The Gulf (11 page)

“Hey, there's a car.”

“It's not a taxi, though.”

“I don't care what it is, flag it.”

“Maybe it's cops.”

“Do they got cops here? I ain't seen any yet. I hope it is a cop.”

“Don't say that.” Hayes shivered, remembering the old man's stump. He didn't even want to know the penalty for public drunkenness in Bahrain.

The lights drew closer. The pilots separated, each taking a lane. When the car stopped, Schweinberg, fumbling at his wallet, weaved around to the driver's side.

There were two tiny people in the Honda, a middle-aged couple. There were suitcases in the back seat. They looked pleased at being stopped in the middle of the night. They smiled up as Schweinberg breathed his predicament into their faces. When he was done, the woman said something to her husband. Then they all four just smiled at one another. “Jeez, she's pretty,” said Chunky. “What are they, Japanese? Andrea, forgive me, I'm in love.”

Hayes said doubtfully, “Do you think they have the faintest idea who we are?”

“Do you understand me?” said Schweinberg to her, raising his voice. “American military, need to get back to ship?”

The woman bobbed her head, and after a moment the man did, too.

“See? They understand.”

“Will you give us a ride?”

“There, she's nodding.”

“What a smile.”

“What nice teeth.”

“But how we going to tell them where to go?”

“We can't,” said Schweinberg. He opened the door and motioned her out. Laughing in low, nervous voices, the Japanese looked around the empty street. Then they bowed. Schweinberg bowed back, steadying himself on the hood. This seemed to reassure them, and they got in back with the suitcases.

“You better let me drive.”

“No, I got it.” Schweinberg seized the wheel with an expression of great concentration. He mashed the gas experimentally and the engine tried to chew its way out of the hood. There were whispers in back. Hayes beamed them his best shit-eater. “Don't worry, we're U.S. Navy,” he said. “We really appresh, appre, well, this is sure great of you. Won't take us long, just down to Salman.”

“Hey, Bucky.”

“Yeah?”

“How do we get back to the ship?”

“Christ! Claude, don't you know?”

“Course I do. Lemme think. Lessee … lessee…” He craned upward through the windshield. “Aw right, Big Dipper's on duty! Keep it in the back window and we ought to get there.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Hayes again.

They went east till the water glimmered. Hayes picked up a radio tower he recognized and they steered for that. They were almost on the causeway to Sitra Island before they realized it. At Hayes's shout, Schweinberg jerked the wheel, too suddenly, and they hit the median and went airborne. The car sailed over the dry ground between lanes for what seemed like a long time, then hit with a rattling jolt that snapped their heads into the dash.

“Down and locked!” howled Schweinberg. “You still there, man?”

“Still here, you still there?”

“ATO, get me a fucking fix!”

There was an excited babble from the back seat. They ignored it. “Home plate dead ahead, range one mile,” said Hayes.

They slowed for the gate guard, holding up I.D.s. When they were clear, Schweinberg accelerated again. Warehouses loomed ahead. They plunged between them into a hardstand of palleted cargo, racing down a twenty-foot-wide lane at fifty miles an hour. There was muffled whimpering from the rear now.

Looking out the right window, Hayes saw a head. This seemed odd and he blinked and tried to focus. Yep, a yellow hard hat was moving along with them on the far side of a long stack of oil drums. “Hey,” he said. “Look over there.”

“I can't. I'm driving,” said Schweinberg. His lower lip was between his teeth and he was staring straight ahead.

“There's a guy over there.”

“Is that so? He's workin' late.”

“Uh-huh.” Hayes closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, the head was in the same relative position, but it was larger. This was interesting. When another aircraft did that, it meant you were on a collision course. “Wonder 'f he sees us,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I said, wonder—”

They came to an intersection and the forklift, with the man Hayes had been watching on top of it, came out of the side aisle with the forks three feet off the pavement. Metal screamed as it tore, and Schweinberg shouted, “Shit! That sonofabitch almost hit us!”

Hayes felt wind on his feet. He looked down to see the roadway going by. “Uh, hey, he did. Hey, uh … do you see that water ahead?”

“Huh?”

