The Sixth Fleet

by David E. Meadows

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Tauten ran his sleeve across his mouth.

  “Chief, can I talk with you over here, please?”

  They moved near the hatch away from the rest of the sailors in the “Radio Shack.”

  “Chief, how much longer until we know what’s wrong?”

  “Give me another couple of hours of darkness, sir. The heat from the day will be down and the sun will be far enough on the other side that, if it is sunspot activity, we should be able to make contact on the night frequencies.”

  The chief paused and then added, “Mr. Tauten, you need to tell the captain.”

  “Not hardly,” Lieutenant Junior Grade Tauten snapped, shaking his head back and forth.

  “No way! The last time I told him we were having problems he chewed my butt up one side and down the other. Then he kept me up all night, along with you, until we fixed the cipher gear. No, Chief, before we excite Captain Cafferty, I want to make sure we know what’s wrong.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. I understand, but if you don’t tell him and he finds out from someone else that we’ve got problems in Radio … Or at least tell the operations officer.”

  “Okay, Chief. You’ve told me. You don’t have to lecture me. I’m not an ensign anymore! Let’s find out what’s wrong before we stir up a hornet’s nest by telling the Old Man. The ETs will be here soon. Then, between our information systems technicians and them, they should be able to troubleshoot the problem.”

  “Okay, Lieutenant; it’s your butt, but I recommend you pass it up the chain of command if you want to keep your butt in one piece.”

  The communications officer, turning to leave, paused and said in a soft voice, “Chief, one other thing: Quit hitting the sailors. You’re going to get us in trouble.”

  “I ain’t hitting them, sir. I’m educating them. This is a warship, not a fucking social barge.” He raised his hands as the lieutenant opened his mouth to say something.

  “I remember, sir, what you told me about raising children.

  You said those social welfare types believe that correcting a long-term whatever was best done by slow, proper attention and support. But, you know something, sir, problems sometimes need a short-term attention-getter so they’ll still be alive for the long-term solution.”

  “Well, for our sakes don’t touch them. All we need is a hot line phone call and there goes our careers.”

  “Well, right now, sir, there ain’t no danger of anyone making any hot line phone calls, until we figure out what’s wrong with our comms the chief said, his lips tight.

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Tauten pulled the door shut behind him as he departed.

  Careers, the chief thought. You ain’t been in the Navy long enough to worry about a career.

  “And junior officers shouldn’t be touching things or speaking out until they’re full commanders — unless they’re Naval Academy graduates and then they should wait until they’re captains,” the chief mumbled to himself. He tugged his pants up and ran his hand around the inside of the waistband. At least two inches he’d lost. May even pass the body fat standards this test cycle.

  He walked to where the seaman stood and slapped him lightly on the back of the head.

  The seaman rubbed his head.

  “What was that for. Chief?

  I ain’t touched nothing.”

  “No, but you were thinking about it.” He tousled the sailor’s hair. Training sailors was a hell of a lot easier than training junior officers. He straightened up as a touch of pride shot through his ego over the young sailors that made up his radio. Damn fine bunch. Navy should never have changed the name of the radioman rating to information systems technician. He still considered himself a radioman regardless of what rating badge he wore on his left arm.

  “Hey, Chief!” a petty officer near the transmitter shouted.

  “Can you come here? I need some help.”

  “Come on. Seaman Jones. Let’s see what teeny-weeny problem Petty Officer Potts has. I’ll watch; you answer.

  They probably taught you the solutions in school and I am just dying to see what new and bright things those pencil pushers have dreamed up to help us poor, stupid sailors at sea.” Within seconds the group was deep in animated conversation discussing ways to approach the problem. From seaman to petty officer they tossed out ideas. The chief stood quietly in the background listening to the exchange.

