by David Poyer
“The propellant and primers should be fine. The fuzes could give us trouble. I don’t think safety-wise, but we might have some duds.”
“Well, I’m not doing the gift horse routine. How much are we getting?”
“Don’t know. It’s still coming over.”
“Sort it by date, if you can. Then strike it below.”
“Aye aye aye.”
“Two ayes are enough, Chick. You sound like you’re getting short on sleep.”
“So do you. One more thing. There’s something here addressed to ‘CO, Oliver C. Gaddis.’ Want me to open it?”
Dan took a deep breath and closed his eyes in thanks. “No. Run it up here right away. And for Christ’s sake, give it to somebody who’s not going to let it blow over the side.”
* * *
USMANI brought hot coffee and he gulped it down, not waiting for it to cool, great slugs of it searing his throat. It didn’t help much; he was still slipping off into dream even as he stood watching the replenishment.
The contents of the manila envelope did more to keep him awake.
As soon as they broke away and he was satisfied they were clear, the unidentified replenishment ship or freighter moving off still darkened, till she fell off Gaddis’s radar screen and the edge of the world, he went into the chart room, threw Robidoux out, snapped the accordion door closed, and switched on the white light. Pulled up a stool, and slit the envelope with a pair of dividers.
The paper within was light and flimsy. Fax paper. The typed words were blurred, as if they’d been photocopied before they’d been faxed. There was no salutation or header and, of course, no signature, either.
The memo or message or order—whatever it was—both reproached him for not conducting a more expeditious search and apologized for the belated realization that Gaddis had been forced to leave most of her ammo in Karachi. It directed him to proceed to an area that, when he tickled a chart, lay 200 miles east of Hainan Island and 180 north of the Xisha Quindao or Paracels. An open and undistinguished stretch of ocean about 250 miles due south of Hong Kong. He drew a triangle on the chart, then erased it after reading the last lines: “Keep these instructions secret from officers and crew. Destroy this note. Final targeting information will be provided en route. Inflict maximum possible damage to outlaw forces. Retire at best speed to the south.”
He erased the tiny triangle so thoroughly that not on the closest inspection could he find a sign of it. He memorized the position, read the message three more times, till he could recite it from memory, then flicked on the shredder.
A dark form awaited him outside the chartroom divider. His flashlight illuminated one of the assistant masters-at-arms. “What is it?” he said.
“Chief Mellows, sir, he wants to talk to you.”
“Why? What for?” But the man didn’t answer. Dan hesitated, then sighed. “All right. I’ll be right down.”
* * *
“CHIEF. You asked to see me?”
Silence, but accompanied with a nod of the smooth, bare scalp, barely visible through the grating. The perforated metal separated them, the one in the half-lighted corridor, the other submerged in the dark. The guard stood back a few feet, weapon casting a gnomonic shadow. Another was perched on a chair at the far end of the passageway.
“I already passed sentence. You had a chance to speak then.”
Mellows said hoarsely, “I couldn’t think of anything then.”
Despite himself, an iota of pity crept past the fatigue. Yes, the man before him was a murderer. Torturer. And mutilator. But now he was facing the common fate, and, by the sound of his voice, not having an easy time of it. Dan motioned the guard farther away, then put his face to the grating. “All right. What have you got to say?”
“This stuff about hanging me—that’s a joke, right, sir?”
“I thought about this a long time, Chief. About whether I should just keep you locked down, turn you over if and when we get back. But there’s no question you’re the killer. You’re going to be an example, Marsh.
“But if you want to talk about … what you told me before, you killed them because they were prostitutes, that’s not it. God damn it, why?”
“They came to me. That’s why.”
“What are you talking about? They came to you to get gutted like chickens?”
“There is an Angel of Death. There is a Sword of God.”
Lenson felt his balls shrivel in horror. The voice was that of a man he knew or had thought he knew, but now he heard something else speaking to him through it. He dismissed the message he’d just received, everything else, from his mind and focused on the man-shaped darkness hunched rocking to and fro.
