The Gulf

by David Poyer

  But when the bloody ball heaved itself into view he realized he’d been wrong. Even the first red paring, suddenly popping over the curved edge of sea, burned his salt-tenderized skin. Above it, he noted the wispy lines of contrails. Aircraft or missiles.

  It was going to be another hot one.

  “XO.”

  Proginelli. The familiar face was puffy and the eyes reddened. Dan slacked a little to let him catch up, and also to rest.

  “Sir, the corpsman, he asked me to tell you three of the wounded died during the night. One of them was Rick Guerra.”

  Lenson grunted wordlessly. He’d miss the stocky, closemouthed engineer.

  “What are we doing, sir?”

  “Swimming, Tad, just swimming south.”

  “What’s down that way? Shouldn’t we go for the strait? Where are our ships? We ought to head for our ships.”

  Patiently, Dan explained it to him. Raising his voice, knowing the others would swim better if they knew. The men weren’t talking much. Just an occasional word. They all looked worn.

  He called a halt at 0600. They gathered around the rafts and the corpsman shared out water, crackers, and a piece of chewing gum to each man.

  Dan pulled himself up and stood briefly, his feet sinking into the soft unsteady floor. Some of the wounded cried softly, like pigeons. Others lay unmoving. They all had bandages and some had writing on their foreheads. Apparently Phelan was doing his job. Dan glanced at him; he was tipping water into the little cup, frowning over it as if it were liquid silver. His hands were shaking but he didn’t spill any.

  The scene reminded him suddenly, incongruously, of a painting he’d seen once. Naked men on a wooden raft, and in the distance, a ship.

  There was no ship here, though. He shaded his eyes and recalled himself. To the west, sure enough, the island. Maybe twelve miles away. Through the morning shimmer, he could make out Jabal Halwa, its outline changed from the night before. To north, east, south … he searched long and carefully but found only weird garbled mirages, shimmering and running together like dark mercury. Too bad; he’d hoped to see something over toward Mubarek, if only the tops of the flare-off towers.

  He squatted then, and waited till they had their gum unwrapped and in their mouths. Then he lifted his hand, and they quieted, looking up at him, a gently jostling seethe of inflamed conjunctiva, stubbled cheeks, twitching or chewing lips. There was something like hatred in a few of those eyes. Here was disbelief, there emptiness, there delirium. Most of them, though, held only suffering and a trust that made it hard for him not to turn away.

  Was it worth it, this pain, this madness? Men destroyed and were destroyed, for … for what? Oil, religion, patriotism … but no one who died won anything. He raised his eyes to the empty sky, blurry and vague but immensely far and high. Suddenly it all seemed insane, purposeless, and absurd.

  But when he looked down again their eyes were still on him.

  “Okay guys, Van Zandt’s still together, and we’re still alive. I’d hoped by now there’d be people out looking for us. But it looks like we’ll have to wait a while yet for that.”

  The corners of his mouth were cracked. Each word hurt. But he made himself go on. They needed to hear him. Especially this next. “It’s a little past max ebb now, but we’ll be going east with the current for another couple hours yet. Then it’ll start moving us back toward Abu Musa.”

  Several voices exclaimed. He went on, raising his: “That’s right, right back where we started. So you see why we got to keep swimming. As soon as we see a plane or a friendly ship, we’ll fire a flare. But there’s one place on earth we don’t want to go back to. So we got to swim like hell for the next few hours.”

  Nobody disagreed. Dan asked them to join him in the Lord’s Prayer. When it trailed off into the disagreement of Protestant and Catholic he stood up again, looked around, and then swung himself back down into the water. This time it felt cool, after the quickly heating air.

  * * *

  The sun lit the inside of his skull even through closed eyelids. The heat grew steadily as it rose. The sea heaved and around him he heard men being sick. From time to time, someone would lose control, and wailing or despairing, weak curses would live for a moment in the heated air before it too ebbed back into silence and the slow splash of many hands.

