by David Poyer
So why not give them a day off—rope-yarn Sunday, in sea lingo? They’d still stand watch, but they’d get a few more hours of sack time. He’d have said yes on the spot, but he knew Bryce would veto it. He’d heard the XO’s philosophy before: “There are no Sundays at sea.”
I should have just said no, he thought bitterly. Now that he’d waffled, the men would discuss it, hope for it, and the inevitable disappointment would embitter them even more. Another too-long-delayed understanding of the situation.
He was still cursing himself when Bloch said, “Got anything more for me, sir?”
“Well, you know what we have to get done, Chief. Just keep them at it,” he said, frowning at a new scar on the toe of his shoe.
“That’s what I told the POs before we formed up.”
“Well, carry on.”
“Aye, sir.”
He’d tried, the day after dumping the tools in his rack, to apologize to Bloch. The older man had said he understood, it wasn’t easy coming aboard a ship like this fresh out of school. The words were right. But now there was a barrier, a reserve, that hadn’t been there at first. And he’d caught looks from the other chiefs. I should have apologized in front of them, he thought. John Paul Jones’s advice, memorized by every midshipman, was to commend in public and reprimand in private. To that, Dan thought, add apologize in public, too.
Couldn’t he do anything right?
He came back from his thoughts to find himself alone in the passageway. He closed the notebook and climbed heavily toward the weather deck. He needed fresh air before his breakfast came out his ears.
Ryan had been on station since the day before. Packer had set them steaming in a rectangle thirty miles long and three wide, oriented with the long axis in the direction of the prevailing sea. At five knots, they spent almost seven hours beating upwind, taking the waves, which had increased gradually in size and fury, on the bow. The crosswind leg was angled ten degrees off the wind, making the rectangle a trapezoid.
That was the leg he dreaded. The seas came in on the beam and the old destroyer’s rolls were brutal. During the night one rogue swell had boarded, tearing a davit from a rust-rotted socket at frame 55 and streaming a fire hose the length of the ship, the flailing nozzle smashing two portholes. He’d seen the clinometer swing to forty-five degrees, which meant it was as easy to walk on the bulkhead as on the deck. The instrument measured to seventy, but Evlin told him that if it ever hit sixty, there’d be nobody to read it but the fish; they’d be capsized and sinking.
The downwind leg was easiest, but with the wind astern, it was over in four or five hours. Packer had tried slowing, but below four knots the twin rudders lost bite in following seas. Then another crosswind, and finally around into the swell again, an endless battering and pitching that nonetheless was almost welcome, for when it came to an end, they’d have to sweat out those three crosswind miles once more.
Emerging onto the weather decks, he saw they were on that upwind leg now. The fantail was awash and shrouds of spray blew over it, trailing from the edge of the Dash deck like bridal veils. He caught at his cover just in time, then stuffed it into his jacket, making a lump. His hair and neck were soaked in a moment, the icy cold familiar now.
It looked as if half the crew was on the fantail. He joined them, studying the gray whalelike hulk that loomed, dripping spray, above the winch assembly. Norden, Rambaugh, Reed, all the sonarmen; a technician from Naval Sea Systems Command, installed aboard with the gear; the rest of the men from First Division. Bryce and the captain stood watching from the partial shelter of the deckhouse.
As experts on hoisting gear, or the closest thing the ship had, the boatswain’s mates had been drafted into the VDS detail. The antisubmarine warfare officer was leaning over the lifeline, staring down. As Dan came up, he was shouting, “Raising or lowering?” to Isaacs. The boatswain was standing off to the side, a cabled box cradled in his gloved hands.
“Lowerin’, sir. Bitch is hung up again.”
Dan leaned to see what was wrong. The AN/SQS-35 towed body, the “fish,” was ten feet long and four wide, and looked heavy as sin. The sonar was somewhere inside. It was raised and lowered on a complex arrangement of steel scissors driven by a hydraulic motor. Below hoisting gear and fish was an immense reel. The cable on it was fitted with thousands of tiny vanes, each independently swiveled, to streamline it and keep it from vibrating as it was dragged through the water. Cummings had said at breakfast it cost five hundred bucks a yard. The whole arrangement looked like a disaster from a maintenance point of view. Already he could see rust weeping from the bearings.
