The Command (32 page)

Since Richardson was a pilot, he wasn't in Kim's chain of command. But he didn't feel comfortable with the idea of his officers … fucking each other, to use absolutely accurate language. Fornication wasn't an issue in the civilian world anymore, at least in legal terms, but he'd read about an air force general getting fired for it. And
Richardson?
The guy was such a twit. A narcissistic blowhard. Dan remembered how Kim had looked at him on the way to see Niles, how she'd gazed so worshipfully at
him
—

Hotchkiss was looking at him like she could see every picture in his mind. “What, they couldn't just get two rooms?” he said weakly.

“The frontiers of navy policy. Don't ask something if you don't want to know the answer.”

“What's your call?”

“We should disapprove it.”

“Because it would be officially condoning it?”

“Exactly,” said Hotchkiss, compressing her lips in a subtle but extremely effective conveying of primness and contempt.

“I agree,” Dan said. He put an X in the Disapproved box and signed it in the CO's space. “Okay, I'm out of here. I'll check at the hotel desk if we go out to dinner or shopping or whatever.”

“Have a great time with your wife, sir,” Hotchkiss said.

Dan wondered what
that
tone of voice meant. Trying to keep it light, he said, “Any chance Chip's going to make it out here, this cruise?”

She didn't answer, just shrugged. Which was unlike her. But he was thinking about Blair, so he just turned away and returned the petty officer's salute and ducked out from under the awning into brightness so intense he caught his breath. He went down the jetty with Palzkill, blinking, and showed his ID at the gate. The marine waved him into a crowded, heavily built up compound, past a movie theater playing
The Fugitive
and the Desert Dome lounge and a post office. The streets were full of dungarees and desert camo fatigues. At headquarters Palzkill mumbled to have a good day, and Dan went up the stairs.

COBIE hadn't figured on going ashore, even after the briefing from the black Arab woman or whatever she was. The rest of the crew got liberty, but not the engineers. The older guys, the ones who'd been on steam-powered ships, “teakettles” they called them, said it used to be that way in every port. You had to light off a week before you sailed, long before anyone else had to be back from leave. You had to keep the boilers lit in liberty ports, in case you needed to get under way in a hurry. They said she was lucky to be on a gas turbine ship. Fifteen minutes from cold iron to cast off. She didn't really care about how it used to be. She figured it was probably all about the same, and the most annoying things, like the whistles that went on and on till you were ready to scream, were what the navy liked most to keep around.

In the days since the seal failure and explosion M division had gotten the old turbine broken out and ready to move. They'd taken off the module walls, disconnected the hoses and piping, bleed air lines, and electronics leads, and unbolted and taken out the scatter shield. This was a four-piece steel assembly, each part an inch thick and upward of three hundred pounds, that was supposed to keep the turbine blades confined in case of explosive disassembly. Only Helm said they didn't fly out when they came apart, they went backward into the engine. Which seemed to be what they'd done in this case, so
she didn't think they'd be putting the scatter shield back on. Especially since they'd lugged the pieces back aft that night and dropped them over the side. But that had been a bear, getting them unbolted and out of the module. There was zilch room to do this, and as the smallest, she'd done most of the inside work, S'd around the turbine with her boots sticking out.

She hadn't seen Patryce since their screaming argument. Or, yeah, they'd
seen
each other. You couldn't exactly miss someone, so many women in a space as small as the berthing compartment. Only now Co-bie Kasson didn't register on Patryce Wilson's radar. Even when they came face to face in the head, the third class just pushed by, bulling her out of the way.

Or at least she'd
thought
she was off her radar. Till Ina had said, “I hear you and Helm got something going. That right?”

Cobie had said angrily that was an utter lie, where'd she heard that? But too late realized from the glances around her she shouldn't have reacted at all. Realized from Wilson's smirk as she went down the passageway—you weren't supposed to leave the compartment unless you were in full uniform, but Patryce went out in a bathrobe open down to her belly—she'd just been set up. Ina told her Patryce had said worse than that. She was passing all kinds of shit about her. Exactly the things Patryce did herself, she was accusing Cobie of.

