The Med

by David Poyer

  If I was there, he thought, I would not wake them. I would lie softly down beside her, and in the morning, wake them with tea and kisses, equal distribution, each to each.

  Yet he was here. Christ, he thought, testing the flashlight with a stab of his thumb. How much longer could this go on?

  Until it ends, he thought. Or until something snaps.

  And if anything does … it can’t be me, he thought. His lips tightened. Not after last time.

  His hand crept up to touch his shoulder.

  * * *

  It was not quite dark when he got topside. Though it was still well before dawn, there was enough gray to the east for him to distinguish bow from sea. He checked the running lights around them as he climbed the last few steps to the flag bridge. The formation had altered during the night, ships shifting position around the fixed axis of the Guam. They seemed closer, too, as if the amphibs had drawn together for protection during the long passage. Only Snoopy, the Soviet trawler, had maintained his station, plodding ahead at the same range and bearing he had occupied at sunset.

  Jack Byrne was leaning in a corner of the wing, staring back over the quarter. “Morning, Jack,” he said.

  “Hi, Dan.” When the N-2 turned, his tanned face looked naked without the sunglasses. “You fit and eager to take it?”

  “You want a straight answer to that? I’m bushed.”

  “Up all night again?”

  “The commodore’s oporder.”

  “My sympathies.” The intel officer didn’t sound like he meant it. Yawning, he went through the litany of watch relief: course, speed, formation, contacts. Ault had joined up and was in a screen station ahead. That made two escorts with them now. At last Byrne bent, fishing a message board from the bridge safe. “And, got a pass-along to you from Lieutenant Flasher. Let’s see, I think I can do it verbatim: ‘Double-nuts wants the ops type to have the traffic memorized when he gets up. Seeing as how he’s doing my job, I might as well leave that to Sundstrom, junior.’”

  “Who?”

  “You, boy, you.”

  “Red said that? Jack, this isn’t my idea. He ordered me to do it. It’s kind of unfair to—”

  “I know, I know. Forget it. We’re all on edge.” Byrne yawned again, and snapped his mouth shut. He looked bewildered for just a moment. “Anyway, this is going to be a busy day. Formation battle problem is scheduled to begin on our signal around nine. Drills from there to thirteen hundred, then each ship has its own individual sked of damage control and engineering casualty-control training.”

  “We got a copy up here?”

  “Taped to the bulkhead.” Byrne pointed. “Middle of the general quarters, we’ll be passing TF 60. Be warned.”

  “America?”

  “The big birdfarm herself. You’ll see in the traffic, they’ll pass north of us. We’re not supposed to interact, but with Ike in charge I’m sure that will be subject to change.”

  “Uh huh,” said Lenson, thinking of it with resigned dread. Funny, though, that Byrne should say something like that … he had never heard him criticize the commodore, even indirectly, before. On edge, sure, just like Flasher … “Anything else?”

  “That should be enough to keep you occupied. I’m headed for the rack. Get in a couple hours before the fun starts. Are you ready to relieve?”

  “I got it,” said Lenson. He no longer bothered to salute. As he strolled into the bridge, walking uphill against a roll, he nodded to Stan Glazer and folded back the red cover on the ops file.

  The blue mimeographs were black under the red light of the chart table. Yeah, he thought, Flasher’s right; he always wants to be briefed first thing when he wakes up. It made no difference that the commodore was awakened anyway for any message Priority or above. It was as if he was afraid he would forget something important, or, more likely, Lenson thought, that it just made him feel important to be briefed, like an admiral. And if I’m up here, and he wants me to do Red’s job, then he’ll probably expect me to brief him.

  Shit, he thought. He glanced round the bridge. For the moment it was quiet. Glazer had his head up; the only surface contact was several miles to the south and opening. He rubbed his forehead and lowered his eyes again to the messages.

  Weather … getting worse. Fleet Central reported winds twenty-two knots and rising, barometer dropping. Units east of twenty-seven degrees longitude were warned to prepare for heavy weather. He memorized the numbers and went on. Couple of well-dones for the Indian Ocean battle group. They were well clear of this flap; he envied them. Some supply messages. Transfer orders for the captain of the Barnstable County, effective next month. Commodore’ll want to know that, he thought. He flipped on. Unclassified, confidential … a Secret marking caught his eye. Soviet naval movements.

