The Cruiser: A Dan Lenson Novel

by David Poyer

“The solutions degrade,” Wenck said. “But gracefully. We can miss one update and it’s not a big deal. Miss two or three, the track starts to wander off. You don’t know if you’re looking at your own system degradation, or increasing uncertainty exactly where that piece of space junk you’re tracking really is.” Singhe nodded.

  Dan nodded too. He started to turn away, then remembered. “Hey, any of you seen the XO?”

  “They were looking for him a while ago.” Wenck shrugged. “Wasn’t here, or in Strike.”

  “He hasn’t been on the bridge since before the fire.” Singhe looked concerned. “We called his stateroom several times.”

  “Anybody go down and knock?”

  “I’m not sure, Captain.”

  Dan clicked on his Hydra, but got a blinking low-battery alarm. He swapped it for a recharged battery and called the bridge. “CO here. Anybody seen the XO yet?”

  Pardees’s languid voice murmured that they hadn’t. Dan told him to send the boatswain’s mate down to check Almarshadi’s stateroom. “Tell him we need him online right away, and where’s he been—he was supposed to—no, never mind. Just tell him to contact me right away in CIC.”

  Singhe frowned. “Should we put out a man overboard, sir?”

  “That’s the next step, but let’s see if he’s just crashed so hard he’s not answering his phone.” Actually he didn’t want to think about a man overboard. Not when he remembered how depressed and upset Almarshadi had been at their last meeting. If he’d thrown a leg over the lifelines, they’d never find him in these seas. He pushed that vision away. “Okay, we’re still up on ALIS, our SCUS is back online, and we’ve got two Block 4s live. Eric, let Lahav know our fire’s out and we no longer need his presence close aboard. So thanks and he can resume his … uh, his station on us. Or no—just thank him. Say we’ve got everything under control. Same to Pittsburgh. Okay, any updates from the war zone?”

  Mills said nothing much new had come through from Iraq or the task force. The Coalition land forces seemed to be punching through the initial defenses. “They’re saying this might not be a very long war.”

  “That’d be good.” He slicked back his hair again. Why was he still perspiring? Maybe because if his defenses were crumbling, the dictator might not wait to wind up his Sunday punch. Savo might be the only shield between helpless people and that roundhouse, whatever shape it came in.

  A stir at the door from aft. He lifted his gaze to Almarshadi, in darker than usual blue coveralls. The little man’s onyx eyes slid aside, wandered back. The XO nodded to Mills, who pointed to Dan. As he reached them Dan saw the darker tone was dampness; Almarshadi’s coveralls were wet through.

  “Skipper? Looking for me?”

  Dan kept his voice down, but with an effort. “Where were you, Fahad? We had a fire aft. I needed you on the bridge. We’ve been looking all over.”

  Almarshadi glanced at Singhe, Wenck, Terranova. “Where was I? Down in the breaker. Having a smoke.”

  “A smoke? We just had a magazine fire. For Christ’s sake…” Dan got a deep breath, let it out. Not now. Not in front of their juniors. “Let’s go over there and—”

  Mills called, “Captain? McMottie on the line. Wants to ask about debris disposal?”

  “Over the side.”

  “Got it, sir.”

  At the far end of Combat, by the darkened nav table, they were finally out of earshot of everybody but the Phalanx operator. Dan put his back to the console and muttered, “Damn it, Fahad. We had a burning booster in the VLS. You weren’t on the bridge. Weren’t in your rack. I was about to call away a man overboard! And you’re down smoking in the breaker? This is totally unsat. I mean, there’s got to be two of you aboard. Just one guy couldn’t mess up this bad.”

  “I apologize if I don’t meet your standards.”

  Dan slammed a fist at an equipment frame, pulling the punch at the last microsecond, so he didn’t break his knuckles. “They’re not my goddamn standards, Commander! We’re in Condition Three ABM. We can get a missile down our throats on fifteen seconds’ notice. I needed you to spell me in the command seat. Can I depend on you to be there?”

  The liquid eyes slid aside. The exec was at parade rest, hands locked behind him. The ship leaned, creaking around them. A metallic snap somewhere aft. The superstructure again? Dan almost missed the softly spoken reply. “I’m not sure you can, sir.”

