The Gulf (26 page)

Pensker said, “Sir, minimum range—”

“I know. Steady on course one-six-zero. Stand by to fire,” said the captain.

Wise spoke rapidly into his headset. Pensker's hand moved up, flipped up the red cover over the
FIRE
button, rested over it. Dan saw Shaker take a deep breath. “All right—”

“Combat, Bridge: Lookouts report air contact, showing red and green lights and a white strobe, off port bow.”

“Silence,” shouted Shaker.

Everyone froze. Hands came up off switches and keyboards. They lifted their heads, eyes remote, mouths open a little. Waiting.

The green blip on the radar jumped ahead, and merged with the blot of light that was
Van Zandt.

“Combat, Bridge: A plane just went over us. Headed northeast.”

“What kind?”

“Can't tell, all we could see were the lights. A big one.”

“Phalanx to hold fire,” ordered Shaker. A switch snapped in the silence and the
READY
light blinked to orange. On the scope, the pip emerged from the blur at the center, still headed north. As they watched, it changed suddenly into a semicircle.

“AWACs identifies: commercial airliner,” said Custer. His voice shook a little.

“Holy shit,” said Wise. They looked at each other. Dan felt his knees begin to tremble.

They'd almost shot it down. If they hadn't still been at sea, where the lookouts could see more clearly than in the dust-shrouded Gulf, they would have. He could smell his own sweat. He looked at the captain. He, too, seemed frozen, looking into the green shimmer after the departing aircraft.

He never asked me, Dan thought through the aftershock of fear. Shaker had held off till there was not an extra second. He'd done everything possible to establish the bogey's identity. Then he'd made his decision. As a commanding officer had to.

So that was right. He was decisive. But had the decision he made been right?

What, Dan asked himself soberly, would I have done?

As soon as he asked it, he knew the answer. Given that choice—between taking a possible hit and shooting down a civilian airliner with who knew how many innocent souls aboard—he knew what his decision would have been.

He wouldn't have fired. Not with the volume of civilian traffic here. With chaff, electronics, and the Phalanx, they'd have a decent chance even if a fighter launched its weapons first. Only then, when he was sure, would he shoot to kill.

But Shaker hadn't seen it that way. He'd decided to fire first.

Which of them was right? Was it Shaker—with
Strong
's agony still vivid in his memory, and probably his nightmares—or Dan himself, perhaps more detached, better able to deal with the situation rationally?

He remembered the old Navy saying: “I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.” The captain's first duty was to preserve his ship and the lives of his men. By that standard, Benjamin Shaker had acted properly. No senior commander, no board of inquiry could fault his response. A situation like this was beyond written rules. It had to be left to the commanding officer's judgment. No matter what that incoming contact had turned out to be, by Hart's rules of engagement Shaker would have been justified in firing on it.

He hadn't. But only by a fluke. When the lookouts had reported lights, he'd called “silence,” the old powder-magazine command that meant don't move, don't breathe, don't do anything.

And the airliner had gone right over their heads.

So it had all turned out all right.

This time.

But what did his choice say about Benjamin Shaker? What would he do the next time he had to make an instantaneous decision on the basis of inadequate data? Would he always choose to fire when the situation was doubtful?

Had the loss of
Strong,
the resolve never to let himself be taken by surprise again, affected his judgment?

“Message from
Mobile Bay
to
Charles Adams,
sir, info to us.”

“What's it say?”

“Relaying an SOS. A Greek tanker, north of us. Attacked by small boats, on fire. COMIDEASTFOR wants to know if one of us can render assistance.”

“Range, location, damn it!”

Custer gave him the range and bearing and Wise marked it on the scope. Shaker lit a cigarette as he studied it. Dan saw that his hands were rock-steady. After a moment, he said, “I can get there in two hours. Al, ask the commodore if he wants me to try.”

Wise spoke briefly into his headset. Then clicked off. “He says he'd rather send
Gallery,
she's north of us, but he wants us to scramble our chopper for a possible rescue. Apparently the fire's pretty bad.”

“Okay, flight quarters,” said Shaker loudly. “Let's get 'em in the air like now. No weapon load, we'll cover them. Minimum brief, vector 'em after launch. Go! Go! Go!”

