The Gulf (69 page)

“You sure about that, sir?”

Suddenly he was so angry he could barely choke out words. He wanted to murder whatever had created a world so cruel and stupid. “No fucking back talk, Phelan! You want them to eat live men or dead ones?”

“Aye, sir.”

The corpses slid into the sea with a sullen splash. Then fell behind as the group, pursed tight around the rafts, began swimming again. Dan tore his eyes from the humped backs, facedown in the water. He knew them both.

To his surprise, the sharks left, staying with the bodies. He was glad to lose sight of them before the feeding began. The island hung on the horizon. The sun hung in the sky as if it was nailed there.

He looked at his watch. Thirty minutes. He squinted around, sealing and then ripping his eyelids apart, and got them all headed south again.

*   *   *

He was crawling blindly when excited voices woke him. He did not see immediately the transparent bladder floating toward him. It was almost on him before he understood, and jerked away. His first thought, as always, was of a plastic sandwich bag scudding over the waves. They spent an hour picking their way through the fleet of drifting, deadly men-of-war.

When they were clear, he called another halt. He turned over and floated, his breath a rusty hacksaw in his throat, gradually freeing him from the prison of his body.

Abu Musa was visible every time a swell lifted him. But thank God, they'd made southing. Better than he'd expected; or else the current had taken mercy on them. It was at least six miles away. From this low in the water, he couldn't see the beach or the roadstead, so he couldn't tell what the Pasdaran were doing. There was still smoke rising from the southern end. Behind him the men clustered around the rafts. Once voices rose to a gabble, and he understood dully that Phelan had spilled a cupful of water.

He was debating whether to go on. The brine flamed steadily in his face and hands. He touched his eyes; they were swollen, tender as wounds. There seemed to be pus left on his fingers, but he couldn't see them well enough in the glare to be certain.

Losing so many rafts put them in a bad position. They could survive without food for many days, but not more than two, he judged, without water. Their existence was dependent hour by hour on luck.

He'd never have believed men could drift through nearly a day in the southern Gulf and not see a tanker. Where were they when you needed one? The sharks wouldn't stay away forever.

Then he remembered the contrails. The last time there'd been a big U.S.–Iran mix-up, all traffic had stopped.

Now, that was a depressing thought.

For the first time in his life, he was confronted with the question each man must face one day: whether it was worth the effort to keep on. His whole body either stung from salt or sunburn or was numb from immersion and hours of swimming. His swollen hands were splitting. The heat was deadly, and there was no shade. They were sweating away more water than they were drinking.

He thought briefly of increasing the allowance. But he didn't know whether he should. His swollen tongue, his parched esophagus said yes. The rules said no. They advised going without for the first day. But that couldn't have been written for the Gulf. If Phelan hadn't been doling out water every couple of hours, the men would be delirious.

Was it worth the pain? What did he have to live for? He thought of Blair. But it had been all too short. Good while it lasted, but the memory failed to move him much. To see Nan grow up, that meant more.

It meant … but then he remembered she was all but grown now. She wasn't a baby he had to protect anymore. He only saw her two, three times a year as it was. Her foster father would be happy to occupy whatever foothold in her heart still belonged to him.

No, she'd grow up fine without him. Fine and beautiful and happy.

He didn't have to stay for her.

In the end, all he came up with was the men around him. Dan Lenson didn't matter. There were billions of others as worthy of life as he was. There were thousands of lieutenant commanders in the Navy. He probably wasn't the best for this job. He could think of several who'd be better.

At the moment, though, he seemed to be the only one on the scene. The only one here, and in command.

So, let's think … just keep going south, that still seemed to be the best plan. By the next cycle of tide, if the sharks stayed away, they might be far enough out to risk raising a sail. They'd move a lot faster then.

Around him the men prayed in guttural murmurs, their blistering lips unable to grasp the words.

He must have passed out, or gone to sleep, for a while. When he woke Phelan was leaning over him from the raft. His stubbled face was copper-dark, dripping with sweat. “Your turn, man,” he whispered.

