China Sea

by David Poyer

  “Very well. I will repeat what I’ve already told the captain, then. We’re here because of a death that was reported in the Azores. A young woman was found murdered in a park. She was found not far from the waterfront, the day after your ship left port.”

  Dan looked at the deck, sobered, getting a quick vision of his own daughter—“a young woman”—Nan, dead in the grass. “I don’t think there’s anyone aboard Tughril who’d—”

  “Nor do we, really. We’re simply following up on a request. In a case like this, the local police have charge of the investigation. We act on their behalf. If we develop any suspects, there are, I believe, status-of-forces agreements that would govern return of the suspect for identification, and so forth.”

  Mr. Selmunit said in an accent Dan couldn’t place, “I will want to interview every man who go ashore. One alone at a time.”

  Dan sat thinking as they discussed how to set up the interviews. He was remembering a night high on the hill and the sad eyes of a young woman at the bar. Chick Doolan, coming over to him at his table, aggressive and defensive at the same time. Doolan, drunk. With his wedding ring slipped off.

  Dan said to Wint in an undertone, “Do you happen to have a photograph?”

  Wint blinked, giving an impression of interest but also of a certain detachment. “Of the victim? Yes, I do.” He flipped open a plastic portfolio and slid out what looked like some sort of high-quality fax, centered it in front of Dan, then studied his face as he leaned forward.

  He straightened after a moment, relieved. It wasn’t Lavina, the melancholy girl with the long dark hair. This woman was dark, too, also long-haired, but her face was quite different. Rounded, heavier, with a different shape to her mouth. Not the same woman at all.

  “Yes?” said Wint politely.

  “Nothing. I thought I might have seen her when I went ashore.”

  “In whose company? Or did she approach you? There’s some indication she may have been a professional or at least semipro—”

  “Neither. I mean, I didn’t see this woman, at all.” He didn’t see any point in aiming Interpol at Doolan over a one-night stand. Even if he was married. “I’ll be happy to go over my movements for you or give you any other assistance I can. I have a first-rate chief as my master-at-arms. He’ll help you organize the interviews, get everybody in you want to see.”

  The other agent, Selmunit, had been watching as he and Wint examined the image. Now he said, “Let me show him the other picture.”

  “All right,” said Wint, and Dan found himself looking at another. His breath stopped involuntarily.

  “This is what the body looked like when it was found,” said Wint. “Notice the pattern. Genitalia. Intestines. But above all, the obviously obsessional attention given to the eyes.”

  Dan pushed the photo away. He’d seen death and wounds before, but never anything like this. The image seemed to have gone right to some primitive horror-center deep in his brain. He tried to speak but for some reason couldn’t get a word out.

  “All right then,” said the agent, getting up. “Thank you both for your assistance. Captain, how do you suggest we begin?”

  The agents spoke to everyone who’d gone ashore, which was pretty much everybody aboard, but didn’t spend much time with any one man and left that night.

  * * *

  THE next day they got under way again, passed under the ancient walls of Fort St. Angelo, and ran east for the next two days at twenty-five knots. A fast passage, but this was a short leg. The wind veered northerly and the seas ran eight to ten feet, rank on rank of cold dark green seas, marching down from the Adriatic and the coast of Greece. Dan watched them pass with a strange sense of déjà vu. It hadn’t been far from here that he and Red Flasher and Jack Byrne and the rest of the Task Force Sixty-one staff had tried to keep their butts from being ground up between Greece and Turkey, in the clash over Cyprus, then reoriented east for Operation Urgent Lightning.

  He stood immobile, clinging to the pitching ship, and stared through it into the past. Hearing again the crack of three-inch fifties, the popping of aircraft cannon, the rising howl of engines. Seeing again what he’d thought then would be the last thing he’d ever see. Silver birds above a green-gray sea. Blossoms of yellow fire, perfect rings of smoke, whipping past him on an icy wind … muzzle flashes from the leading edge of wings, the cutting brilliance of aluminum. They bored inward still, and always would, inexorable, invulnerable, eternal nightmares in the tranced sight of irrevocable memory.

