The Med

by David Poyer

  “Mr. Byrne!”

  “Sir.”

  “When I give you an order personally, I expect you to carry it out personally. Do you understand me?”

  Byrne did not answer. He stood there.

  “God damn you! Are you ignoring me?” Sundstrom shouted. “I’m warning you—I demand respect from you, Byrne, and I’ll get it! One way or another!”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Byrne tightly. He turned from the enlisted man, who was staring at the two officers, and picked up the phone himself.

  When Hogan came up, Sundstrom was deep in his paperwork again, breathing raggedly. The chief staff officer waited just behind his chair. At last the commodore noticed him, and swung around. “Good morning, sir,” said Hogan.

  “Where have you been all morning, Al? I don’t think I’ve seen you on the bridge once since we got underway.”

  “Administrative matters, sir.”

  “Take that pipe out of your mouth when you talk to me. Administrative matters. Do any of those include training? I sure as hell don’t see much of it going on. Have you put out a training schedule for this transit?”

  “No sir, we got underway too quickly—”

  “You’ve had almost two days since. I know for a fact that’s enough time to make up a simple schedule. Goddammit, Al”—Sundstrom lowered his voice, with an effort—“We don’t have as much steaming time deployed as we used to. This fuel situation is shooting our readiness to hell. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in four months on this job, it’s that you’ve got to keep these bastards on their toes. If we don’t they’ll forget everything, they’ll go to pot. That’s the nature of the beast. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes sir, Commodore.”

  “I want my ships ready before the fact, not after the fact. I want this task group to be pre-positioned in an offensive aspect when the need occurs, not milling around like a bunch of amateurs. That’s the way the big boys play it. I report direct to Admiral Roberts, to COMSIXTH-FLEET, and I want him to know he’s got a top-notch force out here, one he can depend on!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Hogan.

  “Now. I want a training schedule for the next three days, and some thoughts on what to do if we stay at sea longer than that. I want signal drills, combat drills, and comm drills. I want each ship to go to general quarters for training as soon as possible. How long will it take you to get that on the street?”

  “This afternoon, sir.”

  “Mr. Byrne! When will Ault catch up with the rest of us?”

  “According to her last position report, late tonight, sir.”

  “Not good enough. He’s just poking along. I want him here sooner than that. I want to pull a surprise battle problem tomorrow, the whole task force at once, get the bridge teams up to snuff on maneuvering, evasive action, antiair. And engineering, too, don’t forget them; I want them practicing casualty control down in the holes. And I want it as soon as possible! Understand me?”

  The CSO was writing in a small notebook. “Yes sir. You realize this will cut into maintenance time. Some of the ships were planning to pull pumps, and—”

  “I know that, Al.” Sundstrom cut him off. “I want normal maintenance to go on, of course. That goes without saying. Put that in the schedule, too. Now take that by the horns and march off with it. I want to see a draft message by thirteen-hundred.”

  Hogan’s mouth twitched, but he finished writing and put the notebook away. “I’ll get right on it, sir.”

  “Good.”

  “Was there anything else, sir?”

  Sundstrom shook his head, and turned back to his papers. When he glanced up again the chief of staff was still there. He snatched his glasses off. “Well?”

  “Sir, some of the men have been asking me whether we’re going back to the Sicily-Italy area. They made reservations for hotels there, paid in advance; their wives are waiting. They need to know—”

  The commodore forced himself to speak calmly. His stomach was tightening up. “I can’t help that,” he said, putting on his glasses again. “As far as I know we won’t be back, but I don’t want people getting the wrong idea and spreading rumors. Let’s leave things as they are for now.”

  “Yes sir,” said Hogan.

  When he was gone Sundstrom studied his papers again, frowning and fighting the burning in his stomach. It was, he thought, typical of the kind of people the Fleet got these days. Everyone worrying about himself instead of the mission. It was the kind of mindset he had always hated. A family had no place in a life at sea. They were best left ashore, as he left his. On shore assignments it was better to be married; you looked more stable that way and the social things went more smoothly. But the sea was a man’s world, a world of work and discipline, and there was no time to worry about anything else. Not if you wanted to do a good job. Not if you were a professional.

