by David Poyer
She looked frazzled, gaunt, a little unsteady on her feet. He eyed her doubtfully. Execs could burn out … as her predecessor had, all too spectacularly. “I wouldn’t let down our guard just yet, Cheryl. Still a couple hours until we’re out of missile range.”
“Right … right.”
“Feeling okay? Get any sleep while we were in port?”
“Not much. We had to get those Harpoons onloaded, and coordinate everything with the port security people.” She coughed into a fist.
“You’re not coming down with this thing, are you?”
“Nope. Just tired. I’m okay.”
He glanced around, abruptly realizing that almost everyone else looked just as hollow-cheeked, just as red-eyed. And equally apathetic. The port visit should have helped, but they’d had so much to do. He cleared his throat. “Look, we need to get out of GQ as soon as we clear the strait. Condition three, but only until we’re over the horizon. Then, the normal steaming watch, so the off watch can catch some Zs. And maybe a rope yarn Sunday.”
“A what?”
He blinked. “Never heard of a rope yarn Sunday?”
“You’re losing me, Captain.”
“Well, it’s old Navy … a half day’s work, to catch up on your mending, pick oakum, that kind of thing. Tomorrow’s Sunday, right? What’ve we got scheduled?”
“I wasn’t sure where we’d be at that point. So I didn’t really—”
“Let’s leave the afternoon free. And what else could we do? To sort of let everybody’s hair down. Swim call?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea in these waters, Captain. Sharks. Snakes—”
“How ’bout a steel beach picnic?” Wenck put in. Dan swiveled to face him. “And a beer call,” the chief added. “We earned it.”
Dan nodded slowly, gaze drawn back to the displays. Where the lumbering behemoths they escorted were turning the corner, bound for the Indian Ocean. The Combattantes they’d passed on the way in, and which had trailed them up to the exercise area, were still out there. He was keeping an eye out for them, and for any bogeys rising from the new airfield farther south, near Chabahar. East of that was the Chinese-built port in Pakistan, Gwadar. He’d love to take a look at that, see if he could pick up any electronic intelligence. If they made it out without further incident.
He nodded slowly. “Steel beach it is. Good suggestion, Donnie. Cheryl, let’s get our heads together, see what we can do.”
* * *
“CAPTAIN. Captain?”
He wasn’t really sure, for a moment, if he was still dreaming. No. In his bunk. Having finally, finally, gotten his eyes closed. He coughed, hard, bringing something sticky and thick and gritty up from inside his chest. Under way … Savo Island … Arabian Sea. He groped for the Hydra. “Yeah … yeah. What is it, Chief?”
“We got some kind of light low in the water. Bearing zero-four-zero. No radar contact.”
Fuck. But you couldn’t say that, or betray in any way that you resented being woken. Or they might not call you, next time, when you really ought to be there. He muttered reluctantly, “I’ll be right up.”
* * *
THE pilothouse was utterly dark. He groped his way around the helm console, barking his shin on something steel. Muttered, “OOD?”
“Here, sir. Chief Van Gogh.”
“What’ve we got, Chief?”
Van Gogh led him out onto the port wing, where Dan stared into one of the blackest nights he’d ever seen. The warm wind blustered in his ears. “What am I looking at?”
Hands gripped his shoulders and aimed him. “Out there, sir. Right below the horizon.”
What horizon? But he caught, just for an instant, what might’ve been a flicker of yellow. Van Gogh said, “Port lookout reported it. Young kid. Good eyes. Otherwise we’d have missed it. Zip on radar. I slowed and called you. We’re at five knots.”
“Okay. Where’s Mitscher?”
“Astern, Captain. CIC put him there to do some kind of beam calibration.”
A pair of binoculars was pushed into his hands. Dan found the lights of the destroyer, well astern, then searched off to port again until he picked up the flicker once more. But the 7x50s didn’t give him much more than his naked eyeballs. “Phosphorescence?”
“Look down, sir.”
He looked straight down, to a greenish flicker, along the turbulent layer where the steel skin of the ship slid through the sea. “We have luminescent organisms, but they’re green,” Van Gogh said. “That’s yellow out there. Almost like a flame.”
“Check with Sonar?”