  His arms felt like wet wool, and he could barely pull himself from group to group. The membranes of his nose and throat burned and his tongue was swelling. The bitter water submerged his head every so often as he swam, stinging like iodine. His skin was raw where his clothes rubbed. He’d given McQueen his ball cap. The older man’s bare scalp was already blistering.

  The swells were heavier now. The wind had come up with dawn. That was good. What he feared was a calm. They’d be broiled alive. The more wind, the more southing. If they weren’t so close to the island, he’d hoist a sail on the raft.

  Once again, for the hundredth time, he searched horizon and sky. Where were the ships? The planes? The helicopters?

  Had Van Zandt and her crew been forgotten?

  Was the United States Navy still in the Gulf?

  * * *

  Around eleven the wind veered, slackened, then died entirely. When the sun was at its height he called a halt. The crawling mass of men, barely inching for hours now, drifted to a stop. They rolled on their backs. Few spoke, and those only in dry, harsh notes like ravens.

  Dan waited till last for his drink. It made no impression on the desert in his throat. He tried to think of something else. How long should they rest? They needed rest. He decided twenty minutes would be okay.

  Leaning his head back on the vest, he fell into a doze. The swell jostled him gently up and down and bumped him from time to time against other bobbing bodies. Only his head, covered now by his skivvy shirt, protruded above the water. The tropical sun blazed above the ocean, but by dousing the cloth occasionally, someone had discovered you could stay cool.

  Some time later, he was awakened by a voice not yet too tired to be terrified. “Shark. Shark!”

  He jerked the cloth from his sight, heart battering suddenly into his first real terror. He’d feared a bullet, the tearing shock of a machine-gun slug. But somehow this seemed more horrible.

  “Where away?” he shouted. Extended hands showed him nothing. He hoped for a moment they were imagining it.

  Then he, too, saw it, rising between two crests. Not in the curving dive of a porpoise. This fin simply rose, glided along atop an indigo darkness, and then sank again.

  He saw a second fin and felt his bones freeze. He remembered what had happened to the crew of the Indianapolis. “Close up,” he shouted. Other voices, McQueen’s, Stanko’s, were shouting it already. The men, who had drifted apart during the rest period, grouped again, splashing and yelling hoarsely.

  “Stay together … link your arms, face out … kick at ’em when they get close.”

  The rafts rocked lazily on a glutinous sea. The sun glittered from a million waves, shimmered and sparkled. Far to the west, the black mass of the island seemed to draw them back toward it, like an immense magnet.

  The dorsals slipped sinuously through the chop, drawing rapid glittering wakes behind them. In the waiting silence he could hear the ripple. Beyond them, a single cloud gleamed like spun fiberglass.

  A man cried out at the edge of the group. The linked line bucked. “Kick it!” “Kick his fuckin’ head in, Tony!”

  “What we going to do, sir? Just let them eat us?”

  Dan knew what he wanted. He moved back to the raft, every cell of his frightened flesh wanting to get out of the water. God, how safe he’d feel up there! But he had to dangle his legs like bait, waiting for teeth in them, and croak, “Doc, get the bodies ready to go over.”

  “You sure about that, sir?”

  Suddenly he was so angry he could barely choke out words. He wanted to murder whatever had created a world so cruel and stupid. “No fucking back talk, Phelan! You want them to eat liv
e men or dead ones?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The corpses slid into the sea with a sullen splash. Then fell behind as the group, pursed tight around the rafts, began swimming again. Dan tore his eyes from the humped backs, facedown in the water. He knew them both.

  To his surprise, the sharks left, staying with the bodies. He was glad to lose sight of them before the feeding began. The island hung on the horizon. The sun hung in the sky as if it was nailed there.

  He looked at his watch. Thirty minutes. He squinted around, sealing and then ripping his eyelids apart, and got them all headed south again.

  * * *

  He was crawling blindly when excited voices woke him. He did not see immediately the transparent bladder floating toward him. It was almost on him before he understood, and jerked away. His first thought, as always, was of a plastic sandwich bag scudding over the waves. They spent an hour picking their way through the fleet of drifting, deadly men-of-war.

