by David Poyer
Dropping back to trudge beside Teddy, Trinh muttered, “I didn’t know the world was so empty.”
Teddy dragged his useless foot forward for the millionth time, but said nothing.
“It is obvious we are going to die out here.” The once-husky Viet was mere parchment over coat-hanger wire. Sores covered his face. His eyes were glazed as if with cataracts. A wispy Ho beard hung from his chin.
Teddy whispered hoarsely, “Guess I got to agree with you, Major. For what it’s worth.”
“They will find our bodies centuries from now. Preserved, like these trees. And wonder who we were. How we got here. Two Asians, two Europeans. A mystery.”
“I guess the AK’s gonna be the only clue. That and the fucking POW clothes.”
Trinh eyed his foot. “How can you keep on, like that?”
“If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter,” Teddy said. “How can you see, with your eyes like that?”
“It is true, I can’t make much out anymore. Vu guides me.”
“How’s he doing?”
“We are all of us dying, Teddy. What more can I say?” Trinh waited, head cocked; then, when he got no answer, trudged on.
* * *
THEY were in a region of fissures and crags late that same afternoon when they lost Vu.
The stream bed they followed had climbed a series of what in flood had apparently been rapids, but were now just stepping-stones of grayblack boulders, rounded on their upper sides by millennia of rushing water. This rose hundreds of feet in ladder after ladder, interspersed with scooped-out areas that would become pools in the melt season.
The ravine was a sheer, vertical cut in a granite face. The rock fell sharp as blades on either side. The four escapees gathered at the foot of the climb, staring up. It was easily fifty feet, and straight up.
Teddy shrugged the strapping off. Its weight had dug a bleeding hole into his shoulder. He’d almost left it behind a hundred times. If they hoped to negotiate mountains, though, he’d figured they’d need it sooner or later. He lashed it around his waist and started up.
Footholds and handholds … But after ten feet it was clear he wasn’t strong enough. He hung there panting as the world spun. But hunger brought patience, too. When the rock finally steadied he felt for another handhold.
Bit by bit, fitting bleeding fingers into niches and callused toes into nearly invisible knobs, he went up. Finally he could hook an elbow over a lip of rock and slowly, slowly lever himself to roll over.
He glimpsed, just for a moment, something dark high above them on the mountain. His head was still pounding, specks swimming before his eyes, so he couldn’t be sure. He’d thought for a moment it was a horseman. But when he squinted again, the shelf was empty. Except for a seam in the rock, which he might just have taken for the outline of a man on horseback, with a raised rifle.
He secured the strapping to a boulder and dropped it over the edge. Then backed off, searching the cliffs above as the others worked their way up hand over hand. Vu seemed to be having the hardest time of it, which was odd, since he was both the slightest and the youngest. Not for the first time, Teddy wondered if he was sicker than he looked.
But they all reached the top at last, and after a rest set off along the new, higher course. This valley led almost straight west, which was good. But it was fissured and seamed, the gray-purple stone torn as if by some recent quake.
It was slow going, but better than trying to negotiate terrain like this in the dark.
Toward late afternoon, as they toiled around a seemingly bottomless pit, Trinh beckoned Teddy up beside him. Handing over the binoculars, he pointed to a patch of snow a mile above them on the mountainside.
“What am I looking at?” Oberg muttered, trying to set the focus. How could Trinh see anything at all with those clouded corneas?
“That snowy spot.”
“Okay … I see … ski trails?”
“I don’t think so, Obie.”
“No, course not.” He blinked and looked again. “What the hell are they, then?”
“I believe, some kind of grazing area.”
“In the snow?”
“Animals have to eat, even in winter.”
He looked again, more carefully. Elk, goats, sheep? He couldn’t see any, but if Trinh was right, something had been up there, ruminating. “It’s too far to climb. And whatever it is, we’d never get a shot. Not with a fucking worn-out fucking AK.”
“But if there are, either game animals or livestock, someone’s going to be around. Either herders or hunters.”
Teddy thought about it. “We could fire the Kalash. See who shows up.”
“That puts us at their mercy.”
“Okay, your suggestion?”
