The Gulf

by David Poyer

  The furnace beyond had been the crew’s mess. Now the vinyl chairs and Formica tables glowed yellow deep in the smoke. Pieces of the missile engine were still burning like white flares. The rails of the serving line glowed a soft neon red. Above their heads, liquid copper dripped from cable runs. On the deck, bodies burned with the smoky orange of grease fires. The flames roared hollowly all around them. The three men felt their clothes catch fire. The rubber of their OBAs began to smoke. The nozzleman hesitated. Something heavy crashed through the overhead to his left.

  He began backing out. But when they tried to retreat, they found an aluminum ladder had melted over the hatchway.

  * * *

  No one had anticipated the need to cut through the deck. The men ordered to do it hoped the special tools for getting pilots out of burning helicopters would work, but they bounced off. At last, the biggest began swinging fire axes. Each blow made only a dent, but gradually they hewed out foot-wide gaps. Like small volcanoes, each hole vented a jet of mingled flame and smoke straight up into the air.

  In the helo hangar, three of the aircrewmen struggled with their machine. The tires had melted and it wouldn’t roll. At last they abandoned it, and ran aft as the explosive charges on the sonobuoys began popping, sending metal pinging and whirring after them.

  Just forward of them, the torpedomen, exercising their own initiative, had begun jettisoning their Mark 46s as soon as they realized the fire was gnawing its way up below them. They had enough compressed air in ready flasks to fire them over the side, but it was a slow process. They first had to move each weapon to the tube with chain hoists and dollies, by hand, without power. They had five torpedoes left when the paint on the deck ignited and they had to clear the compartment. They ran, screaming as the deck by the vent holes burned through the soles of their boots.

  * * *

  The captain stood on the flight deck. Between him and the bridge was a smoking mass of superstructure with flame spewing out of the 02 level. The pumps whined at full speed around him.

  One of the torpedomen pounded by him. The captain caught him by the arm and asked him an urgent question. The man’s face was blistered. He shook his head violently, held up five fingers.

  The captain looked around, at the sea.

  The ship lay sagging to port in the center of a blue emptiness. Some distance off to the east was the purple cloud of a small island. Beyond that was Iran. To starboard, the water was oily and speckled with floating debris. He thought he saw a body, but it could have been something else. The ship, still with way on, moved slowly past it. More debris took its place. The oil gentled the waves. Beyond that was empty sea, but he knew that farther off, maybe fifty miles, was the coast of Saudi Arabia.

  The captain wanted to go forward. He wanted to regain his bridge, and he wanted to go to damage-control central, where the battle against fire and flooding was being coordinated. It didn’t look like he could make it on the main deck, though. Below, it would be even worse.

  “Chief.”

  “Sir.”

  “Take one of these pumps forward. Get water on those torpedoes.”

  Both of them knew what this order meant. The chief nodded and turned away. He shouted to two men to grab pump and hoses and follow him.

  At last the captain took a deep breath and sprinted down the starboard side. The heat staggered him and he blundered through the blazing remains of the whaleboat with his hands over his face. For a moment, he thought he would die. Then he was in clear air again, slapping at his uniform pants. They were a new polyester the Navy had approved in place of cotton. They were sharp-looking, permanent press, but now they shriveled and burst into flame. He got them off, pulling off flesh with the burning fabric, and climbed back to the bridge.

  The officer of the deck looked glad to see him. “Were you able to raise anybody?” the captain asked him.

  “Got a Belgian freighter. She’s putting out a Mayday for us. Sir, we have high-temp alarms in the hangar, torpedo stowage, main control—”

  “I know.”

  The ship groaned and clattered under their feet, settling farther to port. The captain pulled out a phone and talked briefly with the damage-control officer, then put it back. “The engine spaces are flooding,” he said softly, as if to himself. “The fire’s right over them. I can’t get portable pumps down there. The bilge pumps are electric. And I can’t run the submersibles without power or the eductors without firemain pressure.”

  “We can dewater with P-250s.”

  “Not fast enough. I think we’ve got a big hole down there.” He looked to port. “This class won’t stay afloat with the engine spaces flooded. How deep is it here?”

