China Sea

by David Poyer

  He was here to do a job. The rest was in other hands than his, and as he resigned it, his heart grew quiet at last.

  When he looked at his watch it was 0200. He owed it to his men to catch a few hours’ sleep, to gird up the resolution and judgment he would need when they came into the presence of the enemy.

  Soaked with sweat and spray and rain, he turned from the dark sea and went below.

  25

  THE hateful buzzing went on and on as he groped for the source. The speaking tube, that curious survival of nineteenth-century technology down to the fag end of the twentieth. A hollowness of brass, its shiny cover unpolished these latter days of Gaddis’s long decline, like the unshaven faces of her crew and the rusty flaking paint around her scuppers. He finally got it located about the time he remembered where and when he was and what the racked creaking fabric around him, complaining as it leaned to the rush of the sea, was racing toward. “Captain,” he grunted.

  “Officer of the deck, sir. ESM reports a Skin Head radar bearing 010 true.”

  His brain leaped toward alertness. “Any correlation with the radar picture?”

  “Raytheon’s not worth shit this morning, sir. Wind’s picking up again. Too much sea return.”

  He muttered something and clamped the tube closed. Blinked into the darkness as his body rushed from wanting to burrow back into the warm bunk to a sudden acceleration of the pulse, a deep-sucked breath, a nervous thrill along his limbs. He clicked the light on and reached for his trou.

  He had to cease climbing and cling to the ladder as the metal world around him leaned far over in a prolonged roll to port.

  Five-fifteen. Should be dawn, but the sky was as opaque as if it had been 0015. A cold, misty drizzle, dull silver like sprayed mercury, speckled the pilothouse windows between whining sweeps of the wipers, which were set on slow. He studied the typhoon chart, now engraved with new symbology showing the oncoming low-pressure areas, and sucked air through his teeth as he glanced at the barometer. It didn’t take a cyclone to build up mountainous seas; in fact, in some ways the rapid passage and changing winds of a fast cyclone like Hercule militated against them. All it took was a strong, steady wind from the same quarter, operating over a few hundred miles’ fetch. Just like what was shaping up out here now.

  Engelhart joined him at the chart table, eyebrows gloomy as the weather, and Bobbie Wedlake stood by as the chief warrant laconically outlined the surface picture. Two tankers had passed during the night, both headed north at a speed that must have pushed their engines to the limit. Trying to make Macao or Guangzhou before it was too late, clawing their way around the oncoming weather. The ESM “racket,” or contact, had faded a few minutes before. “Faded or stopped?” Dan asked him.

  “Stopped all at once. Turned off, my guess.”

  “What have we got out there on radar?”

  The little Raytheon, Engelhart told him, was handicapped by the building seas; they covered the screen with a speckle of informationless light. Dan chewed at the inside of his mouth, seeing everything headed down the tubes. The Shanghais would have to run for port soon, if they hadn’t already left. The Katori would go with them, and he’d be left out here to battle the storm. He didn’t think the crew would be with him after another like the last. He’d called again and again on their tenacity and perseverance, and he knew it was at an end.

  Bobbie was thinking, too. Finally she lifted her head, and in the ashen morning radiance he saw the marks of time around her eyes, the fine hachure around her lips.

  She said, “You’ve got to call them to you.”

  “Call them to me. How?”

  “Send an SOS. Like the Titanic. Say you’re in trouble, sinking. Or no, not sinking, just say you need help. Let them come to you.”

  Engelhart frowned. “You don’t send a distress call when you’re not in distress.”

  “I’m past worrying about that, Ben,” Dan told him. “Come on; help us out on this. OK, Bobbie, you mean make us look like an easy target, a crippled duck. So what are we going to say? That we’re broken down?”

  “No. Then we couldn’t maneuver. We want to continue to close on this course, right?”

  “Yeah, we got to get in as close as we can.”

  “A fire? Flooding? Medical emergency?”

  “I like flooding,” said Colosimo, who had joined them out of the gloom. “That could explain our lack of freeboard. A destroyer type sits lower in the water than a merchant. It might get us a couple hundred yards closer before they tumble to what we are.”

