China Sea

by David Poyer

  Back in his room, he hauled himself up into his bunk. For a few minutes he lay staring at the overhead. The ship seemed to reel inside his head, then suddenly reorient, as if he were drunk and staggering. He felt something cocked and tense inside him slowly release. Then it was black.

  * * *

  WHEN he came out on deck again late that afternoon the sun had burned off the overcast and the sky was clear and brilliant. He stood on the quarterdeck in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, looking out across the mole and the strait at Pico. The volcano towered like Fuji, black and ominous. Scattered clouds lingered about its upper slopes. He’d called Jim Armey, asking about dinner, but the engineer begged off. Dan decided to go in alone, get off the ship for a couple of hours, maybe find someplace he could make an international call, see if he could get Blair. He owed his daughter a call, too.

  A sun-swarthed Azorean with long hair pulled a taxi to the curb as Dan came down the mole. “To hell with Saddam.”

  “Yeah, to hell with him.”

  “You American, right? But that’s not an American ship.”

  “We just sold it to the Pakistanis.” Dan declined the ride politely. What he wanted more than anything was just to walk along a street, look at human beings he didn’t know, reassure himself a world existed outside Tughril’s steel shell. He turned back to look at her halfway down the mole. She looked so incredibly small.

  * * *

  THAT evening he ended up halfway up the mountain, at a half-house, half-restaurant whose outdoor patio looked down over a spectacular view of the strait, looked up to hawks skating the updrafts. From here the ship was a scale model. Most of the other diners were German. He refused the angelica with some difficulty, declined beer as well, and had sparkling local water and a fish soup and tried a stewed octopus dish that turned out to be quite palatable.

  He was sitting back, waiting for the main course and enjoying the twinkling of lights below as night came to the sea, when he saw Chick Doolan at the bar.

  The weapons officer wasn’t alone. His broad shoulders were hunched attentively toward a twenty-something woman in a lavender pants suit, with long dark hair and a melancholy look that was focused alternately on Doolan and on the wine at her elbow. Dan watched them for a moment, then turned his mind away.

  Then he looked up and there Doolan was, coming toward him. Blue cotton slacks, a Polo shirt. Rugged heavy-jawed face flushed, whether from the drink he carried in his hand or at being discovered, it made him look more like Ernest Hemingway than ever. Behind him, the girl, following close as a tow through a crowded strait. Doolan said aggressively, “Commander. Didn’t know you were headed up here.”

  “Hi, Chick. Bring anybody else with you?”

  “No, most of ’em are down at the Estalagem.” Doolan waved the glass at the horizon. “You can see all the way to Philly.”

  “Just about.”

  “This is Lorenza; she’s from Lisbon—”

  “Not ‘Lorenza.’ Lavina.”

  Dan got up, waited for her hand; she didn’t extend it. He noticed Doolan had taken his ring off. Dan didn’t say anything, just stood there smiling, and after a moment Doolan took the hint, either that or figured he’d discharged his obligation to acknowledge his presence. He said, “Well, enjoy your dinner,” and added something in an undertone to the girl that made her smile. On the way back to the bar he put his hand on her back. Dan looked after them, watching her turn her head and half-smile as Doolan shifted his hand to her waist. Then Dan switched his attention to the deep-sea crab.

  * * *

  HE found a telephone post by the marina and called Blair and Nan on his card. After punching in many many numbers, he got to talk to two answering machines. The ship was quiet, though the bars were still going on the main drag, and he turned in at 2200 to catch up a little more.

  The next day their parts were still not in. The air force said they’d arrive by light plane at 1000. Khashar took the news silently, but it was not a resigned silence. When they finally arrived, at 1130, he canceled lunch and ordered them to cast off. The pilot was on the bridge this time, a small man with several days’ stubble and no compunction about taking cigarettes out of the pack in front of the captain’s chair.

  Dan stood in his by-now accustomed place on the wing as Horta’s hills gave way to the open sea again. Getting under way went without incident, except for the cigarette-filching pilot drawing a glower from Khashar. He debarked outside the breakwater, into the same speedboat they’d passed by coming in. When it was clear the captain spoke sharply, and the OOD flinched and shouted orders. The whoosh of the intakes rose to a whine, and they rolled to a moderate sea.

