China Sea (43 page)

“Uh, yeah, I guess start getting into position,” Dan said. His mind raced as he tried to put this together. All the messages he'd sent requesting fuel and ammunition. Was this his answer? But then why hadn't there been an advance message, outlining the rendezvous point? Could it be a trap? He shook off ratiocination. “Get Mr. Doolan up here ASAP. Bo's'n Topmark, too. Set the starlight scope up. If he won't tell us, maybe we can see who the hell it is.”

Over the next half hour, twenties and fifties manned just in case, they made up on the unidentified ship. The signalmen said they couldn't locate the starlight scope, had not seen it since Karachi. Most likely one of the Pakistanis had taken it ashore; that kind of item brought top dollar in the bazaar. Dan turned away with compressed lips and kept trying with his night glasses. But he couldn't really tell what he was looking at. It didn't seem to be an oiler or ammo ship. She was radiating a commercial radar. Sonar reported the steady thump of one screw driven by low-speed diesels. It was smaller than a U.S. replenishment ship, though still larger than
Gaddis
, and there was something off about the bridge and sterncastle arrangement. At one point he was sure he was looking at a three-island superstructure, but then booms or stick masts came into view and he lost his mental picture. She was running darkened except for a wake light, a faint white light high on her stern. It glimmered dimly off the cresting swells.

He didn't like this. It didn't seem like a trap, but it wasn't going to be simple, either. Nighttime underway replenishments, “unreps,” were standard in the USN repertoire. But he'd never practiced one on
Gaddis
, nor had his makeshift deck crew. Fortunately, the wire highline was the simplest method of transfer and required the least complex rigging. It was simply a trolley block rolling on a man-tensioned span wire, with the load hauled, braked, and managed with heavy manila lines. It could be screwed up, but it was about as conceptually transparent at least as any deck evolution ever got.

Over the next few minutes they closed slowly from astern, slightly offset to port. The wake light drew gradually closer. Following NATO practice, the transferring ship should have been considerably better lighted, with contour lights to give him a fix on how close he was getting to the other hull. That was vital; a mistake on the helm or even a rogue sea could slam the two ships together with catastrophic results. Dan thought for a moment of putting a searchlight on the other, see exactly what he was dealing with. Some inchoate reluctance made him decide not to, at least not just then.

Topmark reported by phone from the starboard transfer station that he could see light boxes for fuel transfer forward and ammo aft. Dan put his glasses to his eyes and made them out, too, an inverted T signal forward and a shape like an E aft. He noticed other lights, too, much fainter, a swarm of indistinct red fireflies moving about along the steadily nearing shadow's port side.

“Keep going in, Skipper?” Zabounian, behind him.

“Continue your approach, Dave. Have the chief warrant keep a close eye on the helmsman. Drop your turn count when the bridge passes her stern.”

Gaddis
bored in steadily, the rush of wind and the crash of seas growing louder as they were reflected from the nearing hull of the other ship. The shadow grew to a dimly visible tracery of masts and booms and topping lifts complicating the black sky.

Then they were alongside, racing along together, and the roar of the bows-on wind in the narrowed venturi between the hulls, the surging frenzied leap of trapped seas, the plunging and rolling and the lack of visual clues were like riding a liquid-damped roller coaster through complete darkness. He braced himself on the wing, looking across at the ruddy pinpoints he could see now were men moving about with dimmed flashlights. Zabounian added a couple RPMs back on the screw and
Gaddis
clamped into the notch, and a faint pop came from across the water and the lighted head of a line projectile drew a luminous arch in the sky.

*   *   *

THEY ran side by side for nearly an hour. Armey reported from Main Control that they didn't have the tankage for much more fuel, unless they dumped the diesel they'd topped off with from the
Marker Eagle
, so Dan cut that transfer off after taking aboard 3,600 gallons. The incoming loads touched down back aft. After two loads had come over, Doolan rang the bridge. He told Dan it was ammunition, five-inch and forty-millimeter. The weapons officer had examined it by flashlight and had something interesting to report.

