The Passage

by David Poyer

  Van Cleef, beside him: “Night orders, sir.”

  He clicked on the red light over the chart table. The captain’s handwriting slanted big and bold across the form. He read down the own-ship and weather data, noting moonrise later that night; temperatures in the mid-eighties, visibility unlimited; independent steaming, remain alert for small contacts not registering on radar. Sonar to conduct self-noise testing at midnight. The engineers to do casualty control exercises from 0130—0500. He signed the 20—24 block and passed it back.

  Yeah, this was what the Navy was all about: going to sea. Or was it? Maybe it was really about the stuff they spent 90 percent of their time doing—paperwork, messages, drills, inspections, administration. Was it about responsibility and honor? Or about making decisions he didn’t want to make, serving under people he didn’t trust, making compromises he hated?

  “Say, sir,” said a voice beside him, and he flinched, but it was only Van Cleef. “I was wondering … when you were getting under way the other day, you used the mooring lines to get the ship around. How do you know how much force to put on them? Is there any trick to that?”

  “You have to have the lines over right. If you can get the bow and stern lines perpendicular to the pier, you can control the lateral position of the bow and stern. Then take in on the spring lines to move you fore and aft … .”

  He thought again of Evlin and Norden and Packer as he tried to pass on some of what he’d learned to Van Cleef. For just a moment, staring at his silhouette in the dark, he saw himself again in the young man: eager to learn and contribute and perform.

  And when someday the Cowcatcher was standing here, explaining shiphandling to someone else, where would he, Dan Lenson, be then? He’d always remember the nights at sea, the camaraderie, the fatigue, but one day he’d go ashore for good, and all this would be memories or less than that. His passing was as inevitable as that of every wave under the keel. All that would remain of him was what he could hand on to others—the knowledge and the craft—and beyond that what meaning he could wrest or guess at from the world and the sea, the glittering of Sirius and Deneb and the faces of human beings, each clouded or bright in his own way, like the stars.

  “Mr. Lenson.”

  The rough-edged voice could only belong to one man. He turned quickly, to find Vysotsky’s shadow between him and the helm console. “Yes, sir. Good evening, XO.”

  “Evening. Everything quiet?”

  “Yes, sir. I was just telling Keon how you use warping lines to get under way.”

  “I don’t think you can do better than emulate Mr. Lenson, in terms of watch standing and shiphandling.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Van Cleef. Dan didn’t say anything. Praise made him feel uncomfortable, especially from someone who would dismiss a set of charges at his superior’s say-so.

  The executive officer stood motionless for a while, then hoisted himself up into his chair. “How’s the computer expert doing? Shrobo?”

  “He doesn’t have any sea legs, but he seems to know his way around a YUK-seven, sir.”

  “Any progress?”

  “He’s down there working the problem, but it’ll take a while to get the new programming loaded and checked out.”

  “I want your guys to pick up all they can from him, in case it happens again after he leaves. And it’s a great training opportunity for them.”

  “Yes, sir. They’re down there, Dawson and Williams and the others.”

  Vysotsky didn’t say anything for a time. Dan glanced back as the phone talker began jotting up data on a new surface contact. “You have that on radar, Mr. Van Cleef?”

  “Yes, sir. Closest point of approach, eight thousand yards at two-two-zero.”

  “Very well.”

  “Has Mr. Harper been helping him?”

  “Sir?”

  “I said, has Jay been helping out with the ACDADS?”

  “Uh, I believe so, sir. As much as he can with watch, running his division, the classified accounts, and all the other things he’s got on his plate.”

  “What’s your opinion of him?”

  “What, of Jay?” Dan considered. They’d had their frictions, especially lately, but he didn’t feel like going into that with the XO. “He’s a real asset to the ship, sir. He’s a good electronics czar, knows the systems. He gets things fixed.”

  “How about as a division officer?”

  “Well, he has his own way of doing things, sir. Kind of the old-style ‘square the fuck away or I’ll kick your ass myself’ kind of leadership. But it seems to work for him. Why?”

