China Sea

by David Poyer

  He shook off the depression that thought gave him. The high Atlantic bow faced him as he stepped carefully across the grease-caked rails the pier cranes rode on. It was topped by the rounded housing of a five-inch gun. Behind the ASROC (antisubmarine rocket) launcher rose the sheer front of the bridge. Above towered a gray cone topped with a drumlike structure, a combined mast and stack unmistakable from miles away at sea. Then he saw something he didn’t expect.

  “What’s that on the fantail? And the boat deck?”

  “The Pak Navy wanted more firepower. So we went rooting around and came up with some old forty-millimeters. We put twins on the boat decks and a quad mount on the stern. They’re getting twenties, too, but they’re not installed yet.”

  A chunky blond in steel-toes and wash khakis loped down the brow. Munro introduced Lt. Comdr. Evilia Beard, the ship transfer officer. Dan followed her and Munro aboard, aware as he faced the flag and then the OOD that every man on the quarterdeck was watching them with outright hostility.

  * * *

  THE outgoing CO’s lips were crimped like the edges of a metal can. His eyes were reddened and glossy behind plastic-framed lenses. As they shook hands outside the captain’s cabin, Dan understood the squadron commander’s decision to relieve him. 0900, and Richard Ottero’s breath was bourbon-ripe. Dan had noticed other symptoms of a carelessly run ship on the climb up from the quarterdeck: a holstered pistol hanging unattended, paint on gaskets and knife edges, out-of-date inspection labels, trash in the passageways.

  “Sorry we had to meet this way,” Dan told him.

  “Don’t take it personally if I don’t say welcome aboard,” Ottero said. He turned to Munro. “Let’s make it short and sweet.”

  “OK by me. Dan?”

  “Sure.”

  Ottero’s hand trembled as he made sure his uniform pockets were buttoned. He faced the ship’s exec, a thin lieutenant commander with a long head like a greyhound’s, fine light brown hair receding in front. “Greg, how do I look?”

  “Good, Skipper. For a guy about to get the shaft.”

  Ottero told Dan, “You can have the damn job and to hell with you. But take care of her. I know she doesn’t look so hot right now, but I’ve been undermanned since day one. She’s a good ship. Too good to be giving away.”

  Dan felt like he was watching something he didn’t want to see. Alcohol and humiliation. He remembered. He said, “I’ll keep that in mind. Captain.”

  “By the way, where’s Khashar?” interrupted Munro. The exec said the Pakistani CO and the incoming crew were on the berthing barge. He hadn’t seen any reason for them to—

  Ottero interrupted, “Right. OK, get ’em mustered on the flight deck, Greg. Give me a ring when they’re ready.” To Dan he said, with what seemed a touch of irony, “Care for a drink?”

  “No thanks. I had to quit, myself.”

  They stood silently for a few minutes. Then the phone squealed, and Dan and Munro followed Ottero aft.

  2

  WHEN the short and all-too-tense ceremony was over, Dan went back to the captain’s cabin, started to knock, then stopped and let himself in. Someone had been busy during the change of command. The floor was vacuumed, the closets cleaned out, his laptop set up on the desk. But he could still smell cigarettes and the unsettling reek of whiskey.

  He hadn’t had a drink for three years, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still want one sometimes.

  No, he wasn’t going back to that. It solved nothing … and he’d made a promise. The woman he’d given his word to was dead, but if anything, that bound him all the more tightly.

  On some obscure prompting he went into the little attached head, the most private place on the ship, and washed his hands. An assured-looking officer in creased khakis with three rows of ribbons looked back from the mirror. He took a deep breath, trying to convince himself he was the Skipper now.

  The turnover ceremony had been brief. When he and Ottero arrived on the helo deck, Juskoviac had called the crew to attention. Chiefs to the right, officers to the left, the crew facing him, shoulders hunched under working jackets and peacoats. The flag crackled in the misty wind. Ottero had read his orders first, a bland paragraph transferring him to the squadron staff. Dan had followed with his, just as terse: “Report to USS Gaddis and relieve as commanding officer.” Traditionally, the outgoing captain then gave a closing speech. Ottero had simply saluted Dan and Munro and said, “I stand relieved.” Then said to the silent ranks, “Good-bye, men, and good luck.”

