by David Poyer
He fumbled the blanket back over him, checked the line that crossed his legs and chest, lashing him in against the rolls. Then he lay back, listening to the accustomed complaint of old steel, the rush of the sea, the steady keening howl of wind. Was it his imagination, or was it increasing again?
Then he remembered, all at once. His fingers found his head, and explored the back of it tentatively. It felt like wet cardboard.
Gradually he became aware of fatigue and chills that made his legs tremble. His clothes were damp, but he wasn’t up to taking them off. He stared at the photograph, his eyes burning. Susan, Betts, I love you.… He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. Four days, five? Bridge watch, CIC, endless motion, reek of barf, acid gut from endless cups of reboiled Navy coffee. When he retched now, that was all that came up. If he lived through this, he’d never drink coffee again. Under his sodden, dirty clothes his legs and arms ached with bruises.
What had happened, what had happened to his men?…
He was seized with a sudden uncontrollable rage at whoever had sent them here with such insane orders. Sent an obsolete ship, ready for the scrap heap, out chasing storms in the Arctic winter! In some plush, heated office, some gold-braided bureaucrat had shrugged and lifted a cheek to fart and staked them out like a rabbit in a dog pound. Then when it came time to stop a nuke, expected them to play goalie.… Lassard was right. They were idiots to acquiesce in this. Fools to carry out such orders. He lay under the humming light and trembled with fatigue and anger.
And they would stay out here.…
For how long? Till the last boiler gave out, or the rudder jammed, and Ryan toppled past the razor limit of stability? Till the submarines en route, hearing the tearing steel of a breaking ship, surfaced to search the roaring waste for corpses still clinging to life jackets with frozen arms?
Thinking of that, he swung his arm up. The hands stood vertical. 2400.
Midnight: the estimated time of arrival of the U.S. and British attack boats. And by inference, the Soviet subs would not be far behind.
He lay whispering mad curses till his rage failed and faded into darkness as the ship rumbled and groaned around him. His last thought was, Would they be at war when he awoke?
And his last clear image was of Packer, his gray face set relentlessly forward against the oncoming sea.
He knew then that if they were, Ryan would fire, and receive, the first deadly exchange.
IV
THE INCIDENT
19
Latitude 64°–33′ North, Longitude 07°–53′ West: 120 Miles North of the Faeroe Islands
“MR. Lenson.”
“G’way,” he muttered.
But the voice had penetrated into the country beneath the ice, a subterranean forest carpeted by gray-green moss that heaved and bucked under his feet. He’d been lost in it for days. Again and again, he’d had to choose between forks in the path, with no hint of which was right. At the end of some were monsters, but his .45 wasn’t there when he reached for it. Once only the unexpected discovery that he could fly saved him. At first Susan had been beside him, and a child he didn’t recognize. Then he was alone. Now at last he approached the central treasure. It lay across a black river on which floated a black swan. He rolled away toward the bulkhead, burrowing back into the dream.
He was wading into the black water when a hand shook a self he did not know existed, undeniably him but existing in a different reality.… He sat up suddenly and blinked down over the bunk edge into a hacked-off-looking face. “What you want, Pettus?”
“Wake-up call, sir.”
He checked his watch, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. The hands didn’t make sense. Evening or morning? Then in a rush, he remembered the submarine, the eyes of the Soviet captain, the shot.… He touched his head gingerly. How had he gotten back to Ryan?
“It’s oh-seven hundred. You up? I got to get back to the bridge. They want you up there.”
“You mean in CIC—”
“We’re not in Condition Three anymore. There’s been some changes. Lieutenant Evlin swapped the bill around during the night to give the regular guys some sleep.”
Changes, he thought. He could feel that Ryan was riding differently. She was rising and falling to quartering seas, but compared to the creative violence of the last week, it was almost gentle. “Thanks,” he said, and tried to roll out before he remembered the safety line. “Tell them I’ll be up in fifteen.”