  Musing, he gazed out at his ships. Gray, distant even in close formation, they pitched ponderously to the swell from the east. He glanced at the wind indicator. Ten knots. Not much of a breeze to be kicking up that sea. Could be bad weather ahead. Christ, that was all he needed.

  He let the papers drop to his lap and leaned back, closing his eyes against the steady cloudlight.

  COMSIXTHFLEET had been no help when he had called on the high-frequency net. He remembered the conversation with anxiety. Maybe he shouldn’t have called at all, just waited for orders. Roberts had sounded annoyed. Cut your liberty period short? You’ll have to use your own judgment about that, he had said. And when Sundstrom began to explain his reasons, about the warning order and the activity to the east, the admiral had cut him off before he’d begun. Granted, HF was not a secure means of communication. Anyone could have been listening. But still, to cut him short like that …

  Sundstrom sat and worried, his eyes closed tight. Around him the bridge was deathly quiet. There was no talk, no idle chatter when the commodore was on the bridge.

  The situation, he thought tightly, is becoming complex.

  The turnover briefing at Rota had been a joke. The offgoing MARG commander was supposed to brief his relief thoroughly on the international situation. But Phibron Eight had been held over a month and Hacker had been hot to sail, so it had turned out a hurried conversation of an hour or two. Sundstrom had gained from it only a confused impression of impending trouble. (Which was, after all, chronically the situation in the eastern Med.) He’d had to piece his picture together from the daily secret sitreps and from Byrne’s briefings … and he admitted he tended to cut those short; it was just too irritating to sit and listen to the man.

  The warning order had alerted the MARG for Cyprus. Divided between Greek and Turk years before, both sides complained that the other was persecuting the minorities in their half of the island. It was possible, Sixthfleet intelligence thought, that rioting or even war could begin again.

  But Cyprus was only one of the hot spots east of twenty degrees longitude. And possibly not the most dangerous. Libya, the bad boy of the Gulf of Sidra, was quiescent for the moment, digesting a coup. But it could become belligerent again at any time. Iran and Iraq were at war, but that seemed only to inflame their hostility to the U.S. Iran had stepped up its state-sponsored terrorism; two months before, in an action that had made world headlines, a team had killed an American general in Germany, had blown apart his armored Mercedes with an antitank mine planted in the roadway between his home and office. The Turks had caught the perpetrators between planes back to Teheran, and at the moment, Sundstrom hoped, they were hanging by their testicles in some Ankara dungeon.

  Onward around the flaming littoral … Lebanon was tearing itself apart, faction battling faction in a labyrinthine bloodbath that Sundstrom, no matter how closely he read the reports, could never keep straight. Israel was on the alert after a series of guerrilla raids along the Jordanian border, suspected carried out by an especially rabid splinter of the PLO. No one seemed to know where they were based or what their goal, beyond killing people. Syria,
the only country in the region officially allied with the USSR, was in another face-off with Israel along the Golan Heights. Syria, too, was involved in terrorism, and he had read somewhere about training camps there.

  He could not make sense of it all; he had no idea which of a dozen crises was closest to blowing off the lid. Maybe the diplomats did, the politicians. Then again, maybe State was as lost as he was. Now, that was a depressing thought.

  What would be best, he thought viciously, would be to let them all kill each other, and deal with whoever was left. But that was unrealistic. The Soviets would step into any power vacuum. If they could expel America from the Eastern Med, gain control of the oil from Arabia and the Gulf, oil that fueled Western Europe and Japan—Sundstrom shook his head. The prospect was too awful to contemplate for any length of time.

  Anyway, he thought, that’s not my problem. Not at the moment. At the moment he had to worry about the Americans and British in Cyprus. If fighting began they would have to be extracted, and immediately.

