by David Poyer
“Looks like it. Why?”
“Short it with something, breakers’ll pop. No lights.”
“We don’t have anything to short it out with, Maggie. Or—oh—you mean the rifle?”
“No, you’re going to need that.” The Australian waved a hand. “Ready?”
“Magpie … Pritchard … what the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’ve got fooking galloping consumption. Not going to make it into those hills. But, you know what?” He coughed hard, and the bubbling sounded deeper. “Least, I’m dyin’ free. Tell ’em that, if you make it.” He writhed, and Teddy realized he was digging one arm into the friable soil. Spitting his own blood onto it, to make the short circuit complete. His other arm hammered Teddy’s back. “O-roo, mate. Now get the fook going.”
Major Trinh, in the dark. Vu, a smaller, silent shadow behind him. “Gap in the wire. Ten meters to our left.”
Closer to the tower, but maybe that wasn’t bad. Teddy wavered, grinding his teeth, about to argue. Then accepted it. He squeezed Pritchard’s wrist. “We’ll miss you.”
“Half your luck, mate. Half your luck.”
They were on the far side of the wire and crawling for the second belt when the searchlight came on above them. It swept up the bluff, then toward them. Teddy hugged the ground, face buried, but they were too close to be overlooked now. In the next second, a machine-gun bullet.
A sputter and hiss from the cliff edge. A cry, cut off almost instantly.
The searchlight flickered, and went out.
* * *
THERE were three wire belts, with a ditch between the first and second, but the outermost was only half finished; more a warning to outside trespassers than a serious barrier. Once past that, they rose warily to stand erect. Almost not believing they’d made it through. But despite shouting between the towers, no lights had come on. And when Teddy had brushed against a wire with his back, it had been dead, without power.
They began walking.
They trudged along all night, keeping to hard surfaces and then the tops of ridges, when ridges rose. Keeping rock under their feet so they’d leave no tracks. Teddy didn’t have to drive them on. They knew they had to push it. He had to admit, Maggie had been right. No way he could have kept up. Not in his condition.
At dawn they lay concealed on a hill, lost in a chaotic jumble of immense rocks that made him think of the White Mountains. Far ahead the snowcapped peaks of the Tien Shan floated in the clear air.
He lay motionless, belly empty, staring up. Could they really cross them? It seemed impossible. But they had to, or die. He, and Trinh, and Vu, and Fierros.
Yet even death would be better than recapture, and the camp again.
3
Apra Harbor Repair Facility, Guam
“WATCH yourself!” The supervisor pulled the slight officer in the white hard hat back as a silver-hot shower of sparks burst out high above them. The liquid steel fell in a crackling, coruscating waterfall exactly where she’d been about to step. Molten drops sizzled on wet iron like a fiery snowfall. Blue smoke rose, with the hot choking stink of burning metal.
Commander Cheryl Staurulakis, USN, hesitated, blinking through the data streaming in front of her eyes. Then, adjusting her smart glasses, she settled the hard hat more firmly over a black-and-olive shemagh and marched ahead, through the smoke and sparks.
A step behind her pale-haired, hard-cheekboned, steeltoe-booted, blue-coveralled figure, a foreman sighed and hitched a tool belt over a drooping paunch. The dry-dock supervisor punched numbers into a battered notebook.
Above them loomed a darkling presence so immense and curved that, like a planet, only a portion could be glimpsed. The cruiser’s hull was spotted with the dull red and bright yellow and glistening black of fresh paint, the charred seams of fresh welds, the silvery patches where workers had ground them down to bare metal. As soon as the metal cooled, women in dust masks slapped paint over it, edging along platforms above the wetshining floor of the dry dock. Shouts and the clatter of pumps echoed in the cavernous space. The sun glittered through catwalks far above. A pump throbbed; water spattered down. A grinder shrieked, scattering sparks like gold coins thrown to paupers by a pope. The workers were finishing the new bow structure, and buttoning up the other repairs.
