China Sea

by David Poyer

  “Skipper? Sir, you awake?”

  He flinched and sat up, returning to the prickle of unshaven beard, the dry mouth, the anxiety that accompanied him now wherever he went, every eye averted from his. Thank God he no longer drank. Or he’d be down in his cabin, turning into Dick Ottero bottle by bottle. “What you got?” he asked Compline.

  “Sir, I don’t like the weather picture. Here’s the latest.”

  “I thought we couldn’t copy Fleet Weather.”

  “We can’t; I’m eavesdropping on the commercial reports out of Hong Kong. They’re only three hundred miles north of us, and I’m getting it pretty clear. This Hercule they’re talking about—”

  “Make sense, Chief. What ‘Hercule’?”

  “The typhoon,” Compline said, gaining Dan’s attention immediately. “It’s out around 130 and headed west. They’re getting real focused on it, in the Philippines.”

  Dan told him to bring him every report he could get on it and to have Robidoux put up a typhoon chart for the bridge watch. He sat and worried a bit more after the chief went below.

  Even at minimal consumption, they’d suck the last of the Brunei oil out of the bottom tanks in a couple more days. The last evaporator had crapped out, meaning all the freshwater would soon be gone, with Gaddis’s increasingly leaky steam system wasting it. The men were down to a gallon a day, barely enough to shave and wash under their arms. Slowly failing boilers, no water, no air-conditioning, no comms … pretty soon this crew would be hoisting pirate flags for real. He didn’t know what he was doing or where he was going. Maybe it would have been better if the islanders had done a Captain Cook on him back at Dahakit, grabbed him and chopped him in the surf. No, that was self-pity. He didn’t have anything he recognized as a death wish. And without him, the ship would be chaos. Juskoviac would never be able to hold things together. The way he had so far, under some pretty trying circumstances.

  Or was he kidding himself?

  Sitting alone, he knew that was the most pernicious and inassuagable doubt, that unbeknownst to him he’d lost it, gone too far, he was over the line, and now no one dared tell him he was into Mistah Kurtz territory. That was the curse of command. But in his case there was a hidden flaw, like a bubble in cast metal. He’d always had problems with authority figures. Oh, he knew why. His father, the drunken, failed, strap-wielding cop. Commanders like Ike Sundstrom, Tom Leighty, Ben Shaker. Not always wrong, not always evil, but Dan had suspected and been wary of them all, even the good ones.

  He smiled faint and bitter, watching the sea roll past. So that now he himself was in command, what more natural than that he should doubt himself?

  “Bridge, Combat,” said the 21MC. Colosimo, who had the watch, glanced up from the radar repeater. Dan said, “I got it, Dom,” and hit the lever with his foot. “Captain.”

  “Sir, distress call coming in from a merchant ship. Being shadowed by unidentified craft. It’s open mike; they’re still transmitting.”

  “They give a posit?”

  “Coming in now, sir. They’re up north of us.”

  “Let me know as soon as you have it plotted.”

  “Aye, sir. Permission to respond, sir? Let them know we’ve copied their distress call?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Combat aye.”

  The 21MC went off. Dan leaned back, briefly debating kicking her up to flank, then dismissed it. Why bother? If it was pirates, they either would strike or would not. If they did, it would be over in minutes. A swift attack, a quick departure, melting back into the chaff of fishing craft and small merchants that thronged these shallow seas. Why burn the last of his fuel to no good purpose?

  He sank back into his seat, returning to the unpleasant contemplation of a very narrow range of possible actions. The time was coming when he’d have to go into port willy-nilly; otherwise he’d end up drifting around out here with empty tanks. He sure as shit didn’t want to have to go through a typhoon in that condition. That was how Halsey and Task Force Thirty-eight had lost three destroyers east of here in 1944. Every seaman knew that story. No, the thing to do was head southeast, back toward Subic. Permission granted or not. Anchor off if there was no space at the pier, but just go in. Go in; give up; give over; throw in his cards; dump Gaddis and her hodgepodge crew and the murderous evil lodged at her heart into someone else’s lap.

  Why put it off any longer?

  A weight eased off his shoulders. It was so easy, giving up. Only the nagging sense he’d failed made it less a resignation than a surrender.

