The Circle

by David Poyer

  “Yessir.” He tore off the last of the wire and picked his way forward, climbing over men and shifting shoals of pubs, walking on the front panels of equipment as often as the deck.

  On the bridge, flashlights licked about. He grabbed Pettus in midleap and asked where the fire was. The third-class said, “Oh, we got it out already. Space heater tipped over into some of the charts. Ali, he hit it with an extinguisher. Hold on!”

  He screamed that last into his ear, and Dan grabbed the lee helm instinctively, jerking his head around to where the boatswain was staring.

  That was when the sea blindsided them, smashing not inward but downward on the now near-horizontal windows on the starboard side. The unbroken ones bulged inward under the impact of tons of water and ice. “Right hard rudder!” Norden was shouting. And Coffey was shouting back, “It’s all the way over! Won’t go no farther!”

  Dan clung to the helm, staring around. Ryan was pinned. Her rudder was over, her engines running all out, but the wind was lying on her, and every time she tried to rise, the sea smashed her back down. The waves hammered her like a street fighter stamping a fallen opponent to death. Another window bulged, then shattered, and the sea cascaded through, spraying him with icy water, broken Plexiglas, ice. He couldn’t smell smoke anymore. All the windows on the starboard side were smashed.

  Suddenly Packer was on the bridge. The captain shoved him aside and grabbed the brass handles of the engine-order telegraph. He racked them all the way back and all the way forward. “Rich! Give her left rudder!”

  “Left rudder, sir? But—”

  But Coffey was already bending. The wheel blurred as he spun it with one hand, clinging to the binnacle stand with the other. “Left hard, my rudder’s left hard.”

  “Not hard, Coffey, full.”

  “Ease to left full … rudder at left full!”

  Packer’s voice cut the darkness and confusion like a machete through tangled black yarn. “Norden, by God, when I give an order, I want it obeyed, not questioned!”

  “Yessir, I—”

  “Never mind now. You have the conn back. Bring her stern through and steady on three-five-zero. Use full speed, twist her fucking tail. We can’t hang around in these troughs.”

  Past him, Dan saw Norden, face linen white, eyes fixed. His mouth moved but nothing emerged. “D’you hear me?” Packer said sharply.

  “Yeah … yes, sir. This is Lieutenant Norden, I have the conn! Come left, left full rudder, steady three-five-zero!”

  But in that pause between Packer’s order and the rudder’s first leftward movement, the ship reeled and rose. Dan felt her lift as if to fly, like a sparrow trying to escape the bulletlike dive of a hawk. But even as she came up, he knew with numb, helpless terror that it wasn’t going to be enough.

  The wave hit them like a lead avalanche. The last windows blew inward. The black sea roared through the pilothouse, smashing men down as they struggled to stand on wet tile, sending hot fizzing sparks through radio remotes in the instant before they shorted and went dead. He hung from the EOT, numb with fear, unable to look away.

  Ryan didn’t come back.

  She hung there, leaning far over to port, and the wind keened around her like a thousand jets going over on afterburner. She didn’t move, and he realized suddenly how unnatural it was, how terrifying, when a ship didn’t move.

  Water rushed past him, icy black, pouring down through the shattered starboard windows, pouring down from above. For an eternity he knew he’d never come to the end of, he looked past his dangling, kicking boots through the windows to port. They were completely covered with the foamy darkness that had nothing beneath it but the bottom, two thousand fathoms down. If he let go, he’d drop straight down through them, straight into the sea.

  Then, so slowly it seemed to take forever, the old destroyer staggered a few degrees back. Then Chief Yardner was between him and It, slamming and dogging the heavy armored ports of the inner pilothouse. He heard Packer shouting over the roar of countless tons of falling water: “… Circle William, set it now, everything but the main intakes. Ed, you got any free surface in the bilges?”

  “Foot or so, sir, we’re pumping down as fast as we can, but we’re taking water somewhere.”

  “Shit. Okay, ballast now. Ballast her down. You hear me? She’s worse than I expected. That last roll, we were right on the edge.”

  Talliaferro’s voice acknowledged faintly, as if there wasn’t enough power to get his voice from Main Control up to the bridge.