After he washed his face, surprised that fresh water came from the tap, he stuck his head into the wardroom. It had been swept, the chairs were upright, and a tray of sticky buns was lashed down on the table with shock cords. The light was on on the coffee warmer. He grabbed buns in a napkin and found a Styrofoam cup. He alternated quick hungry bites with gulps of scalding brew on the way up to the bridge.
The sky was inky and the pilothouse was dark except for one bulb forward where three men were replacing the windows. The foghorn droned as he groped his way to the single officer on watch. He was surprised to recognize Evlin. Where was the JOD? Where was the captain? The ops officer returned his “Good morning” wearily.
“You don’t sound good, Al.”
“I’m all right. Look, I told Pettus I didn’t want you if you don’t feel up to it. A crack on the head, that can have delayed effects—”
“I think I’m okay. But I don’t know how I got here.”
“Where, on the ship? Rambaugh brought you back.”
“Oh. Well, I think I’m fit for duty, sir. I needed the sleep more than anything.”
“Okay, here’s what let’s do: Rich’ll be up in a few minutes to relieve me. I’ll give you the gouge now and turn over the conn. It’s not the regular watch rotation, but we should be back on that by tonight.”
He wondered briefly about Packer’s order to Evlin to lay below. What was the ops officer’s status? But he didn’t want to ask. So he just said, “Roger, sir.”
“We’re on one-eight-five, speed fifteen—”
“One-eight-five?”
“Here’s the situation. After Olferiev … shot himself, the captain reported it and asked for instructions. CINCLANTFLT told him to turn the sub over to the AGI and to render assistance if necessary. The trawler put some guys aboard with pumps and they got the flooding stopped. She’s escorting it north on the surface, restored to Soviet command. Back to Murmansk, is my guess.
“Ryan has been recalled due to low fuel state and successful mission accomplishment. We’ve been heading south since oh-two hundred. Seas and wind have continued to drop. Number-two switchboard’s back up and we have power restored aft. The damage controlmen are welding a hard patch in the fireroom. Dewatering’s started forward. Evaporator’s back on the line and we have fresh water from oh-six hundred to oh-eight hundred. Am I going too fast?”
“No, hell no, sir.” He swallowed, staring out at a blackness that looked both exactly the same and yet somehow much friendlier than it had last night. “It sounds great.”
“Wind’s from three-one-zero, twenty-five knots. Nothing on the radar. Weather is fog and fine drizzle, visibility one to two miles. Sounding fog signals in accordance with the international rules of the road. Guarding air-distress and marine frequencies. One and two boilers on the line while drying out three and four in the after fireroom. Eight hundred and fifty degrees superheat. Plant is cross-connected. Number-two turbogenerator providing electrical power.”
“Got it. Where’s the captain?”
“Sea cabin. I don’t think he’s feeling well, so I haven’t been bothering him, but he said be sure and call him if anything happens. He was awake last time I called him, about the fog.”
“I relieve you, sir.”
“This is Lieutenant Evlin; Ensign Lenson has the conn.”
Dan looked around, trying to think whether there was anything else he should do. His fingers set the binoculars. They still felt numb. The quartermaster was changing the charts, unrolling the paper tube and holding it down with his e
lbows while he applied masking tape. Coffey’s hands lay asleep on the wheel, his binnacle-lighted face somnolent. The ash on his cigarette trembled an inch long. Dan couldn’t imagine him on the deck of a submarine, swinging an ax. Pettus chewed gum beside the ship’s bell, humming “Light My Fire” and switching his hips to the beat as he wrote in a logbook.
“That’s the last window, sir,” said the leading damage controlman. “It’s tight. Just give that monkey shit couple hours to set before you lean on it.”
“Thanks. That looks good, Traven.”
He looked out through the new Plexiglas. In the false dawn the sea was dark as shattered slate under a fine drizzle. He could make out whitecaps close in, white as boiling milk but without curl or spray. Coming from astern, they took a long time to catch up. When they did, the old destroyer seemed to hold her breath, traveling for seconds tilted slightly forward. A 2,250-ton surfboard, he thought. Farther out was nothing but the glow of fog reflecting the ship’s lights, green or red or white depending on which point of the compass you looked out along.
