by Brandon Webb
Finn nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Who do I see to put in for special permission?”
“Uh, just one more minute.” Finn half expected him to back out of the compartment kowtowing.
A moment later a commander stepped out. “Commander Jacobsen,” he said, gripping Finn’s hand in an iron handshake. “How can I help?” Commander Jacobsen said this last in a tone that clearly conveyed the opposite meaning.
“Sir,” said Finn. “I need to get a SITREP on my unit back on the peninsula. How do I get a secure line to Coronado?”
“You’d have to talk to the captain.”
“How do I do that?” He knew the normal answer: fill out a form and wade through a week of red tape. He was hoping for something a little more streamlined.
The commander pressed his lips together and frowned, then spoke slowly, as if in careful thought. “I don’t know, he’s a busy man.”
Uh-huh. Message received.
He thanked the commander, adding a “Sir,” and headed back to his broom closet to get back into his flight suit.
Schofield had said he’d make sure Finn would get access to inside-track communication if he needed it. Turned out he needed it. But Schofield wasn’t there to help. As much as he wanted to give the man a wide berth, it looked like he’d need to talk to the captain himself. The question was, how to manage that? He couldn’t exactly wait around for an engraved invitation.
He stepped inside his quarters and noticed an envelope placed neatly on the pillow on his rack, dead center. The hand-printed writing said “Chief Finn.”
Inside was a printed, personalized card.
From the desk of
Captain William James Eagleberg
Commander, USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72)
The printed message read:
You are cordially invited to be the guest of the Commanding Officer at his mess. On August 4 at 1700 hrs in wardroom 2-200-0-L. Dress whites.
And in the bottom third of the card, there was the captain’s signature in a sweeping calligraphic scrawl.
An invitation.
Practically engraved.
25
At 1645 Finn was decked out in his dress whites and being ushered into the captain’s wardroom, where he was seated opposite the captain, who had arrived at the same moment. The captain’s XO was seated to Eagleberg’s right, the day-shift junior officer of the deck at his left. With its white linens and china and elaborate codes of etiquette, to Finn the setting had more the appearance of a state dinner in DC than a meal on a working warship.
Finn was introduced one by one to each person at the table. As they all took their seats Finn caught the junior OOD’s eye and winked; he’d made friends with her at midrats. She gave back a quick grin.
“So: Finn,” said the captain. “Is that, Finn…?” When Finn didn’t jump in with a response he prompted further. “First name? Last name?”
“Just Finn.” After a moment he added, “Sir.”
The captain glanced around with slight irritation at the clatter of soup tureens being placed on plates around the table. “I’m sorry, it’s a little noisy. Justin? I don’t think I got your full name.”
“Just Finn,” Finn repeated, no louder than the first time. He was curious: Would the captain ask for further explanation, exhibit further irritation? Or let it go, and keep his powder dry?
The captain paused, no doubt waiting for another “sir” or “captain” to conclude the sentence. When he didn’t get one he said simply, “Ah,” took his soup spoon and fell to.
Finn did likewise, as did the rest of the table. The clatter of dishes was replaced by a soft chorus of sips and slurps. Finn was mildly impressed that the captain hadn’t taken the bait.
“I trust you’re finding your way around all right, making yourself at home on our little bark,” the captain commented after a full minute of leek potato soup had elapsed. “Finding everything you need?”
“About that,” Finn replied. “There’s something I’d like to get set up, if possible. A few minutes with a secure line to Coronado, check in with brass there. Sir.”
The captain nodded as he took another spoonful. “You should talk to the people at CVIC.”
“I did. They said they didn’t have the authority to grant access.”
The captain looked up, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. Real or feigned, hard to say. “Is that right?” He looked over at his executive officer. “Artie? That doesn’t seem right.” He looked back at Finn. “We need to do something about that.”
Then took a long thoughtful spoonful. And another.
“So, special assignment, we’re told,” the captain said. “May I ask the nature of that assignment?”
The captain hadn’t actually directed his XO to do anything about the CVIC issue, Finn noted. Just changed the subject.
“I really can’t say, sir,” Finn replied.
True, strictly speaking—he couldn’t have said even if he’d wanted to, because he didn’t really know himself. He knew why command said he was going home: to deliver a special debrief on their efforts in Yemen. But he didn’t believe that. If it was true, it wasn’t the whole truth. Which was what he hoped to learn from Kennedy.
The captain broke into a smile. He sat back in his chair as the mess stewards began removing the empty tureens.
“Naval Special Warfare. Underwater, under wraps, under the radar. Right, Artie? I expect ninety-five percent of Chief Finn’s life is too classified to classify!” He chuckled. A murmur of chuckles circumnavigated the table.
That didn’t seem to call for comment, and Finn offered none.
