China Sea (14 page)

“This was the spy, right?” said Miralda. “You knew him, sir?”

“I was his CO. Dan here was his department head.”

“And you never had any idea what he was doing?”

Dan took that one. “No, the King was smooth. We knew there was a leak, that equipment was missing. But he'd have been the last guy I suspected. The superpatriot and all.”

“Were you there when Naval Intelligence took him out? I heard something about Cuba, a rumor you were actually inside territorial waters—”

“You know how scuttlebutt gets exaggerated,” said Leighty. “Anyway, I have to say, you're the last person I expected to see out here. You say that's a Pakistani ship you're on?” He listened intently as Dan explained the transfer program. “And how are things going over there?”

“There's strain. Occasionally.”

“Between the crews?”

Dan said reluctantly, “No, not so much among the men. There was at first. The cultures are so different. But the biggest problem's between me and the Pak CO.”

“I find that hard to believe. You were always perfectly loyal to me. Personality conflict?”

“More like different leadership styles. Won't be much longer, though; another week to Karachi and we'll be done.”

A smooth-faced young aide appeared beside Leighty. “Sir, we've got the covered round robin coming up,” he said, giving Dan a dismissive glance.

Leighty looked around for his cap; Dan saw that if he was going to bring this up, this was the time.

“Anyway, sir, I did have something to ask you. It's about Desert Shield.”

“Go ahead, Dan.”

“Sir, I just wanted to say, once we hit Karachi, my orders are to fly back to Norfolk. But if there was a spot for me on a battle staff, or an extra fill on a combatant, I bet I could get temporary orders. If it comes to that, I've got leave coming—”

“Whoa there. Whoa!” Leighty chuckled, holding up his hand. “I should have known, if there's anything going on, you'd want in. I'll bear you in mind. All right?”

“I'd appreciate that, sir.”

“Good, then.” Leighty held out his hand. After a moment Dan took it, conscious of the skin touching his, the faint smile on the commodore's lips.

“It would be nice to serve with you again, Dan,” Leighty said softly, at which Dan got a level scalpel flick of a glance from the aide, who seemed to really see him, then, for the first time.

He stayed for breakfast, then excused himself. He called up to the bridge, asking the anchor watch to give
Tughril
a call on Channel 13, let them know he was ready to be picked up.

He stopped just before stepping out on the main deck, enjoying a last moment of air-conditioning before he returned to the growing heat outside. Giving himself a once-over in the reflective Plexiglas of a bulletin board, he couldn't decide if he looked salty and self-assured or like a passed-over loser.

10

THE RED SEA

THE incident with the ferry happened the second day out from El Suweis. All that morning they'd steamed south, hugging the west coast, a low, pale, sandy plain rising toward distant mountains, passing only an occasional island scrubbed with low brush. The Sudan, land of war and famine. The temperature hovered at eighty. Dan hated to think what it would be like here in August. A gusty north wind pushed them along. He was in the nav shack late that afternoon, reading a velvet-paged copy of
Watership Down
, when the 21MC broke out in urgent Urdu. Simultaneously he got a call on the sound-powered phone, which had by now evolved into a U.S.-only comm channel. When he picked it up, Chief Compline said, “Commander? Radio. Call coming in on 8364.”

Eight-three-six-four kilohertz was the international maritime distress frequency, one of the four emergency frequencies the ship monitored around-the-clock. Dan said, “Got a posit yet?”

“Call you back when. Just wanted to make sure you were up there.”

“Surface ship? Or aircraft?”

“Commercial vessel of some sort. Sounds like it might be close.”

Dan told him to send somebody up with the message when they had a hard copy. Not four minutes later Compline himself was at the folding door. Dan glanced over the handwritten carbon and turned to the chart he had taped down and already marked with
Tughril
's most recent fix and a running dead reckoning line from there.