  9

  THE SUEZ CANAL

  THE moonlit desert was made of blackness and straight lines. Forward of Tughril’s blade-sharp bow stretched the straightest and strangest of all: a kilometers-long gutter of dun-muddy water long ago rendered lifeless by the churning props and furtive bilge pumpings of half the world’s commerce. Nearly sixty miles of ditch, varied only by the occasional pumping station or the scooped-out bays that were called gares. Speed in the canal was limited to seven knots, and the frigate glided through the night almost silently save for the occasional hiss of her safeties lifting.

  Dan stood watching from the bridge as a patch of darkness ahead slowly grew into trees, unnatural and somehow ominous-looking in the surrounding waste.

  What the chart called Al-Qantara was lined with trees, what kind he didn’t know, but surprisingly tall in the silvery light of a desert moon. The flat banks were dotted with an occasional low white building that might be a house, though they looked awfully stark for homes. The bank was littered with broken concrete or stones against which their bow wave washed with a rippling roar that in the immense stillness sounded creepy as hell. He saw no people. The distant barking of a dog was the only sound of life. The tidal buoys showed almost no current, floating quietly at their moorings until the frigate’s passage set them nodding like obsequious courtiers at the ends of their chains.

  The Suez connected the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. He’d been through it before, on Turner Van Zandt, and the unease he’d felt then was unchanged. The constriction of a ship, the freest thing on earth, to a narrow channel; the weirdness of sea amid desert; the uneasy sense that, like their passage, all human presence was transitory, irrelevant, perhaps even illusory.

  Their passage had started from Port Said at midnight. Now Tughril steamed with a searchlight on her bow, a loran-C position reporting transmitter on the starboard wing, and a skeletal revenant in sere khakis standing centerline with his hands in his pockets. As long as they were in the canal, he and not Khashar controlled the movements of the ship. The canal pilot was at least sixty years old and very soft-spoken, but his tired brown eyes missed nothing. He’d tested the engines, steering console, rudder angle, and RPM indicators and done comm checks with the bridge radios as well as his own. He made sure the boats were ready for instant lowering, in case he needed them to carry a mooring line, and that the engines were tested and the fuel tanks topped off. Dan couldn’t help contrasting his attitude with Khashar’s. For the first time in weeks, he felt safe.

  * * *

  THEY anchored in the Great Bitter Lake as a desert sunrise ignited the calm waters. What riveted Dan’s attention when he came topside, though, wasn’t the sun, red and swollen as a blood-filled condom above the shimmering desert. It was the blocky superstructure of a Ticonderoga-class cruiser a quarter-mile away. She swung to her hook in the warm air, the octagonal shields of Aegis radars glowing in the ruddy dawn. Her hull number was 56, USS San Jacinto, and after looking across at her for several minutes, listening to the music from the boom boxes out on deck, he went below to ask Irshad if he could borrow a boat.

  * * *

  SWEATING in the airless heat—even this early the gray steel radiated it like an oven—he tossed off a salute as he stepped onto the quarterdeck. “Permission to come aboard.”

  “Permission granted.” A chief returned his salute.

  Dan showed his ID, showed the portable radio he carried, too, in case there was any question later. The c
hief asked him who he wanted to see. He said the operations officer, if possible, and got handed off to a messenger to escort him up to CIC.

  Following him down wide, polished tile passageways waxed so brightly they reflected the overhead, he felt the existential anxiety of a sailor aboard a ship not his own. The air, so icy chill his sinuses immediately began to hurt, smelled of fresh paint and familiar chow. He got curious glances as he trailed the messenger up ladders and along more passageways to CIC.

  After a couple of seconds of jealous staring around—the Tico-class cruisers were the most modern ships in the fleet, with state-of-the-art phased-array radars and computers that could track hundreds of targets at once—he found the ops officer, studying a red-bound publication that he closed as the messenger brought Dan up. Lenson introduced himself. “Van Miralda,” said the other officer, shaking hands. “Yeah, we saw you coming in to anchor and looked you up. Pakistani, right?”

