by David Poyer
“They’ll never make it.”
“Some of them, probably not. But we’ve got to do it. No time to rig one out of dunnage and awnings. I figured, one of the RHIBs, on a long line, drag it sideways, that’ll keep our bow to the wind—”
“How are they going to get it over the side, rolling like this?”
The ship leaned desperately and men clung to each other. Robidoux moaned suddenly from under the chart table, coming to. Aside from his groans, several minutes went by with no one speaking. More seas battered into them, though none as bad as that last big one. She was down, and the sea was taking its chance, kicking and smothering her at the same time. If another monster came in, they could go over. The total blackness, without even masthead and range lights to show what was bearing down on them, made it ten times as terrifying. If only he could fucking see—
Wheep-wheep-wheep, then the rattling bang as Compline grabbed the handset. A moment later it clacked as he slammed it back into the holder.
“What is it, Chief?”
“Mr. Armey,” said Compline. “He used the last of the air. The generators didn’t start.”
Dan stared at him. Exclamations, curses, and quickly choked-back cries came from elsewhere about the darkened bridge. They were finished, then. There was no way to start the boilers without power. Nor did they have bilge pumps without electricity. They’d roll till they took enough water, then capsize.
The J-phone wheeped again, interrupting his thoughts before he had a chance to follow them through. He cursed as Compline held it out to him again. “Jim? That you?”
It wasn’t Armey. It was Neilsen, calling from sick bay. His voice was unsteady. He said, “Captain, we need you down here.”
“Christ, Neilsen, I’ve kind of got my hands full; you’re gonna have to wait.”
“You better get down here, sir. It’s Mrs. Wedlake. We had a visitor.”
Oh, no, he said to himself, feeling hopelessness and horror. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, then jerked them open. “I’ll be right down,” he said, thrust the phone into the chief’s hands, and turned to the ladder.
“What is it, sir?” Colosimo, blocking his path. “Where are you going?”
“Dom, you’re gonna have to hold the status quo here for a couple of minutes. You can reach me in sick bay if it really goes to shit. Chick should be up any second. Tell him what’s going on and what he needs to do, on the sea anchor, and he’s got to do it most rikki-tik now.”
“We need you up here, Skipper.”
“I know that, goddamnit.” He blinked and tightened his jaw against an uninvited image: the girl on Dahakit Atoll, the shallow network of knife cuts around the bloodied socket … Bobbie Wedlake’s elvish face … “Get the hell out of my way.”
“Sir, you can’t leave the bridge.”
“I’ve got to, Dom. Just do one thing for me, OK? Just keep her afloat till I get back.”
* * *
THE midships passageway was empty, leading aft through Officers’ Country. It was dark except for the saffron gleams of the emergency lighting. The deck took another tremendous lean as he worked his way aft along it, creaking and screaming, and for the first time he heard metal popping, breaking, like a human spine twisted sideways and then slowly being buckled by some enormous weight. He staggered into the bulkhead opposite Juskoviac’s door, then dropped to his hands and knees and crept along, more on the bulkhead than on the deck, sucking the slanting, jolting air in dry sobs. He didn’t want to see this. Didn’t want to.
Sick bay was open and a tropical sun shone out of it into the careening, pitching passageway. He blinked into the glare. Neilsen had turned on the battery-powered operating lamp, installed for emergency surgery.
The first thing he saw was Bobbie Wedlake, sitting bolt upright in a chair lashed to the sink. Her dark eyes stared out of a face white as sea foam. She held a snub-nosed revolver on her lap, thin fingers wrapped like white wires around the grip. Neilsen stood on the far side of the compartment, clinging to the bunk frame where Chief Tosito lay, still out, apparently. Dan took it all in with one sweep of his sight, and his knees went weak. Then relief turned to rage. If she wasn’t hurt, why had they called him? Gaddis could go over any moment and never come up again.
“OK, goddamnit, what is it?”
“I had to go out for a minute,” Neilsen said defensively. “And you said call the masters-at-arms … so I did. Then I left. Should have waited for ’em, but I couldn’t. Only for a second. But while I was out somebody tried to break in.”
