by David Poyer
She took a breath and eased the door open. An empty hallway. She tiptoed down it, easing her feet down on the carpet, until she came to the door with the number eight on it. Looked inside, warily, then switched the light on.
Just a classroom. No pictures on the walls. Only a table of the elements. She slid the drawer of the teacher’s desk out. Chalk. Pencils. A photocopied sheaf that turned out to be the answer key for a chemistry final. Yeah, there were probably people who’d kill for this. But they were all in high school.
Then her gaze steadied. Remembering a surge suppressor in a wall socket, a blank space on a tabletop.
A Sanyo desktop, not new, not old, plastic case slightly yellowed. It was set up with a battered-looking monitor. She looked underneath. It was plugged in.
Using the eraser end of one of the pencils, she turned the monitor on, then the computer. It powered up, but froze on the Sanyo screen. Which meant the boot sector on the hard drive was erased or inoperative.
Which in turn meant either that it was broken or that whoever had sat at it last had reformatted it.
Suddenly she wished she still had her gun. She didn’t want to be found here. She almost took the computer, but remembered: chain of custody. She turned the light off, closed the door, and went quietly out and down the corridor and out into the street.
Her shaking fingers groped in her purse for a coin. There it was. A pay phone. Diehl, answering. “Yeah? Aisha, that you?”
“It’s me,” she said. “And I think we just got a break.”
28
The Southeastern Med
A Horn mile was five times around the main deck, through the star board breaker, the forecastle, down the side. Each time he went through the port breaker the smokers flattened themselves against the fire station. Marchetti and Hotchkiss were running, too. Nothing prearranged, they just happened to be out here. He only saw the senior chief occasionally, which meant they were doing about the same pace. He lapped the exec every couple of circuits, though.
Horn cut with a steady pitching whine through a sea that glowed like the green phosphorescent fluid that filled light wands. They were out of sight of land, had not glimpsed it all through the last week. Though once, to the south, distant clouds had hovered over what might have been land. That way lay the Egyptian coast, and Port Said, the by-now-familiar entrance to what navy men called the Ditch. To the west lay Alexandria. But both cities lay over the horizon, though identifiable on the surface search radar.
Nor had they seen Moosbrugger all week. Dan had placed her in the northern half of the box. The two destroyers maintained a close radar watch and kept their electronic surveillance and signals intelligence stacks manned. They were looking for a motor vessel, no name available as yet, nor even any description, that was suspected of preparing to get under way from somewhere in the eastern Med. Nothing further was available, neither its destination, its intended course, its cargo, or its nationality, and “somewhere in the eastern Med” covered a lot of territory. But those were his orders. So he put aircraft up early each morning and just before dusk, to sweep the approaches and visually identify any suspicious contacts. All in all, it was a lot less stressful than steaming in close company with the task force, and he’d let the crew relax. Five section steaming watches. A cookout on the fantail. Early movies on the ship’s closed circuit TV.
He came up on Marchetti, who was starting to lumber, and after a couple of false starts—the senior chief kept blocking him—took him going around the Sparrow launcher. Back here the wind was fresh, and the soar and drop of the deck made him stagger.
This time Hotchkiss heard him coming as he closed on her. She speeded up, and he tailed her for a while, dodging knee-knockers and scuttle coamings, enjoying the perky bounce of tight little cheeks in skimpy green nylon running shorts. She had shorty socks with the little red balls at the back and white Adidas, and a light top that didn’t leave a lot to the imagination either. Her hair was a tight bun above a terry sweatband, and as he gained on her, his eyes moved from it to the sweat shining on her neck, darkening the back of her sports bra, and down to a damp patch on green nylon. Right there at the cleft… He jerked his gaze away and grunted, “On your right.”
Barked it more harshly than he’d meant to, and she flinched away and stumbled into a ventilation tube sticking up from the deck. Then she was down on one knee, cursing a blue streak. “Sorry,” he said, stopping.