  When they were clear, he called another halt. He turned over and floated, his breath a rusty hacksaw in his throat, gradually freeing him from the prison of his body.

  Abu Musa was visible every time a swell lifted him. But thank God, they’d made southing. Better than he’d expected; or else the current had taken mercy on them. It was at least six miles away. From this low in the water, he couldn’t see the beach or the roadstead, so he couldn’t tell what the Pasdaran were doing. There was still smoke rising from the southern end. Behind him the men clustered around the rafts. Once voices rose to a gabble, and he understood dully that Phelan had spilled a cupful of water.

  He was debating whether to go on. The brine flamed steadily in his face and hands. He touched his eyes; they were swollen, tender as wounds. There seemed to be pus left on his fingers, but he couldn’t see them well enough in the glare to be certain.

  Losing so many rafts put them in a bad position. They could survive without food for many days, but not more than two, he judged, without water. Their existence was dependent hour by hour on luck.

  He’d never have believed men could drift through nearly a day in the southern Gulf and not see a tanker. Where were they when you needed one? The sharks wouldn’t stay away forever.

  Then he remembered the contrails. The last time there’d been a big U.S.–Iran mix-up, all traffic had stopped.

  Now, that was a depressing thought.

  For the first time in his life, he was confronted with the question each man must face one day: whether it was worth the effort to keep on. His whole body either stung from salt or sunburn or was numb from immersion and hours of swimming. His swollen hands were splitting. The heat was deadly, and there was no shade. They were sweating away more water than they were drinking.

  He thought briefly of increasing the allowance. But he didn’t know whether he should. His swollen tongue, his parched esophagus said yes. The rules said no. They advised going without for the first day. But that couldn’t have been written for the Gulf. If Phelan hadn’t been doling out water every couple of hours, the men would be delirious.

  Was it worth the pain? What did he have to live for? He thought of Blair. But it had been all too short. Good while it lasted, but the memory failed to move him much. To see Nan grow up, that meant more.

  It meant … but then he remembered she was all but grown now. She wasn’t a baby he had to protect anymore. He only saw her two, three times a year as it was. Her foster father would be happy to occupy whatever foothold in her heart still belonged to him.

  No, she’d grow up fine without him. Fine and beautiful and happy.

  He didn’t have to stay for her.

  In the end, all he came up with was the men around him. Dan Lenson didn’t matter. There were billions of others as worthy of life as he was. There were thousands of lieutenant commanders in the Navy. He probably wasn’t the best for this job. He could think of several who’d be better.

  At the moment, though, he seemed to be the only one on the scene. The only one here, and in command.

  So, let’s think … just keep going south, that still seemed to be the best plan. By the next cycle of tide, if the sharks stayed away, they might be far enough out to risk raising a sail. They’d move a lot faster then.

  Around him the men prayed in guttural murmurs, their blistering lips unable to grasp the words.

  He must have passed out, or gone to sleep, for a while. When he woke Phelan was leaning over him from the raft. His stubbled face was copper-dark, dripping with sweat. “Your turn, man,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  The aluminum cup came over the turgid curve and made for his lips. He tilted his head and let it, God, let it come cool and fresh down his tongue and throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, almost crying when he realized that was all.

  “You’re doing a good job, Hospitalman,” he whispered.

  “Thanks, sir.” Phelan stared down; Lenson saw something strange in his eyes. “Sir?”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t used any of it. I gave it all to the wounded. It’s all gone now.”

  Dan didn’t know what he was talking about, but he nodded anyway. “That’s good,” he whispered. “Keep it up.”

  “What’s next, sir?” muttered someone behind him.

  “Let’s get swimming again,” he said.

  * * *

  They swam till four. Some of the men reported sea snakes. Dan saw two. Vermilion and gold in a lapis sea. A couple of feet long, they were deadlier than cobras, but if you were alert, you could fend them off before they got their teeth into you.

