The Weapon

by David Poyer

  He shaded his eyes with a shaking hand, but saw only blackness ahead. It was hard even to look into the blowing grit, finer than powder, like smoke except that it stung his cheeks and needled his eyeballs. He shouted to Oberg, “Ask Carpenter if he’s got the frigate.”

  The SEAL bowed to the voice tube, then straightened. “No contact,” he roared, bending toward Dan to be heard over the thunder of the gigantic torch, now passing nearly directly over them as they plodded on, pointed into the wind.

  Dan cursed, shading his eyes, all but blind. The massive light wiped everything else out. If he couldn’t see, he couldn’t shoot. While the backlighting would outline K-79 perfectly. The first they’d know the enemy was in range would be those Limbo rounds bringing Limbo from the sky.

  Then he saw the frigate.

  Not by her own light, but like a moon, by a single gleam from the massive torch roaring above him, reflected by the flat glass of pilothouse windows as they altered their angle to his observer’s eye. And below that, behind it, the tarpaper on black velvet silhouette of the ship. She was perhaps two miles away, on the far side of another massive platform with its feet in the sea and its head in the dusty sky. Another oilfield structure that, darkened and unlit, might account for Carpenter’s having lost contact.

  She was still heeling, completing a hard turn a-starboard. As he struggled with the cover on the gyro repeater the frigate steadied, upperworks rolling back up to vertical as she gathered way on the new course.

  Oberg stepped forward and slammed at the repeater with the butt of his weapon. The dogs wedged off and Dan hinged aside the hemispherical cover and fitted down on it the heavy yet fragile bearing circle he’d brought up with him crammed into the waistband of his trou. He shouted, “Ask Monty if he’s ready to fire.”

  Oberg bent. Dan couldn’t hear the exchange but without turning the SEAL lifted his thumb. From across the weirdly glittering sea—each wave-face a mirror of the central gigantic flame for the fraction of a second it reared upright—he even heard the faint prolonged ringing of an electric bell.

  A launch warning, alerting anyone on the frigate’s deck to stand clear.

  He bent to the circle and slid the vertical frame fixed on its circumference and within it the vertical black hairline left and then right, feeling sand grains scrape in the tracks as it rotated, grating and grinding and becoming silt, powder. He fixed it in position just ahead of the oncoming bow.

  His suddenly aloof brain calculated angle and speed and distance, time for a two-hundred-knot weapon to run. He edged the sight the tiniest bit left and squinted for numbers in the writhing shadows cast by the glaring sulphur flame and shouted to Oberg’s turned waiting ear, “Firing bearing zero eight seven, set and fire.”

  For three seconds, the time to draw a long breath, nothing happened. He clung to the stand, fingers locked, lids blinking rapidly and nearly closed against the stinging sandblast out of the night. Wondering if the next thing he’d see, and the last, would be the burst of rosy fire he’d glimpsed once before, as mortar projectiles lifted, three in one, one in three, an unholy trinity that would bring death to him and every one of his team.

  A flare ignited ahead of K-79’s bullnose. For an instant he thought it was a star shell, fired to confirm they were the target, though God knew they ought to be illuminated well enough for that already. But then it began to move.

  Glowing beneath the water, maybe twenty feet down, its dazzling whiteness tempering as the angle to his eye increased to a murky yellow-topaz that slid quickly up the spectrum into yellow, into green, before dousing entirely as it receded into the dark. Behind it welled up a straight line of frothing sea that suddenly opened to vent gouts of white smoke. The smoke lingered for only a moment before the wind took it straight back as they watched transfixed. Dan inhaled an acrid, bitter taste that mixed with the smell of sand and burning natural gas and crude oil into a wild mingled odor he knew he’d never forget.

  He leaned forward, eyes stinging. Beside him Oberg was yelling some wordless hoarse exhortation as if the deadly thing they’d unloosed could hear them. Dan struggled to find some word or feeling in his own heart—of hope or prayer or protest at the way the world was made—when all at once a hellish flash made even the torch behind them pale, picked out and froze each wave in appalled immobility.