  “Make us up a message, Dom. Put it out on International Maritime Distress. Give a position about ten nautical miles ahead of our actual running EP, though.”

  “You don’t want to give our actual position?”

  “No, I want to hold back any surprise I can.”

  They left him at the chart table. Dan stood irresolute again, staring out into the very gradually lightening dawn. Squalls surrounded them, turning the fine drizzle to heavy rain as they passed or as Gaddis passed beneath them. He shivered, remembering the Santarén Channel, a twelve-foot skiff with hull boards so rotten he could see between them. He’d never found out what had happened to the woman he’d shared it with and the boy. At least, fleeing Cuba, they hadn’t had to worry about pirates. The kind of bloodsuckers who hovered now a few miles ahead.

  * * *

  BUT the message brought no response. Dan ordered it sent again at 0900, but again no one answered. The sea seemed empty. Gaddis churned on, swept by violent squallbursts and heavy rain. They were spaced closer together now, Dan noticed.

  At 1020, Chief Tosito called up to report screw noises to the north. Confused and intermittent, he said, most likely because of the storm-driven mixing of the surface layer. Zabounian had the deck now. Dan listened as he quizzed the chief over the bitch box. No, he couldn’t say what type of ships they were. No, he could not give an estimated range. “How about a zone, then?” the supply officer pressed. Tosito, sounding distant and listless, said they could be as close as ten miles and as far away as forty.

  As soon as he went off, Doolan called asking for the skipper. Dan tapped the lever with his foot from his reclined position in the chair. “Lenson here.”

  “Sir, Chick, down in CIC. I’ve been trying to put these indications together on the dead reckoning tracer. Could use some overarching intelligence.”

  “Be right down.” He swung to the scuffed tile and told Zabounian where he was headed, told him to keep the lookouts sharp and to notify him instantly of anything out of the ordinary.

  CIC was dim and hot, with fans and blowers racketing away to take the place of the broken-down air-conditioning. He worried briefly about the effect of ambient temperature on the electronics, then dismissed it. One way or the other, it would not be his problem. The OSes and fire control technicians were stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat. Doolan had peeled his T-shirt off, too, and with the mat of hair on his broad chest he looked more than ever like the young Hemingway. Dan joined him at the belt-height table of the dead-reckoning tracer. Topped with glass, the DRT contained electric motors and gearing that drove a spot of light across the paper taped atop it. The projected spot represented Gaddis. When relative bearings and ranges to intercepts and radar contacts were plotted relative to that moving point, a true geographic plot gradually emerged.

  “Like I said, I’ve been trying to put these together.” Chick swept a hand across the flat white surface that represented the open sea this iron morning. “Trying to correlate everything, sonar, ESM, what we know about the way they operate.”

  “So you see ’em out here,” Dan said, leaning over what seemed to be where these various and fuzzy indicators pointed. “Say fifteen miles.”

  “Can’t pinpoint, but yeah, I’m getting a vague cut out here to the west. Maybe thirty, forty thousand yards, if they’re holding the same course over the last hour or two.”

  “Should we come left?”

  “If they’
re tracking us, it’ll look suspicious.”

  “We still look like a merchie to them, turn count, radar characteristics.”

  “Correct. At least, as far as we know.”

  He was staring at the paper, trying to make a decision, when the 21MC above his head said, “Combat, Bridge: Skipper, problem on the mess decks.”

  He reached above his head without looking. “Captain here. What kind of problem?”

  “Sounds like a riot, sir,” Zabounian’s voice said. Behind him, Dan could hear the whining slap of the windshield wipers and then the hollow roar of rain.

  * * *

  THEY were sitting on the deck, because all the plastic chairs were stacked and lashed along the bulkheads, secured for heavy seas. That was the first thing he noticed: the men sitting down. The second was the haze of cigarette smoke, and then, the smell of the whiskey. Dan saw that Compline was being held by two men just inside the scullery.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the chief. Then he doubled forward as one of his captors grunted, “I told you to shut up,” and punched him in the stomach.

  Dan raised his voice. “Who’s the leader?”

  “We don’t have one,” said a voice behind him.

