by David Poyer
A thick white cloud blasted windshield and hood, instantly extinguishing the flames that roared and licked there. Tiny volcanoes of blistered, smoking paint vented gas and then sagged, stiffening as frost coated them. The door jerked open and an icy howl enveloped him, stopping his breath, instantly freezing his skin. But the flames doused as if by incantation. The rush of frigid gas moved on, to blast first over Mills, hunched at the wheel, eyes squinched, then shifting to the backseat, to quell the last stubborn pools of fire back there.
Gloved hands seized his belts, sawed, and yanked. He stumbled out in a gush of smoke and white vapor, flakes of which drifted around him before sublimating into invisibility. He nearly fell, but other hands steadied him, and he coughed hard, his 9/11-scarred trachea nearly closing. He swallowed, and grabbed the mask tubed to a green cylinder someone held out.
“Matt, you okay? —Matt?”
“Okay, sir,” Mills said, sounding shaken, but looking unhurt. “You burned?”
“Just my … mainly my uniform, I think.”
As a medic led him toward an emergency response van Dan glanced back. A steel mesh barrier and a solid line of troops barred access to the base. Red and blue strobes hurtled across still-smoking asphalt. The Italian police were in among the demonstrators, pushing them to their knees, handcuffing them. Some fought back, and the cops blocked the blows with their shields. Black batons rose and fell as, down the narrow street, sirens seesawed and more police vehicles turned in toward the scuffle.
He coughed hard, and sucked another hit of oxygen. If he hadn’t gotten that window closed, the gasoline would have gone all over him. A fucking Molotov cocktail. Was he the target, or just a random victim? His damaged throat spasmed again and he closed his eyes, trying to breathe.
“Sit down right here, sir,” the corpsman said. Filipino, by the look of him. “Got a problem with that airway?”
“No. No … problem.”
Shrewd brown eyes examined him. “Looked like you might have. Just need to have you lie down here, then. And I’m going to give you a little injection, all right? Just to help you relax.”
Still fighting to catch his breath, Dan only nodded.
* * *
THAT night, in his suite, he looked through a book someone had left in the lobby bookcase. It was by Freya Stark, about Rome’s long struggle to maintain its eastern frontier against first Mithradates, then the Seleucids, and then the long struggle with the Parthians … who seemed to be related, in some way not quite clear, to the Pathans or Pashtuns he, Dan, had fought in Afghanistan. The Persians seemed to be involved too, but later in the story.
Eventually, trying his cell every few pages, he managed to get through to Blair. His wife sounded depressed. She’d been fighting the blues for a long time now, after being injured in the Twin Towers collapse. She’d gone through bone infection, burn problems, and trouble with the autografts to her face and ear. “How’s it going, honey?” he said. “It’s me.”
“I know. But why’s your voice so raspy?”
He debated telling her about the firebombing, but decided that would serve no good purpose. His skin still itched where the corpsman had applied an antibiotic ointment. He shivered. After getting badly burned on Reynolds Ryan, and so narrowly escaping from the Pentagon on 9/11, he was really starting to fear fire. “I don’t know. Do I sound different?”
“Maybe not. Where are you now? Italy?”
“Correct. Naples.”
“I’m sitting here watching them start another TV war. Are you aboard your ship? Savo Island, you said?”
“No, I’m at the Navy Lodge. I can’t take over until they relieve the previous CO.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go.”
He lay on the bed, BlackBerry pressed to his ear. The news was on the television, an Italian channel, sound muted, but a long shot panned the length of a beached and helpless warship, lingered on the U.S. flag, then pulled back to show the harbor. A commentator spoke in the foreground, ending with a smirk and a shake of the head. Dan closed his eyes. “So, how’s the ear?”
“Looks horrible, but the swelling’s going down.”
“And the fund-raising?”
“I feel infected after every meeting. But Checkie says it’s got to be done. He’s been a big help. He advises me before every sit-down.”