“Yessir. Nothing on that bearing.”
“How far are we from land?”
“Hundred and twenty miles, as of eight o’clock reports.”
“All right, let’s come around. Inform Mitscher what we’re doing. Have them stand clear.” He stared through the glasses again, but the spark was gone. Or he couldn’t pick it up. “Go in slow. And better man up the lights.”
* * *
THE dazzling beam from the signal bridge picked out debris from the blackness. Low black dots, a dark line. Dan slowed to a crawl, came left to put the wind behind him, and let the ship drift in.
“Three guys, on a raft,” the junior officer of the deck said, balancing binoculars on the tips of his fingers.
A few minutes later they were looking down at them. The wet black heads sagged and lolled. The men didn’t look up, or wave. There was no raft. They were lashed to a long wooden timber, some kind of beam or spar.
This was what the Navy called a SOLAS event. Saving life at sea. Not that he wouldn’t have anyway, but Savo was legally obligated to render assistance. Dan debated putting the RHIB in the water, but at last just bumped ahead and lowered the boat ladder midships. Grissett and two boatswain’s mates went down to help the men out of the water.
* * *
THE first lieutenant and the chief corpsman reported to him on the bridge an hour later. “Three dudes,” Grissett said. “Lucky as hell. One kept showing me a Bic lighter. That was probably what we saw.”
“Okay, who are they? Where are they from?”
“Iranian. Not super coherent at the moment, but Kaghazchi says he thinks they’re saying they’re refugees. Baha’is. One was condemned to death for proselytizing. Disrespecting Islam, whatever. The other two are his cousins. They broke him out of prison, or bribed him out—that’s not real clear, but who cares—and they were trying to escape in a boat. The good news: they made it out. The bad news: the boat came apart and sank. There were two others. They swam away, and these guys never saw them again.”
“Hundred-plus miles from shore? Headed east? Where’d they think they were going?”
“I don’t get the impression these are seasoned travelers.”
Van Gogh put in, “This is where the prevailing wind and current would take them, from the coast. Pretty fucking lucky, I’d say.”
“Absolutely agree,” said the corpsman. “One more day without water, they’d have been DOA.”
Dan leaned back against leather, unutterably fatigued. “Yeah—to get seen at night, way out here. Somebody’s looking out for them. Okay, so they’re claiming religious, political refugee status, I guess. That right?”
“We didn’t get to the legalities yet, Captain. I was just trying to get ’em rehydrated, and checking eyes and airways. Two of ’em inhaled gasoline when the boat went down, in the slick. Think they’re gonna be okay, though. You can talk to ’em yourself if you want.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” he said, envisioning his bunk again, looking at his watch. 0300. He might be able to get another couple hours in.
If they didn’t call him again.
9
The Arabian Sea
CHICKEN, steak, and burgers were grilling over charcoal in torched-apart fifty-five-gallon drums. The smells of barbecue mingled with those of baked beans, coleslaw, chips, and stack gas. Gulls darted overhead, shrieking with rage and envy as Savo rolled eastward at a cas
ual ten knots, barely fast enough to push a bow wave. Two hundred and fifty miles out of Hormuz, the atmosphere was nearly clear of sand. Still cloudy, still monsoon weather, and the wind still kicked up a blue sea.
Dan, holding a laden plate on the helo deck, studied Mitscher steaming in company a mile off. Incredibly, no one had woken him again until 0730, and he felt almost rested, though his throat was raw and the cough worse. Around him the crew chatted and chowed down at folding tables, squatted cross-legged on the nonskid, or dangled legs through the deck-edge nets. Most wore trunks or bathing suits, predominantly issue gear, but some in colorful civilian attire. Especially the girls, a few of whom lay garnering what ultraviolet they could facedown on blankets on the hangar roof.
Looking down, Dan couldn’t help noting the tire marks and eroded surfaces where the helo had scraped the rough black nonskid off. They’d have to resurface the flight deck again.
“Bug juice, Cap’n. Orange or blue?”
“The orange, please.”