  Twenty steps back into the hangar, the sound of his voice on the quarterdeck, and he was gone. A sigh rustled the crew like a breeze over a calm sea. Dan gave it a moment. Till their eyes turned to him, curious and apprehensive. But he’d said only, “I’ll speak to you all in the course of the day. Mr. Juskoviac, ship’s work, please.”

  Now he ran a comb through his hair, wondering what he was going to say. What would Jimmy John Packer do? How would Tom Leighty or Ben Shaker or Barry Niles approach this? Every leader had his own style, but there were a few things the good ones shared. Make your expectations clear up front. Make sure everyone knew what his job was. Start everybody with a clean slate.

  The most important thing was to make it perfectly plain to every man aboard that a new day had dawned.

  For gnawing at him now was the last thing Munro had said, pausing by the brow for a farewell handshake. “Good luck, Captain. Get her ready for sea as soon as you can.”

  “We’ll try not to let the turnover slip too far.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” Munro hesitated, then added words that had brought Dan suddenly to alertness. “We may need her.”

  He figured he knew what the chief staff officer meant. War was imminent in the Gulf. Gaddis and her sisters might be called on again.

  Thinking that, he went out into the cabin and soon found what he was looking for: a small cabinet with sliding doors and a brass lock.

  “Buzzed me, sir?” A kid in his teens with bushy red eyebrows and freckles like a high-water line across his nose stood in the passageway.

  “Carry on. What’s your name, sailor?”

  “Foley, sir. Seaman Foley. Welcome to the ‘Ollie Maru,’ sir.”

  “Thanks. What’s in this locker, Foley?”

  “That’s Captain Ottero’s liquor locker, sir.”

  “That’s what I thought. Got a key to it?”

  “Me? No, sir, Cap’n kept that himself.”

  “OK, here’s what I want you to do. Who’s the chief master-at-arms?”

  “That’d be Chief Mellows, sir. ‘Marsh’ Mellows, they call him. Can’t miss him; he’s the guy looks like Mr. Clean in the commercials.”

  “OK.” Dan remembered him from the helo deck, a large, patient-looking senior enlisted with a shaven head. “Have him cut this padlock. Put everything in an open box. Take it all down to the Dumpster on the pier and pitch it in. Hard, so all the bottles break. Make sure everybody sees you do it.”

  Foley squinted, then grinned. “Got you, sir.”

  Dan picked up his cap, checked his alignment, and headed aft.

  * * *

  HE ran into the exec on the ladder. “Hi, uh, Greg. Wardroom assembled?”

  “They’re standing by,” Juskoviac said. Sullenly, not meeting Dan’s eyes.

  “I want to see the chiefs and first class, after that. Then the rest of the crew, on the mess decks.”

  “When do you want to meet Captain Khashar?”

  “How about him and Commander Beard for lunch? If they’re free.”

  The XO spoke into a handheld radio as Dan headed down the ladder. Lenson said over his shoulder, “Greg, anything you and I ought to discuss now? What’s our muster look like?”

  “They started the personnel drawdown three months ago. We had a hundred and forty-two white-hats, ten officers, at quarters this morning.”

  “That’s below even a reduced combat readiness manning.”

  Juskoviac nodded.

  “Eq
uipment casualties?”

  “Minor stuff on the combat systems. Major problem’s the boiler.”

  Dan headed down the 02-level passageway. “Give me the short squirt.”

  “Uh, I know the explosion warped the casing, split some brick.”

  “Have we got a repair estimate yet?”

  “Jim Armey might. He’s the CHENG.”

  That was shipboard slang for “chief engineer.” Dan was a little puzzled the exec didn’t seem to have all the details on the damage at his fingertips but let it pass. They were outside the wardroom door when Juskoviac added, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I figured, this close to turnover, they’d fleet me up to acting CO. Either that or send somebody down from the staff. How’d they come up with you?”

  Dan had to admit the guy was up-front. “I’m out of a staff billet. What they told me, they couldn’t fleet you up because you weren’t command-qualified.”

  “I am command-qualified.”

