by David Poyer
“I think it will,” Dan said. “Just my opinion, but both sides are pretty damn sick of this war.”
“Yeah, us too.” She sighed again, placed her hands on the desk, and rose. “We don’t have a county morgue. Body’s being held at Hertich’s. Local funeral home. So, let’s take you over there.”
* * *
THE patrol car smelled like he expected a small-town police cruiser to. Unwashed bodies, greasy fast food, and the ghosts of vomit past. When they pulled up a few blocks distant, a corpulent man in a black suit, white shirt, and blue tie was waiting at the curb. The mortician shook Larsen’s hand and introduced himself, though Dan didn’t register his name. He was abstracted. Not really here.
He was asking a power he hoped was there for help. For strength. Not for a given result, not for it not to be her. He wouldn’t ask for that. Because then he’d just be wishing horror and grief onto another father, another family, instead of his own. He couldn’t pray for that.
Only for the strength to bear whatever came.
The mortician ushered them through several curtained and carpeted parlors, down a flight of steps, into an air-conditioned, fluorescent-lit basement.
Here the air smelled like cinnamon and acetone. The director cleared his throat. Unsmiling, deliberate, with the air of a robing priest, he pulled on a crackling green plastic embalming gown and green nitrile gloves. Talc drifted in the still air. Clearing his throat again—a tic?—he rolled a dressing table out of the way and unlatched the door to a gleaming stainless three-body mortuary cooler.
A single shrouded bundle lay on the top rack. The tray extended with a squeal of bearings. The pale blue sheet atop the body was dotted with brownish fluid. “She was unclaimed,” the director said. “So I didn’t put much time into prettying her up.” He looked shyly at the sheriff, then at Dan, as if expecting to be chided.
“Go ahead, Rog,” Sheriff Larsen said.
The director cleared his throat again, grasped the upper hem of the sheet with thumbs and forefingers, and drew it back with a respectful yet somehow still showmanlike flourish.
Dan felt iced, emotionless, as if walled off by many meters of frozen asbestos from some devouring flame. He forced unwilling legs to dolly him forward.
The face was obliterated, hammered by blunt force into black bruises, so distorted the bones beneath must have been smashed out of shape. The head lay cocked to one side, as if in mute question. Why? Or maybe, Who? No, this victim must have known her assailant. The damage was so up close, so personal a violation.
But confronted with this swollen, distorted wreckage of a face, Dan couldn’t tell if it was familiar or not.
“We figure about five nine, maybe one thirty, one forty. A little taller than average for a woman, but not that much. Mid- to late twenties. Hard to tell race. She’s pretty banged up,” the director said, half admiringly, as if he were describing a used but durable car he was selling. “If you asked me, I’d say she was dragged. There’s a lot of abrasion damage.”
The sheriff said, “Then maybe beaten, so she wouldn’t be recognized?”
“Could be,” the director said. “But that could’ve happened in a car crash, or a motorcycle accident, too. I see a lot of young adults come in here like that. Those are always sad. Donorcycles, they call the bikes, down at the hospital.”
The icy sheath was melting. He felt queasy now, ready to bolt for a toilet. He’d seen the dead before. Many times. But none had been his own daughter. “Can I see her hair?” he muttered, only realizing he’d said it aloud after the words were out.
The director nodded. Those green nitrile gloves lifted the head and fanned out the hair. Dark brown, like hers. But … it was short. He blinked, fighting voices in his brain lifted in argument. Nan hadn’t worn her hair this short. But … she could have cut it. Even, probably had cut it, working in a lab environment.
Her mother’s hair had been jet black. His own, lighter, almost blond. She’d been nearly blond once, when she was small, but it had darkened as she grew up.
Without being asked, the director flirted the sheet downward. Uncovering a torso and chest, also bruised. The skin was mottled red and brown, lacerated and stripped down to raw meat.
Dan closed his eyes, and put out a hand to brace himself against a utility cabinet.
“Did your daughter have any identifying markings?” Larsen asked, beside him, in a not unsympathetic tone.
