The Gulf

by David Poyer

Dan thought, But there are degrees. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is doubly bitter. No human being truly knows right from wrong. We only know the distinction exists, and must be made with every act. He didn’t want to make her pregnant. She had the right to end it, as all human beings have the right to sin, but he didn’t want that on his soul. Or hers.

  He felt her fingers on his wrist. “Let’s get this off you,” she said, and he felt the wristband come off. Something light hit the carpet. “Do you care what time it is? Do you have to be anywhere?”

  “Tomorrow. Dawn, I guess. I ought to be back tonight. We’re getting under way.” He realized then that any possibility of catching up on sleep was gone now, probably for days.

  “What for?”

  “Operations.”

  “What kind of—” She laughed. “You won’t tell me. Will you?”

  “No.” He had to smile, too. “My Mata Hari.”

  “Your anything. For tonight.” She snuggled close, throwing her leg over his belly, and suddenly he hated every other man who’d ever seen that graceful motion. Their damp bodies pressed tight as leaves in an old book. “Tomorrow we’ll be other people, for other people. Tonight we’ll be us, for ourselves. Can you reach … hand me that, please.”

  He lifted the glass over him and held it to her lips. “Oh, I forgot … you probably don’t like the smell.”

  “I don’t mind if you drink. I just don’t myself.”

  “Why not? Is it your religion?”

  “No. I found out I couldn’t handle it.”

  “You’re a good man, Dan Lenson. I wish I’d found you a long time ago. Before I got mixed up with people who didn’t care.” She heard, herself, the note of bitterness.

  Suddenly, without premeditation, she was telling him about another man, how he’d wanted a family and she didn’t, and how he’d left. And then she was crying, and didn’t know how to stop.

  He held her, smoothing her hair over and over, knowing there was nothing he could say to ease her pain. It would live inside her for a time and then die, and new love would paint it over, and it would sink into her heart like old varnish into wood. And she would be stronger, wiser, and deeper, simply and only because she had suffered.

  But there was no way to put this into words. It was something each human being had to learn. And so he held her and stroked her until she stopped crying and lay first rigid and then soft against him, warm and perfumed.

  For a moment or two, while he caressed her, another image came unbidden to his mind: of a woman’s face, slashed out of a family photo. There was pain there, too. Pain and loneliness.

  Bennjamin Shaker had never offered to discuss his marriage and what had happened to it. Dan had wondered whether he ought to ask. Somehow, though, the time had never seemed right.

  She whispered, “I don’t know. Part of me wants children. Part of me says not yet, maybe never. Do you have any?”

  “A girl. She’s thirteen now.”

  “And you … you’re not married.”

  “She left me. Years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess she didn’t want to be married to me anymore.”

  “And you still love her? Your ex-wife?”

  “Funny. That’s what I was remembering, on the balcony. I do. I guess I always will. But you can live with that. You can go on, and love other people, too.”

  “So you loved her, and she had your child. And then she left you. Are you sorry you had your daughter? Dan—oh—I’m not sure I know what to do, or what to think.”

  He knew she needed something and he wasn’t sure he had it. But he had to try. “Blair, whether or not you have a family is up to you. Don’t be afraid of it. You’ve got the strength. But don’t let anyone else tell you what to do. Don’t have kids because someone else wants them. And don’t cross them off because of your career.

  “What’s a career? It’s over in a day if you make the wrong decision. Or the right one, if somebody above you doesn’t like it. Hold lightly, Blair. It’s over in a heartbeat. But a family’s real. I’ve never regretted loving Susan and having Nan. You just have to decide. Then drive on and don’t ever look back.”

  He was filled suddenly with both joy and sadness. Would he ever see this woman again? Was this it for them, one snatched night? He knew already that at the very least he’d always remember her. That in years to come he would see her likeness in others who passed him on the street, in malls, on beaches. She would be part of what made him himself; he would take the smell of her hair with him into the darkness.

  But he needed someone to love, not for a night, but for nights without end.

  And even if she was that someone, would they ever be able to, given their careers, his changes of duty, her commitment to the Hill?

  “When do you have to leave?” she whispered, and he breathed the warm scents of rum and lime and the sea-smell of woman.

  “Soon.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “No, not now. You can’t leave now. Hold me some more. I’ll let you go. But not now.”

  “All right,” he said. So he held her, not thinking anymore about the day ahead or the days ahead or forever. And for a while, just holding her was enough.

  27

  U.S.S. Turner Van Zandt

  THE next afternoon, sixty miles out, Lenson blinked away gritty fatigue. Putting on his cap, he took a last slow look round the flight deck.

  The crew was ready. The honor guard was in place, three ranks of ten along the port quarter. No more could be spared from a ship at full readiness for attack. To his left, the rifle squad waited at parade rest, M-14s grounded on a deck too hot to touch. Behind him, in the shadow of the hangar, stood the pallbearers.

