The Passage (22 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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Then the baby kicked and she thought quickly to it: I will tell you of this one day, of cane fields and mangroves. But you will not eat the bread of slavery, to fear and obey, to work all your life for distant masters. Your father fought till he could fight no more. I owe him that, that his last wish for you be granted, even if it has to be in a foreign land.
Either this child would be born in freedom or it would never see the light of the sun.
U.S. Naval Base, Charleston
T
HE sun burns through the noon sky in a blaze like a near-death experience. Below it lies a ship. From across the pier, through chain-link fences, a renewed burst of cheering and waving comes thin and already faint from three hundred throats. Kids flourish flags, pretending to one another they can send semaphore. Women wave with their free hands as hip-slung babies suck their thumbs. Carefully made-up girlfriends twist glossy fingernails into metal mesh, searching the ranks that line the rails. A nearly invisible rush of brown-tinted gas shimmers above the stacks. On the bridge, a knot of men lean out, looking down on it all.
On the starboard wing, standing with the captain, the starboard lookout, and two phone talkers, Dan drummed his fingers on the varnished ash bolted on top of the splinter shield.
Where the hell was the tech rep? The quarterdeck had taken a call last night that he was flying in, would be aboard before they got under way. But since then, nothing. Leighty had held up getting under way for nearly an hour now. Now he turned from the crowd, shaking his head, and said to Dan, “I guess he's not coming. We'd better get out in the stream.”
“Aye aye, sir. Fantail: take in the brow. Forecastle, Fantail, Midships: Single up all lines. Engine Room: Stand by to answer all bells.” And a little while later, after sweeping his eyes down the pier one last time, he ordered, “All engines ahead one-third. Ship's whistle, one prolonged blast.”
“Under way. Shift colors.”
The forecastle detail, spotless in summer whites, puts their backs to the last line. A moment later, the eye splice slithers through the chocks, dripping. At the bullnose, a petty officer hauls down the jack, folding it with quick stiff motions like a
Nutcracker
Suite toy soldier. Others detach the jackstaff toggles. As they finish, the deck
division falls into ranks, facing where slowly, slowly the space of water between USS
Barrett
and the land widens. The sun glitters across the murky water. From other quarterdecks, other ships, men watch with professional interest, and something else: a reluctant fascination, affected by beauty almost against their will.
In an ancient festival, the people of Venice tossed a gold ring into the waves. The most beautiful thing they could make, they gave to the sea.
To the sea …
“Navigator recommends come right to course one-seven-five.”
Dan checked to starboard, then up and down the channel. It was clear—no ships, no barges, no pleasure craft. The radio, set to the harbor channel, hissed unmodulated, a voiceless somnolent sibilance. They had a different pilot today, not Papa Jack. Dan had told him he'd try taking it out without direction. The pilot had nodded and went out on the port wing. He was out there now enjoying a cigar; the men inside the pilothouse could smell it, that and the damp rich smell of the river … . God, it was nice being able to see. And slack tide, they didn't have to fight the damn current this time.
From his chair, Leighty murmured, “Boot her in the ass. Get out of here, Mr. Lenson.”
“Aye, sir. Right fifteen degrees rudder, steady course one-seven-five. All engines ahead standard, indicate pitch and rpm for fifteen knots.”
Barrett
accelerated smoothly and stood tall down the channel, rendering honors as she passed the senior officer present aboard USS
Shenandoah.
The buoys slid by like street signs, and after the forward marker of the Mount Pleasant range passed down the side, Dan turned the conn over to Horseheads. A cannon boomed out from Fort Sumter, and they rendered honors again, in case it was meant for them. The Park Service ran Sumter now; maybe they were doing some kind of historical thing.
