by David Poyer
But as he’d told the captain, all his senior programmers were in Hawaii, at the annual Advanced Combat Direction Systems Fleet Working Group conference. He’d have gone himself, but Hawaii was one of the most polluted areas of the country, as far as agricultural chemicals and insecticides went.
“You didn’t go because they spray the pineapples?” The captain sounded incredulous.
“Those are organophosphates, Ted. They don’t just stay on the crops; they contaminate the air, the roads, everything. And they don’t have a good effect on the body.”
That night, he was in a C-12 headed for Charleston. And then this morning, the helicopter had arrived, and they’d bundled him in—despite his changing his mind—and the well-padded, doublewrapped, nylon tape—strapped box with him.
He sat crouched in the seat, six feet three, thin as a rail, breathing hard and saying his mantra over and over.
Half an hour later, someone clapped his shoulder. He flinched and opened his eyes. The crewman was pointing out the window. He looked out and saw the boat.
It was so little and so far down. It moved steadily through the blue sea. He stared down as they approached. How were they going to get him down there?
“Get up, man.”
The crewman again, smaller than the others—and without much caring, Hank noticed he wasn’t a man; she was a woman. She flicked his buckles open and helped him up. He started to collapse back into the seat, but she swung him bodily and jammed him against the wall. Then she was putting a round yellow collar around him and another crewman was clacking a safety harness on beside the door.
Suddenly, he realized what they were going to do. He would have fought, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. He closed his eyes as his bowels let go.
The woman was screaming something from a contorted face. He couldn’t make it out over the suddenly world-filling roar as the outer door slid back. He stared out into blue blinding space.
They shoved him through the door like butchers handling a side of beef. His legs kicked helplessly at the air. He swung out, back, helpless in a blast of hot air and sound, dizzy, sick, terrified. Then steel slammed up under his feet. Hands pulled off the collar. His legs gave way and he fell. The hands tightened under his arms. He felt the rough steel surface grind at the knees of his suit as he was dragged across it.
THEY took him down to a clean, well-lighted place deep in the ship. Two men helped him out of his dirty torn suit. He told them he had clothes in his bag, but they just exchanged looks. “We didn’t see any bag, tall guy. They dumped a box and a briefcase with you, that’s all.”
He closed his eyes again. He’d shoved it under his seat as he got into the chopper, then forgotten it; the crew hadn’t seen it, and now here he was without clothes or toothbrush or even his vitamin supplements. They were all still aboard the helo—wherever it was now.
After a shower and a change, he climbed the ladder behind one of the sailors. He was surprised how large the ship was. It had looked so small from the sky. There were a lot of people aboard, too. Somehow he’d thought of boats as smaller, with just the computer systems and, of course, a few men to handle the ropes and motors and things.
The “bridge” turned out to be a control center high up in the ship. Several men were standing around, not doing much of anything. “Sir, here he is,” the corpsman said, and he was led over to someone in a chair.
“Welcome aboard Barrett. I’m Thomas Leighty, the captain.”
“Hi. Hank Shrobo,” he said. “I don’t shake hands, but I’m glad to meet you. Nothing personal. It’s just that rhinoviruses propagate that way.”
The captain, a small man in a white uniform, looked down at his own extended hand, then put it back on the arm of his chair. “Did sick bay take care of you?”
“Oh, yes. Just shaken up a little.” He swallowed. “It was a rough flight.”
“Just out of curiosity, why are you wearing scrub greens?” the captain asked him.
“My clothes didn’t make it, and my suit’s torn. The nurses loaned me these.”
“Nurses? Oh, the corpsmen. George! Come over here. This is the tech rep just came off the helo. This is George Vysotsky, my exec.”
“Did you bring the tapes?” the blond officer asked.
“Yes. Version Three-point-one ACDADS. A new version of the NTDS operating system, with double the track capacity. New comm and sonar modules. And a new Link Eleven tape, too, though your message said yours was okay.”
The blond guy was looking him up and down. His voice sounded hoarse. “You’re what? GS-eleven? GS-twelve?”