Hands full, he stood eating with a gathering of the chiefs, listening to “Red” Slaughenhaupt tell about the time he’d been on a boarding team deployed out here. They’d been doing maritime intercept operations with a Canadian frigate when they’d intercepted a heroin shipment. “We found two tons of brown powder, in plastic bags,” the lead fire controlman finished. “I had to witness the destruction. Felt pretty wasteful, dumping all that good shit over the side. You gotta wonder, it’s worth that much on the street, why don’t we just take it home and sell it? Buy ourselves another carrier battle group or something.” The other chiefs grinned, glancing from him to Dan.
He wandered from there into the hangar. Red Hawk squatted, folded-back blades nodding with the ship’s motion. The helo mechanics were disassembling equipment. “Thought this was a rope yarn afternoon,” he said to Strafer, who’d strolled over when he came in.
“You want us in the air tomorrow, gotta maintain today.” The lead pilot rubbed his crew cut. “Not to bring up business, but … we put a lot of hours on this bird. Coming up on Interval Two fast.” Wear was accumulating, and the bird would need serious attention soon. Wilker looked out to sea. “We have to put flight hours into this exercise? What’s it called?”
“Malabar.”
“And who else—”
“U.S., Australia, Japan, India, Singapore. This year, they’re gonna focus on ASW. So, yeah, you’re gonna be tasked. Plus, if we have to put you in the air to check out any questionable surface contacts.” Dan glanced at the worktables, where burgers and Cokes had been set aside. “We’re all getting tired. If there’s any way we can lighten your guys’ load, let me know. And if we’re getting close to the hairy edge on safety, let me know. I mean it. Don’t push any envelopes, just for an exercise.”
He wandered out onto the flight deck again and stood looking down on the fantail, eating baked beans with a plastic fork. Three dark-haired, swarthy men squatted on their haunches on the afterdeck. The Iranians they’d fished out the night before. They were looking out at the sea, not speaking or interacting, just staring, as if hoping to spot someone they knew was out there. The after gun was centerlined, threatening a distant, slowly rolling horizon. The wake unscrolled behind them, a smoothed path that gradually vanished as it approached the distant, jagged waves at his sight line. Several crew members stood along the lifeline, spaced like sparrows on a wire, holding poles or tending handlines. Seabirds whirled, making him shield his plate with one hand against errant squirts. Now and then a gull left the milling swarm to dive toward where the sailors’ bait skipped along the surface.
Then, from high above, a greater shadow descended. The gulls parted, shrieking and crying. Dan squinted up into the opal light, not quite believing what he was witnessing.
The thing’s wings were wider than a man was tall. It balanced on the wind like a Romanian gymnast. A black eye examined him from a cocked head. A hooked beak opened and closed. For an endless moment he met that dark soulless gaze. Then a wing tip twitched, and the great bird angled off, lifting without effort on some invisible draft Dan couldn’t even feel. But still, gazing down.
He suddenly became aware of others standing behind him, also goggling at the bird, and watching him. The crew, holding plates and cans.
Tausengelt stepped up. “A good omen,” the leathery old master chief said drily. “Or a warning?”
“Oh, they’re good luck.” Dan glanced over his shoulder and raised his voice. “Albatross. Good luck to a ship … unless you harm one. Let’s just make sure we don’t.”
The anglers murmured assent, looking up. The great bird soared far above, gradually dropping back until it hovered over their wake. And stationed itself there, motionless, as if pasted to the cloudy sky, until Dan turned away, and carried his plate to the plastic bins.
* * *
HE was in some kind of boarding school. Run on English lines, but somehow in Pennsylvania. He and some other boys were siphoning gasoline from what seemed to be a swimming pool.
The Hydra woke him. A furious-sounding Cheryl Staurulakis was on the other end. “Captain? We have a situation.”
He blinked into the dark, the dream still inhabiting his mind. Shaking it off, he jumped up in his boxers and jerked the blue curtain from over the forward porthole. It looked out over the bow, but the night sea lay empty of lights. Not an impending collision, then. “What’ve you got, Exec? I was trying to get my head down—”
“A situation,” the XO repeated. “In my stateroom.”
“In your … stateroom. You want me to come down there?”
“If the captain pleases.”
He didn’t like her tone on that last, but bit back a snappish reply. If she thought it was important, it would be. He checked the bulkhead clock. Just past eight o’clock reports. “Let me pull my coveralls on.”
