The Gulf (18 page)

“That so,” said Phelan. He tried not to smile.

“Anyway, I wanted to give you this.” The square of pasteboard clicked as Fitch snapped it on Formica and stood up. “Give it back to me after you memorize it. We'll stand one in three underway, you, me, and Golden. He's up there now. Can you take the twenty to midnight?”

“Sure,” said Phelan. He dragged his widened gaze from the combination. He looked at his wrist, then remembered: no watch. “What time you got?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“Sure,” he said again. His spoon clattered against the bowl. He wanted to run to sick bay, relieve Golden early and himself, too. But he controlled it. Fitch had sat down again.

“What else you want?”

“Just to talk. You got a minute?”

“What about?” He was unable to keep the quaver out of his voice. Jesus, he thought, there's all kinds of shit in that safe. The card gleamed a foot away. He slid his hand over it casually, afraid Fitch would change his mind. Only when it was buttoned into his shirt pocket did he relax a little.

“Take it easy. Just about you. Get acquainted; we ain't really talked yet. You married? Got any kids?”

“Yeah. One kid. Little boy.”

“How old is he?”

“Three.”

Fitch took out his wallet and showed him pictures of his kids. Phelan's wallet was gone and his picture of Denise and Little Coyote, as they called the kid, gone with it. He wished now he'd kept it, but he hadn't been thinking about pictures at the time.

He told Fitch about the robbery, laying on the detail. By now, he could see it all clearly. The first-class clucked his tongue and offered to loan him ten bucks for cigarettes till his pay caught up with him. Phelan took it.

At last, Fitch stretched and got up again. “Well, just thought we'd get acquainted. You know, we got a billet for a permanent HM3. I was figuring Goldie for it, but … You might think about staying with us, 'stead of transferring back to that cruiser. You get a lot more responsibility on a ship this size.”

“I might put in for that,” said Phelan, making his voice sincere, as he had with the XO. “I'd sure like to make third. What do you think, would you help me out with that?”

“I can order the test if you want. Are you studying?”

“Oh yeah, I'm reading that manual every night.”

“It ain't a hard test to pass, but there's lots pass ain't advanced. Well, we'll see.”

Finally Fitch left. As soon as he was out of sight, Phelan jumped up, leaving the bowl for somebody else to clean up, and went directly to sick bay. Golden was reading a Conan the Barbarian comic book and was glad to get off a few minutes early. Phelan closed and locked the door behind him.

He was squatting down in front of the safe, the card in his hand, when he realized he'd screwed up. He'd told Fitch he was robbed, which was the story he'd used at the legation. But he'd told the exec, Lenson, that he'd saved a little girl. If they got to talking about him, they might compare stories. They might get suspicious.

But they wouldn't. He was getting crazy, that was all. Paranoid, yeah. But they were so fucking stupid, Fitch, the officers. He was safe here. He was reaching for the dial again when something inside his head stopped his hand in mid-movement.

What if he didn't open it; didn't use? Just rode it the rest of the way out. Cold turkeyed it. And really got clean.

Phelan squatted there, undecided and a little angry, scared, that the idea insisted on his considering it.

So he did. Thought about not using. Even though he could.

Then he thought, Hell, I can do that anytime. Relief flooded him at the decision. He could do it tomorrow. All he needed right now was something to calm himself down. Come down easy, that was the trick. In a couple days, he'd be clean and then he wouldn't have to touch any of it again. He'd only use a little. One cap, that was all he needed. They owed it to him. After all he'd been through.

His body twitched with hunger. The dial clicked into the final number, and the gates to paradise came open deep within the guts of a gray ship.

10

U.S.S.
Turner Van Zandt

THE staccato clatter of chipping hammers filled the passageway outside Radio Central, varied with ripping noises, thumps, and yells. Beneath Dan's boondockers, where the de-flooring party had passed, was naked steel, still bearing the circular scars of shipyard grinders.

RM1 Wolfe pulled off a stencil, revealing a gleaming red arrow six inches from the bottom of a door. “Uh, can I ask a question, XO?”

“Sure.”

“Why down here? What's wrong with eye level, where they're supposed to be?”

