China Sea (38 page)

He still suspected the bottom line was deniability. If
Gaddis
was caught or sunk, she and Dan Lenson could be disowned. A commissioned, first-line submarine could not.

The singing came again, louder, and he stared aft. Something about it made him listen more closely. Then he frowned.

He walked aft, circled the helo hangar, and came out on the flight deck.

The first thing he smelled was charcoal, then roasting meat. The torched-in-half fifty-five-gallon drums the Supply Department kept for ship's picnics had been set up inside the empty hangar, shielded from the wind and rain and spray. And despite the pitching, the rain, the howl of the wind outside, the party was going full blast.

Everybody had a cigarette in his mouth, even sailors Dan had never seen smoking before. A boom box detonated with rhythmic thuds. The men did not look at him as he walked by. They were eating T-bone steaks off paper plates. One of the supply petty officers stood behind the grill, teeth gleaming, chef's cap perched on the back of his head, spearing and rearranging white-veined chunks of meat with a long, wicked-looking stainless-steel serving fork. Dan said, “Smells good.”

“This one here got your name on it, Cap'n.”

“Where'd these steaks come from, Machowski? I thought we were out of chill stores.”

“These here come off the merchie, Cap'n. Pistolesi and them brought 'em. How you like yours, rare?”

“I'll pass.” Dan told his disquiet, So what? If we didn't eat them, the fish would. They were lawful salvage.

He stood for a moment, watching. The men wore a casual mix of uniforms: dungarees and coveralls, blue jackets or foul-weather jackets, shoes and steel-toed boots. They swayed as the deck rolled beneath them. A thin film of salt water surged across the nonskid at the hangar door, pooled in the scuppers, then vanished over the side. Their uniforms were filthy, unwashed, but that wasn't their fault. Because of the shortage of freshwater, the ship's laundry had been shut down since they left Brunei. Ditto for their dirty, too-long hair. Some were unshaven. He noticed they still wouldn't meet his eyes. They stared at their plates or talked animatedly to each other, avoiding his glance. What the hell was going on? He didn't mind their enjoying themselves. He wished he could cut loose himself. But there was something off about their casual chatter, the way they spooned canned beans rapidly into their faces. As if hiding something.

He wheeled suddenly and grabbed the man who was trying to edge past, making him clutch at his plate. It was Greg Juskoviac. Dan pulled him close and lifted the cup from his hand. The sweet solvent odor told him all he needed to know.

The defrocked exec snapped his mouth closed, looking frightened and then, a moment later, angry.

Dan tossed the liquor out onto the flight deck, put the cup back in Juskoviac's hand, and shoved him away. He looked around, then noticed the one area on deck everyone had drifted away from as he'd entered. Everyone except Machias. The sleepy-looking petty officer was sitting cross-legged on a red-painted rescue-and-assistance gear box next to the barbecue grill. A cigarette dangled from his lips. Dan strode across the slanting deck and motioned him up. Machias glanced up, blinking, then hoisted his long body till he towered. Dan reached behind him and jerked the cover up.

Rank on rank of flower-decorated bottles.

Pistolesi came out of the crowd. “The captain's cabin?” Dan asked him. The fireman scowled, arms folded. Dan braced his boot on the locker and eyed the distance to the deck edge.

“You don't want to do that, my man,” Machias said in a low, somnolent voice.

When he turned his head, Dan saw all the men in the hangar were getting to their feet. The music played on, but the singing had stopped. The smoke from the cooking steaks writhed in eye-stinging clouds just beneath the floodlights.

“Say again, Shi-hime?”

Machias's eyes were nearly closed. He looked down with a faint smile bending the thin mustache. He did not answer.

Pistolesi plucked a fifth out of the box. He spun the cap off and held it out. “Jap whiskey, sir. That's your bottle. The rest of these is ours.”

“Navy ships are dry, Pistol.”

Machias murmured, barely moving his lips, “News flash, Boss Man. You ain't on no fucking Navy ship no more.”

The eyes around him had turned opaque. They were all standing now. Dan looked at Pistolesi. “Don't push this one, sir,” the fireman said in a low voice. “Roll with it. Take a drink.”