The long arms of the jetties released them, and
Barrett
nodded slowly, remembering the rhythm of the sea. Then they, too, lay astern, and the sky fell unhindered to meet the dark flat blue. Dan stood on the wing as the pilot climbed down into the pilot boat. He looked up, gave them a casual salute, and Dan tapped one off to him. The boat cast off and curved away, throwing spray, and he told Horseheads, “Put her on base course and speed, what the navigator recommends. Make sure you run the dead-reckoning line out well ahead and check it on the chart.”
Horseheads nodded and went inside. A little while later, Dan watched the bow swing to a southerly heading. He went in then, too, and looked over the charts.
Morris, the chief quartermaster, pointed out their track: a thousand-mile great circle course from Charleston to the Caicos, where
they'd alter course southwest to run through the Windward Passage to Guantánamo, on the south coast of Cuba. “Twelve hundred miles,” said Morris. “Speed of advance twenty knots, take us three days.”
Dan studied the Bahamas, the shallow sounds and islands where Columbus had struck land—San Salvador or Eleuthera or some other island, but somewhere in there the Old World had ground its keel on the sand of the New. He picked up dividers. They'd pass twenty-three miles off Punta Maisi, the eastern tip of Communist Cuba. He looked around the pilothouse, studied the surface plot—two contacts well astern, another with a closest point of approach of 11,000 yards—then went out on the wing again.
He stayed there for half an hour, letting Horseheads get a taste of being in charge. He leaned on the splinter shield and watched the sea go by fifty feet down, the deep summer blue-green of the Atlantic, frothed by
Barrett's
skin friction as she drove through it.
The land had dropped out of sight when the radioman came up with the message that a helicopter was inbound to them, two hundred pounds of cargo and one passenger.
 
 
DR. Henry S. Shrobo looked down from the hurtling aircraft, staring through the plastic window as beneath him land gave way to a wrinkled, blazing sea. He'd used the bathroom three times waiting to take off, but now he needed it again. He squeezed his eyes closed. It wasn't healthy to compress the sphincter, but he didn't seem to have a choice. He was pretty sure there was no bathroom anywhere in the vibrating aluminum cylinder that curved now in a clattering circle out over the glitter. Sunlight flickered over his sweating face. The way the men in flight suits had pushed him into his seat when he started to ask a question, roughly strapped him in when he tried to explain he needed out again just one more time … well, he just didn't think he'd better unbuckle the straps.
It was hard to believe he'd been at work yesterday, secure in his routine, and that now he was hurtling outward to sea off South Carolina. Headed farther than that, to Cuba. The first hint was when he'd been asked to step into the office of the commanding officer, Fleet Combat Direction Systems Support Activity, Dam Neck, Virginia.
“Hank, I'm sorry to have to say this, but it sounds like our prototype ACDADS has developed a glitch. Who've you got available for a little on-scene consulting?”
But as he'd told the captain, all his senior programmers were in Hawaii, at the annual Advanced Combat Direction Systems Fleet Working Group conference. He'd have gone himself, but Hawaii
was one of the most polluted areas of the country, as far as agricultural chemicals and insecticides went.
“You didn't go because they spray the pineapples?” The captain sounded incredulous.
“Those are
organophosphates
, Ted. They don't just stay on the crops; they contaminate the air, the roads, everything. And they don't have a good effect on the body.”
That night, he was in a C-12 headed for Charleston. And then this morning, the helicopter had arrived, and they'd bundled him in—despite his changing his mind—and the well-padded, doublewrapped, nylon tape—strapped box with him.
He sat crouched in the seat, six feet three, thin as a rail, breathing hard and saying his mantra over and over.
Half an hour later, someone clapped his shoulder. He flinched and opened his eyes. The crewman was pointing out the window. He looked out and saw the boat.
It was so little and so far down. It moved steadily through the blue sea. He stared down as they approached. How were they going to get him down there?
“Get up, man.”
The crewman again, smaller than the others—and without much caring, Hank noticed he wasn't a man; she was a woman. She flicked his buckles open and helped him up. He started to collapse back into the seat, but she swung him bodily and jammed him against the wall. Then she was putting a round yellow collar around him and another crewman was clacking a safety harness on beside the door.