“I’m not a civil servant. I’m with Vartech Research, Incorporated. We support software for all NTDS-related systems.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” the exec asked him.
“No, I don’t feel too well. Actually, I’ve never been out in a boat before.” Shrobo swallowed, catching their exchange of looks: amused, condescending.
“Normally we call her a ship. Well, anyway, welcome aboard. George, have you got a place to put him?”
“We’ll fix something up, sir.”
“Dan, can you step over here? This is Lieutenant Lenson; he’s the combat systems officer. Dan, the tech rep from Vartech. We should be in Gitmo three days from now, uh, Hank. Hopefully you’ll have everything fixed for us then. Just in case you don’t we’ll get a message out, have them hunt your bag down and get it to us in Cuba.”
As he followed the exec down ladders and through passageways, all alike, till he no longer had any idea where he was, he wondered if he’d done the right thing. He hadn’t said he was not just a technician but also a Ph.D.; not just “with” Vartech but the head systems analyst, too. It would have sounded like he was puffing himself, but it was also something else.
He resented the way they looked at him, amused, pitying, as if knowing how to work with your mind wasn’t as manly as working with your hands. That had always enraged him, but he’d never really known how to react to it.
DAN stayed on the bridge till 1145, phasing into the normal watch rotation. Quintanilla came up and posted a four-section watch bill with Dan, Dave Cannon, Burdette Shuffert, and Jay Harper as OODs, and Van Cleef, Cash, Paul, and Kessler as JOODs. The engineers were off the watch bill, preparing for the arrival inspection. Dan told Morris to advise the navigator he had the next watch. The chief said Cannon knew, that he was eating early and would be right up.
The boatswain’s mate said, “Sir, Ensign Lohmeyer wants to have the at-sea fire party muster on the helo deck.”
“Make it so,” said Dan, thinking it was good to see the new officer taking hold. He’d seemed bewildered when he first came aboard, almost slow. “Ed, take another look out there at that freighter. Does he look like he’s coming right to you?”
When Cannon relieved him, he went down to lunch, feeling better than he had for days. Just being at sea made his problems seem less pressing. He dealt rapidly with spaghetti, pizza, canned beets, and steamed broccoli, then took a quick shower.
When he stopped by the computer room, Harper was briefing the tech rep. He watched them for a minute, amused at the contrast. The chief warrant, grizzled but fit, in his faded khakis, knife sheath, and steel-toed boots. He laced technical terms with the salty obscenities gleaned from a life at sea. The civilian—why was he wearing scrub greens?—was going bald, though he couldn’t be very old. He didn’t look like he got much exercise. His long, knobby fingers rested lightly on a panel as he listened, as if he could sense through them the streams of data coursing through the humming gray machines.
“Excuse me. I’m Lenson, the combat systems officer. We met on the bridge.”
“Hank Shrobo.”
“Glad to have you aboard. Anything you need, ask Mr. Harper here, or Chief Dawson. Got a bunk? They show you the mess decks?”
Shrobo said quietly that they had. Dan felt something strange about the guy. His color wasn’t good, as if the motion of the ship didn’t agree with him. Maybe it was just the scrub
greens, though.
“Got him up to speed on our problem?”
“Just about.” Harper looked worried. Dan wondered if the glitch was worse than he thought. He wanted to ask, but he knew he was interrupting, so he just said he’d be back later and left, dogging the door quietly behind him.
HE got an hour in with Cephas on the administrative package. They got through the rescue and assistance bill, the replenishment at sea bill, and the visit and search, boarding, and prize crew bill. Then they started on the departmental correspondence file. Around 1400, the boatswain’s call shrilled “attention.”
“This is the captain speaking.
“In three days we’ll be pulling into Guantánamo Bay for the toughest training the Navy provides. I want all division officers and chiefs to take one last look at the admin package. If there are any problems, let your department heads know now.
“This afternoon, and each morning and afternoon till we arrive, we’ll practice basic fire fighting, damage control, and engineering casualty control under the direction of the XO. He and Mr. Giordano have designed a series of walk-through drills to refamiliarize us with the basics. We’ll go through each one slowly and explain each step. Please ask questions and give all your attention to these drills.
