The Passage

by David Poyer

  Lauderdale’s voice from a speaker grille. “Combat, aye. We’ve got a clear radar picture. Fix in thirty seconds.”

  Dan glanced at the pilot. The old man looked tranquil, almost asleep, like he’d been born out here on the river. Hell, maybe he had.

  “Bridge, Combat: Based on a radar fix at time oh-nine, we are fifty yards left of proposed track. Nearest aid to navigation, buoy Romeo eighteen on port bow range two hundred yards. Nearest hazard to navigation, shoal water ninety yards off port beam. Depth sounder agrees. Three hundred yards to next turn, two minutes at this speed. Recommend coming left to course one-three-three at time thirteen.”

  “Very well,” he muttered. He glanced out to the left, conscious of the shoal water out there, and froze. Something huge was taking shape behind the mist.

  The tremendous black silhouette of an aircraft carrier.

  His brain stalled, unable to accept what his eyes insisted they saw. Was he hallucinating? Was all this a dream, getting under way, the fog-shrouded river? But no, there it was, emerging more solid and real every second from the blowing fog. The long flat line of deck, the vertical antenna-spiked island amidships … it was a carrier. But it couldn’t be, not to port; that was shoal water; that was land. Why didn’t anyone scream? He opened his mouth; his hands trembled.

  “Slack off, Lieutenant,” the pilot muttered. “That’s the old Yorktown , tied up at that museum they got over there. You’re headed fair, just goin’ to have to turn sooner than the radar’s tellin’ you. Fog’s gonna lift once you get out to sea. Coming up on it … . Start turning now.”

  He felt his legs shaking. Of course, the maritime museum, how could he have forgotten … but it had been so much like the last minutes of the doomed Ryan … . The pilot cleared his throat warningly and Dan raised his voice to the helmsman. “Left fifteen degrees rudder, steady course one-three-three.”

  “Left fifteen degrees rudder, steady course one-three-three … My rudder is left fifteen, coming to course one-three-three.”

  “Better steady to port of that, current’s setting you south something fierce here.”

  “Continue left to course one-two-seven.”

  “You’re doing fine, Mr. Lenson,” said Leighty casually. Dan glanced at him in surprise, wondering what kind of answer you gave to that. Finally, he just said, “Yes, sir.”

  Behind him, the talker said, “Combat recommends steadying course one-three-zero. The course just ordered will take us out of the channel to port.”

  “They’re not taking the current into account,” muttered the pilot. “Steady as you go.”

  Cannon’s voice cut through the click of the fathometer, the steady hum of ventilators. “Navigator concurs with combat. Sir, recommend coming right now to one-three-zero.”

  Dan glanced swiftly at him. The navigator had his faced buried in the hood of the bridge radar repeater. So he was getting radar, too. And the two fixes agreed. “Nearest shoal water?” he asked him.

  “Combat, Bridge: Based on a good fix at time thirteen we are one hundred yards left of proposed track and at the edge of the channel. Nearest shoal water is Hog Island, ten yards to port. Depth sounder reading agrees. Sir! Combat recommends hard right rudder, come to course one-four-zero immediately to avoid grounding.”

  “Captain, navigator concurs with that,” said Cannon, pitching his voice past Dan to where Leighty sat, legs crossed. Dan turned, too, looking at him, waiting.

  But Leighty didn’t say anything, didn’t even move. Dan felt cold. The captain had frozen. He’d seen it happen before to men faced with the necessity for decision. Leighty wasn’t going to do a goddamn thing.

  It was up to him.

  He took two long strides out to the port wing and leaned out over the splinter shield. Whatever his decision, it had to be fast. The fog had closed in again and he couldn’t see a thing. All he had was the sense of it pressing on his face, cold and clammy, a white spongy solidity all around. He could see the river below, whirling brown eddies hurrying Barrett inexorably toward whatever lay ahead. Whom to believe? The radar, the navigator, or the pilot? Nothing to go by but his gut.

  “Steady as she goes,” he called. The helmsman repeated the order in a nervous shout: “Steady as she goes, aye, sir; steadying new course one-two-nine.”