“He did break in,” Wedlake said. Her voice was soft and low but very focused.
Dan took another took at the gun. “Uh, could you take your finger off the trigger now, Mrs. Wedlake? Thanks. Did you see him? Could you identify him?”
“He used a key. It was dark. All I saw was somebody very large.”
“Black? White?”
“I think white. I think. No, I’m not sure about that.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, but I saw something gleam.”
“Then what?”
“Then I cocked the gun. He heard it. And I said, “Stop. Get out of here, or I’ll kill you.” I would have, too. I can hit what I aim at. He stood there for a second or two. Then he left.”
Lenson swung on the corpsman. “You didn’t lock her in. I gave you a direct order—”
“He did,” said Wedlake. She lifted the gun, hands still locked on it, to push back a strand of black hair. In the blinding light, close as he was to her, he saw gray roots beneath. “I heard it click as he went out. I told you, the man who came in had a key.”
“Who else has a key to this compartment?” Dan asked Neilsen. The corpsman said as far as he knew, nobody. The controlled substances safe was in sick bay. Access was as tightly controlled as to Crypto and the magazines. Dan hesitated, chewing that one over.
Or had there really been an intruder at all? He glanced at Wedlake again, bolt-erect in the chair, taut upright but swaying forward as the ship took another gigantic squealing roll and the sea thundered over them, shaking their metal shell as if the storm knew they were in here, as if determined to crack it apart and devour them all. What kind of drugs had Neilsen given her?
As if on cue, a slow voice piped from the lower bunk, “She’s right, Captain. I saw him, too.”
“Chief Tosito. You back with us?”
“I was awake. Don’ feel so good, but I could see. Just like she said.”
“Who was it?”
“Couldn’t be many guys. He was real big.”
“Tall, you mean? Or hefty?”
“Real big.”
The voice trailed away, and Dan reached out and squeezed Tosito’s leg reassuringly. “Thanks, Chief. You get some sleep now, OK? Get better.” Then he switched back to Mrs. Wedlake. “Did he touch anything while he was in here?”
“No … but he backed out and he tripped on the, on the sill, as he went out. I ran to the door and locked it again, then jammed the chair against it. But I heard him fall down outside. There was a lot of noise.”
Dan glanced at the J-phone, remembering he had to get back topside, had to figure out some way to save the ship. They’d missed this psycho yet again, but they had another hint. There were only so many “big men” in the crew. He and Mellows would narrow the interrogations accordingly. Eventually one would crack. He nodded curtly to them both and to Tosito, who had closed his eyes again and lay back exhausted. “All right. Keep it locked after I leave. We’ll get it sorted out in the morning. If we’re still here.”
“I want another lock on this door,” she said. “I’m telling you, he came right in.”
The corpsman offered to rig a padlock and chain, and Dan said to make it so. The need to get back to the bridge became overwhelming then. He jerked the door open and stepped out into the passageway.
Just then the ship went over again, this time farther than before, till he was lying on his back looking terrified up at the
opposite bulkhead. The hull boomed deafeningly, jerking under him. The impact of thousands of cubic meters of water was skidding her bodily sideways through the sea. He tried to regain his feet but went down again as the ship fell away beneath him, then rose again with dizzying speed. He waited, pinned helplessly, for her to go over, for them all to start drowning, those who weren’t battered to death first by shifting machinery.
Something cold submerged the backs of his legs.
The deck came back to the upright a few degrees, then a bit more. She was losing stability with each roll, but she was still fighting. He flicked on his light. A stream was pouring down the passageway, funneled into the corner made by deck and bulkhead. The parting main deck seams … then the cold poured over the tops of his half-Wellingtons.
As he glanced down he saw something glint in the water. He bent, felt around, picked it up. Shook the salt sea off and held it under his light.
It was gray plastic. The shattered-off back of a Polaroid camera. He turned it over and read the inscription. Faded black Magic Marker read: PROPERTY OF USS GADDIS.
He nodded once, there in the heaving dark. Understanding at last. Because just that simply, just seeing that, so much that had gone on so puzzlingly and for so long became suddenly and perfectly clear.