“A, uh … a tattoo. A tennis racket. With some kind of design around it. Leaves, or flowers. She got it when she was at college, thinking about going pro.”
The director murmured, “Where was it, sir?”
“Right wrist. No, left, I think … Actually I’m not sure right now.” He ground his teeth, fighting down the nausea. He had to stick with this. Had to know. One way or the other.
The director pulled the left hand from under the sheet and turned it over. The skin was mottled, but there was no sign of a tattoo of any kind.
“The right one?” the sheriff, Kit, said.
The director tucked the left hand back under the sheet, refolded the sheet, and took out the right hand. His deliberate, measured movements were enraging. Dan squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open again.
On the right hand, the skin was gone from above the elbow down nearly to the fingertips, scooped or scraped off, leaving raw red muscle and white tendons.
“That’s what we call road rash,” the director said. “It’s instinct. You tend to push your arms out when you go down. Try to break the fall. So maybe, whatever happened to her, it started with a wipeout.”
Dan rubbed his face. He tried to remember what his daughter’s body looked like, but all his mind gave him was pictures of her as a child. Bony, long legs, long arms. Her slightly awkward, stiff-legged run. This body was the right size. Five nine was about right, and the weight was ballpark. The skin appeared slightly sallow, at least in the uninjured areas, more or less like he remembered hers looking like when she’d been indoors studying and hadn’t gotten much sun. Which she probably hadn’t, working at Archipelago.
But he couldn’t tell, and he wavered, standing there, between wondering if he was just denying what was in front of him, or if this truly might not be her. The undertaker and the sheriff stood watching. Waiting for some decision.
But he just couldn’t look at the poor broken thing in front of him anymore. As if some force field, or magnetic repulsion, wrenched his gaze away. He had to think about breathing just to get air down to his lungs, and the room kept trying to spin. At last he said, inspecting the green-and-white tile floor, “You can cover her up now.”
“So, is that your daughter, sir?” the sheriff asked, taking his arm.
“I … I’m sorry, but I just can’t tell. What about clothes? What was she found in? That might help.”
“Found her pretty much just like this,” the sheriff said. “Covered in leaves, out where the highway crosses the White River, north of the airport. Stripped naked, lying under the trees. Jogger who spotted one hand called it in.”
“Can you do something else to ID her? Fingerprints, blood type … DNA?”
They looked at each other. The director cleared his throat. He shook his head and whispered something to the sheriff that Dan didn’t catch.
Finally Larsen said, “It’s not exactly like CSI or the movies, Captain. Not out here, these days. We could maybe do DNA, but it would take a while. The sample would have to go to Lincoln. Like I said, it would take a while. Weeks. Maybe months, I don’t know how much backlog they have, with all the … you know, the remains, from the Exchange.”
“I’d be happy to pay, if that would help.” Dan wished he felt icy again. Now he felt hot, sweaty, and his legs were beginning to quiver. “Look, I don’t know what to say. I really can’t tell for sure. It’s probably her. But I can’t be certain, so I don’t want to…” He caught his breath; could see from their sympathetic yet baffled expressions he wasn’t making sense. “Look, I’m going to hav
e to get out of here.”
“Sure. Sure.” The sheriff took his arm again and they climbed back up the steps, back through the floral-scented parlors, outside into the fresh air.
When they reached the patrol car his knees buckled under him. He felt dizzy, sick, ill. He dropped to a crouch on the curb, covering his face with both hands.
The others patted his back, murmuring in consoling tones. Hands slid under his armpits, to lift him, but he twisted away, fought to stand on his own. Finally he made it, but barely, swaying.
He leaned against the patrol car, fighting just to breathe past the sucking black hole in his chest. Wishing now that numbness would return. That feeling he wasn’t really involved. Was not seeing what was right in front of him.
But this nausea, and this endless and bottomless horror, felt like they were here to stay.
12
The Sea of Japan
SAVO ISLAND had been at Condition Three, wartime cruising, for over a day now. Cheryl had spent most of it slumped bonelessly in her chair in the Citadel. Occasionally dozing, until jerked awake by some interruption, or reports, or a particularly insistent itch. Finally Mills had persuaded her to retire to her cabin for a few hours. But she’d spent most of those staring up at the overhead, arms tense, waiting for the general quarters alarm or a call on her Hydra.