“We will now go to general quarters, then break for training from there.”
The bong of the alarm. Dan reached for the phone and dialed the computer room. He told Dawson to have the guys working on the computers stand fast but to break off the others to the drill.
He found CA, CF, and CG divisions sitting in a circle on the fantail, in the swaying shadow of the after launcher. The props rumbled under them as the sea marched by. The air was very warm. He squatted, joining them as a damage controlman lifted a mass of black rubber, straps, tubes, and buckles. “The Model A-four quick-starting oxygen-breathing apparatus consists of four parts—one: airtight face piece with eyepieces and speaking diaphragm, two: exhalation and inhalation tubes; three: oxygenproducing canister; four: breathing bag … .”
THEY secured from GQ at 1630. He put in another hour in the office, stopped in the computer room, then went up to his stateroom.
The buzz of the phone woke him. He had the watch, the 20—24, eight to midnight. He told the messenger he’d be right up.
The bridge was almost dark and he felt his way around at first. Then, gradually, stars appeared beyond the windows; pilot lights on the radio remotes; the faint radiance from the binnacle, occluded as the helmsman leaned against the console, talking to the boatswain. Frowning—the bridge was supposed to be silent—he checked the chart, then the surface plot.
They were two hundred miles out of Charleston, off the Florida-Georgia border. It would be a long run now parallel to the Florida coast, then the southeasterly tending string of the Bahamas. There weren’t many ships out here. The glowing circle of the radar repeater showed him only two flaring pips. The radio circuits hadn’t changed since his watch. The ship was on split-plant operations, port steering system in operation, starboard in standby.
He was ready to relieve, but he couldn’t find Harper. He bumped into someone beside the bridge scuttlebutt and said, “Who’s that?”
“Hey, your quartermaster of the watch, Mr. Lenson. Quartermaster Third Class Lighthizer.”
“Evening, Lighthizer. Where’s Mr. Harper?”
“Check the port wing, sir. He’s been out there most of the watch, the guy I relieved said.”
Dan stopped in the door, looking out into the night. The wind flowed by steadily, warm but not uncomfortable. The stars looked blurry and huge; no moon yet. Two silhouettes stood at the port pelorus, and he heard the murmur of conversation. As he stepped out, it clarified into words.
“I just don’t see how she could do that, go out there, get her picture taken with them. Remember that, her with the antiaircraft gun? Shit, why didn’t the Commie bitch pull a trigger on our guys herself? I never bought a ticket to one of her pictures after that. Fuck her!”
Something inaudible from the lookout. The shadow turned, and a red glow came into view, brightening, then dimming.
“Oh yeah? Try SEAR school. Escape and Evasion. They put you in this mock concentration camp. The guards are sadists. Army Special Forces, Marine Corps, Air Force MPs. Hit you with the side of their fists. No food. A cup of rabbit soup. Some of the guys cooperated. Did whatever they told them to, spit on the flag, sign petitions. Not me. I escaped. Got under the wire, walked all night through the fucking swamp, turned myself in the next morning at the post headquarters. Nobody ever made it that far before—”
“Excuse me,” said Dan.
“Just a minute. So they give me a Spam sandwich and a glass of milk and take me back in a truck. The guards beat the shit out of me and throw me in the cage. Example to the others.” The shadows separated and Harper said, “You’re late, Lieutenant.”
“I was here. I spent fifteen minutes getting familiarized. Now I’m looking all over the bridge for you. What is this, you’re out here telling the lookouts sea stories?”
“It’s a long watch. So I passed a word with the guy.”
“He’s also smoking. You don’t let them smoke, and you don’t distract the lookouts, Chief Warrant. Where are the binoculars?”
“Binoculars … Hey, Lighthouse, where’s the fucking binoculars?”
Dan controlled himself. “Never mind. I’ll find them. What’s the engineering status?”
“It’s all on the board, night orders.”
“The night orders aren’t up yet.” Dan suddenly became conscious of other ears around them. “Who’s got the conn?”