  “Six hundred feet, sir,” said the quartermaster.

  “I hope they saved a fucking lot of money on this ship,” said the captain softly.

  “DC central reports: team from Repair Five has been forced back by fire.”

  The first torpedo cooked off then, mowing down the pump crews on the flight deck. The secondary conning station made a somersault in the air and plunged down on the burning gig. The captain rose from an instinctive crouch, looking aft. The flames occupied the entire midships now. The frigate gave a lurch and slid farther over to port. It was now listing perhaps forty degrees and was noticeably lower in the water aft.

  “All this from one missile,” said the lieutenant.

  “One missile,” said the captain.

  “Whose was it? What kind was it? Soviet?”

  “No,” said the captain. “It was a Harpoon. One of ours.”

  He took a last deep breath, then picked up the phone again. “DC central, Bridge. This is Captain Shaker. Bring your people out on deck. Yes. Get them all up from below.” To the lieutenant, he said, “How far away you figure this freighter is?”

  “About twenty miles, coming north, toward us.”

  “Call them back. Ask them to render assistance.”

  “We’re not going to leave her, sir?”

  “I may have to,” said the captain. He looked back along the length of the ship again. A second torpedo went off, blowing shattered Plexiglas past him; he ducked back just in time. A huge mushroom of inky smoke stuffed with red fire rose above the listing destroyer.

  That made up his mind. He said, “Okay, we’ve done our best. Let’s get as many off alive as we can. Tell Radio to commence crypto destruction. Abandon with life rafts and jackets, off the starboard side, and keep them clear of the oil.”

  When the lieutenant and the others left, the captain remained, standing in the center of his bridge. Looking down at his burning, sinking ship, then out at the emptiness of the Gulf. He touched the flaking gray paint of the binnacle, then closed his eyes for a moment, shuddering with emotion he only now had begun to feel. From aft, now, he could hear the screams over the growing roar of flame.

  They surprised me, Benjamin Shaker thought. We weren’t ready for this. They told me it couldn’t happen.

  But next time we’ll be ready.

  And next time, I’ll make them pay.

  I

  THE CALM

  1

  Mina’ Salman, Bahrain

  THE thin officer in dress whites dragged a sleeve over his forehead, then tucked his thumbs back under his sword belt. The August morning was hot and airless as the inside of an oil drum—and smelled like it. Only the shade of a canvas awning made being in the open bearable at all.

  Lieutenant-Commander Daniel V. Lenson, U.S. Navy, turned from the shore. His narrowed glance found his watch, then flicked critically around at the ranked chairs, the newly painted deck, the lectern. He watched two boatswain’s mates sweating the belly out of the awning. His eyes lingered on a mahogany stand holding the motionless flags of the United States, Bahrain, and the U.S. Navy, then swung outward again, searching the pier and beyond it the low line of land.

  U.S.S. Turner Van Zandt, FFG-91, lay starboard side to alongside a concrete quay half a mile long. She was the only Navy ship there, compac
t, gray, and deadly looking amid a hodgepodge of tankers, freighters, and one patrol boat of the Bahraini Defense Force.

  Lenson squinted into sun glare dazzling as a welder’s arc. The harbor had the flat, oily gleam of dead calm. Eastward, between it and the open Gulf, the shallows of the Khawr al Qualay’ah glowed like murky turquoise under a sky the color of sandpaper. At the foot of the pier, straight as a gunshot, was the shorefront town of Mina’ Salman, and beyond it Manama, the capital of this island sheikhdom. From here, all he could see of it were the needles of minarets and a green water tank. The waterfront was prefabricated warehouses, concrete silos, the gallows shapes of Japanese-made container cranes. The earth was the color of sand. The air smelled of hot tar and dust. And it was unbearably humid—as usual.

  It wasn’t much of a place for a change of command. But then, Dan thought, it was better than Sitra anchorage, where American warships usually spent their liberty. Manama was the closest thing to a friendly port the Gulf offered these days. But that didn’t mean it was fun.

