deep tanks and chain lockers and blown off the air search antenna with a demo charge to reduce weight high in the ship. Thank God they weren’t carrying ice now, but Dan had no confidence in the ability of this crew to carry out controlled flooding. If it wasn’t done perfectly, the
weak link or cracked shackle would give way, Armey had suddenly reported he had one-bravo boiler lit off again. Somehow Sansone had managed it without electricity, kindled it with a tank of welding oxygen, a smoky, dangerous, half-assed fire but one that gradually brewed enough steam to restart a turbo generator, then the fans, then the bilge pumps, and finally the shaft began to spin and she’d forged ahead to breast the oncoming seas once again as they brought the anchor back aboard. Yeah,
hundred feet beneath the sparkling sea. * * * “Thirty seconds to the gate,” said the copilot, who was simultaneously kneeboarding his map, working the GPS, and plotting each waypoint on the Tacnav display, a green screen in the middle of the instrument panel. The pilot risked a quick glance, then jerked his eyes back to the ground as it rose again, as if the land itself was reaching up to grab and stop them. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, wishing he could see more clearly. Through the
all been commercial ships. I would also like to point out a continuing pattern of attacks on small craft in the Gulf of Thailand and the western reaches of the South China Sea, where a nearly continuous flow of refugees attempt to escape conditions in Vietnam. These craft set out overloaded and are usually barely seaworthy to begin with. They are nearly always intercepted by members of a swarm of part-time pirates, part-time fishermen. The typical modus operandi is to approach them offering