It made a sick kind of sense, now she was starting to figure the woman out. It also made her so angry she could hardly talk. All she'd wanted was to do her job and send money home. Learn something she could use. Build up that reenlistment bonus. She didn't need this crap.

So now she didn't go back to the compartment, except to shower. She slept on a mat somebody had put in the IR flat to do sit-ups on. Let Patryce play her games. Fuck half the men in the crew and blame it on her. Pretty soon everybody else would see through her the same way she had.

So she hadn't expected anything different now, had figured they'd have to work all night and all day while everybody else went ashore. So when the chief came by with word the generator was going to be here in a couple of hours, they had to get the old turbine up on deck, it didn't surprise her.

For a ship that was designed to have the engines replaced instead of repaired, she was beginning to think somebody didn't do his job when he drew where to put things on the
Horn.
The generator had to go up the escape scuttle. Five decks, straight up. But before that, they had to
get it out of the module, pivoted around, and headed aft. Then chain-fall it from point to point until it got to the scuttle entrance, then pivot it again until it pointed up.

“Ready to do this?” Helm said when she got down to the lower level. She cracked her knuckles and nodded.

BAHRAIN International was across a causeway on an island of its own. Dan waited at the lounge area reserved for U.S. military, reading back copies of the
Gulf Daily News
and trying not to keep looking at the clock.

Finally her plane glittered in the sunlight, a falling flake of silver, then slowly grew, landing lights like Venus in the evening sky. It flared out above the runway before slowly decelerating to pivot and trundle back toward the terminal.

They didn't kiss. Cold glances from waiting Arabs were no inducement to bill and coo. He just hugged her, wanting so much more but knowing he had to wait; then stood back. Her smile was like the sun on a winter day.

“God, you look tired,” was the first thing she said.

“You look kind of travel-worn yourself.”

She did look beat, as if too much had happened too fast to keep up her usual grooming standards. He touched her hair. “You got it cut.”

“It was time for a change.” She looked around. “Let's get my luggage before it disappears. Where are we staying? The Regency?”

“How did you know?”

“I know how your mind works. And I like it.”

AT the hotel she insisted on a shower first. Then they made love. He didn't think about anything while they were doing it. Just surrendered to his body, and to hers. Responding without necessity of thought, with the simple instinctual desire that had come long before thought.

Afterward they lay in the air-conditioning cool, her thigh thrown over his stomach, telling each other about what had happened to them. Except that he left out the part about the charges. If she didn't know, she couldn't help, and he didn't want her to help. She told him about her ongoing feud with the army three-star for personnel and how she was trying to get the military health-care system restructured. Then asked, as she always did, whether he'd heard from his daughter and his ex.

“A letter from Nan. Nothing from Susan.”

“How's she doing? Nan?”

“Getting ready to start school, at Goucher. Where her mom went.”

“So that'd work out for you, if you got a Washington assignment.”

“Yeah, I'd see her more than I do now.”

“A girl needs her dad.”

“A dad needs his girl. I miss her.”

“Ever think about having another?”

“I always said, that was up to you,” he told her.

“That's not what I asked. You jumped a step there.”

“Just cutting to the chase.”

“It's skipping a step,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“So do you miss having a kid?”

“Sometimes.”

He thought she was heading for something, but instead she let her hand rove over his chest. Rubbing it, tweaking a nipple and watching his response. “Enough talking? Is the commander ready for action again?”

“You're not hungry?”

“I'll just have a little
bite,”
she said.