“I don’t have any. Just pointing out the first animal life we’ve seen.”
Teddy nodded. He was turning away, handing the glasses back, when a thin scream echoed from off to their right.
* * *
WHEN they looked down they could barely see him. Just a corner of a gray blanket-strip, flirted out from around an outthrust of rock.
“Did anyone see him go?” Trinh was crouched so far over the edge of the precipice that Teddy reached for him involuntarily, anchoring the Vietnamese with a fistful of collar. “He slipped, right? And fell? He did not jump.”
No one had seen him go. Fierros had been a few steps ahead, while the senior Viet had been talking to Teddy. Who, of course, had been looking up at the mountain. While Vu apparently had been skirting just close enough to the pit that a weak place had given way, dropping him so fast and with so little warning that he’d only been able to scream. Teddy rubbed his rag-bound foot along the edge. Fresh, crumbly rock.
“I can see him better from over here,” Fierros said, edging to a vantage point farther out. “Better toss me your strap, there … in case this gives too … thanks, Oberg. Okay, I can see him.”
“Is he moving?”
“A lot of blood around his head … He’s not moving. His neck’s twisted like it’s broken.”
Trinh squatted next to him, peering through the glasses for a few seconds before he stood, looking grim.
“Dead?” Teddy asked him.
“I’m … afraid so.” He stood as if irresolute for a few moments, then came to attention. He snapped into a salute. Teddy lifted his chin and faced in the same direction, bringing up his hand in a bareheaded salute. Finally, as if reluctantly, the airman did too. They stood solemnly in the sighing wind until their arms began to quiver and sag.
When they dropped the salute, Fierros stalked back and forth along the cliff edge, peering. “That’s gotta be a hundred yards down. No way we could get down there,” he muttered. He rubbed his chin. “I mean, too bad we…”
He didn’t finish the sentence, and both Teddy and Trinh cut him sharp glances. He scowled back. “What? Don’t tell me you’re not thinking the same thing.”
“I don’t know, Ragger. What are you thinking?”
The pilot showed yellowed teeth, what remained of them. “That we made the wrong choice back there.”
“There aren’t any choices,” Teddy said.
“What?” Fierros’s brows drew together. “What’s that supposed to mean? Yeah, we got choices. We got to go down, where it’ll be warmer. There’ll be people. We have a rifle, don’t we? We can steal food, take a hostage. Do something.”
“This valley will lead us out of China,” Teddy said. “If there’s nobody up here, that’s good. We’re on the run, remember? Wanted men. It can’t be that much farther to the border. All we have to do is keep going. We’ll never get out your way.”
“It’s freezing. It’s winter. All this wandering around, until we starve … or fall into a crevasse, like Vu … it isn’t going to work.”
Teddy looked at Trinh. Slowly, the major’s shoulders lifted. Then sagged.
“All right,” Teddy said. “Which way, then?”
The pilot grinned. “I saw a draw back there. Look
ed like it might go the way we want.”
Teddy turned away, without wasting another word, and began to lead them down.
9
USS SAVO ISLAND 25°00.38′ N, 159°42.37′ W 500 Miles NW of Wake Island
CHERYL leaned back on the bridge chair. The sun warmed her face as she tried not to scratch the itchy patches between her fingers. The red, aggrieved spots were spreading. Doc Grissett had given her a steroid cream, but it wasn’t helping.
The cruiser’s truncated prow sliced through two-foot seas as every few seconds the singsong whine of her sonar pinged out into the deep. Scattered clouds chased their shadows over a sea so deep blue it hurt the heart. A balmy breeze coursed through the wing doors. Aloft, flags snapped. A breechblock rattled as a gunner’s mate checked one of the machine guns. Down on the forecastle, cross-legged around portable computers, fire-control techs were carrying out the daily systems-operability tests, quizzing the missiles beneath the gray hatches set nearly flush to the deck.
The Ticonderoga-class cruisers had been designed around those weapons and the radars that guided them. Within a radius of three hundred miles, an Aegis ship could detect, track, identify, and knock down anything that threatened. Ahead, a black speck hurtled outward: a just-launched Blackjack, one of the drones that searched ahead of the advancing force with synthetic-aperture radar and a hyperspectral imager.