“What?”

The aluminum cup came over the turgid curve and made for his lips. He tilted his head and let it, God, let it come cool and fresh down his tongue and throat. He squeezed his eyes shut, almost crying when he realized that was all.

“You're doing a good job, Hospitalman,” he whispered.

“Thanks, sir.” Phelan stared down; Lenson saw something strange in his eyes. “Sir?”

“What?”

“I haven't used any of it. I gave it all to the wounded. It's all gone now.”

Dan didn't know what he was talking about, but he nodded anyway. “That's good,” he whispered. “Keep it up.”

“What's next, sir?” muttered someone behind him.

“Let's get swimming again,” he said.

*   *   *

They swam till four. Some of the men reported sea snakes. Dan saw two. Vermilion and gold in a lapis sea. A couple of feet long, they were deadlier than cobras, but if you were alert, you could fend them off before they got their teeth into you.

They lost Dorgan. He was drowsing when one bit him on the web of his thumb. The chief storekeeper took several hours to die. But for most of that he was paralyzed and said nothing, just stared blindly up from the raft.

Some of the men were raving now. Dan could no longer force himself to move. His arms were dead. And it seemed that no one else could do better.

He knew now how Shaker had felt, there at the end.

He should have turned them around, brought them ashore, and surrendered.

He didn't pass an order to, but they all stopped, anyway.

He floated there, eyes fixed and staring. After a while, he saw a silver train rolling along the horizon. He knew it wasn't there. But still he could see every detail. Why wasn't it real? How could you tell?

They drifted on the sea. The wind had stopped again and now every breath was like drawing in melted metal or superheated steam. They had no more moisture in their bodies. The island floated shimmering in the western sky, a magic land no one could reach. In silence now, together but each man alone, they waited motionless for death.

*   *   *

Out of the dream, out of the delirium, he peered into a hell of light.

The sun was drowning in a sea of blood. Red sparkled from the sea and stained the clouds. The star that had tortured them since dawn hung just above the horizon, its rays flogging them to the last. And to the north, a black mass cutting the sea in two, the brooding, distant double peak.

The sea was filled with dying and nothing he did could change it. It was immense and never ending. For a while, the waves would toss these bundles of flesh. Then they would die one by one, and slip away, back into the eternal recurring of the tide. And become part of it again. Part of the gulf that sucked into itself all life, and gave forth all life, over and over again unto infinite time.

Here at the end, he did not find he really minded.

His eyes were sinking closed when he saw something move, out in the dying glow.

It was dark at first against the bloody and hurtful light. Later he saw that it was neither black nor red. Its ends rose to absurd points. There was a stick on top of it. There were men on it, bent peacefully over what looked like animal cages.

Dan blinked sleepily at it. Its bow shattered the sea into a million glowing drops of blood. It moved across the face of the dying sun, and its shadow reached out across the darkling sea. Around him no one moved; perhaps no one else saw it.

And he wondered for a time, between sleep and death, whether he was imagining it. It was the kind of thing one might imagine, adrift, facing another night. But the funny thing was he could hear it, too. The hollow faint
pung-pung-pung
of an old-fashioned single-cylinder engine. It heeled gradually as it went by them, sea creaming under the prow, headed southeast, toward Dhubai.

He pulled himself very slowly, as if in a dream, to the raft. A bare foot stuck over, rose-colored by the declining sun, reflected in the still indigo beneath.

Phelan was asleep or unconscious. He didn't move when Dan shook him. Nor could he get words around his swollen tongue. He thrust his arm over the inflatable's side and groped in the bottom.

It took a long time to find it and he cursed in his head, squeezing his eyes shut in weakness and anger and fear. But at last his sea-softened fingers closed on plastic. He thrust an arm through the netting, turned, and raised his hand.

