The Gulf (47 page)

“I know what you been doing,” said the seaman. His yellowish face was sweating, too. The heat, trapped among the rocks, was hellish, and there was no merest breath of wind. “You know that?”

“What have I been doing, Golden?”

“Selling drugs. On the ship.”

Phelan grinned. There was something fascinating in the way Golden's face moved. Could there be a mind behind it? Sometimes when you were high you could see people thinking, like it was that Max Headroom on TV. Golden didn't worry him. He felt like he always did on grass. Everything was the way it was because. Nothing he could do was wrong and nothing bad could happen to him. He was immune. Safe. Not like the slaves and peons around him. He was part of something bigger.

He said casually, “You're way out of line, dude. I use once in a while. Who doesn't? But I don't sell nothing.”

“Don't shit me, Bernard. I seen the pharmaceuticals log. And I counted what we got left in the counter stores. You're giving stuff out like M & M's. Enough to space out half the ship.”

“Everything's covered, Goldie. Those guys are sick and I prescribe for 'em. Just the way it's supposed to be.” He laughed. “It's all
kosher.
”

Golden, he noticed then, still hadn't lit the joint. In fact, he was putting it away, in his shirt pocket. His long hairy legs shifted a bit closer to Phelan's.

“So, hey, what's going down?”

“I'm thinking about turning you in, that's what's going down,” said Golden.

Phelan was tracing a finger through the sand. Back here it wasn't oily, it was white, and he could feel each grain as it slid past his skin.

“Well, Rich, you got to do what you got to do, I guess,” he said at last. To his faint surprise, the sand said
denise.
He tore his eyes off it and tried to find the seaman in the storm of color around him. It was so bright he had to squint or it would blind him. “If you got to turn some poor scum-suckin' shipmate in because he gets high once in a while, I feel sorry for you, though.”

He grinned again and took a deep hit. He could hear the wind sighing past the wings of the gulls. He could hear the faint clicking of the crabs, secreted among the rocks, hoping for their departure, or possibly their deaths. He looked at Golden's sweating face through the smoke. Would crabs eat a body? Somewhere outside, apart from them, the sea hissed like a waiting snake.

“Pensker's right out on the beach, man,” he said. He could feel the smile still on his face. Eating it, like a crab. “You'll probably get third-class out of it. Shit or get off the pot, Rich.”

“You really don't care?”

“Doesn't make a rat's ass to me.”

It'd taken him a while, but he understood now what was going down. But he could see his cool puzzled Golden. So he decided to play the hand out. If the other corpsman went through with his threat, he could always deny it. Ditch the pack in the water. What did one joint prove? All he had to do was say he bummed it from Quint.

If Golden had one joint. If he was alive at all sixty seconds from now. Phelan watched him from beneath half-closed lids. He was too skinny to be strong. You could slip running over these rocks. Get banged up bad. Maybe even get your neck broke. It wouldn't be like murder. It would just be changing Golden into something else.

In the crevices the crabs clicked Morse like a thousand secret signalmen.

Golden made a little circle in the sand with his bare toe. “Well. I don't really want to do that. Not to you.”

Phelan waited. The beer and the cannabis and the heat had turned his eyelids to lead. It was some time before he realized Golden was rubbing his back under the shirt. It felt good and he bent his neck. “I sort of thought we should be friends,” the seaman was saying from far away.

“Yeah, they're good to have.”

“But you haven't been acting friendly, Bernard. You've been real irritable. Throwing that can at me, for example.” His voice was a silky whisper.

“So what.”

“I mean, we could be close. If we were close, we could do things together. I'm not into drugs. But that's not all there is to do.”

Phelan considered, detached, lazy, but his skin thrilled as Golden's fingers slipped down his shirt. It came down real simple. It was either let him do what he wanted or kill him.

A whisper, almost lost in the hiss of the hidden sea. “We can be special to each other. I can do things you'd like. Better than you've ever had from women.”

Phelan lay back, his eyes closed. The fingers moved over him like soft crabs. They rippled over him like the sea. He thought of Denise and the camp fire by the lake. He felt the tide rising, the waves rippling over his legs, his thighs, and reaching at last his rigid and suddenly voracious cock. He opened his eyes for just a moment, to see Golden's yellow face close to his, shining with love.

