by David Poyer
He wheeled abruptly down the narrow corridor between the air consoles and the EW stacks. Weariness engraved the faces of those who manned them too. The chill air stank of sweat and ozone and bodies not washed often enough. The edges of the gray steel consoles were grimed black where wrists had rested for hour after hour, watch after watch, day after day. Savo wasn’t billeted for continuous Condition Three. Her truncated crew had come through manfully up to now. No, not “manfully”—that would have excluded too many. Staurulakis. Singhe. Terranova, and so many others, from the deckplate engineers to the bridge watchstanders. Who had all, in the words of that traditional Navy accolade, sailed close to the wind.
He was suddenly filled with emotion so overwhelming his eyes stung. He had to clear his throat and scrub a mistiness from his sight. He was proud to lead them. He only hoped he could do as well, when the crunch came.
Which could not be far away now. And the very fact that they were all exhausted, running on empty, meant he had to be more careful than ever. This was when commanders made stupid mistakes, or misjudged the situation. And people died.
“Sir, illuminating from fire-control radar. Bearing one two five.”
He wheeled back to the EW stack and cleared his throat again. “You mean two two five?” It must be Alborz. Or her smaller, faster consort, trying to nail them from a distance. Strange, though; tactically he’d have expected them to separate, angling for different bearings for a coordinated launch.
“No sir. One two five. K-band radar; correlates with Eilat-class corvette.” The petty officer darted him a glance. “It’s Lahav.”
He couldn’t help whispering “Crap.” What the hell was Gabi Marom doing? “Could they be illuminating Alborz? And we’re just in the way?”
“Don’t think so, sir. I might pick up a side lobe, but … no sir, he’s locked solid on us.”
Dan’s fists tightened. The Israeli corvette, which so far had seemed to be escorting him, riding shotgun, from the hints her captain had dropped, was now scanning him with its fire-control radars. Could the Israelis have intuited, guessed, his so-far barely formulated intent? And now were warning him? They were inside Savo’s Harpoon range. If they attacked, all he could do was hope to slap down their missiles with Sea Whiz, then take them under fire with his five-inch gun.
He didn’t like how this was developing. Coincidental or not, it was becoming all too much like the classic three-point attack, with threats developing from widely spaced bearings all around the horizon. Stretching even the most capable combat suite’s ability to detect, track, and respond.
* * *
HE was standing by the command desk, unable to decide even whether to sit, when a murmur ran through the space. Cheryl Staurulakis said something under her breath, and gripped his arm like a falcon alighting. He could actually feel her nails. It was so unlike her that he flinched. Glanced at her, then looked where she was staring.
Fahad Almarshadi stood just inside the doorway from aft, beside the dark gray rubberized curtain that partitioned off Sonar. The slight little XO was holding something down close to his leg. Dan frowned. What the hell was going on?
Slaughenhaupt, on the right of the command table, half turned his head. Murmured, “He’s got a gun.”
Ice ran down through Dan’s arms. He sucked a breath and straightened. The motion must have attracted the exec’s attention, because his face came around. The thin hawklike visage steadied on him.
Almarshadi took a step toward Dan. Another. Holding his right arm down close to his side. As he advanced, the petty officers scattered, jumping up, backing away, to the far end of CIC. Leaving a cleared space around the command table. Now what the little XO held was visible, pointed muzzle-down alongside his thigh.
Voilà, Dan thought. The mystery of the missing nine-millimeter was solved.
Almarshadi halted. He peered around, then back at Dan. Who’d frozen, bent forward at the waist, half-standing, palms flat on the desk. Beside him, apparently not having noticed anything amiss, Staurulakis was typing away, head down.
Dan cleared his throat. “XO. What’s going on? Thought you were on the bridge. This is a real-world contingency. I really need you up there.” A reminder of the guy’s duty; maybe that would snap him out of whatever this was.
“You should have cleared me.”
No, duty wasn’t going to work. Dan straightened. If the guy was going to shoot him, he’d take it standing. An image: his own pistol—locked in his weapons safe, in his at-sea cabin, as it so happened. Only about fifty yards away, but as inaccessible as the Andromeda galaxy. “Cleared you? Of what, Fahad? I’ve never charged you with anything.”