Dan pushed his thoughts from his mind. It was his privilege to second-guess. But his actions, his speech, they were not his own.

He was Benjamin Shaker's executive officer. And he had his duty to do.

14

U.S.S.
Turner Van Zandt

“WHAT you got under the towel, Buck? Tent pole?”

“Hell, you're supposed to make it littler in the showers, Hayes, not bigger.”

Buck Hayes two-pointed his soap into the sink. His bare feet made wet question marks on the deck. “Okay, smart guys. What's eleven inches long and white?”

“What?” said Schweinberg suspiciously.

“Nothing.” He whipped off the bath towel and polished his butt with it, then began rooting through his locker for shorts.

The pilots were sitting around the stateroom drinking Orange Crushes and Frescas from the mess decks. Woolton was beside Schweinberg on the latter's bunk. “Smiley” Bonner, Woollie's ATO and the junior flier aboard, was perched on Hayes's chair. Schweinberg had been telling a story, and now he started over, motioning with his hands.

“So like I was saying, these two Jews just got married. And they're already fighting over the toilet seat, right? He leaves it up, she wants it down. Well, one night she sits down without looking and bingo! She's stuck. She screams for him to get her out, but the harder he pulls, the more she wiggles and the tighter her ass gets wedged in.

“So finally, they call the plumber. They can't think of anything else to do. When he's at the door, the guy suddenly realizes his wife's naked. So he takes off his yarmulke and puts it in her lap. And then he takes the plumber in the bathroom.

“And he just stands there. Finally, the guy asks him, “So, what do you think?” And the plumber says, “Well, I think I can save the broad, but I'm afraid the rabbi's a goner.”

They laughed. Bonner said eagerly, “Hey, I got one. Knock, knock.”

“Oh, hell, Bonner, what you wasting our time with that high-school stuff for?”

“Come on, boot camp, that's oldern' buffalo shit.”

“You know why Smiley went helicopters?” Woolton said. “It's the only aircraft where you can masturbate without any hand motion.”

Schweinberg said, “Did I ever tell you guys about my old OIC, Max Suck?”

“The Red Max? Sure, he was on the
Aubrey Fitch
when I was on the
Doyle.
I remember when we had our thousand-hour party, and he called our bridge and told 'em he was gonna render honors.” Woolton grinned. “So the shoes all went out on the wing. Suck comes roaring past at a hundred feet, they salute, and there's the gunner's, the SENSO's, and the ATO's moons hanging out at them.”

“That's him. Well, Max was our det CO on the
Fitch,
in the Med. And they were about to ship his crewman over to the JFK to see a shrink. Whenever they flew at night, he'd start screaming “ground fire, ground fire,” and Suck would go evasive. Only there was never anything on the radar. The guy would come back shaking, swearing he'd seen tracers. Then one day Suck swapped with my ATO. Halfway through the flight, I noticed he was smoking.”

“In the cockpit?”

“Yeah, holding it down by his leg. I don't know how he got it lit. Anyway, he'd put his butt down to the air vent there and tap the ashes off. Sure enough, all of a sudden our SENSO comes up on the ICS screaming “Tracers! Tracers! Break right, for Christ's sake!”

The pilots laughed. Schweinberg went on deadpan: “Our captain had this hard-on for the pilots. The Rocket Ranger, that was his code name. Well, when we first come aboard, every time we make an approach, the ship's right on the hairy lips of the envelope. He'd have the wind ninety degrees to port at fifteen knots, or someplace else where we're sweating baseballs the whole way in.

“So Max goes up to the bridge and says, ‘Captain, we need to talk.' And the Ranger says, ‘I know it's tough, I'm giving you a challenge.' Suck gets a little steamed at this and he tells the guy we get enough pulse-pounders, we want to see Mom and the kids again.

“So this dickhead takes a pencil and draws a little triangle way inside the limits on the relative-wind diagram, and marks it ‘P.E.' Then he gives it to the OOD, and says, ‘This is the Pussy Envelope for our no-balls helo pilots, Lieutenant.'

