China Sea (24 page)

“Can't tell you who phoned that one in, sir. Could have been anybody. I just hope they don't start doing the firebug act for real.”

“All right … another thing: Till we either find us a suspect or I get satisfied somehow I'm wrong, I'm wondering if I should grant any more liberty.”

The thick eyebrows cranked upward. “That wouldn't go down real well, sir. Nosir, that wouldn't make the mess decks happy at all.”

“I understand that, and I sympathize, but if we have someone like that aboard, at least here he's on safe. No prostitutes or women aboard, whatever triggers him off—you see what I'm saying.”

“Right, sir, but you got to understand something, too: This ain't your usual ship's company no more. You got some bad actors cooped up down there. Only thing keeping them off each other's throats is the idea they're gonna cut loose in Subic or Yokosuka.”

“Well, I'll think about that one. Just keep the lid on as tight and as long as you can,” Dan told him, then reached out, giving way to the impulse, and slapping Mellows on the shoulder. “I appreciate your help and advice, Chief. Makes a tough job easier.”

“That's what I'm here for, sir, but thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Dan glanced at the list again as he got up. If he was right, one of the names on it was that of a murderer. Someone in the grip of a compulsion so sick and savage that it had driven him to kill at least three times as USS
Gaddis
plodded halfway around the world and changed her flag twice.

He hoped like hell he was wrong.

15

OFF BORNEO

THREE days later, morning came brighter than it had for a week. A watery, pale sun penetrated the overcast to shine through the bridge windows, upholstering the green tile deck with yellow pads of light. Dan woke facing into the light, feet propped on an L-beam. He rolled his head in the CO's chair to find Usmani holding coffee and toast. How long had the Pakistani been standing there?

As he spread jelly, he reoriented himself. Engelhart had the deck and the conn, the ancient mariner saturnine on the far side of the bridge.
Gaddis
was in Form One, line ahead, steaming at 045 degrees true at twenty knots. Three surface contacts were on the board, none threatening. No land was visible, but over the curved lens of silver sea to the east lay the coast of North Borneo.

He stretched, reflecting on how little they had to show so far in the operation.

The biggest excitement in the last two days had been
Hang Tuah
's report shortly after midnight one morning of two unidentified small contacts tracking east out of the Banka Strait. The Banka, Gelasa, and Karimata Straits were choke points between Sumatra and Borneo. Pirate attacks had been reported there. The Malaysian frigate reported a radar track moving toward the shipping lane east of Belitung Island, at speeds varying between eighteen and twenty-five knots. Admiral Suriadiredja had quickly reoriented the formation, which was strung out across twenty miles of sea.
Sea Lion
, the fastest unit in the task force, headed west, to cut off the northern exit of the Banka Strait.
Hang Tuah
, the southernmost ship and the one gaining initial contact, was to close slowly, maneuvering to keep the targets out of radar shadows.
Nala
and
Gaddis
went to flank speed for the Karimata Strait, leaving the two older ships maintaining the patrol in the eastern half of the Phase One op era.
Nala
's helicopter wasn't cleared for night ops, but Suriadiredja had radioed for Indonesian air surveillance assets.

For four hours the eastbound element held its course, steadily closing on a scatter of islands past which the main Singapore–Surabaya shipping lane, and, not incidentally, the main route to Australia, ran. Dan had set GQ for the bridge and CIC team and told Doolan to be prepared to man up what guns he had ammo for.

For those few hours in the dark
Gaddis
had seemed suddenly to pull herself together. She charged through the night as with a single mind. Men answered with alacrity to orders and busied themselves preparing for action. At one point the radarmen reported they were tracking the suspect go-fasts, range 85,000 yards on the starboard bow. Knowing it was way too far yet to see anything, even if they were showing lights, still Dan had taken his binocs out on the wing. And stood holding them, the utterblack monsoon sky overhead, steel vibrating under his feet, and savored the excitement of the chase. The warm wind smelled of flowers and spices, and ghostgreen phosphorescence flickered as the bow wave crashed endlessly out from the stem. Standing there, he remembered that these were Conrad's seas, bordered by Conrad's lands: Malaya and Sumatra, Java and Borneo. Almayer and Lord Jim and blind old Captain Whalley had threaded these islands and sailed the sea where secrets were shared and old iron held longer than anyone had a right to expect and men crossed the shadow-lines within themselves.

