China Sea

by David Poyer

  “I got two guys in custody, Johnile. If I can get a confession out of one of them, I can let the other go.”

  Machias smiled slowly, and two gold incisors flashed out. “I better see a lawyer.”

  Dan put his hands into his pockets, very slowly. It occurred to him that they were now alone in the locked-down compartment. He didn’t hear anyone from the passageway. From what Mellows had just told him, Shi-hime Machias had actually been behind razor wire in the naval station brig when a pressing need for engineering-qualified bodies had bought him a “get out of jail free” ticket. “A lawyer,” he repeated.

  “I got a right to an attorney. I don’t like being locked up. I got to tell you that. I get to make a phone call, too.”

  “We don’t have phone communications, Petty Officer Machias, and we don’t have Miranda warnings and bail and a lot of other things you might rate shoreside. You and Pistolesi are staying locked down till one of two things happens.” Dan outlined the same choices as he had for the other sailor. The heavy lids did not quiver. Machias seemed half-asleep.

  When Dan was finished, there was a short silence. Then Machias said again, “I better see a lawyer.”

  “Are you telling me you’re guilty?”

  In reply he got the communicativeness of a stone wall. Dan regarded him for a moment more, then turned as a chain rattled.

  Mellows was back. The chief was letting him out when, with great swiftness, surprising them both, Machias made a break for the door. Dan flung up his arm and knocked him back, nothing more than reflex action, and slipped through and slammed the grate closed with his shoulder against a violent battering till the chief got the padlock snapped shut. Machias snarled through the expanded metal, an edge close to panic in his voice, “You got to let me out. Shackle me, whatever; just get me out of here. I can’t take being locked up, man.”

  “Give him his tobacco,” Dan told Mellows. The master-at-arms, holding his body back from the door, poked three White Owls through into the cell. Machias snatched the cigars and turned his back to them. His hands were clapped to his face, and for a moment Dan felt pity. Then he hardened his heart. If Shi-hime was the killer, mercy was a misplaced emotion.

  Juskoviac came back down the passageway, rejoining them. “All done, sir?” he said crisply. Dan nodded, thinking that as usual, the exec had managed to be absent when anything actually had to be done.

  “It’s got to be him,” Mellows said, a few steps down the passageway. “He’s been twitchy as a bedbug since we put him in there.” He stopped and leaned against the Supply Department bulletin board, took his hat off, and wiped his streaming face. Dan saw perspiration beaded on his shaven scalp.

  Juskoviac: “You OK, Chief?”

  “Son of a bitch startled me. He’s fast.”

  Dan said, “Why do you say it’s got to be him?”

  “I mean it’s got to be. You know what he was in for, when they sent him to us? Attempted rape.”

  “And they let him out?”

  “The woman dropped it or something. But Shi-hime likes knives. If anybody aboard this ship could cut a guy up like they cut up that kid, it’s him.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Dan waited for the chief to recover, glancing back down the corridor to where the gratings faced each other. Two choices, and he didn’t like either one. The Italian-American was more vocal in his denials. Dan had heard no false notes, seen nothing that would indicate anything more serious than a certain contempt for authority. The black sailor had clammed. But if Dan carried Machias’s history, he’d not say a word without an attorney present, either. Not when the penalty for a mistake was a murder charge.

  On the other hand, he was no psychology expert. Living as close to other men as you did aboard ship, trying to lead them, you got a certain basic grounding in human nature. But if they were really facing a psychopath, his guesses and his intuitions were probably worth absolutely zip.

  “Nothing on the prints, huh? The ones you dusted for down in the dome?”

  “No, sir. Whoever done it was real careful. Maybe had gloves on.”

  Fucking great, he was thinking when a J-phone squealed on the bulkhead. Mellows snatched it, listened, said, “Yeah, he’s here. For you, Skipper,” and handed it over.

  “Captain.”

  “Sir, this is Chief Compline. We finally worked that MARS hookup we were talking about; you want to come to Radio.”

