China Sea

by David Poyer

  “What?”

  “Your helmsman, Lieutenant. Tell him he’s doing good.”

  The man smiled briefly, not looking up. Dan watched as they crept up, then seemed to stop, relatively at least, hammering along seventy yards off Al Qiaq’s port side. The men on the ferry’s bridge were yelling something. He couldn’t make it out above the mingled wind and blowers and diesels. He glanced again at Khashar’s back, then leaned in and yelled, “Captain! Permission to put the boat in the water?”

  He’d meant it to help the man save face, but the momentarily turned eyes held a depth of hatred he’d seldom read in a human visage. OK, so be it. He leaned over the shield and gave the boat crew the signal.

  Pistolesi waved, and the inflatable dropped. The crew scrambled down a jacob’s ladder as it surged and bumped against the hull. “Cast off!” Dan howled down through cupped hands.

  The outboards whined, and the boat curved off into the patch of slightly smoothed sea between the heaving, rolling hulls. The OOD, without coaching, dropped four RPMs and drifted back fifty feet, then nudged the bow in with one-degree course changes till they were riding so close to the other ship Dan could have underhanded a softball down to the afterdeck. He saw the bright-colored curved roofs of cars, the wet shine of lacquered metal. The passengers were women, in black veils, chadors. Children, too. He rubbed his face anxiously, watching the RHIB try a tentative first approach to the gate. It came in too fast and sheered off, and the wind caught the bow and lifted it and blew it scudding backward like a paper boat on a pond. The coxswain caught it deftly, though, spun it through a full turn in the wake, and surged back again in a full-throttle roar that was audible all the way up here on Tughril’s bridge. They disappeared for a moment, screened by an immense green-hearted swell, and Dan’s hands tightened on the rail. Then they reappeared, and he saw a spider thread of nylon stretching from the bow over the stern gate.

  Suddenly a jet of black diesel smoke shot from the ferry’s stack. Dan cursed, hammering the freshly repainted splinter shield as Irshad yelled into the pilothouse. Increasing speed, but Tughril’s steam plant couldn’t accelerate as fast as the ferry’s diesels. What the hell was the ferry’s captain doing? Then he saw the stern squat down into the water, sucked down by the increased thrust of the screws, and at that same moment a line of men squatted back along a white thread and the black wedge of the inflatable boat surged up and out of the sea like a beaching seal, sliding to a stop on the wave-washed afterdeck.

  * * *

  THEY dropped back a thousand yards and plodded along after the ferry as the sun dropped out of sight in a final brief blaze followed by the stars that had accompanied Sinbad. Khashar went below without a word to anyone. Dan wasn’t looking forward to the explosion. He’d never seen a captain defied on his own bridge like that. He would have simply left declining even to witness, except for the obligation to provide assistance. For the moment, that took precedence over everything else. If it tore poor damn Tughril apart, that would have to be accepted.

  He retreated inside the pilothouse to warm up, propping a shoe on the radiator as he checked the ferry out through his glasses. Her lights burned bright half a mile ahead, their reflections on the heaving sea now and then silhouetting the RHIB, swimming astern. He wanted to call Pistolesi, see how it was going, but didn’t want to interrupt them. They would be pretty busy. It was hard to tell, it was surging up and down so fast and so far, but he had the bad feeling that the ferry’s stern was riding lower than when he’d first seen it. The maneuver to dip her stern and get the boat aboard had been nicely done, but he hoped it hadn’t made them take on more water.

  The PRC crackled about half an hour later, in Urdu, and he listened as Irshad went back and forth for a couple of minutes, then called down to Main Control. Dan waited till he was done, then sidled up. “How’s it going over there?”

  “They’re dewatering two compartments on the starboard side. That’s why everyone was over to port; they were trying to even out the list. Not sure where the leak’s coming from. Maybe a split seam. Our eductors don’t fit the hoses on the ferry. So they’re trying the P-250s.”

  “How about fixing her pumps?”

  “They’re working on it.” He didn’t have anything more, and Dan took a turn or two around the bridge, then checked the chart. The navigator had laid out their DR straight to Jedda. Fifty-some more miles.

