The Gulf (19 page)

“I guess that's okay, but I want metal everyplace else.”

“Yessir, it's being done.”

Shaker hung up. Dan looked at his book again, then went into the port hangar.

It was dark in there, and almost cool. The insectile bulk of the helicopter filled it like a butterfly in a tight pupa. In the minimal space left over, three crewmen had rigged a scaffold and were working, bent over hinged-out aluminum like Saturday mechanics under the hoods of their pickups. Dan looked around; a CO
2
extinguisher stood near to hand; only one thing missing.… He called up to their oblivious backs, “Hey! Chief Mattocks up there?”

“Yeah! Who wants him?”

“Me. Where're your pilots?”

The chief emerged for a moment; his face was smeared with blue grease. “Dunno, sir. You check their stateroom?”

“Maybe I will.”

As he turned away, he heard a mutter from one of the other crewmen; it was just loud enough to make out: “Don't knock too loud, you might wake 'em up.”

*   *   *

Late that afternoon, as soon as strip ship was complete, Shaker called a surprise general quarters. Lenson was in the ship's office, proofing a hastily revised conflagration plan. As he sprinted through the mess decks, the crew jumped up from full trays, cursing heartily. The ladders were thronged, but only for a moment; the clamor of feet came loud through the overhead. He reached CIC, to find Shaker calmly examining his watch. “You take TAO,” said the captain. “We'll say I'm dead.”

Dan snatched the headset out of Wise's hand. He glanced swiftly around, barked, “CIC, manned and ready,” and focused his attention on the surface repeater.

The two-foot-diameter horizontal display was a madhouse of ships and low fliers. To the east was the dull green glow of land, freckled with mountain. To the west—they'd left Dhubai behind—was a scatter of fishermen. To the north, in the shipping lanes, were two solid, clearly outlined columns of ships, so many the course-and-speed circuits had been overwhelmed.

He swiveled, his hands still occupied with his life vest. The air picture was not quite as crowded. Its operator had managed to keep up, identifying aircraft through the automated link with the AWACS, the Saudi-owned, U.S. Air Force-manned radar bird that orbited over the Gulf twenty-four hours a day. West of them were two helicopters, probably servicing the oil field they'd just passed. To the south, dozens of aircraft, commercial airliners, were stacked up over Dhubai. In the upper Gulf, the prime worry was Iraqi aircraft, Exocet-armed Mirages and Styx-carrying Badgers. They lay in wait for ships enroute to and from Kh
ā
rk Island, the main Iranian oil terminal. Here the danger lay to the north. Near the coast of Iran, pulsating electronically to stand out from the land clutter, were the symbols for hostile aircraft. Two of them, over Larak Island, not far from the Iranian Navy base at Bandar
Abb
ā
s.

The intercom said, in Pensker's taut voice, “This is a drill. ESM contact, bearing two-six-oh true, snoop scan radar.”

“ESM identify,” shouted Lenson across the compartment.

“ESM identifies: Soviet radar: associated with Styx missile.”

Dan passed it to the bridge and put the weapons console on standby. The next thing he heard was, “I-band homer, bearing two-six-five degrees true.”

“Styx missile, bearing two-six-five true”—he thought for a fraction of a second—“Weps control! Fire chaff, port battery, activate Phalanx automatic mode. Mark 92, search and acquire; assign to Mount 31.” He snapped a switch beside his chair. “Bridge, TAO: come left, steady up two-nine-oh. Gun control, TAO: Your target bears two-two-five relative. Air target, low flier, incoming. Load with mixed infrared and proximity fuze. Commence fire when locked on.”

The captain reappeared and crossed the room to stand beside the ECM operator. A moment later, the sailor cried out, “New contact! Surface radar, frequency twelve megahertz, pulse repetition rate three point two. Corresponds—”

“Classify friendly,” shouted Lenson. “That's a Bahraini.”

“Correction. PRR four point seven.”

