The Command (6 page)

A crackle of radio from the pilot informed him the tug was made up ahead of the pivot point on the starboard side, with a power tie-up. Hotchkiss opened with a forceful rudder order lining them up, then dropped the pitch to slow.
Horn
moved along at a good rate, but began shedding speed as she passed the pierhead. “Left five degrees rudder,” Claudia told the helmsman.

She sounded confident, but Dan was getting light in his seat. With a car, you turned the wheels left, the rest of the vehicle followed. With a ship, you put the rudder over and the stern moved. Left rudder, stern moves right, bow swings left, ship goes left—eventually. It was the “eventually” that got you into trouble. His spine was rigid when she said, “Right full rudder.” He sank back gratefully.

Now they were passing the amphib, lined up down the midpoint of the dock. Civilians called piers “docks,” but to a seaman, docks were
the water spaces between the piers.
Horn
was still moving too fast for comfort, but Dan thought he read the exec's intent; a swifter passage to the berth meant less time for the wind to work. Unfortunately, the bow was swinging to starboard now as the rudder took effect.

“Port engine back full. Starboard engine back one-third.”

Good, she was using the engines both to slow the thousands of tons of moving metal and to twist them to port. Dan blotted perspiration furtively from his forehead. Enlisted men looked down from the am-phib's bridge. One pointed at Hotchkiss, who gave him an annoyed glance, then turned her back.

Horn
was slowing. Slowing … He felt the moment loom, then slide into the past when he'd have stopped his engines had this been a steam-powered ship. But gas turbines responded more quickly. There, she was ordering “All stop.” The lee helmsman slid the throttles back, and suddenly seven thousand tons of destroyer was perfectly motionless, perfectly placed, parallel to her berth and fifty yards off. She'd stay there for only a few seconds, though. Then the wind would begin carrying her down on a Dutch frigate so close to starboard Dan could have beaned the guys gawking from her deck with a baseball.

“Rudder amidships. Captain, can we have the push boat now?”

“Captain” meant in this case not him but the pilot, a confusing form of address but traditional. The pilot put his handheld to his mouth as Hotchkiss strolled over to Dan. Close up she wasn't as cool as she'd looked from yards away. Wisps of hair from under her cap clung to flushed skin. She gave him a questioning glance; he cleared his throat and blinked, looked away.

Beside and below them the tug was blasting out diesel smoke. The engine vibrated the air. Something was making him uneasy. Just as he realized what it was, Hotchkiss went on tiptoe to peer over the bulwark.

“We don't seem to be going anywhere,” she said.

The momentary stillness was gone. They were drifting downwind, away from their berth. Dan stood in his chair to look down over the splinter shield. The tug's skipper was staring up through his windshield. A middle-aged, reddened face. Their eyes met, and the other shook his head rapidly.

“Clelia Gracie's
dropped gears,” the pilot said, relaying off the handheld.

“Just fucking great,” Hotchkiss said. He followed her gaze across to the Dutch warship. The strip of water between them was narrowing as
Horn's
drift accelerated. Yet still he waited, forcing himself to stay nailed in the chair.

“I'm going to need help here, sir,” she said, several beats before a male officer would have.

He came out of his chair. “Left hard rudder. Port engine back full. Starboard ahead full.” In the pilothouse the chorus, “Captain has the conn.” Glancing down, the tug's master still shaking his head. A
whoop, whoop
from the Dutchman; his collision alarm, he was shutting his watertight doors.

His only remaining chance to avoid a low-speed but still unpleasant, expensive, and diplomatically embarrassing collision was to get his bow into the right angle the pier made with the quay wall. The maneuver would also push his stern perilously close to the Dutchman. But under the suddenly increased drive of the screws the bow was already pivoting. His glance crossed the pilot's. The man said another tug was on its way, ten minutes. Dan nodded, but they both knew it'd be over by then, one way or another.

As he walked briskly to the port side, the bridge team flattened against consoles. Hotchkiss followed. Good, she was still in the game. Watching and learning from the Old Man. While that Old Man, anxious but trying not to show it, braced his palms on the bulwark and eyed a swiftly widening gap of brown water fingernailed with scalloped wavelets. The wind was stronger than he'd thought. Spruances had high superstructures, a lot of surface for the wind to grab. Maybe he wouldn't be able to pull this one out of his ass.