  “Captain, Combat.”

  “Go ahead,” he snapped. Why were they still calling him that? He wasn’t in command. He never had been. It was time just to accept it.

  “Sir, more information on the Marker Eagle. The ship shadowing them is a gunboat of some sort. It signaled them to heave to. Two more craft approached. One’s attempting to lay alongside. The master has increased speed and is trying to keep them from boarding—”

  Dan set his coffee aside, not sure he’d heard that right. “Say again—say again the name of the ship.”

  “They identify as the Marker Eagle, a ro-ro out of Hong Kong.”

  A restaurant in Little India and a white-bearded fellow who started conversations with strangers. A workaday ship, not new, not yet old; a cabin filled with paintings and good talk and friendliness to a stranger.

  He shook himself back to the Gaddis’s bridge, to find Colosimo looking at him expectantly. He depressed the key again. “You said you had a posit. Distance to intercept?”

  “Ninety-two nautical miles straight-line, sir. I don’t know what his turn-away course is, though.”

  A trifle over three hours, at Gaddis’s best speed, Which she could not reach now, with steam leaks and worn pumps, yet still not all that far. Without Dan’s understanding why, his heart surged suddenly upward, as if struggling toward the surface from an immense depth. The bare possibility of action transformed the world, the way love changed the look and feel of everything accustomed and everyday. He cleared his throat and said to Colosimo, filtering any hint of excitement from his voice, “Commander, let’s come to three-zero-zero and go to flank.”

  “Flank speed? You sure?”

  “Right, I know, we’re short on fuel.”

  “Real short. We sprint too far, we won’t make it back to Subic. By the time we get there, it’ll all be over, anyway.”

  Dan ignored the assumption that was their ultimate destination. “Well, without knowing the ship’s name, I’d say you’d be right. But I’ve been aboard the Marker Eagle, in Singapore. She was boarded and robbed before, in the Strait of Malacca, and the captain built in some precautions based on that experience. Depends on who’s attacking him, but he might be able to hold out long enough we could do him some good.”

  While they were talking, Compline had been busy at the chart table, but he now turned away from it and approached them and stood silent, waiting for their exchange to end. Dan said, “Yeah, Chief?”

  “Sir, uh, just to interject, going north right now isn’t going to improve our position in respect to this typhoon.”

  The radioman had a point, and Dan crossed the bridge and checked the chart Robidoux had taped up. They only had two date-time/lat/long positions on Hercule, but it was obviously headed in their general direction. It would pass over Luzon first, though; that mountainous island was a barrier in its path. The movement roses in the Sailing Directions suggested a tropical cyclone coming over Luzon would curve northward. Compline said the forecasts he was monitoring had mentioned this as a likely track, but not as the only possible one; it could head straight west or even hook left, though this was statistically rare. Dan tried to weigh all the factors in his mind, trying to make the right decision. He’d watched the process, watched his previous COs as they thought their way through a go–no go call. Sometimes they’d been right, sometimes not. “We’re getting status reports on this out of Hong Kong, right?”

  “Yessir—so far,�
�� Compline said.

  “And we’ve got a little time to watch him come, see what he does. I don’t think another ninety miles north is going to put us in an irretrievable position. Let’s bring her around, Dom.”

  Colosimo looked doubtful but started snapping orders. Gaddis swung obediently to the new course. Dan hit the bitch box again to tell Combat to pass to the Marker Eagle to hold out and try to shape her course southward if possible. Then he went back to stand by the helm console. The helmsman showed no sign he knew Dan was there, eyes riveted on the gyro, his whole being intent on keeping the ship on course within a tenth of a degree. Slowly, he became aware of a murmured conversation behind them, in the little chart room abaft the pilothouse.

  “… Let me out, but you know the son of a bitch did it still prowling around. Who the fuck knows? And what he doin’ about it? He’s headed north again. We’re not going to Subic. Just steamin’ off into fuck knows where.”

  A mutter in reply, something about the officers. Then, just incrementally louder enough that Dan could make out the words: “Maybe he right. Somebody got to do something about it.”