  He cleared his throat, suddenly at sea in more ways than one. What was going on here? He’d had difficult subordinates before. Been a headache to his own seniors more than once. But he’d never come across someone like this. How had this guy made commander? How had he made jaygee? “I’m sort of at a loss here, Fahad. You’re saying … I can’t count on you? Or I’d better not? Or what? Exactly?”

  “No sir. It was you who said that.”

  “So what’s your take on it?”

  “I was in the breaker.”

  “Why are you all wet?”

  “There’s spray coming over the bow. It’s getting rougher out there.” The little man tilted a wrist to check his watch. His voice quavered, but he appeared to be growing more resolute, not less. Dan was fitting together words, exploring how to ask whether he’d been down there contemplating doing away with himself, when his second in command murmured, “I don’t believe this was my scheduled time in CIC anyway. Not according to the rotation.”

  “True, but I needed you.” He remembered the Motorola, and glanced at Almarshadi’s belt line. The XO wasn’t wearing it. “Where’s your Hydra? We’ve been calling you on that just about nonstop.”

  “It’s back in my stateroom. Recharging.” Almarshadi frowned, as if taking back the initiative. “Captain, I have to protest. I was off duty. I went to my stateroom, put my battery on charge, then went down to the breaker for a smoke. Yes, I heard something aft. I didn’t know what it was. But the next thing I know, when I come in, you’re about to call away a man-overboard muster for me. And then you’re insulting me in front of the junior officers. Even the enlisted.

  “To be frank, this is unjust. I know your wife was injured in the attack on the World Trade Center. I know you were hurt at the Pentagon. And yes, I am an Arab. I may have my shortcomings as an exec. If I’m not performing to your expectations, relieve me. But I’m not your enemy, Daniel.”

  Dan splayed his fingertips to his temples. What was this asshole saying? That this whole fuckup was his fault? He said thickly, “This discussion’s over. Go to your stateroom. Don’t leave it again. Until I get … until I decide what to do about you.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Fahad nodded, about-faced crisply, and faded like a specter down the row of antisubmarine consoles, past the curtains of Sonar, passing from sight.

  Dan lowered his hands, shaking. He’d pressed them to his temples so he couldn’t wrap them around Almarshadi’s throat. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. Every time he faced off with the guy, he understood him less. He was sinking away, losing contact. Only who was actually receding? The other, or himself?

  Mills, voice lifted to reach the far end of the space. “Captain? Prelim bitchback from Chief Quincoches. On the 21MC.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He cleared his throat, which seemed to be closing up again. Then with swift, tired strides, headed back for his post.

  14

  Oparea Adamantine

  HE shifted in his chair as the night came for him out of the east. Out of a graphite, darkening sky, out of the blasts of snow.

  The bridge was in full darken ship, every pilot lamp and screen turned to its night setting. The bridge team spoke in murmurs, near whispers. Dan kneaded his cheeks. So fucking tired.…

  He’d watched as Quincoches and the other gunner’s mates had very gingerly boat-hooked the charred remains of a Sparrow II RIM-7P frag-and-blast warhead up out of the pried-open hatch. They’d set it on a cargo net. Ollie Uskavitch had pointed out the fuze booster to Dan, the weapons officer explaining how it had been designed to melt instead of detonat
ing the main charge. It was melted, all right: a shapeless blob of blackened material that didn’t look like much of anything now. The main charge had burned entirely, leaving only a cagelike structure of charred, warped steel. Dan couldn’t stop a shiver ratcheting his spine as Grissett, who seemed to be the ship’s photographer as well as the chief corpsman, bent close, snapping off shot after shot. Turning the thing over, snapping off more. The lightning flicker of the strobe illuminated only a tiny circle of the deck.

  When the postmortem ended, they’d regathered. Lifted the charred warhead, like firemen around an old-fashioned life net, and walked it toward the side. The boatswains had unreeved the deck-edge nets. The tumble home at that point bulged out slightly, so it wasn’t a straight drop. With cautious unanimity, they’d swung the net, and-a one, and-a two. At a muttered “three” they’d given it a last heave, and let go. Net and contents had vanished into the gathering dark with a muffled splash. As the disturbed patch eased aft, everyone concerned had straightened, sighing.

  None more deeply than Dan. He’d given them all high fives, then gone below for a walk-through of the VLS interior.