  “Well, I guess that word didn’t get to wherever it had to get. Announce me.”

  Juskoviac slammed the door open. “Attention on deck!” he yelled, and the officers surged to their feet.

  “Seats, please,” Dan said, taking the head of the table. He scanned their faces, taking a sip from the coffee that had appeared at his elbow, and looked to make sure the galley slide was closed. “Who’s missing?”

  “This is everybody, sir. We’re dual-hatted on several billets.”

  “OK, let’s get down to business. Commander Juskoviac’s given me a rundown on our readiness for sea and personnel status, but I’d like to hear it in more detail. Let’s start with Supply. Please introduce yourself, I need to start getting faces with names.”

  A sallow, slim, dark-haired lieutenant. “Dave Zabounian. We did a complete inventory to get ready for our turnover. Aside from what we used coming down from Staten Island, we’re at a hundred percent.”

  “Is everyone getting paid?”

  “Yessir. I got a first-class who’s pretty hot on the disbursing end.”

  “What exactly is the status of the ship itself, Dave? In terms of this turnover? Can you talk to that?”

  “Sure. The Pakistanis are signed up for a five-year lease. With that, they get what’s on board for parts and consumables and so forth. Ammo’s a separate account; they bought that outright.”

  “How hard would it be to jerk her back to full-op status, say if this Kuwait thing escalates to war?”

  Heads lifted around the table. Zabounian said cautiously, “I don’t believe there’d be any major problem with that, sir. We’d need a personnel augment from somewhere, though.”

  “OK, good. Let’s continue.”

  Chet “Chick” Doolan, the weapons officer, looked like a young Hemingway, with a broad chest and black hair curling aggressively over a white triangle of undershirt. He briefed on the guns, the ASROC, and the torpedo tubes. The operations officer had no outstanding problems, though the news that most of the crypto and radio equipment had been stripped off was a downer.

  Finally only a lean, uneasy-looking black officer in coveralls remained. “Jim Armey, right?” Dan said. “Tell me about our plant.”

  “The inspector’s aboard; I can ask him to come in—”

  “I’d rather hear it from my chief engineer.”

  “We’re in Condition A except for our boiler and some sea suction valves. The bottom paint’s reasonable considering we haven’t been out of the water for four years. This isn’t a new ship, but it’s in good condition.”

  “Tell me about the boilers.”

  “We’ve got Babcock and Wilcoxes, type D. CRMO headers, mag-moly drums, carbon steel in the waterwalls. Thirty-nine thousand steaming hours on them.”

  “I meant, how bad’s the damage.”

  “The explosion warped the casing. First off that’s gotta be replaced. Once the yard checks the burner fronts and does the hydros, they’ll replace the damaged tubing; fix the refractory brick, with the grout and the mud and so forth; then do the light-off exam. Now, normally they’d put us in dry dock for tube and brick work, but I think I’ve got them argued out of that. That saves us three weeks just to set the graving blocks up.”

  “That’s the direction we want to go in. How are the drums?” Dan asked him.

  “Far as we know now, all we’ve got to do is replace a couple of downcomers.”

  “How long’s it going to take?”

  “My seat-of-the-pants estimate would be there’s three to four weeks’ work there, once the yard turns to.”

  “I’ll get with you around eleven, take a look.” Dan glanced at his watch and stood. They scrambled to their feet, taken by surprise.

  He said, “Gentlemen, you tell me Gaddis is in good shape. But I see a dirty ship, a slovenly ship, one that can’t steam safely because of her crew’s carelessness.

  “Here’s how I do business. There’s only one test of a warship: her ability to steam and to fight; to take punishment and inflict it. I don’t believe that simply because we are due to turn this ship over so many weeks from now we have an excuse for letting it be less than a fully capable fighting unit.

  “The standards we set in this room are the ones our men will judge themselves by. I have high standards. I expect you to bust your tails till this ship meets them. Until the moment we haul down the flag, Gaddis is a U.S. Navy warship and I will run her as such.”

  No one spoke, but he could read their thoughts in their eyes. He nodded coldly and went out.