  “No reason,” said Vysotsky. “Just asking.”

  Dan raised his glasses and leaned against the window. A diffuse light like a faraway fire glowed off to port. The moon, still below the horizon, was advertising its impending presence.

  “Well, I’m going to turn in.” Vysotsky swung down; Dan moved aside to let him past. “See you in the A.M.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  After the XO left, Dan checked the radar and satisfied himself the contact ahead would pass clear. He looked out to starboard for a while, then drifted over to the chart table and stared down at it. “Lighthizer,” he said. “This last loran fix you took, is it—”

  From out of the darkness, the suddenly energized voice of the JL phone talker cut in: “Aft lookout reports—man overboard! Starboard!”

  “All engines stop! Hard right rudder,” he and Van Cleef shouted at the same second. Dan kept going, dodging shadows on his way to the wing, yelling as he went: “OOD has the conn! Sound six blasts. JOOD, call the captain. Boatswain, pass ‘man overboard.’”

  He was startled but not terribly excited. It was probably a drill, get the guys shaken down for Gitmo. As the horn blasted into life, he reached the wing, jerked the ready float off its holder, pulled the pin, and heaved it overboard. It ignited as it hit the water and fell rapidly astern, disappearing as the stern wake swept over it, then flaring up anew, bobbing crazily. Barrett leaned into the turn. The horn stopped, started another blast. Simultaneously Dan saw another flare astern, more distant, but on the same line of bearing as the one he’d just dropped. Good, the after lookout had popped a float, too.

  The last blast cut off and other sounds became audible. “Combat reports, shifting to two hundred yards to the inch, commencing man overboard plot.”

  “Very well. Keep an eye on that contact, see if he’s going to embarrass us if we heave to.”

  “Man overboard, starboard side. Man overboard, starboard side.”

  Dan bent to the pelorus and lined it up on the glowing marks to the reciprocal of their original course. The night orders said the wind would be ten to fifteen knots from the east. The ship was slowing rapidly. He saw it all in his head and made his decision. “Port engine ahead full,” he called in. The rapidly swinging bow eclipsed the first, more distant flare. He waited, then a few seconds before it came in line with his own, he shouted, “Steady as she goes. All engines ahead one-third. Mark your head.”

  “Engine room answers, all ahead one-third. Steady as she goes, aye. Mark my head, zero-two-three.”

  Dan hit the 21MC button for the signal bridge. “Sigs, Bridge: Get our lights fired up. Man in the water, port bow, five hundred yards ahead.”

  The captain came out on the wing. His torso glowed strangely. He was in his undershirt. “Where is he?” he said. Dan pointed ahead to the guttering flares. “The far one, the after lookout threw as soon as he saw him. I placed the other one.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “Modified Anderson recovery. Line up on the two floats, take him aboard with the boat.”

  “Bridge, Midships: Boat crew’s mustered. Request permission to lower to the rail.”

  “Hold off,” said Leighty. Dan repeated the order into the pilothouse. The captain said, “It’s calm enough for a shipboard recovery. The water’s warm. Go in slow along the reciprocal. Don’t run over him. Any idea who it is?”

  Dan said, “No
, sir,” realizing only then that this was a real man overboard, not a stuffed dummy to be hauled back aboard with a grapnel. The phone talker shouted, “Bridge, Combat: Man bears zero-one-eight, three hundred yards.” Leighty disappeared inside. Dan heard him yelling, “Is the XO here? Have you got a muster yet, George?”

  Part of the normal response to a “man overboard” was to muster the crew at stations for a quick head tally. Dan wondered for another second who it was, then dismissed it from his mind. They were closing in on the southernmost flare. When it passed down the port side, tossing on the waves, he could hear it hissing and sputtering as its flame fought the sea. It cast a fitful glitter on the black waves around it. Then it moved past and aft. “Left hard rudder, starboard engine ahead full, port engine back full,” he yelled into the pilothouse.

  The boatswain’s mate of the watch said, “Sir, the lookout says—”

  “Which lookout?”

  “After lookout. He says he wasn’t really sure it was a guy.”