“That’s good, hon. But I can’t believe you need much hand-holding.” Checkie Titus was her father, a retired banker. Blair was from one of the oldest families in Maryland, and a former undersecretary of defense. Dan didn’t think she’d actually have much trouble raising enough cash to run for Congress, though he wasn’t sure he wanted her to win. That, of course, had to go unvoiced. Like maybe a lot of things between husbands and wives.
“I wish you didn’t have to deploy again.”
“I wish I could be in two places, hon. How about this. Maybe you can take a break and fly over. How’s Crete sound? The ruins of Minos. Or maybe Athens?”
“I’ve been to Athens, but Crete … hmm. That’d be new.” Her voice changed, gained what sounded like anticipation. “Can you let me know your schedule?”
“Not sure just yet. And I couldn’t tell you over the phone anyway. I’ll give you the name of the port-calls guy at Surflant.”
When he hung up he lay watching the muted images flicker shifting shadows on the ceiling of the darkened cavelike room. He hadn’t seen his daughter in nearly a year. Wouldn’t see his wife for months. Neither would any of the others aboard the ship he might shortly call his own.
Why did they do it? When they could all make more money ashore? Be with their families. Have actual lives. Instead, they were part of a crew.
Part of a crew.
Yeah.
Maybe that was explanation enough.
2
THE next morning Mills took him to the Spina, a bricked courtyard with a Subway, a Navy Federal Credit Union office, and a Navy College storefront. Admin Two’s long, wide, light-filled corridors smelled of cappuccino. They were floored with glossy white callacatta veined with writhes of cinnabar. The slick hard marble felt strange underfoot; he was used to buffed tile or terrazzo.
Across a desk, a woman who’d always made him nervous was giving orders over her cell. They’d shaken hands when he came in, her small palm slightly sweaty; then her phone had chimed. Intense, skeptical Jennifer Roald, a small-boned, sharp-faced brunette was only a little older than he. She’d directed the White House Situation Room when Dan had worked in the West Wing. They’d stayed in touch, and now and then she’d been able to extend a helping hand, or pulse the Old Girl Network on his behalf. She’d obviously hit wickets and punched tickets since; now she was ComDesRon 26, Savo Island’s squadron commander—and thus, his putative direct boss, at least for manning, equipment, and administrative matters.
Studying her, he wondered if she could have been the one who’d gotten the promotion board to throw out its initial recommendations. Probably not. They hadn’t been that close. Coworkers, no more. Only Niles had the clout to swing a board his way. And the cunning to make sure no one would ever be able to prove it.
Snapping the cell closed, Roald focused a dark gaze on him. “Dan, good to see you again. That was the NCIS. They’re helping the Italians with the case. The police are working their way through the demonstrators. They want to know if you got a look at who threw the bomb.”
“It wasn’t a bomb. Just a bottle of gasoline. Green, maybe a wine bottle. I only got a glimpse. And I didn’t see who threw it. It flew up out of the crowd, then hit our windshield. I smelled gas, and whoosh—it ignited.”
She pushed across a paper slip. “Call this number. The agent’s name’s Erculiano. Italian name, but he’s American.”
He said he would and Roald glanced at a notebook screen. “Okay. Where we stand on the grounding … Sixth Fleet convened a JAG manual investigation, came down with a six-man team. They’ll wrap at noon and present their conclusions to Admiral Ogawa. You know him?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t think so. No.”
She frowned. “He seems to know you. Or of you. Anyway, he’ll hold mast at 1400. I can’t anticipate the results officially, but between us, I think he’ll fire several people on the spot. Captain Imerson will be one. The base master-at-arms is over on Savo packing their seabags. They’ll go from mast to the barracks and we’ll fly them back to CONUS tomorrow.”
“They’re not going back to the ship?”
“There’s some concern there might be, um, physical violence.” She nodded at his raised eyebrows. “Yeah, that bad … Some things here for you to read. The last Insurv report. The Command Climate Survey. But right now we have to talk about where Savo Island’s going from here.”
He nodded and took out his BlackBerry, but she gestured to put it away. “Let’s make this off the record. To tell the truth, I was surprised to see your name on the message. I asked for a forceful backup, but I thought you were … off the board, somehow.” She smiled. “That doesn’t mean I’m not glad to have you.”