But just before dawn the two contacts had suddenly reversed course south of Belitung Island, then shortly afterward turned north and merged with land return.
Sea Lion
had reported in from the south end of the channel not long after, but after several hours of searching, Suriadiredja had recalled the force. Colosimo guessed their quarry had detected the radar signals from the converging hunters and ducked into a handy inlet. That had been the only significant event in three days' patrolling, and shortly afterward the flagship had re-formed them into the now-familiar column and began leading the way northeast, toward a refueling stop in Brunei before proceeding to the Sulu Sea for Phase Two.

Now he blinked as the growing light gave him back an eternity of water, high clouds bandaging the sky like old gauze, the thin tapioca-colored glint of sun. Since then they'd sighted only the plodding highway traffic of merchant shipping, churning down the straight-line routes that laced this shallow sea: containerships, tankers, bulk carriers, barge and tug combinations, even the occasional jack-up drill rig, dragged reluctantly behind straining deep-sea tugs. No fishermen, though the water was plankton-rich. Colosimo said they abandoned the area during the monsoon, snuggling the western coasts of Sumatra, Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula. Dan wondered if that was where the TNTF ought to be, then dismissed it. That was the admiral's problem.

He swung down at last and went below. A stop in CIC, to check the electronic warfare station, then aft and down through the awakening ship, past the clatter and food smells of the mess decks, aft and down again till he stepped off the ladder into the steam-heated stuffiness of the engine spaces. Armey and Sansone were in the air-conditioned booth of Main Control. Or
usually
air-conditioned. When he clamped the door shut behind him this time, it was quieter but just as hot as in the engine room.

“What the hell, Jim? Don't you guys believe in AC?”

“Sure—when it works.”

Armey explained he was having to gradually shut down the ship's air-conditioning plant, as compressors and pumps failed without parts or bearings to repair them. “We're at about seventy-five percent of capacity now,” the chief engineer said. “The A gang's been working hard getting them back up, but … when are we going to get some logistic support? Any idea? It'd help me plan how to deploy my spares.”

“I hope soon,” Dan said. “I left a complete logreq in Singapore, but I never got a response. I'm hoping for parts and ammo in the Philippines. Fuel, we should be OK for a while after this top-off in Brunei.”

“But can we can pay for it? Dave told me there was something fucked on the supply end, when we fueled in Singapore.”

“This one's courtesy of the Brunei government. They don't have much of a navy, but they're floating on oil. So that's their contribution, a complete fuel load for the whole task force. It's a big contribution, too—crude's gone to forty dollars a barrel since Saddam took over Kuwait.”

Sansone had been standing silent as the two officers talked; as Dan paused, he nodded to Armey and left.

“Well, I hope they come through as advertised,” said Armey, and worry engraved his face as, Dan had noticed, it did more and more these days. “We're down to thirty percent. Running one boiler and two burners, we're going to just about make it there.”

Dan told him he was doing a good job, to keep on stretching it, and Armey said Sansone was doing exactly that. “Matter of fact, sir, I wanted to ask you about fleeting him back up. We're short chiefs and he's doing the damn job; he might as well pin his anchors back on.”

“No objection here, Jim. We'll do it tomorrow, muster on the fantail and frock him. Probably take pay a while to catch up, though.”

“None of us are getting paid, Skipper. Whatever the foul-up is, it's major and it's shipwide.”

Dan said unhappily that he and Zabounian had done all they could; everybody would just have to suck it up until the logjam got unjammed.

He left the engine room disturbed and anxious. If they didn't get parts soon, the breakdowns would cascade, as overworked equipment failed and dropped more load on what remained. So far Armey and Sansone had kept
Gaddis
steaming, but sooner or later they'd lose mobility. He didn't relish having to ask for a tow, but the question that stumped him was where they would be towed and how they would pay for repairs when they got there.