A week had passed since the near-disastrous exit battle from Guam. After forming up and completing a damage assessment, the task force had headed north. The Japanese had interned George Washington, still crippled from a mine strike, but had let her aircraft go. MH-60s from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 12 had flown out hundreds of miles over the open sea, well beyond their point of no return. McClung had hot-refueled them, hopscotching them the rest of the way to Hornet. One had to ditch en route, but Kristensen had picked up its crew.
Ollie Uskavitch cleared his throat beside her. She’d moved the Weapons Department head up to acting XO until the filler from stateside arrived. They went over the day’s schedule. Helicopter and ordnance fire drills, mainly. Evolutions they could do with personnel already on station, without moving them around the ship. Things they could put a lid on instantly, if operational requirements dictated.
When he left she viciously scratched her fingers, musing. Wondering.
CTF 76 had passed intel that opposing forces comprised ten Song-class diesel-electric attack submarines, along with another nine to ten more advanced Yuan-class subs with air-independent propulsion. There might be an older boat, too, converted to carry fuel and torpedoes so the force could extend its stay, perhaps for months.… Also, there were up to five nuclear boats. This huge pack might be subdivided into attack groups, but Intel placed them all within a square bounded by 5 degrees north to 25 degrees north, and between 180 and 160 degrees west.
Unfortunately, that covered roughly a million miles of ocean.
She had no idea what Lenson’s plan was for finding their enemy.
To take them on, he had helicopters, two U.S. destroyers, and Savo, Hornet, Farncomb, and the Koreans. The eastern jaw of the vise, out of Pearl, consisted of another LPH, four destroyers, an Independence-class frigate, and one U.S. sub. They were supported by land-based air out of Hawaii, while TF 76 was supposed to get flights out of Wake.
Meanwhile, logistic transits through the mid-Pacific had been called off. Even escorted convoys would be torn apart by a pack that large. Fuel, supplies, weapons, and parts had to come either by air or the long way round, through the far South Pacific to Australia, then routed north.
Which meant the task force couldn’t expect much, and none of it on time. And the carriers were still holding east of Pearl. Safer for her husband, aboard Vinson, but not so good for her.
“Captain?”
She returned the salute. Lieutenant (junior grade) Todd MacAllister had moved up to head Supply since Hermelinda had left for Lenson’s staff. Tall, heavy-jawed, and low-browed, he seemed to have a handle on the department, though he hadn’t made the extra effort to qualify as OOD that Garfinkle-Henriques had. “Todd. How’re we set for chow?”
“Numbers don’t look good, Captain. That missile hit Earhart in the forward hold, where they stowed dry stores. Between fire and flooding they lost most of it.”
“Which means we don’t get resupplied?”
“’Fraid not.” The Supp (O) looked regretful. “We got some fresh stores in Apra, but not a full allowance. Gonna be eating out of cans. Dehydrated stuff, powdered milk.”
“Excuse me. Captain?” Past MacAllister, Lieutenant (jg) Mytsalo was angling for her attention.
“Yeah, Max, what have you got?—Excuse me, Todd.”
“Lookout reports: Hornet’s showing a list.”
She frowned. “Hand me those binoculars.”
Through the glasses the gray slab of the carrier jumped close across ten thousand yards of sea. A slight list to port? Maybe. Something to fret about? She decided not. “How many days’ chow do we have, Todd?”
“On normal rations maybe two weeks. If you give me permission to go to half rations … cut back on meat, provide more starches … a month.”
She looked away to cover her dismay. But berating him wouldn’t produce more. “Very well,” she said reluctantly. “Our guys in Korea’re probably not getting much to eat these days either. And we have no idea how long we’ll be out here. Go to reduced servings. Do I need to make an announcement? Have the exec put it in the plan of the day?”
MacAllister grimaced. “Why bother, Skipper? The minute the word goes down in the Supply Office, it’s gonna be all over the ship.”