He moved back beside Norden. The weapons officer stood with folded arms, scowling up at a huge white bird that dipped over the passing crests. It seemed to be keeping station on Ryan. His cheeks were stubbled with blond beard and his eyes were red and puffy.
“Rich?”
“What?”
“The guys in First Div are asking for a rope-yarn Sunday. I’d like to give it to them. We can’t do much topside in this weather—”
“You know the XO’s got to authorize that. Besides, I want them on deck. We might need them fast if something else carries away.”
Dan pressed his lips together, tasting bitter sea. The wind slapped him, and he shivered and glanced around. Bloch had come up behind them.
“Try it now,” Reed shouted, leaning over the stern. Isaacs twisted a switch on the box. The motor whined. The steel levers edged down a few inches, but the fish stayed stubbornly aloft, swaying ponderously as the stern slammed into a trough.
“Is it moving?”
“Nossir.”
“Back it up, then forward,” suggested the technician. Isaacs twisted the switch. The motor groaned, levers jerked, but the fish didn’t move, just shuddered a little each time Ryan rolled, its round belly and little fins swaying above the boil of gray-green sea.
Then Bloch was thrusting his way through the men at the rail. “Cut that fuckin’ motor off a minute, Ikey,” he said, handing Greenwald his cap. He looked down at the lowering gear, shielding his eyes from spray and wind, then threw a leg over the lifeline. Reed grabbed his arm. “Chief—”
Bloch shrugged it off and disappeared below the turn of the deck. His voice came up, faint against the shriek of the wind and the creak of the suspended mass. “Gimme a line, here, Popeye.”
Leaning down, Dan saw that Bloch had found footing on the lower arm of the assembly and was searching with his boots for the next step. Below him water foamed from the screws, swirling in violent dark green eddies laced with cream. For the first time he noticed ice, brownish chunks the size of dinner plates, rocking and spinning in the miniature maelstroms.
The chief’s bare hands were white against gray-painted steel. He found the next foothold and swung himself down clumsily, hugging his stomach into the hull, and then reached to his belt. His hand came away with the combination knife and spike the boatswain’s mates carried. He leaned into the drum, and a hollow clanging came up to the men on deck.
“Line, Chief!” shouted Rambaugh. When he tossed it, the wind caught the end and whipped it out and down into the wake. Dan thought at first he’d thrown it too far, but then he pulled it up. Soaked, heavy, it was less the plaything of the breeze. Still its knotted end whipped across Bloch’s ass, making the chief flinch. He poked his head out of the drum.
“Line, Chief.”
“Okay. Okay. Slack off.”
Holding on with one hand, the seething sea surging to the soles of his boots, Bloch caught the line and pulled it round his paunch. His hand performed a quick flip and twist and Dan saw a bowline.
“Tie it off, Popeye,” said Norden.
“Naw, sir. Break his back if he slips. I’ll just take a turn on this cleat.”
Bloch’s bald head disappeared again. More clanging.
Finally he backed out. He swung back against the line. “Gimme a hand up.”
Dan helped pull him back over the lifeline. The bo
atswain’s face was red. He tugged his jacket down over where his shirttails had escaped. “Awright, hit it now, Ikey.”
This time when the motor hummed, the swivel arms jerked and began to lower. The fish swayed, approached the water, plunged under as the stern sank. The tech showed his fist to Isaacs. The hum stopped. The fantail heaved up under their feet, water running forward past their boots, and the gray-black smoothness surged up, too, halfway back into the light. Water poured in through flood holes. The tech pointed downward, and Isaacs twisted the switch again.
Driven under by the arms, the fish submerged, air foaming and bubbling from its tail.
“Release it,” said Reed. Isaacs clicked over a toggle. A clank came from below them. The cable drum jerked, shedding a crackling cascade of thin, transparent ice, and began to rotate. The bubbles disappeared. The finned cable reeled steadily down, disappearing into the murky, turbulent water.