The message was from something called the MV
Al Qiaq.
It reported taking on water and requiring assistance at L 20° 34' N, λ 38° 17' E. She was making 030 at between two to three knots, destination Jedda, on the eastern coast. He walked the dividers out. “About sixty nautical miles,” he said, running a DR line toward her advance position and marking it hour by hour. The other ship was headed northeast, generally across
Tughril
's bow. He calculated two courses to intercept, one at twenty-five knots and the other at flank speed. He wrote them in ballpoint on his left palm, along with the estimated time to intercept, and took the message out into the pilothouse.

Khashar was standing at the chart table with Irshad and the Pakistani OOD. Past them a lapis sea surged and billowed, the wind whipping spray off a breaker to rattle like spent shotgun pellets against the windows. None of the three looked up till Dan cleared his throat. He laid his copy of the message against their original, which was already lying on the chart, and said, “I thought we could check our intercept courses against each other.”

“Do you feel we need to respond?” said the captain after a moment.

“Sir, we've already responded. Chief Compline rogered for their distress call. It's only about twenty miles off our intended PIM anyway.”

Khashar looked doubtful as Irshad laid out his recommendation: a thirty-knot course to intercept. Dan said, “Sir, I concur with that.”

“Come left, one-three-zero,” the CO said at last, turning away as he said it.

Dan and Irshad looked at each other; was that a helm order or what? The OOD checked with Khashar, who was back in his chair now, lighting a cigarette, and got an angry response. He suffered it in silence, passed an order to the helm. The gyro swung around to steady at 130. The speed was unaltered, though, and presently Dan pointed this out. The lieutenant said, “If the captain had wanted the speed increased, he would have said so.”

“You know as well as I do that if we maintain this speed, we'll pass astern of the contact. He forgot it, that's all.”

The lieutenant wouldn't meet Dan's eyes; he obviously didn't want to fall afoul of the silent officer in the chair. Dan sighed and tried Irshad next. He didn't even answer, just stared ahead through his binoculars. For a moment Dan considered reaching over, seizing the shining polished brass handle, and yanking it over to “ahead flank” himself. To hell with it. He crossed the bridge and said, maybe too loudly, but he was getting sick of tiptoeing and scraping, “Captain, we need to increase speed.”

Khashar breathed smoke out and watched it curl off the inside of the window. “We're already at twenty knots. There's no indication we need to go any faster.”

“They sent a distress signal. Sir, our obligation under international agreements governing distress at sea is to respond as quickly as possible.”

Khashar spoke angrily. The engine order telegraph pinged.

Dan, sweating for some reason, turned away. Then he forced himself back. “Sir, we've got two hours plus till we intercept. I'd recommend using that time to get organized. Get the boats ready and the gear loaded, flake out a towline, get a damage control party ready to—”

“That will do,” said Khashar coldly. “You really do not have to instruct me in any of these matters, Commander. I know my duty, I know my men, and I know international law and my own regulations. You do not need to instruct me, and I do not believe I require your presence on my bridge. I would recommend that you return to your book and your coffee in the wardroom.” He turned his head.

Dan debated a response, debated against what frustration, anger, and growing hate pressed him to say, finally decided none was called for. He said, “Aye aye, sir,” and went back to the charthouse, feeling the gazes of the enlisted men following him. Hard to tell, impossible to guess, what was going on behind those expressionless black eyes.

He was really looking forward to Karachi.

*   *   *

THE next message came in fifteen minutes later, saying the water was rising and assistance was needed fast. This time Compline said that an Italian merchie had answered, too, but its position plotted well to the south, at least six hours away at the best speed she indicated she could make. Jedda had promised a tug but had been unable to provide a sailing time yet.

The distressed ship came up on radar at sixty thousand yards. Dan felt the bridge team's eyes on him every time he came out to dip his face into the repeater or to scan the sea ahead with his binoculars. Taken at face value, what the captain had just said barred Dan from the bridge. And he was tempted to take Khashar at his word, to go below and play passenger for the rest of the voyage. But he'd decided he wasn't taking any hints. He'd stay here doing his job till they threw him off by force. One good thing about the sideswiping in Horta: it would lend him credibility if Khashar entered a complaint against him. Once you'd established that you were acting in the interest of safety, a court-martial found it hard to hold your actions against you. Rain rattled at the windows, then slacked, leaving a sky the color of wet concrete.