His own voice sounded thick and slow. “Did Seaman Vorenkamp come to you that way, Marsh?”
“He came on to me, yeah. Just like the whores did. I wouldn’t have done it to someone who didn’t deserve it.”
“You had to know something was wrong, Marsh. If you felt like you had to do this, if you couldn’t stop yourself, why didn’t you turn yourself in? Try to get help?”
In a voice so low Dan could barely hear it over the humming roar of the blowers, Mellows murmured, “Why bother? It’s all going to be dark soon anyway.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. It was fun while it lasted, though. Like a game. You really would have turned Pistol and Johnile over to the NIS, wouldn’t you?”
Engelhart, up the passageway. “Captain? Where are you?”
“Here, Chief Warrant. What you need?”
“I got some preparations to make, sir. So do you. Dawn’s gonna be here, couple hours. Listening to whatever sick shit that son of a bitch in there is ladling out isn’t going to change a thing.”
“You’re not going to hang me, Ben. This is some kind of trick. You’re just trying to scare me.”
Engelhart: “Oh, yeah? You think I’m fucking with your mind? This is the Old Navy again, asshole. You get off cutting on people? Fine. We’re gonna swing you off the fucking yardarm, teach the rest of these motherfuckers a lesson.”
“You can’t do that. I got rights—”
“Hey, so’d your shipmate Vorenkamp. So’d the girl on Dahakit and all the whores you cut up. I’m out of here, asshole. See you at dawn. Skipper! Let’s go! He’s not worth wasting rack time on.”
Dan moved away from the grille, his momentary weakness braced by the old warrant’s blunt comeback. Out of nowhere came what Dr. Guo had said, in Singapore, something about pirates, about all criminals, being rational but not moral, seeking gains to themselves, but shifting the costs to others. This was what lay at the end of that path. A being willing to destroy others not for its survival, nor even for its advantage, but simply for its transient and passing pleasure. He said, “Ben’s right. Society’s a bargain. You break the rules, you pay. And from what I’m hearing, you can’t give me a better reason for killing them than that you enjoyed it.”
Silence. Then: “You people are such a bunch of fucking hypocrites.”
“Why are we hypocrites, Marsh?”
“Because every man alive would love to do the same thing.”
Dan sat silent as the chief went on, describing the things he’d done. Gradually, he began to sweat.
Mellows was right.
Suddenly, in this heaving cage of steel, he recognized the face of his own darkest fantasies. Desires he’d almost forgotten, which he’d never acknowledged in the light of day.
He felt perspiration roll down his back and dragged his sleeve across his mouth, fighting nausea and guilt. He’d faced evil men before. But he’d never before felt so close to the evil within himself. Another self, which pushed back the gravestone he’d always covered it with and whispered now into his inmost ear, He’s right. You are the same.
Mellows muttered, “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Hear it by the way you’re breathing. Smell it by the way you stink. And you’re punishing me?”
Dan said through
the horror, “I thought about it. When I was fifteen. Sixteen. Then I realized it was sick and wrong and pushed it away. Again and again, until it stopped coming back.
“Maybe we had the same fantasies. Maybe everybody does. But instead of fighting them, you fed them. Went over and over it in your mind. Read about it. Watched the tapes. Till finally it seemed like you had to do it. And then you did. You did it, Marsh.”
Mellows leaned close to the mesh now, so close Dan could feel his breath. He pulled back instinctively, as if something infectious and malevolent might pass between them on that warm current. “And you didn’t have the balls to,” came the whisper.
“It doesn’t take ‘balls’—”
“No, it does, and you just don’t have them. That’s the only difference! I had the courage to say to hell with what they tell you’s right and wrong. Don’t push it away, deny it, pretend it isn’t there. It’s what we really are! You can make me some kind of devil, so you won’t have to admit the truth. But there’s others starting to think like me. Go ahead, hang me. You aren’t taking away anything I’m not going to lose anyway. But I won’t be the last. You’ll see.”