  At any rate, he reflected wearily, he had made his decision. He had gotten the MARG underway. It had not been easy. No one was ready; they were all on stand-down and the captains complained, but it was safer. He knew the men wanted liberty, but that was secondary if there was something brewing. And the message had come in, in fact, only ten hours after Guam weighed anchor. Prepare to get underway, prepare for extended operations east of the toe of Italy. So he had not made a mistake after all.

  Except of course—he rubbed his mouth—for that business with Ault. He half-suspected her captain had kissed that shoal on purpose, to make him, Sundstrom, look like a fool for ordering him out of port in the dark. Well, he wasn’t going to fall for that. Of course you were supposed to report any time a ship touched ground, be it ever so lightly. But he saw no point in bothering Roberts with trivia if the destroyer was undamaged.

  He resolved not to use the high-freq net again. The Admiral obviously didn’t like subordinate commanders telling him what to do. He was worrying over this again, about the impression he had made, when someone cleared his throat beside the chair. He sat up, blinked, and shuffled the papers. “Yes. What is it now?”

  It was Byrne, again. “Sir, Bowen has that contact in sight. Trawler-type, quite small.”

  “Yes? So?”

  “Lots of antennas.” Byrne pulled a book from under his arm. “We have a tentative identification. It’s a Soviet flag.”

  “Oh, no. An AGI? An intelligence ship?”

  “They think so, sir.”

  “And she’s closing us?”

  “Aimed right at the formation, sir.”

  Sundstrom stared out at the sea. After a moment Byrne closed the book and went away.

  * * *

  The AGI was small, all right, not much bigger than one of the landing craft. It was tiny, rusty, and wallowed like a toy boat in a tub with twins. But Byrne had been right. Its low pilothouse, aft of the open fishing deck, was thick with dish antennas and radio aerials. Sundstrom watched it through his glasses, cursing aloud as it closed slowly from ahead, made a wide turn, and settled comfortably into position six miles ahead of the main body, halfway between Guam and the lead frigate.

  It was a tattletale. The Soviet Navy used them often, where a warship would be too conspicuous. They plodded along like pilot fish attached to a shark, keeping American formations in sight, reporting back position, electronic intelligence, and anything they could gather about maneuvering or tactics. The sailors called them “Snoopies.”

  And there was not a goddamn thing that he, Ike Sundstrom, could do about it. If the formation turned, the tattletale would turn with it. If they tried to break away at night, it had radar, too. And you couldn’t harass it in any way, send your ships in close or buzz it with a helo; that was forbidden by the rules the two countries had agreed on, to prevent collisions and their political consequences.

  Damn the politics, Sundstrom said, but to himself. It’s the goddamned Russians behind it all anyway. We should have nuked them back to bows and arrows when we could get away with it.

  At last the sight of it, steaming fat and happy along in their midst, got to him. He swung heavily down from the chair. “Mister Byrne!”

  “Sir.”

  “Keep a sharp eye out. For a change. And find Lenson, have him report to me on the double.”

  “Aye aye, Commodore.”

  * * *

  He rang the steward for lunch in his cabin, then went into the head. When he came out he found Lenson at parade rest, stifling a yawn in the middle of the stateroom. Sundstrom was glad to see him. He was the one officer on his staff who did not talk back, crack stupid jokes, or take shortcuts. The mustache was silly, but that was his youth. He was sober and industrious and deferential. Annapolis, yes, but he had seen some less-than-stellar products of that institution, too. He sat down at his desk and smiled. “Hello, Dan.”

  “Good afternoon, Commodore.”

  “You look pretty run down. You ought to get some sleep sometime.”

  “Yes sir,” said Lenson expressionlessly. “Here’s what I have so far on that oporder, sir. I’ve been on it since I got off watch, but there’s a lot more to be done.”

  “I know, but good planning always pays off. Are these the charts?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You haven’t discussed this with the others?”

  “Uh … I asked a couple of questions, sir. But that’s all.”