  The hull techs had welded a box out of stock aluminum and spray-painted it black. It rested now on a tablecloth-covered breadboard from the galley. Over it were draped three new American flags. Six sailors in whites held it, swaying to the sway of the ship, their bell-bottoms flapping in the hot, thick wind.

  He glanced at his watch once more, then raised his eyes. For the last hour, a pod of dolphins had been following them, rolling through the sea like black wheels. Yes. They were still there.

  “Now all hands bury the dead.”

  As he stepped to the lectern, the ensign dropped, fluttering down to half-mast. The whine of the turbines sighed away and Van Zandt slowed, slowed, till she rolled uneasily in the center of a vast blurry emptiness, a hazy circle giving no suggestion that such a thing as land existed anywhere.

  It looked different somehow now that he knew it held an Iranian submarine.

  He clicked on the mike. “Ship’s company. Atten-hut.

  “Parade … rest.

  “We are here today to bury the mortal remains of shipmates who fell in battle. Virgil Hayes, Claude Schweinberg, and Peter Kane will long be remembered by all who knew them. They gave their lives defending their country. May they rest in peace, and may their sacrifice carry them to eternal glory.

  “Please bow your heads for the Scripture reading.”

  He bowed his, too, focusing on paper that burned and dazzled in the eternal glare of the Mideast. There was a flash of white to the side. It was Shaker, taking his position beside the rail.

  “‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change, and though the mountains be shaken into the heart of the seas. For God is our God forever and ever. He will be our guide even unto death.’

  “‘If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for all of us, will he not also give us all things with him? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him
who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’”

  He paused to wipe sweat from his eyes. In the hot silence, the steady sigh of sea wind, the slap of waves seemed louder than they ought to be. Invisible seabirds pleaded from the blazing heavens. He let the pause linger—the service was brief enough as it was—then went on to the prayer. When it, too, was over, he paused again, then lifted his head.

  “Ship’s company: Atten—hut. Hand … salute.”

  The men straightened. Their hands came up. The body bearers stiffened, exchanging glances.

  “Unto Almighty God we commend the souls of our brothers departed, and we commit their bodies to the deep.”

  Dan waited, his eyes on the book, but nothing happened. He glanced toward the lifelines. The bearers were looking at him expectantly. He nodded. A moment later, there was a muffled splash.

  “‘… in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.’”

  “Amen.”

  The bearers stood rigid, holding the flags as they flapped over the now-empty board. Dan gave the order and the crew relaxed back to parade rest.

  “‘The Lord bless you, and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and give you peace. Amen.’”

  The gunner’s mates came to present arms. Ensign Lewis muttered, “Aim … fire.” The report cracked out over the green sea. Breeches rattled; empty brass tinkled on steel. “Aim … fire. Aim … fire.”

  The bugler played taps. When he was done, there was a long, hot pause while the bearers solemnly folded the flags. Dan found himself yawning and snapped his mouth closed. They handed the triangles to Shaker, who received them without word or expression. His face looked cast out of some marble substitute that would last for centuries without decay or change.

  Dan looked at his notes again. There seemed to be nothing more. But the men were waiting. At last, he leaned forward again to the mike. “These proceedings are closed.”

  The crew broke ranks and straggled forward. The ensign climbed back into a hazy sky as exhaust burst from the stack again. As the ship gathered way, the gunnery officer handed Dan the spent cartridges. Along with the flags, charts, and a letter signed by the commanding officer, they would be mailed to the next of kin. He gathered up his notes. He turned the microphone off and was about to leave the flight deck when he saw that it wasn’t empty.

  Shaker was still standing by the rail, the flags under his arm. He was staring out at the murky blur that was their horizon.

  Dan watched him for a time. Sweat trickled down his neck and he scratched it absently.

  Only now did it occur to him that it was on this picket station—probably not far from this exact position—that Strong had been hit two years before.

  After a while, he went over. He propped a shoe on a chock, keeping his whites clear of the sooty grit on the lines. Shaker glanced at him, but it was obvious his mind was far away. Dan wasn’t even sure the pale eyes recognized him.

  “Captain,” he said at last.

  “What?”

  “I know how you feel.”

  Shaker turned his head at that. The furrows around his eyes were deep as graves. “You do, huh?”

  “I do, Ben.” He looked down at the Gulf as it slipped by, hollowed by Van Zandt’s bow wave. The sea he remembered was a slaty gray and miles deep. He debated with himself for a while whether to say it.

  “I know about the nightmares,” he murmured.

  The big head jerked around, quick as the Phalanx locking on to a threat. “What nightmares?”

  “The ones you have. About watching men die. And not being able to move. Not being able to help.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I have them, too.”

  Shaker had returned his gaze to the distance. He said nothing more. But Dan saw the tension in his back, and the way his hands tightened on the lifeline.

  Oh yes. He knew what the captain was seeing. He should have guessed it long before.

  “Ryan was a good ship, too, Ben. With a good crew. Her captain made a mistake. It wasn’t a big mistake. With any luck at all, he could have corrected it. Unfortunately, other men made mistakes, too. Because of that, a ship died.