  Ryan came back a little more, then suddenly lifted and swooped madly in a great crack-the-whip as the sea shoved her quarter up and around. Coffey slipped on the deck and went down, hard. The wheel spun unmanned for a moment before Dan grabbed it. He yanked it over to left full and then the black seaman was up again, saying, “I got it, sir,” shoving back in front of him.

  “Bridge, Main Control.”

  “Captain here. Go ahead, Ed.”

  “Sir, bad news. We’re already ballasted.”

  “What? Without orders? Christ, what—”

  “No, sir.” The voice came louder now. “I didn’t give orders to. But when the oil king went to crack the valves to the fire main, they were already open. The wing tanks are full. It must have been a while ago, too, ’cause they’re topped up, no free surface. I’m trying to find out how it happened now.”

  “Find out later. Right now, look for what else we can flood. To starboard, preferably, that’s windward up here. And keep those boilers on the line.”

  Packer cut off, interrupting the chief engineer in midacknowledgment. He stared around, and saw Dan.

  For a fraction of a second, so transient Dan wondered ever after whether it was just the shift of a flashlight, Packer smiled at him.

  Then he turned away. “Rich, you hear that?”

  “Uh, yes, sir. Sir, we’re steady on three-five-zero.”

  “Okay, that’s good for now. But I’ve got to go east, not north. Hear what I’m saying? I’ve got to go after this bastard or we’ll lose him. He’ll tiptoe away in that fucking ice, and we’ll never see him again. Till we hear that launch impulse, when the missiles come out of the tubes. And unless we’re sitting on top of him, right then, there won’t be a goddamn thing we can do about it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, we were ballasted, but we still went to sixty degrees on that roll. And she didn’t want to come back. We’re way more tender than we ought to be. We either got free surface somewhere, or a lot more ice than I thought. I can’t come right again till we get rid of it.… Mr. Sullivan!”

  Dan got up from his half seat against the helmet stowage. “Lenson, sir.”

  “Yeah, Lenson. Get your division up on deck. Muster them in the Dash hangar. Sledgehammers, axes, pry bars, every man bring a tool. Rich, tell Main Control to get steam hoses rigged to the oh-two level. We’ve got to get some of this ice off.”

  “Now, sir? It’s pitch-dark—”

  “Now, Rich, now. In half an hour, I’m coming right, and if we’re not ready, we’re going to roll, and if we don’t come back, that’s just tough titty. So get cracking! Dan, get your people moving; they won’t have long to work. Make sure they wear foul-weather gear and life jackets.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “And lines, lifelines. If anybody goes in the water, I won’t be able to come about for them. Make sure they understand that. Move, Lenson!”

  “Aye, sir,” he said without thinking, the way you responded at the Academy after a two-hour come-around, when your body screamed so loud your mind could no longer make itself heard. Then only something more kept you going. Something deeper. Discipline, and pride, and something that was neither of these, though it was part of them. Maybe it was only knowing it had to be done. Past Packer’s squinted eyes, he caught the cracked face of a clock. It had stopped at five minutes past midnight.

  15

  HE ran into Bloch on the ladder down. The boatswain had on a gray sweatshirt and a w
atch cap. His belly pressed out between the halves of his unlaced life jacket. He still hadn’t shaved. “You looking for me, sir?” he said.

  “Yeah, Chief. We got to get our boys up on deck.”

  “Up forward? Ikey’s getting a party together now. We—”

  “Forward? No, muster in the Dash hangar. We’ve got to get some of this ice off, fast.”

  “Well, we’re taking water up forward, sir. Somebody better be doing something about that right quick, too.”

  He stopped halfway across the mess decks, swaying as the steel around him reeled to the stern seas. “What are you talking about?”

  Bloch took off his cap and wiped his forehead. Dan caught a faint whiff of something, after-shave or liniment. “Talking about the handling room, sir, forward of chiefs’ quarters. The gunner thinks we cracked the shield on the mount, running into these seas all night.”