“Khakis might be best, sir.”
With lifted eyebrows, he signed off.
Five minutes later—the uniform races at the Academy had been, after all, a good preparation for eventual command—he knocked at her door. “Come in,” said a muffled voice.
He closed the door to a flushed, sweaty Staurulakis, swinging a leg from a perch on her fold-down desk, and a seated, slumped Petty Officer Terranova. The girl raised tearstained cheeks. Her usual presentation, of a junior high school band student, was gone. The chubby face looked more like that of a child who’d fallen and skinned her knee. Dan restrained his first impulse, to put an arm around her, as when his daughter had been little, and fallen off her bike. “What happened?” he murmured.
“Tell him,” Staurulakis said. Just from the speed at which her leg swung he could tell she was furious.
Dan’s leading SPY-1 fire controlman, the woman he depended on during general quarters, described in broken sentences how, back in Crete, she’d ordered a new bikini swimsuit from a Soft Surroundings catalog one of the other girls had. It had come in in their mail delivery at Jebel Ali. “And I thought, we’re having the picnic, I’d wear it. Sure, I’m … a little heavy, but I could get a tan. In CIC all the time, we all get pasty white.”
“I know,” Dan said. “Take your time.”
“Anyway I got in line and had a salad. Then took my blanket up on the 03 level. And Heather and Ashley and Reagan and I, we laid there and talked, and drank Cokes … and I bummed a cigarette off Reagan. Then after the bird came—”
“The albatross?”
“Yessir. The, um, albatross. The sun started to go down, and they packed up. But I didn’t want to leave. You never get to be alone. So I stayed. And it got dark. Finally I got everything packed up and I left too. I was going down the port side, in through there, in my flip-flops, carrying my blanket—”
“Go on,” Dan said, though from the exec’s bouncing leg and the Terror’s averted gaze he had an idea what was coming.
“Anyway, somebody … grabbed me, there, inside the helo hangar passageway, and pulled me behind the darken ship curtains. Where they fold against th
e bulkhead. And put a knife to my throat—”
“A knife?” Dan repeated. “A knife?”
“That’s what I said. I felt it—it was fucking sharp, too.” The petty officer gulped and straightened. “He pulled me behind the curtain, there, and felt me up. Stuck his hand under my top, and down the back of my—bottoms.”
“I see. Was there actual—”
“There wasn’t,” Staurulakis said, flat-faced. “We already discussed that.”
“I see. Well … then what?”
“I felt him … jerking off. Then he whispered in my ear to stay there for five minutes, or he’d cut me when I wasn’t expecting it. In the mess line, or wherever.” She took a deep breath. “So I did. And got myself back together, then came—”
“Then came to me,” Staurulakis said. “You did exactly right, Beth.”
Dan cleared his throat. “That’s right, Terror. You didn’t mention this to any of the other girls? En route? Straight here, to the exec’s cabin?”
“I asked Donnie where the exec was. He said, probably in the combat passageway, observing eight o’clock reports. But I didn’t tell him why I wanted her.”
“Where did you see Wenck?” Staurulakis asked.
“On the way down to berthing. I would’ve come right here, ma’am, but I was still in my swimsuit and—”
Dan said, “Exec, we need the chief master-at-arms in on this. Terror, you said he, um, hand-jobbed himself. Did anything get on you? On your suit, or your blanket?”
“I didn’t look.”
“We need to sequester them, inspect for semen.”
The exec murmured, leg slowing a bit, “Yessir, we can do that. But about the master-at-arms…”
“What about him?”
“Can we, um, talk offline?”
Out in the passageway, door closed, Staurulakis murmured, “Toan’s not going to be that interested. You heard them, when we took Peeples to mast over what he said to Scharner.”
“Oh, he’ll be interested,” Dan said. “This isn’t verbal harassment. Calling somebody a kunk, or whatever it was. This is assault with a deadly weapon. A threat of bodily harm. If he doesn’t take this seriously, I’ll recalibrate him. I won’t have my sailors terrorized. Also, I want to know where Peeples was during the picnic and afterward. Who he was with. And if he owns a knife.”