“Engines stop. Both ahead one-third. Rudder hard right.”

Now the bow was nearly in line-heaving range, though the stern was swinging far out, but in the process
Horn
had gathered forward momentum. The quay was marching up on them. Its cracked concrete face was so near he saw a rat watching from behind a bollard. “Engines stop,” he shouted into the pilothouse, registering the repetition of his command, the ping of the engine order telegraph.

It wasn't enough. He looked down to see the boatswain's mates staring grimly across at the pier, lines sagging in their hands. Too far to throw.

One trick left. “Right hard rudder,” he shouted; then, “Engines ahead full.”

Heads whipped around in the pilothouse. He leaned over the splinter shield, waiting, listening.

And suddenly it gripped him. A gush of cold sweat all over his back. The instantaneous and swiftly increasing fear he might turn and run. Or worse, stand mutely frozen, unable to respond or react.

At the edge of his mind, something began to glow. A thin, pale edge, like a white-hot steel blade seen end on.

He heard the engines start to whine, and cut them off. Hearing his voice high, almost out of control. Hoping it wasn't too late, that he hadn't stood rooted too long and missed his chance.

The stern halted its downwind drift and nudged twenty yards to port. The momentary shot of water through the rudders had kicked the stern to windward, but hadn't increased their forward velocity that much. Maybe they could still brake with the lines, before they slammed the delicate dome below the bow into concrete and mud.

He eased out a shaky breath. Told the phone talker, calmly as he could, “Put over lines two and four.”

Two and four were the spring lines that tended aft, the only ones that could brake the forward momentum he'd built. The line guns popped. Orange ribbons uncoiled in the air. And thank God, the handlers on the pier grabbed the vivid filaments as they drifted down and began hauling them in hand over hand, first the lead line, then the nine-thread, and last the heavy elephant's-trunks of mooring line. The handlers dropped the bights hastily over the bitts, then took to their heels.

He looked down again at the forecastle crew. They were edging back, too, but the chief was shouting at them to stand fast.

“Check two and four,” he said.

Hotchkiss spoke for the first time since turning over the conn. “Not hold them, sir?”

Dan rethought. “Checking” meant one turn on a chock, braking the outrunning line with friction. “Holding” meant making it fast, stopping the ship dead—unless, of course, the line snapped. And it was true they were not slowing fast enough.

The rat stood suddenly on its hind legs, seeing the bow towering above it. Then tore for the shelter of a Dumpster, speed laying it flat along the ground.

“No, we'll check them. If we hit the quay, too bad. If we part a line, we'll kill somebody on the fo'c's'le.” He shouted into the pilothouse, “Rudder hard left. Engines back full.” And to the phone talker, “Put over one and six.”

A chattering groan rose below them. Nylon, biting and slipping over steel as it absorbed energy. White smoke burst off the bitts.
Horn
reeled, tilting. He felt the astern bell taking effect, but too late. The quay wall slid out of sight beneath the bow. He closed his eyes, bracing for the crunch.

When seconds passed without it, he opened them again. Nothing had parted, and they hadn't hit the quay. He breathed out, looking around at those who watched from bridges and forecastles, who'd gathered, like spectators at a suttee, to witness his self-immolation. Said to Hotchkiss, “Okay, you've got the conn back. Remember your engines are still astern. Your rudder's still right, and you've still got the tug alongside.”

The windlasses began going around, slowly warping
Horn
into her berth, while Dan stepped back where no one could see him, lifted his cover, and smoothed a shaking hand over his sweat-soaked scalp.

THE Second Fleet flagship was moored close enough to walk to. His briefcase was waiting at the quarterdeck, along with Lieutenant (jg) McCall, the strike officer. Strike was the rename for what had been missile officer on his previous ships. Kimberley McCall was rail-thin, as tall as Dan, and carried herself in a way that straddled boyish scrawny and model elegant. She was from Savannah and proud of it, single and into tennis, parties, and getting her MBA. Dan told her they'd be visiting Vice Admiral B. F. Niles. Had she ever heard of him?