“I’m out of here,” Dan said to the guard. “Nobody else sees this son of a bitch. Nobody else talks to him.” The gunner’s mate nodded grimly. But even when he came up out of the supply passageway, Dan still heard the chilling whisper of Mellows’s final testament.
23
THEY hadn’t seen the sun for weeks, and it was a blinding and awesome thing. He watched it mount passing clouds as he sat on the bridge like a cat bathing in the floods of heat. Still, he felt empty. Cold.
Miles astern now, two bodies were sinking toward the ocean floor. Mellows and his final victim, Vorenkamp.
The execution had gone at dawn, as scheduled. Chief Warrant Engelhart had taken charge in the helo hangar, on the upper catwalk where the sonobuoys were stored. The line was manila, made up to a hoisting point on the overhead.
The ship’s lay leader had stepped up with a Bible in his hand, but Mellows had ignored him, staring stolidly ahead as they put the blindfold on. Engelhart had looked to Dan. Who had nodded, and with a simultaneous push of several arms the condemned man had toppled off the platform, plunged fifteen feet, and jerked to an abrupt stop just above the nonskid. The snap and crack had been as loud as a shot in the closed-in, echoing steel space.
Dan massaged his eyeballs as perspiration needled his forehead. He felt unreal, as if this were all dream or nightmare. But it was real.
It would take a long time to forget that sound. If he ever did.
Now every officer, chief, and first-class aboard Gaddis carried a loaded side arm and watched his back in the passageways. But Dan had to put all that aside for now. Entirely apart from the question of justice, Gaddis could not go into battle with any question as to who was in command. He had established his authority in the starkest way imaginable. And it was perfectly plain where they were headed, just as soon as he got the targeting information last night’s message promised.
As the two ships had separated, he’d told Zabounian, who had taken over the watch from the chief warrant, to come to 270. If Colosimo was right and the freebooters were out of the Leizhon peninsula, going west made sense. As long as he was not so close to the Chinese coast that air surveillance could nail him, and of course he had to keep the weather in mind; despite this morning’s glimpse of sun, this was still storm season, and the break would not last long. He picked up the CO’s clipboard. Compline had gotten a weather chart from somewhere, and Dan contemplated what looked like a string of low-pressure areas moving west, trailing like bubbles in the wake of Hercule, which was up in southern China now.
A stir roved the bridge, the throat-clearing and furtive checking of flies and hitching up of belts men do when they unexpectedly encounter a woman. He looked up to see Bobbie Wedlake’s pale, pinched face emerge from the companionway, Neilsen close behind. He stared, then remembered himself and tried to smile. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
He asked her if she’d had breakfast yet but got only a wordless stare. The corpsman shrugged. Dan turned back to Wedlake and offered her his seat. She swung up into the leather chair, then sat motionless and silent, blinking in the radiance. She’d lost weight. Now the fine bones engraved her skin from beneath. He could see each tendon and carpal in her hands.
She said, “I heard another engine last night, lying with my head against the frame of my bed.”
“We were refueling and rearming.”
“Out here? From another ship?”
“That’s right.” He cleared his throat and told her the other piece of news he figured she might be interested in. “The man who broke in on you, night before last? We found out who it was. I executed him this morning and buried him at sea, along with a young man he murdered two weeks ago.”
“Executed? Right here aboard?”
“I felt I had to.”
To his relief, she didn’t probe that wound further, simply said, “Where are we bound now?”
“I’m heading west, looking for the people who attacked you. Marker Eagle wasn’t the first ship they’ve looted and taken over.”
“So you’re really going after them. And if you find them?”
“I’ll bring them to battle and, I hope, win.”
“You didn’t do so well last time.”
“You’re absolutely right, but they took me by surprise. I expected patrol craft. I didn’t expect what seems to be a cruiser.”
“I saw it close up. It’s larger than your ship here. Though yours looks newer. And you think you can beat them?”
“Well, we have to try. The tough part may be getting in close enough.”
“Any woman can tell you how to do that,” she said, and a faint sarcasm edged her voice.