  “We were Oliver C. Gaddis till last month.”

  “I didn’t know we were giving ships to Pakistan. There was something on Armed Forces Radio; they’re doing something we don’t like—”

  “Well, this is a done deal.” Dan looked at the command displays enviously. “You’re lucky to be here.”

  “You sound bitter, man. What’re you doing over there? You a tech rat?”

  “No. I had her for a while. Just long enough to get attached. We’re just making sure they get her home in one piece.”

  They traded backgrounds, finding they’d both been in Destroyer Squadron Six, in Charleston; Miralda had come in after Commodore Niles had left. The lieutenant glanced at the bulkhead clock. “You want to come on down, catch second seating for breakfast? Food’s nothin’ special; we’re doing some kind of reduced-galley-manning test.”

  “You kidding? After four weeks of lamb and rice?”

  Miralda started to get up, then said, “Did you have some questions for me? Before we went down?”

  “Yeah. We don’t have Fleet Broadcast, so we don’t get much news. You don’t have to tell me classified stuff; just I’d like to know what’s going on.”

  Miralda said that Saddam—he pronounced it “Sad-damn”—had probably intended Kuwait as the first stage in a two-stage offensive. The second would have taken a bite out of Saudi Arabia, advancing to a line south of Dhahran that would take in the country’s oil production, ports, and desalinization facilities. The president’s ultimatum, backed up by the Independence and Eisenhower strike groups, had made him pause. Now the Army and Air Force were ramping up rapidly. The Navy was concentrating its main forces in the Persian Gulf, to support an air offensive and prep for an amphibious assault.

  “That’s why we’re headed over. You’ve heard of Tomahawk.”

  “I helped develop it.”

  “Is that right? You’re familiar with the capabilities of the weapon then. We have the vertical launch version. And something new.” The ops officer told Dan about a new kind of warhead, loaded with hundreds of spools of superfine carbon fiber. On detonation over transformer stations and other electrical infrastructure, the spools would unwind, shorting out power but causing little permanent damage. The lieutenant explained the awesome forces that were building up to retake Kuwait, push Saddam back into Iraq, and decimate his military force to the point where his government would fall, brought down by the anger of long-oppressed minorities.

  A white uniform passed the sonar curtain. Miralda said, “Want to meet the commodore?”

  “Sure, who is he?”

  “Fella named Leighty.”

  Dan sat rigid. “Not Thomas Leighty.”

  “That’s him. Sir? Commodore?”

  Commodore Thomas Leighty, USN, still carried himself with the air of conscious drama Dan had noticed when they’d served together aboard USS Barrett, DDG-998. Leighty’s hair was a more distinguished silver now; that was all. They stared at each other, and Dan remembered very suddenly running through the passageways with this man, riot gun in hand; kneeling over him, thinking he was dead. Leighty must have remembered it, too; he nodded slowly, and a shadow crossed his gaze. He extended a small manicured hand. “Why, Dan. Where did you pop up from, out in the middle of the Great Bitter Lake?”

  Confronted with Leighty’s crisp whites, Dan was suddenly conscious of his own unstarched, wilted khakis. “The Pak frigate, sir. I’m OIC of the MTT.”

  “It’s been a while. Since we went after Jay Harper.”

  “I still think about the King Snake. In my nightmares.”

  “This was the spy, right?” said Miralda. “You knew him, sir?”

  “I was his CO. Dan here was his department head.”

  “And you never had any idea what he was doing?”

  Dan took that one. “No, the King was smooth. We knew there was a leak, that equipment was missing. But he’d have been the last guy I suspected. The superpatriot and all.”

  “Were you there when Naval Intelligence took him out? I heard something about Cuba, a rumor you were actually inside territorial waters—”

  “You know how scuttlebutt gets exaggerated,” said Leighty. “Anyway, I have to say, you’re the last person I expected to see out here. You say that’s a Pakistani ship you’re on?” He listened intently as Dan explained the transfer program. “And how are things going over there?”

  “There’s strain. Occasionally.”

  “Between the crews?”