  The bridge, the fog, the world was silent for perhaps two minutes. Dan listened with his feet, waiting for the sibilance of steel on mud, waiting for the slowing, the easy deceleration, that meant they’d touched. Then a black shape took form ahead.

  The shadow took on a pointed silhouette, then a color, becoming a red cone-shaped buoy moving swiftly down their port side. It lay over on the end of its anchor chain, dragging a heavy wake as the current swirled past. As Barrett’s bow wave hit, it began thrusting itself slowly in and out of the silvery river.

  “Navigator, how far to our next turn?” Dan said, trying to keep his voice steady. Past Cannon’s shame-faced look, he caught the captain’s head, tilted back, staring expressionlessly out the dewbeaded glass.

  THEY threaded the rest of the channel out in the same tension. They passed the dredge at work off Crab Bank, a black fog shadow of booms and stacks, the long, humped pipe of the outflow leading away into the shallows. The channel widened after that and Dan added a few knots, but he paid for it with a near miss with a motor yacht crossing from the Intracoastal. It loomed up suddenly white as the fog, not sounding any signals and not registering on radar till the forward lookout was actually shouting and pointing. He had to order back full and right hard rudder to miss it.

  Just as the old man had said, the fog lifted a few miles past the sea buoy, raising the curtain on a calm morning Atlantic. He eased out a long breath, feeling now like he could deal with anything as long as he could see it coming.

  “Sir, navigator recommends course one-one-zero true, speed twenty to reach operating area at fourteen hundred.”

  “Very well,” he said. “Captain, permission to secure sea and anchor?”

  Leighty nodded. Dan gave the new course and speed orders and the lee helm pinged. Barrett accelerated and turned southeast, toward the sea horizon. The boatswain’s pipe shrilled. “Now secure the special sea detail. Set the normal under-way watch. Watch Section Two.”

  Burdette Shuffert came up and said he was ready to relieve. Dan leaned against the gas mask storage locker as he brought him up to speed. When the black officer relieved him, they went over to the starboard side and waited till the captain looked up from the message he was reading. “Captain, I’ve been properly relieved by Lieutenant(jg) Shuffert as OOD.”

  “Very well.”

  “I have the watch, sir.”

  “Very well.” Leighty tossed a salute back and swung himself down, scribbling on the file and handing it back to the waiting radioman. Dan was turning for the ladder when he said, “Mr. Lenson. Could you join me for a moment?”

  On the wing, Leighty glanced at the lookout, who had his glasses welded to a school of porpoises and his headphones clamped over his ears. Dan waited, wondering how the captain was going to justify the fact he hadn’t made a decision there in the fog. But instead, he just said, “You did well, taking her out.”

  “Thank you, sir. Sorry about that carrier—”

  “I could see that startled you, but you recovered. No, I meant the moment when you were getting conflicting recommendations. The only criticism I have is that you hesitated a bit too long before taking action.”

  Dan looked at him. He had hesitated? When the captain hadn’t given him any guidance, any direction at all? It was stepping over a line, but he said it anyway. “I was waiting for you to tell me what to do, sir.”

  Leighty said mildly, “You’re my OOD, Dan. If I didn’t think you could do the job, I wouldn’t have signed your appointment letter. One of these days, you’ll be sitting in my chair. Nobody’ll be around to tell you what to do then. I like to train my people with that day in mind.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dan, but at the sam
e time he was thinking, Where is this guy coming from? It sounded a little like something he’d heard once at the Academy, but it sure wasn’t what he’d seen in the fleet.

  He understood Thomas Leighty less every time he talked with the man.

  HE went from the bridge to his stateroom, rinsed his face, picked up a checkoff sheet, and began getting ready for the test firing.

  He started at the muzzle end, the launchers and gun mounts. He made sure the gunner’s mates and fire controlmen were finishing the prefire checks, that each was witnessed by an officer. He climbed up to the directors and watched the Daily Systems Operability Test from there. Then went down to the magazines and confirmed that the instrumented birds they’d loaded at Goose Creek were lined up properly in the big rotating drums that fed the launchers. Chief Alaska assured him he’d checked out each missile. They were alive, they answered up, and they gave the right responses. He spent the last half hour before lunch in the computer room, going over system procedures with Williams and Dawson.