  An hour out the GQ alarm sounded. He was in the combat systems office, going through his mail. A letter from Blair, putting him in a better mood. He took it along as he ran up to the bridge, figuring to read it over again there.

  He got there to find the train warning bell clanging and the five-inch slewing out to port. He blinked, staring past the muzzle at the island of Terceira. Almost immediately the long tapered tube depressed, scooted all the way around the deck, and rose again on the starboard side. He breathed out and sprinted up the ladder to the flying bridge.

  Here no overhead protected him from the glaring sun. He flipped the binocular strap around his neck and rastered the horizon, wondering for a moment if they were outside Portuguese waters. Then shrugged inwardly, a response that was becoming habitual.

  He was tucking in his earplugs when he saw Doolan duck under the gun barrel and disappear around the mount. Dan frowned. Not a good idea. In fact, against the NAVORD safety precautions. He watched till Chick reappeared, loping bent over across the deck. The weps officer glanced up and saw him, raised a thumb. Dan lifted a hand in acknowledgment.

  Khashar emerged onto the wing. He glanced at his Rolex, looking down at the mount. His impatience and anger were clear as if they had been lettered in a comic-book balloon above his head. The barrel rose and fell with the roll of the ship, intent on some distant target. An imaginary one, apparently, because when Dan scrutinized the sea horizon through the Big Eyes he saw nothing but far-off clouds, the sparkle of afternoon sun off the waves, and Tughril’s own shadow, lengthening across the inkblue sea. Then without warning the gun let go a blast and flash that, despite his having held himself ready for it, made him flinch so hard he skinned his knuckles against the coaming.

  He’d figured it was just a quick-reaction drill, but the gun kept firing, round after round, sometimes in full auto, sometimes a round every thirty seconds. Empty powder canisters clanged on the deck. Smoke and paper fragments blew aft. Either Khashar was running some sort of reliability test or else he was just taking out his frustrations by firing seventy-pound projectiles into the empty sea.

  The mount fell silent, still pointing south. Khashar stood drumming his fingers on the splinter shield. It had been hastily hammered back into shape and primer slapped over it. The captain snatched his hand back and examined sticky red-orange on his fingers. He turned and yelled into the pilothouse.

  Doolan came out and said something to Khashar. Dan looked on from above, only mildly interested. The captain made a hurried dismissive gesture and turned his back. Doolan stayed. Dan leaned down, cupping his ear to catch Chick’s next remark.

  “Sir, you’ve got to get them out of there.”

  “They’d have to do it in battle.”

  “We’re not in battle. You’ll lose four guys if it goes off.”

  “Perhaps that will motivate them to find out what’s wrong.”

  “That’s not a smart way to operate, sir. In fact, it’s damn dumb.”

  Khashar, colder than liquid helium: “You will go to your stateroom, Mr. Doolan. At once.”

  Dan came down the ladder, joining them on the wing. The gun was still trained out. The mount door was open, and he glimpsed a fear-drawn face within. He said to them both, “Hot gun, Chick?”

  “Right. We’ve got to get those guys out of there, g
et a stinger down the barrel, and commence cooling.”

  Five-inch ammo came in two sections, the shell and a separate propelling charge. The loading mechanism lined them up and rammed them. But if a primer misfired or the firing circuits failed, it was possible to end up with a shell in the breech and no way to either fire or extract. If the gun was relatively cold, no problem, but if a number of rounds had already been fired, the residual heat quickly began cooking the shell—and the live explosive within it.

  “Chick’s right, Captain—we’ve got to get them out of there.”

  “I told you to go to your stateroom,” said Khashar, face immobile as iron.

  Doolan stood rooted.

  “Go on, Chick,” Dan said.

  The weapons officer wheeled and disappeared into the pilothouse.

  Dan said, “Can we commence cooling now, Captain?”

  Instead of responding, Khashar spun, making for the ladder leading to the main deck. Dan followed him down, then forward through the breaker.