* * *
HE climbed back to the bridge to find everyone clinging to handholds in the flickery dark. He stuffed the whole issue with Bobbie and the intruder then, jammed it under a rock in his head till they were out of this. If they made it out of this. If not, this night would see justice done to innocent and guilty alike. Your will, he thought, not mine. I’ll do my best, but if that’s what you want, I’m ready.
Brief as the prayer was, it steadied him.
Lieutenant Commander Colosimo was waiting at the top for him. “Chick getting his team together?” were the first words out of Dan’s mouth.
“He hasn’t shown up. I called again but—”
“Here I am, goddamnit!” Doolan, on the ladder just below Dan. “Jesus. What the hell’s going on? Where’s the power?”
“Fires are out, and the de-gens won’t start. Where the hell you been? We’ve got to get a sea anchor out.”
“I fell down the goddamn ladder,” Chick said, and this time Dan saw the blood black on his face, on his mustache. “Slipped and did a Superman all the way to the bottom. You ran right past me as I was lyin’ there.”
“We’re stuck in the trough. Jim tried to start the diesel gens. Till there wasn’t any more compressed air.”
“Oh, shit.” Doolan rubbed his head, staring at the ominous black outside the window. Dan couldn’t believe it was still dark; it felt like they’d been fighting this for days. “Oh, shit.”
Dan stared out, too, suddenly going still as it rushed back into his mind at last, what he’d almost grasped a few minutes before. How he could put drag on the bow. He spun and yelled at them both, “OK, here it is. Forget the RHIB. Chick, get your team ready to drop anchor.”
“What? We’re way off soundings. What are you thinking of—” Then Colosimo stopped. Dan saw Doolan’s eyes snap open, too. They nodded, not looking at him. Then the weapons officer picked up the phone.
* * *
A few hours later he sat exhausted on the wardroom sofa, staring with the blank regard of utter exhaustion at the lashed-down chairs and the bare table. The hull still strained and creaked around him. He could still make out the whish of breakers going past, the crash and roar and shudder as a big greenie smashed itself apart over the main deck. But the eye had passed, Gaddis drove now through still-heavy but less mountainous afterseas, and, most vital of all, she had way on again. The low, nearly imperceptible hum of the turbines, the beat of the screw, were a steady reassurance. The overhead fluorescents burned flickerless, intense. He was soaked and filthy. His khakis were sodden, his back and arms were bruised, and terror was still fresh in his mind. He knew he wasn’t the only one. Every man aboard had probably gone over his accounts due this dark night.
In the first black light of dawn Doolan and Topmark had led a party of volunteers out on the forecastle, a damn brave act, and run forward with safety lines and clung as the cold gray sea hammered over them, then dashed forward again, like marines, some covering as others rushed, and at last managed to reach the ground tackle at the extremity of the bow. A slash of knives, a couple of judiciously applied steel-toes, and the pelican hooks had flicked free and the chain slipped, clanked, then thundered out. The boatswain rode the brake, half-submerged at frequent intervals on the control station, till all twelve shots, fifteen fathoms a shot, a total of 1,080 feet of steel with each link weighing twenty-two pounds, were out and the big bow anchor was swinging far down there in the darkness. And the drag of all that metal through the depths had brought her back, brought the bullnose slowly around into the teeth of wind and sea, the water foaming white as it broke and seethed and swept her all the way to the pilothouse, but at least she wasn’t rolling beam on now.
And after two and a half hours like that, with everyone sweating bullets and wondering when a weak link or cracked shackle would give way, Armey had suddenly reported he had one-bravo boiler lit off again. Somehow Sansone had managed it without electricity, kindled it with a tank of welding oxygen, a smoky, dangerous, half-assed fire but one that gradually brewed enough steam to restart a turbo generator, then the fans, then the bilge pumps, and finally the shaft began to spin and she’d forged ahead to breast the oncoming seas once again as they brought the anchor back aboard.
Yeah, everyone had been scared. Some had met it boldly. Others had acted only when it was thrust on them. But for once, goddamn it, the crew had worked together.