The flare departed with a hollow crack, igniting as it left the barrel. The cherry-red ball of flame arched upward, brighter than the sinking sun, over the foredeck of the dhow, and disappeared.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the figures straightened, calling out in high, excited voices. One whirled, stretched up to tiptoe, pointing. The others turned, too, and looked out toward him with comically open mouths. One wore what looked like a white nightshirt.

Then, to his tired horror, Dan saw that they were arguing. One pointed ahead; others gesticulated. At last, an old man with the beard of a Sistine God appeared from inside the wheelhouse. Shading his eyes, he looked down for what seemed like eternity. Then turned his head toward the helmsman.

The bow dipped, and the boat slowed, then foreshortened.

It was coming toward them.

He felt his men pushing him, hitting him, expressing with weak blows what their swollen tongues could no longer utter. He couldn't respond, either. He was glad they were happy. His eyes were too dry for tears. They felt as if they were bleeding.

It was all he could do, when the rough splintered wood rose above them in the final light, and the sinewy brown arms reached down, to wave, weakly, for the others to go first.

V

THE AFTERIMAGE

 

Manama Airport, Bahrain

BLAIR sat curled in the royal lounge, flipping through the summer issue of
Global Affairs.
The staid blue-bound pages, once so penetrating in their strategic and economic analysis, their subtle explications of the issues beneath the headlines, now seemed abstract, pretentious, even callous.

They hadn't changed. She had. And she wasn't sure, yet, what she was becoming.

She sighed, and set it aside. Glanced at her watch. Stretched, lifting clenched fists, and then unfolded herself.

The hostess came over, offering tea, coffee, Perrier with a twist. She declined.

Standing at the window, she looked out and down.

Below her was the flat expanse of tarmac, inked with the black cryptographs of each arriving flight. And beyond it, the Gulf, blue and smooth today as the ribbon a mother twists around a little girl's braids. Silver aircraft trundled along feeder strips. A 747 bulged into view, Air India bound east for Delhi or Bombay. It gathered speed with ponderous slowness, then lifted its nose and drifted upward, folding its wheels delicately as it dwindled to a receding spark.

She was waiting for Bankey Talmadge's charter. Four of the most powerful men in the country would be with him, coming to review the conduct of the Gulf-wide battle that had followed the strike at Abu Musa. Three-quarters of the remaining Iranian navy and air force had sortied from their ports and airstrips, attacked, and been wiped from the sea and sky by the missiles, guns, and aircraft of the Middle East Force, the Indian Ocean Battle Group, and the French and British task forces. Two U.S. ships had been damaged, and one Tomcat from
Forrestal
hit; the crew had ejected into the Gulf of Oman and been picked up by helicopter.

She stared out, her mind turning analytical. An exhausted and isolated dictatorship had lost its final gamble to prevail. Now peace had to be made. But not just any peace. She wanted no cease-fire, no temporary armistice, but a fair and durable settlement that would benefit the region and the West alike. It would not be a quick process, nor a simple one. The military had made it possible. Now diplomacy had to make it real.

And then, without warning, she was thinking of herself.

She was still standing there when she saw a drab-green military transport taxiing in. She leaned into the glass. Below her men in whites and khakis leaned or squatted in the building's shade. Three of them stood apart. One was tall, brown-haired, very thin.

She turned suddenly. The attendant jumped to her feet, looking startled. She said, “I'll be right back, please watch my things,” and her heels clicked briskly on marble.

*   *   *

Dan was standing a few feet from the chiefs and officers, sweating in the baking heat of buildings and asphalt, when the C-130 swung into view. McQueen was briefing him on the wounded; he'd just come back from the hospital. “They think they'll all pull through,” the quartermaster concluded. “Rest, that's all they need now. The docs said they'll be ready to follow us in a few more days.”

“Good,” he said. He had to feign interest. Since they'd been picked up, he'd felt an immense apathy. He didn't understand why. Maybe it was just fatigue.

The chief left. Jack Byrne, beside Dan, tilted his head back, peering at him. His eyes were invisible behind the sunglasses. “Well, friend,” he said. “I'd say you did all right. In spite of your unlucky choice of commanding officers.”