“I was showboating. Trying to stay ahead of you.”
“You okay? I can help you down to sick bay.”
Marchetti came pounding around the corner. As he neared, Dan saw his expression, and realized what it must look like, with his arm around the exec. Glancing up he saw the lookout watching, too, finger on the button of his mouthpiece. Fucking great, it’d be all over the ship in seconds. “She cracked her shin on one of the vents,” he told the Machete. Hotchkiss fended them both off, undogged a weather hatch, and limped inside.
Dan started to jog again, then stopped and went back to the quarterdeck phone and punched in the sick bay number. He told the duty corpsman the XO had hurt her leg running. She was probably in her stateroom, would he mind taking a look at her. Then immediately felt disgusted at such a cover-your-ass thought. That he’d actually worried about documenting he hadn’t been groping her on the main deck. With time, did it become second nature?
Wiping sweat from his eyes, he started on his fourth mile.
THAT afternoon, in Combat. Kim McCall, the on-watch TAO; Hotchkiss, limping; Casey Schaad, Lieutenant Sanduskie from the intel det, the Camel, Marchetti, and Dan. The ops officer chaired. He still spoke deliberately, but the others had gotten so used to it they spent the time between words thinking about other things.
As Camill reviewed the day’s contacts, Dan wondered again what they were doing out here. His private theory, based mainly on a month-old Time magazine someone had gotten in the mail from home, was that they were looking for someone smuggling Scud boosters to Iraq. But he hadn’t seen any reference to Scuds in the message traffic or any indication whatever they were looking for would actually transit their area. It was all so vague he doubted they’d be out here much longer. And the deployment was drawing toward an end. Then a little time at home, and he’d have to think seriously about what next. Like Blair’s proposal. A nine-to-five shore billet, a house in Alexandria or Arlington or maybe a little farther out, Falls Church or Reston.
Looking at the absorbed expressions around him, listening to the hum of the blowers and the monotone of the controller talking Blade Slinger down for a hot refuel after searching a hundred miles to the east, he realized he’d never be as happy in any other job. Commanding USS Horn was probably going to be the high point of his career. He’d done well, considering its … checkered nature. That was probably the right word. A red square, then a black. In the navy’s good graces, then, most decidedly, out.
He tuned back in to hear Marchetti say, “If we do have to board anybody out here, I want the Gold Team.”
“Despite Petty Officer Wilson?” Hotchkiss said, only the faintest edge cutting through the sweetness of her tone, like a blade that has to be oiled to penetrate a tough alloy.
Marchetti just shrugged, not giving it away. Which, Dan thought, was being a little rough on somebody who’d saved his bacon.
HE got the phone on the second buzz. “Captain,” he muttered, trying to snap himself into something resembling awareness.
“Sir, TAO here. EW reports warship type radars between sixty and a hundred miles northeast of us, based on bearing drift over the last twenty minutes.”
He blinked into the slanting darkness. The wind was rushing outside. It had been rising at dusk. “Any idea what type, what class?”
“It might be a Kashin.”
He sat up. A Kashin-class destroyer displaced less than a Spruance, but in terms of weaponry they could be considered evenly matched. The next moment he shook his head. This was what Nick Niles had accused him of. Reacting too fast
. Assuming the worst. What Fetrow hadn’t liked about his arming his boats in Bahrain. “Have we got them on JOTS?”
“Coming up now.”
Dan was reflecting how once, and not that long ago either, detection of a Soviet destroyer would have sent a U.S. warship to general quarters. For his entire career, the Soviet navy had been the U.S. surface fleet’s number-one enemy. Now Yeltsin’s newly downsized Commonwealth of Fewer and Fewer Independent States was trying hard to impress the West with how great an investment opportunity they were.
