The Passage

by David Poyer

  But it was all he could think of to do.

  He leaned back slowly, looked casually into the chart house, then strolled in. The helmsman’s eyes followed his every step. He came out again, crossed to the starboard wing, noting exactly where the man stood, where he’d propped the shotgun against the console. If only he could make him step away from the wheel. The door to the starboard wing grew slowly ahead of him like a bright portal to another life. Through its shining oval, he saw the sparkling sea, the distant violet and green of a forbidden land. What a calm, beautiful day. Legs, hands tingling numb. So scared. He hoped Nan had a good life. He hoped she remembered her daddy.

  “Where you think you’re going?”

  He took a deep breath. One more look at the sea, then he’d come back in and do it. “Gonna take a bearing; I can’t see my marks from inside anymore,” he called back.

  The guy nodded. Dan stepped over the knee-knocker into the sunlight. How warm it was on his hands, his lifted face. He smelled flowers, grass, the land. How beautiful the world was. His lungs pumped, getting ready. His heart accelerated, preparing to fight and die. When he went back in, he’d take three steps, pivot as he passed the chart table, and charge. He knotted the leather strap of the heavy binoculars surreptitiously into his fist. If he could slug this asshole with them before he got to the gun, he might live through the next sixty seconds. He glanced out and aft, back toward where the gunboat rolled uneasily, keeping pace—and into George Vysotsky’s intent blue eyes.

  For a long moment, he couldn’t speak, just stared. The XO was crouching below the level of the window, a few feet aft of him. His blond hair stuck up in a ragged cowlick. His bare feet, pale toes splayed, were dug into the wooden gratings of the deck.

  In his right hand, extended toward Dan, was a long gleam that he recognized after a puzzled instant as a saber.

  “XO,” his lips shaped, but his voice died in his throat. He remembered the helmsman, just inside. He glanced back. The masked head was bent, concentrating on maintaining course as the slowly dropping speed reduced the effect of the rudders. The shotgun lay propped against the console.

  Obviously, he hadn’t noticed the executive officer yet. But it was a nasty dilemma. If Dan spoke, the helmsman would hear it and look up. But if he didn’t say something right now, it looked like the XO was going to run him through. He was already moving forward, point extended. “You bastard,” he hissed. “You one of them? Are you?” The point glittered, rising toward his throat. Dan couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t take his eyes from it.

  “No,” he whispered. He motioned frantically. “No. Keep it down, XO!”

  “What are you doing up here, then?”

  “Shut up!” But he could see his voiceless whisper, his desperate and furtive gesticulations weren’t getting across. Vysotsky wasn’t listening.

  He had to speak or the exec would kill him. But he couldn’t speak, because then Vysotsky would die.

  In that interminable frozen instant, while his brain fought with itself, the point pricked into his throat. Dan closed his eyes. He stood motionless, waiting for the lunge.

  Then, when it didn’t happen, he opened them, to see Vysotsky rise slightly from his crouch, peep quickly through the bottom of the window into the pilothouse, then drop again.

  Dan turned his back on both of them, set up the bearing ring, and bent to sight through it. His hands were trembling so badly it took several tries to get a cut on Punta Caleta. He had a crazy desire to jump over the side. But there was nowhere to swim to, and jumping wouldn’t help recover the ship. Just then, one of the MIGs circled back, not as low as the first pass, but the thunder gave the exec auditory cover to mutter, “I couldn’t sleep. Felt uneasy. Then I heard people moving around outside my cabin. I hid just before they came through my door.”

  Dan murmured through motionless lips, “They were waiting for me up here, when I came on watch.”

  “The guy at the helm, he one of them?”

  “Yeah. He’s got one of the riot guns.”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “I think so.”

  “He’s forcing you to conn?”

  “Yeah. What you want to do, sir?”

  Vysotsky murmured hoarsely, “We’ve got to take the bridge back, then turn her head to seaward and get the hell out of here. They can sink us if they want, after that. At least she’ll go down in deep water.”