  Several hours passed with no change and only occasional reports from the damage control party. They reported gaining on the leaks and an estimated repair time of 0600 on one of the ferry’s pumps. Around midnight the Italian merchant reported in. Dan asked them to stand by just in case, then signed off and stood looking ahead at the steadily rolling lights.

  * * *

  HE came awake in the red-lit dark of the chartroom, tilted back in a chair, with somebody shaking him. It was Irshad. He said, “The ferry is sinking, Dan.”

  He followed Irshad out of the chart room onto a silent dark bridge. The sea had not moderated. If anything, it was heavier, and Tughril labored around them. He rubbed his eyes and stared at an unlighted shadow ahead. “When did they lose power?”

  “About five minutes ago. They ran out of gas for the pumps. The water’s gaining fast now.”

  Useless to ask why they hadn’t awakened him sooner. He checked the radar scope, trying to flog his tired brain into something resembling attentiveness. At least the ferry was still under way, had even increased speed a bit. Straining every sinew to reach port, no doubt. A bright contact off to the south was labeled as the Italian ship. Nobody else close enough to assist. The chart showed a little over thirty miles to Jedda. He wished like hell for an island, even a shoal, but the chart showed nothing but coral reefs. The dark sea beneath their rolling keels now was seven hundred meters deep. They could alter course right, try to anchor when they got closer in, but what the chart showed as the Abu Shawk Reef didn’t look inviting; if the anchor dragged, in this wind, they’d be on it.

  “Any word on the tug?”

  “It got under way from Jedda. We don’t have it on the scope yet.”

  On the radio, Pistolesi said he’d tried his best, but the rising water had shorted out the generators. Now it covered the pumps, too. Dan looked around the bridge. He should call Khashar. But Irshad hadn’t, and he didn’t feel like going through the charade. Finally he told Irshad to close up to two hundred yards astern of the ferry and to get the crew to rescue and assistance stations. As the GQ alarm went off, he called Compline, who was still in Radio, and told him to patch voice UHF to the Italian freighter, to a remote on the bridge. The chief said he had it up and tested; he would be speaking direct to the Sant’ Oreste’s master. He spent ten minutes making arrangements with the Italian, then signed off and switched his attention back to the ferry, which was coming up fast. He was opening his mouth to caution the ops officer when Irshad snapped an order and the lee helm kicked back to one-third.

  Out on the wing, Dan snapped the switch over on the signal light. He flipped the shutter handle down and swept the beam along the length of the ferry. In the sudden brilliance hundreds of faces looked back at him. Women raised their arms as if to a deliverer. Some held out black wrapped bundles. He tore his eyes from them, focusing on the bridge team. This would take iron nerve. They didn’t have the boats to transfer that many people, there wasn’t time to rig transfer lines, and if the passengers went over the side in this weather he’d lose them downwind in the dark and they would go spinning down before the seas and in a couple of days there’d be bodies on the beaches of Eritrea.

  This was the only way it was going to work.

  “Need a hand?” Chick Doolan, at his elbow. “Since he isn’t up here?”

  Dan said thanks, he could take over on the circuit to the Sant’ Oreste. He outlined his plan, then jogged aft to make sure the deck-edge nets outboard of the helo pad were going down as ordered.

  The Italian loomed out of the dark, red and green sidelights burning, then showi
ng green alone as she passed through their wake. Dan sent the new course, 010, to Al Qiaq over Pistolesi’s walkie-talkie. Irshad spoke tersely, and Tughril gradually dropped back, clinging to her flank as the ferry lumbered around. Dan tensed, watching her begin to pitch. Please God, it wouldn’t open any more seams. He had to have both ships steaming upwind for this, with Sant’ Oreste close aboard, crossing their bows in a diagonal zigzag, thirty degrees to either side of their base course.

  The ferry was slowing. He didn’t know if they were doing it for him or because they were losing power. He cupped his ear and didn’t hear any engines at all.

  The little PRC-10 crackled: “Tughril, this is the assistance party. Our engines just crapped out.”

  God damn it. At the worst possible time. “All stop,” he snapped to Irshad. Into the walkie-talkie, “This is Tughril. Abandon the engine spaces and stand by the boat.” He clicked off and yelled to Doolan, “To Sant’ Oreste: ‘Disregard previous plan. Request you heave to in your current position and begin pumping now.’”