Suddenly, he realized what they were going to do. He would have fought, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. He closed his eyes as his bowels let go.
The woman was screaming something from a contorted face. He couldn't make it out over the suddenly world-filling roar as the outer door slid back. He stared out into blue blinding space.
They shoved him through the door like butchers handling a side of beef. His legs kicked helplessly at the air. He swung out, back, helpless in a blast of hot air and sound, dizzy, sick, terrified. Then steel slammed up under his feet. Hands pulled off the collar. His legs gave way and he fell. The hands tightened under his arms. He felt the rough steel surface grind at the knees of his suit as he was dragged across it.
 
 
THEY took him down to a clean, well-lighted place deep in the ship. Two men helped him out of his dirty torn suit. He told them he had clothes in his bag, but they just exchanged looks. “We didn't
see any bag, tall guy. They dumped a box and a briefcase with you, that's all.”
He closed his eyes again. He'd shoved it under his seat as he got into the chopper, then forgotten it; the crew hadn't seen it, and now here he was without clothes or toothbrush or even his vitamin supplements. They were all still aboard the helo—wherever it was now.
After a shower and a change, he climbed the ladder behind one of the sailors. He was surprised how large the ship was. It had looked so small from the sky. There were a lot of people aboard, too. Somehow he'd thought of boats as smaller, with just the computer systems and, of course, a few men to handle the ropes and motors and things.
The “bridge” turned out to be a control center high up in the ship. Several men were standing around, not doing much of anything. “Sir, here he is,” the corpsman said, and he was led over to someone in a chair.
“Welcome aboard
Barrett.
I'm Thomas Leighty, the captain.”
“Hi. Hank Shrobo,” he said. “I don't shake hands, but I'm glad to meet you. Nothing personal. It's just that rhinoviruses propagate that way.”
The captain, a small man in a white uniform, looked down at his own extended hand, then put it back on the arm of his chair. “Did sick bay take care of you?”
“Oh, yes. Just shaken up a little.” He swallowed. “It was a rough flight.”
“Just out of curiosity, why are you wearing scrub greens?” the captain asked him.
“My clothes didn't make it, and my suit's torn. The nurses loaned me these.”
“Nurses? Oh, the corpsmen. George! Come over here. This is the tech rep just came off the helo. This is George Vysotsky, my exec.”
“Did you bring the tapes?” the blond officer asked.
“Yes. Version Three-point-one ACDADS. A new version of the NTDS operating system, with double the track capacity. New comm and sonar modules. And a new Link Eleven tape, too, though your message said yours was okay.”
The blond guy was looking him up and down. His voice sounded hoarse. “You're what? GS-eleven? GS-twelve?”
“I'm not a civil servant. I'm with Vartech Research, Incorporated. We support software for all NTDS-related systems.”
“Are you sure you're all right?” the exec asked him.
“No, I don't feel too well. Actually, I've never been out in a boat before.” Shrobo swallowed, catching their exchange of looks: amused, condescending.
“Normally we call her a ship. Well, anyway, welcome aboard. George, have you got a place to put him?”
“We'll fix something up, sir.”
“Dan, can you step over here? This is Lieutenant Lenson; he's the combat systems officer. Dan, the tech rep from Vartech. We should be in Gitmo three days from now, uh, Hank. Hopefully you'll have everything fixed for us then. Just in case you don't we'll get a message out, have them hunt your bag down and get it to us in Cuba.”
As he followed the exec down ladders and through passageways, all alike, till he no longer had any idea where he was, he wondered if he'd done the right thing. He hadn't said he was not just a technician but also a Ph.D.; not just “with” Vartech but the head systems analyst, too. It would have sounded like he was puffing himself, but it was also something else.
He resented the way they looked at him, amused, pitying, as if knowing how to work with your mind wasn't as manly as working with your hands. That had always enraged him, but he'd never really known how to react to it.

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