  On the sunlit forecastle the mount still pointed off to starboard, motors humming an ominous obbligato. Khashar ducked his head into the open hatch, beginning a shouted exchange in Urdu. Dan stood a few steps off, looking down at the stinger, a long metal wand connected to a three-inch fire hose. There was no sign or hint of danger, no smoke or noise other than the ominous hum and the hollow clank of a tool. But inside, hidden by the breech and mechanism, was a live shell steadily approaching cook-off temperature. He bent and picked up the stinger. All he had to do was thrust it into the barrel, twist the valve on, and run like hell. Unfortunately, the 54-caliber barrel was so long he couldn’t get to the muzzle with the mount trained outboard. He moved up behind Khashar. “Cap’n? Have ’em go back to ready surface, and I’ll get that barrel cooled down.”

  “They’re almost ready to fire.”

  “That’s good, but we need to get some water down there … sir?”

  A hollow metal clanking came from inside the mount. Simultaneously the men within yelled. Khashar back-pedaled hastily, and Dan got through the breaker door and slammed it behind them a split second before ka WHAM slammed through the steel and shook the bulkheads around them. Ka WHAM, ka WHAM, ka WHAM, jumping dust and paint chips up from the nonskid to hang in the air like smoke. He stared at Khashar’s sweat-glistening face in the dimness.

  “You Americans are too easy with your men. You treat them like children. No wonder they act without respect, without self-control. You are so obsessed with perfection. If they have no freedom to fail, how can they succeed?”

  Dan stared at the strong sallow teeth.

  “Lieutenant Doolan. I do not wish to see him about the ship until he apologizes to me. I cannot permit disrespect.”

  Suddenly the ship was unfamiliar, the space Dan stood in was strange and separate and other, as if he had boarded for the first time and knew nothing and no one here. He stared at Khashar, then turned, still wordless, and left him standing in the empty passageway.

  8

  THE MED

  THE Rock was a violet wedge splitting lavender clouds. As dying beams of gold and scarlet flashed across the sea, Dan shaded his eyes to a needle of light that stitched the gathering dusk. It paused, and beside him the shutters rattled, the signalman flicking his wrist with cool expertise. Then the rapid flash from the Rock resumed.

  The Strait of Gibraltar, a day after leaving the NATO base at Rota, Spain. An overnight there to fuel and have the maintenance activity do a little metal bending and stanchion welding along the side. His sight bridged two continents: the mountainous darkness of Africa to starboard, the purple gloom of an equally precipitous Iberia to port. Tughril moved steadily east, surging occasionally to a swell. The air temperature was fourteen degrees Centigrade and the sea sixteen. The wind was from the north at twenty knots, the sky clear save for the luminous and slowly fading clouds that hovered behind them, over the Atlantic. Which, he could not help reflecting, the frigate would never see again. She’d serve out her life in the Far East and end reduced to anonymous metal for Toyotas and Hyundais.

  The days since Horta had passed peacefully, but with a sullen undertone he didn’t like. Khashar had released Chick from restriction after twenty-four hours, though Doolan had not apologized. Dan had taken Doolan off the bridge watch, moving him to CIC for the rest of the transit. Keep them apart, that was about all he could think to do. Anyway, they’d be in Karachi in another three weeks.

  The straits were as busy today as they’d been every other time Dan had transited, to his surprise; he’d expected the loom of war to keep ships in port. It hadn’t, at least in the West Med. There were a score of contacts on the vertical plot, containerships and colliers plowing past in the stolid ox plod of commercial shipping.

  Now he lifted his glasses to the ships that moved rapidly closer out of the eastern darkness. He studied the lead one as it grew to the unmistakable icebreakerlike silhouette of an Udaloy-class cruiser. Accompanying it, four thousand yards astern, were the cutter bow and complex tophamper of a Kashin-class destroyer. As they passed, he followed them with the circle of enlarged sight, watching the sunset light flash scarlet and brass off paint and glass, catching high on the cruiser’s mast top the white, red, and blue flicker of the new Russian flag. He remembered passing their weapon-bristling warships close aboard and wondering when the final challenge would come. Now it appeared it never would, that the long faceoff would end without the Armageddon both sides had anticipated and feared for so long.