  “MARS hookup … oh. Yeah. Be right up.” He glanced over and saw that Mellows looked a little better. “OK, let’s go,” he told them both. “Greg, I want that search I told you about. You’re in charge. Zone by zone, locker by locker. Start at the pointy end and finish in the wake.”

  He left them staring silently at each other.

  * * *

  IN Radio Central, he pulled out a chair in front of a mike as Compline explained what he’d set up. The Military Affiliate Radio System, or MARS, was a military/civilian arrangement where amateur radio operators provided auxiliary comms shoreside during emergencies or equipment failures. Originally a backup for official radio links, it was mostly used these days for personal messages, but the backup function was still operational. Just now they were in luck. The sunspot cycle was right for long-range communications. Compline had a ham from Maryland on single side band on the high end of 13 megahertz and had explained Gaddis’s situation. The stateside operator was willing to patch him through to any East Coast phone number, but he had to bear in mind that it was two o’clock in the morning.

  Dan thought fast and gave the operator a number.

  She picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

  He closed his eyes. She didn’t sound as if she’d been asleep. Distant as her voice seemed, ionosphere-crackly, distorted by thirteen thousand miles or more, it swept him with loneliness like a foundering hulk swept by a heavy sea. He couldn’t think for a moment, hearing it. The illusion of her presence was so strong, the image or fantasy that he could reach through the microphone somehow and touch her warmth, her tangled hair. For a moment he actually saw her lying in bed in the second-floor Georgetown flat he knew so well. She was sitting up, holding a book. A faint tapping came from outside. The elm tree on the corner, branches whispering beyond her bedroom window …

  “Hello?” Impatient now, about to hang up.

  “Uh … Blair? This is Dan, calling on a radio patch. Can you hear me? Over.”

  “Dan. Dan? Is that you? This is a really lousy connection. Where in heaven’s name are you? I got your card from Singapore.”

  “Uh, you have to say, ‘Over,’ because we can’t both talk at once. I don’t know how long we can maintain this patch, but I have a couple of things, if you can grab a pen. Over.”

  He gave her phone numbers, and brief messages to pass to the appropriate staffies at CINCLANTFLT and at DESRON Twelve and one guy he knew who was still at JCS J-3, Current Ops. She took them down without comment but when he didn’t have any more said, “It sounds like you’re having some problems. Are you all right out there? Speak as loud as you can; there’s a lot of static on this line.”

  “That’s the MARS patch. We’ll make it, but we need to phone home with the Navy. We’re out here hunting pirates, but I’m beginning to feel like one myself.”

  “Are you all right? Personally?”

  He thought about unloading it on her, the murder, the restive crew, everything, but didn’t see the point. “I’ll live. I know why some of my COs were so damn short-tempered now, though. How are things on the Hill?”

  “Pretty tense at the moment. We’re looking at authorizing resolutions for military action in the Gulf. You’re probably better off where you are. The China Sea, you said?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Should be quiet there.”

  He told her it wasn’t really, that the locals had concerns, what Dr. S. Mei Guo had said about ships disappearing near Hong Kong. Told her about Suriadiredja’s suspicions, though without using his name. “They’re convinced the Chinese are slowly
moving south. First the Paracels, then the Spratleys,” he finished. “And they don’t think the U.S. will be there for them. We went aboard a PRC survey ship in Brunei. The captain drew a line in the sand north of fifteen degrees. Said that was Chinese coastal waters. Which it isn’t.”

  “I agree, but the policy is not to provoke them. They’ve got legitimate interests in the region. Remember, the Indonesians killed about a half-million ethnic Chinese in ’65. Not to mention their thoroughly barbaric record in East Timor.”

  “What about this military buildup? All this new equipment the Chinese are buying, these new ships and aircraft, the missiles they’re building?”

  “There’s a good case that’s driven by internal dynamics. Jiang Zemin, the new Party head, is probably just buying the support of the military leaders. Over.”

  Dan glanced at Compline, then grabbed the desk in frustration. “And the spying they did on the Tomahawk seeker? Wait; I know. That’s a ‘legitimate interest,’ driven by ‘internal dynamics,’ right?”