  The blowers had been howling, and the smells of burnt insulation and seawater were choking, but the metal trusswork bracing and the unaffected cells stood undamaged, though their corrugated white-painted exteriors were smoke-stained. Techs were disconnecting cables, running continuity checks with portable testers. They’d showed him a stub of connector. Quincoches and the chief electrician’s mate agreed it was the most likely place for the fire to have started. Most of it was burned away, though, so they couldn’t be sure.

  Dan had walked the module from end to end and port to starboard. Then started to tell them they needed everything back up as soon as possible. But instead, bitten his tongue. They knew. Having the skipper say it again wasn’t going to get ordnance back on the status board any faster.

  Now he stared out into the dark as Savo staggered and corkscrewed. She was on a southerly leg, the seas slamming into her quarter. The invisible beam lanced out from their port aft panel. He imagined it boring a hole through the overcast. They said the SPY-1, at full power, radiated enough microwave energy—four million watts, enough to power a good-sized town—to melt snowflakes. Fry seagulls in midflight. He hadn’t seen it do anything like that yet. Maybe in the morning, if it was still snowing, he’d go out and take a look.

  “Captain?”

  A vanishing shadow he identified only by voice. “Yeah, Cher?”

  “You wanted to talk about rejuggling the watch bill. I made up a draft, taking the XO out of the rotation. For now.”

  “Right. For now.”

  “Who do you want to replace him with?”

  “Put your name in there, Cheryl.”

  She hesitated, then must have nodded; a faint red light illuminated a clipboard. “That makes you and me in the command seat. Lieutenant Mills as port section TAO. For starboard section, I recommend Mr. Branscombe.”

  “I wish Noah had gotten to school.”

  “I agree, sir. Mr. Pardees strikes me as levelheaded. But he hasn’t had the training—as you said. Nor has Lt. Singhe. The only other alternative is Chief Slaughenhaupt. Our leading fire controlman. But we need him as combat systems officer of the watch.”

  “Okay, you’re right—make it Branscombe. How about our OODs?”

  Staurulakis proposed moving Mytsalo up to officer of the deck. Dan kept his voice low, in case the ensign was on the bridge with them. “Who else’ve we got? An ensign—I don’t know. Who’re our other JOODs?”

  “Sir, the officer of the deck under way doesn’t have the responsibilities he used to. A lot of that’s been absorbed by the TAO.”

  “I know that, yeah. But still—”

  “The only other possibility’s the chief quartermaster.”

  “Van Gogh?” Dan ping-ponged that around in his skull. It’d mollify the goat locker, seeing one of their own fleeted up. “I don’t have any problem with a chief standing OOD. Not the navigator, anyway. He’d certainly be on the stick as far as where we are relative to the basket.… Okay. Make it Van Gogh. But give him Mytsalo as JOOD, and tell Gene he’s gonna be next in line, soon’s he gets a little more seasoning.”

  “Good thinking, sir.” The clipboard light winked out.

  “What about this freakin’ snowfall, Cher? Will this degrade our beam numbers?”

  She explained the main problem was side-lobe visibility. “The snow adds more background clutter. We have better discrimination with the D, but especially in the high-clutter near-shore environment, along with all this sea return this wind’s kicking up … yeah, the snow can degrade us … especially for something like a low-flying C-802. But Chief Wenck thinks he can combine pulses to build what he calls a ‘synthetic wideband image’ out of one of the side lobes.”

  “You lost me, Cher.”

  “I mean, along with the main beam, you get side lobes—”

  “I know that. Any beam has side lobes. Like harmonics.”

  “Well, normally that’s wasted power. But he’s trying to tinker with the signal processing to turn that into an extra radar. To give us a better look along the coastline, to alert us to any cruise missile launch.”

  “That’s great, but I don’t want it tuned in such a way it degrades our ABM search function.”

  “Noted, sir.”

  “Have Donnie give me a call. I really don’t want to trade main mission for self-protection.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Will the cloud cover degrade satellite cuing?”

  “Obsidian’s more of a sideways-looker. And it’s an infrared sensor. I’m not sure how much snow or cloud would degrade that.”

  The STU-3 beeped. Dan flinched. The scarlet light above it was flashing so brightly it lit up this whole end of the pilothouse. The boatswain hurried over with masking tape. “Stand by, please, Ops,” Dan said, and got the phone to his ear. “Savo Island actual here.”