Through the augmented-reality lenses, Cheryl noted the blisters along the hull where the new Rimshot sensor/output modules had been welded in. She squinted at where fresh paint ended and barnacles started. If only they’d had time to strip and repaint the whole hull … The bright blue sky seemed far away as the supervisor explained, “We edge the dock out into the channel, then start flooding. Right before you float, we secure ballasting. Our fitters are down belowdecks inspecting your seals and sea valves for watertight integrity. Once you’re satisfied your DC checks are set, you give the order, ‘Float the ship.’ I’m up at the head of the dock, watching trim and list. If you go off half a degree, I stop and we figure out what’s wrong. Once you’re fully afloat, we power you out with the trolleys and wire pendants up there”—he pointed up to where steel threads crisscrossed the blue—“and make you up to the tugs, take you over to Victor Wharf. Just make sure your engineering guys know—”
“Excuse me.” Staurulakis halted again, shielding her gaze with a gray-gloved hand as she read the repair and readiness status of each object she looked at. “But can we pressure test that sonar dome one more time?”
“We already did that twice, Commander—”
The radio clipped to her web belt, her Hydra, clicked on. “Commander? Comm here. Where exactly are you right now?”
“XO here. Down in the dock. By the bow dome.”
“Got a message for you. Running it down.”
“Never mind, I’ll be right up.” She clicked off. Said to the super, “I’m not confident we found the weak point. Out there in some sub’s torpedo danger area is not when I want to find out we have a reduced acoustic capability. Keep pushing, okay? We appreciate everyone’s efforts.”
“You got it, Commander. Fix yer battle damage, get you back out there to fight, that’s why we’re here.”
Pompously put, but the shipyard people were coming through. Three shifts, working around the clock since USS Savo Island had pulled in. Despite the missile raid drills and the flights evacuating military dependents back to the States. Almost all the workers were locals anyway, Chamorros and Filipinos. The naval shipyard had been BRAC’d years before, but the wharves, cranes, and most of the other facilities—foundry, labs, motor rewind, industrial gases—had remained. Now hastily remanned, the facility’s wharves were lined with damaged ships.
No one knew what was coming. Invasion, perhaps, or the bombardments that had preceded the landings on Taiwan and Okinawa. Worst of all, a nuclear strike like the one that had wiped out an entire battle group at sea. The Army had moved a THAAD battery here from Meck Island, and the Air Force a squadron of F-22s, but they wouldn’t be enough to stop a serious attack.
The story of the whole war so far. The Allies had been surprised, outmaneuvered, outthought, and overwhelmed. The only good news was that the carriers were still holding east of Hawaii. Which meant her husband, Ed, aboard Vinson, wouldn’t see action for a while. So she could stop worrying about him. Short of the usual back-of-the-mind anxiety about flameouts or bad landings. But he was a solid flier. A squadron leader, now. And since the wedding, he’d promised to take fewer risks.
Thank God, at least they still had an operational dry dock out here. The huge, hollow mass of steel could be ballasted down, allowing a ship to be floated in. Then the ballast was pumped out, buoying the carefully propped-up vessel and exposing the hull for repairs.
The missile had come in from astern during a confused nighttime imbroglio in the Taiwan Strait. They’d known a sub was out there, but hadn’t been able to localize it closely enough to neutralize. Though the missile could have been air-launched, too, programmed to loop around and approach from astern to maximize
surprise.
At any rate, it had bored in so fast—transonic, or supersonic—and so low that their radar had picked it up only a second before impact. Savo’s electronic-countermeasures team had managed to spoof it away from the centroid, but not enough to miss entirely.
A hundred yards ahead and above, another coverall-clad figure, also female, waved and started down. Two men trailed her down the steel stairway that descended flight after flight into the dry dock’s Stygian depths.
Hitting at an angle, the warhead had penetrated before explodings. The blast had blown off everything forward of the wildcats. Lifelines, bulwarks, bullnose, ground tackle, both anchors, and the upper part of the stem down to four feet above the waterline. The anchor chain had run out with a grating thunder. After they’d gotten the fire under control, Captain Lenson had ordered them to cut away what was left, leaving a gaping hole. “Have to call her Old Shovelnose from here on,” the first lieutenant had cracked.
The damage-control teams had welded and shored bulkheads, but they’d had to avoid taking heavy seas head-on for the agonizingly slow twelve-hundred-mile creep back. During that passage, apparently, more of the forward stringers had cracked and separated from the shell plating. The Tiger Team engineers from Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard had reviewed the damage documentation Cheryl and the chief engineer had prepared, and translated that into work orders. Savo had to wait her turn—she wasn’t the only battle-damaged ship around—but eventually it had come.