  The captain needed to know about this, but he had told the officer. With the old captain he would have made sure the Old Man knew, but with Cafferty, the chief shook his head. The new captain shot messengers, so reluctantly he understood the COMMO’s position. That didn’t make it right, but he understood. He looked at his watch. It’d be breakfast before he could voice this concern with his fellow chiefs in the goat locker. He could sneak down to chiefs berthing and wake the command master chief, but the CMC had not had a full night’s sleep since Cafferty assumed command. A chief’s responsibility was to the ship and its sailors, but sometimes it was a “Christly” hard job to do.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Colonel Yosef dozed under the shadow of the bridge, out of the hot morning sun. He drifted within that gray area of fatigued consciousness so familiar to veteran soldiers awaiting the next battle. The shout brought him fully alert, his weapon coming up.

  “Colonel, aircraft approaching!” Sergeant Boutrous pointed north out to sea.

  Yosef pulled himself off the deck of the fishing trawler and climbed to the bridge. The fisherman was still at the helm. A night without sleep mixed with a day-old beard and sweat-matted hair accented by red-rimmed eyes gave the fisherman the look of a wild man. Yosef knew he looked as bad. He shoved his shirttail into his pants and ran his hand over his inch-long desert brown hair, blinking his eyes several times to clear them.

  “No sleep?” Yosef asked. He rubbed his nose where the day’s heat had burned it while he slept. “No, sir. But I am fine. I can continue,” the fisherman responded, unconvincingly.

  “See, I told you I was the helmsman.”

  Yosef pushed the fisherman aside gently to look at the compass. They were still heading east. Good, after last night’s disappointment of discovering that the combined knowledge of maritime navigation between him, his men, and the fisherman hovered between being able to read a compass and being able to spell it. Two kilometers to the south, a morning haze clouded the coastline of Algeria.

  They were following it to keep from getting lost.

  The fisherman had not lied about manning the helm.

  Unfortunately, he failed to mention that it was always under the close eye of the boat’s captain.

  “I see it. Sergeant.” Yosef grabbed a pair of binoculars from a nearby shelf and scanned the air until he focused on the aircraft.

  “Mig-29,” he said as he lowered the binoculars.

  “Tell everyone to go below and keep out of sight until we know what he is doing.”

  “Corporal Omar, get the men below,” Sergeant Boutrous relayed.

  Corporal Omar slid down the railings on the narrow ladder to the main deck. He roused the morning sleepers and with shouts and foot shoves hurried them down the ladder.

  About half were through the hatch when the Mig-29 roared past directly overhead. The gigantic engines of the warplane shook the small vessel as it passed low overhead, the heat from the afterburners taking the breath away from those topside. The deadly fighter turned upward, gaining altitude.

  “Damn!” Yosef shouted.

  “Seems they have found us, or it could be one of our loyal pilots from the west,” President Aineuf said from behind. “Mr. President, what are you doing up here? You must stay below, sir. The pilot may be Air Force, but even Air Force officers can recognize that men in suits are not normally crew members of a fishing trawler.”

  Aineuf smiled.

  “I am sorry, mon colonel. It is just that neither do fishing crews wear desert utility uniforms like you and your men.”

  Yosef nodded in agreement.<
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  “You are correct. President Aineuf, but it is you who will stand out. Please go below until the aircraft leaves.”

  The Mig-29 turned left as the pilot circled for another pass. Yosef, the president, the fisherman at the helm, and five Guardsmen remained topside on the wooden trawler.

  “He’s coming back, Mr. President. Would you please go below, sir,” Yosef pleaded urgently.

  “I’ll go, Colonel Yosef. I think we are too late. Don’t you think the pilot has already reported our presence? I do.

  So the question is not so much what the fighter will do, but how long before the first helicopters with rebel commandos come rumbling over the horizon, heading for our floating sanctuary?”

  The president disappeared slowly down the ladder, his head disappearing as the fighter straightened for its approach.

  The Mig-29 descended to about fifty meters.

  “Wave at him!” shouted Yosef.

  “And keep your weapons out of sight!”

  They waved at the pilot, whose black helmet was clearly visible as the aircraft approached the boat. The noise of the fighter blasted the boat again. The trailing exhaust fumes burned the eyes and raised the ambient temperature across the trawler until the faint sea breeze cleared the air. Yosef noted the pilot failed to wiggle his wings; not a good sign.