  “Look, if we work together, we can maybe take this guy. I’ll distract him. Then you come in from the wing.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “You can trust me, sir.” The MIG dwindled toward the hills, and he lowered his voice. He bent as if to take another sight, knowing he couldn’t linger out here much longer.

  “There’s another guy loose,” Vysotsky’s hoarse whisper floated up. “I caught a glimpse of him down near the boat deck. Had his back to me. I didn’t see his face.”

  “One of them?”

  “I don’t think so. He was in coveralls, but he wasn’t wearing the hood.”

  “Lost steerageway,” the helmsman shouted from inside. Dan turned and saw to his horror that he’d moved away from the wheel. It turned lazily this way and that.

  Without another look at Vysotsky, who was crouched with the blade gripped in both hands, Dan stepped back inside. He said, “Try to keep her head southeast as long as you can.”

  “I did. Told you, we lost steerageway.”

  Dan got to the far side of the console. He lifted his hand to his cap, took it off, the motion drawing the man’s eyes. He said loudly, angrily, “Oh yeah? Mark your head.”

  The tone worked. The eyes in the drab wool mask dropped, seeking the compass. Now, XO, Dan thought, wanting to look toward the door but knowing he couldn’t. Do it now.

  From outside came the clack of a wooden grate being stepped on.

  The helmsman’s eyes flicked up instantly from the gyro and widened as Vysotsky bulled through the doorway. A second later, the short ugly barrel of the twelve-gauge came up as Vysotsky charged, screaming, his blade whipping down in a shining arc of steel.

  The blast blew the exec off his feet, shattering the window behind him white around the pellet holes. Blood splattered like rain against the captain’s chair, the radar repeater, the double-ought buckshot gouging the housing to bright aluminum. Vysotsky hung on the gyrocompass stand, staring not at the man who’d shot him but at Dan. “You bastard,” the gravelly, hoarse voice said. “You goddamned traitor. May God strike you dead.”

  Lenson stared at him, frozen, as Vysotsky’s eyes went dull and the sword clattered to the deck. Faintly, Dan heard someone yelling from the deck below, from the open ladder well.

  He cursed himself, understanding too late that he should have charged at the same instant Vysotsky had; one of them would have made it. He started to step forward, but from behind the console came the clang of the empty shell being ejected. “Leave him alone,” the masked figure shouted. “Don’t touch him. Get back.”

  Dan lost it then.

  Lost it and charged, right into the gun. The masked eyes widened. The muzzle came down from where it had been pointed at the overhead as the second shell was jacked into the breech, came down, but not quite fast enough to be aimed at him when it went off, right past his ear.

  He slammed into man and gun with a full body block, elbow in his throat, and the impact and the recoil of the shotgun carried them locked together back into the bulkhead, into the coffee mess. Stainless pots and mugs clanged and spun to the deck. Dan got in a punch, hammering the other’s head back into a corner of the 1MC panel.

  The other man wedged a knee between them, got an arm across Dan’s face, and started forcing him back. The shotgun clattered to the deck at the same time he chopped Dan across the bridge of the nose, a short blow that didn’t hurt as much as it would have if he’d had more room to swing, but it still made him gasp. As he staggered back, Dan grabbed at the other’s head, an instinctive clawing to keep them locked together. If the ot
her broke free, he could get the gun. He had to stay on him until one of them went down for good. But instead of flesh, his taloned fingers snagged wool, and the balaclava came off in his hand.

  He stared into Casey Kessler’s eyes, astonished—till the ASW officer levered him off suddenly, and he reeled, staggering backward.

  The steel edge of the helm console caught him right in the kidneys. He screamed at the sudden obliterating pain. Kessler swayed in front of the door leading aft, dragging an arm across his face, bleeding from a saber cut across the scalp. Then, as he started toward Dan again, his boot struck the stock of the shotgun. He stared down, blinking through the blood, then stooped.

  Bent double with the pain in his back, Dan shoved off the console into a low, crabbed tackle, hitting Kessler as his extended fingers brushed the gun. He crashed backward, but his head snapped forward as it hit the jamb of the open door with a crack. The lieutenant turned away and ran, staggering a few steps down the short passageway behind the bridge, then suddenly faced Dan again, punching him painfully in the cheek. Dan, still unable to straighten, hit him as hard as he could in the belly, driving him back another step down the passageway. Then he bulled forward and butted him in the chest.