“They say you were tortured. In Desert Storm. Maybe that’s why. I don’t know.”
Dan lifted a hand, slowly, and smoothed his hair. Trying to get his breath, which was suddenly coming hard through his damaged airway. “I’m not following, Fahad. I had a bad experience. True. But I think I’ve treated you just as—”
“Shut up.” The exec didn’t look enraged, or berserk. Just more determined than usual. “This time, you listen to me. Cher! Stop typing.”
Staurulakis flexed her shoulders and glanced over. And only then looked surprised, as if realizing just now that an armed man was in the space. “Move away from him,” Almarshadi told her. “This is between the captain and me.”
Staurulakis braced herself on the arms of her chair but didn’t rise. “Go ahead,” Dan told her. “He’s right. This is between us.” To the exec he said, “How about if we take this out on the weather decks? The two of us? No reason to put anybody else at risk.”
“They’re all on your side.”
Dan cleared his throat, trying for a reasonable tone. “There are no sides here, Fahad.” A gross oversimplification, his brain commented dryly. But let it stand. He took a step forward, but halted as Almarshadi’s weapon rose. He presented his palms. “How about putting that away? Or at least telling me what you want?”
“What I want? It’s what I wanted. But it’s obvious that’s beyond what you felt like accommodating.” Almarshadi swallowed visibly; the muzzle, though, hardly wavered. “I’m the second-most-experienced officer aboard. I screened for command! But to you, I’m only here for the paperwork. Maintenance documentation. And to dump on when you’re pissed off. You don’t want me on station when we’re alongside. But you call away a shipwide search when you can’t find me.
“Face it, Captain Lenson. It isn’t Fahad Almarshadi you’ve got it in for. It’s anybody with an Arab name.”
Dan glanced aside, to see Amy Singhe crouched tense as a panther five yards away. Unfortunately, one of the ASW consoles, a hulking mass of metal six feet high, was between her and the man with the Beretta. He switched his gaze back quickly, but not without sending her a thought message: Don’t. He took a step left, and the muzzle followed him. The little open black hole described tiny circles, but never seemed to leave his center of mass.
Dan murmured again, “If that’s the case, you don’t have a problem with anybody else here. Let’s take it outside. Commander Staurulakis?”
She flinched. “Sir?”
“Take my seat.” He raised his voice so everyone in the space could hear. “TAO has tactical command. CO and XO are … uh … offline.” For once, naval terminology failed him. The only military term that seemed at all applicable to what was going on seemed to be “mutiny.” But it didn’t seem politic to throw that word at the sweating, desperate man who stood irresolute a few feet away.
Despite himself, Dan glanced at the vertical displays. And took another quick breath; the tracks of the incoming Iranian contacts had split. They were on diverging courses now, opening their bearings to Savo, though still closing the range. Like muggers in an alley, spreading out to confront a cop with one bullet left.
But he had to solve the more immediate problem. “Okay, XO. You’re in charge now. Where’re we going? Out on the weather decks?”
Almarshadi wavered. He glanced at the s
creens, then back at Dan. “They’re attacking?”
“Doesn’t it look like it? You did the TAO course at Newport.”
Almarshadi blinked and took another step back toward the door. He frowned at the displays. “Aren’t you going to preempt?”
“Not in the ROE, Fahad.”
“You’re a strange guy, Captain.”
“I just follow orders, Fahad.” Dan took another breath, but it seemed to be getting harder, as if his throat was closing up again, as it had after the firebombing in Naples. Could the guy be right? That he’d regarded him with suspicion from the first … because of his ancestry, and his name? He didn’t want to believe that. He didn’t think it was so. But maybe … maybe some of the blame was his.
Hell, he was the CO. All the blame was his. No matter what happened outside, on those wet slick decks, in the blackness of winter night. Actually, in the dark, Almarshadi would be vulnerable. And he had to foresee that. So he’d probably shoot when Dan’s back would be to him, going through the darken-ship curtains.