  It pulsed again, even brighter this time, but less white than blue. Then yet again, a searing yellowwhite flash like the nuclear fireball he’d glimpsed for a fraction of a second, before it had wrecked USS Horn.

  He didn’t remember diving for the deckplates but he was there, and so was Oberg, and a crackling din rolled overhead like God crashing through the dimensions that structured the universe. It didn’t stop but went on, snaps and deeper detonations and a yowling whine that wasn’t human but that sounded like nothing he’d ever heard from a ship. A noise that rose and rose and then faded away into the bluster and hiss of the sand-laden wind.

  When he put his head up he saw nothing. Not the cooling remains of molten metal, superheavy depleted uranium, explosives, what had a moment before been a living ship crafted of steel and discipline and commanded by a spirit in no way inferior in determination and skill to his own. All of it was gone, and the black sea rolled and the dust whirled over it. He considered searching for survivors, but dismissed the idea with numb horror. The heavy depleted-uranium rods of the special warhead, designed to punch through the side armor of a Nimitz-class carrier, would have burned a hole the length of the thin-skinned frigate, instantly vaporizing and then igniting magazines, fuel tanks, engines, flesh.

  “Right hard rudder,” he pushed through lips still tasting that bitter exhaust. “Let’s get out of this smoke, if we can. Make it uh, one two zero.”

  Oberg didn’t respond for a moment; then he repeated the order down the tube. “That take us out of this field?” he asked. Dan didn’t answer.

  They ran for a few minutes, and he didn’t smell more smoke. That was good. He told Oberg, “Have Donnie open the forward hatch. Get some circulation going. Maybe we can get that chlorine blown out, get the diesels started.”

  “I don’t know,” said Oberg. “That water was still gaining when we shut the doors on it. I think we’re sinking.”

  Dan looked at him, but the SEAL wasn’t looking back. His attention was somewhere off the starboard bow, where, far ahead, something glittered now and then when the dust thinned. “What’s that?” Oberg asked.

  “Those lights? Probably Dubai.”

  “I mean, in front of it.”

  Dan squinted again, and this time saw it.

  A shadow moving against the lights, only visible now and then, but there, most definitely there. Directly in their path, between them and safety.

  “The other frigate,” Oberg said. They were moving very slowly now, but the roar of the flare-off had lessened enough that he could speak in a normal tone. “Sierra Two. Still waiting for us. We going to abandon?”

  “I guess so,” Dan said, and the taste on his lips grew even more bitter. Not just the gall of defeat, but of misjudgment. If he’d had to surrender, why couldn’t he have done it before killing two hundred men?

  He was the thief. The spy. Now he’d pay, and Team Charlie with him. The men who’d trusted him.

  What was left? Only the last charge, the final, feigned attack that would force their enemies to destroy them. Forlorn, yes; but a quick death was better than what alternatives remained. He felt the tendons and flesh sag on his bones.

  He was standing rigid, gripped with remorse, when a pair of red-hot eyes cometed out of the darkness to the north. They passed low and incredibly fast, no more than two hundred feet up, between K-79 and the oncoming frigate. The whine of turbines reached them, and the hot eyes that were the glowing tailpipes of two jet fighters pulled up and came around again, lit now as they banked by the yellow glare of the massive flare; passing, this time, directly over the Irani an frigate.

  Oberg went nuts, stamping his feet, yippeeing
like a Texan at a rodeo. Dan leaned forward, fighting to believe, but unable to credit what he was witnessing. The task force was hundreds of miles to the north. Far out of fighter range. And something about their outline, hard to make out as it was . . . they banked again, and he saw what was wrong. He knew Navy planes, and these weren’t Navy.

  In fact, they weren’t American at all.

  They were French.

  The Afterimage

  Aboard MNF Foch (R-99)

  They’d offered beer and wine, but after three days without sleep, he’d asked for coffee instead. He felt gritty even after a long hot shower. Felt grubby even after being reclothed in French pilot’s coveralls, felt swollen and battered even after antibiotic salve and a checkup in sick bay.

