China Star

by Maurice Medland

  “I love your scones.” He downed it in two bites and washed it down with a slug of black coffee.

  “Hey, take it easy, Boss-man. Eat slow. Food meant to be tasted.”

  Matt finished off the omelet and half the polenta, nodding his approval. He picked up a pair of scones and headed for the door. He paused with his hand on the latch, feeling better than he’d felt in a while. Even without much real sleep, a belly full of eggs, corn meal, and coffee had worked wonders. He turned and smiled.

  “Thanks, Francisco. You’re amazing.”

  Francisco grinned, his moon face flowering.

  “I know.”

  Traveller darted out the door beside Matt. As Matt walked away, he tossed one of the scones to the dog.

  “Scones for you. Not for dog,” Francisco shouted over the clatter of dishes from the sea cabin. “Scones too good for dog.”

  Matt watched Traveller bolt the scone down in two gulps while he finished his own, savoring each bite.

  “No offense, Trav, but he’s right.”

  He walked aft to the crew’s lounge, rehearsing what he was going to say. He stepped over the coaming and saw that most of the crew was already there. They milled around, bantering, drawing coffee from the urn, waiting for the show to begin. Francisco came bustling in with a tray of Filipino pastries and set them on the table by the coffee. The crew converged on the tray, murmuring their approval at rows of fresh hot pandesal, pan de ube, ensemada, and cheese rolls, while Francisco beamed.

  “Well, if it ain’t sleeping beauty,” Scootchy Carter said. “What brings you up, Cap’n? It ain’t even noon yet.”

  Matt felt the muscles in his abdomen constrict, looking into his chief engineer’s weasel face. His real name was Raymond, but everyone called him Scootchy. The scuttlebutt was that someone had once caught him in the engine room scooting against a steel deck plate to relieve the pain of his hemorrhoids, like a dog on grass. He’d been dubbed Scooter, which had evolved into Scootchy, and the name had stuck. It was the way of the sea. The first rule every seaman learned was never get caught saying or doing anything embarrassing aboard ship because it would never be forgotten.

  “What are you doing out of the engine room?”

  “Them Cat 399s don’t need me. They’ll run forever.”

  “Who relieved you?”

  “That new kid, Kuntz. Been breaking him in to stand engine room watches.”

  Matt flushed. “Kuntz is a diver, not an engineer. We just overhauled the number four engine. I want it monitored closely for the first hundred hours. You need to be down there.”

  “Bullshit, I already told Sam, it’s running like a $2 watch,” Scootchy said. “Anyway, I’m a ship’s officer, I got a right to know. I ain’t gonna get it second hand. I want to hear it from the horse’s ass - I mean mouth.” He grinned, exposing his rat teeth.

  Matt’s eyes flashed. “One of these days, your mouth is going to get you into more trouble than you can handle.”

  “Hey, it was a joke, for chrissake.”

  Sam walked up. “Morning, Skipper.” He turned to the chief engineer. “I thought I told you to stay below, Scootch.”

  “And miss the scoop? No chance.”

  “All right,” Matt said. “You can stay. But keep your opinions to yourself during the briefing. If you’ve got a problem with anything I say, I’ll talk to you about it privately.”

  Scootchy shrugged. “Why should I have a problem with a salvage job?” He walked toward the coffee urn.

  Sam counted noses. “Looks like everyone’s here that can be, Captain.”

  Matt nodded. “Let’s get started.”

  “All right, you slugs, knock it off and sit down,” Sam said. “Captain is on deck.”

  Matt walked up to the aft bulkhead and pulled down a map of the South China Sea. He turned and looked out over his crew. Fourteen members were present, including Sam and himself, and four were on watch. A crew of eighteen was lean for a ship of this size and capability, but they were all good men, even Scootchy. They’d all signed on as specialists, and Matt had insisted that every member of his crew be trained to do any job aboard ship. The years of cross-training had paid off, and Connor Marine had a reputation for having one of the most efficient salvage crews in the industry. He smiled at them, as proud of his crew as he was of his ship.