“She can? I mean, you can?”
“Sure. Just make yourself look like something he wants. Now. Tell me: What can I do to help? Eric broke me in on the bridge. The radar and how to do the chart work. I’m a pretty competent second mate.”
“I’m sure you are, but Navy procedures are different. I’ve got my watch teams pretty well shaken down.”
“I want something to do. I need something to do.”
He thought of the crowd at the flight-deck picnic, the remarks Sansone had overheard. “Well, I could put you on as an assistant JOOD. But I’ll level with you, Bobbie. It would be best if you stayed out of sight as much as possible. Usmani will bring you your meals. Don’t roam around the ship. I think you know why. The man we hung is not the only possible danger aboard.”
“Then you don’t want me in sick bay. People are always knocking at the door, wanting the corpsman.”
Dan considered. “I’d give you my cabin, but I have to be close to the bridge.… You still have your revolver, right?”
“I still have it.”
“Well, what the hell, I spend most of my time up here anyway. Bo’s’n! Show Mrs. Wedlake to my cabin, and tell Usmani to put my shaving kit in the officers’ washroom.”
She thanked him with the quiet dignity of a medieval lady. Watched the sea for a few minutes longer, a distant look in gray eyes, then climbed down from the chair and went below.
* * *
“THIS is a drill. Now General Quarters, General Quarters.” The 1MC’s bark caromed off bulkheads. Gaddis, rolling hard as she plodded westward, echoed with running feet. Dan let Doolan run the exercises, which he did slowly, stopping for instruction and explanation, getting the phone talkers and designation personnel, the gun crews and ammunition handlers, back into practice.
Dan went aft and stood a few feet from the quad forty, observing as the loaders, arms nearly covered by heavy protective gloves, pushed four-round clips of the foot-long shells down into the loader guides atop each gun. The pointer and trainer were hunched over their handwheels, helmets shading their faces as they peered through the ring sights. The mount captain jerked back the hand operating lever, closing
the breech with a metallic clank. The loaders stood ready with the next clips. All signs of hesitation or apathy had disappeared. The men were intent on learning as quickly as possible and moving as fast as they could.
Yeah, the prospect of a fight pulled together the most unpromising crew. But Gaddis’s skimpy compliment and the heavy manpower requirements of the old twenties and forties meant that when he went to GQ he’d have just enough hands to steam her, conn her, and fight her. If they took hits, he’d have to choose between continuing to fight and letting her sink under them. Not an appealing prospect in this corner of the world. He had little expectation any friendlies would turn up to rescue them if they ended up treading water.
The answer, of course, was that if he engaged, he’d damn well better make sure he won in round one. He couldn’t let it turn into a slugging match.
When the shoot was over he convened another war council, this time in the wardroom, since Wedlake was in his cabin.
Chick and the leading gunner’s mate reported that they were seeing about 30 percent duds with the five-inch proximity-fuzed ammunition, most likely due to simple age. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t explode; a VT shell carried a point detonating fuze too. But it would make it more difficult to neutralize the gunboats. The weapons officer recommended that they dedicate the five-inch to the cruiser and let the forties and twenties deal with the light craft. Dan had to disagree. They might have to engage the Shanghais first, and in that case, he didn’t want to hold back his longest-ranged weapon. “How many rounds does that leave us with, by the way?” he asked Doolan. “And how much did we use this morning?”
Chick said they’d received 300 rounds of 5’’/54 powder and projectiles, half a normal loadout, and 3,000 rounds of 40mm. They’d fired 29 rounds of five-inch and 307 rounds of 40mm that morning.
“I want to drill again this afternoon. Aimed slow fire at long ranges, director-controlled. Next issue. How’s Chief Tosito holding out?”
“Tostito’s in pain. Keeps eating pills. But he’s parked down there in the sonar room, keeping the scan going. The ping jockey on watch got a signature off the Katori. If it’s around, he’ll find it.” Doolan hesitated. “But there’s a lot of sea out here. How are we gonna localize this guy?”