“Yes, sir. ‘Nick' Niles. First African-American three-star. Commanded
Barney
and
California.
I hear your paths have crossed before.”

“What?”

“You worked with him at Joint Cruise Missile Projects. Back when the test beds were crashing, and nobody knew why till you found out. They told us that story at Tomahawk School.”

Dan remembered it: how he'd frozen his butt off lost in Saskatchewan and only survived by burning the fuel out of the bird. “Sea stories get improved along the way. And Admiral Niles and I haven't had the happiest of relationships.”

“Any idea why he wants to see you, sir?”

“I'd guess it has to do with Women at Sea. But we'll find out when we get there.”

They fell silent, swinging along the waterfront. Gray prows grew, cast their shadows over them, fell behind. The smells of river, fuel oil, steam, exhaust. Passing enlisted muttered, “Good morning, sir, ma'am.” Dan noticed them eyeing McCall. She was humming under her breath.

Mount Whitney
was the East Coast command ship, a swollen gray blimp spiky with antennas and dishes. A staff officer took them down a hushed, carpeted corridor. In the flag captain's office a Jack Mathias
introduced himself and gently detached McCall. She'd not be required, he said. The admiral would see
Horn
alone. Mathias grimaced apologetically, like a proctologist's nurse. Dan's mood of disanticipation sank another notch.

“Lenson,” Niles rumbled. He didn't get up or ask Dan to sit. Just reared back in the padded chair, pale-palmed hands locked behind his bull neck. Dan tried to swallow his nerves by inspecting him back. But Niles's Certified Navy Twill khakis looked as if they'd just come from the tailor. Three silver stars flashed like rhodium-plated shark's teeth at his collar points. He looked more grizzled around the edges but otherwise the same: massive, beefy, and pissed off. Even the jar of Atomic Fireballs on his desk might have been the one Dan had sampled in Crystal City, years before. The flag captain was lingering in the doorway. Niles pointed a finger pistol and blew him away.

Dan opened with, “Good to see you again, sir.”

“Bullcrap. You hate my guts. And notice I'm not saluting your Congressional.”

“I hadn't noticed, sir.”

Niles blinked like a rhino contemplating a charge. “I have no idea how you got it. Or a command. It wouldn't have happened if I was on the board. I have no idea how your wife fixed this dames-at-sea fiasco for you either, but we're going to unfix it just as fast.”

“She had nothing to do with it, sir. I got the CO selection before she was named assistant secretary. And it's not a fiasco. Not yet, anyway.”

Dan remembered too late, contradicting Niles wasn't the way to get on his good side. The pouched eyes burned even redder. “Well, just to make it clear, we aren't going that way.”

“What way, sir?”

“Women do the job on the auxiliaries. But we don't need them aboard combatants.”

“It's good to hear your policy on that, sir. I was hoping to get some guidance as long as I was here.”

“I'm sure you were. It's horseshit, and we're not going to stand still for it.”

“Who is ‘us,' Admiral?”

“The service leadership. He keeps pushing this, he's going to see a backlash he won't believe.”

Dan wondered why a black man would be so set against integrating women. But obviously being black didn't mean you were a liberal, a lesson Nick Niles seemed to live to personify.

Niles was looking out the curtained porthole. No, not a porthole, more like a round picture window. “Lenson, I have a problem with your commanding one of my ships. A big problem. Usually you Academy guys understand the concept of obeying an order. But it didn't take with you. You were out sick that day, or something. To you a command's not a
command,
it's some sort of
suggestion
from above.”

“I work within the system, sir. As long as possible.”

“And when you decide it isn't?”

“I try to take responsibility, and act. I know that can't be officially encouraged. But if any service has a tradition of independent action, it's got to be us.”

“I see. It's not direct disobedience. It's
taking responsibility.”

Dan didn't bother to answer again. He sounded defensive even to himself. The worst of it was, at some level, Niles was right. He
did
regard power as intrinsically suspect, and thanks to the shrink, he thought he knew why. Growing up with an abusive cop for a father didn't give you the warm fuzzies for authority figures.