  He slammed back the sliding curtain to reveal two startled faces. One was Quartermaster Second Robidoux’s. The other was that of Johnile Machias, the third-class Dan had mistakenly confined. Machias stared at him with a brazen, lazy gaze, as if he’d said nothing worthy of note. The QM swallowed, smoothing the charts spread before him. “Yessir? Need something, Skipper?”

  “South China coast.”

  “Out on the table, sir, underneath the one we got out now.”

  “What are you doing up here, Machias?”

  “Just hanging out with my buds, Cap’n. There a problem with that?”

  “You’re not on watch, you have no business here. Boatswain, show this man below.”

  “You gonna chain me down in the fan room again, sir?”

  Dan turned back, enraged by the heavy-lidded face, the sleepy, contemptuous voice. For a moment he struggled with what to say, while three men watched and waited: the QM, Machias, and the boatswain. “Get below, Machias,” Dan said at last.

  Instead the enlisted men glanced at one another. They still didn’t move. What the hell was going on? Taken by a sudden disquietude, he glanced back over his shoulder; but the bridge looked normal; no one else was paying any attention. Colosimo and Compline, standing watch as JOOD, were over on the starboard side. He wheeled back as Machias said, “You ain’t never apologized for locking me up down there, my man. That was not easy on me.”

  “If it was a hardship for you, I apologize. I did it for everyone’s safety.”

  “I told you, I can’t take that kind of thing. I said—”

  Dan said again, “Below, Machias,” and somehow that broke the spell.

  The boatswain grabbed the seaman’s arm. Machias said, disgusted, “You ain’t gon’ get away with this shit much longer,” and drifted toward the ladder down, looking back, as if daring Dan to take up the threat. But he ignored the bait, and a moment later the joiner door banged.

  “I don’t want him on the bridge again. Or anybody else who’s not on the watch team,” he told Topmark, then raised his voice. “Commander Colosimo? I’m going for a tour of the ship. Keep her headed to intercept the merchant. Pass the word, what’s going on, to get your boarding team and the boat crews spun up, but don’t call them away yet. I’ll call you back for an update in a few minutes.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said the reservist, eyes masked by binoculars as he stared at the sea ahead.

  * * *

  HE went below and walked the length of the ship, all the way forward on the second deck, then turned at the windlass room and went all the way aft. Pondering, as he slid through office spaces and passageways and test labs. Thinking, as he breasted the too-hot air of the empty mess decks. A solitary sailor in cutoffs, bare shoulders shining with sweat, pushed a listless swab over glistening streaks that dried as dirty as before. The scullery trash had been pushed into corners and forgotten; the stench was choking in the cloying heat. A half-finished repair had left cables dangling from the locked-open door of the package conveyor. He pushed through a watertight door, its ungreased hinges groaning and cracking, and down a narrow hooked passageway that ended at a door that was unlocked and shouldn’t be. He pushed it open and looked around at a looted litter of masks and rubber ponchos, the deck covered with the black rubber duck feet of Footwear, Chemical Protective. A cleared space and a blanket.

  Wherever he looked he saw the signs of neglect, filth, lack of care. Sure, they were undermanned. But wasn’t that what Dick Ottero had said?

  A functioning exec would have helped, too. Damn Juskoviac anyway. After their confrontation beneath the helo nets he’d vanished, like the Invisible Man when he unwrapped his bandages. Juskoviac’s visibility, his impact on the ship and on Dan’s consciousness, minimal before, had ended. He didn’t come on the bridge anymore or show up in CIC. Dan wondered fleetingly if he’d done the right thing, securing power to the XO. Maybe any XO was better than no XO … no, not in this case. He didn’t care what the man was doing, as long as Greg Juskoviac was out of his face.

  He dropped down a deck to Main Control, found Jim Armey there, and discussed fuel state and possible ballasting against heavy seas. Then emerged from the hole and headed up, until with sweat dampening his shirt he emerged onto the open main deck on the starboard side aft.

  Driven by a cool wind, the green sea surged by, leaping and running like a herd of deer, and he followed it aft to watch the washing-machine surge of it as the square stern dragged itself over the rolling surface. The foam seethed and sucked, and looking down into it he remembered how years before on another ship a man had turned his back on him and stepped out and off the stern, seemingly standing on the air, before dropping away into the vortex. For a moment that endless maelstrom called to him, too, and he leaned forward, gripping the lifeline so hard his fingers hurt. And that, too, brought a memory, of his younger self trying to abandon the doomed and sinking Reynolds Ryan, staring down into a fire-lit sea while his fingers cramped on an icy lifeline.