He decided it might be nice to be friends.

25

U.S.S.
Turner Van Zandt

AT exactly 1000, the anchor let go with a jarring rumble, the running chain exploding a cloud of powdered rust, paint, and sand out of the hawse pipe to drift down onto the calm water of Sitra Bay.

Dan stood on the wing, feeling unneeded. With Bell ill, he'd gotten used to maneuvering, mooring, and anchoring. Judging the wind, tide, current, all the forces that could affect four thousand tons of ship. Then giving the orders that put
Van Zandt
where he wanted her to be.

A whistle echoed over the water. “Moored. Shift colors,” said the 1MC. The jack fluttered upward, unfolding to a faint, hot breath.

But now she was another man's. He'd had nothing to do that morning but navigate, and the bridge team had been in and out of Sitra so often they could have reeled off the bearings in their sleep. Some of them had looked as if they were.

“Fifty fathoms on deck, chain tending two o'clock,” said a phone talker. At the same moment, McQueen, at the chart table, held up two fingers, pointing up.

“Navigator holds us twenty yards north of assigned anchorage,” called Dan.

“Close enough,” said Shaker. “Pass the stoppers, secure engines, secure sea and anchor detail.”

“Get some more white lead on that sumbich, slather her down good,” Chief Kellam cried. Dan glanced down. Seamen in dungarees were evening up the stoppers. The rest of the forecastle detail stood staring landward, ball caps shoved back, fatigue and relief plain in their slouched bodies.

Shaker had pushed his back, too, the scrambled eggs on the bill gleaming in the sun. One black lock, wet from 100 percent humidity, curled over his forehead. In khakis, Dan thought, any director would have typecast him as a hell-for-leather destroyer captain. Big, a little paunchy, but impressive. Three rows of ribbons beneath the Surface Warfare insignia civilians often took for submariner's dolphins. Above that, the dull gold Command at Sea pin. The crow's-feet emphasized the eyes, penetrating and cold beneath shadowing brows. He was talking to Turani, whose launch had been standing off as they passed Sitra Beacon. Now, seeing Dan watching, the captain waved him over. “Hey, XO, Mr. Turani's got an invitation for us.”

The husbanding agent was wearing the kind of shirt waiters wear in Mexican restaurants. Four ball pens were stuck in his pockets, one in each. “Hello, Achmed,” Dan said heartily, extending a hand.

“Good morning, Commander Lenson. Nice to see you back. I'm sorry about your pilots.”

“I am, too, Achmed.”

“You are all very brave, lions of the sea, and we Bahrainis appreciate your assistance in this troubled time. Let us say this is in their honor. I would like the two of you, and your officers, to join me tonight to celebrate your return.”

“Thanks. I'm sure some of our guys will be there, but I'm afraid I've got a lot of work to—”

Shaker said, “Oh, horseshit, XO. Come on, enjoy yourself for once.”

When Dan looked at him, a little taken aback, the captain's face was open and boyish. The angry man of the night before had disappeared.

What I want, you want.
He said to Turani, “Okay, thanks. We'll be there. Just tell us where and when.”

“The Regency. Around nine. I would entertain you at my home, but my wife keeps a strict household. You might find yourselves, ah, inhibited.”

“Good point,” said Shaker. “It's been a long, dry cruise. See you there.”

They stood together on the wing. The glittering bay, beyond it Mina' Salman, and beyond it Manama, looked just the same, smelled just the same.

Dan was looking toward one of the moored ships—a new ro-ro flying Italian colors—when he saw a launch clear the pier. He moved around Shaker, who was leaning on the coaming, and swung the Big Eyes around. Even three miles away he could identify the man who stood in the stern sheets, supporting himself with one hand as the boat lifted into a plane.

“Admiral Hart's coming out to see us.”

“What? When?”

“In about ten minutes. I'm looking right at him.”

“Oh yeah? Hey, do me a favor. Call Crockett, tell him to lay out some iced tea in my cabin.” Tilting his cap forward, Shaker made for the quarterdeck.

