China Sea (27 page)

16

THE SULU SEA

IT took two days to transit from Brunei to the Phase Two op area. En route,
Hang Tuah
's commander notified the CTF that he had received a recall from the Malaysian naval headquarters, to operate in the Gulf of Thailand after an incident with the Thai fishing fleet off Kota Bharu. She detached minutes after Admiral Suriadiredja's terse acknowledgment and dropped rapidly astern.

That left
Nala
,
Monginsidi
,
Sea Lion
, and of course
Gaddis.

The TNTF staff promulgated Suriadiredja's orders for the second phase of the operation by flashing light as the group transited the Balabac Strait. The message sliced the island-hemmed diamond of the Sulu Sea into rectangles of various sizes according to the surveillance capabilities of the ships assigned. It read: “Units will maintain constant and alert radar, radio, electronic, and visual watch, concentrating on the waters, islands, and passages bounding their assigned patrol areas. On detection of possible pirate or smuggling activity, inform CTFOP, other TF ships, and Philippine or Malaysian coast guard commands as indicated below.”

Gaddis
was assigned patrol area Zamboanga, a fifty-by-hundred-mile rectangle of shallow sea dropped athwart the main shipping channel through the Sulu Archipelago. Colosimo, who had taken over the vacant billet of operations officer, briefed Dan in his cabin about the most effective way to clamp a blockade on the most active area of pirate activity in the Philippines. “They operate out of Basilan Island,” he told Dan, unfolding a Defense Mapping Agency chart that had what looked to him like suspiciously widely scattered depth markings.

Lenson sat forward over it, studying their carefully drawn area of responsibility, then perused the labyrinthine scatter of islands that bounded it. “How close in do you think we should patrol?”

“I'd be wary about closing any of these islands. The
China Sea Pilot
says not to trust the charts. They're based on old Spanish surveys. The coral heads aren't marked, and you won't get any warning from the fathometer, no preliminary shoaling, before you hit one. Strong tidal currents. Nothing's marked, no buoys or lights. Worst of all, like you know already, loran's spotty this far south. It's satnav, radar, and putting our balls on the table.”

“What else?”

“It's typhoon season. That's probably the most serious threat. If one closes in, Admiral Suriadiredja will probably direct us to maneuver independently. I'd get the hell out of the Sulu, look for sea room west of Palawan.”

Dan agreed that trying to ride out a major storm in the reef-fretted Sulu didn't sound like prudent seamanship. But he wasn't sure committing a ship with failing machinery and an already too small and increasingly disgruntled crew to fight it out on the high seas was a stellar idea, either. “What if I wanted to take shelter? Port Isabela?”

“You don't want to go into Isabela,” the reservist told him. “That's Basilan, where these local bandits are out of. We're talking hundreds of them, and what amounts to a civil war the Philippine government's waging against Muslim separatists and communist insurgents. You'd have to set up machine guns on deck and man them around-the-clock.”

A tap on the door; Juskoviac leaned in. “You wanted to see the prisoners, sir? Chief Mellows is here.”

“Yeah, just a second.” Dan sat looking at the chart for a moment more, then stood. “Thanks, Dom, I'm real glad to have you aboard.… Yeah, XO, let's get to it.”

*   *   *

GADDIS
, like most modern combatants other than carriers, had no permanent brig arrangements. When you absolutely, positively had to keep someone overnight, the auxiliary machinery spaces were usually pressed into service. The fan rooms Chief Mellows had put the suspects in were aft on the main deck level, at Frame 128. One was to port, sandwiched between the ship's store and the post office; the other was across the midships passageway. The ship's store was closed, Dan noticed. No wonder; the Plexiglas shelves were empty except for shaving powder and cologne. Juskoviac excused himself, saying he'd be right back as Mellows unsnapped the padlock and held the expanded-metal door for Dan to step through.

Pistolesi looked up from a folding chair on the bare gray-painted deck. Dan noticed he looked even more on edge than when they'd had their little counseling session on getting along with the Pakistanis, back in Philly. He was naked from the waist up, and the tattoo Dan had noticed before was revealed, but it had been so badly executed and was so obscured by a black snake of curly hair writhing up from his dungaree trou he could not tell what it was.

“Stand the fuck up, Pistolesi,” said Mellows from the corridor. The fireman waited just long enough, then stood, arms dangling in studied contempt.