  “What!” Dan rounded on him, and the man shrank back. “What do you mean, he isn’t sure it was a guy? He just told us man overboard!”

  “Sir, he says he saw something white go over from the helo deck. It hit the water hard, but he couldn’t make out in the dark what it was. So he called in—”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay, he did right.” Dan debated passing that to the captain, then noticed suddenly that his bow was swinging too fast. He yelled, “All stop! Right full rudder, steady course three-four-zero.” At that moment, the little twinkling star ahead of them winked out suddenly.

  “Aw fuck,” Van Cleef muttered beside him. Dan asked him, “Have you got a report from the fo’c’sle?”

  “Yeah, they’re ready down there.”

  Dan leaned forward, confirming that they were indeed ready, five men spaced along the side of the ship. Only it was the wrong side. He cupped his hands and yelled down, “Port side! Port-side recovery!” They waved back and ran to the opposite lifeline.

  The searchlights had been playing ahead, searching here and there across the gently heaving blackness. Now they all swung to one point and steadied. Dan checked the wind again and corrected.

  “There he is! See him, sir?”

  “Yeah, there’s something there all right. Can’t tell if it’s a man. Okay, let’s shift to the port wing for the pickup. Get some paper cups from the chart room.”

  But as they coasted in the final few hundred feet, the white patch disappeared. Dan gave the engines back one-third, then dropped a cup overboard. It sailed down fifty feet, hit the water, then drifted slowly aft. The captain and XO came out and they all three stood there, searching the water. The lights held steady a few dozen yards off the bow, but they couldn’t see anything. “What the hell?” muttered Leighty.

  Above them, a signalman leaned over the rail, gripping binoculars. “Didja see him?” he yelled.

  “No. Where is he?”

  “He was right out there—a guy in whites. When we came up on him, he dived down. You could see him a little while in the lights, under the water, but now he’s not there anymore.”

  Vysotsky pulled another float off the rack, stripped the waterproofing tape off it, and pulled the pin. He heaved it over in the direction of the focused lights as it ignited. A sulfurous cloud enveloped the wing, then blew away downwind.

  Dan yelled up, “You’re sure it was a man? Not a bag of trash that sank when we came up?”

  “No, sir. We could see his arms moving. He was looking up at us as we came in. Then he dived down, like he was trying to get away.”

  They stared down into the water. Finally, Leighty said, “Lower the boat. Do a careful search all around where he … went down.”

  Chief Oakes came out, Barrett’s chief master-at-arms. He handed a piece of paper to Vysotsky. The XO read it, then looked up.

  “One of yours, Dan. ETSN Benjamin Sanderling.”

  The snort of a motor, and the whaleboat charged around the stern. Then it slowed, purring out toward where the beams were drifting apart now, growing uncertain, groping over the unmarked surface of the sea.

  Dan put his flashlight on the 21MC and punched the call button for the computer room. Williams answered. He said, still hoping it might not turn out that way, “Petty Officer Williams. Sanderling turn up yet?”

  “No, sir. Ain’t here, and his rack’s empty.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Just after he got off watch. He had the second dog in Combat.”

  “How’d he seem to you? Anybody else see him after that?”

  “Chief Dawson here, sir. He was acting kind of down. Said something about going to the XO about something. I didn’t ask him what. I guess I should’ve, but he’s like always in your face about something or other.”

  Dan told him not to blame himself, then punched off. He looked out to where the boat was searching, the pale thin beams of the battle lanterns probing down into black depths. Beyond, below, around it, only the black.

  CANNON came up early and relieved him. Dan went to combat systems berthing, where Sanderling had slept. Its other occupants squatted in the passageway. Inside, all the bunks were empty and all the lights were on. Harper, Oakes, Dawson, and the departmental yeoman were waiting in one of the bays.

  “Here’s Mr. Lenson.”

  Dan said heavily, “Okay, Senior Chief. This everybody we need?”

  “Yes, sir. Actually the inventory board just needs one officer, according to—”

  “Cephas, what’re you doing here? Oh, the secretary. Okay, Senior Chief. Cut it.”

