The Passage (20 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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“How's our birds look, XO?”
“Number one and number two both normal fly-out … . Wait a minute … .
Oh no
.”
Simultaneously, the petty officer at the fire-control console yelled, “Missile number one, no tip-down! Passing over the target!”
“What the hell happened?”
“Target still incoming, bearing zero-nine-eight, range nine thousand yards.”
“Fire number three, Mr. Lenson?”
“No. Check fire. Check fire—”
“TAO, Bridge: I hold the drone visually. It's low—”
“Stand by for number two intercept, now now now—lost track!”
“Ah,
fuck,
” Dawson groaned.
The intercom from the bridge said, “It's still coming. Hey, right at us. Hey, this thing's way too fucking low.”
The captain reached up. His hand went to the radio circuit to the launch aircraft, still orbiting to the north. “Lima two six, this is Echo November Actual. To the drone controller: Pull up. Increase
altitude immediately or turn away. You are headed
directly for us
with no offset.”
No reply from the plane. Two seconds … three. “Still coming at us,” said the 21MC. “Right at us—”
Leighty cut it off in midsentence. “Left hard rudder, turn into it! Phalanx in AAW auto,
now!
”
“Phalanx in auto,” Shuffert shouted.
The low bass
brruummmp
of 20-mm slugs going out washboarded the bulkheads. Then it cut off.
Dan closed his eyes. CIC was silent, waiting.
The 1MC crackled, keened, then announced: “This is not a drill. Ah … fire. Fire, fire! Class bravo fire on port side. Repair Three provide.”
 
 
FORTUNATELY, the drone was lightly built and had been almost out of fuel when it hit; the repair party, already dressed out and on station at general quarters, had grabbed their gear, run fifty feet, climbed a ladder, and snuffed the flames with water mist before they got well started.
Dan went down as soon as the ship secured from GQ. He picked his way over three-inch hoses as the damage-control party rolled them up and carried them away in flat heavy cartwheels. The smells of kerosene and smoke coated the back of his throat. He swallowed nervously. They reminded him of another ship, another fire … . The light airframe had punched a jagged hole through the shell plating abreast and below the aft five-inch mount. The fire had been contained within the boundaries of the laundry and, near it, the master-at-arms shack. Smoking debris littered the deck. Looking out through the smoking hole, he saw the sea slipping by as
Barrett
dawdled along at steerageway.
He looked up, to see Vysotsky in the doorway. “Anybody hurt, sir?” he asked.
“One of the laundrymen.”
“Not … dead?”
“No, no. Second-degree burns, smoke inhalation.” The executive officer touched a bulkhead, then examined his soot-smeared hand. “Good thing there's no warhead on a drone. What the hell happened?”
“We're not sure yet, sir. Either we had two missiles fail the exact same way or else we've got a bug somewhere.”
“Your troops working it?”
“Yes, sir. We'll have a report for the skipper and the observer as soon as we find out what went wrong. Uh, what did it look like from topside, XO? You were up there, weren't you?”
“Yeah. Hell, I thought everything was going fine. Both rounds looked sweet off the launchers. They were flying the normal up-and-over profile. One of the lookouts yelled that he had the drone. I saw it just for a second, a little red guy way out there a couple inches above the waves.
“Then suddenly, we all realize the missiles aren't tipping down. They're way the fuck up there and still climbing. They go over it, way over it. The drone keeps coming. Tracks in like it's on rails. It starts to nose up the last couple seconds, like the operator's reaching for altitude, but then the Phalanx cuts loose. Just about blasted my ears off—I was out on the wing. The drone's hit. Starts to wobble. The engine starts cutting out.
Blatt, blatt, blatt.
Then it quits and just kind of tumbles down into the side.” He smacked his hands together. “Flash. Boom.” He looked around at the wrecked machines, soaked tile, toppled racks of wet, filthy uniforms. “We're going to have to get this cleaned up, get a patch on the hull … . I'm just glad we had everybody at GQ. Anyway, what now? We've still got a gun event, don't we?”