“Well, after that, every time the Ranger wants a photo hop, or a parts run, funny, the helo's always down. Then one day COMSIXTHFLEET flies over to see what's new, and it's late, so he decides to stay. So the Ranger gives the admiral his cabin and moves down with the XO.

“Well, meanwhile one of the det guys, his wife sent him this rubber fuck-me doll. It's human-size and like everything works. Suck gets an idea. While the admiral and the Ranger are eating dinner, he sneaks into the CO's head. He leaves the doll in the shower stall along with a big jar of vaseline and some pieces of hose, electrical tools, carrots, that type of stuff. Then he closes the curtain and takes off. The next morning, soon as the admiral leaves, Suck's in there and sneaks it out again. The Ranger never understood why the admiral wouldn't shake hands with him anymore.”

When they were done laughing, Schweinberg turned serious. “Woollie, talking about that, we got to do something about the way Lenson's screwing with our guys.”

“What happened now?”

“He found our mechs flaked out in the hangar. Got torqued and chewed Mattocks out. Now, those guys worked all night getting the bird back up. They couldn't rack out in their berthing compartment because there were people tearing the deck apart.”

“Right.” Woolton nodded. “You're preaching to the choir, Chunky.”

“Well, you preach to Lenson, then! Another thing, he made some crack a couple days ago about us usin' too much water. Well, we sweat in that cockpit. We
need
showers.”

“They've got a water problem,” said Woolton. “The CHENG, Guerra, he was telling me how the seawater's so hot here, the condensers aren't as efficient—”

“Woollie, you can't start takin' the shoes' side! You got to represent our side!”

Hayes got up. He flexed in front of the mirror, still naked except for shorts.

“Knock it off, Buck, you're givin' Boot Camp a hard-on. Woollie, when you figure we'll fly next?” asked Schweinberg.

“Pretty soon. It'll be double-pumps all the way up the Gulf, dhow-herding and mine-hunting.”

“Waste of gas. The ragheads are running scared. This is a big sweatex, that's all, they won't pull anything with the
Forrestal
offshore.”

“How about those F-14s that bounced us?” said Hayes. “My personal pucker factor's been way up since then.”

There was a moment of silence, then Woolton got up. Schweinberg said, “Hey, one more before you go.”

“What?”

“How do they know Adam and Eve weren't black?”

“How?”

“You ever try to take a rib away from a black guy?”

The white officers glanced at Hayes. He didn't laugh. There was another silence, awkward this time. Then, slowly, the little party broke up.

*   *   *

The dark thing almost had him. He'd tried to get away on his bike but it broke. Finally, he just ran, screaming “Dad! Dad!” Screaming for his father, the pilot, the strongest man in the world—

Suddenly he understood how to escape. Wake up. That was all. Knowing it was the first step. But it wasn't the whole way. Halfway across yet caught, like a calf in a fence, he fought toward consciousness with the mindless desperation of any being that must be born or die.

But its growls and his screams still rang in his ears. Then he heard its pad, pad behind him, the click of claws, and its rotten-flesh breath on his neck. He wasn't sure there was anything on the other side. He just had to jump.

When Hayes got his eyes open, the sheets were twisted around him tight as a coat of paint. It took a struggle just to get an arm out.

When the bunk light clicked on he saw it was 2235. The growling came from beneath him. But he couldn't close his eyes again. Not with that thing waiting in his head. What did Dustin call it—the Eater Monster—

He realized suddenly that in the dream he'd been his son, powerless, terrified, four years old. And at the same moment, he understood the terror. It was what he felt when his engineer's mind retraced some narrow escape and realized that one more bad break, one wrong command or move by his HAC, his crewman, or himself, would have killed them all.

That terror was too real. He preferred the nameless horror of his son's nightmares. But as he blinked at his watch it faded back into its dream jungle, casting back one lingering gleaming glance.

As if to say: I'll be here.

He'd just clicked the light off when the GQ alarm brought him upright again. Then came “This is not a drill. Aircraft incoming.”

“Holy shit!” Schweinberg's feet hit the deck like two steaks. The overhead light flickered on, showing him pulling on his flight suit. Hayes grabbed a pipe and swung himself down.