“How's it going, Fireman Pistolesi?”

“You made a mistake, Captain. I'm not the guy you want for this one.”

Dan tried to discount the Jersey accent and the overtones of
The Godfather
it brought to mind. He leaned against the sheet-steel housing that covered the fan itself. Its muffled roar underlay all their words. “I'd like to believe that, Pistolero. Unfortunately, when we ask ourselves who we got aboard with a bad liberty record and a history of violence, your name pops out of Chief Mellows's computer.”

“Yeah, it's pretty airtight. I slammed some brews on the beach. I don't let slanty-eyed asshole cops push me around. Obviously that means I whacked that cocksucker Vorenkamp and the hooker in Singapore.”

“And most likely several other women, too.” Dan watched the scarred face and concrete eyes as he described the girl in Fayal, what the two detectives said had been done to her. He compared that to the injuries to the corpse that rode beneath them, wrapped in a body bag and chilled to below zero. He wasn't sure what he was looking for; a sparkle of interest, a gleam of regret, a relish for the gory details … but he didn't get any of those out of the man before him.

Pistolesi listened, then shrugged. “Just the guy you want to carve your turkey on Thanksgiving. We got a serious head case aboard, all right. But it ain't me, Skipper.”

“Just saying that doesn't cut it, Pistolesi. I only see two ways you get out of this fan room. First, confess now. We'll move you to a compartment with air-conditioning, treat you good, till we can turn you over to the pros. Second, if it wasn't you, prove it to me, and you walk out of here.”

“Somehow it strikes me as funny there ain't no mast or charges or anything involved in this.”

“No, there aren't,” Dan told him. “I'd guess we're about two thousand miles from the nearest JAG officer. I know I'm going to get reamed at some point for taking you and Machias into preventive custody. Or maybe not; a commanding officer at sea still has some latitude. But if neither of those two things happens—you confess or you can prove it wasn't you—we'll turn everything over to the Naval Investigative Service when we get to Subic. You can explain it to them.”

“Oh, we going to Pubic? I didn't hear that. Hey, I know a bitch in Olongapo, she'll tell you I don't need no knife to make an impression.”

“I don't have orders yet, but I've asked for a brief port visit en route to the Phase Three op area,” Dan told him. “I also asked for an agent to fly in to Brunei, but I never got an answer to that one. So I'm planning for Subic.”

“Well, I'll tell you what
I
hope,” Pistolesi told him, flashing small, widely spaced teeth outlined with yellow tartar. “I hope it's Shi-hime. I really hope it is. 'Cause I know it ain't me. And if it ain't him, the sicko who did the faggot is still strolling around giggling under his breath, looking for another chicken tender to carve on. You know what? I like where I am. Keep that door locked on me, Skipper. Keep her locked tight. I may just be the safest son of a bitch aboard this fucking death ship.”

*   *   *

JOHNILE “Shi-hime” Machias was extremely tall. The electrician's mate's long, close-cropped head carried heavy lips, a pencil-thin mustache, and large opaque protruding eyes over which strangely corrugated lids half-masted. The first thing he said when Dan opened the cage was, “Is you the man with the cigarettes?”

“Get him some cigarettes, Chief,” Dan told Mellows.

“Ship's store's fresh out of 'em, Cap'n.”

This was the first he'd heard of it. He didn't smoke, which had made him something of an exception in the Navy when he'd joined, but he knew how much smokers needed the weed. Another negative morale factor. “Well, find a couple someplace.”

“It don't need to be cigarette tobacco, Chief!” the prisoner called, stepping to the relocked grating and shaking it violently. Dan saw the slim shoulders held astonishing power. “See-gars. Pipe tobacco. Copie. Whatever you got.” He turned back to Lenson. “What you doing down here, Cap'n?”

“I got two guys in custody, Johnile. If I can get a confession out of one of them, I can let the other go.”

Machias smiled slowly, and two gold incisors flashed out. “I better see a lawyer.”

Dan put his hands into his pockets, very slowly. It occurred to him that they were now alone in the locked-down compartment. He didn't hear anyone from the passageway. From what Mellows had just told him, Shi-hime Machias had actually been behind razor wire in the naval station brig when a pressing need for engineering-qualified bodies had bought him a “get out of jail free” ticket. “A lawyer,” he repeated.