  “Awning’s rigged, XO. If the shamal comes up, it’ll flap, but it’ll hold.”

  Dan straightened from his musing. Lieutenant (junior grade) Steve Charaler, Van Zandt’s perpetually harassed first lieutenant, looked out of place in service dress white, combination cap, white gloves. The redheaded deck officer spent most of his time in scuffed combat boots and khakis that looked as if they’d been bought secondhand from Mister Goodwrench.

  “Button your collar, Steve.”

  “Aw, just till—”

  “Your lip, too.” Dan glanced at the canvas. “You’ve got Irish pennants on the quarter. And coil down the rigging lines. Get it squared away; there’s a sedan on the pier.”

  “Yessir.” Charaler headed off, yanking at his collar and shouting for BM2 Stanko. Dan adjusted the gold braid sword knot, Naval Academy issue that came already tied, thank God, and took a last turn round the ceremonial area. He stepped to the lecturn, tapped the mike, and said, “One, two, three.” His voice boomed out satisfactorily. On three sides, ranked along the deck edge, the crew fidgeted and sweated at ease.

  The guests began arriving. Bob Ekdahl, the officer of the deck, came back from the quarterdeck with the telescope under his arm. He was leading a dark man with a mustache. Lenson greeted him warmly. Achmed Turani, the husbanding agent, decided how fast their water and garbage would be taken care of. The Arab was followed by the American consul, two liaison officers, the commanding officer of the Bahraini gunboat, and two of his men. Van Zandt’s junior officers ushered them to seats. There were no women. It was a remarkable thing even to see a woman in the streets of Manama.

  He hadn’t figured on a heavy attendance. Stateside, a change of command was an occasion. The families and friends of the oncoming and offgoing captains were invited. There would be press people, maybe even a TV crew if you were in your home port.

  Things were different in the Gulf. He glanced up. At the frigate’s masthead, a radar antenna rotated tirelessly. There were men on watch in CIC, and directly above him, atop the helo hangar, the six barrels of the Phalanx gun poked out aggressively.

  Iranian waters were fifty miles distant. Alongside a pier or not, they were in a war zone.

  Van Zandt was part of the recent beef-up of U.S. forces in the Gulf. She’d arrived two months before, and had four to go before she returned to the States. Under the operational control of Commander, Middle East Force, she was assigned at the moment to a surveillance and escort operation called “Earnest Will,” convoying American and Kuwaiti tankers between the Arabian Sea and their onload points in the north.

  Dan rocked on the balls of his feet, glancing shoreward again. The front row of chairs was still empty. After coming aboard briefly yesterday, the new commanding officer had spent the night ashore. No ship was big enough for two captains. But where was he now?

  Ekdahl, beside him, said, “Admiral’s here.”

  As they left the shade, the sun hit hard. Visible waves of heat shuddered off the steel deck. Dan got to the quarterdeck just as the boatswain’s pipe began shrilling. He nudged one of the sideboys into alignment, ran an eye over the area—just swept, good—and took his place by the brow. He nodded to Ekdahl. A moment later, six slow bells trembled in the heated air.

  “Commander, Middle East Force, arriving.”

  The pipe shrilled again. The sideboys saluted, Dan with them, as Rear Admiral Stansfield Hart, USN, loped up the gangway, followed by two aides. He returned the salute. The sideboys held it, then the call ended; their hands snapped down.

  “Good morning, Admiral.”

  “Morning. Where’s … Oh. You’re the executive officer? Lenson?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, Admiral.”

  Dan led the party aft and got them seated. The aides took chairs in back. He winked at one of them, Jack Byrne, Hart’s intelligence officer. Byrne winked slowly behind dark glasses. The other staffie was the chaplain. He glanced at the crew; Charaler had already put them at parade rest.

  “Sit down a minute, Mr. Lenson,” Hart muttered. “How’s Charlie holding up?”

  “I think he’ll be all right for the turnover, sir. After that … I don’t know.”

  “I told him he shouldn’t have waited. Not with cancer. He’s gambling with his life. But”—the admiral squinted up at the awning—“I might have done the same … anyway. I imagine you’ve been carrying a lot of the load for him.”