Dan straightened, looking down the passageway at the stack of torn-up tile. How many thousands of man-hours had been lavished on it, buffed daily for XO's inspection, stripped and waxed every week till it shone like a calm green sea. Now it was flammable trash, ready to go over the side.

“If we have a major fire, this passageway's going to be full of smoke. And you'll be on your belly, crawling for the weather decks. Get the picture?”

“Oh,” said the petty officer. “Who thought of that? That makes
sense.
”

Two hull techs banged their tools down, conferred over a sketch, then began sawing a hole in the skin of the ship. Behind them, electronic technicians were popping lids off cans, laying a coat of deck gray mixed with sand.

Dan decided to get out of the way and let them work. He pulled out his wheel book and drew a line through 01
LEVEL DECK
.

As he headed aft, the whole ship clanged, clattered, and whined.
Van Zandt
's crew was stripping ship. Ridding her of every piece of tile, wood, or plastic, every nonessential that could shatter, break, burn, or explode—as well as modifying quite a few things in ways not strictly in accordance with the
NAVSHIPS Technical Manual.

“Where they're
supposed
to be.” He'd sidestepped the petty officer's real question. Because no one had approved what they were doing. No one had been asked to. Not one message had gone to Washington about it. Not one dollar had been spent on research and development, environmental-impact studies, leading-edge engineering, or comparative testing. Shaker had simply given the orders. And Dan had decided, despite some misgivings, to carry them out.

The midships passageway, eight feet wide and half the frigate's length, was crowded with boxes and garbage bags. A narrow walkway threaded between couches and rolled-up carpets from the wardroom and chief's mess. Against the bulkheads were stacked cruise boxes filled with civvies, dress uniforms, Corfam shoes, and everything made of the deadly polyester Shaker called “walking napalm.” One box was Dan's. There were bundles of surplus charts from the quartermasters' shack. Lengths of wooden shoring. Souvenirs: pseudo-Persian carpets, djellabas, sheik outfits. Bunk curtains and shower curtains. The oiled walnut cabinet that had held the flag and silver of the old
Turner Van Zandt,
lost at Savo Island taking on two Japanese cruisers.

“How's it going, Chief Dorgan?”

The harried-looking storekeeper, neck trickling perspiration, was directing four petty officers bagging armloads of pubs and records. “Getting it done, sor. But I never realizing this fooking tub carry so much paper. What'm I gonna do, I need to look up a regulation?”

“Same as you always do, Chief. Make one up.”

Dan had briefed the senior enlisted after he'd left Shaker's cabin the day before. Not without some doubt. The officers could issue all the orders they liked, but it was the chiefs who either made things happen or let them fall by the wayside. To his surprise, there'd hardly been a grumble, hardly a hint of their usual response to anything out of the ordinary, which was not-very-muted bitching and moaning.

The varnished gratings from the bridge bobbed by him on the shoulders of two signalmen, followed by their cherished collection of foreign flags. The ship's library lay stacked on deck, along with chair covers, plaques from the captain's cabin, and boxes of videotapes, mostly kung fu, mercenary, and porn. Two disbursing clerks were packaging everything frangible: glass covers, shaving mirrors, the sneeze shields from the serving line, and the trick Greek painting from the chiefs' quarters, an ample nude that became an innocent landscape when turned upside down.

The air on the fantail was like a hot, wet sponge. Squeezing a reluctant breath out of it, he looked around.

It, too, was the scene of hectic activity. Between him and the slowly heaving horizon was a small mountain range of cleaning fluid, furniture polish, paint remover, drums of extra oil and grease the gunners and snipes had been packratting away since commissioning day. Brocket and Jimson, the supply officers, were bustling about getting it inventoried and strapped onto pallets. To port came a sudden cough and buzz; Ensign Loamer was testing the portable pumps. A petty officer aimed a nozzle, and a cone of mist split the oppressive sun into a rainbow. Dan let the wind of
Van Zandt
's passage blow it over him, lifting his face gratefully to the cool fog, tasting the sting of brine.

“Hey, Percy.”

“Sir.” Loamer ran toward him, tripping on a hose.

“How are those flash hoods coming?”