  “Dan, stop it! Which is better, a trading partner or an outright enemy? Which do we have more leverage over? Most people up here think constructive engagement’s the best policy in the long run. Treat them like responsible partners on the international scene. Accustom them to the give-and-take between equals. Help them grow economically. Given time, given interaction, their system’s going to change the same way the Soviet Union did. Over.”

  “I seem to recall we had to fight a couple of times while we were waiting for them to turn into good guys.”

  Her voice again, cool and patronizing. The tone he hated. “Let’s not argue, Dan. Not at this distance, OK? It’s good to hear from you. I’ll pass your messages along first thing in the morning. When do you think you’ll be back in the country?”

  * * *

  JUSKOVIAC, Mellows, and the assistant masters-at-arms searched the ship for six hours, stem to stern, but found nothing. The crew cooperated, but in an ominous silence. They watched as the chief and his petty officers went through the pitifully small storage compartments under their bunks and the equally minuscule lockers in each berthing area. They found nothing, which meant either that his crew was made up of Eagle Scouts or that they’d anticipated the search. Dan sat glowering on the bridge after Juskoviac had reported as much. All he’d done was further estrange the men.

  Which most likely explained why the sounding and security watch smelled smoke not too long afterward. When he went in search of its source he found a smoky blaze in the wardroom storeroom, an obscure space in an untended part of the ship, far aft and belowdecks. He put it out with an extinguisher before reporting it to Main Control. Jim Armey reported it to Dan, along with his guess: Someone had thrown hydraulic fluid, fuel, or cleaning fluid through the gratings, onto the officers’ stacked-up luggage and boxes, and tossed a match in after it.

  * * *

  AS they ran toward their assigned area through that evening and night and then the next morning, the sea changed. It shallowed and turned from murky green to a deep transparent emerald. They passed widely scattered islets, and though Dan kept them far offshore the men concentrated around the Big Eyes on the 01 level. Palm trees and white sand beaches glared in the occasional sunlight. The wind dropped to a breeze. The sky cleared, not entirely, but they saw blue more often than they had since Singapore. In the early afternoon the lookouts reported breakers ahead. Chick Doolan, who had the conn, slammed on the brakes and called Dan to the bridge. By the time he got there, the “breakers” had resolved themselves into thousands of bottle-nosed dolphins, furrowing the swirling sea.

  They reported on station in patrol area Zamboanga on the task force coordination frequency at 1400 on the seventeenth of November. After he sent the message, Dan lingered uncertainly on the bridge. What was it Barry Niles had told him once.… something about if you ever achieve command, you’d better keep your doubts to yourself. Be the picture of confidence. It seemed distant and faraway, in the face of what was happening aboard Gaddis, the seemingly metastasizing evil within her hull. Irrelevant, in the face of the pristine and shining sea and sky that surrounded her, under way at a fuel-conserving five knots in the midst of a paradise.

  * * *

  THE call came in on Channel 16, 156.8 megahertz, the distress frequency yachtsmen kept dialed in as the default on their sets. The radioman jotted it and called the bridge. Dan heard the tail end of his read-back as he woke from an only partially voluntary nap. “‘… boarded by armed men from small boat.’ That was all.”

  Doolan pressed the worn-smooth transmit lever. “Any posit?”

  “No, sir. That was it. Clear and five by, though, so I’d guess it’s within thirty miles. VHF, you lose it over the curve of the earth past that.”

  “Sir?” The weapons officer turned his head toward Dan.

  “Say again the whole transmission.”

  “‘Motor Vessel Queen Shallop being boarded by armed men from small boat.’ End of transmission.”

  “Come to flank and head toward the Strait.” Dan was awake now. “Make sure Combat knows what’s going on. If they transmit again, maybe the ESM team can get a line of bearing. Get Dom up here right away. And pass this to the coast guard; make sure they got it, too.” Part of the message setting up their patrol area had specified that two Philippine coast guard patrol boats would be available close inshore, ready to move into shallow waters to intercept once Gaddis or Monginsidi, which patrolled the next area north, could relay track information on a suspect craft.