Since then both the yard and ship’s force had been cutting, fabricating, welding. Covering everything in the ship with dust, and tracking grinder grit over the decks. But cleanliness was the least of her worries now. Neither was aesthetics, though she hated that the new bow wasn’t as graceful as the old. Where the original had been sharp, it was square, shorter, cruder, and carried only one anchor. A hasty wartime repair, for a ship needed back on the front line. The super had promised to have everything buttoned up before dawn tomorrow. Get her off the blocks, a quick engine test, then under way to load ammo at the magazine wharf.
Everyone expected the next phase in the Chinese offensive. Only what would it be? She murmured, “Glasses: power off,” as the approaching woman angled to meet her, snagging the admiring gazes of the male workers. No wonder, the way she filled out her coveralls, that long dark hair flowing from under her hard hat …
“XO. Good morning.”
“Good morning.” Cheryl tucked the glasses away and returned Lieutenant Amarpeet Singhe’s salute. “Amy? Dave? And Master Chief. What’s this little party for? I said I’d be right up.”
Singhe was Savo Island’s strike officer, in charge of the Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, though she had other responsibilities too. The taller lieutenant behind Singhe was Dave Branscombe, Savo’s communications officer. The third, lagging them, was Master Chief “Sid” Tausengelt. The senior enlisted’s receding hairline and grooved cheeks went with his being probably the oldest person aboard.
“Thought we’d bring this one down ourselves,” the comm officer said, handing over an aluminum clipboard.
Cheryl carried it to where sunlight slanted. They stepped around water-soaked oaken blocks as big as buffaloes, picking their way between pools of dirty slime, over the uneven rusty steel. Other balks had been stacked into a makeshift shelter. She doubted they’d afford much protection. If the enemy hit this harbor, a ballistic-missile cruiser parked helplessly in the single floating dry dock west of Hawaii would be a prime target.
“As soon as we realized what it was, we printed it out and called your cabin,” Branscombe said. “Then we got on the Hydra.”
“Dave was going to bring it down, but I had to come too,” Singhe said. “I grabbed the master chief on the way.”
What the heck? Cheryl flipped the cover up.
TO: COMMANDER CHERYL STAURULAKIS USN
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY ASSUME COMMAND USS SAVO ISLAND.
That was all. Other than the prosign BT, which just meant the end of the text proper.
Shouldn’t there be more?
But maybe that was all there had to be.
And maybe it wasn’t really a matter for congratulation.
As she stood blinking, her relationship to the mass of metal above her, to the other officers, to the crew, to the world, had changed.
“Cheryl?” Singhe was smiling radiantly. Even through the smells of scorched iron, paint, and fetid mud, her sandalwood perfume penetrated. “This is great. Really, really. We’re going to make some changes. Make everything different. Right?”
Branscombe said nothing, just studied her. Of course, the comm officer knew what it said. As probably everybody in the ship above them did too, by now. Scuttlebutt traveled faster than light. The old master chief’s weathered face was attentive, but unreadable as a catcher’s mask.
Staurulakis pulled off a glove, took the proffered pen, and initialed the message. Scratched the itchy patch between her fingers, and handed back the clipboard. Singhe’s expression changed, faltered, as Cheryl didn’t respond to her enthusiasm. Altered, in some indefinable way, when the woman who was suddenly, now, to them all, the captain, gave her only a brief smile, and headed for the stairs.
* * *
THE work-progress meeting convened at 1300 in the wardroom. Cheryl ran it just as she would have if she were still the exec, but the oxygen content of the atmosphere had changed. As the chief engineering officer, Bart Danenhower, briefed on the checkoff list for flooding the dock and getting under way, she propped her chin on one fist. Remembering how often the previous skipper had looked abstracted, rubbing his face or massaging his eyes as they’d briefed him. Snatching a few seconds to multitask behind those opaque gray eyes.