God. She hated waiting. The worst part of war, or the run-up to it.
She still wasn’t sure exactly which one this was.
Maybe the whole idea of peace had been, in that great Navy acronym, OBE—overtaken by events. Maybe the world would just keep fighting from now on. Just changing the names of the enemies. God, but that was a horrible thought.
If this really was a new war, or a resumption of the old one, though, the oncoming fleet would already have been suffering a withering gauntlet of fires. From unmanned penetrator aircraft, long-range missiles, attack submarines, and Space Force hypersonics. From land-based Marine and Army batteries too.
But Fleet and PACOM had made clear that would not happen in this case. Not until the approaching Russians demonstrated hostile intent.
The United States wasn’t going to start this war. And it wasn’t going to happen by accident, either.
On the other hand, her mission was to block that fleet’s passage. To abort their landing in Dalian, and takeover of the former Russian grant there.
If they kept coming, how could she do that without initiating hostilities?
An insoluble dilemma. An impossible mission.
But she had to figure out how to accomplish it.
Somewhere in there, though, she must have managed a few minutes’ troubled shut-eye, for when she next forced her lids apart the clock had moved on. She rolled out, splashed her face and scrubbed her armpits, smeared on ointment, pulled on a fresh set of coveralls, and went down to the messdecks. They were serving breakfast, and she bolted buckwheat pancakes and a ham slice, sitting with several young enlisted women.
Then, back to Combat.
Now she sat at the command chair again, feeling levitated from the three cups of coffee she’d chugged and gravitated from the heavy flapjacks and ham. Maybe they counterbalanced each other, but she felt leaden. Even though she’d lost fifteen pounds over the course of the war. She’d gained a couple back since the armistice. But now, she guessed, I’ll be losing again. Fuck.
If only that were her biggest problem …
Chief Terranova turned to her. “Captain? Seein’ a change in their formation.”
Reluctantly, she donned the heavy VR helmet once more.
And was floating in midair, gazing down on a scribed and virtual sea. Which by now seemed more genuine than the ocean outside. A sight she hadn’t seen for days.
Tilting her head slightly, she sped forward above its monochrome blue. Until contacts loomed up over the ever-receding horizon. Warships, like her own. Only not her own. And beneath the waves, other contacts swam like sharks, their locations less well defined, the edges of their probable locations fuzzier, but there. And all headed her way, as surely as locomotives on a track.
Russians.
The Northern Task Force had filtered in via the Soya and Tartary Straits, with the Japanese reporting numerous submarine passages of the Tsugaru Strait, between Hokkaido and Honshu. Their tightly interlocked steaming formation showed that they expected attack, or were guarding against it. She hovered, counting ships, occasionally zooming in for a closer look when drone or nanosatellite video was available.
The new arrivals were in a conventional sector screen, with Peter the Great and associated logistics ships and one Priboy-class Wasp-equivalent assault carrier at the center. Intel expected the assault carrier to be equipped with the new fifth-generation fleet defense fighters, which would be augmented with land-based MiG-31s out of Vladivostok to provide air cover.
Her heart sank. Together with those submarines—the Russian Pacific Fleet numbered over twenty modern boats, most nuclear-powered or advanced air-independent conventional—the oncoming force disposed of far more striking power than she could call on.
If it came to a battle, she’d lose, and it wouldn’t take long. Her ships would be overwhelmed by hundreds of missiles striking in a coordinated mass attack. Any survivors would be finished off by torpedoes and missiles at close range, once the subs penetrated a degraded ASW barrier.
Unless she made sure of her ground, and fought for every inch of it.
Or … unless she made it perfectly clear to her opponent that she was both prepared to fight and capable of inflicting heavy damage.
In which case, Moscow might decide it really didn’t want Dalian enough to risk a full-on war with the United States.