  Well now, he thought, and began to read.

  Thirty units in the Med, twenty percent over normal for this time of year. Why? No answer. Two of their newest destroyers, big as a U.S. cruiser and better armed, had just been reported in the Aegean, transiting south at high speed. Their sea legs were shorter, but once in the Med that hardly mattered. The Black Sea Fleet’s time on station in the Med was doubled or tripled by the repair and refueling facilities in Syria and Libya. Syria, allied by treaty with the USSR, had a full-fledged operating base for them at Baniyas.

  He had seen the Russians. No one sailing these waters could miss them. Their lean lines, bristling with topside armament and electronics, looked deadlier than corresponding U.S. classes. They were faster; they cut through NATO formations from astern, passing the cruisers and cans, their gas turbines whining wasplike across the water as they creamed by. They passed close enough for you to see the men on their bridges, watching you with binoculars just as you were watching them; staring at each other across the sea, like looking into a mirror at a strangely altered and unknowable image of yourself. Oh, he knew they were no supermen. They spent less time at sea than the Americans and British; the ships were cramped and the men poorly trained, and part of the reason they had so many weapons and sensors was that they crapped out more often than Western gear did.

  But they would be no pushover, if it came to the test. Certainly they could take the MARG out in a matter of minutes, if they caught them unescorted and away from air cover. Lenson thought of the three-inch popguns the amphibs carried. Not much of a contest there.

  “Permission to relieve the lookouts, sir.”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  He flipped through the rest of the messages, found the one on the carrier group, and took it over to the chart. In the growing light he examined the pencil marks where Byrne had plotted their track. Carrier headed west, MARG east; he was surprised to see a full thirty miles separation at the point of closest passage. Why had Jack even mentioned it? There was plenty to keep them occupied steaming just as they were.

  “Anything interesting?” said Stan Glazer, looking enviously at the board. “I never get to see that thing.”

  “Hey, Stan, it’s secret. The commodore catches you looking at it, both our asses are grass.”

  Glazer looked disappointed. He turned away and raised his glasses again. Dan tossed the board back in the bridge safe, swung it shut, and sighed. He’d thought, late the night before, that he’d never want the stuff again, but now he thirsted for coffee. Thirsted for the impossible … if Sundstrom smelled another drop of joe on the bridge after his interdict, Dan knew, there would be a shitstorm that would make Fleet Weather blanch.

  God damn it … he checked the radar, the vertical plot, the gyro, out of habit. The wind indicator and barometer he scrutinized carefully, but as yet they showed normal readings. His attention shifted back to his internal state. His feet hurt already, and he hadn’t been on them thirty minutes yet … he felt half-asleep.

  Reaching up, he slapped his face twice, hard, and went out on the wing for a dose of fresh air.

  Morning, at sea.

  Though it was not yet sunrise, the sky was already red beyond scattered cl
ouds. Flaming, though the fire was still hidden behind the rim of sea that lay like a heated saw-blade across their bow, cutting the mass of the flight deck, still black as night. The cough of a starter came from somewhere aft; the ready helo was checking out its engines. The wind, over thirty knots when you added the ship’s speed to the prevailing breeze, was cool and blustery, and he drank it with gratitude. Sleep retreated a step. The eastern sea threw back the sky’s tints, scarlet and gold, not flashing yet but glowing, like molten glass. The last minutes before dawn; just a little too late for morning stars … thinking of that, he glanced upward. The ship’s navigator was standing on the wing above, fitting his sextant back into its wooden box. A snatch of talk drifted down on the wind: “Deneb … just got her … sixty percent cloud cover.”