  Behind them the sun turned redder as it fell, sending rays of luminous violet shooting up into the sky. The clouds were pink continents, edged in luminous gold. The sea glittered copper, then tangerine. The sun’s lower limb slowly spread as it touched the sea, as if kissing it with parted lips.

  Dan raised his glasses again. The flat russet disk, tint and heat dulled by miles of air, sank steadily, eclipsed moment by moment by the rising horizon. Then, as the distant darkness sheathed the last curved edge, a sudden flash of brilliant emerald darted toward him across the darkening ocean. It was so vivid and so unexpected he jerked the binoculars from his eyes. Then it, too, was gone, leaving only a dwindling hue in the violet sky, an expiring, fatal maroon like venous blood. Till all that remained was a fading glow, a luminous wash of phosphorescent gold, lingering like memory over the windy sea.

  * * *

  HE was sitting in his stateroom that evening, playing a computer game on his Z180, when the GQ alarm went again. Another fire. He got down to the galley fearing the worst, but by the time he arrived it was out, though white smoke seethed and the air smelled like scorched doughnuts. The deep-fat fryer, probably the biggest fire hazard in the ship. Someone had used his head and tripped the Gaylord hood. Others stood around with CO2 extinguishers. That was good, a better response than showing their heels. A man lay on the deck, the normal batch of gawkers close around him as the Pakistani corpsman squatted. Through the surrounding legs Dan caught a glimpse of skin as the medic stripped off clothing. It was coming off with the cloth. The burned man was completely silent. Then suddenly he began to scream, endless and deafening in the sealed metal room.

  * * *

  THE open Mediterranean, dark and winter-windy. Their next landfall lay another thousand miles ahead, past Algiers, Palma, Sardinia, Tunis, and Sicily. He and Irshad had laid the track down well clear of land, except for a close passage off Cap Bon to cut a few miles off the last leg to Malta. The decision to lay over at Malta had been the Pakistanis’. Malta and the U.S. Navy had not been on good terms for some years now. Tughril steamed eastward over the next few days, out of sight of land but never out of sight of shipping. The Med seemed more crowded every time he returned to it. He recalled his first deployment, how vast and empty it had seemed. Now he looked at the chart and felt cramped.

  The burned man from the galley died after a day, and they buried him at sea.

  Dan spent most of his time on the bridge, standing for hour after hour on the wing or parked
in the chair in the nav shack. Khashar was up there a lot of the time, too. Which would have been fine, except he was continually taking over the conn. Whenever a closing contact forced them to maneuver, he gave orders direct to the helmsman. Dan could see it wrecking what little confidence the OODs had gained. Not only that, but Khashar changed course when Tughril was bound by the rules of the road to hold course and speed. The first couple of times it happened, Dan pointed out he was courting danger, that sooner or later both ships would put their helm over in the same direction. Misunderstandings at high closing speeds could be fatal. But the wall was up. The third time he brought it up, the captain cut him off with the brusque statement that he’d been commanding ships for years.

  * * *

  THEY lay over in Valletta for two days. The second day in port, Dan was in the wardroom, watching an Italian television report on the Desert Shield buildup. He could follow the diagrams and video clips if not the torrent of speech. Five seconds of jets dropping napalm, then a shot of Saddam looking at a map, surrounded by fawning generals. Then the bulkhead squealer went off.

  Dan hadn’t been in Khashar’s stateroom in a while. The coffee table was covered with papers. The two men on the sofa stood as he came in. They were both stocky, one fair and balding, the other dark, both in lumpy gray suits. The one who spoke first sounded German or maybe Dutch or Flemish. He shook Dan’s hand. “Mr. Lenson? I am Mr. Wint. This is Mr. Selmunit. We’re with Interpol.”

  “Pleased,” said Dan. He looked from one to the other.

  “Well sit down,” said Wint. “You are the senior American, correct? I understand that there’s something of a divided command aboard this ship?”

  “There’s only one captain,” Dan said. He glanced at Khashar, who sat fingers tented, dark eyes hooded. The smell of tobacco smoke lingered in the room, but none of the men in it were smoking now. There must have been a confab of some length before he had been called. What had Khashar told them during it? Why did cops always come in pairs, anyway? No answers offered, so he went on, “But I report to him, for the U.S. contingent.”