Weary as he was, a glow of satisfaction warmed him as he sprawled exhausted in the deserted wardroom, eyes empty as a lightless sky.
There might be hope for Gaddis yet. It wouldn’t make a lot of difference in the great scheme of things, but it made him feel better. As if he’d done something worth doing. More than that, he wished her well. He knew it was pure sentiment. “She” was just a piece of steel, iron and carbon bound by chemical attraction yet separated by the mutual repulsion, the jealous guarding of selfhood every atom of matter maintained against every other. But that was the way he felt.
Another thing occurred to him then, and any elation at survival dropped instantly away. He rubbed his face, hard, as if hand-sanding a block of walnut. The matter he’d shoved under a rock while he waited to see if they’d still be afloat come dawn. He had to make a decision. In a sense it was made for him, but he wanted to make sure it was the right one. If it was wrong, the consequences, both for himself and for others, were too terrible to contemplate.
And right or wrong, his own life would never be the same.
A gray piece of plastic marked USS GADDIS.
A big man, with access to the most restricted spaces of the ship.
Dan sat there for a few minutes more, too battered and wrung out to push himself erect; trying to concentrate, trying to think. Instead he found himself bobbing back for a moment above the slick black surface of a tormented hallucination, neck kinked painfully by the arm of the sofa. He heaved himself up and wended his way down the darkened, swaying corridor, fingers splayed to the slanting bulkheads, back to his cabin to snatch an hour’s sleep.
22
THE chief’s quarters, and the tension level was high. Chief Compline and Chief Warrant Engelhart, Al Sansone, and both the assistant masters-at-arms stood witnessing as Dan checked the name on the locker. The chiefs had bigger lockers than the junior enlisted, but they still weren’t overgenerous. Padlocks tapped as Gaddis rolled.
Dan rubbed his mouth, trying to push away his desperation for sleep. He’d only managed a few minutes of shut-eye, for the simple reason that he couldn’t just turn off the terror and energy the typhoon had unleashed. He was glimpsing weird animals at the corner of vision that when he focused weren’t there. Plus, he couldn’t stop wondering what they were going to find this mornin
g. It was only the second time in his career he’d had to witness a non-consensual search. They were only legal with probable cause, or in an emergency, both of which justifications he figured applied to a murderer aboard ship. He felt torn, both eager for a final answer and dreading what that answer would demand in its train.
“Where’s Commander J.?” he grunted.
One of the masters-at-arms said, “Uh, he said you decided you didn’t need him to be the exec, sir, so he ain’t gonna be part of whatever you’re putting over here. Is what he said.”
“You’re the one who keeps custody of the evidence camera, right? Has it shown up yet?”
“No, sir, haven’t seen it since the chief checked it out to do the sonar trunk, you know, the kid they found sliced and diced down there.”
“Does he check it out often? When he does, does he keep it long?”
“He keeps it right much of the time,” said the petty officer. He kept his tone bland and uncommitted.
Marsh Mellows was topside, on bridge watch with Chick Doolan. It was his locker they were looking at here in the CPO quarters. Dan finally nodded to the guy with the “Magic Key,” the big bolt cutters every ship kept for when someone forgot his combination. “OK, open it up. Chief Warrant, why don’t you go through the stuff, and Chief Compline can take the inventory.” The other MAA handed the radioman the clipboard and a cocked ballpoint.
When the hasp separated the locker door swung open with a tinny pop. Dan bent to peer inside but didn’t see anything interesting. He deliberately stayed several feet from it, well out of arm’s reach. Engelhart reached up a folding chair, snapped it open with a motion like cracking a whip, and perched on it back to front. He started from the bottom. Shoes came out first, then a black-lacquered shore patrol nightstick. Then a gray metal box that looked like Navy issue. It had a smaller padlock on it and Engelhart started to set it aside with the shoes, but Dan said, “Open it.”
Inside was a rubber-banded roll of cash, fives and twenties, an old faded box of Trojans, some letters, and a pink partial denture in a Ziploc bag. A handful of coins from every port in the world. On the bottom, magazines with trussed-up women on the pulp covers. Two Beta videotapes, volumes 2 and 4 of something called Faces of Death.