Yeah, he was a hero. Medal of Honor. Silver Star. Been everywhere. Done everything. But he was so damned demanding. A perfectionist. She’d never felt she knew him, even as she’d worked like a dog to anticipate his next thought. He didn’t shout when someone fell short, like other skippers she’d worked under. In a way, that silence was worse. Facing the disappointment, in those flat, cold, judgmental eyes. He never doubted. Saw everything in black and white. Expected too much, of himself, and then, of them.
Now she was in charge. Her chance to do things differently. And, she hoped, better.
At the same time, some of the things he’d done right, she hoped she could do half as well.
The first question was who was going to fill her billet as second in command. No clue in the message, which meant she’d have to select, or “fleet up,” someone to fill her still-warm steeltoes.
But who? Danenhower was the obvious choice, as next senior lieutenant commander. Matt Mills, the handsome blond intent on his notebook next to him, was another option. The operations officer was usually next in the pecking order after the XO. But Mills was still a lieutenant, too junior even in wartime. Amy Singhe was smart, ambitious, a Wharton grad. But she wasn’t senior enough either, plus she’d gone behind the chiefs’ backs to stand up for the enlisted women too many times. Praiseworthy, but it didn’t make her popular with middle management. Slotting her as XO, even as a temporary fill, would guarantee friction. And it was the chiefs who made the ship titivate, motivate, and navigate, as the saying went.
Scratching absentmindedly between her fingers, she looked from one to the next of her department heads. Better a guy backing her up than another woman. Danenhower … Mills … Ollie Uskavitch, the weapons officer? Physically, the biggest hunk aboard. But … kinda dumb. Her Supply Department head, Hermelinda Garfinkle-Henriques? Not a line officer. A woman. And only a lieutenant. Three strikes, she’s out. Branscombe, the comm officer? Reasonably smart. A male. But again, too junior.
If only she could Frankenstein them together, Amy’s Wharton degree, Ollie’s size, Matt’s Harlequin-cover looks, Bart’s seniority, and Engine Room savvy—
Danenhower was winding up. “Dry-docking or not, we’ve been at sea way past our overhaul date. This was supposed to be just a Med cruise, remember.
Then we got extended. To the Red Sea. The Indian Ocean. Then here. Machinery wears out. At some point … well, I’ve said it before. Sooner or later, we’re asking for major equipment degradation.”
He paused, looked to her, and she murmured, “Thank you, CHENG. What about the moisture issue in the CRP?”
“Um, Chief McMottie had them ultrasound the bottom all along the starboard shaft. They found a crack. Minor, but enough so that inaccessible void under the sump would fill up slowly. We cut that section out and rewelded it.”
“The grounding issues in the engine control consoles?”
“They put that in the ‘too hard’ file. Said we needed rip-out, all new consoles. Just got to be careful, don’t get ourselves in situations where we depend on instant engine response.”
She nodded and leaned back, enjoying the way they eyed her. If only Eddie could see her now. “All right … Oh, the dock supe wanted me to remind you, make sure your shafts are locked out during the undocking.… Let’s move on. Ollie, did you check on the Annex?”
“I went over there this morning with Chief Quincoches. Did you know, he’s got family around here?”
“Really? Interesting … What have they got for us?”
The weapons officer said, “The flight got in from Australia, but with only four Advanced Standards. Which makes a light loadout.” The weapons officer went over the tally, but since he was sending her the inventory on the LAN, she just checked that it was in her queue. She’d get all too familiar with those numbers. Provided no one was lurking offshore waiting for them. Fleet had warned that even with swept harbor exits, it was possible smart mines would be waking as days and weeks passed. Just to keep the pucker factor high, she reflected sourly.
Murmuring around the table; it ceased as she cleared her throat. “We need an acting XO. I’m going to call Squadron and request a permanent fill.” She didn’t look at Singhe, but noted her cheeks paling, the heavy black eyebrows contracting. “For now, CHENG will be acting XO as well as our resident Harry Potter expert.” A dutiful chuckle; as ever, even a lame pleasantry from the skipper got a laugh. “But he really deserves a full-time exec billet. There are other folks we could promote from within”—she dispensed Singhe a glance—“but they’re still too junior. I know, wartime, but years in grade still counts. If we don’t get fills in a reasonable time, then I’ll fleet people into the billets. We’ll just have to deal case by case.
