Tipping Point

by David Poyer

  He looked down again, seething. Singhe had wrecked his plan. He’d been going to award Peeples restriction and dock him three months’ pay, and not suspend any of it, making clear that the reason was the slur he’d used wasn’t just a general insult, but a specifically sexual slur. But if he did that now, he’d look as if he’d given in to Singhe, caved to feminist pressure. While if he went easy, it would look as if he were supporting any male crewman who felt resentful about having a female boss.

  Damn it.… He cleared his throat again and rasped, “I just came from commissioning a destroyer named after a woman who died under my command. USS Cobie Kasson. Any idea we’re not supporting our female members is flat wrong.” He gave it a beat, then went back to the formula. “Are there any more witnesses you’d like to call, or additional statements or evidence you would like to present?”

  Peeples shook his head, looking enervated, but beside Dan, Tausengelt stirred. The senior enlisted adviser growled, “Captain, a comment.”

  “Speak your piece, Master Chief.”

  “Basically, I agree with what you said and all, the command policy about supporting female members. But on the other side, it’s not really fair to try this kid on how politically correct he is when he loses his temper. Or give him some kind of extra punishment because of it.”

  Dan sighed again, inwardly. Now he had Tausengelt, McMottie, and the chief master-at-arms, the three most influential chiefs on the ship, glaring at Singhe and Scharner, while beside Dan, Staurulakis was staring at him expectantly. He harrumphed and they all looked at him. “I appreciate everyone’s input. After due consideration, I am imposing the following punishment: sixty days’ restriction to the ship and half pay for three months, the half pay to be suspended for a period of six months. To clarify this, Peeples, you’ll serve the EMI and restriction. If you succeed in not repeating your offense for six months, your pay will not be docked. But if you screw up like this again, I’ll revoke the suspension and your pay reduction will start then.

  “I strongly advise you to take this opportunity to revise how you interact with your seniors. Petty Officer Scharner, you are reminded to exercise fairness and restraint in dealing with your juniors, just as you expect fairness from those above you in the chain of command.” He paused, but got only weak “Yessirs” from them both. He snapped, “Dismissed.”

  “Accused: Cover. Ready … two. About face,” said Toan. “Forward … harch.”

  When the door closed on them Dan snapped the binder shut and handed it to the exec. She looked remote. Singhe, angry. Danenhower, puzzled. The chiefs left quickly, speaking to none of the officers.

  The chief engineer, still frowning, went to the sideboard and valved coffee into a heavy mug. “Uh, what just happened?” he muttered.

  “You think that was a fair sentence, Bart?”

  “For Peepsie? Oh, sure. Pretty much what they usually get, right? For a first-time fuckup. But what was all that from Amy?” He lowered his voice, glancing toward the exec. “And the XO nodding, agreeing with her?”

  Dan didn’t answer. He’d hoped this whole Singhe versus the Chief’s Mess fight was over, but it looked like it was on again. He raised his voice. “Cheryl, we need to talk. About the exercises. We’re heading into dangerous waters. I want us to be ready.”

  “Yes sir. Certainly, sir,” his exec said, expressionless, gaze eluding his. She flipped her PDA open. “Let’s see what we have planned.”

  6

  The Gulf of Aden

  DESPITE the wind, the clouds never seemed to move. Since dawn, they’d been visible only now and then through low plaques of fog that hugged the sea. Beyond them a burning sky should have belonged to some hellish planet much closer to the sun. six- to eight-foot seas were locomotived by winds from the southwest of twenty knots, with gusts to thirty. The bulwark of the bridge wing that Dan leaned on was too hot to touch with bare skin. The arid wind spasmed his throat; after the icy air in CIC, the heat made his temples throb. Right now they were in one of the gaps in the fog. The blue sea rolled, streaked with foam but otherwise empty, for ten thousand yards in the direction they’d be firing.

  He lowered the binoculars. “Check again with Combat.”

  “Combat confirms: range clear, both radar and visual.”

  “Very well.” He coughed into a fist and screwed bright yellow foam plugs into his ear canals. “Batteries released.”