  When he turned, four men grabbed his arms and hands. He did not bother struggling as they took his automatic from the holster. There were at least thirty men down here, half on their feet around him and Compline, the others sitting, passing bottles around.

  He said, hearing his voice hoarse and angry, “OK, you’ve made your point. We won’t resist. What do you want?”

  It was Pistolesi, to Dan’s regret, who stepped forward. The fireman looked ill at ease but determined. “Cap’n, sorry to tell you this. But we ain’t manning up for GQ anymore, and we ain’t going another mile north. Pick up that squealer, call the bridge, and tell ’em to shag ass for Subic.”

  “You don’t walk off the field in the middle of the play, guys. That’s what this is, last quarter, last down.”

  “Too bad, we’re out. The boys voted for a strike.”

  “There’s another name for that in the Navy, Pistolesi. One none of you are gonna want on your record.”

  “We’re not stupid, Skipper. We been talking this over for a long time.”

  “OK, I’ll say it. Mutiny. Your ticket to Fort Leavenworth. You considered that?”

  “You got to be on a USN ship to commit mutiny, Mr. Lenson. This hasn’t been one for a long time. Anyway, you can call it whatever you want. We ain’t doing shit till we’re headed for Olongapo.”

  Dan felt his heart sink. They couldn’t take on an armed enemy with a third of the crew out of ranks. The mission was finished and so was he. All he could do now was minimize the damage. He took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice steady. “OK. I hear you. But there’s still a lot of bad weather between us and the Philippines.”

  “Then let’s boogie south. We don’t care; just get us out of Chinese waters.” Pistolesi glanced at the men behind him. “Hey, just so’s you know, some of these assholes wanted to shoot all the officers and throw them overboard. I told them that wouldn’t be cool, good as it sounded.”

  “Thanks for that, Pistol.”

  “Shut it, OK? Only reason why not, we ever get home, we don’t want murder on the record. But there’s still some wouldn’t mind taking you back to the fantail.”

  A seaman jerked the handset out of its retaining clips and held it out. Pistolesi snapped the dial to 01, Bridge, and said, “Go on. Tell ’em.”

  “If I don’t?”

  He heard a click not far from his ear and turned his head to find himself looking into the black cavernous bore of the handgun.

  Wedlake answered. “Bridge.”

  Dan fought to keep his voice level. The rage and disappointment were like an obstruction in his trachea, making it hard even to breathe. “This is the … this is the captain. Give me Mr. Doolan, if he’s up there. Otherwise the OOD.”

  “Just a minute.” A click, then Zabounian’s voice said, “OOD.”

  “Lenson here.” The muzzle of the pistol moved nearer, pressed itself in a cold circle against the side of his head.

  “Yessir. Everything cool down there?”

  “Not really. I need you to come left. Carefully, because we’re top-heavy. Time your swing through the trough to minimize roll. Steady on one-eight-zero true and click her up knot by knot to what she’ll take without too much motion.”

  “Sir, I don’t advise that. I was about to pass the word for you. CIC advises ESM racket resumed, very loud, very close—”

  Dan said angrily, knowing this was the wreck of everything and all he had hoped for, “Don’t advise me; just do it. Come left to one-eight-zero. Increase your speed to fifteen knots if the seas permit, once you’re on that course.”

  A confused burst of sound from the bridge, the babble of several voices at once. He ignored it, slammed the handset back into its bracket. “There, I told him,” he said to the men around him. “He’ll come around as soon as he sees a trough between the swells.”

  For answer his hands were yanked around behind him and hard metal bit his wrists. A rasping click, and he realized when he tried to pull them around again that he couldn’t. He was handcuffed, secured to a stanchion beside the long-empty soft ice-cream machine.

  Then somebody coughed, and he looked up to a familiar pair of malevolent, swollen, heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Sorry to see you fucked up like this, Cap’n.”

  “I’m sure you are, Johnile.”

  “You could be fucked up a lot worse.”