  Harper came in while he was finishing up, looking irascible. Dan asked him how the DSOTs had looked from his end. He grumbled that nobody listened, nobody used the checklists. “Yeah, but how did they go?” Dan persisted.

  “All my shit’s gonna work. I don’t know about the assholes operating it, though.”

  When the 1MC said, “Lunch is now being served in the wardroom,” he tore himself away reluctantly. But it would be a long afternoon. He needed to eat. He went out on the flight deck to check the weather first, though.

  Barrett was charging steadily along through an enormous calm flatness. A blower roared softly above his head. Through it, he could hear the giant hollow flute note of air going into the stack and exhaust blasting out. The faintly heaving polished glass of the sea, reflecting nothing but soft blue sky, told him there was really no wind, though he felt a hot breath on his cheek and arm from Barrett ’s passage through the waiting air. Aft of him, men were lowering the deck-edge nets. Behind them, two decks down, he caught a glimpse of the gunner’s mates laying out the hemp mats that prevented spent shell cases from chipping the decks. Behind them was the fire-ax abruptness of the stern, then nothing but the wake. From a gray-green central turbulence, it rolled outward into the flat silver, spreading to either side like unfolding wings, then gradually merging with the heat haze and the topaz blur of stack gas until everything shimmered, everything melted together, nothing was definite or clear.

  He stood there for ten or fifteen seconds, knowing he didn’t have the time to spare but giving it to himself, like a gift. At sea … he couldn’t really say why it was so different, but it was. Detached from the billion-voiced roar of the shore, maybe there was less to distract you. Not that going to sea on a warship was a cruise on Walden Pond. This was as solitary as it got, snatching a couple of seconds with your boot on the scuppers, letting the sea-doubled sun scorch your face.

  He wondered how many more times he’d go to sea. Three years in this billet, then he’d be in line for a shore job. But then he’d be facing XO screen and the lieutenant commander board. Unless he did a stellar job on Barrett, he wouldn’t make it, which would leave him firmly screwed to the bulkhead, passed over, without enough time to retire on.

  He smiled bitterly. He’d given up his family, and now he’d probably get booted, anyway. No, that wasn’t exactly so. Betts would have left regardless. Her dislike of the Navy would just have shifted to something else. He still didn’t understand it. Maybe he never would. But he thought of the wreckage of his marriage now as inevitable, fated, unavoidable.

  The trouble was, he still missed a little girl with all his heart.

  He looked out over the sea and blinked sun tears out of his eyes.

  WHEN he let himself in, Pedersen was dealing out the main course, sloppy joes and fries and pink stamped-out circles of plastic tomato. Dan took his seat, muttering “Excuse me, Captain” to Leighty, who nodded absently, his eyes following the steward around the table even as he kept talking to Vysotsky. Dan noticed a strange lieutenant commander sitting next to the XO, but nobody introduced him. The new damage control assistant sat beside Harper at the bottom of the table, looking awkward. He had short black hair, tentative eyes behind the gold rims. Lohmeyer, he remembered. “Peanut butter and jelly,” Dan said to the steward.

  “It’s sitting there ten miles from the eastern edge of the op area. Picked it up just before I got off.”

  “What’s that, Felipe?”

  Quintanilla said, “There’s an AGI sitting out there waiting for us.”

  “An AGI. A Russian?”

  “That’s right. One of their little spy guys with all the antennas. Hiltz picked up his signature just before I got off watch.”

  “How do they do it?” Dwight Giordano said. “They’re always there when we’re going to do a shoot or an exercise.”

  “It seemed like that in the Med, too,” Dan said. “Or maybe it’s just that we only notice them then. There’re always fishing boats around, wherever you go.”

  “I’d buy that sometimes, but it’s like I’ve heard it too often.” The lieutenant commander pointed a spoon at Quintanilla. “When we were doing the development testing on the Aegis, whenever we had a shoot scheduled or beam-tracking exercises, there was a trawler there when we got out to the op area. Finally, we had to reserve four areas and decide which one to use the morning we got under way. That solved the problem.”

  “Yeah, it’s like they had our schedule.”

  Harper murmured to the new officer, “Maybe the XO calls them up the night before. Says, ‘It’s Comrade Vysotsky. Come on out and join us.’”