She sighed again, and boosted the suddenly heavy-as-lead helmet off her shoulders. Now, all at once, she felt shrunken. Impotent. Dazed, with the realization she was only a tiny worm in a thousand-acre field, instead of the master of the universe. Could see only the nutshell-interior of this black-ceilinged compartment, instead of infinite space.
“I don’t like these odds, Skipper.” Noah Pardees slid into the seat beside her. The ops officer stretched flexibly as a cat, but he too looked worried. “We should have spanked these guys as soon as they started through the straits.”
“We’re not at war yet, Noah. And we can’t strike first.”
“Who says? Otherwise, we just wait to get whacked? What the hell’s PACOM thinking?”
She glanced at the geoplot, lit on the large-screen display in front of them. “Their declared destination is Vladivostok. Until they turn south from there, we’re not even sure they’re headed for China.”
Pardees rubbed his chin, looking stressed. “Oh, sure,” he said bitterly. “But by then it’ll be too late. They’ll have their targeting dataforces fused. Hit us with hypersonics, cruises … we could have two hundred missiles inbound at once. We’ll be friggin’ toast, Skipper.”
She dragged a hand through lank sweaty hair. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know. If we had the Japanese with us, the numbers’d look better. But I agree, this isn’t a good force ratio. If anything, we might just be a tripwire.”
The ops officer grimaced. “Tripwires get trampled.”
She bobbled her head, unable to disagree, but wary of coming across as defeatist. If anyone aboard had to project stone confidence, it was the CO. Not only that, she had to convey it to her other units.
She regarded the geoplot for a bit longer, then began keyboarding.
At the front of CIC, one of the large-screen displays reversed. Lifting her fingers from the keys, propping her chin on a fist, she studied it.
This was what things looked like from the point of view of the oncoming fleet. Of Admiral Vitaly Aznavuryan, commanding what intel was now calling the Combined North Pacific Task Force, or CNPTF.
It might be worthwhile knowing more about this guy. Back to the keyboard … to call up the classified personnel summary on him.
It was sparse. A Nahkimov scholar as a te
enager during Soviet times. Graduate of the Kuznetsov Naval Academy, the Moscow Higher Command School. Commanded two submarines—a submariner, then, before becoming the senior assistant to the commander, Pacific Fleet. A picture of him, obviously an official photo, in the grotesquely high-crowned combination cap the Russians had inherited from the old Soviet Bloc. It told her little, other than that he had five o’clock shadow on those pudgy cheeks.
The only personal information was based on an attaché’s chat with him. It noted that he was from Smolensk, married, with two grown children, boy and girl. He spent his free time fly-fishing and bicycling in the country, when he could. Aznavuryan also enjoyed American movies and seemed to like discussing them. She wondered about his name, which didn’t sound Russian, but there was nothing in the bio about that.
She left his picture looking back at her from her command desk screen, sighed, and contemplated the bulkhead displays again. Trying to figure out how this guy would proceed.
Okay, she thought. Let’s assume he joins up with the forces already in port in Vladivostok. At that point, they’d be pretty much centered in the widest bowl of the Sea of Japan. Then he heads south.
But as he makes southing, the coastlines of Japan and Korea will funnel his line of advance more and more narrowly.
Until Tsushima Strait.
Back in 1905, Admiral Togo Heihachiro had engaged Rozhestvensky’s fleet after it entered the strait from the southward. Here, the situation would be reversed. She, Cheryl Staurulakis, would be blocking this new threat’s advance from the north.
She got up and valved coffee into a CIMSEC-logoed mug at the mess table in Sonar, then came back and settled in again. Her stomach felt like it wasn’t doing so well with the pancakes. Or maybe it was just nerves. She sighed, pondering her options. Which seemed to be pretty fucking limited, given that she’d been ordered not to strike first.
How had Togo handled it? A few seconds on SIPRNET answered that. A simple blocking maneuver, then directing his line ahead so as to cross his oncoming opponent’s T. Obviously, not a tactic she could adopt, given modern weaponry. And since Japan and Russia had already been at war back then, it didn’t matter who had opened fire first, although apparently it’d been Togo.