  Now he sat in flag quarters, coughing and nibbling pastry while waiting on the vice-admiral who commanded Combined Task Force 150 in the Southern Gulf. Opposite, legs crossed and elegant in a custom-tailored medium blue unform, touching a flame to a Gauloise, sat his former fellow ARMINTEX shopper: jut-jawed, raven-haired Commandante de Vaiseau Christophe de Lestapis de Cary.

  This time he didn’t even attempt to speak French to the guy. “What are your people doing with K-79?” Dan asked him.

  De Cary’s gesture left an intaglio of smoke in the scented air. Could those really be fresh hibiscus in that vase on the sideboard? “Oh, de—is the word really ‘dewatering’?”

  “Dewatering, yes.”

  “Our damage control people are ‘dewatering’ now. The submarine we salvaged is under tow by one of our frigates of the second rank. It will be repaired in Bahrain, to a standard that will make her safe to steam if not to submerge. Then we will turn her back over to Teheran.”

  “What did you tell the Iranians about us?”

  “I’m sorry, I do not know that you were ever aboard,” de Cary said politely. “So far as I know, K-79 was found unmanned. Whoever hijacked her must have abandoned her before she drifted into the oil field.”

  “The bodies? The dead Russians?”

  “What Russians? What bodies?”

  “I see.”

  De Cary said mildly, “You must understand, we are playing this absolutely straight with you. Whatever we know, you know.”

  Dan digested this along with another bite of pastry. U.S. Navy coffee and French Navy flag mess café au lait had obviously evolved in unrelated spacetime continua, and the tarts—the apple tart was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted. This was his second and he felt as if he could keep nibbling forever. The only thing he didn’t care for was de Cary’s secondhand smoke, but under the circumstances it seemed ungrateful to object.

  “What I can’t quite grok is why you’re here, uh, Chris. Are you attached to CTF 150? The vice-admiral’s staff?”

  “No, I’m still with Défense Conseil International. As I was when we were in Moscow. Of course, we knew you were in the Gulf. We are after all closely associated in our joint effort to find out the secrets of those who threaten us both.” De Cary gestured at what Dan had to admit made the flag quarters aboard U.S. ships, even carriers, look humble. “As the only other power operating fixed-wing carriers, and as part of Coalition forces operating under CTF-Southwest Asia, we stood ready to assist whenever we could. As authorized, of course, by your own national authorities.”

  “But how did you know where we were?”

  “Of course, we listen to the Iranian transmissions.” De Cary frowned, as if startled at such a naive question.

  “And what did you mean about ‘authorized by national authorities’?”

  “We could have been on the scene earlier. The admiral offered to intervene as soon as it was reported you were offshore and needed help. But higher levels apparently felt the situation had to be clarified. And it took some time. Not our fault, I assure you. Ah, Captain Byrne.”

  Jack Byrne had been riding the helo that had picked Team Charlie up, which O-6s did not normally do. Today the intel officer was in a civilian suit and rep tie, along with his trademark reflective Ray-Bans. “Don’t get up, Dan. Feel better?” he said, holding him in the chair with a hand on his shoulder. “You needed that shave, let me tell you. Now, you know this fellow, I think—”

  “Sure, Jack. And, thanks for coming to get me. If that’s what you’re aboard for.”

  “One good turn deserves another. I was sure glad to see you on the Kremlin embankment.” Byrne chuckled. “Though I should have brushed up on my swim lessons. Well, time to get down to business.”

  “I need to see about my team—”

  “They’re being taken care of. Not one, but two doctors aboard. One’s even a surgeon. Your lad with the busted wing’s x-rayed, set, and splinted.” He lowered his voice. “Vaught’s body is being handled with due respect. We’ll get you all off the flight deck sometime this afternoon. He li copter to Dubai and a special Air Guard C-130 home from there. That set your mind at ease?”

  “I’d still like to see them, Jack. As soon as we’re done with the admiral here, whatever he wants. And maybe, call my wife.”

  “Blair, sure, we can set that up covered voice, right to the Building.”

  Byrne broke off. He, de Cary, and, belatedly, Dan came to attention as the inner door opened.