“I do,” Kessler said from the darkness.
“We’re going in the chartroom for a second, Lieutenant.”
The red light in the little attached space made Harper look emaciated and diabolical. “Another ass-chewing?” he grunted.
“You rate one, Chief Warrant. You don’t know where the binoculars are because you haven’t been using them. You don’t know the engineering lineup, electric load, or what tonight’s ops are going to be. Do you?”
“What kind of Mickey Mouse bullshit is this?” said Harper. “Look, I’ve been OOD-qualified on ten ships and every CO gave me four-oh evals. You can chew the fat with the guys without breaking discipline, long’s they know you’ll turn around and beat their fuckin’ ass. Why don’t you just chill the fuck out?”
“I’m not going to match sea years with you. And chewing the rag—that’s not the point. They’re smoking outside the skin of the ship. That’ll cost us points in Gitmo, not to mention it ruins their night vision.”
“I’ve been to Gitmo five times. Robinson knows he can’t smoke in Condition Three. And he won’t.”
“And I’m telling you, you condone smoking on watch now, he’ll sneak a smoke later. And the next time I relieve you, I expect a proper turnover from a properly organized watch!”
“I stand relieved,” said Harper, tossed him a contemptuous salute, and left. Dan stood in the chartroom, so taken aback he didn’t respond. But when he went out, Harper was already gone. He said loudly, “This is Lieutenant Lenson. I have the deck and the conn. Belay your reports. Boatswain’s mate!”
“Sir.”
“Check all the lookouts. Any of them smoking, give the JOOD their names. Quartermaster! Inventory the binoculars and report to me if any are missing. Combat! Recalculate all contact courses, speeds, and CPAs. I want a complete update on the board by time fifteen. Mr. Van Cleef, call Main Control and update the plant lineup board. We’ll be doing a lost-steering drill this watch, then a maneuvering-board drill.”
When bridge and lookouts and combat had settled down again into the dark silence that meant a tight, alert watch, he checked the surface picture one last time, then turned the conn over to his new junior officer of the deck, Van Cleef. He leaned against the XO’s chair, looking out at the passing sea.
It was so black, it seemed to pull all light into itself. Yet even this long after su
nset, a glow lingered far to the west. Water crashed and rumbled as Barrett’s ax-sharp stem cut it apart and peeled it back. Beneath it whirled the blurry luminescence of the suddenly exposed deep, mysterious and beckoning, more profound than any man could ever know and still live. The Gulf Stream, he remembered. They were breasting the greatest river on earth, the shoreless stream that carried the heat of the equator from tropic to pole.
But he was remembering another night, the shriek of the storm in an old ship’s top-hamper as Alan Evlin had explained the world and human life to him. Looking out now, he seemed to see again a huge Arctic comber, moving in on them out of the north, black on deeper black, a green phosphorescence rippling and flickering along its crest.
“There are things you can’t say in words,” the gentle lieutenant had said, Dan so green then that he’d hardly known his way from one side of the bridge to the other. “Just look out there, and think about it.”
The wave was almost on them. “Get ready, Ali. Here comes a big mother.”
“Got her clamped, sir.” The strong black face behind the wheel.
“Coffee, sir?” muttered Pettus. Yeah, he remembered Pettus, too.
The sea hit them square, so hard that the old tin can’s bones shook. He reached out to grip steel, but it was Barrett’s fabric he gripped, not Reynolds Ryan’s. It was tonight and not years before. He was older now and not nearly so naïve, so trusting, and so idealistic.
He suddenly missed Evlin, Packer, all the guys who’d died in Ryan. Did their spirits linger over the sea, as their bodies had become part of it? Because they were all still out here, in the greatest graveyard on earth—or at least the dissolved atoms that had once been their bodies. Maybe they were spinning through Barrett’s screws right now. Atoms remembered nothing; they were changeless and eternal. But what had happened to their spirits? Was there such a thing as an immortal soul, or, as Evlin had thought, a little splinter of the infinite within each creature that had the capability of choice?