Bloch threw the coiled line to Greenwald and took back his hat. “Toggle pin was fouled on the drum frame. Looks like it was put in backward. I’d say redesign it, make it yardbird-proof.”
“Thanks, Chief,” said the technician.
Bloch left, yelling at the seamen to come with him. The officers were left staring into the sea. “How’re the sonar readings going?” Dan asked the ASW officer.
“Okay. We’ve been getting background readings, mostly. Getting the sonarmen used to local conditions. Our playmate’s supposed to show up today.”
“Great. Let’s get this over with.”
“You aren’t any more eager than I am,” said Reed.
* * *
HE finished the last bite of a veal cutlet (an act of faith; he was still sick) and speared the last fry with his fork. It had been a long afternoon. Along with inventorying the forward gear locker, going over the Eldridge mooring method, and struggling with thirty overdue maintenance chits, he’d tried to get a first cut on Isaacs’s fitness report. Now it would be a long evening, starting with the second dogwatch.
When he got to the bridge, it was dark. “Any change?” he asked Silver.
“Wind’s up, barometer’s down. Twenty-nine point five and dropping. Quartermaster says there’s a major low en route. Number-one generator’s on the line. Fish is streamed at two hundred feet. You got a turn coming up at time twenty.”
He stepped behind the helmsman, checked the red glow of the gyrocompass, heading indicator, magnetic compass. Port pump and port synchro were on the line. “We picked up the sub yet?”
“That should happen during your trick.”
“What do we do then?”
“Whatever Sonar tells us. Reed’s down there; he’ll give us our orders over the twenty-nine MC.”
“Uh—what’s that?”
“The Sonar Control speaker. The intercom to the left of the XO’s chair.”
“Who’s got the conn?”
“I do. Hold on a sec while I give it to Al. Here, here’s the binocs.”
He took his usual position beside the radar. Silver reported to Norden, who had his head down with Evlin over the chart table. Now that Reed was busy, the two lieutenants were standing port and starboard, six hours on, six off.
Silver came back. “He says to give it to you.”
“To me? Great.” Dan grinned; this would be the first time he had control of the ship. “I relieve you.”
They exchanged salutes. “This is Mr. Silver,” shouted the jaygee. “Mr. Evlin has the deck; Mister Lenson has the conn.”
The seamen on the bridge acknowledged. Dan turned, to find Coffey’s impassive face, lit red from below, regarding him across the helm console. “How you hanging tonight, Clyde?” Dan asked him.
“No ‘Clydes’ around here. Answer to Ali, or Seaman Coffey. When I answers at all.”
Dan grinned. “How you hanging tonight, Ali?”
“Loose … sir.” Coffey grinned back, a little, warily.
“How’s she handling?”
“Kind of rough in the pitches. I can hold it within about five degrees.”
“Good work. Keep it up. Boatswain’s mate!”
“Sir,” piped up Pettus.
“We’ll be starting the crosswind leg in twelve minutes. Make sure everything on the bridge is secured.”
“Aye, sir.”
Fingering the binoculars, Dan glanced around the bridge. Norden had left, but Evlin still had his head down over the chart. Through the windows, the sky, which had been solid with low nimbostratus during the short daylight, was solid dark. The wipers whined and clacked at blowing spray. He watched the bow rise to a dimly visible sea. Twenty feet, he estimated, trough to crest.
He turned and put the red spot of his flash on the wind gauge across the pilothouse. Forty knots. What had Silver said about a low?
“Got it under control?” asked Evlin.
“Yessir.”
“When you turn, remember you’ve got the fish astern.”
“Right.”
He fidgeted through the seconds. At nineteen after by the bulkhead chronometer, he crossed to the port side and searched the sea in that direction carefully. They were alone out here, but looking before a turn was a good habit to cultivate.
How much rudder? The turn would require a lot, since their speed was low. But too much could kink the cable, or cause a whipping action on the fish, hundreds of feet down. Forty knots of wind would have a sail effect once the bow started to swing. He peered into the phosphorescent dark, waiting for a long trough.
“Left twenty degrees rudder, steady course three-five-zero.”