“I got a right to an attorney. I don't like being locked up. I got to tell you that. I get to make a phone call, too.”

“We don't have phone communications, Petty Officer Machias, and we don't have Miranda warnings and bail and a lot of other things you might rate shoreside. You and Pistolesi are staying locked down till one of two things happens.” Dan outlined the same choices as he had for the other sailor. The heavy lids did not quiver. Machias seemed half-asleep.

When Dan was finished, there was a short silence. Then Machias said again, “I better see a lawyer.”

“Are you telling me you're guilty?”

In reply he got the communicativeness of a stone wall. Dan regarded him for a moment more, then turned as a chain rattled.

Mellows was back. The chief was letting him out when, with great swiftness, surprising them both, Machias made a break for the door. Dan flung up his arm and knocked him back, nothing more than reflex action, and slipped through and slammed the grate closed with his shoulder against a violent battering till the chief got the padlock snapped shut. Machias snarled through the expanded metal, an edge close to panic in his voice, “You got to let me out. Shackle me, whatever; just get me out of here. I can't take being locked up, man.”

“Give him his tobacco,” Dan told Mellows. The master-at-arms, holding his body back from the door, poked three White Owls through into the cell. Machias snatched the cigars and turned his back to them. His hands were clapped to his face, and for a moment Dan felt pity. Then he hardened his heart. If Shi-hime was the killer, mercy was a misplaced emotion.

Juskoviac came back down the passageway, rejoining them. “All done, sir?” he said crisply. Dan nodded, thinking that as usual, the exec had managed to be absent when anything actually had to be done.

“It's got to be him,” Mellows said, a few steps down the passageway. “He's been twitchy as a bedbug since we put him in there.” He stopped and leaned against the Supply Department bulletin board, took his hat off, and wiped his streaming face. Dan saw perspiration beaded on his shaven scalp.

Juskoviac: “You OK, Chief?”

“Son of a bitch startled me. He's fast.”

Dan said, “Why do you say it's got to be him?”

“I mean it's got to be. You know what he was in for, when they sent him to us? Attempted rape.”

“And they let him out?”

“The woman dropped it or something. But Shi-hime likes knives. If anybody aboard this ship could cut a guy up like they cut up that kid, it's him.”

“I'm not so sure.” Dan waited for the chief to recover, glancing back down the corridor to where the gratings faced each other. Two choices, and he didn't like either one. The Italian-American was more vocal in his denials. Dan had heard no false notes, seen nothing that would indicate anything more serious than a certain contempt for authority. The black sailor had clammed. But if Dan carried Machias's history, he'd not say a word without an attorney present, either. Not when the penalty for a mistake was a murder charge.

On the other hand, he was no psychology expert. Living as close to other men as you did aboard ship, trying to lead them, you got a certain basic grounding in human nature. But if they were really facing a psychopath, his guesses and his intuitions were probably worth absolutely zip.

“Nothing on the prints, huh? The ones you dusted for down in the dome?”

“No, sir. Whoever done it was real careful. Maybe had gloves on.”

Fucking great, he was thinking when a J-phone squealed on the bulkhead. Mellows snatched it, listened, said, “Yeah, he's here. For you, Skipper,” and handed it over.

“Captain.”

“Sir, this is Chief Compline. We finally worked that MARS hookup we were talking about; you want to come to Radio.”

“MARS hookup … oh. Yeah. Be right up.” He glanced over and saw that Mellows looked a little better. “OK, let's go,” he told them both. “Greg, I want that search I told you about. You're in charge. Zone by zone, locker by locker. Start at the pointy end and finish in the wake.”

He left them staring silently at each other.

*   *   *

IN Radio Central, he pulled out a chair in front of a mike as Compline explained what he'd set up. The Military Affiliate Radio System, or MARS, was a military/civilian arrangement where amateur radio operators provided auxiliary comms shoreside during emergencies or equipment failures. Originally a backup for official radio links, it was mostly used these days for personal messages, but the backup function was still operational. Just now they were in luck. The sunspot cycle was right for long-range communications. Compline had a ham from Maryland on single side band on the high end of 13 megahertz and had explained
Gaddis
's situation. The stateside operator was willing to patch him through to any East Coast phone number, but he had to bear in mind that it was two o'clock in the morning.