  Kessler screamed, arms windmilling, and toppled backward into the ladder well leading down to the next deck. Aluminum crashes and heavy thumps and thuds came back up. But Dan wasn’t listening. He was crimped over, fists to his knees, panting hard and staring at a nothingness flecked with pinpoints of light. His ear was still ringing from the blast. He felt like he was going to pass out. Then he heard someone yelling below him. “Hey. Hey!”

  “Yeah?” He lurched forward, grabbed the rail at the top of the ladder, looking down.

  Kessler lay facedown on the polished green tile outside the captain’s in-port cabin. Standing over him was another man without a face—just an olive drab head, with eyes that now looked up at Dan through the peep sight of an M14 pointed at his chest.

  47

  AT the bottom of the ladder, Kessler moaned and stirred. Lenson stared with terrible fascination at the rifle. Why didn’t the man fire? He’d seen him knock Kessler down the ladder. Why didn’t he shoot?

  Then, to Dan’s astonishment, he let the barrel drop. “What happened?” he yelled up. “I heard shooting. Would’ve come up, but I’m supposed to stay here.”

  He looked down at himself, bleeding and disheveled, and suddenly understood. In his hand—still clutched where he’d yanked it off Kessler’s head—dangled the olive drab hood.

  Harper had compartmentalized his teams, so that not even they knew one another. Clever, clever, Dan thought. But maybe also a weak point.

  Kessler grunted and tried to hoist himself up. “Stop him,” Dan yelled. The rifleman jumped back, then brought down the rifle butt savagely.

  Dan swallowed with a dry throat. With a last glance around the bridge—at Vysotsky’s body, his blood painting the deck like spilled primer; at the vacant helm droning to itself—he pulled the balaclava over his face, then went forward to pick up the shotgun. Remembering Razytelny, he checked her through the shattered Plexiglas. She was hove-to now, a half mile away. A boat lay alongside; the boarding party was climbing down into it. He returned to the ladder, cursing as pain kicked his kidneys, and started crabbing his way down.

  “Sons of bitches tried to knock me down, take my gun,” he growled. “Almost made it.”

  “I heard two shots.”

  “I got one of them—the XO. Where’s Harper?”

  “I thought he was up there with you.”

  “No.” Dan got to the bottom and shifted his grip to the barrel of the shotgun. “What, he’s got you guarding the captain?”

  “Yeah. I was in there with him, then I heard the shots.”

  “He in there now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit! Look out!”

  The other whipped around, and as soon as his back was to him, Dan swung. The stock cracked, but the guy went down.

  Dan stepped over him and tried the door—unlocked. He slid in, closing it behind him. He felt incredibly alert now. Colors seemed brighter. Sounds seemed louder. He wanted to think, wanted to try to get his mind around some things, such as Casey Kessler being one of them. But there wasn’t time to think. His only advantage was that no one knew he was free yet. But what should he do? Maybe Leighty would know. “Captain,” he whispered. “Captain!”

  Puzzled, he looked around at an empty cabin. His eyes snagged on the porthole, swinging slowly, undogged. Beyond it, sky. Not much of an opening, but Leighty wasn’t a big man. Could he have escaped through it? Was he the one Vysotsky had seen on the boat deck? He moved toward it, letting the shotgun droop.

  Then he stopped, going rigid as an edge dug into his throat. “Don’t move,” Leighty whispered into his ear, pressing it deeper. Dan couldn’t tell what it was, but it felt slicing-sharp. “Drop the gun or I’ll cut your head off.”

  “Sir, it’s Lenson. I’m on your side.”

  “Drop the fucking gun.”

  Dan threw it onto the sofa. Eyes still on the porthole, he muttered again, “Sir, I’m on your side. If you’ll open your door … I just took out your guard. Just got free myself a minute or two ago. That was the shooting you heard.”

  Leighty didn’t answer, but the door opened, then closed. Then footsteps came back, quick and light. Dan felt the shotgun placed back in his hand.