Yeah, everybody was friends now. The Russians. The Chinese. The Wall was down. The Cold War, over. The vortex that had sucked down blood and treasure for fifty years. Could it possibly be everyone had learned to play together in the same sandbox at last? He told Camill, “If it’s on JOTS, the world knows about it, but let’s make a satellite voice report anyway. Just to reassure ’em we’re on the beat down here.”
He thought about getting Camill to plan an attack, just for drill, but didn’t. He hung up and lay back in the dark.
Then he couldn’t sleep. His mind was just jumping around. Thinking about this and that. Once they got back, they’d spend the next year more or less in port. Maybe some counterdrug ops in the Caribbean. About the time Horn started gearing up for her next deployment, he’d be briefing his relief. And maybe thinking about a civilian career. Except … he couldn’t think of a job that’d give him a tenth the satisfaction that welding this crew together had.
Yeah, they’d come through a lot: overcoming the divisiveness Ross had left, fixing the engineering and combat systems problems, getting the women accepted. It’d be tough to see them go. Especially since they’d added their little footnote to history.
But it happened to every crew. They’d transfer, ship out, get out, retire. And in later years they’d think fondly of their old ship, and whenever they met someone from her, they’d talk about this character and that; and maybe someday there’d be a notice in the Navy Times about a reunion. He’d heard the way former skippers talked about old crews and ships that were gone, heard the regret and homesickness in it, as if for a little while they’d actually tasted what life had promised when they were young.
The phone. “Skipper? Just got off the horn with CTF 60. They said they know about the Russian. Not an object of concern.”
Dan asked if there were any other contacts, and he said no. A second later the phone was back on the hook.
He was almost asleep again when someone tapped on his door.
“WHO is it?” He kept his door locked when he slept, something he felt equivocal about but couldn’t neglect. Not in the navy of the 1990s, and maybe, thinking about the Bounty and the Globe and a lot of other infamous incidents over the years, maybe never. He leaned against the jamb, waiting.
“It’s me.”
Hotchkiss. He opened at once, and there she was in the dim red light of the passageway. He heard the ever present hum from the nav shack, the creak of steel around them. Not a heavy roll. Just a light, comfortable sway that told him they were taking the prevailing seas on the port beam. “What you got, Exec?”
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.” He turned the stateroom light on as she came in, snapping the switch to red. Giving her visibility to navigate, but not so much he’d be dazzled if he was called to the bridge. She was limping and he took her arm. “How’s the knee?”
“Not so bad. Nothing broken.”
“That’s good.” They were face to face in the dim light. When she said nothing, he shifted his gaze and cleared his throat. “Well, what you got?” he said again.
“I’m afraid it’s about you,” she said.
He cleared his throat, trying to reorient even as his body, understanding more swiftly than his torpid sleepy mind, began to respond. In the red light her lips looked softer even than he’d dreamed. He stood riveted, unable, in that moment he’d fantasized so often, to move or act.
She looked around the stateroom she’d been in so often before. He saw it suddenly through her eyes. The rumpled blanket on the settee, the coffee cups racked over the desk. The hum of the computer. The sigh of the wind. The creak and sway around them loud enough, the devil in his heart proposed, to cover any noise they might make.
Finally she said, “Can I sit down?”
“Sure. Sure.” He waved to the chair, but she perched on the settee, almost primly, knees together. Looking closely he saw perspiration gleaming on her upper lip. He lowered himself beside her. Conscious suddenly he was in skivvy shorts and T-shirt, neither exactly fresh. “Thanks for helping me today,” she said.
“All I did was help you up.”
“With your arm around me. You know what they’ll be saying now.”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
He was so used to seeing Claudia Hotchkiss in control that seeing her nervous was almost frightening. Seeing her pressing her fingers together to keep her hands from shaking.
“We’re not going to be together much longer.”
“We’ll have to take her through the yard together. Then postdeploy-ment training. No,” he tried to joke it away, “I wouldn’t let go of the best exec I’ve ever had.”
“I’ve decided to put in for a transfer. As soon as we get back.”