She checked her watch and swung down out of the chair. She gave the boatswain, at the 1MC panel, the nod. Took deep breaths, scratching her fingers, as he blew “attention” on his silver pipe. Then accepted the microphone.
“This is the captain speaking. Good morning.
“From today on we will be hunting a sizable submarine pack that we know is somewhere in this sea area. We may be attacked at any time, by missile or torpedo. We will continue steaming in Condition Three. Keep flash gear and breathing apparatus close at hand at all times.
“Now set Material Condition Zebra, modified for flight operations, throughout the ship. Make all reports to the bridge.”
Steel slammed, doors and hatches dogging as Savo subdivided herself. Her captain passed a hand over her face, looking out again to where Hornet rode the horizon. Centerpiece of a task force flung across fifty miles of sea.
She hoped its commander knew what he was doing.
* * *
THAT afternoon in CIC she hunched in the padded command chair, absorbed in the displays. The space was darkened save for the screens. At Condition Three, wartime steaming, all consoles were manned except Strike. Voices murmured over tactical circuits. Keyboards clattered. The air was icy cold, but she was comfortable in a nylon flight jacket, though her sinuses hurt.
Propping her jaw on a fist, she studied the central screen.
Task Force 76, alone in an unislanded sea, headed east at twenty knots in a circular formation. Hornet, Green Bay, and Earhart steamed at formation center. Savo rode shotgun ten thousand yards southwest of the carrier. She was air guard, though the farther east they went, the less likely missile or air strikes became. Ahead, and to the north and south, were spread wings of destroyers and frigates, U.S. and Korean. Farncomb, the Australian sub, was out ahead, supposedly sanitizing their track, but running on diesels, snorkeling, at the moment.
The missile deck videos showed empty ocean. She studied the weapons inventory once more, dismayed. Then turned to the TAO, next to her at the desk. “What d’you think of this formation?”
Matt Mills reminded her of her husband. The same blond good looks, but without the fighter-jock attitude. He’d come from squadron staff in the Med as a temporary fill, and been with them since. “It’s … not really optimal?”
“Is that all? No shit, Matt. It’s weak.”
&nbs
p; He looked as if he wanted to agree, but didn’t. “Okay, what?” she asked.
“Just that … Lenson’s no dummy. If he set it up, there’s something we’re not seeing.”
She studied the screen again. What was she missing? Lenson had reoriented the formation late the night before. The ROKN screen units were clustered on the northern and southern flanks, thirty miles out from the main body. Three frigates centerlined the leading edge of the formation, ten miles ahead. Savo was ten thousand yards to starboard of Hornet. McClung was ten thousand yards to port. Kristensen brought up the rear, protecting them from end-arounds.
Ship dispositions weren’t the whole story, of course. Icons glimmered on the screen as recon drones and helos roved, busy as bees in clover. Every twelve miles HSC-12 dropped staggered rows of sonobuoys across the advance. The buoys hit the water, cut their chutes, and deployed microphones on wires a hundred yards long. They didn’t ping unless ordered. Just hung passive, alert for the heartlike whish-whish of submarine propellers,the throb of pumps, the whine of air-conditioning, the clank as torpedoes were handled or watertight doors swung closed.
She scratched furiously, then made herself stop. Get more sleep, before things started popping again? But a motion on the after hangar deck camera caught her eye.
The California Guard was doing a slew check. The gyrostabilized turret, craned aboard in Apra, had two launcher pods, each with four Stingers. There was no direct link to the cruiser’s combat system. Instead they had a watchstander on sound-powered phones. If they got an incomer, all they had to do was slew to the bearing and pickle off rounds in ripple fire. The missiles did the rest, streaking out at incredible pace.
She found herself scratching again, and cursed. Stingers were short-range, but one thing this war had demonstrated was that once action started, threats had to be dealt with faster than in any previous conflict. They could expect saturation attacks. A short-range backup was more than welcome, as far as she was concerned.
“What’s wrong with this formation?” Mills mumbled, squinting into the screenlight. His fingers drummed the desk. Then he grabbed a red-backed publication, flipped pages. “Huh. See who he’s got right in the middle, in the lead? Seoul. FF-952. Seems like a weak sister to you?”