“God damn it, Schweinberg,
stop!
”

The brakes worked great. There were thuds and cries from the back seat. The pilots unfolded themselves clumsily. Hayes took all the money he had left and leaned back inside. The Japanese were staring fixedly forward, no longer smiling. “Uh, thank you,” he mumbled thickly. “We're sorry about the car. Is it a rental car? I hope so. Send us the bill if it's more than this, aw right? Thank the nice people, Chunk Style.”

“Th' y',” mumbled Schweinberg. He let go of the door tentatively, grabbing handfuls of air to stay erect. Behind him, the door slammed. The Honda's little engine tapped, and torn sheet metal squeaked against the rear tire as it moved off.

They stumbled down the pier. Hayes felt as if the air had been let out of his legs. Schweinberg didn't feel anything, no more than if he were floating toward the ship on a whiskey cloud. At last the brow slanted ahead. Grimly, like mountain climbers assaulting the summit, they hauled themselves toward the quarterdeck.

Hayes glanced around, ready for Lenson to jump out from the shadows, but there was only a sleepy, pissed-off-looking enlisted man. “Hope you
officers
had a good time ashore,” he said.

“We had a
great
time,” roared Schweinberg, groping forward toward the hatchway. But Hayes stood still for a moment, peering into a sudden, yawning blackness. The hangar. In the dimness he could make out the folded tail boom, the looming mass of 421.

The liberty, the snatched hour of freedom, was over. Suddenly he was aware that his shirt was soaked with sweat, that he stank of beer and vomit. He was getting too old for this. He had a family now. A family he ought to be with more, provide for better.…

Not knowing why, he stepped into the waiting maw. It eclipsed the distant twinkle of Manama, swallowed it in a gulf of absolute blackness. Not as if the light had never been at all, but the blacker black of a final end, of what had once been but now no longer was.

He was staring into it still when a jingle came from behind him. The faint metal kiss of pocketed keys. He turned, and made out a figure between him and the stars. “What are you doing in there?” came a sharp voice.

“Just looking at the plane. Who're you?”

“Duty officer. Who are
you?
”

“Lieutenan' Hayes. Hi, Terry.”

The voice came closer. “Virgil? You all right?”

“Had a couple drinks … just going below.”

“You sure you're all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine.”

“Well, okay. Take care of yourself, brother.”

He swallowed. “Will do,” he said thickly. “You, too, brother.”

He felt the light slap of a hand on his own, and made out, in the faint light from outside, the dark, somber eyes of
Van Zandt
's weapons officer.

Schweinberg's holler, deep in the ship: “Bucky! You comin'?”

“Comin', Chunky,” he said. Turning, he staggered forward, after his friend.

II

THE CONVOY

6

U.S.S.
Turner Van Zandt

DAN leaned over the chart table, squinting into the morning sun as it fired a warning shot of heat across the flats of the Khawr al Qualay'ah and through the windows of the bridge. Senior Chief McQueen, the assistant navigator, was correcting their courses out for the tidal current. Around them was the usual morning yawning and chatter, but today it was muted, expectant, like an audience before a premiere.

It was always like that, the first time under way with a new skipper in charge.

Captain Shaker strolled in from the wing, lighting a Camel as the harbor pilot explained the channel out. Lieutenant Terry Pensker, the combat systems officer and at the moment the officer of the deck, was talking on the intercom, finishing up the underway checkoff. Dan shoved away from the chart table, catching the captain's eye.

He wanted to stay visible, ready to take over if the skipper decided on prudence over valor.
Perrys
were single-screw ships, harder to maneuver in close quarters than older destroyer classes. Today their situation would challenge any ship-handler: starboard side to, with a northerly wind setting them on the pier. And a tanker behind them and a waste barge tied up forward left no room for learning on the job.

The Bahraini was saying, “The tug will make up to you forward, Captain, so if you want to—”

“No tug,” said Shaker. He didn't look at Dan. “Thanks. Terry, we ready to shove off?”

Pensker saluted. “Checkoff list complete, Captain, ready to get under way.”

“Very well.” Shaker raised his voice above the mechanical and human murmur. “This is the captain. I have the conn.”