  Oh, Jesus, Dan thought, staring at the chief’s bald spot. The ship was coming apart around them. And worse than that, the crew. He hadn’t studied this at Annapolis. The tactics books took crews for granted, faceless and pliant material. Battles were duels between admirals, Scheer versus Jellicoe, Nagumo versus Spruance. But if you couldn’t depend on the men, how could you take a ship into battle? How could you even stay at sea? He bit his lip, pulling his mind back as Bloch said, “What you want us to tackle first?”

  “Did the gunner report the flooding? Yeah? Let’s get them on their feet, then see what we have to do when we get there.”

  First Division berthing was a swaying, stinking cave. Men had slid off the mattresses, the mattresses had slid off the bunks, and the lockers had burst open, littering the deck with uniforms, boots, hats, books, magazines, toothpaste, condoms, letters, cans of Brasso and Kiwi. The locked-down air was yellow with sweat and grease and vomit. The men sat or lay between the bays, heads in their hands. A few looked up as he and Bloch staggered in. “First Division,” Dan yelled. “Petty officers and seamen. Grab foul-weather gear and muster on the mess decks. Right now!”

  “What’s goin’ on, sir?” said Rambaugh, getting up. His pipe was still in his mouth. Dan wondered whether he slept with it that way.

  “Get your men on their feet. We’re going up on deck, oh-two and oh-three levels. We got to deice to save the ship.”

  “Williams! Gonzales! Coffey! Connolly! Jones! Lassard!” the second-class bawled out, turning to the compartment.

  “Coffey’s on watch, Baw.”

  “I hear ya. Rest of you mugs, on your feet! Rain gear, Mae Wests, line-handlin’ gloves!”

  Ohlmeyer came in through the forward hatch just then. The gunnery officer carried a battle lantern. His red hair was plastered down wet above a white face. “Cherry” Heering, the leading gunner’s mate, was with him. “Dan, can you give me some men?”

  “I don’t know, Barry. Captain wants my guys topside. What you got up there?”

  “The seal’s given way and the casing’s cracking around it. We’re taking water in the mount and handling room.”

  “How much? A lot?”

  “Couple hundred gallons so far,” said the gunner’s mate. His eyes showed white around the irises. “But more every minute, right in the electricals … few more seas and you can write this whole fuckin’ mount off.”

  “Can you stuff it from inside?”

  “We tried. Nothing to hold it there,” said Ohlmeyer. “No, we’ve got to do it from up on the fo’c’sle.”

  Bloch turned to the second-class, who stood waiting, his old eyes alert. “Popeye, take two guys and help him. Blankets and mattresses. Pick out the worn-out ones. I’ll go topside with Mr. Lenson and get things set up.”

  “’Kay, Chief.”

  “The rest of you meet us up on the Dash deck. Don’t think to fuck off down here. If this bitch turns turtle, you’ll never get out of this compartment. Where’s Ikey?”

  “Here he is, right behind,” said the first-class.

  The men began struggling to their feet and pulling on gear. Dan and Isaacs followed Bloch out. Aft through the mess decks, up two ladders, aft again past the frozen Asroc launcher.

  The hangar was dark and empty. From outside and below came the thunder of men running on thin metal, and a heavy, scraping clatter. It was a storeroom now, packed with the shadowy profiles of line spools, lashed-down boxes, athletic gear, the separate walled-in space of the torpedo magazine. The chief pointed to a crate of gloves and basketballs. “Ikey, grab two, three your Louisville Sluggers out of there. Them bats is the best thing to get ice off with.”

  The door to the weather decks resisted them. Dan remembered this was aft, windward now. He got his shoulder to it beside Bloch and body-slammed it open.

  The sea night was black as frozen tar. Frozen spray lashed them like a cat-o’-nine-tails. His foul-weather jacket was soaked instantly. It was icy, glacial, the cold of interstellar space sucked down into the sea and flung at them, riding a wind that flattened their ears and rippled their cheeks.

  Bloch was shouting something. “What?” Dan screamed.

  The chief laid his head alongside his. “Which side?”

  “We’re stern-on. It doesn’t matter.”

  “We may lose some men doing this, sir.”

  Dan blinked, ducking as frozen spray needled his eyes. “Get the lines ready,” he said, and turned forward, boondockers greasy under him, for the open area between the stacks.