  The Mig-29 climbed and turned left for another circuit. Yosef leaned over the bridge railing.

  “Okay, this is it.

  Be alert. This is his third pass. He’s not sure who we are or what he’s seeing. So wave, grin, and think the friendliest thoughts you know!”

  The aircraft completed its circuit, dove back to sea level, and, with afterburners blazing, bore straight for the trawler.

  Five hundred meters out, the fighter triggered its nose cannon and a series of five sprays erupted about fifty meters in front of the fishing vessel as thirty-millimeter cannon shells hit the water.

  A Guardsman standing on the bow whipped his AK-47 from under a towel and fired a long burst at the aircraft as it zoomed, untouched, past the boat. The fighter flipped its starboard aileron and flaps as it zigzagged into a left roll and climbed. Increased power applied to the Mig’s afterburner sent the decibel level climbing, causing the men to cover their ears.

  “What are you doing!” screamed Yosef as he ran at the Guardsman, his shout lost in the noise of the jet fighter.

  “He fired at us. Colonel!”

  “No, he didn’t!” Yosef shouted, slapping the young private.

  “He fired in front of us. If he wasn’t sure before who we were, he definitely knows now. Fishermen don’t carry automatic weapons! You fool! You bloody fool!”

  “I’m sorry. Colonel,” the man said, his head lowered.

  The fighter started a fourth circuit.

  Yosef turned to the helmsman.

  “When I give the word, you turn this boat toward the aircraft. Give him as small a target as possible.”

  Sweat poured down the fisherman’s pudgy face, joining the yellow stains on the front of what used to be a white shirt and increasing the stale ammonia smell of days-old sweat. Yosef knew he smelled little better than the fisherman did. The fighter completed its circuit and descended for another run against the slow fishing vessel.

  “Now! Turn this boat toward the aircraft! Turn it now!”

  But the boat remained steady on course.

  Yosef took two steps, jumped for the ladder, and with one leap was on the bridge.

  “Turn the boat!” he yelled, shaking the fisherman.

  The fisherman stared ahead, eyes wide and knuckles pale white. He held the helm in a fear-frozen grip.

  Yosef knocked the fisherman out of the way and spun the helm as fast as he could, but all his verbal urgings failed to swing the trawler faster than six knots allowed.

  As the boat crept toward the direction of the fighter, Yosef pulled the fisherman off the deck and onto his feet.

  “Keep this boat pointed at the aircraft, fisherman!”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, sir,” the man said as he hurriedly replaced Yosef at the helm.

  White flames flashed from the plane’s thirty-millimeter cannon, creating a geyser path of death, tearing up the sea as the shells headed toward the boat.

  “Take cover!” Yosef shouted, diving down the ladder.

  He rolled across the deck.

  Seconds later bullets tore a path across the boat, ripping up deck and tearing through the sides before the fighter roared by again.

  The boat continued its turn. Yosef leaped up the ladder to the helm. The fisherman lay across the wheel. A thirty millimeter shell had made a large entry hole, but it made a larger exit, taking the fisherman’s entire back with it before blasting through the other side of the boat. Involuntary muscle spasms caused the dead man’s mouth to move as if trying to speak. Yosef rolled the twitching body to one side and spun the helm in the opposite direction.

  Sergeant Boutrous bounded up the small ladder. “Here, take the wheel and head for shore.”

  “We’ll run aground. Colonel.”

  “That’s the point. If we don’t run aground, we’ll be sunk out here.”

  From the deck below came a shout.

  “Here he comes again!”

  Yosef raised his gun.

  “Well, shoot the son of a bitch!”

  The ocean erupted as the path of death raced again toward the boat. Gunfire from the Guardsmen reached for the aircraft. Bullets hit the aircraft nose area. Yosef doubted they affected the heavily armed fighter. Shooting down a fighter aircraft with small arms was nearly impossible. The aircraft’s cannon shells ripped through the trawler again.