He let himself out on the helo deck at Frame 118. The air was hazy, but across an expanse of ruffled sea he made out a pallid ghost slipping from a cloud-shadow astern.
Monginsidi
and, far behind her, lagging as usual,
Malvar.
The rest of the horizon was empty. He took a turn around the flight deck, trying to shake the tension that seemed to increase every day.

The 1MC, sudden and loud: “Captain to the bridge. Captain to the bridge!”

Thirty seconds later, sucking wind, he slammed the wing door open and yelled, “I'm here! What the hell—”

“Sir, the bo's'n's got a situation down in the sonar dome. Says you better take a Mark Five with you, though.”

*   *   *

HE didn't quite need a gas mask, but he understood what they meant when he stood with Chief Mellows and Boatswain's Mate First Topmark at the bottom of the ladder, all the way at the pointed stem of the ship, that led down
Gaddis
's sonar trunk. They were in a tiny circular space walled by electroacoustic elements and thick black cables. They were actually below the keel, below the ship, submerged, in the bulbous dome deep below the stem that housed the sonar transducers. It was the most remote and obscure space in the ship.

“You got to wonder why he didn't just dump it overboard,” Mellows said, squatting to lift the head. It came up easily; Dan remembered dimly that lack of stiffness meant a body had been dead for some time. The blue-green, puffy flesh of the face seconded that estimate. He swallowed, as a second look told him the sockets beneath the blackened swollen lids were … eyeless. The smell welled up as the chief master-at-arms let the chin drop. A dark fluid drooled from the open lips. Dan's look traveled downward, and then he had to turn and grope blindly for the ladder.

“It hits you, don't it,” said Topmark when Dan came back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “And judging by that rag in his mouth, he wasn't dead when they started cutting.”

“Who is it? Anybody recognize him?”

“This here's Clayton Vorenkamp,” said Topmark, sounding surprised Dan didn't recognize him; and as he heard the name he did: a slightly built young man with a trusting air who had worked on the mess decks.

“Seaman?”

“Seaman apprentice. Hey!” The boatswain bent and felt around under one of the cables.

The paper square snapped into a curl when he held it up.

“What is it?”

“Polaroid film. The backing, or whatever you call it. The part you rip off and throw away when you take a picture.”

“I'll take that,” said Mellows. “Where exactly did you pick it up? Right here? Lay it down carefully till I can get an evidence bag.”

“I don't recall anyone mustered as missing movement in Singapore,” Dan said. The close, musty air in the cramped space, the smell, the dizzying up and down motion here at the very bow, it was all getting to him.

Mellows: “Right, sir. So he got put down here after we got under way.”

“Vorenkamp. OK. What do we have to do, Chief?”

“Well, sir, before we start fucking around with him, we better get some pictures. Put that rag and the film backing and any other evidence in Ziplocs. I'll get out the fingerprint kit and see if we get lucky.”

“Make sure you check the hatch at the top of the ladder,” Dan told him. “Whoever put him down here had to lift that access. And the rungs, climbing down that long trunk. Unless they were wearing gloves, they left prints.”

“What you want to do with the body after that, Captain?” said Topmark hesitantly.

None of them was looking at him, and Dan realized suddenly they were afraid. Of him? Of the perpetrator? Or perhaps they thought
he
was the one responsible for this. A bitter laugh rose in his throat till he looked back at the butchered meat. The seaman's hands had been tied behind him. The smells of blood and shit and grease and rubber and decay were suddenly so dense he could barely force the air in and out of his lungs.

“Do like Marsh says. Let him dust for prints and so forth. Check all the corners; look for the knife. Then get the pictures,” he told them. “We want the pattern of the … injuries.” He swallowed, feeling water spring in his mouth, fighting nausea with logical thought and what little distance he could muster. “Then put everything in a body bag and take it down to the reefers.”

*   *   *

HIS cabin, an hour later, with Mellows, Juskoviac, Doolan, Topmark, and the only member of
Gaddis
's Medical Department left aboard, a sallow, indolent-looking third-class named Neilsen. Dan left them all standing and took the settee. He began harshly, “Neilsen, why aren't you in a complete uniform?”