  The phone talker repeated the command, and the first rounds cracked out of the chain gun, followed by light gray smoke that blew aft as the ship left it behind. Dan followed the projectiles in the binoculars by the furrowed instantaneous trace they left, like a crease in reality itself. The target rocked and rolled amid blue swells, a lashup of empty oil drums and scrap dunnage daubed fluorescent orange. Gray-helmeted, life-jacketed, the gunner’s mates took turns at the pedestal-mounted gun, fitting their shoulders to the yoke to trigger bursts of five to seven rounds. Spray fountained up, obscuring the target. He braced his elbows, watching. The 25mms seemed more accurate, or maybe just easier to aim, than the 50-cals. And the rounds would hit harder, though a .50 was nothing to sneeze at.

  He lingered on the wing as control was shifted to the remote operating consoles, just inside the doors. The operators twitched joysticks, watching screens. This time the rounds perforated the target. Within seconds, as the white spray subsided, it rolled over and disappeared beneath the blue.

  “Target destroyed.”

  “Very well. Come back to base course.” Dan crossed the pilothouse to his chair, stowed his glasses, and climbed up. And once again, resumed flipping through, and worrying about, that morning’s messages.

  After a five-hour refueling stop in Djibouti, then exiting the Bab-el-Mendeb, Savo had reported in to Commander, Task Force 151, the antipirate coalition that patrolled the Arabian Sea. Since then she’d been trolling the Gulf of Aden and east coast of Africa, what the Navy called the “internationally recognized transit corridor” or IRTC. Maritime Trade Operations was reporting dozen of attacks each month on commercial vessels, and not long before, a private yacht had been hijacked and four Dutch nationals killed. A Russian combat tug, patrolling off Socotra, had reported boarding and sinking a confirmed pirate. So far, though, no one on Savo had glimpsed Edward Teach, Johnny Sparrow, or indeed any pirates whatsoever.

  Meanwhile, the Iranians were threatening again to close the Gulf to foreign, meaning Western, shipping. He reread the top message: a maritime advisory for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, southern Arabian Gulf, and western Gulf of Oman. It warned about swarm attacks by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, or Pasdaran, an ideological force separate from the regular Iranian navy.

  He fidgeted, annoyed. That was their mission. Not hanging out here inspecting sixty-foot fishing dhows. But the shortage of frigates, now that the Perrys had almost all been retired or given away, meant the Navy had to use high-value ships in low-value missions. “This saves money?” he muttered.

  “Sir?” Max Mytsalo, the cherub-faced officer of the deck. He was new to the job, but so far, Dan liked the way he stood his watches. A little overanxious, but better that than bored.

  “Nothing. Just talking to … nothing.”

  He caught the glances from around the pilothouse, and cursed. Exactly what he wanted them to pass around the ship: that the skipper was talking to himself. Still, their patrol area had been shifted farther east, closer to Socotra. Hormuz was only a thousand miles’ steaming from there.

  * * *

  HE was in his in-port cabin with the light off, trying to conduct a quick eyelid inspection, when the ship heeled in an unscheduled turn, superstructure creaking to a new rhythm. His eyes snapped open. Two seconds later the cabin J-phone and his Hydra went off simultaneously. He got to the radio first. “CO.”

  Pardees, for once sounding not totally carefree. “Captain, got a report from a ro-ro in the IRTC. Shadowed by two boats acting in a suspicious manner. Now under attack with antitank grenades. Plots twenty miles to
the east. Coming to course to intercept, increasing speed to flank.”

  “Okay, good. Sound general quarters, surface action, and call away the boarding team. I’ll be right up.”

  * * *

  HE leaned on the splinter shield, in life jacket, flash gear, and the gray helmet stenciled CO. The bridge team was buttoning up. Down on the main deck, the five-inch train warning bell began ringing.

  “Chain guns, manned and ready.”

  “Phalanx in surface mode.”

  “Mount 51, manned and ready.”

  “Mount 52, manned and ready.”

  Pardees leaned out. “All stations manned and ready, Captain. Time: one minute, fifty-two seconds. Material condition Zebra set throughout the ship. Boarding team and boat crew manned and ready.”

  “Very well.” Dan glanced aft, to a raised hand from the boatswain’s mate chief, back by the boat falls. The RHIB was swung out; the boarding team, in combat gear, helmets, carrying shotguns and M16s, stood with duffels at their boots, swaying in unison as Savo rolled. It was rough for boat ops, but within the margin of acceptability.