  To pause in the passageway, wondering. The words had come almost without him, fruit of the years he’d spent at sea and the men he’d served under, good and bad. If you watched them all, learned from them all, maybe it wasn’t really that much of a stretch to step up and take your place after them.

  Anyway, he’d do his best.

  * * *

  HE was on the bridge later that morning, leaning thoughtfully over the splinter shield, when he noticed several seamen sauntering down the pier. He said to the quartermaster, a Cajun named Robidoux who looked like he had a basketball under his dungaree shirt, “Who’s that down there, Louis?”

  “That’s the Pakis, sir. They only do half-days. Fridays off, too.”

  “And Saturday and Sunday?”

  The QM nodded.

  “And half-days?”

  “That’s their routine, sir.”

  “You know Captain Khashar?”

  “Yessir, sure do.” The petty officer glanced around, as if making sure they weren’t being overheard. “Ever hear the phrase ‘a menace to navigation’?”

  “All right,” Dan told him. “I’d better form my own opinion of him. Get a chance to start over, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sure, sir. It might help; him and Cap’n O. sure didn’t get along.”

  Three of the Pakistanis, in USN-style dungarees but different ball caps, came rattling up the inboard ladder. Two immediately lit cigarettes. Dan glanced at his watch again and saw it was nearly time to meet Armey.

  * * *

  HE stood in front of the wrecked boiler in steel-toes and borrowed coveralls as the chief engineer introduced the fire-room team. “And this is Chief Albert Sansone,” Armey finished.

  Dan studied Sansone. He looked young for a chief, stocky and young. He also gave the impression of being both pissed off and startled, maybe because he didn’t have any eyebrows. His skin looked as if it had been microwaved. “You the one blew this boiler up, disregarding the operating standards?” Dan asked him.

  Sansone met his eye. “Is that what they told you, sir? All due respect, that’s bullshit.”

  “What’s your side of it?”

  “Sure, I lit it off the back wall. Just like everybody does, when the boiler’s warm. It works great, long as you got draft. I get ready to light her off; I turn my head and yell over to Abdul Number Two, ‘Check and make sure the forced draft blower’s on high speed.’ He ambles over to look, then gives me th
e high sign. Next thing I know I’m laying in sick bay with half my face burned off. And fucking one-alfa looks like a tank ran over it.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Dan said. He jackknifed himself and slid in through the manhole.

  An odor of oil and metal and smoke stuffed his nose. Brick grated against his back. He rolled over and got to his knees and then to his feet, crouched over, so he wouldn’t whang his head into the slanted ranks of water screen tubes above him.

  Steel-cold now, but when it was lit off this bathroom-sized cave was the blazing heart of the ship. Burners sprayed hundreds of gallons an hour of Distillate Fuel, Marine, into a tornado of fire that cooked the water in the tubes into an invisible gas so charged with energy by heat and pressure it could cut rubber or cloth or flesh like a shearing blade. Knox-class plants ran at over 1200 psi, double that of previous destroyers. A crack or break in the piping would fill a compartment in seconds, cooking or smothering anyone who didn’t get out in time.

  The blackened brick swallowed the light so that you had to bend close to actually see the surface. He shuffled forward, noting where it had blown out of the fire wall. The fractures were paler than the flame-blackened surface around it.

  A scrape, a cough, and Sansone joined him, twin fetuses in a hellish womb. The chief pointed above their heads. “All that side of the casing’s bent. That brick’s all got to be chipped out. There’s the tubing we gotta replace. Then it’s all got to be hydroed and certified, then rebricked and go through light-off. It’s a good six weeks of work.”

  “Mr. Armey said three or four weeks.”

  “Ain’t impossible, but the forty-one shop’d really have to get their butts in gear. Which I don’t see happening yet. This yard’s way overbooked. We’re like parked in the front lot; they’ll get to us when they ain’t got nothing better to do.”

  “OK, I got a question for you. What would it take for us to fix this ourselves?”

  Sansone touched one of the tubes. “Sir, I’d like to tell you we could. I mudded brick before, on the Harry Yarnell. But we couldn’t do the tubes, or the headers. I’ll tell it to you straight. It’d be a goddamn bomb waiting to blow.” The chief spat into a dark corner.