by David Poyer
He’d stood at the gate, watching the others being shoved and cursed past to another part of the camp. He didn’t know why, but something irrevocable would happen to them there. And for some reason, though he too was a captive, he felt intensely guilty. He’d reached out to one woman. “I’m sorry,” he told her. Raised his arms, as if to bless them, and called, “And may God keep you all.” Dark eyes rose, but no one spoke. The guard growled some harsh phrase he did not understand, and someone’s hand gripped his arm—
“Who’s that?” he muttered, trying to retrieve who and where he really was.
“Chief Grissett, sir. This a bad time?”
“I don’t know. What time is it?”
“Local 2310, sir.”
He cleared his throat. He was on the the bridge. USS Savo Island. Still dark. Still snowing. And in fifty minutes, he’d have to relieve Cheryl Staurulakis in CIC. “What’ve you got, Doc?”
“Sir, if you’re trying to sleep—”
He snapped, “You woke me up. Now what the fuck d’you want?” Then winced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean that. Just tell me it’s not another death at least.”
“That’s all right, sir. No, not another. I’ll come back—”
“What is it?” he said, trying not to put I am being so immensely patient into his tone.
“Sir, it’s the XO.”
He hitched upright. “The exec? What about him?”
“I looked in on him. In his stateroom.”
“You … why?”
“Well, that’s sort of my job, sir.”
“And?”
“Well, he seems depressed.”
The ship leaned. Something rattled and clattered on the darkened bridge. He wanted to say, “And this is my problem because…?” But didn’t. “He’s in his stateroom because I put him there. Occasionally, Chief, we still have to discipline people in this organization. That goes for O-5s, too. Not just E-2s.”
“Yessir. I grok that. But he’s not responding to conversation.”
Dan frowned. “What d’you mean?”
“Monosyllabic replies. Not making eye contact.”
Dan remembered the wet uniform. Almarshadi’s repeated statement he’d been in the breaker. Of course, the guy usually didn’t meet your eye. That was normal—for him. But what had he been doing in the breaker? Just smoking and looking idly down into the passing sea?
Or wondering if he should sling a leg over the lifeline, and let it all go?
“Okay, Chief. Thanks for bringing me this. You think he could be suicidal?”
“Not crossing that off the list, sir.”
Dan hitched himself erect again. “Is he alone down there?”
“I have the duty corpsman posted in the passageway outside his room.”
“Think it’s that serious?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Right. Well, do you think he should be medicated?”
Grissett cleared his throat. “Well, sir, I’m not qualified to dispense psychoactive medication. I’ve got it, but there are a couple of complications. Sometimes it actually makes people more prone to … offing themselves. According to the literature. And another thing. If I dispense, I have to certify the member as unfit for duty. It’s a disqualifying condition. That should be certified by a qualified medical representative. If there isn’t an MD around to do that, in an emergency, I can dispense it. But I have to report it to the CO. And put it in the member’s record. There’s a waiver process, but … it’s complicated.”
“I’ll bet. You’re saying, if he goes on these meds, he’s unfit for duty?”
“Yessir.”
“And that’s it for his career.”
“That toy’s out of my playpen, sir.”
“Uh-huh. Do you think he needs it? Medication, I mean?”
“Right now, it’d be even money, in my humble opinion.”
Dan kicked back in the chair again. “Unfortunately, we just rebuggered the watch bill … put Chief Van Gogh on as OOD.… Okay, you brought me the issue, now give me a recommendation.”
“I’d say put him back on duty. Unless you’re absolutely convinced he’s, I don’t know, totally incompetent,” Grissett said. “But is that the case, sir? I see a lot of him for medical stuff and XO’s masts and so on. I guess what I’m asking, is he really that bad? If he isn’t, lighten his load. Don’t wall him up. Maybe I didn’t get the whole story, but the word going around is, he took a smoke break, and now he’s being hammered for it.”
Dan frowned. “Is that really what’s going around?”
“It’s the scuttlebutt. But like I say, you’re the CO.”