He noticed that the XO winced every time the captain called him “Artie.” A microexpression, so fleeting that no one else saw it. Probably didn’t even realize he was doing it. Finn sensed that the XO hated that nickname but would never let on, not to his captain. Finn had seen him in operation during that muster call, and he’d carried himself quite differently then. Not a right-hand man, but a man in charge. Not overbearing, not an asshole, but wearing his authority well. Bit of a shape-shifter, though. Sucking up to the captain the way he did now was entirely understandable. Once the captain got kicked upstairs, the XO stood a decent chance of taking his place on the bridge. The promotion path was not automatic. But possible. Which meant that until then he would stay close to his captain, close and protective.
Not necessarily the same thing as loyal.
“I have tremendous respect for everything you boys are doing back there,” the captain was saying. He gave a vague wave of his butter knife in the direction of the stern and, implicitly, all of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. “And I know you’ve made a lot of sacrifices, no doubt including many of your own friends.” Pointing now at Finn with the butter knife. “Not easy, losing men you trained with, fought with, bled with.”
To Finn it sounded like the captain was rehearsing the voiceover for a movie trailer, but here he decided to contribute a reply. “Tougher for you, I’d think.”
“For us?” The captain frowned.
“Noncombat losses are even harder. You’ve lost an ATO officer and an entire helo crew, and not one of them in combat. Sir.”
The captain stiffened. “Every loss is a hard thing.”
There was an icy silence as the stewards began placing platters of Caesar salad. The Parmesan had been baked into the shape of a plane’s tail assembly and placed jutting up on one side of the plate, with three flash-fried whole white anchovies laid out flat upon the bed of romaine. An aircraft carrier salad. Galley guys plying their trade skills. Good for them.
Finn took a bite of romaine.
“That has to be tough on morale, sir,” he added. “You know sailors and their superstitions.”
The XO, Gaines, broke his silence. “You think we should be worried about morale, Chief
?” he said mildly.
“No. I mean, I wouldn’t, sir. Maybe if you lost a few more.”
Finn noticed the junior OOD’s eyes grow wide. No one said a word.
Now the captain chuckled and took a bite of salad. “Some people,” he said, then took another bite, chewing thoroughly before continuing. “Some people see you fellas in Special Operations as renegades. Outlaws. Troublemakers. As if you’re not really part of the navy at all.” He shook his head. “I don’t see it that way. No. My view is this: you may be outliers, but you’re outliers belonging to the same great organization as every other soul on this boat.” He looked around the table, as if admonishing all assembled company. “From now until we dock in San Diego, Chief Finn, you are not a US Navy SEAL. You are a guest on our ship. As such, you’re part of my crew, and I, for one, look forward to the men and women of my crew having the benefit of your example as a sailor of great achievement, discipline, and respect.”
In plain English: behave yourself.
“You know what the man says,” the captain continued. “The victorious warrior wins first, then goes to war; the defeated warrior goes to war first, then seeks to win.” He stabbed another bite of salad, then paused, fork in midair. “However,” he added. He placed the bite in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully while everyone else at the table waited for him to finish the sentence. Classic power move. Finally he gave a nod, speared a second bite, then paused yet again, fork held aloft.
“However, the wise warrior avoids the battle altogether.”
Finn took another bite himself, chewed, swallowed. Then said: “Ruling a country is like cooking a small fish.”
There was another awkward silence, this time broken by the captain bursting into laughter and holding up a fried anchovy on his fork. “Well these, in my estimation, are perfect!” He turned to a nearby server. “Compliments, Luis, please!”
The server nodded and with a murmured “Of course, Captain” withdrew to convey the captain’s compliments to the chef.
26
The captain was not happy.
For five full minutes Arthur had sat silent, waiting. Part of his job description. When the skipper finally spoke up it was so abrupt he nearly flinched.
“Did you note the first thing that happened when our guest sat down tonight?”
Arthur frowned in thought. “You…asked him about his name.”
The captain gave a sour smile. “That came next. Before that.” When his XO had no reply the captain continued. “He winked at my junior OOD. And she smiled back.”
Arthur raised his eyebrows. He had not noticed that.
Eagleberg nodded. “Oh, yes. I observe, Artie. I observe. Chief Finn has been making friends.” He paused to swirl his Baccarat crystal brandy snifter and take a taste of the premium cognac. Against regulations, but this was his ship. “You know what they called me at the Academy, behind my back? Captain Know-It-All.”
In fact, they’d called him “Captain Eaglebeak,” but Arthur was not about to offer the correction.
“And they were right. I did know it all. That’s how I got to be commander of this ship. By knowing everything—before it matters. By having the answer before anyone else has even thought to ask the question. And you know what I know about this Lone Ranger knuckle-dragger we’ve got on board?”
“No, sir, what’s that?”
The captain looked up from his crystal glass and peered at his XO for a moment before replying.
“Nothing. Not a goddamned thing.” He took his final sip and placed the glass down. “I don’t know why he’s nosing around CVIC, or Public Affairs, or why he’s grilling my crew members about misfortunes past. I don’t know why he’s patrolling this ship every day like a Bengal in a cage. I don’t know why, if SOCOM has such a hard-on for him that they had to yank him from the field and pull him back to the States for some special assignment, they didn’t just put the man on a C-130 to Frankfurt and points west.