“Don't play with me, Chick. I'm trying to run an unrep up here without lights or comms or even knowing whose dick I'm holding. Spit it out and get off the line.”

“You're getting to be one of those cranky COs, Dan.”

“God damn it—”

“All right, all right. This stuff is USN-issue, but it's old. The five-inch is dated 1970 and 1971. The forty-mil's even older, 1960s. Some of it—get this—it's got RVN markings.”

“Vietnamese? South Vietnamese?”

“Yeah, it looks to me like stuff we shipped the Vietnamese Navy back during the war.”

“Is that going to be any good? That's twenty-plus years old.”

“The propellant and primers should be fine. The fuzes could give us trouble. I don't think safety-wise, but we might have some duds.”

“Well, I'm not doing the gift horse routine. How much are we getting?”

“Don't know. It's still coming over.”

“Sort it by date, if you can. Then strike it below.”

“Aye aye aye.”

“Two ayes are enough, Chick. You sound like you're getting short on sleep.”

“So do you. One more thing. There's something here addressed to ‘CO,
Oliver C. Gaddis
.' Want me to open it?”

Dan took a deep breath and closed his eyes in thanks. “No. Run it up here right away. And for Christ's sake, give it to somebody who's not going to let it blow over the side.”

*   *   *

USMANI brought hot coffee and he gulped it down, not waiting for it to cool, great slugs of it searing his throat. It didn't help much; he was still slipping off into dream even as he stood watching the replenishment.

The contents of the manila envelope did more to keep him awake.

As soon as they broke away and he was satisfied they were clear, the unidentified replenishment ship or freighter moving off still darkened, till she fell off
Gaddis
's radar screen and the edge of the world, he went into the chart room, threw Robidoux out, snapped the accordion door closed, and switched on the white light. Pulled up a stool, and slit the envelope with a pair of dividers.

The paper within was light and flimsy. Fax paper. The typed words were blurred, as if they'd been photocopied before they'd been faxed. There was no salutation or header and, of course, no signature, either.

The memo or message or order—whatever it was—both reproached him for not conducting a more expeditious search and apologized for the belated realization that
Gaddis
had been forced to leave most of her ammo in Karachi. It directed him to proceed to an area that, when he tickled a chart, lay 200 miles east of Hainan Island and 180 north of the Xisha Quindao or Paracels. An open and undistinguished stretch of ocean about 250 miles due south of Hong Kong. He drew a triangle on the chart, then erased it after reading the last lines: “
Keep these instructions secret from officers and crew. Destroy this note. Final targeting information will be provided en route. Inflict maximum possible damage to outlaw forces. Retire at best speed to the south.
”

He erased the tiny triangle so thoroughly that not on the closest inspection could he find a sign of it. He memorized the position, read the message three more times, till he could recite it from memory, then flicked on the shredder.

A dark form awaited him outside the chartroom divider. His flashlight illuminated one of the assistant masters-at-arms. “What is it?” he said.

“Chief Mellows, sir, he wants to talk to you.”

“Why? What for?” But the man didn't answer. Dan hesitated, then sighed. “All right. I'll be right down.”

*   *   *

“CHIEF. You asked to see me?”

Silence, but accompanied with a nod of the smooth, bare scalp, barely visible through the grating. The perforated metal separated them, the one in the half-lighted corridor, the other submerged in the dark. The guard stood back a few feet, weapon casting a gnomonic shadow. Another was perched on a chair at the far end of the passageway.

“I already passed sentence. You had a chance to speak then.”

Mellows said hoarsely, “I couldn't think of anything then.”

Despite himself, an iota of pity crept past the fatigue. Yes, the man before him was a murderer. Torturer. And mutilator. But now he was facing the common fate, and, by the sound of his voice, not having an easy time of it. Dan motioned the guard farther away, then put his face to the grating. “All right. What have you got to say?”

“This stuff about hanging me—that's a joke, right, sir?”

“I thought about this a long time, Chief. About whether I should just keep you locked down, turn you over if and when we get back. But there's no question you're the killer. You're going to be an example, Marsh.