“Thanks for the reminder.” He sighed and dug at his eyes again. “Bo’s’un? Any hot coffee in the neighborhood?”
“Just came up, sir. Stand by one.”
“You say he’s awake now?”
Grissett said he believed so. Dan sighed again and selected the CO/XO channel on the Hydra. “XO, CO here.… Fahad?…—No answer.”
“Want me to go down, sir? Knock on the door, tell him you want him?”
Dan kneaded his forehead. He’d already given the guy a second chance. But if the chief corpsman was right … Almarshadi was emotionally labile, that much was true. But maybe this wasn’t the best time to take him out of the loop.
The Hydra beeped and he rapped out, “Skipper.”
“Wanted me, sir?”
It was him. Dan leaned over to check the radar repeater. Aside from Lahav, screwed into position like a rusted-in bolt, it was empty of surface contacts. “Yeah. Look, I need some relief up here. I’m gonna try Cher and me on and off in CIC. I need you to take over on the bridge. Pretty much full-time, I’m afraid, until we get out of Condition Three. Could you handle that for me?”
A short hesitation. Then “I can do that, sir.” But the voice was flat; Dan couldn’t read any emotion at all into it, either resentment or pleasure.
“Can you get up here like at midnight?”
“I’ll shower and be right up.”
“CO out.” He made sure it was off and muttered, “Okay, he’s gonna come, but he doesn’t sound happy about it.”
“I think that’s the right decision, though, sir.”
“How’s everything else going? How about that guy with the cough?”
“He’s doing okay, sir. Temp’s up slightly, but he’s resting. The question is, how are you doing?”
“Me?”
“Yessir, you. You’re not getting much sleep. Napping in a bridge chair—”
“Don’t worry about me.” Dan scowled. “I’m all right.”
“You need sleep, sir. Or a go-pill. Whenever you think you need one—”
“I don’t need a go-pill,” he gritted out. “Just don’t wake me up again to tell me I need sleep! All right?” He put his head back again and closed his eyes.
The boatswain brought the coffee over and stood for a moment, listening to his captain snore. Then, balancing the mug against a heavy roll, he felt his way across the bridge and poured it back into the carafe.
* * *
MIDNIGHT on the Sea of Good and Evil. Combat was icy cold. Nothing wrong with the AC anyway. Dan swirled another cup of joe. It tasted horrible, but that wasn’t the brew’s fault. He was just drinking too much, past the point where it seemed to have any effect. Grissett wanted him to think about a stimulant. Later, maybe—he wasn’t totally ruling it out—but not just yet.
He scrubbed his face with his palms, dug grit out of his eyes, tried to refocus. Savo and Lahav floated in an existential void. Far to the south, the GCCS showed the three pips of the Alborz group—the Iranian surface force—creeping northward. He should get Pittsburgh down there, to pick up trail and surveillance.
He blinked and squinted again. To the northwest, off Cyprus, a red callout had suddenly popped. As he stretched for the keyboard, data bloomed. Dave Branscombe, the comm officer, newly installed in the TAO chair, had leaned forward to bring it up.
“Distress aler
t, Captain.”
“I see it.” He squinted harder, shading his eyes; damn, were they going fuzzy too? The comm officer’s keyboard rattled. The display zoomed in; the coast of Cyprus enlarged.
“Source of data’s GMDSS,” the lieutenant murmured. The global maritime distress and safety system, a satellite-based international network. “Automatic alert. SS Agia Paraskevi. Cruise ferry. Greek flag. Sixteen thousand tons. Capacity six hundred passengers.” More keys clicked, and an image came up: white hull, swept-back, winged funnel with a smoke deflector. Row after row of portholes, tiered decks, lidos … “Thirty miles off Cape Gata, reporting loss of power and flooding.”
“What the hell’s a cruise ship doing out in March?”
“A cruise ferry. Guess they still run during the winter. I’ll try them on HF distress.”
“Hold on a second, Dave. Exactly how far away are they?”
“Wait one … about a hundred and twenty miles. Course to intercept, 340.”
“Concur,” said a petty officer behind the TAO.