  First, though, he’d check these guys out visually. If they showed hostile intent, he’d deal with them out of range of the Kalashnikovs and RPGs that typically formed pirate armament hereabouts. He leaned on the coaming again, binoculars searching through the heat shimmer, the red haze. The wind was behind them, and their exhaust added to the seethe of the atmosphere. He hadn’t caught sight of the pirates yet, though radar had two faint pips astern of their assumed quarry.

  The tremendous squared-off blue-and-white box was slogging along at ten knots as the fog blew past it like a cavalcade of specters. Dan had talked to its bridge on channel 10, and had messaged MSCHOA, UKMTO Dubai, MIRLO, the NATO shipping center, and CTF 151 that he was going to the assistance of M/V Mons Neptune, a Japanese-owned, Caymans-flagged ro-ro. It was enormous, a supership at least a quarter mile long. Ro-ros—roll-on, roll-off—carried anything with wheels, though he guessed this one would be carrying gleaming new Toyotas and Hondas and Lexuses. The pirates would be more interested in what portables and cash they could steal from the crew or by breaking into the safe, as he’d observed off Ashaara, when he’d been deployed to help protect and rebuild that failing country.

  “Small-boat contact. Two small boats,” a quartermaster shouted from the flying bridge, above him. He was on the Big Eyes, huge pedestal-mounted binocs with objectives the size of dinner plates.

  “Where away?”

  “About zero-two-zero relative.”

  He refocused and caught one, then the other, as they rose on a swell. Just specks, through haze. But something odd … they were headed in different directions. “What’s CIC say about their course and speed?”

  “Wait one … sir, they hold them essentially DIW.”

  Dead in the water. Dan frowned. Not what you expected, if they were carrying out an attack. On the other hand, if they’d caught sight of Savo Island, they might be turning tail. “Bump her up to flank. Designate to guns, but weapons tight until I give the word.”

  Over the next ten minutes they made up so swiftly on the tossing boats that it was clear neither had way on. They grew into dark craft with complexly curved, lofty prows, not a bit like the high unwieldy dhows of the Gulf. No masts, and apparently no deckhouses either. The housings of outboard motors gleamed at their sterns, but cocked up, propellers dipping into the water as the bows rose and fell violently, throwing spray. At Dan’s direction, Pardees made an upwind pass at five hundred yards, while the Big Eyes and Dan’s own binoculars studied them. Five souls in one craft, six in the other. Bare-chested, dark-skinned men, in white turbans or headdresses. They waved frantically.

  “Sucking us into range?” the exec said, beside him. The issue helmet was far too big on her and looked faintly silly. Her holstered 9mm looked less jolly, though.

  Dan had been wondering the same thing, and fighting apprehension. This was how Horn had died, sucked in close to a small ship that had then, inexplicably, detonated into light too hellish for the human eye. How to separate emotion from logic, experience from fear? “Maybe. Noah, let’s do another pass. No closer than two hundred yards.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  On the second pass Dan, on the flying bridge now, bent to peer through the mounted optics. He could see the crews now as well as if they were beside him. They looked emaciated and desperate. No weapons, but they could be lying in the ceiling boards, or otherwise concealed. The tanker had specifically mentioned an RPG being fired. According to his ROEs, he could take them under fire and sink them based solely on that.

  He took a deep breath, aware he was asking men to run a risk. When he looked up, the clouds were fleeing across the sky, and a squall grayed the horizon to the southwest. “Cheryl, I want you in CIC. Maintain a three-sixty awareness while my head’s in this situation. And make sure we’re taping from the gun cameras. Noah, park us upwind, and put the boat in the water.”

  * * *

  SAVO rolled two hundred yards off. As the gray rigid-hulled inflatable motored past, the first few heavy drops of cool rain spattered on the deck like thrown pebbles. Dan looked down. At young Max Mytsalo, the boat officer. SK3 Kaghazchi, their designated Farsi speaker, who’d admitted a few words of other local languages. Braced at the stern, Seaman Peeples. They were hanging on as the RHIB skipped across the waves, rising and falling on the swells, then altering course to circle the nearest boat. The whine of the engine dropped, and the RHIB fell from its plane and its bow wave rolled on without it. The hulls surged in off-rhythm, then, for the briefest moment, matched. At that moment the squall-line swept over Savo and they vanished in a downpour that cascaded all around Dan, cold as a mountain stream, wetting him to the skin.