“But if you want to talk about … what you told me before, you killed them because they were prostitutes, that's not it. God damn it,
why?
”

“They came to me. That's why.”

“What are you talking about? They came to you to get gutted like chickens?”

“There is an Angel of Death. There is a Sword of God.”

Lenson felt his balls shrivel in horror. The voice was that of a man he knew or had thought he knew, but now he heard something else speaking to him through it. He dismissed the message he'd just received, everything else, from his mind and focused on the man-shaped darkness hunched rocking to and fro.

His own voice sounded thick and slow. “Did Seaman Vorenkamp come to you that way, Marsh?”

“He came on to me, yeah. Just like the whores did. I wouldn't have done it to someone who didn't deserve it.”

“You had to know something was wrong, Marsh. If you felt like you had to do this, if you couldn't stop yourself, why didn't you turn yourself in? Try to get help?”

In a voice so low Dan could barely hear it over the humming roar of the blowers, Mellows murmured, “Why bother? It's all going to be dark soon anyway.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. It was fun while it lasted, though. Like a game. You really would have turned Pistol and Johnile over to the NIS, wouldn't you?”

Engelhart, up the passageway. “Captain? Where are you?”

“Here, Chief Warrant. What you need?”

“I got some preparations to make, sir. So do you. Dawn's gonna be here, couple hours. Listening to whatever sick shit that son of a bitch in there is ladling out isn't going to change a thing.”

“You're not going to hang me, Ben. This is some kind of trick. You're just trying to scare me.”

Engelhart: “Oh, yeah? You think I'm fucking with your mind? This is the Old Navy again, asshole. You get off cutting on people? Fine. We're gonna swing you off the fucking yardarm, teach the rest of these motherfuckers a lesson.”

“You can't do that. I got rights—”

“Hey, so'd your shipmate Vorenkamp. So'd the girl on Dahakit and all the whores you cut up. I'm out of here, asshole. See you at dawn. Skipper! Let's go! He's not worth wasting rack time on.”

Dan moved away from the grille, his momentary weakness braced by the old warrant's blunt comeback. Out of nowhere came what Dr. Guo had said, in Singapore, something about pirates, about all criminals, being rational but not moral, seeking gains to themselves, but shifting the costs to others. This was what lay at the end of that path. A being willing to destroy others not for its survival, nor even for its advantage, but simply for its transient and passing pleasure. He said, “Ben's right. Society's a bargain. You break the rules, you pay. And from what I'm hearing, you can't give me a better reason for killing them than that you enjoyed it.”

Silence. Then: “You people are such a bunch of fucking hypocrites.”

“Why are we hypocrites, Marsh?”

“Because every man alive would love to do the same thing.”

Dan sat silent as the chief went on, describing the things he'd done. Gradually, he began to sweat.

Mellows was right.

Suddenly, in this heaving cage of steel, he recognized the face of his own darkest fantasies. Desires he'd almost forgotten, which he'd never acknowledged in the light of day.

He felt perspiration roll down his back and dragged his sleeve across his mouth, fighting nausea and guilt. He'd faced evil men before. But he'd never before felt so close to the evil within himself. Another self, which pushed back the gravestone he'd always covered it with and whispered now into his inmost ear,
He's right. You are the same.

Mellows muttered, “You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Hear it by the way you're breathing. Smell it by the way you stink. And you're punishing
me?
”

Dan said through the horror, “I thought about it. When I was fifteen. Sixteen. Then I realized it was sick and wrong and pushed it away. Again and again, until it stopped coming back.

“Maybe we had the same fantasies. Maybe everybody does. But instead of fighting them, you fed them. Went over and over it in your mind. Read about it. Watched the tapes. Till finally it seemed like you had to do it. And then you did. You
did
it, Marsh.”

Mellows leaned close to the mesh now, so close Dan could feel his breath. He pulled back instinctively, as if something infectious and malevolent might pass between them on that warm current. “And you didn't have the balls to,” came the whisper.