  The pilot climbed, flipped to the right instead of the left, and began another circuit, positioning the aircraft for a stern-to-bow attack. The cannon shells, this time, would pass straight down the middle of the trawler.

  “Yosef, what is going on? The woman has been wounded by splintered wood!” shouted President Aineuf, who poked his head up the ladder from below.

  “Stay down, Mr. President! We are heading for the beach.

  Pack up any food and water you can find. We are going to need it!”

  The head disappeared.

  “Here he comes again!”

  Cannon shells ripped into the engine compartment. The private who had fired the first rounds at the aircraft dove to the right directly into the path of the thirty-millimeter shells, which cut him in half. His top torso fell overboard.

  The legs collapsed slowly. What remained of his body tumbled forward, sending blood and a wad of intestines flooding onto the deck.

  The bridge looked as if it had been through a frenzied chain saw attack. The small half-roof was gone. Tattered bits of smoking wood swung from the sides. No windows remained. Sergeant Boutrous stood miraculously unscratched as he spun the helm, lining the bow dead-on to the beach about five hundred meters ahead. No dirty windows obscured his vision. Yosef shook his head, amazed the sergeant was alive with so much damage around him.

  Sergeant Boutros pushed the throttle forward as far as it would go. From the engine compartment the diesel noise increased as the motor strained to provide more speed.

  Yosef gripped a nearby railing as the fishing trawler picked up a couple more knots.

  “Corporal Ghatan, Corporal Omar!” Yosef shouted, releasing the railing and waving his arms at the Palace Guardsmen.

  “Prepare to abandon ship or whatever it is that sailors do when they run like hell!”

  The fighter jet turned right again.

  White smoke trickled out of the boat’s engine compartment.

  By the time the aircraft finished its circuit for another attack, dark billowing smoke poured from the engine room.

  “Colonel, we’re slowing down!” yelled Boutrous, shifting the throttle back and forth, trying to keep the engine going.

  The wind blew the smoke to the left, obstructing Yosef’s vision.

  “Swing that wheel as far to the right as it will go!�
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  The boat started a slow turn to starboard into its smoke.

  The cannon shells whistled through the smoke. Two shattered the bow. The others missed the boat entirely.

  “Keep it pointed toward the beach!” The beach was about two hundred meters away.

  Sergeant Boutrous whirled the helm, hand over hand, to offset the strong riptide. A sharp current pulled the boat south, helping them close another hundred yards. Yosef hoped the fading momentum of the boat would carry them to the beach. Less than a hundred meters from the beach, the engine sputtered, coughed, and died.

  “He’s leaving! Praise be to Allah!”

  Yosef shielded his eyes as he scanned the sky for the Mig-29. The contrail caught his attention. The aircraft was heading west toward Algiers. Fighter aircraft used a lot of gas in combat. Yosef suspected his party’s luck was due more to lack of petrol than to Allah.

  The boat lurched, nearly throwing Yosef off his feet, as it crunched onto the sand beneath the outgoing tide. They would have to wade the remaining twenty meters to shore.

  Perfect targets if the aircraft returned.

  “Come on, everyone. Overboard.”

  Sergeant Boutrous jumped down from the bridge area.

  “Sergeant, take three men up there above the beach and see where we are.”

  Boutrous pointed to Corporal Ghatan and two other Guardsmen.

  “Come on!” One after the other they jumped overboard into knee-high waves. Seeing their weapons would be in no danger from the water, they lowered them from over their heads and slugged through the sucking tide to the beach.

  President Aineuf emerged, leading the woman; a bloodsoaked bandage hastily wrapped around her head covered her left eye. The president carried the wailing child.

  “Amir, Amir,” she said when she saw the body of her husband, then she began the oddle-ooping titter common of grieving Bedouin women. She hiked up her dress and started to the bridge, but Yosef grabbed her arm.

  “No, he is dead. Remember him as he was. You do not want to see what he looks like now.”

  “But he was my husband. What will I do without a husband?”