THEY had dinner atop the hotel, looking over the coastal highway, out into the darkening sapphire Gulf. Northward, he thought. So Iraq would be over that horizon. Dozens, scores of rusty-hulled dhows were putt-putting in. As they neared they fell into line ahead. Then slowed, threaded the entrance to the artificial harbor, and gunned forward and back, stacks jetting blue smoke, fitting themselves into the shelter of the eastern mole. It was exotic, magical in the ending light.

“How long can you stay?” he asked her.

“Three days. Maybe four. How about you?”

“We haven't gotten orders yet. I've got to do a generator swap, fuel, and do some—administrative stuff. Then we'll probably go north, to the interdiction line.”

“We're putting a lot of effort into that. Isn't that what you were doing in the Red Sea?”

“Yeah, we put in a lot of hours. More than I thought we would.”

“Is it working?”

He veered her away from that question. He wanted to forget about the navy, oil,
Horn,
about everything he'd been doing for months. He
wanted to concentrate on having a fine dinner in the company of a beautiful woman who was also his wife.

“How are your women working out, Dan? We're very interested in that, on the committee.”

“They're doing all right.”

“Just ‘all right?'”

“There are problems. I wouldn't say more than with male sailors. But… different.”

“Pregnancies?”

“A few. Not enough to affect readiness. I guess if my XO got knocked up it might, but it hasn't happened yet.” He caught her glance. “I'm joking, okay?”

“Oh, yes … Claudia. Is she working out?”

“Yeah. She's good.”

Blair sipped her wine. Said casually, “Have you thought about what you want to do after this tour?”

“Well, usually it's a shore billet after a command tour. Typically at one of the staffs.”

“The Pentagon?”

“Could be.”

“You don't have any preference?”

“Something to do with operations would be good,” Dan told her. “Maybe joint operations, it seems like that's the way things are going.”

“I want to get a house,” she told him. “I'll probably be in the administration for a while. I don't see anyone taking this president's second term away, but there are figures who won't stay for a second term.”

“So you could get a promotion?”

“We don't call it that, but that's what it'd be. If I do well where I'm at. And so far, I think I am. Oh, there's grumbling at having a woman, and a Democrat, and somebody who hasn't had any military service.”

“I can see the point about lack of service,” Dan said, “but the other shouldn't matter.”

“Unfortunately, for some people they do. but they're just going to have to live with it.” She shook her head. “Anyway, that'd put us both in town. I can start looking. If I find something I can send you pictures.”

Dan felt uneasy, but he wasn't sure why. “Look, honey, don't take this wrong, but I don't want you setting up some special job for me. Understand? Just let the system work. I'll talk to my detailer and see if there's anything in the area.”

She picked at her fish. Then said, “You don't like it when I bring this up. But what are you going to do after you get out of the navy?”

He tried to make a joke out of it. “Just being in takes all my attention, Blair. I don't have time to think about anything else.”

“You told me if you made commander, that'd be it. So now you're a commander.”

“When did I say that?”

“In Philadelphia. When you were getting the
Gaddis
ready to turn over to the Pakistanis.”

He was trying to recover the memory. Then had it: the garden of the art museum, the Schuylkill rushing by below, its cold breath coming up into their faces in the winter dark. “I didn't mean I'd get out when I was a commander. I meant I wouldn't make it to commander.”

“And now you have, and you've got the Medal of Honor, and a graduate degree, and you're commanding a ship. Is this the old Dan Lenson I'm-doomed-before-I-start routine?”

“I don't know. Maybe.” He had to grin, thinking she was probably right. He
did
tend to look on the dark side. On the other hand, that side had turned his way, often as not.

“You need me around to give you these pep talks once in a while. I don't think your career's over yet. If that's what you want.”

“Can we talk about this some other time?”

“Sure. But think about it, okay? … Aren't those boats pretty?”

“Yeah, they're pretty,” he said. Thinking only, as he looked out at their graceful shapes outlined against the declining light, that there sure were a lot of them, crowding in through the entrance to lie shoaled against each other as the nets of silvery gain came swinging ashore.