*   *   *

The admiral didn't stay long. Shaker left with him in his gig, leaving the whaleboat for the beach party that afternoon. Dan called Wise—he had the duty—and told him several things that needed to be done.

Then he went up to his stateroom. He peeled off his khakis and hung them up. He sat on his settee in his underwear and contemplated the uniform. It hung quietly, stirring a little now and then as the ship moved. The oak leaves glowed a dull gold.

They told you at Annapolis that was what you saluted, what you obeyed. Not the man, the uniform he wore.

He no longer believed everything he'd memorized in the halls of Mother Bancroft. Some of it was oversimplified. Some of it was obsolete. Gradually, you modified it, with experience.

But it wasn't a bad start.

Before he knew it he was asleep.

*   *   *

When the phone buzzed, he was lying not in but across his couch. The lights were all on. “Yeah,” he grunted. “XO here.”

“Dan, this is Al. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

“S'alright. What you got, Wise-off?”

“Got a boat alongside from the Bahraini Navy. They say they've got remains on board.”

He propped himself on one elbow. “They've got what?”

“Remains. The lieutenant in charge says they tried to call on the way in but couldn't raise us on harbor net.”

“I'll be right down.”

He was instantly soaked with sweat as he came out under the open sky. The steel deck and every piece of metal was radiating heat after baking all day in the sun. Two Arab officers in British-style white shorts were waiting on the quarterdeck. He returned their salute, looking past them. Their boat rode docilely at
Van Zandt
's boom, an orange sack in the bow.

The lieutenant said that this was all they'd been able to find of the crew. They'd also found floating fragments of gray fiberglass and one uninflated life jacket. The life jacket was stenciled HSL-52. Dan pondered this and then said to Wise, “We better get Doc up here.”

“I already called him. He'll be up in a minute.”

“Here, sir,” said the corpsman a few seconds later. Fitch was a small, bald, middle-aged man with a submissive expression. Dan told him what they had. He nodded thoughtfully, looked at his hands, then edged his way out along the boom. A moment later he was back aboard, slinging the sack over his shoulder like a department-store Santa. He said in a low voice, “You want I should check it over, sir?”

“Please.”

“And refrigerate it, sir?”

“We'll see. Call me when you figure out what you got. I'll be in the wardroom.”

The Bahrainis left after Dan noted their ship and commanding officer in his wheel book. A message would be called for. Though from the looks of the sack, it might have been better to leave whatever it was out where they'd found it.

Fitch knocked at the door of the wardroom a few minutes later. He edged in and took off his hat. Dan looked up from the message blank. “Yeah,” he said. “What was it?”

“Body parts, sir.”

“Whose?”

“I can't really say, XO.”

“Right. Well. Are they … are they black or white?”

“I can't really tell, sir,” said Fitch again, respectfully. “Maybe an M.D. could, some kind of pathologist. But not me. Do you want to see them, sir?”

“No. Where'd you put them? One of the freezers?”

“Well, no, sir, I didn't think that was what you wanted me to do. I got some ice cubes from the galley and they're iced down in sick bay.”

“I guess that's better than the meat locker. Okay, thanks, Doc, I'll let you know what we decide.”

“We ought to do something pretty quick, sir.”

“I know. I just want to ask the captain about it, get his input, that all right with you?”

“Yes, sir. That's fine, sir.” He nodded, seemed about to say something else, then put on his cap and started to leave.

Dan sighed. “Fitch.”

“Yes sir?” He paused.

“What were you going to say?”

“Well, it was just a thought, sir. That is, what to do with the remains.”

“Shoot.”

“We can't ship them back, sir. That wouldn't be right for the family. I mean, there's not enough there even for a closed casket. Couldn't we hold on to them till we get under way again, and do a burial at sea? I know it's too shallow to do a real one, with a chaplain and all, but—”

“That may be the best thing. Thanks, Doc.”

Fitch left. Dan sat there for a while, playing with a salt shaker, then got up. He got an iced tea and sat down again. After a moment, he pulled the pad toward him again.