  Dan said reluctantly, “No, not so much among the men. There was at first. The cultures are so different. But the biggest problem’s between me and the Pak CO.”

  “I find that hard to believe. You were always perfectly loyal to me. Personality conflict?”

  “More like different leadership styles. Won’t be much longer, though; another week to Karachi and we’ll be done.”

  A smooth-faced young aide appeared beside Leighty. “Sir, we’ve got the covered round robin coming up,” he said, giving Dan a dismissive glance.

  Leighty looked around for his cap; Dan saw that if he was going to bring this up, this was the time.

  “Anyway, sir, I did have something to ask you. It’s about Desert Shield.”

  “Go ahead, Dan.”

  “Sir, I just wanted to say, once we hit Karachi, my orders are to fly back to Norfolk. But if there was a spot for me on a battle staff, or an extra fill on a combatant, I bet I could get temporary orders. If it comes to that, I’ve got leave coming—”

  “Whoa there. Whoa!” Leighty chuckled, holding up his hand. “I should have known, if there’s anything going on, you’d want in. I’ll bear you in mind. All right?”

  “I’d appreciate that, sir.”

  “Good, then.” Leighty held out his hand. After a moment Dan took it, conscious of the skin touching his, the faint smile on the commodore’s lips.

  “It would be nice to serve with you again, Dan,” Leighty said softly, at which Dan got a level scalpel flick of a glance from the aide, who seemed to really see him, then, for the first time.

  He stayed for breakfast, then excused himself. He called up to the bridge, asking the anchor watch to give Tughril a call on Channel 13, let them know he was ready to be picked up.

  He stopped just before stepping out on the main deck, enjoying a last moment of air-conditioning before he returned to the growing heat outside. Giving himself a once-over in the reflective Plexiglas of a bulletin board, he couldn’t decide if he looked salty and self-assured or like a passed-over loser.

  10

  THE RED SEA

  THE incident with the ferry happened the second day out from El Suweis. All that morning they’d steamed south, hugging the west coast, a low, pale, sandy plain rising toward distant mountains, passing only an occasional island scrubbed with low brush. The Sudan, land of war and famine. The temperature hovered at eighty. Dan hated to think what it would be like here in August. A gusty north wind pushed them along. He was in the nav shack late that afternoon, reading a velvet-paged copy of Watership Down, when the 21MC broke out in
urgent Urdu. Simultaneously he got a call on the sound-powered phone, which had by now evolved into a U.S.-only comm channel. When he picked it up, Chief Compline said, “Commander? Radio. Call coming in on 8364.”

  Eight-three-six-four kilohertz was the international maritime distress frequency, one of the four emergency frequencies the ship monitored around-the-clock. Dan said, “Got a posit yet?”

  “Call you back when. Just wanted to make sure you were up there.”

  “Surface ship? Or aircraft?”

  “Commercial vessel of some sort. Sounds like it might be close.”

  Dan told him to send somebody up with the message when they had a hard copy. Not four minutes later Compline himself was at the folding door. Dan glanced over the handwritten carbon and turned to the chart he had taped down and already marked with Tughril’s most recent fix and a running dead reckoning line from there.

  The message was from something called the MV Al Qiaq. It reported taking on water and requiring assistance at L 20° 34’ N, λ 38° 17’ E. She was making 030 at between two to three knots, destination Jedda, on the eastern coast. He walked the dividers out. “About sixty nautical miles,” he said, running a DR line toward her advance position and marking it hour by hour. The other ship was headed northeast, generally across Tughril’s bow. He calculated two courses to intercept, one at twenty-five knots and the other at flank speed. He wrote them in ballpoint on his left palm, along with the estimated time to intercept, and took the message out into the pilothouse.

  Khashar was standing at the chart table with Irshad and the Pakistani OOD. Past them a lapis sea surged and billowed, the wind whipping spray off a breaker to rattle like spent shotgun pellets against the windows. None of the three looked up till Dan cleared his throat. He laid his copy of the message against their original, which was already lying on the chart, and said, “I thought we could check our intercept courses against each other.”