  Lenson hesitated. Hart saw it. “I know, I know, you don’t want to say. I thought about you, by the way, when they told me Bell had to be replaced.”

  “About me?”

  “About fleeting you up instead of ordering in somebody new. Don’t tell me you hadn’t considered that possibility.” Hart grinned suddenly. “But you’re still a little too junior, and you’d need your command quals. It wasn’t anything personal.”

  Dan nodded. It didn’t happen often, going from XO to CO on the same ship, but then commanding officers didn’t get medically relieved that often, either. And he’d finished his command qualification. But this didn’t seem like the time to bring it up. The decision had been made. Meanwhile, Hart was looking around. “Hell, where is Shaker? You might get it yet, if he doesn’t show up pretty soon.”

  At that moment Dan saw a set of trop whites and commander’s stripes swing out of a taxi and jog up the gangway, tossing a salute toward the ensign. “He’s coming aboard now, sir.”

  “Okay, good. How long are you going to be pierside? Aren’t you on this next convoy?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll be heading south day after tomorrow.”

  “Let’s get the show on the road, then.”

  The trop whites slid into a seat in the back. Lenson got up. He looked searchingly around one last time. The crew waited, quieted by the gold braid in the front row. Beyond them, the harbor glittered and the shore burned silently in the sun. He could hear the whir of the motors in the gun above them, the hum of the blowers forward, the gentle slap of sea against the hull. He adjusted his sword, squared his shoulders, and walked to the podium.

  “Ship’s company: A-ten hut!”

  The lines of sailors clicked into rigidity. Lenson cleared his throat. With the amplifier on, it sounded awful.

  “Good morning, Admiral, Consul, honored guests, officers and men. This is the change of command ceremony for the relief of Captain Charles Bell, U.S. Navy, commanding U.S.S. Turner Van Zandt, by Commander Benjamin Shaker, USN. Chaplain Grace will read the invocation.”

  He stood to the side, head bent, for the prayer. He glanced at Turani, thinking only then of the Moslem. But Grace made it general and short, mentioning “our heavenly Father” only once and leaving Jesus out entirely. When the crew said “Amen,” Dan nodded to Ekdahl, who was watching him from the quarterdeck.

  “The Star-Spangled Banner” played scratchily over the ship’s announcing system, interrupted by an electronic whine each time the ra
dar went around. Lenson watched the crew; as he’d drilled them, they waited till Hart started to salute and then tried to beat his hand up. For a working crew, tired to the bone after refresher training, a long transit, and months of escort duty, he thought they looked damn sharp.

  The Bahraini anthem was next. When it hissed to a stop, Dan stepped to the lectern again. He said loudly, “Captain Charles Bell.”

  The crews’ eyes swung toward the helo hangar. From its shadow, a thin figure came slowly out into the light.

  Captain Bell did not look far from death. The flesh of his face had baked away, and the body beneath the starched whites was angular. He moved slowly, holding himself erect with visible strain. Rick Guerra, the engineering officer, kept pace a step behind. Dan gripped the lectern, praying him on.

  Would I do that? he wondered. Stay with my ship when I knew what he knows?

  “Parade rest,” murmured the captain. His thin, trembling fingers went white on the wood and Dan stood aside, melting into the line of officers along the quarter.

  “Good morning,” said Bell. “I believe … I believe you all know me. Hello, Stan. Hello, back there, Ben. Glad you could make it.”

  The crew laughed a little. Hart smiled. It looked as if it took an effort. Bell flexed his fingers, then regripped the lectern.

  “I know this is a little early to leave. But you know how it is with us old guys. We just can’t take these heavy liberties all the time.” His strained, gaunt face cracked into a grin and the crew laughed again, this time with a tone of unease.

  Bell’s voice gathered strength. “Seriously, though. I’ve been aboard Van Zandt for a little over a year, and I feel I know you about as well as I’ve ever known a crew. I wanted to tell you, by the way, that I was looking at The International Herald Tribune international edition this morning, and we made the front page again. The people back home know what we’re doing out here, and they appreciate it.