“I recommended we call it off, sir. There's something wrong, and if we don't know what, it's not safe to shoot.”
“That doesn't leave us looking very good to start refresher training next week,” said the exec. “Is it too late to rethink that decision? We could shoot in local control, couldn't we? There's a casualty mode for NTDS—”
“Yes, sir, we can plot by hand, but not fast enough to track an incoming drone. And we can't launch a missile at all without the fire-control system up.” Dan looked at the dirty oily water on the deck, a stray black sock crumpled like something small and dead. “I'll check again, sir. But the skipper seemed to agree—with calling it off, I mean. Something's out of whack.”
“Well, in that case.” They looked at each other. Then the XO added, “He's very … concerned about the men.”
“Seems that way, sir,” said Dan, suddenly alert. The way the XO was holding his gaze, there was something else, another message or question behind the words. But he didn't know what it was. He cleared his throat. “Is there, uh, anything else, sir?”
“Anything else? No, I guess not.”
“I'd better get back up, find out what went wrong.”
“Yeah, do that,” said Vysotsky. When Dan looked back, the XO was still watching him.
T
HE blast of a whistle. “Moored. Shift colors.”
Dan sagged against the splinter shield, watching as the linehandlers paid out five-inch nylon, doubled it, busy spiders webbing
Barrett
back to land. They'd raced the setting sun up the Cooper, and now security lights buzzed and popped and one by one hammered down green light like a thin sheet of corroded brass over the deserted shipyard.
When he went back inside, Leighty had left the bridge. He handed the binoculars to the quartermaster and stumbled toward the ladder. His feet hurt. His whole body felt sticky. His stateroom, clean uniform, shower … Instead, he went aft through an emptying ship.
The DP center was icy as a walk-in freezer and silent as a medieval library. The whisper of the air conditioning, the click of keys, and the occasional whir of tape drives only deepened the hush. Dawson and Mainhardt and Williams were snapped to pubs and computers. Sanderling was packaging cards for mailing. O'Bierne was sipping coffee at the workbench.
Dawson glanced up. “Hey, Lieutenant.”
“Evening, sir,” said Chief Mainhardt. They didn't look happy at being interrupted, but to hell with that. He gestured Dawson over behind one of the computers.
“Yes, sir,” said Dawson, his voice falling on the last word.
“Okay, Chief, we've had to scrub two days' worth of exercises—which I don't know when we're going to be able to make up. We're scheduled so tight between now and deployment, we don't have time to pull our socks up.”
“I know, sir. We thought the system was operational. But I think we got it squared away.”
“Already?”
“Well, it's not up yet, but I think we figured out why it went down. A bad card. We'll swap it out, see if that does it.”
“Sounds reasonable.” He looked around, met the observer's eyes. “Commander, helping us out?”
“I'm an interested party. If it isn't something wrong with your system, then we've got a problem with our missiles.”
“Well, hopefully we'll have it back up before too long. Chief, where's Mr. Harper?”
“Chief Warrant's down eating chow, sir. He's been working it with us.”
The 1MC said, “Now lay before the mast, all eight o‘clock reports. Eight o'clock reports will be taken by the XO in his stateroom.”
“Let me know how things work once you get the new card in.” He remembered something else, looked around for Sanderling, but he'd left. “Chief, when's our man going to mast?”
“He's not, sir. The XO dismissed it.”
“He dismissed a shoplifting charge?”
“Said it was a misunderstanding.”
“Oh.” He thought about that. Then said, “Well, I'll be aboard tonight. Give me a call in the department office when you get the system back up.”
 
 
AT eight o'clock reports, he told Vysotsky that the techs had the problem with the combat system isolated and should have it fixed soon. The executive officer said in that case, he was going home—it was his son's birthday; call him when he knew for sure. Dan started to ask him about Sanderling, but there were too many other people around.