“Iranian,
Combattante
-class gunboat. Classify hostile! Weps control, TAO: Load one Harpoon, set search mode two, range unknown, fire on command, next round search mode one. ECM, get me a bearing!”

“H-band homer! Missile incoming, starboard side!”

“XO, you're out of action,” said the captain. Dan stopped in mid-order and handed the headset to Wise. The operations officer took over instantly, ordering more chaff and telling Pensker to shift his rudder. The captain looked displeased, and he altered it hastily to maintain present course.

“You were right the first time, Al. Missile hit forward, frame twenty,” said Shaker.

Wise told the bridge. A moment later the 1MC said, “Missile hit forward, frame twenty, Repair Two provide.”

“Let's go,” said Shaker. Dan ran after him down ladders and passageways till they reached Repair Two. The team was already dressed out and moving, laying hose and comm wire behind them. The captain reached up and with a piece of chalk Dan hadn't seen made an
X
on a pipe. To one of the men, he said, “Fragment hit, main firemain.”

The team instantly divided, most continuing forward as the team leader yanked a valve to isolate the broken main, two dropping axes to break open a pipe-patching kit. Shaker paused at a bogen. A moment later the lights went out and ventilation died.

An eerie silence fell, broken only by the muffled panting of the men. Battle lanterns came on, yellow beams groping through sudden darkness. The air grew hot. Shaker was chalking every other man, declaring them casualties. Loamer came out of a side passageway and the captain
X
'd him on the chest, chewing him out meanwhile for leaving DC central.

They reached frame twenty. Bodies lay strewn about the deck. The char of third-degree burns blackened their bare chests. Dan stepped on a hand, lying some distance from the nearest body, and nearly slipped in a pool of “blood.” The moulages looked realistic. “Forget about him!” shouted the captain at a man who bent. “Report the casualties, then concentrate on saving the ship!”

After watching them fight the “fire” for ten minutes, Shaker left. Shortly thereafter, the 1MC said, “Prepare to abandon ship. Nearest land bears one-two-zero magnetic, distance twenty miles.”

The interior of the ship, dark as a mine disaster, filled again with running men, this time rushing for their assigned life rafts and a hasty muster. Dan matched names on the bridge, sweating. He found two missing and passed the word for them, hoping they were the ones Shaker had told not to report.
Van Zandt
quaked under his feet as the engines went full astern; below them, Guerra was running his own series of casualty drills.

*   *   *

After that, they remanned battle stations and fired Phalanx and small arms for an hour. Shaker wanted to shoot the 76mm as well, but Wise looked up the Omani regulations and nixed it; nothing larger than 20mm without prior notice. The captain nodded quietly and thanked him. From surface firing, he exercised them in Rules of Engagement interpretation, anti-Silkworm tactics, and vectoring of attack aircraft.

They finally secured just after midnight. Dan found himself standing on the starboard wing, trembling, his clothes wringing wet.

He stared out on a scene of apocalyptic grandeur.

Ahead of him, the sky was burning. Close in the torches were visible, vibrating bands of fire that waved slowly in the wind. They lit the water like lines of gaslights in a London fog. Farther away, they were cut off by the horizon, but still their light trembled in the sky like an infernal aurora. Not a star was visible, though there were no clouds; dust, smoke, and ambient light blockaded their feeble glitter from the Gulf.

In the glowing night, row on row, outgoing ships stood eastward in a line that stretched beyond sight. Deep-laden, swollen with oil like honey ants, their palely glowing superstructures seemed to plow through the sea without benefit of hulls beneath. Like some giant, primitive invertebrate, the Gulf's narrow mouth and anus were the same. This was its only entrance, and for two hundred miles the traffic divided, left and right, a great highway on the sea. Behind him, over the bridge-to-bridge circuit, came the gabble of hundreds of voices as the Omani authorities tried to maintain order.