  He leaned back and his gaze dropped once more, as it always did, to the ever-changing, never-changing sea. Below the overhang of flight deck it surged in five-to-seven-foot crests, each wave rising and falling in the dim light like a life all in itself, complete and perfect and individual and then gone, but rising again instantly in another form. He watched, his mind empty. The ship drove through them, vibrating, powerful, intent, and his eyes drifted aft to follow them as they dropped astern. Aft of the helicopter deck the sky was still tinted enough with night so that as he looked astern he could see the darkness, fleeing away behind them along the terminator of earth. The masthead and sidelights of the Barnstable County twinkled far astern.

  Glazer came out. “When’s sunrise, Stan? You know?” Lenson asked him.

  “Oh-five-twenty-seven local. Another ten or twelve minutes.”

  “Less than that. Looks to me like the upper limb’s about there.”

  “Well, we’re moving east. I didn’t allow for that. That would make it earlier—earlier? Yeah.”

  “Here she comes,” said Lenson.

  “Think we’ll see the green flash?” said Glazer. He sounded skeptical.

  “Maybe.”

  “You believe in it?”

  “Sure,” said Lenson. “It’s pretty clear today. Why not?”

  “I think it’s a put-on. Like the mail buoy.”

  “Go look in Bowditch. It’s in there,” said Dan, ending the discussion pretty effectively, he thought. He raised his binoculars, aiming them where the sea was brightening moment by moment. If the fabled emerald flash, the refracted concentration of green light as the ray passed just above the rim of sea, actually happened, he wanted to see it.

  They stood on the wing together and watched the sun rise. It began with a more brilliant glow at one point of a line of sea that up to then had grown uniformly lighter. The glow shimmered, intensified, and then, suddenly, a flattened oval of pale molten gold winked on like an ignited flare. The waves marched under it, strangely elongated, flickering like flames. Too small to be the sun, the luminous blob jiggled and shimmered, suspended in the air for a long moment. Then it slowly expanded, growing deeper yellow and then orange.

  “Nope. Not today.”

  “Doesn’t it come after? Right as it leaves the horizon?”

  “I heard, before,” Dan said. “Just as the sun rises, and for a second or two after it goes down.”

  The shining oval had by now become, definitively, the Sun. It was no longer pale gold, but fiery saffron. It seemed taller somehow than it should be, though, pulled out of shape vertically like a circle of hot glowing taffy; as if straining to rise, but held back by something below the horizon to an agonized creep upward; fighting, powerful as it was, for every millimeter it mounted into the sky.

  You never actually saw the sun rise ashore, he thought. There were too many hills, trees, buildings in the way; it was already flaming steady when you caught it for the first time. A seaman, though, could watch the birth of each new day. He followed its steady ascent, watched its slow ticking upward, the powerful lunge of the chariot into the sky. Already, in the minute or so they had watched, half the disc had freed itself of the sea.

  He raised his binoculars, and leapt forward instantly miles across the glittering blue. Now the disc loomed huge, painfully bright, though as yet too filtered by passage through atmosphere to be dangerous. He could see sunspots and a few wisps of haze or cloud between him and the sphere. It was three-quarters up. The glasses increased its speed, made it race now, looming up like a detonating fireball. Each wave, miles away yet still distinct, etched itself plainly against the brilliance, tiny and perfect.

  The sun’s rounded belly emerged from the sea, shimmering and trembling, yet connected to it still by a glowing tail. The shining umbilical elongated. Then, suddenly, at the instant it snapped away, a burst of crimson flashed toward them across the heaving sea, the dark ruby-scarlet of venous blood. Then it was gone, and the sun rose free into the distant sky, a perfect hot circle that gathered force so swiftly he had to jerk the glasses down. It was day. “Did you see that?” he breathed.

  “Yeah. Red—but no green,” said Glazer, disappointed.

  “We’ll see it sometime. We’ll just keep looking.”

  “If I stay in that long.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Lenson. He knew what Glazer meant. Being at sea—you loved that; action—that would be all right, if it happened. It was the bullshit that went before, the flaps and flails and paperwork and most of all Sundstrom, that got to you after awhile.

  “NOW REVEILLE, REVEILLE,” said the ship’s announcing system a few minutes later, startling them both. Lenson glanced at his watch; 0600, on the dot. “ALL HANDS HEAVE OUT AND TRICE UP. SET MATERIAL CONDITION YOKE THROUGHOUT THE SHIP. SMOKING LAMP IS LIGHTED IN ALL BERTHING SPACES. NOW REVEILLE.”