  “Good.” Sundstrom began to read the operation order. It was still new to him, this amphibious business. You did not land troops from destroyers. He rubbed his forehead, then pointed at the chart at random. “This dotted line. What’s this?”

  Lenson leaned over to see. Sundstrom liked this. The man did not answer off the top of his head; he thought first. After a moment he said, “That’s the separation line between Red and Blue beaches, sir.”

  “Why is it there?”

  “When the first and second waves go in, the boats tend to bunch up. That keeps them separated so they hit their assigned points together.”

  “I know that, Dan. Don’t lecture me on the obvious! I mean, why is it here.”

  “Because there’s a straight line of bearing on this point of land, sir. We could use a radar beacon, but those boat radars aren’t real dependable. This way the coxs’ns can steer by it without getting mixed-up.”

  “Good, good … now, when does the, uh, first wave hit?”

  “H-hour’s scheduled right at dawn, sir.”

  “Are you sure this time is right? Did you check it with the navigator?”

  “No, sir, I calculated it out of the Nautical Almanac.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, but let’s double-check it just the same.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And doing it right at dawn … we’ve done that in practice, too. Should we keep on doing it at dawn?”

  “It’s the standard time to hit a beach, sir.”

  “I know that, Dan, but maybe we should do it earlier. They’d be expecting us at dawn, wouldn’t they?”

  “If there was a dug-in defending force there, and they knew we were coming in, they might. But it wouldn’t do them much good. The reason for hitting at dawn is to make it hard to aim, plus they’re less alert then. I wouldn’t try going in earlier, sir; it would be mass confusion if we got forty boats and LVTs out there milling around in the dark.”

  “Well, okay, I guess that makes sense. How about the helos? The gunfire support? I don’t see anything in here about that.”

  “I’m going to work that next, Commodore.”

  Sundstrom glanced up. The j.g.’s face was intent, drawn, yet somehow detached. He looked tired. But when you were young, the commodore thought, you could take days of this. He felt a sudden lift of relief. The other officers were worthless, but with one or two like Lenson he might still pull off a successful landing, if it came to that.

  “Well, let’s get on that, then. We don’t know when we might n
eed to go. The upper echelons could pass us the ball anytime. When they do, I want to be ready to take it to the mat for a touchdown.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He leaned back, pushing the charts away, and watched Lenson straighten warily. Too bad, he thought, he was just a j.g. It got so goddamn lonely without anyone to talk to of his rank. There was Colonel Haynes, the chaplain, the doctor aboard, he could talk with them, but that was all. And after the first month they never came up to the bridge unless he called them. So strange that he, in charge of all these ships and men, spent most of his time alone. But that, too, was part of command.

  The steward knocked and came in, steadying a covered lunch against the motion of the ship. Sundstrom debated for a moment asking Lenson to stay, but decided against it. Get the operation order ready, that was first priority. He stood up. Lenson finished rolling the charts. “That’ll be all,” Sundstrom said. “Please get the rest of it done as soon as possible for me, Dan.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The steward uncovered the tray. Cottage cheese and tuna salad, iced tea. His usual at sea. He sat down to eat, in a considerably better frame of mind than he had felt on the bridge.

  * * *

  And outside the door, Lenson turned a corner and nodded to Red Flasher. The operations officer fell in beside him.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Not so bad.”

  “How many stupid questions?”

  “Oh, not too many,” said Lenson. “Thanks for helping me, Red. I studied this at amphib school, but you forget a lot.”

  “Writing oporders isn’t your job. It’s mine. But it don’t matter who gets the credit, as long as the job gets done.”

  “That’s a real mature attitude, Red.”

  “I’m a real mature guy. Say, I checked on lunch. It sucks. I got a stock of Hersheys down in my stateroom. Let’s get back on Appendix H.”

  “I guess it beats working for a living,” said Lenson. “You think we’ll really land there?”

  “They don’t pay lieutenants to think,” said Flasher. “I leave that to the four-stripers and up.”