  So many memories. So many years at sea. Was this all it had come to? Duty and sacrifice and struggle; was this what he had earned?

  What in God’s name was happening to him?

  Gaddis was bulling through the ocean now at flank speed, and the wind blustered across her deck so strong he had to take shelter under the lee. Leaning again on the lines, he looked down as the combers surged endlessly by, their backs the cool gray-green one saw sometimes in human eyes, but a darker color in their curved hearts.

  Standing there, he contemplated the conundrum. And once again, could come to only one conclusion.

  It didn’t seem logical. He might not be quite sane, even to entertain it. But if it was not the explanation for why he and Gaddis were where they were, well then, he had no other theory. The U.S. Navy didn’t just misplace combatants, even obsolescent frigates. It didn’t detail crews the way it had detailed these misfits and undesirables to him. And it didn’t cut off communications or refuse port entry to its own ships.

  All right then, he told himself. Reason it out. One step at a time.

  Fact: He’d been extended to go with the training team, when usually the XO or the chief engineer was the officer in charge.

  Hypothesis: Someone wanted him in command of, or at least aboard, Gaddis after her departure from Karachi.

  Fact: The USN didn’t let a ship’s commissioning status drift, even if it was a question of a lapsed or abrogated transfer. It either was a Navy ship or it wasn’t. But Gaddis had been left in that limbo, despite repeated notification.

  Hypothesis: Someone wanted a doubt to exist as to whether Gaddis was actually a U.S. warship.

  Fact: The Navy didn’t refuse port entry when a ship needed resupply and fuel and ammo, “beans and bullets and black oil,” in sea parlance.

  Hypothesis: They wanted him right where he was, in the northern end of the South China S
ea, west of the Luzon Strait.

  Boot propped on a chock, staring down into the passing foam as the frigate charged northwest, he gradually realized that facts and deductions, hypotheses and speculation, all added up to a conclusion only if he assumed that everything—his unlikely assignment as Gaddis’s CO, her delayed turnover to Pakistani control, everything that had happened since then—had been set up by some single, as yet unrevealed operator, with the tacit or active concurrence and cooperation in varying degrees of COMDESRON Twelve, COMNAVSURFLANT, NAVOTTSA, CINCLANTFLT, PACFLT, and possibly COMIDEASTFOR.

  He shook his head slowly, rubbing his mouth as he stared at the rolling horizon. No, no, impossible. Just reciting the list of commands and commanders who would have had to acquiesce made it prima facie the paranoid construct of a disordered brain. He’d always pitied those who saw conspiracies at the root of world events. It had seemed a sign of minds too isolated, too simplistic, too enraged at their own powerlessness to deal with the innumerable permutations a messy reality offered up for marvel every day. But then, grimly, he took hold of his doubts and set their faces forward again. Continue the analysis, he ordered himself. Follow to its logically absurd end, and clear your mind of it forever.

  What possible rationale would justify such collusion?

  He tensed. As soon as he asked the question, the answer was self-evident.

  The only reason to have a ship that was not a U.S. ship, under a commander who could be disowned as a U.S. Navy commander, with a crew that was disposable … would be to make it possible for that ship and that commander and that crew to take on an enemy that was, for whatever reason, undesirable to confront directly. To make a statement or send a message, while protecting other U.S. interests by making his action plausibly deniable.

  With a chill, he realized how neatly it fitted into his own career history. He had decorations, yes, and dedicated service. He had supporters, friends, even a patron or two. But he also had letters of reprimand in his jacket, adverse fitness reports, and a reputation in the Fleet for acting independently, speaking his mind, for being close at times to the proverbial loose cannon. Daniel V. Lenson could easily be labeled a rogue. And how smoothly and gradually it had all been done! On paper Gaddis was Pakistani. He had nothing, not a document, not so much as a message, to prove he was entitled to sail her. Everything had been verbal, passed by messengers who could deny any such instructions had been given.