That was when he noticed she wasn’t calling him ‘sir’ or ‘skipper.’ In fact, she wasn’t calling him anything. Just talking directly, in an obviously stressed tone. Maybe he was wrong about what was going on here. He’d assumed … the obvious, but maybe he was wrong.
“This isn’t about Chip, is it? Are you still having problems?”
“He’s met someone else. Someone who … fulfills his needs. He told me when I get back, he’s filing for divorce.”
“Oh, Claudia. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t ask her if there was anything he could do, because he knew there wasn’t. No one could do anything for another in that stark time when the one you loved told you it was over, when you realized your plans and dreams were a mug’s game. But he put a hand on her shoulder, to give her a human touch in her pain.
Without saying anything she pulled his head down to hers. So hard and fast their teeth slammed together, and the sea taste of blood mingled with the kiss.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” she whispered. “Don’t worry. I know you’re married. I’m not the clinging kind.”
He took a deep breath, trying to get past wanting to lay her down and let go all the tension and stress and lust he’d buttoned up for months. “I wanted it, too. And I can’t say I don’t want to now. But we can’t. You know that.”
“I guess I do. But, oh, shit, I just needed that kiss so much. I didn’t really think past it when I stopped and knocked. Actually, I was going to the nav shack.” She laughed shakily, almost crazily, and he caught a glimpse of a far less controlled and hardheaded Claudia Hotchkiss than anyone had ever seen aboard Horn. “That’s why I want off. Going to sea with you and having to deal with you and work with you. Talk about living hell!”
“You can take it, Commander. Or else do a damn good imitation.”
“That’s all it is. A fucking imitation.” She laughed again, shakily. Her hair had come undone and hung over her cheek. “See, I know you don’t want to hear this, but—”
He put a finger over her lips. “Don’t say it, Claudia.”
“You know what I’m going to say?”
“I’ve got a good idea.”
They were whispering, of course. He could smell her breath. Clean, like balsam, or pine scent. An inane voice in his head prattled about pheromones and chemical receptors. He got a breath in and out, but couldn’t look away. In the red light, flushed, eyes wide, with her shirt coming undone, she was as desirable as it was possible for a woman to be. All he had to do was reach out and she was his. And his prick kept popping up out of the buttonless fly of his Uniform Shop yellow-label boxers. Making him fear that any moment she’d bend over and very slowly and delicately slide those parted warm lips do
wn over it.
In which case, he’d be well and truly lost, because his inhibitions were holding forty million years of heartily copulating primates back now only by the barest fingernail.
He cleared his throat again. “Don’t go there, Claudia. We wouldn’t give McCall and Richardson the seal of approval. Or Konow and Hurst, in the paymaster’s office. So how’s it look if we do what we punished them for?”
She didn’t say anything, just adjusted something under her shirt and looked away from him. He felt uneasy, like he always did when women didn’t speak.
“You’re probably right,” she said, almost listlessly. “Anyway, thanks for listening.”
“I’ll take it as a compliment.”
“Not as a lapse of professional conduct?”
“Maybe a misstep,” he said. “But I’m guilty, too. Whatever you want, Claudia, I want, too. And I might have communicated that on some subverbal level. But let’s get one thing straight. You’re finishing your tour, and you’re going on to screen for command and get your own ship and have a sterling career. Is that clear?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” she said, and he honestly couldn’t tell what her tone was actually saying.
She was at the door when he remembered and got up quickly. “Wait a minute.”
“What?”
“Let me look first.”
She stood back as he cracked it, peering out, feeling the insane weirdness of having to check the passageway. But they couldn’t let somebody spot her going out at this time of night. Perceptions mattered, sometimes more than what really happened.
Which had been nothing. Right?
The passageway lay empty, a disturbing scarlet-lit vacancy that always seemed to him like some midnight knife-murderer should be prowling it. “The coast is clear,” he whispered back, feeling like a teenager getting his girlfriend out of the house before his parents heard them.
