The Gulf (36 page)

Sea duty, the path to command … but beyond lieutenant commander, promotion grew increasingly rigorous. About half made it to commander, and only a third of those to captain. He had no illusions about how his record would look to a board. They'd react the way Shaker had. Regardless of what anyone thought, he had no special pull, through Niles or anyone else.

Not that he cared. He'd given up ambition long ago. No, he was here because he wanted to be, and because the Navy, once in a long while, needed someone who cared more about being right than being an admiral.

His mind moved on. He watched it coldly, wishing above all that it would stop and let him sleep. But now it decided to think about Terry Pensker.

The black officer's unease had come back. Dan didn't think it was fear. Pensker did fine when the heat was on. When they'd nearly fired on the airliner, for instance. It was when things were calm he acted jittery. He'd known men like that before. Their imaginations were their worst enemy.

Dan had discussed it with him the day before. He went back to that conversation now, trying again to make sense of it.

It had been during XO's inspection. The ship had gotten steadily dirtier since they'd picked up the convoy. Watch and maintenance, that was all Shaker wanted their minds on. Dan kept up his rounds, though. An exec had to know what was going on in the corners. But he shifted his priorities, to damage control and fire hazards.

Yesterday, he'd decided to start with the missile magazine. One of the torpedomen was sitting by the scuttle in a folding chair, reading a coverless Louis L'Amour paperback. He put it away quickly when Lenson came in sight, stood up, fiddled with his pistol belt.

“Hello, Thompson. Catching up on your professional reading?”

“Uh, sort of, sir.”

“If you've got nothing to do on watch, study for your second-class exam. You need to.”

“Yes, sir. Uh, you got to sign here, XO, before I can let you go below.”

To his surprise, he'd found Pensker in the ready service room. This was a small compartment deep below the rotary magazine. It was usually unmanned, a bare space with rust stains like old blood on the deck and the air musty from the recirc unit that kept mold off the missiles. Pensker was sitting alone when he came down the ladder, pausing en route to check the linkages for the CO
2
flooding system. Dan saw he was studying one of the ordnance publications. A diagram of the launching system was folded out of it.

“Hi, Terry.”

“Hello, XO.” Pensker flipped the pub closed, stood up, and stretched.

“Getting some quals in?”

“No, we got an intermittent in the test today. I thought it might be in ship's systems, but it looks like a bad missile.”

“Harpoon or Standard?”

“Standard.”

“Did you find the problem?”

“I think so, sir.” Pensker paused. “Maybe we can get a card ordered in, fix it aboard.”

“Are we authorized to work on the missiles?”

“Not
authorized.
But if I can, we don't have to offload it, go through all the rigging for sending it back to
San Jose.
It'd save us a lot of man-hours. Hell, XO, the Navy couldn't operate if everybody did exactly what the regs say. Could it?”

Dan gave him a faint grin back. “It depends on the reg. And the reason we have to shave it.”

Pensker fell silent. It was then Dan caught the shadow in his eyes. And noticed that the lieutenant's hand was dancing lightly against his leg.

That nervousness, that elusive wariness again. He'd thought it was over. Pensker had been doing fine on the bridge and in CIC. So now what?

Well, this was private enough to find out. And maybe it was time to. He said with forced heartiness, “I've been meaning to have a talk with you, Terry. Just been so much going on.… Have you got a minute? Go ahead, sit down.”

As Pensker unfolded another chair for him, Dan hesitated. How to begin? He decided to plunge right in. “I noticed on and off, this cruise, you seem kind of on edge, kind of tense. Is anything wrong at home?”

“Oh, no, Lena's good.”

“I remember her at Glynda Bell's party. She seemed like a nice girl. You staying in touch?”

“Yeah. She sends cards. Pictures.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I see you talking to the captain. He grooming you for my replacement, or what?” They both chuckled. “Seriously, how are you getting along with him?”

“Good.”

“What do you talk about?”

“Well, this and that, XO. Weapons-department business most of the time.”

“Keep me cut in, Terry. The department heads have direct access to the CO at all times. But you need to keep me informed of what's going on, so I can track possible interference with the work of the other departments, coordinate the schedule … you know how it goes.”

“Yes, sir. Will do.”

They looked at each other for a long moment. Finally, Dan cleared his throat. “Well, don't make me pull teeth. What's eating you, then? Go ahead, confide in your understanding executive officer.”

Pensker grinned unwillingly. “Hey, nothing. Well, there is one thing.”

“What's that?”

“I was wondering, well … it sounds silly, sir.”

“Not if it's bothering you, Terry. Believe me.”

“Okay.” The lieutenant's voice went suddenly soft. “Why the hell are we here, anyway? Steaming around, escorting these guys, waiting to get hit like
Strong
 … what's the point, sir? I think I must have missed something.”

Dan looked up. Through an open magazine access, he could see the nozzle of a missile booster. “I thought that
was
the point. Protecting trade. Protecting these merchants we're convoying.”

“That's not—” The lieutenant hesitated. “Can I say this, sir? It doesn't sound real gung ho.”

“Let's call it off the record, Terry.”

“Okay, man to man, that doesn't sound like a hell of a lot to die for. Defending a lot of oil-company ships, so they can keep their dividends up. So people can pay a nickel a gallon less for gas to get to the beach.”

“I can't disagree with that,” said Dan. “I feel that way sometimes myself. It isn't like World War Two, when we were fighting for our lives.”

“I maybe feel it more than the other guys, I know.”

“Because you're black?”

Pensker said slowly, “I feel closer to other blacks, sure. Especially when they're in danger, or when they get … the shaft … from the white world. But I didn't mean just that.

“See, my dad died in 1969. He was on Swift boats, a gunner.”