  Someone had turned on the lights on the 02 and 03 levels. Red and white working floods on the mast and over the unrep stations, bringing the boat decks and davits, lifelines and stacks out of the black with a weird pink glow. Looking forward, he saw for the first time what Ryan had been carrying on her bent back.

  The ice on the decks was a foot thick, smooth and slick with new water, which slowed and congealed even as he watched into another suddenly translucent veneer. The lifelines were crusted six inches thick with white opaque ice, blown back and frozen like coconut Popsicle. The whaleboat was almost unidentifiable, a huge rounded mass solid with its davits and lowering tackle. Heat conduction had kept the stacks clear; they stood out black in contrast; but above them the top hamper, bracing and whips, the tripod mast and its trucks and lights and antennas was a thick frosted fretwork. Below it, the forward deckhouse, what he could see of it, was an ice palace. From beneath the translucent sheathing portholes and floodlights diffused a jewel-like luster, like an immense smoky diamond, plunging and leaning with drunken gravity as Ryan raised her stern to the overtaking surge.

  Out of nowhere, he remembered looking through the microscope when he was choosing Susan’s engagement diamond. The jeweler was having the little joke that Dan suspected he’d chuckled over to probably ten thousand other uncertain young men: “Cut, color, and clarity are just as important as carat weight. Yes, that is a lovely stone, not as big as you might afford, but most women know that size is not all that counts, if you know what I mean. You’ll never be unhappy with that stone.”

  And looking into that crystalline microcosm of self-sufficient light, where not an atom had changed its position in 10 million years, he’d understood with sudden joy that their love would be like that. Fixed, never-changing, till death parted them, and maybe not even then.

  Something black moved on the main deck. Men, dragging out long tubes. “Give them a hand; that’s the steam,” he shouted.

  First Division ran forward, slipping on the ice, and hauled up the steam lances and hoses. Bloch and Isaacs moved among them, shouting and pushing, pointing to the thickest accumulations. Gradually, the men picked spots to stand, braced themselves, and began swinging axes and bats. Three sailors ranged themselves on one of the lances, a six-foot steel pipe, and suddenly even the wind was blotted out by a roar like someone had lifted the safety valves of hell; a billowing, opaque cloud obliterated them, then was shredded by the wind and whipped away. Dan skidded over. The live steam blasted and melted at the same time. When the nozzlemen undercut properly, whole sheets of white armor fell from bul
kheads and stanchions, exploding into glistening curved chunks that kept, like castings, the shape of the steel to which they had clung.

  When he was sure it was going well, he told Bloch to keep at it. The chief nodded, panting, and swung his baseball bat again.

  Dan headed forward, pulling himself over the ice by the lifelines between the stacks. He’d only been topside for ten, fifteen minutes, and already his face felt as if it were made of cut glass. He wondered where Rich was. He was the only officer on deck. He didn’t expect the XO, but Rich ought to be up here, too. He passed the Asroc launcher. Stefanick and two others he didn’t know were jetting it with hand sprayers. He caught a sweet antifreeze whiff of chemical.

  He was almost to the bridge when the ship began to roll again. He crouched instantly, grabbing the lifeline, praying it wouldn’t be as bad as that last one. His heart pounded so hard he saw flashes behind his eyes. The old destroyer’s recovery was sluggish, an overweight sea creature tiring of the fight.

  When she staggered upright again, the terror released him, and he labored on the last few feet, panting out of a dry throat through dry lips. Below him, the wind was ripping the tops of the waves off and flinging them hundreds of yards downwind.

  He wasn’t looking forward to going down on the forecastle.

  When the door clamped shut behind him, he saw Packer hanging by one arm from the overhead rail, shouting at the helmsman. He sucked desperately at the close warm air and looked around for Norden. Didn’t see him. Then he did, bent over, face burrowed into the radar hood. He made his way toward him, but Packer saw him first. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sir, I came to—came to report. My men are at work on the oh-two level and oh-three level. I saw some Ops types turning to up on the signal bridge.”

  “Good. A gang’s getting steam hoses up to the—”

  “They’re back there, sir. The lances work pretty good—”

  Packer kept right on talking, ignoring his interruption. “They’ll help you with the ice, but Bloch knows the drill. I want him in overall charge.”