Dan stared at the image. They could be there in four hours at flank speed. No, four and a half, considering the sea state. But he was pinned to his station.
Against that, every tradition of the sea dictated that any ship within radio range had to respond to a bona fide distress call.
“Think it’s for real?”
Dan twisted, to find Ammermann behind him. The civilian staffer had borrowed a foul-weather jacket somewhere. It had the Savo patch on the breast. He’d gotten himself a ship’s ball cap, too. The overall impression was the opposite of what he intended, if he was trying to fit in. “I don’t think they’d put out a false SOS,” Dan told him. “That’s not looked on with amusement. In fact, it’s a criminal offense.”
“GMDSS has experienced a lot of inadvertent Maydays,” the comm officer observed. “It’s a new system. The maintenance is complicated.”
Dan said, “We’re up on International Distress, right, Dave?”
“Always, sir.”
“Jack up whoever’s monitoring. See if they’ve heard anything.”
“You’re not thinking of leaving station, are you, Captain?”
“I’m not thinking of anything right now, Adam. Just trying to stay current on what’s going on around us.”
“We don’t want to get diverted from—”
“Absolutely not.”
The 21MC. “CIC, Radio: Faint distress call on 2182 kiloherz, international marine distress channel. Weak and garbled, but it seems to be from USS Paraskee. We’re in EMCON. Permission to reply?”
Dan blew out. “USS Paraskee” was a reasonable mistake for SS Paraskevi, given a Greek accent and a weak single-sideband transmission. Emission control on the radio circuits was pretty much pro forma, considering Savo was putting out five megawatts of microwaves. So he didn’t have much misgiving about answering the call.
On the other hand, once he did respond, he was legally obligated to render assistance. Of course, it wasn’t that clear-cut. But if it came to an investigation, it would definitely weaken his defense. He grimaced, not liking thinking in those terms, and leaned to the bitch box. “Radio, CO: Anybody else answering up on 2182?”
“No one, sir.”
“Not Lahav?” If Savo was in range, the Israeli frigate should be too.
“No sir.”
He swept the surface display again. Usually hundreds of contacts would be swarming the screen at this zoom level. But the east Med had really emptied out.
Ammermann found a folding chair somewhere and scraped it up beside him. “Could be just to pull you off station.”
“I don’t think so, Adam. And it’s not an inadvertent actuation, like Dave suggested. Not if they’re following it up with a voice call.” Command decision time. But even as he thought it, he’d already decided. “Give me International Distress,” he told Branscombe. The lieutenant reached across his lap and snapped the selector on Dan’s remote to 4.
Right, he knew that. God, he was getting stuporous.… He cleared his throat and unsocketed the worn gray handset. “SS Paraskevi, this is U.S. Navy warship Savo Island. Over.” Too late, he remembered he wasn’t supposed to use their real name in the clear. Oh well.
“Want me to do that, sir?” said Branscombe.
“Thanks, I got it. —Paraskevi, Paraskevi, this is Savo Island, Savo Island. Over.”
Branscombe laid a publication in front of him, open to a page that showed a military joint rescue coordination center in Cyprus and a naval base at Zygi. “They’re a lot closer than we are,” he murmured.
“Are they responding to the call, Dave?”
“I’ll get Radio on their coordination band and see.”
“If they’re not, we can pass data,” he said. Everyone in Radio and Branscombe too already knew that, but he had to say it. Actually, since the distress call was up on GMDSS, they had to have the basic data—lat, long, type of emergency—already on their screens. It took getting used to, this idea of information existing everywhere simultaneously.
“We can’t lose focus on our mission,” Ammermann murmured beside him.
“Goddamn it, we’re focused! I’ve got four people over there full-time! I don’t need you at my elbow telling me what to concentrate on.”
Startled faces turned. “Hey. Hey.” The staffer lifted his hands, palms out. “Take it easy! Didn’t mean to—”
Dan gripped the handrests of his chair. “Keep your advice to yourself until I ask you for it. Otherwise, you’re going to have to stay in your stateroom. All right?”