  “This is Jen Roald. Over.”

  “Commodore. Lenson here. Over.”

  “Dan. I just got this. You had another fire?”

  “More serious this time. In the aft VLS. Lost eight missiles to fire and flooding.” Staurulakis put her hand on the remote box; he nodded; she turned the speaker on.

  “That’s not good. But it wasn’t the Block 4s? Are the rest of your cells back up? Over.”

  “We’re running operability tests now. I’m hoping to get them back up shortly.”

  “Message on the way. Things are moving faster than anyone expected. The Army’s crashing through the border defenses. Also, and this may be of interest to you, there are mutterings of support from Iran.”

  “Meaning, their task group? Over.”

  “They’ve announced their first port call. Syria.”

  Dan shook his head. “Taken on board.”

  “Good. We also have a warning order from EuCom. We want your total attention focused on the western part of Al-Anbar Province. CentCom’s trying to interdict the launchers with air and ground teams, but you’re the backstop.”

  “Copy, over,” Dan said into the phone. “Map of Iraq,” he asided. The clipboard riffled. A moment later it was in his lap, with Staurulakis’s red penlight illuminating the area just east of the Jordanian border. From the topo, it looked like desert. Nearly unpopulated, and unroaded, too, from the absence of town or road symbology. He’d seen Saddam’s hulking Russian-supplied TELs—transporter, erector, launchers—with his own eyes, in a secret installation beneath Baghdad, during Signal Mirror. Obviously they weren’t in the capital anymore, and their eight all-terrain wheels, much taller than a man, meant they could go cross-country, hide in wadis or under overpasses. The intel said it took half an hour from parking to launch.

  “Commodore, that’s where we’ve been looking. But can anyone neck it down a little more? The more localization we have, the narrower we can set the gate functions, and the more confident I’d feel about early detection. Over.”
/>   “Stand by.”

  A short pause, during which Dan shifted in his chair. When she came back on, Roald read off six-figure geocoordinates. Dan jotted them on the map’s margin, glanced at Staurulakis; she nodded. He read them back, slowly, enunciating in the exaggerated radio speech learned so many years before. “Thuh-ree. Zee-ro. Nine-er.”

  “That’s correct. Not to limit your search to that area, but that’s what they’ve given us as what they’re calling the Western Complex. They operated from there during the Gulf War, too, and we had a hard time locating them then.

  “What’s it like weather-wise on your end? I’m seeing this cold-air surge hitting you soon.”

  He looked out the window but couldn’t see much in the darkness. “Correct, the front’s hitting now. We’re getting snow and six-foot seas.”

  “What’s your Israeli friend doing?”

  Dan craned down for the repeater but couldn’t quite reach it. The OOD came in from the darkness. He muttered, “Still out there, sir. Ten thousand one hundred yards.”

  “Any other surface contacts?”

  “No sir. Not for this whole watch.”

  “He’s still with us, Jen. Like a bur. Any progress on that link to the Patriot battery at Ben Gurion? It would really help.”

  “I knew there was something else. I think we’ve got you up at least on voice. I’ll get the freq to you. Watch your TAO chat.”

  Roald signed off. As Dan socketed the handset he was suddenly racked with nausea. Up here, in the dark, the motion seemed to be getting worse. He envisioned his bunk with the hopeless yearning of unrequited love. Deep … slow … breaths. The sickness backed off and he fumbled for the reclining knob on the seat. Dropped it as far as it would go, and leaned back with a sigh. Closed his eyes, and listened to the regular whip-whip of the wipers. Whip-whip. Whip-whip.…

  * * *

  “CAPTAIN? You awake?”

  “Uh … yeah.”

  The dream had been so real, so detailed, waking was like coming back from another life.

  He’d been much older. Gray. Bent. And, weirdly, he’d been some kind of pastor—Lutheran? It hadn’t been exactly clear. He’d been in a concentration camp, with barbed wire around it. Just before he’d been awakened, the guards had been herding a group of prisoners past. They were ragged, starved, in much worse shape than he. Though he was also an inmate, there was some deep difference between them. Some profound foreignness about their features, and the language they gabbled as their captors harried them along with bayoneted rifles.