  He couldn’t see it, but in a few minutes he smelled it. The petroleum reek of lubricating oil, coming down the wind. As it reached them, he felt the seas smoothing, gentling, as if a sheet of plastic had been glued down on the swells. It was almost miraculous, but he didn’t stop to contemplate it, just snapped, “OK, move in. Keep everybody clear of the nets when we hit. And for Christ’s sake, put the smoking lamp out.”

  The heaving black sea between them narrowed as Irshad took her in. They drifted together so slowly it looked almost tender, a gradual embracing one ship of the other, but then metal clanged and snapped from aft as the outfolded deck-edge nets hit the side of the ferry.

  Lenson took a deep breath and swung the loud hailer up. “Passengers first! No baggage! Passengers first! Take your time. We have plenty of time.” Which wasn’t true at all. It was going to be a close race between the other ship slipping away stern-first and capsizing, but he didn’t want to trigger panic. He passed the megaphone to Irshad, who repeated the message in songlike Arabic. Watching the upturned faces, mouths open as if drinking the words. A keen wavered into the wind, followed by a babble of voices.

  Then it began. A slow, wriggling stampede, only marginally channeled by the united efforts of the ferry’s crew and Tughril’s. Pistolesi lifted an old woman, black cloth flapping around her frail body, and half threw her across the gap between the rolling hulls. Doolan and the fantail party were tossing cargo nets over the moving metal junk into which the seesaw crashing and rolling of the mismatched hulls were rapidly grinding the nets and lifelines. Dan stood on the wing, staring down as the black tide of pilgrims advanced like ants transferring from rocking leaf to leaf in a storm. Some drew back from the passage, clutching bundles or luggage as they glanced terrified between the ferry, whose stern was now nearly submerged, and Tughril’s afterdeck. Others shoved their way forward, clambering hand over hand out over the tossing bridge, hesitating at the brink, then hurling themselves forward. An obese fellow in a long white shift tripped as he stepped across, stumbled, flung his arms out with a hoarse despairing cry. He was plummeting for the gap between the rolling hulls when Chief Mellows leaned out, swept down a muscular arm, and hoisted him straight up as effortlessly as a power winch.

  Dan took another deep breath of the choking oil smell, watching helplessly from above as the weird uluation broke out again among the huddled pilgrims. He didn’t understand the words they were crying below him, but he could guess. They were praying, and they were right. He’d done all he could. They’d all done all they could, on this dark night.

  Their lives were in the hands of Allah now.

  11

  KARACHI, PAKISTAN

  THE hot wind smelled of petroleum and swamp, mud and smoke and shit and dust. On the way in they’d passed a refinery, then a railroad yard; to port stretched low black mangroves and, closer in, miles of exposed and drying mud. Dan wasn’t sure why they were going in at low tide, but then, he hadn’t spoken to any of the Pakis for days. The pier walked slowly closer, grimy worn concrete left over from British times. Forward of it a steam dredge was puffing and pumping, not far from where Tughril was expected to go alongside, if one judged by the men leaning against the bollards.

  Dan stared down from the main deck, the only place outside the skin of the ship he was allowed to go. His stateroom, the wardroom, and the main deck. Since the ferry incident, Khashar had restricted all the U.S. officers to their quarters, forbidding them to set foot on the bridge or CIC. An enforced leisure cruise, without the shuffleboard and dance extravaganza.

  They’d debarked the passengers at Jedda, robed in black and chattering to one another, carrying the bundles and cheap suitcases that despite all Irshad’s and Dan’s shouted warnings they’d insisted on pushing or carrying across with them when they abandoned the Al Qiaq. Which had apparently gone down, because the salvage tug that had reached her position a couple of hours after the frigate had cast off, having embarked all her passengers and crew, had found no sign of her. He tried to console himself with that: not a single life had been lost and only three injured, one fractured pelvis and two twisted ankles. That helped, to think they’d rescued nearly three hundred people from certain death.

  But here they were at last. The passage was at an end. His seabag and B-4 were already packed and a set of civvies laid out for the taxi or bus or however the local security assistance guys had set up for them to get to the airport. A few hours and they’d be on their way.