“An' how about the split-tail?” said another man, staggering across the deck as it pitched violently. “Little dried up, but not bad-looking. See'f she wants to come out an' have a drink with us—”

Instead of taking the proffered bottle, Dan turned his head and yelled, “Juskoviac!”

The XO flinched. His narrow, balding pate searched around. Then he put his plate down on the deck and trotted over reluctantly.

At the same moment, Machias reached behind his back.

His hand came out holding a hunting-style blade, still pointed downward as it had slicked out of the sheath or maybe just from riding tucked into the small of his back. It seemed to Dan to move very slowly. By then he was moving, too, circling slowly to his right, toward where the steaks smoked on hot metal. The men around them shuffled their boots, falling back to form a cleared space in the center of the hangar.

“You fucked everything up since you come aboard,” Machias said. “You know that? Fucked up with the Pakis. Fucked up with fucking Vorenkamp. Fucked us up all the way out to ass end a noplace.”

“Your point?” Dan said.

“My
point.
Man want to know, do I got a
point.
I got one, all right. You ain't gon' like it when you get it, either.”

The knife turned slowly in the long, dark hand, tip wheeling upward.

Dan flicked the serving fork up, three feet of sturdy U.S. government-issue stainless-steel servingware ending in two icepick-sharp tines aimed right at Machias's windpipe.

For a moment neither of them moved.

“Take his knife, somebody. Before I turn Shi-hime here into shish kebab.”

“Shit, Johnile—”

The electrician had lost his sleepy expression. He stared down with undisguised hatred.

When the knife was in custody Dan tossed the fork back to the gaping barbecue chef, then bent. He hauled four bottles out and handed them to Pistolesi, so that he had five now, with the one he'd offered, and his arms were full. Dan turned to face the men. It took an effort of will to put his back to the motionless Machias, like a matador turning away from an unreliable bull.

“Shi-hime tells me we aren't on a Navy ship anymore,” he yelled into the monsoon wind and the crackle of charcoal. “There's something to that. But we're still on a ship I command.”

Silence.

“What Pistol's got in his arms right now's enough to light everybody up. I don't have any problem with a party. If I still drank, I'd have a shot with you. But this is it for today. We could run into a major confrontation at any time. XO, take the rest of this down to Supply and lock it up. Decide on a fair ration and issue it daily.”

Juskoviac opened his mouth, seemed to think it over, then closed it again. From the men, silence still. Dan eyed Machias once more. The sleepy look was back, the arms crossed, the cigarette dangling. Dan turned from him again and said to the supply petty officer, “OK, I'll take that steak now.”

*   *   *

HE stopped again outside sick bay on the way back to the bridge. Wanting to go in, but not sure he should. Wanting to ask Neilsen for something for his own nerves, goddamn it. His knees were shaking. He couldn't believe the rebelliousness he'd seen in the hangar. He couldn't believe he'd had to face down a man with a knife. The crew was coming apart at the seams. He had no exec, hardly any midgrade petty officer structure to stiffen discipline. In sailing ship days, a captain at sea had a squad of marines with bayonets to keep order when the chips were down. All he had to lean on was Mellows and his masters-at-arms.

And now he had to plan around Bobbie Wedlake's presence. He was glad she was alive, but having her aboard complicated things. Not just because of the killer, though God knew that was dangerous enough. But he had a slew of bad actors aboard now, lads like Machias. If anyone got out of hand, it could be ugly. Some men lost all control when they drank.

You should know, he told himself. For an unsettling moment, the old craving had coaxed him to take a mouthful. It had reminded him of the relief from tension and worry alcohol had always brought. But he knew he couldn't stop with one. If he'd so much as tipped that bottle Pistolesi had offered, he'd end up stinking oblivious, useless to the ship and to himself.

Still, he'd barely been able to walk away.

Rung by rung, he and
Gaddis
were descending the ladder.

He had to decide what they were going to do. He couldn't put it off any longer. A prudent mariner would dodge south, get out of the vicinity of the storm, then come back when it was past. A responsible commander would take
Gaddis
into Subic permission or no, decline whatever game the gods were playing with her. Not stay out here, looking down the barrel of a typhoon, with a ship that was falling apart and a crew three millimeters from mutiny.