  The vice-admiral was shorter than any other man in the room, but he had the same absolute self-assurance Dan was used to in senior U.S. flag officers. His hand felt small and soft. “Monsieur Lenson—Commander—it is a great pleasure. Commandante de Cary has given me the briefing entirely upon you. Your great courage. Your many decorations. You are to be congratulated on this latest success.”

  “Uh, thank you, sir. Very much. And thank you for coming to our assistance last night. I wouldn’t exactly call it a success—”

  “You did not attain what you hoped?” The dark eyes drilled in. “But the Commandante assures me you have. He was speaking with your men, while you were recovering. Apparently you have photos, software, the principe d’operation of the weapon is now entirely known—”

  Dan glanced at Byrne. De Cary had been interrogating his men without him present? But the intel officer shook his head slightly.

  The vice-admiral turned to a side table and picked up a small blue case. “Attention, please, Commander.” Not sure what was going on, Dan snapped to. A faintness took him as he did so; he swayed; de Cary grabbed one arm, Byrne the other.

  “Are you well, Commander?”

  “Not much sleep, bad air—a lot of stress.”

  “I should imagine so. Tres bien.” The admiral cleared his throat, opened the case, took out a card, and read something so rapidly from it in French Dan caught only the odd word here and there. Before he realized what was happening, the little man was pushing something into the front of his flight suit. He pulled Dan’s head down, yanked him close, and kissed him on both cheeks in a dry, businesslike way. Stepped back and clicked his heels. When Dan looked down a five-pointed white and green star lay over his heart.

  “In the name of the President of the Republic and in virtue of the powers conferred on me by him, I name you chevalier of the Legion of Honor,” the admiral said. “Congratulations, Commander Lenson.” He pumped his hand up and down twice, then let it drop. “Thank you for helping resolve this threatening situation, assuring the security of both our country’s forces.”

  Dan was so taken aback he didn’t have words for a moment. He muttered from the side of his mouth, “Uh, Jack—am I allowed to accept this?”

  “Don’t sweat it, you’re not actually in the Legion,” Byrne muttered back. “Foreigners can’t officially belong. It’s like an honorary thing. But it’ll still look good in your record.”

  In the passageway Dan waited till none of the sailors in their striped pullovers was in hearing range, then grabbed Byrne’s arm. He coughed, then said, “Lemme ask you something, Jack. Here and now. Between us.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “De Cary said this task force could have helped us out long ago. But we wouldn’t clear th
em to?”

  “Actions had to be coordinated. Approval sought. Unfortunately, it had to go through the joint staff. Long memories there, when your name comes up.” Byrne smiled sardonically behind the shades. “Under the circumstances, we hustled it through pretty damn fast, I think.”

  Dan couldn’t seem to stop coughing, but he wheezed out, “If it’d happened faster, Vaught’d still be alive.”

  “I’m sorry. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. As long as we’re down and dirty.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I appreciate your being here, but Naval Intelligence didn’t score this one. Or DIA, or CIA, either. Your operation cratered. TAG did. Team Charlie, that’s not funded worth a shit, has to beg for support, that’s apparently not even supposed to exist. So why do I get the feeling you’re going to be claiming most of the credit?”

  Byrne smiled, but Dan couldn’t see his eyes. He flicked the enameled cross with his thumbnail. “Pretty medal. ’Course, it’s the lowest of the five grades of the Legion.”

  “Answer me.”

  “Danny boy, Danny. Let me turn the bathroom light on for you. First of all, CIA was involved. Who told us K-79 was in Bandar Abbas, with what we wanted aboard? Who passed us the lead in the first place, about the improved guidance? But there’s a problem. And the French, in par ticu lar de Cary, could be the solution.”

  “What problem? What solution? You lost me.”

  Byrne sighed. He looked up the passageway. Paced a few steps, Dan following, then stopped again.

  “Dan, you won’t even get part of the credit. For your own good. None of this took place under Congressional oversight. So—you never laid eyes on a Shkval.”

  “Bullshit, Jack. My CO cleared it all the way to the top. And my guys shed blood for this. One died. I’m supposed to take a Crackerjack prize and go away whistling? I don’t think so.”