There were chicken sandwiches in the wardroom. He helped himself to one, ate a piece of chocolate sheet cake, and then went down to the weapons office.
He worked for a couple of hours, taking advantage of the quiet. He kept expecting a call from Dawson, but it got to be nine-thirty, then ten. Finally, he locked up and went back up to the computer room.
Dawson and Mainhardt were still there, only now Chief Alaska, the chief missile-fire-control technician, was with them. They all had that thousand-yard stare. “Well?” he asked them.
“That wa'n't it,” Dawson said.
Mainhardt said, “Mr. Lenson, it might not be a hardware problem.”
He looked from one face to the next. “Software? Well, that's easier to fix, isn't it?”
“You want to come over here, take a look? … There it is. This's what was running this afternoon.”
Dan looked at the computer. There were two ways to see what was going on inside an AN/UYK-7. There was the monitor-control console, a screen where you could read code during maintenance. Or you could read the lights on the front panel. A lighted bulb was a one, a dark bulb was a zero. He slowly spelled out, “Two, three, five, four, six, three, two, zero.”
“Pretty good, sir, didn't know you could read binary. That's cell number five twenty-three on the engagement program.”
“So?”
“Petty Officer Williams,” Dawson called. Williams came out of the back with a looseleaf book.
Dan said, “Short and simple, please.”
“Short and simple, aye, sir. Okay, you know we … got the operational program and the subprogram.”
“The operational program runs the top-level ACDADS system, and hands off to subprograms for a given task.”
“That's right. The op program just … runs and runs till we turn it off, we're in port, or we need the computer for something else. But as we … go from detection to tracking to identification and so forth, it calls other modules up. Computers can only do one thing at a time. They load up, it hands them the data, and they run till it's time to hand back. Now, we didn't have no problem today with detection or identification, did we, Lieutenant?”
“No, everything ran fine right up to the engagement phase.”
“So that's where we started looking. We put in a break point and started checking it out. Now it says here—you see here in the listing what we … ought to have, where it come time to hand off to the final guidance-to-launch module. And that on the box is what we do have.”
Dan looked at the programming in the book, then compared it to the lights. “It doesn't match.”
“That's right, Lieutenant. The hard copy in the listing don't match what's in the machine.”
“How does it translate to missile commands? I mean, are you telling me it's giving bad commands?”
“No, sir,” said Dawson. “It's not giving it
any
commands. There's nothing in there anything like a command, good or bad.”
Dan rubbed his chin. The naked skin still felt strange. “But how did it get changed? The programming's off a tape, right?”
“Yes, sir. Tape came from the Fleet Programming Center. That's the Version Three we told you about, the one Williams worked so hard getting to run for us.”
“So in the shoot today, the system's running fine, then it hits this and goes haywire.”
“Right, sir. So when the fire-control system asks the computer what to do next, it gets this read to it as instructions. And it is just totally confused. It doesn't know whether to shit or go blind, or do like it did today, tell the missile to find the nearest seagull and blast his ass.”
“So it wasn't hardware or operator error; it was a bad tape. Have we got the original?”
“This
is
the original, sir. This is what we loaded up with before we got under way.”
“Can we get a copy from somebody else in the nest?”
“Not ACDADS, sir. We the only ones got this system.”
“So we order a new tape, reboot from that, and we're back in business.”
“I hope it's that simple.”
Dan turned to O'Bierne. The lieutenant commander sloshed his coffee around, took a slug, pointed to the screen. “It might not be just a bad line of code.”
“It sounds to me like that's exactly what we've got, sir.”
“I'd check the rest of your system out before you assume that.”
“Lieutenant Lenson, quarterdeck,” said the 1MC. “Shit,” Dan said. “Excuse me, sir.”
He called on the J-dial phone and got the petty officer of the watch. “Mr. Lenson. What you got?”