  When he turned, the captain was checking the M14. A letter opener was tucked into the belt of his whites. Trop whites, white shoes, ribbons, the uniform he wore every time they went into or out of port. He looked small and fine and freshly shaven and the weapon seemed too large for him, like a boy with his father’s gun.

  “First thing, we have to get to the 1MC,” Leighty said. He released the operating handle and the breech slammed closed. “Who’s on the bridge?”

  “What for, sir?”

  “To announce what’s going on—that this isn’t a security drill, that someone’s actually trying to take over the ship.”

  “Sir, it’s past trying. They’ve got it.” He explained as quickly as he could about Harper, his spying, passing key lists and classified equipment, how Dan suspected him of killing Sipple to cover his tracks. The captain’s face stilled as he listened. “He’s got thirty people with him. They drilled this in advance. Everybody else is locked below. More bad news—we’re being escorted by gunboats and MIGs to Santiago. And there’s a Soviet destroyer off the bow, getting a boarding party ready.”

  Leighty touched his teeth with his knuckles. “And you think we’re the only ones free? How about George? Felipe?”

  “Sir, the only other loyal man I’ve seen was Commander Vysotsky. And he’s dead; he died on the bridge, fighting. I wouldn’t be here without him.”

  “I’ve been doing some thinking while they had me locked in here. I’ve also been doing some listening.”

  “Listening, sir?”

  Leighty nodded into his bedroom, and Dan saw the phones on the bulkhead. “On the internal circuits. There’s not much going on. In fact, there’s no chatter at all. From that, I deduce he doesn’t have thirty men. If he did, he could set a normal under-way watch. And I can’t believe he’d find that many disloyal men aboard, whatever he offered. Where’d that figure come from?”

  “From Harper.”

  “It’s smoke, bluff. You’ve seen—what, three, four?”

  Dan thought. “Maybe four. It’s hard to say who you’ve seen twice. The ski masks.”

  “That’s a smart tactic. But I don’t buy thirty. I don’t think he’s got more than six or seven. And maybe less.”

  “You might be right, sir.” He’d been banging his brains against that, too, wondering who Harper could have turned. And he’d come up with a few names. But Leighty was right: Thirty sounded way too high.

  “We’ve got to stop him, take the ship back, and beat off the Russians and Cubans.”

  Dan said, “Sir, I was thinking, too, when
they had me up there conning at gunpoint. If we could get the conn and weapons systems back, we could try to fight our way out. But I don’t think we can hold the bridge. Even if there aren’t thirty, there are more than there are of us. I think we should try to disable her, buy time. Eventually, somebody’s going to notice we’ve missed our ETA, start looking for us.”

  “Does anyone know we’ve got a problem? Did we get any comms off?”

  “No, sir, I don’t think so, but we were supposed to pick up the pilot off Leeward Point at dawn. They’ve got to wonder where we are. If we could get to the engine room, disable the engines—”

  The captain said slowly, “The reduction gears are the most vulnerable point. Get the covers open, dump in some tools—then when they turn over, they chew themselves apart. We wreck those, she’s not going anywhere.” Leighty eyed him. “If we get separated, or one of us doesn’t make it, the other keeps going. Agreed?”

  “Yes, sir.” He felt relieved to have an order to follow, to be back under command. He crossed to the door, cracked it, and peered out. Then he checked his twelve-gauge. The butt was cracked, but it should still fire. His mouth was raspy-dry, but he seemed to be getting used to the idea he could die any minute. If Jay Harper was around the next corner, great, let it be.

  “All right, let’s go,” said Leighty, slipping past him.

  DAN bent to check the guards as they stepped over them. They’d be out for a while yet. He pulled the balaclava off the one he’d slugged and held it out. The face under it he only distantly recognized; it wasn’t one of his men. Leighty hesitated, looking at it. “Your shirt, too, sir,” Dan prompted. Finally the captain stripped it off and threw it back into his cabin. He pulled on the olive drab wool.

  “Let’s go,” Leighty said again. But instead of heading aft, toward the engineering spaces, he ran forward.

  “Shit,” Dan whispered, but he followed.