  Oakes positioned the bolt cutters and leaned on the handles. The jaws slipped through the hasp of the padlock and met with a click. Dawson hoisted the mattress, exposing the under-bunk locker, a three-by-six-foot slab of six-inch space. He started sorting things into a cardboard box, giving Cephas a running description. “Web belt, black, one. Blue chambray shirt, four.” In the personal compartment were a marking kit, a wallet, a key ring with three keys, the USS Barrett stationery kit that the ship’s store sold, Sanderling’s boot camp copy of The Bluejacket’s Manual, and a mending kit.

  “That’s it. Mostly class-two and -five stuff.”

  “What else we got?”

  “Hanging locker, then the seabag locker,” said Dawson.

  The upright locker held a reefer jacket and two sets of whites still in their dry-cleaning bags. By the time they were through inventorying it, the master-at-arms had the seabag locker open. The duffel stenciled B. G. SANDERLING USN held civilian clothes and carefully folded winter blues. It didn’t look like it had been opened for a while.

  “Anything else?”

  Cephas cleared his throat. “Sir, there’s a luggage locker some of the guys keep stuff in.”

  They found a green suitcase with a chain tag marked “Benny Sanderling, 205 West Fifth Street, Eugene, Oregon.” It was locked, but a little stamped key on the ring opened it.

  “Yeah, I figured we’d find something like this,” said Harper.

  Dan looked down silently as Oakes snapped on a set of rubber gloves. He started laying the magazines and objects out on a piece of plastic.

  “What do we do with this, sir? We don’t want to send this … stuff back to his family, do we?”

  “No,” said Dan. His face felt rigid. “Dump it overboard. Leave it off the inventory, Cephas.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the yeoman.

  “How about these magazines?” Harper picked one up, displayed a foldout page to the others. “How about it? Turn you guys on?”

  “Put it down,” Dan snapped, and the chief warrant grinned and dropped it.

  Oakes took the last magazine out of the suitcase, and there was the book. It said DIARY on it.

  “Overboard,” said Dan. “Don’t even open it.”

  “Wait a second,” Harper said. “This might be evidence.”

  “Senior Chief? What’s the regs say about diaries?”

  “Uh, I guess class fi
ve, sir. Miscellaneous personal stuff—”

  Harper picked it up with the tips of his fingers, just as he had the magazine. He thumbed through several entries. He cleared his throat, then flattened it so they could read, underlining one passage with his fingernail.

  July Fifth. Today me and the captain made love for the first

  time. It was not like what I expected. He is a tender man … .

  “Uh-oh,” muttered Oakes. His old face looked furrowed and resigned.

  “I knew it,” said Harper. “I knew it. He’s been cornholing this kid, and he couldn’t take it anymore. So he jumped overboard. This is dynamite.”

  “We better get the XO in on this,” Lenson said.

  “Fuck we do! He’s covering for him, if he isn’t one himself. If it goes to Vysotsky, it’ll disappear.” Harper turned to the master-at-arms. “Oakie?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Harper. I don’t know what to do.”

  They looked at Dan. He picked the diary up and made himself look through it. It was Sanderling’s all right. He recognized his handwriting from the special request chits, applications for officer training, protests of his evaluation marks. He turned to the last entry, dreading what he’d find. A farewell message, a declaration of love, a cry of revenge? … But there was no entry for that day, and not for several before that. The last entry was a poem he’d copied from somewhere: “Invictus.”

  Out of the night that covers me,

  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

  I thank whatever gods may be

  For my unconquerable soul … .

  He took a deep breath and put the diary in his back pocket. The others looked at him.

  “The rest of this stuff, throw it overboard,” he said. Cephas rolled up the plastic, hefted it.

  “Off to the fantail,” he said, and left.

  18

  Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

  THE hills loomed up like a rampart built across the sea. They stretched off gradually, dropping below the limits of sight, with no sign of human habitation except directly ahead. There, east of where the land opened, a water tower and antennas rose on the far side of what the chart named the Cuzco Hills.