“Sir, outside call for you.”
“Who is it?”
“I don't know, sir.”
“Take a message, okay? I'm in the DP center working a major problem.” He hung up and turned back to the conversation, to find that Harper had come in and was talking to O'Bierne.
“They're under tight security. Locked in the vault the minute they come aboard. I'm the custodian, so I can guarantee nobody but me, the comm officer, and the guys right here in this space. That's all that's had their hands on them.”
O'Bierne said, “Still, I'd recommend checking your system out thoroughly before you spin another reel.”
“Attention on deck!”
Everyone stood as Captain Leighty came in. Dan fought down tired anger. When something was royally screwed up, everybody had to get his two cents' worth in.
“Carry on, everyone. Just thought I'd stop by before I went home. Jay, how does it stand?”
“Excuse me,” Dan said. “Captain—”
“Mr. Lenson. Didn't see you at first. Have we got a fix on the problem?”
“I think we've got it located, sir—in the software that tells the missile where the target is. Part of the code in that module is bad.”
“Can we fix it?”
Dawson said, “Sir, once the program's loaded, we can patch it by hand. Put in a break point at the bad line, look at the listing, and use those on/off buttons on the front panel to reset the code in that cell.”
“But that doesn't fix the tape,” said Dan.
“No, sir. We'd have to patch it again every time we rebooted.”
“Can we modify the tape?”
“Not with the gear we have aboard, sir. We'll have to get a reissue.”
“How long will that take?”
Harper said, “Sir, if we put a hot priority on it, they can probably get a new piece of programming to us in a day or two. Stuff that important, they fly out.”
“But Mr. O'Bierne thinks we shouldn't assume that's all that's wrong just yet,” said Dan.
Leighty took off his cap and aligned it on the workbench. “Cal, I'm glad you're here to advise us on this.”
“Sir, I don't really know a hell of a lot about it. I was just saying, if it was up to me, I'd check the rest of the program against the listing. Make sure whatever failure mechanism altered that line didn't alter any others.”
“If we do find more glitches, can we get any help from NMSES on this?”
“Sir, I'd like to, but I've got a red-eye back to the West Coast, I need to ask somebody for a ride to the airport. And strictly speaking, we're only responsible for the part that flies away and blows things up.”
The phone buzzed again. Williams said, “Mr. Lenson, for you.”
It was the petty officer of the watch again. “Sir, I got that number for you, you want to call her back. Says she'll be home.”
“Shoot.” He jotted it down on his hand with the Navy-issue ballpoint, recognizing it halfway through as Beverly's. He hung up and went back to the discussion.
The captain was saying, “If this doesn't fix it, we don't have a lot of time to kick it around. We're getting under way for refresher training, and looking at a six-month deployment two-blocked to that.”
O'Bierne nodded. “Yes, sir, I understand. Only thing I can say is, if you need help, let your squadron N-four know what's going on. If you keep having problems, have the type commander go to the software support activity for you; let them beat on whoever developed the tape. Meanwhile, have your guys shut the system down, let everything you've got running evaporate, then reload it piece by piece with your eyes locked on the screen.”
Leighty nodded abruptly. “Okay. Dan, I'll make that call to squadron. Keep me informed.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
O'Bierne left with the captain. Dan sighed. “Well, Chief Warrant. It's going to be a long night.”
“Not for me, sir. I'm going home.”
Dan glanced at the chiefs. “Let's go out in the passageway.”
The corridor was deserted except for a duty-section seaman listlessly steering a push broom. Dan said, “What is this? We need you here on this one.”
“And I got a family I won't see for the next six weeks.” Harper squinted. “This isn't wartime, Lieutenant. I seen the shit hit the fan in Vietnam, and this don't start to compare.”
“The combat system's down. That's a major problem.”
“Okay, but let's not get twisted into the ground on it. Piece of hard-earned career advice from the King Snake, okay?”

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