  The noise all but blotted out the next radio call. “Matador, this is Matador One.”

  Dan retreated into the signal bridge, clicked his Hydra as the windshield wipers flailed and jerked. The rain was noisy in here, too, and he turned the volume up. “What’ve you got, Gene?”

  “Five skinnies. Extremely agitated. Screaming and crying. No guns I can see.”

  “Take up the floorboards. Conduct a thorough search. Look for ladders and grapnels, along with weapons. You got rain coming your way. We’re in a heavy downpour right now.”

  “Not much to search, sir. Pretty bare bones. They might have dumped them overboard when they saw us coming.”

  That was possible. Or they might not have been armed at all. Dan kept his eyes on the other boat, just in case. Too close for the five-inch, but below him on the main deck, and beside him on the wing, the 7.62s, 50-cals, and chain guns rose and fell as the crew kept the sights on their targets.

  The ensign again. “One of these guys talks a little English. He says they had a rifle, to defend themselves, but they threw it overboard when they saw us. He says they’re out of water and gas. They’ve got a flare pistol. One of those plastic things.”

  “Smell it,” Dan said. “Over.”

  “Sorry, sir? Over.”

  “The pistol. Smell it.”

  “Got it, sir. Yessir, it’s been fired. Recently. The guy here is nodding like hell. Pointing to it, then the sky. Over.”

  “All right. Good.” He clicked off, reconstructing the scene. The boats adrift, out of gas, out of water. The massive ro-ro shouldering up over the horizon, first a blue-and-white dot, then filling the sky. The pistol had been their last despairing chance. Unfortunately, the bridge team on the tanker had taken the lofting flare for the launch of an antitank grenade. He was a little in awe of these guys anyway. Two hundred and fifty miles out at sea, in a thirty-foot boat without even a deckhouse?

  The downpour eased and he strolled out again. Staurulakis joined him, tucking her hair under her cap. “Take them into custody, sir?”

  “Cheryl. Um, no, I don’t see any need to do that.” He ambled to the side of the flying bridge and looked down. Rainwater gleamed, bent streams rainbowing from the scuppers. Par
dees looked up from the wing. “Noah, bring us alongside. And ask Hermelinda and Ollie to come up.”

  * * *

  THE stench of unwashed men and fish and heaped damp nets rose from the boats. The dark wet faces stared up with hope, fear, awe, resentment. Dan surveyed them as Jacob’s ladders went over. It looked like a hard way to make a living. Watching the huge powerful ships parade past … He could understand why a penniless and desperate fisherman might turn pirate.

  The boatswain yelled orders, and blue plastic water containers and bags of rice and beans went down into the boats. Also a compass. Unfortunately, Ticos no longer carried any gasoline, so he couldn’t help them with fuel.

  Dan clattered down the ladder and back into the bridge to check the radar picture, keep from being sucked into the micro. The wind was kicking up. As soon as Uskavitch reported water and food offloaded, Dan ordered the RHIB back aboard.

  He went out onto the bridge wing and looked down again. A very tall Somali was standing in the prow of the nearest boat as it pitched heavily.

  Dan pointed south. “Three hundred kilometers,” he shouted down. The Somali squinted, then grinned unpleasantly. He pointed, as if mimicking Dan, but to the southwest. “Okay, you don’t need a compass,” Dan muttered. He raised his voice into the pilothouse. “Let’s get back on track. Fifteen knots.”

  When he looked back, the boats were specks again under a swiftly darkening sky. Then the mist, or fog, moved in again, freight-trained on the endless wind, obliterating them.

  * * *

  THE room was small, square, low-overheaded. A green curtain hung across the door to the berthing area. By long and honored tradition, no one entered the Chief’s Mess, also known as the Goat Locker, unless invited. Including the skipper.

  Ushered in, Dan shook hands with Tausengelt, Wenck, Van Gogh, Quincoches, Toan, Anschutz, Zotcher, Grissett, McMottie, and others. He knew them all, though some, like the chief corpsman, the sonar chief, the quartermaster, and the assistant navigator, he worked with more closely than others. He slid onto the picnic-style bench, taking in the bug juice machines, the patriotic posters, the swimsuited near-nude that skirted official acceptability. Savo had no female chiefs yet. He needed to look into that.