“We're still cutting up the fantail awning, sir. Going to start the stitching pretty soon.”

“When's the last time somebody looked at our gas masks?”

“Well, I don't know, sir, I've only been aboard since—”

“I know, I know. Pull them all, all over the ship. Check them for airtightness and replace the filters. Today.”

“Yessir, but we got the pumps to test, and the—”

“I understand that, Percy, and now you got gas masks to do, too. So don't waste time arguing, all right?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Start your repair-team leaders going through the lockers. Make out a requisition for a hundred and fifty more OBA canisters. Write it down, Mr. Loamer! If you need new gaskets, strainers, hoses, order them, too. Make sure we have the right fittings on the eductors. Let me know what you need by sixteen-hundred and I'll get a message off to
San Jose.
”

When the ensign rushed off, Dan stood by the lifeline, looking out over an oily, windless, gently heaving sea toward a far-off line of ocher.

In their tortuous passage through the southern Gulf, doglegging to avoid Iranian waters, oil rigs, and offshore loading points, they'd steamed 350 miles to make the straight-line distance of 200 from Bahrain. Now, re-creating the chart in his mind, Dan guessed he was looking at Dhubai. Guessed; this southern coast was low; sand, desert, or saltwater marsh. It sloped so gradually upward from sea level, the radar showed only ghosts. Here, close to land, dust fogged the air, making the shore look more distant than it was.

His squint caught something off the bow, dark and inchoate, shimmering and weaving in the sun-tortured air. Why, he wondered, was everything in the Gulf so hard to see as it really was … then just for a moment the mirages steadied into cliffs. Abrupt masses of rock, fissured and gullied by erosion or earthquake. The Musandam Peninsula. The United Arab Emirates on this side, Oman on the other. The bluffs reminded him of Nevada, when he'd gone out there to see his daughter.

And between
Van Zandt
and the distant land stood a procession of ships, tankers, freighters, coasters, set out like chess pieces across the oily sea. Most were beam to him, proceeding into or out of Dhubai for repair, refueling, and offload. There must be eighty of them in sight. And this was only the beginning. Traffic would be even heavier in the approaches to the Strait.

The Strait of Hormuz: the busiest maritime channel in the world. Through that thirty-mile-wide gap between the Omani peninsula and the coast of Iran passed 19,000 ships a year, and sixty percent of the world's supply of oil.

He looked aft, where the frigate's bow wave, marching away from the wake, disappeared into the blurry melding of atmosphere and sea. Dropping astern now was a nest of dhows, slowly circling as they laid or hauled their nets. They'd caused him anxious hours in the past two months. Milling around on no fixed course, following the schools below them, occasionally they'd aim themselves across
Van Zandt
's bow as if intent on snaring frigates rather than fish. He'd be sleeping light tonight.

Then, with a stab almost as of pain, he remembered: She wasn't his anymore. Now the OOD would call Shaker if he was confused by lights, or wondered which way to turn.

He couldn't decide whether to feel relieved or regretful.

Tim Jimson came up with a question about pay for the new corpsman. When that was settled, Dan fingered his wheel book. So much more to do … but he lingered still, looking off to port. Toward the Mubarek oil field. Its black derricks poked over the curve of the sea, writhing in the shimmer like black flames. Above several flickered yellow points. The sky was stained with smoke and dust. And farther off, so far he could only just make it out, a huge inky pall streamed endlessly upward: a British-owned separation platform. The target of a Pasdaran attack, it had been burning since before
Van Zandt
arrived in the Gulf.

Beyond it was Abu Musa, Iranian-held, a base for the revolutionary guards—the Pasdaran, fanatical vanguard of Khomeini's fundamentalist revolution.

“Commander Lenson: Bridge.”

Jerked from reverie, he went into the hangar. Shaker answered the bogen. “Dan? Where are you?”

“Fantail, sir. Been making the rounds.”

“How's strip ship progressing?”

Dan gave him a rundown. Halfway through it, Shaker interrupted, “When are the passageways going to be done?”

“I'd say four, five more hours, sir. By the way, Doc Fitch asked me about sick bay. He wanted to keep his tile, said it'd be more sanitary. I said he could.”