But at least no one else would be in the line of fire. The issue Berettas held fifteen rounds: enough to take out most of the men and women around them in CIC. Above all else, Dan had to get him away from them. He forced numb legs into reluctant motion. “Shall we?”
As he took a step forward, Almarshadi took one back. Still holding the gun on him. Still looking both irresolute and past caring.
The gray canvas curtain to Sonar parted. Something small and low to the deck barreled out. A crouched-over Chief Zotcher hit the XO in the midriff, arms extended, grappling for the weapon. The impetus carried them both bodily into the dark corner under the comm readout. The thump and clang as they collided with the scuttlebutt was overlaid by a pistol crack. Confined by the black-painted bulkheads, the low overhead, it was as close and loud as a lightning strike.
Zotcher reeled back and crashed into the outer door as it burst inward. The doorway was suddenly filled with bulky figures in orange float coats and body armor, shouting hoarse commands and pointing shotguns and short-barreled rifles. Savo’s intercept and boarding team. Scrambled, Dan had no doubt, by Staurulakis’s typed message over the ship’s LAN. The lead petty officer crouched low, sweeping the space with his weapon, then caught the pointing fingers and wheeled left.
Almarshadi had the pistol free again, but he wasn’t aiming it at anyone. He was just holding it down, along his thigh. Frowning. Looking puzzled. “Don’t shoot him!” Dan shouted. “Fahad! Put the gun down!”
“No, there’s no point in that,” Almarshadi said.
“Put it down, Fahad. Please.”
“I’m sorry, Chief,” the exec said to Zotcher, who’d slumped to the deckplates and was holding his side, face shocked white. The executive officer lifted his head, and his voice. Looked them all over. “I could shoot somebody else,” he said. “But what good would it do? Just confirm what you already think. That Arabs kill.”
“Give us the pistol, Fahad,” Dan pleaded. “Fahad. Please.”
“May God have mercy on me,” Almarshadi said. He fingered the sidearm for a moment, groping at the neck of his coveralls with his other hand, while the boarding team kept their carbines on him. Then brought the gun up again, slowly, his gaze locked for once with absolute confidence on Dan’s, and pressed it to the side of his own head.
* * *
CHIEF Zotcher had taken a bullet in the side. Grissett straightened from the Stokes litter where the sonarman lay. “It missed his kidney, I think. If I can stop the bleeding, he might not be in danger.”
Dan was on one knee by the litter. “Can we get him down to sick bay? Is it safe to move him?”
The chief corpsman said it probably was. Dan squeezed Zotcher’s hand. Blinked past him to the covered form in the corner. A green nylon bag lay unfolded and unzipped beside it, freshly stripped of plastic packaging; the air smelled of blood and talcum and burnt powder. The pistol lay a few feet away. The chief master-at-arms was bagging it with gloved hands. He glanced up. “Serial matches the one missing from the quarterdeck. Sir.”
“All right. —Thanks, Doc.” Dan wanted to stay, but couldn’t. He laid Zotcher’s hand back on his chest, and patted his shoulder. Met his squinted gaze. “Nice work, Chief. You done good.”
A grimace, probably meant as a smile. “Not totally a pain in the ass … right, Skipper?”
“Not totally. I’ll see if I can get you something for this.” Dan patted him again, shaking his head, and jerked himself to his feet.
Took two steps, and knelt by the body. Almarshadi lay with his head turned away, which was just as well. Blood and brain matter spattered the cables that ran up the matte black of the bulkhead. The XO’s left hand still gripped the cross that had hung from around his neck. Dan put his hand on the motionless chest. I never, he thought. I didn’t … His inner voice faded back into the blank hissing rush of fatigue.
He’d mishandled the XO. That was the bottom line. Misread whatever subtext had dictated his bewildering touchiness, his strange mixture of prickliness and eagerness to please.
Just another failure in a long string of them.
“Can I get a shot, sir?” Grissett said, beside him. Holding a camera. “Then we’d better bag him, and get this cleaned up.”
“Treat him with respect, Doc.”
“Always, sir. Want the pistol back in inventory?”
“I imagine it’s evidence, right? The NCIS’s gonna want it?”
“Could be. Yeah.”