  “Now for it,” he muttered. Right on cue, the commodore’s buzzer went off. At the same time, the flag radioman came up to him, holding out the message board. “Just a minute,” he told him, picking up the phone. “Flag bridge, Lieutenant Lenson, sir.”

  “Good morning, Dan,” said the voice, so familiar it pursued him even in his dreams. “What’s going on up there? I haven’t been called all night.”

  “No contacts, sir.” He gave the commodore what he wanted; all the data; Sundstrom kept interrupting him, asking him to repeat things. He wanted to know about the weather, and the barometer, what the Soviet trawler had been doing all night, whether Ault was in station, whether the carrier was on the scope yet, and a dozen other things. Lenson told him.

  “You’re sure there’s nothing else? Nothing about the situation up ahead?”

  “Nothing in the traffic, sir.” Beside him, the radioman tried to give him the message board again; he covered the phone with his hand. “What the hell do you want?”

  “Got an immediate, sir.”

  “Well, wait a goddamn minute. I’m talking to the commodore.”

  “How did the night exercises go?” Sundstrom asked him. “What were the reports like from the ships?”

  “Uh, they didn’t make any, sir. Would you like me to go out on pri-CI, ask them—”

  “No, no, forget it. It’s too late now.” He heard Sundstrom’s exasperated sigh. “You’ve got to keep an audit trail on these things, Dan. To me, this is basic. If you don’t check up on these guys, stay perched on their backs at all times, they just won’t perform. That’s what it’s all about, in a nutshell.”

  “Yes sir,” said Lenson.

  “Well, keep me informed. I’ll be up to the bridge in a little while.”

  “Yes sir,” said Lenson again. The commodore hung up. He hung up too, and took the message board. “Now what the hell is this that’s so important?”

  “Immediate from Sixth Fleet,” said the radioman.

  Lenson flipped back the cover. The sunlight was pouring in through the bridge windows now, brushing a film of gold over every instrument, every surface. For this one moment every day the worn paint on the bulkheads glowed, metal glowed; the tired faces of Glazer, McQueen, the other men on watch took on form and brilliance, became deeper and more real. He rubbed his eyes, feeling weak and hungry, and began reading. Th
ere was a long list of addressees, then the text. Two or three paragraphs.

  The Turkish fleet was at sea.

  Reported sortie from the base at Izmir, observed by a British patrol plane out of Crete. Several destroyers, a couple of what looked like troop transports. Headed south. There were more details, but he barely registered them.

  This was not routine.

  It made no difference that he had been working all night on the oporder. It had been remote, a contingency plan. Guns, aircraft, marines wading ashore … they had existed only in his mind, as a mathematical exercise. There was so much at sea that was done just in case, done on the off-chance, that to know suddenly and for sure that something was going to happen gave him a strange feeling. It wasn’t power. He had no power. Even Sundstrom, “Comphibron SIX Actual,” was only an instrument, like the ships around them, something to be moved about a vast blue chessboard for some distant, unclear, and to them almost irrelevant end. It was different … like going into combat for the first time.

  And what had Byrne said about a battle problem this morning? His mind was going fuzzy … he initialed the SDO box on the message, told the radioman to get the board below to the commodore immediately without really thinking about it. It was automatic, like the slewing around of a gun mount under remote guidance. He was not really there.

  He was in Cyprus, waiting for the Turks.

  He was an Anatolian soldier, sick with his first experience of the open sea, clinging to the rail and watching the coast of Asia fade into blue distance.

  He was a section of once-peaceful city, jumping under the impact of shells.

  He was holding Susan, in the moment of surrender and forgetfulness of self, the moment of release.…

  “What’s the matter, Dan?” said Glazer, looking up from the scope. “You look kind of pale.”

  “It’s for real,” said Lenson, and looked around the bridge. It looked so peaceful in the sunlight; the way it had always looked, for weeks and months and years of steaming through the Med, the Atlantic, the Caribbean. But now it was different, all of it.