  “Jesus, Jay,” Dan muttered.

  “Keon, are they reading our traffic?” Vysotsky asked the comm officer. Van Cleef said hastily, “Not ours, sir.”

  The captain said, “We’ll hug the western edge of the area. Stay as far away from him as possible.”

  AT 1300, the 1MC announced, “Prefire brief in the helo hangar.” Dan heard it in the department office as he was going over the exercise op order once more, highlighting call signs, frequencies, and aircraft on-station and home-plate times.

  When he got back to the hangar, he looked around to make sure his players were present. Dawson, Harper, Mainhardt, Horseheads, Shuffert, Alaska, Boyer, Glasser—all here, sitting on the crate of spare blades or lashed-down boxes of aviation supplies. He leaned against the bulkhead as Mister Ed passed out the firing plan. Through the open hangar door, the sea astern gradually slanted left, then right as Barrett rolled.

  Vysotsky introduced the lieutenant commander who’d been at lunch as Cal O‘Bierne, the exercise observer, straight from the Naval Missile System Engineering Section. O’Bierne went right into the plan for the shoot, shouting to overcome the ambient noise in the hangar bay.

  “This is the prefire brief for the first stage of the combat system sequential qualification trial, the CSSQT. The purpose of the trial is to test your ship’s radar, combat system, and antiaircraft team training against a UVS—”

  The captain lifted a finger. “Yes, sir?” said O’Bierne, breaking off.

  “What’s a UVS?”

  “Sir, unmanned vehicle system.”

  “A drone?”

  “Yes, sir. The BQM-thirty-four simulates a typical antiship cruise missile profile, like a Styx or an Exocet.” He waited for another question, then went on. “As I said, the purpose is to test your effectiveness against a simulated cruise missile attack. The trial will proceed in three phases. The first events, oh-six-oh-one to oh-six-oh-four, are alignment exercises using a wire-towed drogue. Once you’re tweaked and peaked, satisfied your system’s operating at a hundred percent, we’ll do three tracking runs.

  “Finally, event oh-six-oh-eight will be a live fire against a high-speed drone launched from a mother plane. Barrett will be firing special instrumented Standards, with telemetry but no warheads. I will grade the exercise and submit a report.”

  O’Bierne looked at Leighty.
“Captain, about the only other thing is to make sure you’ll have a boat and crew and a thousand-pound davit available to pick up the UVS—I mean, the drone, after the exercise. It’ll soft-land in the water, and we’ll send a truck over for it when you get back to Charleston. Are there any questions?”

  Leighty deferred to Vysotsky, who asked Dan what his tactics were going to be. Dan said, “Sir, I’ve checked out NWP-sixty-five and the class tactical manual, but there are no tactics developed yet for the ACDADS. I recommend an adaptation of the Kidd-class Block-One tactics as follows … .”

  When he was done Vysotsky asked if anyone else had comments. Finally, Leighty nodded. “Okay, George, let’s get to it.”

  “General quarters, sir?”

  “Why not. Let’s make it as realistic as possible.”

  “THIS is a drill; this is a drill. General quarters; general quarters. All hands, man your battle stations. Set material condition Zebra throughout the ship.”

  The electronic bonging was still echoing through the passageways when he got to CIC. He strapped on gas mask and life jacket, buttoned his sleeves and collar, tucked trouser cuffs into his socks. A seaman handed him the gray helmet stenciled TAO and he swung up into his chair.

  CIC was dark now, dark and cold and packed with people. The black bulkhead and overhead disappeared, making it seem like the backlit displays and tote boards floated in interstellar space. From the TAO chair, centered in the compartment, he had a clear view of every plot board and display. Action flowed outward concentrically from the TAO. He could speak in a normal voice to the officers who controlled the sensors and weapons: the surface-subsurface weapons coordinator, the antiair weapons coordinator. They, in turn, were in voice range of the petty officers who ran the launch consoles for Harpoon, Standard, ASROC, torpedoes, and guns. They were tied together by intercoms and screen-to-screen computer links, and if all else failed, there were the time-tested sound-powered phones. A dedicated intercom by Dan’s hand gave him direct talk to the officer of the deck, one deck up, so he could maneuver the ship.