“Then no. Bag it and lock it up.”
He pushed the guilt and sadness away and rose, knees protesting after so long on the hard steel.
* * *
HE wiped both palms across his face, trying to reorient as Staurulakis, who’d gone back to her seat as soon as the boarding team had broken in, briefed him in spare sentences. In the minutes the confrontation with Almarshadi had eaten, the Iranian warships had separated even farther. They were now ten degrees apart in bearing, with their courses still diverging.
“Does that missile boat have to be bow on to us to launch, Cher?”
“Not that class, sir. Not with that missile.”
“And Lahav—”
“Bearing zero seven five, range fifteen thousand. Course, zero three zero, speed twenty. Opening to the northeast.”
A heavy figure in civvies stood at his elbow. “Tell Bart we want full power available,” he told Cheryl. “Let’s go to general quarters.” He nodded absently to Ammermann, his mind caroming around several tracks at once as the 1MC crackled, hissed, and began to bong in that sustained note that always stilled his heart when he heard it. Nothing much would change in CIC; they were already at full battle manning. But the rest of the ship would be dogging doors and hatches, donning helmets and flash gear, manning damage-control teams, weapons, launchers, magazines.
Getting ready for the ultimate test.
Lahav was opening, but she was still between Savo and the Syrian radars, the truck-mounted launchers. The Israeli Corvette had ceased illuminating them during the drama with the exec. Which he did not have time to think about any more just now … “Pittsburgh?”
Cheryl flinched and rattled the keyboard. “Almost forgot about them … They’re out of torpedo range, but locked on to the missile boat with sub Harpoon.”
“Okay, that leaves Alborz for us—”
“Can I get a word in?” said the staffer.
Dan forced his tone halfway toward courtesy. For a second he couldn’t remember what he’d sent him to do. Then did, and coughed into a fist. “Uh, Adam. Any luck on what I asked you to look into? Intentions of the Iranians? Whether the West Wing can get Israel to hold off striking back?”
“I talked to the national security adviser. Dr. Szerenci said you know each other.”
“Uh-huh. He was my professor at George Washington. A long time ago, when we … anyway, a long time ago.”
“Well, he couldn’t give me anything on the Iranians. We don’t have a window there, a
pparently. There are a lot of different factions, too. The regular navy. The Revolutionary Guards. Not a unitary actor. If you know what I’m talking about—”
“Don’t talk down to me, Adam. Yes, I know unitary-actor theory.”
“Sorry … Captain.” The staffer shook his head like a boxer shrugging off a hard punch. “He said he’d call Sharon. A personal call—apparently he can do that if it’s important enough.”
“That’s all? He’s going to call?”
Ammermann shrugged. Dan stared for a moment longer, then sighed. He’d tried. More and more, it was looking like that was all he was going to be able to do. Just try … but fall further and further behind rapidly cascading events.
“That missile boat’s a Thondar-class,” Staurulakis murmured. “Could be a Guards unit. Like he says.”
“It’s getting a little late to speculate on who exactly’s who,” Dan told her. “These guys are in an attack profile. The only question is at what point we hit them. Range?”
“Thirty-four thousand yards.”
Outside the warning range from his ROE, but hostile maneuvering trumped range. “Warn them,” Dan snapped. “Break off, or I will open fire.”
“You said you can’t shoot first,” Ammermann said.
“I sure as hell can in this situation,” Dan told him. “And I will, but I don’t really have time to explain it.”
Staurulakis called something from the desk and a man Dan didn’t recognize came toward him. Tall, mustached, swarthy, in his mid-thirties, he inclined a long, closely shaven skull with grave politeness.
“Who’s this, Commander?”
“This is SK3 Kaghazchi, Captain. A native Iranian speaker.”
The man’s large eyes were burning, unsettling. Where had this guy been until now? Dan didn’t remember seeing him about the ship. SK meant storekeeper, one of Hermelinda’s people. He probably worked in some tiny office. It did seem that whatever language you needed, someone in your crew could be found to speak it. Still, he thought he’d met everyone aboard. “Excellent. Okay, Kag … Kaghazchi, right? Where are you from, Petty Officer?”