“You got it, Captain,” the staffer said. But added in a murmur, leaning in, “But I hope you don’t mind my saying, a lot of folks seem to be getting confined to their staterooms aboard this ship. Is this how the Navy does business? Anybody who has a different point of view gets put in the corner for a time-out?”
Dan took a deep breath, close to exploding. “If you mean Fahad Almarshadi, he’s on the bridge right now. Come to see me before you believe the scuttlebutt—what gets passed around word of mouth.”
“I know what scuttlebutt is, Captain. But you can’t both tell me to come to you, and restrict me to my cabin. I came out here to help. Offer access. But you’re not making it easy.” The staffer pushed dark hair off his forehead, looking both put-upon and satisfied. His round cheeks glowed. He waited, obviously expecting an apology.
Too bad. Dan lifted the handset and tried to reach the ferry again, but no answer came back. He resocketed it and turned back to the screen as a piercing buzzer racketed from the EW console. The speaker between the CO’s station and the TAO’s announced tersely, “Radar jamming from bearing zero seven zero. Correlates with Heart Ache. Designate Music One.”
The Heart Ache was a Russian high-power noise jammer, truck-mounted, that was supposed to counter surveillance and observation radars—such as the SPY-1—and jam airborne and nap-of-the-earth flight-control radars, among others. It was fairly effective in beam mode at short distances. But the fact that someone was trying to jam Savo was significant. They were dueling with microwaves, high over Israel and Jordan. A hum of voices from the consoles rose above the eternal rush of the air-conditioning, and the cicada chatter of keyboards sped up too.
Dan twisted in his chair, to see Amy Singhe’s hawk-nosed profile bent over, green-lit, peering past Terranova’s rounded babyish features. Beside him Branscombe was on the SPY-1 coordination circuit. “Is that giving her any problems, Amy?… Good … good.” The TAO signed off. “We’re shifting to an anti-jam waveform, and freq-hopping. The jammer’s trying to follow, but its response time’s lagging our shifts. Probably older-model equipment.”
“I know the brand. Syrian, you think?”
“The bearing would say so.”
The speaker said, “Second jamming emitter. Bearing zero six eight. Designate Music Two.”
Dan slapped his cheeks to wake up. Two jammers? This was getting serious. “Tell Bart we need both shafts and all engines back on t
he line for battle maneuvering. Check your illuminator coverage. Check all doctrine statements.”
Branscombe was acknowledging when the EW warning speaker stated, “Third emitter. Bearing zero six nine. Designate Music Three.”
“Something in the works?” said Ammermann, getting up from the chair and questing back and forth like an alerted bird dog. God, the guy was annoying. Dan made a pushing-off gesture. He concentrated on the rightmost screen, where a launch would show up. Mobile jammers were, of course, mobile. But still, they were fat targets for U.S. antiradiation missiles. So they usually didn’t start transmitting unless there was a good reason.
And he could think of only two reasons for a coordinated jamming attack on Savo Island’s main radar.
One: An enemy missile was about to launch.
Two: An attack was imminent on Savo herself.
Regardless, the duel was on. His own beam was more powerful, and far swifter, a rapier to the daggers of the truck-mounted shoreside jammers. But many daggers could defeat one rapier.
Again: It was a duel of light sabers. At each point the beams clashed, the SPY-1’s radar picture was distorted, even obliterated. If the threat originated within those jammed regions, she couldn’t see it. No matter how powerfully her own beam burned.
The 21MC. “CIC, Radio: Voice transmission from Cypriote joint rescue coordination center at Zygi. They don’t have a ship available to render assistance. M/V Paraskevi is foundering. Four hundred and eighteen souls. Lifeboats available, but seas are heavy. They request we render assistance, at the following position. Latitude thirty-four degrees, twelve minutes north. Longitude, thirty-two degrees, fifty-nine east…”
The voices faded. Heads lifted across the compartment, swung in his direction.
Data existed everywhere. Simultaneously. But decision, power … was that what he had? It didn’t feel like it. It felt as if he had no choice.