“Uh … thanks.”
“What have they told you? Well, first. You’ve XO’d an Aegis, haven’t you?”
The XO was the executive officer, the second in command. “Actually, no. Horn wasn’t Aegis capable. My XO tour was on a Knox.”
“But you have missile experience? Computer background?”
“With the Tomahawk program. Computers, yes. And as far as conning goes, I’m pretty confident on the bridge.”
“If you mean you wouldn’t have put her aground, I certainly hope not. From what I’ve heard, it was a real monkeyfuck, the last few minutes before they hit. But we’ll read all about that in the investigator’s report.”
“You don’t want me at the admiral’s mast.”
“Absolutely not. Stay out of sight.” Her cell chimed again and she flipped it open, listened, said, “Make it so,” and oystered it. “Okay, what’d they tell you before you got on the plane … never mind. I’ll start from square one. You know Savo just went from a baseline 7 Aegis to something new.”
“Theater ballistic missile defense.”
“TBMD’s a new mission for us. Up to now it’s been an Army responsibility, from the old Sprint to the Patriot. But if the Navy can do it without boots on the ground, shore installations, and host-country complications, this could be a Surface Force breadbasket for the next fifty years. We’ve grown the Standard missile with a higher-energy booster and a lighter proximity-kill warhead. So you get the range and altitude for a midphase intercept. Dahlgren rewrote the operating system with addendum units and took out the software stops they built in back in the seventies. With me so far?”
“I think so, but I’d want to get down in the weeds with some people I’m bringing over from TAG.”
“I’m glad you have additional personnel resources. You’ve got a tech rider aboard from Johns Hopkins. I can break you out a couple bodies from my staff, too. Gap fillers only; I’ll want them back.”
“Thanks. So—this mission?”
She glanced at the door, and dropped her voice. “You’ll be loosely associated with the Med strike group that’s hitting Baghdad with Tomahawks and manned strikes. But you, yourself, will be defense of Israel. That’s why Sixth Fleet’s hair is on fire over this grounding. It was supposed to be an overnight in-and-out, to fuel, pick up the last shot for the anthrax inoculations, and head straight for station off Tel Aviv. Instead, she’s high and dry in full view of every TV network in the Med. The Israelis are screaming, and I can’t blame them a bit. We promised them a missile shield, and we’re not delivering.”
She glanced at her watch and he took the cue. “Okay. What are the personnel redlines? Any you’re aware of?”
“Yes, I am aware of some,” Roald said, in a voice that said Do not accuse me of not knowing the status of my own units.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to—”
“Forget it. You’re billeted for 299 enlisted and thirty officers. That’s not counting the air det. They’re lily-padding up from the Gulf of Aden. If this mast goes like I expect, you’ll be down eight to ten bodies. A big hit. The command master chief. Even worse, your combat systems officer.”
“Holy smoke.” He’d already discussed candidates back at the Tactical Analysis Group, his last duty station; guys he’d worked with before. But they’d need time to get up to speed. The personnel Roald had just promised from her own staff could be hot-runners, or they could be bottom-blows. All too often, what you got from another source, even a well-disposed one, were no-loads who weren’t pulling their weight in a current billet. “Do you think—will the XO go too? Or stay?”
“Admiral Ogawa’ll decide that based on the report of the investigating board. Right now I can’t say. I won’t tell you what I think of him. The exec, I mean. Let you form your own opinion.” She looked back at her screen. “The other issue I wanted to surface is material condition. Form your own opinion on that too, but keep an eye on your engine controls. All the consoles, the back plane wiring, where they run Chip A to Chip B, it’s grounded. Not a good design, in my book.”
“That can shut the engines down when you don’t expect it.”
She nodded. “And cascade—take the next engine down too. Actually, that might have been a contributing factor to the accident. That Main Control reset without notifying the bridge, or the bridge didn’t quite register the reset, with all that shouting going on, so the throttles were full ahead when the engines came back online. Then suddenly they get this huge surge of power and don’t react in time.”