“I don’t know why the man is on my boat, Artie. And I don’t like not knowing.”
Arthur had always admired his boss’s piercing intellect, but he found the man’s paranoid streak worrisome. It was Eagleberg’s job to manage the ship. It was Arthur’s job to manage Eagleberg.
“And that comment,” said the captain. “What the hell was that about? Ruling a country is like cooking a fish?”
“A small fish, sir,” Arthur said. “You quoted Sun Tzu, The Art of War. He quoted Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching.”
“I know that,” snapped the captain. (He didn’t, was Arthur’s guess.) “But what the hell did he mean by it?”
Arthur shrugged. “Hard to say, sir.”
He meant you, sir, he thought. He meant, be careful how you treat the small fish.
27
August 5. A warm breeze; rumbles of distant morning thunder.
Sailors called this the “time of no horizon,” this brief stretch of transition from night to dawn, when light had begun to infiltrate everywhere without quite showing itself. Neuroscientists said it was in the moments between sleep and wake that the boundaries roping off conscious from subconscious were at their most permeable, imagination and intuition at their peak.
The time of no horizon was the ocean’s intuition time.
This morning Finn sat out on the ship’s fantail, perched on that big capstan, sketch pad on his knees, gazing out at the total absence of distinction. No sounds but the scratch of the pencil, the steady churn of the big brass screws below, and the wash of the sea.
Was this where Schofield had gone over the edge?
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” that’s how they always put it in the funeral services, but it wasn’t really like that: ashes and dust weren’t where we came from, no, we came from the water, and the water was always there, waiting to claim us back.
Finn tried to picture the man, a few yards away, putting one leg up over the rail.
Not his mess.
Just a passenger.
Ignoring the lingering stench of garbage, he went on sketching the shifting shades of charcoal gray, pewter gray, battleship gray, ash gray.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the time of no horizon receded and distinct masses of color began to resolve. The sky grew lighter, the ocean darker. Up and down reasserted their presence.
Now, in their second day since threading the Strait, the air was already changing. It was strange to feel less humidity when you were completely surrounded by water, but on the open sea the atmosphere was drying out, leaving the cloying feeling of the Gulf behind them.
The ocean, too, was different here. In the Gulf it was always calm, as if it were going along with a pretense of domestication. Out here the sea didn’t hide the fact that it was wild.
“Still here, Ray,” whispered Finn. “Still here.”
A low wind whipped around from the starboard and carried his words away.
Ssssss. Ssssss. Sssssstillhhhhheeeeeerrrrrre…
“You hate ships.” That was Carol explaining Finn to himself, a task at which she was considerably skilled.
“Not true,” Finn had objected. “I love ships.”
“You love water. Everything about it. You love being in the water, under the water, out on the water. You love small boats, where you can smell and feel the water. Big ships, where you’re shut in? Those you hate.”
Finn didn’t relate to the word “hate.” But otherwise she had him nailed, dead to rights. As usual.
Carol said she felt safe with Finn because he was “such a fucked-up mass of contradictions.”
Not true, Finn had said, knowing she would then demonstrate that it was.
“You love hunting, especially underwater,” she said. This was true. He was lethal with a speargun. “But you’ve got this weird thing about guns.”
Also true. So?
“So, you’re an el
ite sniper who doesn’t like guns. You despise authority figures but worship your lieutenant. You love water, hate ships. You’re a fucked-up mass of contradictions.”
So how did that make her feel safe?
“Your shit is out front, where I can see it,” she explained. “It’s the assholes who keep their contradictions hidden you have to worry about.”
Finn smiled as he sketched.
Ssssssstillhhhheeeeeerrrrrre said the wind.
He thought about Schofield. Thought about that hot prickling he’d felt up the back of his neck. He still didn’t know what it was telling him, but he recognized the language.
Death had come to call.
“Death and I are old friends,” he’d heard teammates boast, but he knew that was a lie. Death didn’t have friends, only acquaintances. Death was still a mystery, even to Finn.
The prospect of dying did not especially disturb him, though. He’d spent his life knocking at death’s back door. For as long as he could remember, Finn had always pictured death as a creature with a massive head and no arms or legs. Like a great wriggling invertebrate shark. Why, he had no idea. Maybe one day he’d find out.
Maybe soon.
Because death had come to call, and wasn’t leaving yet. Finn could feel it stalking the ship.
For all he knew, it had already brushed right by him.
“Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up.”
Oh six hundred. Finn closed the sketch pad and stood. Time for breakfast.
He needed to ask someone for a favor.
28
Stopping by his broom closet to drop off his drawing tools, Finn opened the door and froze.
Intruder.
A slender, narrow-shouldered sailor over by Finn’s dresser, shuffling a mop around and humming to himself. He swayed slightly on his feet, almost as if he might fall. Drunk? Stoned? It took Finn a moment to understand.
He was dancing with his mop.
As the sailor began swiveling around toward Finn his tune reached its chorus and he went from humming to singing. “Ayy, ayy, ay, ayyyyy, canta y no llorr—”