  The pier drifted nearer and beyond it the flat mass of city. The mysterious East. Only from here it looked pretty workaday, the industrial face every port city presented to the arriving seaman: railyards, water towers, oil tanks. Only needled minarets and an occasional dome gave any clue to what lay beyond.

  The first hint something unexpected was going on was when a silver Mercedes turned onto the pier, accompanied by two covered army trucks. The trucks stopped and troops began jumping down. Chief Mellows, who had come up to watch beside him, said, “You know what’s going on over there, sir?”

  “Damned if I know, Marsh,” he told the master-at-arms, then shaded his eyes, staring in disbelief across to the pier. “Hey. You see who I see? There in the civilian clothes and the big hat?”

  “I can’t really say, sir; eyesight ain’t what it used to be. Where you looking?”

  Dan shaded his eyes. “I thought I saw Commander Juskoviac.” It had certainly looked like him, in a blue windbreaker and the flamboyant straw Panama Greg liked to wear on liberty. But that made no sense. Dan had left the former XO behind and never missed him—in fact, quite the reverse.

  When the brow went over, the soldiers presented arms. A white-uniformed dignitary emerged from the Mercedes, followed by another character in a business suit. They marched up the brow, looking grim.

  “Your presence is requested in the captain’s cabin,” the messenger told Dan a few minutes later.

  When he knocked at Khashar’s door they were all there. All wore war faces, and the smoky atmosphere was hostile. As he entered, a bulky form in whites and broad-barred shoulder boards, a familiar enraged face, swung to him. Khashar said, “Here he is. I was explaining to your attaché here, Lenson, your role in the near-rebellion of my crew.”

  Dan said carefully, still at attention, “I’m not aware of any rebellion, Captain. Nor have I ever intended you any disrespect.”

  The man in the suit cleared his throat and introduced himself as Capt. Marion Sasko, the assistant U.S. naval attaché to Pakistan. The man in uniform was Capt. Ahmed I. Uddin, Chief of Staff, Pakistani Fleet.

  Uddin said heavily, “Sit down, Commander. Captain Khashar: Is this rebellion or mutiny the subject of an official report? Or is it a figure of speech, meant to illustrate the depth of your disappointment with this officer, while he was under your command?”

  Khashar hesitated, and in that moment Dan knew he had never reported any such thing, nor would he. To do so would be to admit he’d so estr
anged his crew and even his officers that they preferred the direction of a foreigner to his. Finally he chain-lit another cigarette without answering. Uddin said, “Now, how long will you require to off-load your crew, officers, official publications, cryptographic materials, personal gear, and all ammunition?”

  “I have not yet been ordered to do so,” said Khashar.

  Uddin resumed speaking, but now in Urdu. Dan didn’t follow it, but Sasko leaned forward to slip him a photocopied message. When he lifted his eyes he had the picture.

  The transfer was on hold. Because of Benazir Bhutto’s avowal of a previously secret nuclear weapon development program, all transfers of U.S. weapons, ships, and aircraft to Pakistan had been frozen under the terms of the Pressler Amendment.

  Uddin turned to him. “Commander, are you up to speed on all this?”

  “Uh, this is the first I’ve heard. You mean we’re taking the ship back? But we already transferred it.”

  Sasko: “It was a lease, not a permanent transfer. The contract always contained provisions for early termination.”

  Uddin said, “That is not quite correct. The provisions for termination, I do not recall the exact terminology, but they state that the material involved may revert only for certain reasons, such as the U.S. needing the ship in case of war or the receiving country not meeting the lease payment. Which case is it, Captain Sasko? War or nonperformance? And why now? I am sure you have known about our nuclear programs for years, with your wonderful satellites.”

  “I would say noncompliance with the nonproliferation pact.”

  “Which no nation bordered by China and India could dare take seriously. We have invested several million dollars in acquiring this ship and the others scheduled to follow her. This is extremely offensive to my government. However, in the interests of continuing a defense relationship that has been of value to both sides for many years, I have been directed by my service to acquiesce in Tughril’s temporary relinquishment. Contrary to my own instincts in the matter. We insist, however, that we retain title, and if this matter is not resolved in a reasonable period of time, we will pursue restitution in the appropriate diplomatic venues and in U.S. and international courts.”