She spread her hands. “But like I said, I’m out of the loop, and rightly so. It doesn’t exactly come across as career enhancing for me, either.” She frowned, glanced at her cell, as if the fact it hadn’t rung in the last couple of minutes puzzled her.
Dan got up. “I don’t see how it can hurt you.”
“Mud has a way of spattering.” A closed-mouth bend of the lips that this time wasn’t really a smile.
“Thanks for the briefing. I appreciate your support, Commodore.”
She bent to fish in a black sample case. “That’s my job. Here’re the reports I told you about. Go someplace quiet and read them. Call NCIS about the gate incident. We’ll sit down again when we find out who’s going and who’s staying. Discuss specifics.”
Her cell chimed again. He left her frowning into the distance as she listened.
* * *
HE found an empty meeting room and read through the files. The Insurv report first, the ship’s last board of inspection and survey. It was like a marine surveyor’s appraisal, or the inspection you ask a mechanic for when you’re thinking of buying a used car. Every mechanical and electronic system, its status and shortcomings and how well the records reflected that, which told you whether the crew were gundecking their maintenance. He read the engineering plant section with particular care, noting the control system grounding problem Roald had alluded to.
The next document was the Command Climate Survey. This was a new report sailors completed anonymously via the Internet. It rated their perceptions of how fairly they were treated, any instances of discrimination, whether the command played favorites, and so forth. There’d been a lot of strife over it, the hardshells complaining that giving the crew power to rate their commander was inverting the chain of command. But as he read it over, flipping back and forth to the unit sitreps on psychological problems, DUIs, and administrative separations, an unsettling picture emerged.
Something had been deeply wrong aboard. And of course, whatever the problem, the skipper was ultimately responsible. As Roald had said, heads had to roll, and Imerson’s would be the first.
But this would be only one of a rash of recent DFCs, detachments “for cause.” What was happening to the fleet? His unease grew as he recalled a Navy Times piece that had said cuts in crews and training funding had left some Aegis units in a low state of readiness. Was Savo Island one? If so, he might be getting issued a real can of worms. Especially if the people he lost
included the strike team, the very officers and sailors he’d need most in combat. He was glad now he’d talked to Donnie Wenck and Rit Carpenter before he’d left TAG. Wenck could be a real help. Carpenter, probably, too, although the older man had baggage Dan wasn’t comfortable with. He’d talked to Monty Henrickson, but the civilian analyst had been less than enthusiastic about a months-long deployment.
He went to the Subway for a six-inch turkey, light on the mayo, then back to the second deck of Admin Two. He was rereading the Insurv report when a civilian in slacks and sweater looked in. “Captain Lenson?” Italian, by her accent. “You are Lenson? Admiral Ogawa will see you now.”
* * *
COMMANDER, Sixth Fleet, wore rimless spectacles and had buzzcut hair the color of weathered asphalt and a receding chin that did not seem to diminish his command presence. His name was Japanese, but he didn’t look markedly Asian. Another officer—the deputy chief of staff, Dan guessed from his rank—nodded as he entered. Ogawa pointed to a chair. “Grab a seat, Captain. We haven’t met, but I’ve heard about you. From Steve Leache, Vince Contardi, among others. Seems like you really leave an impression—either one way or the other.”
“Um—thank you, sir.”
“How’s Blair doing? She was in the South Tower, wasn’t she?”
“That’s right, sir. She was burned. And broke a hip. But she’s recovering.”
“We met in Ukraine, the negotiations for Black Sea porting rights. Impressive woman. Well, I’ll make this quick.” Ogawa tapped a blue-bound document. “I’ve reviewed the report of the investigating board. I’m relieving Captain Imerson this afternoon. Have you inspected the ship?”
“I haven’t been aboard. I did a waterline inspection as she lies.”
The admiral skated another file toward him. “Damage report. Preliminary, but it’ll give you an idea what you have to work with. I’m convening mast in half an hour, as soon as my jaggies can set it up. I’ll listen to the defendants, but unless they can change my mind, the following will go: commanding officer, command master chief, two E-8s, two E-7s, and an O-3—your combat systems, unfortunately.