He became aware then of someone beside him. He turned his head and made out Shaker. The weird sky glow was bright enough to see dark heeltaps under his eyes. The captain bent, instinctively masking a flame behind the splinter shield. Then straightened, his cigarette glowing like a dying sun.

“It's like fucking Fifth Avenue out here,” he muttered. “What are you doing still up, XO? We got a long day tomorrow. Rendezvous with the battle group, do the refuel, then find our convoy.”

“I don't know.” Lenson looked out at the ships. “Just taking a breather. I'll go below in a little while.”

He glanced toward the chart table. But as if he'd read his mind, Shaker murmured, “We're on track, half an hour ahead of intended movement. Your senior QM, he's sharp.”

“I've known Mac since I was a jaygee. He's about the best there is.” Dan paused. “This whole crew's good, Ben.”

“They're shaping up,” said the captain, his voice noncommittal. “We still got a few slackers. But they'll come around quick. Or they won't be here long.”

“Slackers?”

“Or let's say, people I'm not sure about yet.” The captain's voice trailed off as he looked aft. “Lieutenant Pensker, for one. What do you know about him?”

“About Terry … let's see—”

“Where's he from? Where'd he go to school?”

“He's from Indiana. OCS. Graduated from Ball State, I think, with a masters in electrical engineering.” Dan searched his memory for more. “He's married, but I've only met his wife once. A pool party at Glynda Bell's. Lena's a nice girl. Quiet. No kids yet.”

“Kind of car's he drive?”

“Car? Uh, Japanese. One of the sporty ones. Toyota or Datsun, I think.”

“What's your impression of him? Good guy? Bad guy? Strong or weak?”

Dan considered this, uneasily wondering whether the fact that Pensker was black had anything to do with Shaker's questions. It wasn't a pleasant thought. The Navy discouraged and punished discrimination—there were black COs and even admirals now—but it still existed. “He's sharp, Captain. He rewrote our Combat Systems Doctrine, and the Fleet Training Center inspectors, when we went to Gitmo for refresher training, they wanted a copy, said it was going to be Fleet standard for
Perry
class as far as they were concerned. Leadership, he's good there too. Takes care of his men. He's taking this deployment seriously. All he needs is seasoning.”

Shaker asked nothing more. Dan glanced at the bulky silhouette. The captain had perched himself on the wing chair, and looked like he was settling in.

Then he thought, That's exactly what he's doing. With the Strait transit tonight, hundreds of ships on the scope, this man planned even less rest for himself than he allowed his overworked crew.

He hoped he was wrong about the racial business. Aside from his momentary suspicion on that angle, so far he couldn't, if he was honest, fault Shaker in anything he'd done.
Van Zandt
had been a standout ship, a measure for excellence by the Navy's book. Shaker wanted to make it even more of one—but by some only gradually revealed Scripture of his own. He was driving the crew, the officers, as if at any moment the sky might open to a plunging missile.

But it could! Dan had wondered himself about Bell's preoccupation with cleanliness, preservation, administrative correspondence, lectures on safe driving and sexual harassment, sometimes ahead of combat training.

So what was it about Benjamin Shaker that however obscurely bothered him? Because something did. Something he couldn't quantify, but felt nonetheless.

He decided now that his instincts were wrong. Two days into command, Shaker had already changed the ship beyond recognition. Dan thought of the chiefs, how they'd carried their cherished sofa out of their lounge with their own hands. Remembered the men on the mess decks, leaping up from loaded trays with curses, yes, but also with alacrity, with something not far from eagerness, exhausted as they were.

Shaker was a leader. And he was right.
Van Zandt
was a warship in a war zone, and anything could happen. And the crew knew that. In liberties to come, early in the evening they would piss and moan about him. But later they would defend their captain and their ship with their fists as something that had almost disappeared from the fleet: a fighting ship, a grimly honed instrument of war. What they sweated for, what they sacrificed and bled for, there they would find their pride.