  Pistolesi was nowhere in sight; he must have left right after Dan made the call. The other mutineers watched, some avid, others looking doubtful, but no one offering to interfere. Machias brought the knife up and put the point under his chin, against the soft flesh of his throat. He whispered, “You know I said I didn’t like being locked up. Didn’t make no never mind to you.”

  “I told you I made a mistake. I apologized.”

  “That ain’t enough. You lorded it over us too long, you sorry motherfucker. You need to bleed.”

  They were standing like that, face-to-face, when the crack and flash deafened them all. For a moment Dan couldn’t move, as around him men dived for the dirty terrazzo. Then he squatted as a second, louder explosion slammed the metal around them, as if a bulldozer had been dropped onto the main deck from about eighty feet up. Fluorescent tubes quivered and burst, spraying a mist of glass and poisonous powder into the closed air of the mess decks.

  Only in the ear-ringing aftersound did he hear, dimly, the electronic bong of the general alarm. Men scrambled up, some cradling the bottles like infants, others flinging them to smash on the deck. They scattered while he yelled into the pandemonium for somebody to unlock the handcuffs.

  Then he was alone. The deck began to slant, not in a roll, but in a shuddering application of power that meant the screws were biting in with full force, 100 percent pitch, either full ahead or full astern. It seemed to be a crashback, all back emergency. He fought against the unyielding steel, twisting his hands until the pain lanced sharp and he sagged back, gasping.

  “Open fire,” he yelled desperately, as if the bridge team could hear him through three levels of solid steel and a third of the length of the ship. “Open fire! Don’t let them board!”

  Instead a crashing boom, hollow and grinding, shook the ship. It seemed to come from forward, not a detonation but something slower and more prolonged. He had no idea what it was. He wrenched his wrists again, savagely, helplessly, against the metal, then gave up and hung, trying to quiet his thudding runaway heart as minutes crept past slowly as worms.

  A husky-chested HT came running from aft, pounded past him, then braked and spun and gaped at him. Dan yelled, “We’re being attacked! That was shellfire, hitting aft. Get me off here! Get Pistolesi; he’s got the key.”

  Instead the man wheeled and dashed in the opposite direction. Dan cursed him and all his tribe and surged against his rest
raints as the grinding came again from forward, the ship responding with a shudder through her length.

  “Stand by to receive boarders, starboard side,” announced the 1MC in a voice he didn’t recognize. Yes, he did. It was Topmark’s, but raised an octave. A thunder of boots and a clatter as of dragged chain came from just overhead. Then silence as he wrenched again, feeling his skin abrading off.

  The HT came back, lugging the Magic Key at port arms. “Lean back, sir; lemme see some slack,” he said. Dan sagged against the stanchion and thrust his arms out stiffly behind him. A moment later a clicking snap announced he was free, or at least that the steel chain that restrained him had parted.

  He was heading forward when small-arms fire broke out on the deck above.

  * * *

  BY the time he got topside the shooting seemed to be nearly over. He gripped the rail in the blowing mist, peering into the unremitting wind on the midships flat. Taking in the hundred feet of light gray paint and wicked-looking automatic guns that lay a few yards off to starboard, rolling till it showed black boot topping and barnacles. A line slacked between them as the smaller craft swung in to smash violently into Gaddis’s side, then ripped dripping up out of the green and suddenly drew bar-tight between them, slicing through the passing seas that crested and surged as the two hulls swung apart again. The rumble of engines penetrated his consciousness, along with the strangely muffled crack of shots.

  He lowered his eyes to the crumpled bodies, huddled as if they’d died of cold in the corner of the boat deck. Weapons lay around them. Blood pooled in the scuppers, eddying with the roll. Another clatter of fire, and he looked up again, unable to piece sense for a moment out of what was happening.

  A door slammed open suddenly on the low pilothouse opposite. It swung closed as the Shanghai-class gunboat surged upward, climbing a green-black mountain, then flopped open again, tolling a mournful note like a bell buoy. A moment later a body hurtled out. The Asian clung to the handrail, staring across at Dan. He looked surprised. Then his hands slowly loosened their grip, and he toppled down a ladder to the main deck. Dan could make out forms moving inside the pilothouse. Then one came out on the little wing platform and saw him watching.