  Doolan yelled out the new course to the helmsman. The engine order telegraph pinged as Dan jumped down from his chair. The combination of the lean of the deck as Gaddis came to a new course of 135 degrees true and a brush with his arm knocked a cold cup of coffee from its perch on the steel U-beam that formed the window ledge. He stepped over it, not stopping, and went to the chart table, where Chick joined him after passing on the orders to his junior OOD, Chief Tosito, and to CIC.

  Colosimo arrived, stuffing his shirttails in. Together they discussed the most likely position the distress call had come from, putting together the estimated range, the channel conformation, and what the reserve officer knew about the pirates’ preferred method of attack. They came up with an area of sea south of a shotgun blast of islets the chart called the Pilas Islands. By now Gaddis was at her maximum speed, almost thirty knots, rolling slightly to the quartering northerly swell, the deck shuddering and the blowers whining and whooshing. Dan backed off from the process, zooming back to get perspective, and keyed CIC again. “Combat, bridge. Did you pass information on Queen Shallop intercept to Philippine authorities?”

  “Sir, we called on the assigned freq but have no response yet. Will keep calling.”

  Dan double-tapped the lever in acknowledgment and crossed to the repeater. Found himself confronted by a taped-on paper sign: RADAR FUCKED. “Is this the repeater or the radar?” he yelled angrily.

  Heads whipped around, and the boatswain said hastily, “Sir, that’s just the repeater; we called the ETs half an hour ago.”

  “Get Chief Warrant up here ASAP. We need this repeater.” He wheeled, straight-armed the door to the ladder, and clattered out one level down in CIC.

  The ops specialist had his head down over the big repeater next to the plotting table. He made a careful mark with his grease pencil as Dan came up. “Yeah, we got it,” the petty officer observed. “You were gonna ask me if we had a contact bearing about 130, forty thousand yards, right, sir?”

  “I like being anticipated. Give me a course and speed to intercept to make my day.”

  “Another three minutes. There’s some intermittents out there, but this is the only one that paints on every sweep.” The OS eyed his watch, then etched another mark. Dan saw it was tracking directly in toward the center of the screen. “Dead in the water,” the petty officer said, walking his fingers across the glass. “Come left a hair and we’ll intercept in … forty minutes.”

  No point getting worke
d up, Dan cautioned himself. They had no certainty the contact was actually the vessel that had put out the distress call. But still he felt the acceleration of events, the excitement that came so seldom, but that when it did made up for so much boredom, so much routine, stupidity, and repetition. The ladder slanted beneath his half-Wellingtons as he ran up it again. Gaddis was flinging herself headlong across the choppy sea, charging to the rescue. Forty minutes, less now, and they’d be in range of the five-inch in about … No, goddamnit, they didn’t have any five-inch ammunition … but the twenties could reach out and touch someone at a good thousand yards. He yelled at Doolan as he emerged onto the bridge, “PCG answer up yet?”

  “No, sir, no response on their circuit.”

  “Have they answered up before? We did a radio check, right?”

  “Compline says they had contact when we checked into the net around 1400.”

  “Sir?” The duty signalman at the wing door. He looked scared. “Captain? Can you come and look at this?”

  Dan frowned but stepped out onto the wing. The signalman pointed over the side.

  He leaned over the splinter shield, to gaze directly down on what his shocked and disbelieving eye recognized instantly as a tropical coral head. The sea was so clear that in the smooth trough of Gaddis’s bow wave, distorting what lay below like curved crown glass, he saw a blue parrot fish frozen against the convoluted background of a brain coral. He stared downward for what seemed like an eternity as Gaddis roared on, then spun and screamed through the open wing door, “Depth!”

  “Five fathoms under the keel, sir!” Tosito yelled back. Dan felt himself almost literally torn apart between wanting to yell all astern full and wanting to keep on, hoping to reach the now not-so-distant contact while perhaps their quarry for so many days was still aboard or at least nearby.… Colosimo, face suddenly bleached, turning from the chart with mouth an open O …