Thinking of that, he checked the centerline gyro. Coffey was dead on one-eight-five. The clock ticked. The anemometer needle oscillated around twenty-five. The barometer was up. He realized that he was standing on the deck without holding the overhead brace, without having to wedge himself into a corner.
“Well, I’ll be darned,” he said out loud.
Norden came up a few minutes later. He looked around the bridge. “What’s going on?”
“Heading south. Al says we got a recall message.”
“He say where to?”
“Who cares? As long as it’s not north again.”
“Good point. Where is he? Where’s Al?”
“In the chartroom, I think.”
“You’re not supposed to have it alone, Dan. You’re not a qualified OOD yet.”
“Well, he’s the senior watch officer, Rich. I figured if he trusts me, it’s okay.”
“Keep your voice down. Don’t argue with me. And don’t call me Rich on the bridge.”
When Evlin went below, Norden wanted the conn. Dan went through the turnover, keeping resentment from his voice with difficulty. Something was eating the weapons officer.
But he decided he didn’t mind. He felt like a man who’s just been told his surgery won’t be necessary, after all. Maybe they were going back to Newport! The thought made his heart leap. When he finished the turnover, he drifted over to the chart table, whistling under his breath the same Doors song Pettus had been humming.
Their new track extended south for four hundred miles, past the Faeroes, then bent west to take them along the coast of Scotland. Past that, it ended off the Rockall Bank, west of the Hebrides. His elation yielded to a penknife twist of alarm.
“You know where we’re going, Chief Yardner?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Lenson. What did Lieutenant Evlin say?”
“He didn’t. Just that we were going south.”
Norden came over. He said wearily, “Goddamn it, you’re supposed to read the message board before you relieve. Here it is … ‘proceed to rendezvous point Lima, such and such a latitude and longitude, for rendezvous with CTG twenty-one point one aboard USS Kennedy. Refuel as conditions permit with USS Caloosahatchee. Thence accompany Kennedy Carrier Battle Group for operations in the eastern Atlantic.’” He let the sheaf of messages fall to the end of its cord. “Shit.”
“What’s that mean, Rich—I mean, Lieutenant?”
“There goes Christmas.”
“But I thought … Al said our operation was over. Doesn’t that mean we get to go home? I—”
“That was the original plan, do the tests and then zip back to home port. This’s new. Probably what happened, some other can had to drop out, and we’re already out here, so we get moved over two squares to plug the donkey. Kennedy’s an aircraft carrier. Be good for you, you need experience working in a formation.”
“Yes, sir. But they can’t keep us out here much longer, can they? Do you think we’ll get any repairs before we head back?”
“That’s possible. England or Spain would be my guess.”
England … he’d always wanted to go bicycling there, to see the Strand, Baker Street, all the places he’d read about. Spain would be fun, too. If only Susan could join him there. Still, he felt better. It was amazing what rack time and a course change could do. His hand found one of the pastries in his pocket. “D’you get any sleep, sir?” he asked around a mouthful.
Norden propped a foot against the binnacle. “Couple hours. You?”
“Don’t know how much, but I was out like a dead dog.”
“Good.” Norden looked out at the sea, checked his watch. “Pretty quiet right now.… I’ll give you the conn back after a while.”
Dan understood that as an apology for snapping at him. He checked the radar, swallowed the last of the bun, and after a time thought of the division. He went to the window and looked down on the fo’c’sle in the pewter light. The safety lines were still rigged, but the life nets had been triced up again. A tatter of blanket flapped at the corner of the gun mount. There was no one in sight, though. He went out on the wing and looked aft. The breeze was fresh but already seemed less frigid. No one there, either, not at the swung-in whaleboat, not in the breakers, no one at work on deck at all as far as he could see. He went back inside.
“Pettus, what did we do for quarters today?”
“Exec said muster on station, Mr. Lenson.”
“Thanks.” Great, he thought; if the guys were getting their heads down without Bryce objecting, he was damned if he would. “You catch up some on your sleep last night?”