  “Good morning,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I hope you guys slept as well as I did.”

  They all laughed. There were no secrets aboard ship, and they seemed to enjoy the fact that the captain had dogged it.

  “About this job. . .” Matt said.

  “This better be a good one,” Scootchy said, munching a cheese roll. “I need the money. There’s a ranch I want to buy.”

  “It’s actually more of a mission than a job,” Matt said, “but there’ll be bonuses for everyone if we can pull it off.”

  “A mission?” Scootchy said. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “If you’ll shut the hell up, Scootch, maybe the captain can tell us,” Sam said.

  “There’s a freighter aground on an island off the coast of Macau,” Matt said, pointing to a black speck on the map. “We’re going to go through the motions of debeaching the ship, but it’s just a decoy. The real assignment is to pick up a woman from a neighboring island.”

  “A woman?” Scootchy said. “For what?”

  “She’s an American citizen being held by the Chinese. Other people will deliver her to us. Our job is to bring her back.”

  “Being held?” Scootchy said. “Jesus Christ, you mean we’re going to break her out of some Chink prison?”

  “Nothing like that.” Matt glared at him. “Our role in this is a relatively small one.” He spent the next twenty minutes going over the details of the rescue plan, and the bigger than usual bonuses they’d all get, while the crew sat mesmerized. To his surprise, even Scootchy kept quiet, apparently too flabbergasted to speak. When he’d finished, he leaned back against the table and folded his arms.

  “That’s about it. Any questions?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Holy shit,” Scootchy said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know about the rest of you boys, but this ain’t what I signed on to do.”

  “I never thought I’d agree with Scootchy on anything, Captain, but he’s right,” Doc Miller said. “This is over the top.”

  “I know it’s out of the ordinary,” Matt said, “but business is a little slow right now. If we want to keep the crew together, we’re going to have to take some risk.”

  “Risk?” Scootchy said. “Jesus Christ Almighty, we’re liable to have half the goddamn Chinese Navy down our backs. If they catch us, we’re screwed. I don’t fancy spending the rest of my days in a Chinese prison.”

  “Scootchy’s got a point,” Gene Harvey said.

  The rest of the crew sat quietly, watching Matt and Sam.

  “I’ve tried to give it to you as straight as I can,” Matt said. “Yes, there is some risk involved, but I think it’s manageable. You guys will have to decide. If you want, we’ll abort and return to Kaohsiung and wait for another job. It may come in time to keep us together, it may not.”

  They all looked at Sam, waiting for his opinion. Matt hadn’t discussed it with him, but he thought he knew how he’d vote. If Sam agreed, the rest of the crew would go along.

  Sam stepped forward. “Let me remind you jokers that none of us were doing so hot until the skipper here brought us together. Under his leadership over the last five years, we’ve all had more fun and made more money than we ever did in our lives. Some of us even got our self-respect back. Now, the captain’s thought it through. If he says it’s the right thing to do, then I’m in.”

  “Well, what the hell,” Doc Miller said. “I guess we could use a little excitement around here.”

  “You can have the excitement,” Gene Harvey said. “I’ll take the money.”

  Matt saw heads nodding in agreement. A chorus of “Suits
me,” and “I’m in,” went up from the crew.

  “Well, I guess that makes me odd man out,” Scootchy said. “I’ll go along, but I still don’t like it. Even if we pick her up without getting our heads shot off, we still gotta have a woman around. Women are bad news on a ship.”

  “How would you know, Scootchy?” Doc Miller said. “You never had a woman in your life.”

  “Hell I didn’t,” Scootchy said over the laughter. “I had a woman once. Women are only good for two things. Screwing and complaining. And when they ain’t screwing, they’re complaining. Never again. I want gash, I buy it.”

  “All right, knock it off,” Matt said. “We’re going to have a woman aboard, and I expect you all to be on your best behavior.”

  “Ass for gas,” Scootchy said. “If she wants to ride, she’s got to-”

  “You heard the captain,” Sam said. “There’ll be no more of that kind of talk.”