At 1700 the lookout must have reported sighting the other ship, because everyone rushed to the starboard side and focused their glasses on the same point. Dan stood at the chartroom door, not bothering to look. According to her reports,
Al Qiaq
wasn't making as much headway as she'd hoped. For a moment he wondered why they were headed upwind; then the chart gave him the answer. Downwind lay shoal water, swash islets, and the black symbols of wrecked ships. The Sawakin reefs.
Tughril
came farther right, to 145, heading for what in a few more minutes he could make out with his naked eye: a distant white speck against blue-black. Even at this distance there was something irregular and disquieting about its motion.

Robidoux had been poring over a pub and now nudged him with an elbow. “MV
Al Qiaq
,” he said. “Saudi registry. Twin diesels. A passenger ferry.”

“Thanks, Robby.” The photo showed a modern vessel with a short forecastle, high superstructure carried up from the main deck, a single funnel midships, and a mast on the afterdeck. He couldn't make out from the picture if there was ro-ro access forward, but there was clearly a ramp aft. “Take it out to the OOD,” he said.

He went out to the wing and looked down at the RHIB. The dark gray inflatables—
RHIB
stood for “rigid-hull inflatable boat”—were nearly as big as the old-style motor whaleboats, but much lighter and far easier to launch and get back aboard. Instead of diesels they had fifty-horse outboard Johnsons. A couple of familiar faces down there. Pistolesi, shrugging a black coil of cable into the boat. Usmani, the fellow who'd fondled the shipyard worker in Philly, looking glum as he manhandled a pump along the deck. For a moment Dan wished he were going with them, fighting something honest like a separated seam or a cracked intake casting. But his place was on the bridge, trying to flatter and kick-start Khashar into the right decisions. Lips set, Dan went back in, checked the radar, made sure the bright dot that was
Al Qiaq
was tracking down the grease-penciled line to intercept.

Irshad muttered, “What's your thought on this?”

“Me? I'd run up alongside and send the repair party over. See if we can help 'em out.”

“They look very low in the water. What if they sink?”

Dan frowned, swung up his glasses. In the half-light he saw what the Pakistani meant. The ferry was down by the stern. Some sort of dark liquid eddied about her afterdeck, but he couldn't make out what it was. Her stern rose, wallowed about, then dropped into a trough with the grace of a sack of sand. For a fraction of a second he'd seen a hollow interior, caught a glimpse of a ramp.

“What if they sink?” Irshad muttered again.

Dan glanced at him, surprised to see he was licking his lips. “We'll have to take everybody off.”

“I don't know if we are ready for that.”

“Well, we'd better get ready. There's a section in the rescue and assistance bill on what we've got to do to embark refugees and stuff. That'll cover where we put them and so forth.”

He headed toward Khashar, but before he got there the captain swung down from his chair and walked past him. Lenson spun nearly in a circle, watching Khashar go on past the helm console, open the door that led to the ladder down, and vanish without a word or a look back.

The OOD removed his eyes from the glasses long enough to glance at the empty chair, then said to Dan, “Sir, we're going alongside?”

“Too soon to tell, Lieutenant. We need to establish comms, find out how bad off they are. See if you can raise the bridge on UHF.”

After several calls, while the ship ahead drew steadily nearer, an excited voice answered. Unfortunately, Dan didn't grok Arabic, and it seemed to puzzle the Pakistanis, too. Or maybe the man on the tossing ship was trying to speak English, but it wasn't coming across. The signal light clattered. After a long pause, a burst of light came back, but modulated by no intelligible communication. OK, Dan thought, so this wasn't going to be easy.

“Is the boat ready to go? Repair party, pumps, lines aboard?”

“I will check. I believe so.”

“Take a look at the wind direction. You want to give the RHIB a lee to lower into. I'd cross the wake, then pull up and match speed off her port side. As close as you can without banging into her.”