He decided to give it one more day.

But when he got back up to the bridge he found Compline standing at the storm chart, pouchy face ashen. Robidoux was crouched forward, etching in a position. “What's up, Roy? What you got, Louis?” Dan said, already feeling the knife edge of dread.

The QM said, “The tracking reports got sent twice.”

“Give me the bad news, guys. It doesn't improve with age.”

The radioman chief said that one of the position reports had been retransmitted without being updated. Hercule had not been hovering stationary over Luzon, as they had thought. “It must have a real strong subtropical high pushing it along. It's been roaring west at twenty-two knots for eight hours, while we thought it was in park.”

Dan bent to the chart as the bow dropped away into a trough, leaving his head floating and his gut dragging along somewhere behind. The sky to the east was turning a dead, woolly dark that made his mouth go dry in sheer physical fear. It was black as a coal face, laced with hot platinum wires of lightning. The red
X
Robidoux had just lifted his grease pencil off showed the typhoon 150 nautical miles west of Cape Bolinao and starting to hook north.

He'd lingered too long, trying to make up his mind. They were pinned against the China coast, trapped, and they were going to have to do exactly what he'd feared most: go through the right-hand dangerous semicircle.

The bow slammed down, foam and green water spurting up through the bullnose, and the shock of salt sea against steel shook the pilothouse with a deep strumming boom like a dropped piano. He raised his eyes to see every member of the bridge team staring at him, some with terror in their eyes. And through his own fear, for he had seen tropical cyclones and knew what they could do, he had to smile reassuringly and pump confidence into his voice. He had to. Nobody else.

He was in command.

21

HE was nodding out in his seat, buckled tight, when in the heaving, plunging darkness someone shook him. “Sir, Dave Zabounian here. The SPS-10's out again.”

Dan grunted an acknowledgment, blinking as his mind reeled from uneasy dream back to the real world, or what passed for it: this lightning-grayed rain-streaked obscurity that surrounded them, the stagger and shock as
Gaddis
blocked and wove and counterpunched the screaming wind and mountainous seas of an oncoming typhoon.

For the last day and night they'd steamed north, then northeast, fighting to keep the wind on the starboard bow when the seas let them. Usually they didn't. In all that time the swells had grown, harried and maddened hour after hour by a roaring blast varied only by battering gusts that had hauled steadily around as the storm hurtled toward them. His apprehension rose as the bottom fell out of the barometer. Hercule was obviously a fast-moving storm. They shouldn't have to fight it for long. But the winds were passing sixty knots now, gusting to eighty, and they would be higher, much higher, as the wall of the eye neared.

Despite the fouled-up transmission, he couldn't help feeling he was at fault. He'd had plenty of time to get clear. He'd stayed north of fifteen degrees and north of the Xishas, despite advice from his officers. He remembered a story he'd read once about a captain too stupid or too stubborn to evade a typhoon when he could and who'd barely survived. But it was too late for second thoughts or beating himself up. He'd made his decision, and now everyone aboard was going to be royally screwed for it.

No, he thought, half-listening in the flickering darkness as the supply officer's voice brought Chick Doolan up-to-date on wind and sea and the engineering plant lineup. It wasn't really the ship he was worried about. He'd seen some horrific storms before. The hurricane in the Santarén Channel, bailing his butt off for two days and nights in a leaky skiff with a Cuban kid and a pregnant woman. Or the weeks-long Arctic hell north of Iceland in winter, the endless hammering before
Reynolds Ryan
had finally turned south. Unless something went very, very wrong,
Gaddis
could take heavy weather. It was her crew that really worried him.

Zabounian interrupted his musings. “Captain, Mr. Doolan has the deck and the conn.”

“Sir, I have the deck and the conn. I'm going to break Chief Mellows here in as JOOD, since Chief Tosito's hard down.”

Dan told them, “Very well,” and added a couple of encouraging words to Zabounian. Dave said, “Yessir, well, it's my first big storm as OOD.”

“You're doing a super job, Dave. You and Roy go below and try to get your heads down. We're going to be in this awhile.”