  Matt spent the rest of the day moving around the ship, briefing the watch standers who’d missed the meeting of the ship’s company and talking with crewmen individually, reassuring them. By the next morning, they all seemed to be solidly behind him, though Scootchy Carter, he’d heard, was still taking shots behind his back. He had to get it resolved. He found Scootchy in the crew’s mess just before noon, sitting alone at his usual table. Matt drew a cup of coffee and joined him.

  “Scootch, I’m hearing scuttlebutt that you’re not with me.”

  “On what?”

  “This mission.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say that,” Scootchy said, tearing into a roll. “I just think it’s nuts, is all.”

  “I can’t have you getting the crew upset. I told you before the briefing yesterday that if you had any problems with it, I’d talk to you about them privately.”

  “You ain’t been around to talk privately.”

  Before Matt could respond, he heard Jason Tyler’s voice rattle through the ship’s loudspeaker system.

  “Cap’n to the bridge. Radar reports low-flying aircraft approaching from the stern.”

  “See, I told you,” Scootchy said, his voice rising. “It’s probably a Chink fighter. They’re probably wise to us already. They could drop a bomb on us out here, and no one would ever know.”

  “Shut up,” Matt said, listening. In the distance, the faint thump of helicopter rotors beat the air. “Go to emergency stations.”

  The crew broke and scrambled for their assigned stations, and Matt ran for the bridge. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from a hook in the pilothouse and stepped out onto the bridge wing. He adjusted the focus and followed a small speck in the airspace over the stern of the ship as it approached. It was a military helicopter, and it appeared to be coming straight toward them.

  “Can you make it out, Captain?” Sam asked.

  “Starting to. They’re gaining altitude.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re either going to sink us or fly over us.”

  “What is it?”

  “Looks like a Z-8.”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “PLA Navy chopper. Chinese copy of an old French design called the Super Frelon. They bought a few and developed their own version of it.”

  “Whatever it is, that son of a bitch can move.”

  Matt nodded. “Medium-size bird with three turboshafts. Cruises around 250 kilometers per hour. They fly off DDGs on anti-sub missions.”

  “Think they’re going to drop a bomb on us?”

  “They don’t carry bombs, but they could sure as hell sink us if they wanted to. They carry one torpedo, usually an American Mark 46.”

  “Be a bitch if they sunk us with one of our own torpedoes.”

  Matt strained his neck to look up. The helicopter roared straight overhead, the red star on its fuselage clearly visible. It decreased its altitude and kept going in a straight line, appearing to take no notice of them.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Sam said.

  “Beats me,” Matt said, watching the steel-blue helicopter disappear over the horizon. “They look like they’re searching for something, but whatever it is, it’s apparently not us.”

  “Suits me fine,” Sam said.

  “You got that right,” Matt said, and he whistled a sigh of relief. “Pass the word to secure from emergency stations.”

  “Aye aye, Captain.”

  Matt stayed on the bridge for another hour or so, scanning the horizon, making sure the helicopter didn’t come back. Suddenly feeling hungry, he looked at his watch. One-thirty. He decided to join the late lunch crowd in the crew’s mess before it was closed. There had been a small officer’s mess on the ship, but Matt had converted it into a storage area. He insisted that every member of the crew eat together.

  “Any more of them Chink birds flying around out there, Skipper?” someone asked as he walked into the crew’s mess.

  “Nary a one,” Matt said, picking up a steel tray. Francisco was busy in the galley, so he went down the line and served himself a slab of meatloaf, a scoop of au gratin potatoes, and a side of green beans. He finished his lunch, then went to his sea cabin to catch up on some paperwork. By the time he finished, it was three o’clock. Before he could clear off his desk, the speaker on the bulkhead crackled.

  “Captain to the bridge, captain to the bridge!”

  Matt dropped the papers and sprinted for the bridge, hoping it wasn’t another encounter with the PLA Navy. He burst through the door of the pilothouse and saw Sam and Jason Tyler staring through binoculars at an object two points off the starboard bow.

  “Better have a look at this, Skipper.” Sam handed Matt his binoculars. “Looks like some poor joker out there on a raft.”