  They lost Dorgan. He was drowsing when one bit him on the web of his thumb. The chief storekeeper took several hours to die. But for most of that he was paralyzed and said nothing, just stared blindly up from the raft.

  Some of the men were raving now. Dan could no longer force himself to move. His arms were dead. And it seemed that no one else could do better.

  He knew now how Shaker had felt, there at the end.

  He should have turned them around, brought them ashore, and surrendered.

  He didn’t pass an order to, but they all stopped, anyway.

  He floated there, eyes fixed and staring. After a while, he saw a silver train rolling along the horizon. He knew it wasn’t there. But still he could see every detail. Why wasn’t it real? How could you tell?

  They drifted on the sea. The wind had stopped again and now every breath was like drawing in melted metal or superheated steam. They had no more moisture in their bodies. The island floated shimmering in the western sky, a magic land no one could reach. In silence now, together but each man alone, they waited motionless for death.

  * * *

  Out of the dream, out of the delirium, he peered into a hell of light.

  The sun was drowning in a sea of blood. Red sparkled from the sea and stained the clouds. The star that had tortured them since dawn hung just above the horizon, its rays flogging them to the last. And to the north, a black mass cutting the sea in two, the brooding, distant double peak.

  The sea was filled with dying and nothing he did could change it. It was immense and never ending. For a while, the waves would toss these bundles of flesh. Then they would die one by one, and slip away, back into the eternal recurring of the tide. And become part of it again. Part of the gulf that sucked into itself all life, and gave forth all life, over and over again unto infinite time.

  Here at the end, he did not find he really minded.

  His eyes were sinking closed when he saw something move, out in the dying glow.

  It was dark at first against the bloody and hurtful light. Later he saw that it was neither black nor red. Its ends rose to absurd points. There was a stick on top of it. There were men on it, bent peacefully over what looked like animal cages.

  Dan blinked sleepily at it. Its bow shattered the sea into a million glowing drops of blood. It moved across the face of the dying sun, and its shadow reached out across the darkling sea. Around him no one moved; perhaps
no one else saw it.

  And he wondered for a time, between sleep and death, whether he was imagining it. It was the kind of thing one might imagine, adrift, facing another night. But the funny thing was he could hear it, too. The hollow faint pung-pung-pung of an old-fashioned single-cylinder engine. It heeled gradually as it went by them, sea creaming under the prow, headed southeast, toward Dhubai.

  He pulled himself very slowly, as if in a dream, to the raft. A bare foot stuck over, rose-colored by the declining sun, reflected in the still indigo beneath.

  Phelan was asleep or unconscious. He didn’t move when Dan shook him. Nor could he get words around his swollen tongue. He thrust his arm over the inflatable’s side and groped in the bottom.

  It took a long time to find it and he cursed in his head, squeezing his eyes shut in weakness and anger and fear. But at last his sea-softened fingers closed on plastic. He thrust an arm through the netting, turned, and raised his hand.

  The flare departed with a hollow crack, igniting as it left the barrel. The cherry-red ball of flame arched upward, brighter than the sinking sun, over the foredeck of the dhow, and disappeared.

  For a moment nothing happened. Then the figures straightened, calling out in high, excited voices. One whirled, stretched up to tiptoe, pointing. The others turned, too, and looked out toward him with comically open mouths. One wore what looked like a white nightshirt.

  Then, to his tired horror, Dan saw that they were arguing. One pointed ahead; others gesticulated. At last, an old man with the beard of a Sistine God appeared from inside the wheelhouse. Shading his eyes, he looked down for what seemed like eternity. Then turned his head toward the helmsman.

  The bow dipped, and the boat slowed, then foreshortened.

  It was coming toward them.

  He felt his men pushing him, hitting him, expressing with weak blows what their swollen tongues could no longer utter. He couldn’t respond, either. He was glad they were happy. His eyes were too dry for tears. They felt as if they were bleeding.

  It was all he could do, when the rough splintered wood rose above them in the final light, and the sinewy brown arms reached down, to wave, weakly, for the others to go first.