“Left twenty, steady three-five-zero, aye. My rudder is left twenty, coming to three-five-zero.”
“Very well.” He waited, but Evlin said nothing. The helm hummed. The ship began to turn, slowly at first, then with gathering speed. A sea gathered itself a hundred yards ahead. Zero-three-zero … zero-two-zero … the swing of the compass accelerated.
“Meet her.”
“Meet her, aye.” Coffey spun the wheel back, checking her swing. The bow rose to the sea, but not fast enough. It crashed over the anchor chain, bludgeoning itself apart into glowing foam against wildcats, chocks, life rails, stoppers. Under the liquid water, ice gleamed faintly in the penumbra of the masthead light.
“Steady course three-five-zero.”
Three miles on this course, at five knots. They’d steadied up at twenty-two after. That would be thirty-six minutes to the next turn, or 1658. The downwind course would be two-four-zero. “Watch the seas, now, Coffey. When you see one coming, give her about ten degrees right rudder.”
“No problem, sir.”
Beam on the swells looked immense. He’d read they came in patterns, but he couldn’t make out any. There was also something new: a long cross swell under the wind-driven seas. He was peering out, trying to worm meaning from the boiling darkness, when the intercom said, “Bridge, Sonar.”
He pressed the key. “Bridge here.”
“This is Lieutenant Reed. Did we just turn?”
He could hear eerie whines and chimes in the background while the ASW officer was speaking. “Affirmative. We’re on three-five-zero now.”
“Mr. Lenson, the sonarmen would appreciate warning before a turn. Pargo’s moving into the second convergence zone band. We had a primary tonal, but you just pulled us off it.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
The intercom clicked twice and went dead. He risked a quick glance around the pilothouse. It was snug and stuffy-hot. Faint lights showed him instrument faces. A seaman sniffled behind him, just in from his turn as lookout. Evlin was reading message traffic now, apparently oblivious to what was going on.
He let himself sag against the repeater. He wished he was down in Sonar; what Reed was doing sounded interesting. More interesting than supervising spray-painting. That thought led him again to what had happened on the fantail. He wanted badly to talk to somebody about it. It was hard to keep your mind off coming so close to death.
But he couldn’t. P
acker had made that plain. So instead, he said to Evlin, “How long you been aboard Ryan, sir?”
“Almost two years.”
“What did you do before that?”
The operations officer’s glasses caught the flicker of the radar as he glanced up. “Usual stuff. Communications officer on an ammo ship, then put in for destroyers and got a Mitscher-class. A tour on Bronstein, department-head school—and here I am.”
“Two years—you’re coming up on the end of your tour. What’s next?”
Evlin hung up the clipboard. “Ryan’s my last ship, Dan.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve got my letter in. I’m leaving the Navy January twentieth.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.” The knowledge suddenly changed his perception of Evlin. He looked again, imagining more than seeing the clear, alert face, rimless glasses, lock of brown hair. Cold-looking at first, precise, demanding, Evlin grew on you. “What are you gonna do?”
“Teach.”
“That sounds like it’d suit you. What are you going to teach?”
“Well, that depends. Deanne and I are going to go out to California and find out.”
“You’re going all the way to California to find out what you’re going to teach?”
Evlin chuckled and dug into his pocket. For a moment Dan thought he was going to show him his wife’s picture. But when the flashlight came on, the face in the photo was gray-bearded, the eyes piercing yet good-humored. Dan looked up, puzzled.
“The Master.”
“Wait a minute.”
Evlin laughed again and put the photograph away. “Ever heard of—” He said something in a foreign language, too rapid to catch.
“Is it a place?”
“That’s his name. Deanne met him in San Diego. I was upset over it at first. That some guru had something I couldn’t give her. Then I got to know him. Once I’m out, we’ll study at the Consciousness Center for a while. Then we’ll be teachers—or whatever else he asks us to do.”
Dan checked the time. A while yet till the next turn. But—wait a minute! Evlin was no ordinary officer, but this was way out of bounds. “What kind of things does this—guru—have that you and your wife need?”