  Matt focused the binoculars on what appeared to be a nearly naked man lying face down, clinging to a crude raft that was half submerged.

  “Must be what the Chinese were searching for this morning,” Matt said.

  “I wonder how they missed him?” Sam said.

  “It’s easy to miss a speck from the air, especially when you’re flying at that speed.”

  “If that’s the guy the Chinese are searching for, I don’t think we want him aboard,” Jason Tyler said.

  Matt silently agreed, but he’d pick him up if he was still alive. It was the oldest law of the sea.

  “Doesn’t matter who it is. We can’t just leave him.”

  “He’s not moving,” Jason Tyler said. “Maybe he’s dead.”

  “Let’s get a closer look,” Matt said. “I’ve got the conn, Jason. Right standard rudder. All ahead slow.”

  “Captain has the conn. Right standard rudder, all ahead slow, aye, sir.”

  As CoMar Explorer inched closer, the man shifted his weight, struggling up higher on the raft, trying to get his feet out of the water.

  “He’s alive,” Matt said. “All engines stop.”

  “All stop, aye, Captain.”

  “Pass the word,” Matt said. “Stand by to recover a man on a raft. Starboard side.”

  “You want the raft too?” Sam asked.

  “Leave it. If the Chinese find it they’ll think he’s drowned and stop looking.”

  Within minutes of the All Stop order, two divers wearing masks and fins were in the water, swimming the raft toward the ship. They lifted the man into a sling suspended from the aft cargo boom, positioned themselves on either side and gave the thumbs-up sign. The boom operator hoisted the sling aboard, dripping seawater, and gently lowered it to the deck.

  “Secure from recovery operations,” Matt said, watching from the bridge wing. “Jason, you have the conn. All ahead full. Return to your original course.”

  “I have the conn, aye, Captain,” Jason said, twisting the wheel. “All ahead full. Course two-six-three.”

  Matt felt all four Caterpillar engines come to life at the same time. The ship shuddered and surged ahead through green water.

  “Call Doc to the infirmary,” he said. “Come on, Sam. Let’s
go see what we’ve got.”

  By the time Matt got to the ship’s infirmary, Doc Miller was bending over the castaway, trying to stick a thermometer in his mouth. Doc had been a Navy hospital corpsman until he got bored with it and became a diver. He was the only member of the crew with any medical experience at all, so he got stuck looking at every sprained wrist and ingrown toenail. “Can’t get a thermometer in his mouth,” he said. “Bastard won’t hardly let me look at him.”

  “How is he?”

  Doc shrugged. “Looks okay to me. A few contusions and abrasions that look fresh. I’d expect him to be dehydrated, but he doesn’t seem to be. He must have had some fresh water on his raft.”

  Francisco came rushing in with a tray holding a steaming teapot and single mug. “Man need tea now, not food.” He said it firmly, as though expecting an argument.

  Matt looked down on the man. He appeared to be Chinese, about forty. He sat up in bed to take the mug of tea Francisco offered him, and the thin blanket that had been covering him fell away. The guy had a body like an athlete. Aside from a few bruises here and there, he looked to be in perfect physical condition.

  “Nin gui xing?” May I ask your name?

  The man looked up, startled, and sloshed tea on the blanket. He stared at Matt.

  “You can talk?” he said in Mandarin.

  “My Chinese is poor,” Matt said, “but I can talk a little. How are you called?”

  “You speak very well,” the man said. “I’ve never known a west-ocean person who could talk.” He looked down at the blanket, then at Francisco. “Please tell this foreign brother I apologize for spilling his tea.”

  “It’s nothing,” Matt said. He stared, waiting for an answer.

  “Forgive me. I am called Yang Zhi.”

  “Where are you from, Mr. Yang, and how did you come to be on a raft in the South China Sea?”

  “I am from Dalu, a small village in Quangxi Province. I was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for speaking against the government. I was sent to a laogai on an island off the coast of Macau. Everyone said it was escape-proof, but I got away.”

  Matt blinked. “Turtle Island?”

  Yang stared at him. “Do you know the place?”