  “For a long time, I blamed myself. I was on the bridge when it happened. Junior officer of the deck. Because I didn’t speak up when I realized the maneuver was dangerous.”

  He lifted his eyes to the horizon, half-afraid he would find there what had haunted him for years after: the bow of a carrier, wedged and deadly as a lifted ax. But there was only the tan sky, the equivocal, ever-shifting transition where it met the passing sea. The pain was still there, but it had changed. Been transmuted by time, into … wisdom? Acceptance? He pulled his mind back. It had value now, at this moment, only as it could help the man beside him.

  “I guess all I’ve got to say is that it passes. We have to carry on for those who died. Carry on, and just—trust—that it all will turn out for the best.”

  Shaker stared out to sea. Dan stared at his motionless profile. What was he thinking? Could he be reached? Or would he have to find his own way through?

  He waited in the hot wind for a long time. Then he lowered his head and went forward, leaving the captain standing by the rail alone.

  * * *

  He was very tired. Nevertheless, he worked late that night, drafting the loss report, the after-action report, and letters to the next of kin. Occasionally he got up and rinsed his face. Staring into the mirror at his puffy, reddened eyelids, he would think for a moment about a woman, or about men who’d died years before outlined by flame.

  Then he went back to work.

  At midnight, he decided he couldn’t work anymore. He called CIC for a late update. Everything was quiet over the Iranian coast, and inland as far as the Battle Group’s E-2C and the AWACs could see. Then he undressed and turned off the lights. He was thinking again about Blair, wondering whether he should try to call her back in the States, when the edges of his mind blurred and he sank away.

  * * *

  Some indeterminable time later, he came awake again. His hand went by reflex to the bogen.

  In the earpiece, he found only the distant drone of an empty line.

  He hung it up again. It was long past midnight. Yet sleep was gone. He could feel that.

  He got up and pulled on his trousers. A glass of milk might help. He slipped his feet into his boonies and decided that at this hour even the exec didn’t have to be in full uniform. Halfway to the wardroom, he stopped, listening to the ship. To the steady eternal whine of blowers, the gentle creak as her hull worked.

  Nothing was different. But he knew suddenly that something was wrong.

  He knelt and laced his shoes, and debated for a moment going back to his room for his shirt. Then he decided not to. Not for a short look around. He climbed the ladder to the O1 deck and slipped into Combat.

  Darkness, silent men, the green glow of scopes and the steady whalelike song of the sonar. The sonarmen had shortened the 56’s ping length, hoping for a better shallow-water picture. Huxley had said it wouldn’t help much, but it was all they could do.

  Pensker was sitting at the weapons console. Dan stood behind him for a while. Lines of control code glowed green on the screen. At last, he said, “Hey, Terry.”

  Pensker swiveled. “Oh, hi, XO. What you doing up?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. Where’s the captain?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Probably in his cabin. Can I help you with something?”

  Dan shook his head. He paced around for a few minutes. The night watch was quiet and intent. OSs and EWs and STs sat at their displays, detached from their bodies, their attention projected into th
e sea and sky around them. He put his hand on Shaker’s chair, ready to pull himself up.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he crossed the room and pressed the CO’s buzzer.

  Shaker didn’t answer.

  Dan stood holding the phone, biting his lips. There was nothing on the scope. Earlier in the day, they’d seen fighters airborne inland, to the south, out of Bandar Abbās. They seemed content to stay there, however. As far as he could tell, nothing was threatening them.

  Then why did he feel as if there was?

  And where was Shaker?

  He pushed his way through the curtain into Sonar. Perhaps what he was feeling … but neither the SQS-56 nor the towed array, a passive listening system, had showed anything suspicious for hours. They had two hundred meters under their keel, about as deep as it got in the Gulf, and the sonar supervisor said their active range was 7,500 yards.

  At last, he reached for the intercom. “Bridge, Combat. Is the captain up there?”

  “He’s not here, sir.”

  “Where is he, Petty Officer Stanko? Any idea?”

  “Don’t know, XO, sorry.”

  He looked again at the scope; again, saw nothing out of the ordinary; but this time caught a glance from Pensker, across the consoles and displays. The weapons officer was slumped back in his chair. He dropped his eyes as Dan looked back.

  He suddenly decided this was enough. “Pass the word for him, please, Bo’s’n. Have him call CIC.”

  “For the captain, sir? After taps?”

  “That’s right, Stanko! Right now!”

  A second or two later, over all circuits on the sleeping ship: “Commanding officer, call CIC.”

  The bogen went off immediately. “Shaker here. What’s wrong?”

  Dan felt relieved just hearing his voice. “Nothing specific, sir, but we lost track of you for a while. Where are you?”

  “I’m in the goat locker.”

  Dan wondered what he was doing in chiefs’ quarters in the middle of the night, but that wasn’t the kind of question you asked a CO. It was his ship; he could go where he liked. “Will you be there for a while, sir?”

  “Till I decide not to, I guess. That meet with your approval?”