“Aye aye, sir.” A chorus from the bridge team, helmsman, lee helmsman, phone talkers, boatswain, quartermasters, and Dan. Talk and yawning came to an abrupt end.

“Take in lines one, three, four, five, and six. Hard right rudder.”

As talkers and helmsman repeated the orders, Dan followed Shaker's top-heavy bulk out to the wing again. The wind brought him the captain's smell, tobacco and sweat and a hint of shaving cream. Below them, the lines came in, tossed off the bollards by overalled pier crew, then hauled aboard smartly by the deck gang. The phone talker trailed the officers, tugging his cord behind him like a ladies' train, relaying reports as the lines came in. When only number two still restrained them, Shaker looked into the wind for a moment, glanced back along the ship, then snapped, “Engines ahead one-third, indicate three knots.”

Seated at the console that filled the center of the bridge, the helmsman advanced a lever; a needle followed it upward. “Ahead one-third, indicate three knots … engines answer, ahead one-third, sir.”

Dan propped his shoe on the signal-light bracket and watched fascinated as Shaker, cap tilted back, walked the stern out, holding the bow back from the barge with a combination of spring line and jockeying the throttle between ahead and astern. The Bahraini harbor pilot hovered behind him, looking anxious. The strip of oily water slowly widened.

Shaker ordered the last line in as the stern cleared the tanker, then slacked his rudder and increased power aback. The pier began to move forward.

The combination of stern-walk and the wind swung
Van Zandt
neatly onto course for the southern fairway. Shaker ordered an ahead bell, steadied her, then looked around, grinning faintly at the relieved faces around him. “This is the skipper,” he said, raising his voice again. “Lieutenant Pensker has the conn.”

“This is Lieutenant Pensker, I have the deck and the conn.”

I wouldn't have done it that way, Dan thought. I'd have walked us out with the bow thrusters, and done it a lot slower, too. At one point, they'd been only fifty feet from the tanker.

But Shaker hadn't even deployed the thrusters. He'd done it the hard way. And on a ship he'd never maneuvered before. It was an amazing display, and not only of shiphandling.

McQueen muttered at his elbow. The captain was out on the wing again, saying something funny, apparently; the high, relieved laugh of the pilot drifted in. Time to navigate. “Officer of the deck, hold us on track,” said Dan. “Recommend ten knots; next turn, time two-nine.”

“Steady as she goes,” said Pensker. “Engines ahead two-thirds, indicate ten knots.”

“Steady as she goes, aye; course zero-seven-two, checking zero-seven-zero.”

“Ahead two-thirds, engines indicate ten knots, sir.”

“Very well.”

Dan muttered, “You got it, Mac.” His assistant immediately said, “Officer of the deck! Turn bearing on fairway marker ‘ten' will be two-seven-zero; now bears two-nine-zero; time to next turn, two minutes; next course one-zero-seven, pick up the A.S.R.Y. range markers.”

Pensker was staring through his binoculars at the channel ahead. “Very well,” he said again, in a tight voice.

Dan studied the weapons officer from behind. Early as it was, there were stains under his lifted arms. It was good to take conning seriously, and a new CO put everyone on his best behavior, but Pensker seemed nervous. He was a good officer, intelligent, dedicated, but sometimes he tried too hard. Maybe it had something to do with his being the only minority officer in the wardroom.

Beyond him was the blinding dazzle of morning at the latitude of the Sahara. To starboard, coral reefs drew a sapphire line beneath the crème de menthe of the bay. To port, a short chop splintered the new sun above the shallows. The fathometer clucked sleepily. Six feet under their keel. Astern, their screw would be kicking up mud, turning the wake the color of bakers' chocolate. But it would deepen past the next turn. They were headed fair.

McQueen marked the turn bearing and Pensker rapped orders to the helmsman. The steering gear hummed and the jack staff began marching right. Past the choppy line of shoal, past the low metal buildings of the repair yard, past the scorched, fragment-ripped bridge of a tanker holed by an Iraqi missile two months before. The sun shafted through the windows, painting the shadows of the bridge team across the receivers and cables on the aft bulkhead. Pensker ordered fifteen knots. They felt the acceleration almost at once; the gas turbines, marinized jet engines, responded faster than the steam plants on older ships.