“Yeah. Mr. Evlin got some of the signalmen down here, said there wasn’t anybody for them to wave their skivvies at, anyway. They spelled the lookouts some. We broke guys off to go crap out.”
* * *
THEY pitched steadily southward through the morning watch. At noon, Ohlmeyer relieved him. Dan went below to find a hot lunch waiting: bean soup, swiss steak, collard greens, peach pie. The wardroom was crowded for the first time in days. Weaver, the comm officer, had the latest poop. Ryan would be steaming with the task group for two weeks, screening the carrier during an exercise west of Ireland. Then they’d put into Rota, Spain, for five days alongside the tender before heading home.
“Do you know why they diverted us, Ralph?” Dan asked him.
“Boiler explosion on Jonas Ingram, DD-nine thirty-eight. Burned a couple guys pretty bad.”
“Do they know about our damage?”
“I don’t see everything that goes out, but I think so, yeah. We were putting out two reports a day during the Pargo play, and then every couple of hours while we were tracking the Russian. The captain reported all the equipment casualties and gave the weather data. But he always finished up by saying we could continue the mission. I guess they needed us more here than they did in Newport.”
“Won’t we need an air-search radar to play with the carrier?”
“You’re thinking again, George. Leave that to people with more than one stripe, okay? They got a cruiser with a lot better air picture than we’d ever get. Usually, we just plane guard, tag around after the flattop in case one of the fly-boys has to punch out.” Weaver returned his attention to his pie.
Dan was back in his room, torn between another nap and a long-overdue start on a letter to Susan, when the phone squealed. “Lenson,” he snapped.
“Dan? This is Commander Bryce.”
“Uh—yes, sir.”
“I can’t seem to locate Mr. Norden. Could you find him and come down to my stateroom, please?”
He suddenly remembered the search of the compartment, the interviews, his confrontation with Lassard. It seemed like months ago. But it had only been days. The executive officer wouldn’t have forgotten. He hadn’t been standing watch, or missing sleep.
“Aye, aye, sir,” he said, hearing wariness and hostility edge his voice. “We’ll be right down.”<
br />
* * *
HE knocked at the exec’s door with the same fatalistic dread he remembered from Plebe Year. When the drawl soaked through the aluminum he took a breath and pushed it open.
“Ensign Lenson, sir.” God, how he hated that rhyme.
“Come in, Dan. So, hear you played Charge of the Light Brigade out there last night.”
Last night? Had it only been last night? He sat on the sofa and looked at the XO with a strange mix of feelings. He still hated him, but the fat lieutenant commander looked less intimidating now. Compared to forty feet of oncoming sea, or a live torpedo, or an armed Soviet sailor.
“Popeye and the other men did most of it, sir. I just sort of supervised.”
“That so? I heard different. Heard you did us proud.”
He didn’t know how to respond to a compliment from Bryce, so he didn’t say anything. There’d probably be something less pleasant along pretty soon, anyway.
Bryce didn’t offer him a cigar this time. Instead he pulled out a file. The XO looked rested and chipper as he studied it, then laid it aside. He lighted a Camel, then leaned back, smiling. It wasn’t the same smile at all—it wasn’t dreamy or remote—but it still made Dan think of Lassard.
“I think we have something to talk about. That is, you—you and Norden—I know a lot’s been going on, but I believe y’all still owe me a report on that there investigation. That right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well? You got one?”
“Yes sir.”
“Where’s the lieutenant?”
“Up forward, sir. He asked me to send his respects and report that he had to supervise the dewatering of the powder magazine at present.”
“Oh?” Bryce frowned. “I guess we’ll have to make do with you, then. Okay, proceed.”
“Sir, an exhaustive investigation was conducted over a period of two days,” Dan began, slipping into the official passive of Navy correspondence. “The bunkroom was searched from deck to overhead, and compartment cleaners and personnel who bunked near the site of the cache were interviewed. I then proceeded to interview every member of First Division. That process was completed, uh—two days before yesterday? Anyway, just after Pargo left. Sir.”