Dan waited him out as Pensker's eyes hunted into the corners. Finally, he said, all in a rush, “I've always felt like his life was wasted. I remember him; I was three when he left. He's just a name on a wall now. And what for? We lost. We sent people—black people, way more than should have gone, if you look at the proportions—away to fight a war. And they died. Like him. And we still lost.

“What we're doing here, it feels the same way to me.”

“We're not losing here.”

“We're not even
fighting
here!” Pensker slammed his open hand against the booster-suppression tank. “The Iranians sink our ships, they blow up people, take hostages … we don't do a thing! It's the same kind of limited-war bullshit they tried in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh just outlasted us, till Congress wimped out and pulled the plug. The Ayatollah's playing the same game.”

“When the Iranians push us too far, we push back.”

“I don't see any pushing back. Why have we got ships and planes? Why've we got missiles? As long as we're out here, we ought to do something.”

“You can't start a war by yourself, Terry.”

“News flash, XO. We
are
at war. Drugs, oil, terrorists—everybody in the world thinks they can fuck us over and laugh. We ought to teach somebody they can't.”

“Take it easy.” Dan leaned his chair back, thinking how appealing it was. Especially to Americans: to see themselves as patsy and victim, and the panacea as violence. It had made sense to him once, too. Till he saw what the outcome was. “It's a hell of a lot more complicated than that. But one thing's for sure. The U.S. military doesn't make policy. We're here on this ship to do what we're told. Period, full stop. And that, even just that, isn't going to be easy.”

The weapons officer's eyes had gone strange then. Dan had been looking right at him when it happened. His clenched hands relaxed and opened; his fingers worked. He looked away. “Maybe so, XO,” he said. “Maybe you're right.”

Now, lying in the dark, Dan stared sightlessly at the overhead. Cool air brushed his face like the fingers of a ghost. Why did he have the feeling that ever since that conversation Pensker had been on the far side of a wall from him? Why did he feel that something had been left unsaid?

Why did he feel that he'd failed?

*   *   *

At 0530 the bogen jerked him awake. After the clarity of his waking interlude, then sleep again, his brain felt as if it had been frozen and then microwaved once too often. At the fifth buzz, he got it to where he figured his mouth should be. “XO.”

“Dan, Ben here. How about takin' over, I'll grab early breakfast.”

“Yessir. Be right up.” He lay back, fell asleep again for six seconds, then forced the animal he was chained to to roll out. He folded the bunk into a sofa, pulled on khakis, decided to shave later, and headed once again for the bridge.

Topside dawn was an eerie buff. Visibility was a mile in blowing sand. To starboard, one of the tankers was a horizontal shadow, fading in and out of sight as the storm thickened and waned. He looked at the radar, checked the track, and talked briefly to Firzhak. Shaker was slumped in his padded chair. He looked dead. When Dan was ready, he went over. “Good morning, Cap'n.”

The Captain opened those malamute eyes; his mouth twitched. Dan saw that the furrows had deepened. “Morning, Dan. You awake?”

“Not sure, but I'm here.”

“Coffee in the thermos. Get alert now, we'll be in the Narrows in the next few hours.”

Shaker went over the formation disposition—opened to two thousand yards to minimize the risk of collision—and told him he intended to go to GQ around ten, as they closed Farsi Island. They'd be passing within twenty miles of it, and Nauman wanted them ready.

At last, he went below. Dan waited till Stanko announced his departure, then swung himself into the chair. A Camel smoldered in the butt kit. He stubbed it to death, then poured himself coffee. It was lukewarm, left from the midwatch, by the taste.

Farsi Island. The big Pasdaran base. They'd have to get a grip here, tired as they were.

He worried about that for a while. They'd been balls to the wall for three days now, since leaving Manama, everyone aboard working day and night with strip ship and drills.

But a crew could stay cutting-sharp for only so long. Overwork, heat, stress, lack of sleep—combined they made men not just less alert but less alert in a certain way. They blanked out for seconds at a time; could be staring at a screen but not see a new contact. Port and starboard watches, six on and six off, was a bad arrangement. A man got only five hours sleep at a time, and lost that to eating, maintenance, and musters. It also upset his sense of day and night.

Dan had often thought it was self-defeating to subject human beings to this and expect them to perform effectively. The U.S. Navy had always worked both its men and its ships harder than other navies, since at least the turn of the century. Even in port, twelve-hour days weren't uncommon, and at sea this was more like sixteen or eighteen. The idea seemed to be that this gave you better readiness, a more professional crew.

As a junior officer, he'd just accepted it. Now he thought it might have been realistic when equipment was simple and the consequences of error small. Neither condition held in the modern Navy. Submariners had studied fatigue and tried to prevent it. The aviation community insisted on regular rest. Yet the surface fleet seemed to take pride in subjecting its men to conditions guaranteed to reduce their effectiveness. It wasn't generally discussed—no one liked to appear weak or unenthusiastic—but fatigue-induced sickness, hallucinations, falling asleep standing up weren't uncommon at sea. Granted, an error in the air could cause an accident faster than a momentary lapse at twenty or thirty knots. But dopiness or poor judgment on the bridge, at a weapons-control console, or in main control could kill a lot more people.

Not that he had any alternative at the moment. The danger was real. They'd just have to stay alert. Shaker's remedy—no cleaning, no administration—was feasible short-term, in a battle zone. Someday, though, someone would have to look at all the requirements laid on men at sea, demanded piecemeal by different authorities, but aggregating to a crushing load.

He struggled with his eyelids through the morning. The sandstorm added to his anxiety and isolation. At 1000, he called Shaker and told him they'd be entering the Narrows in half an hour.

The captain ordered GQ. As Stanko passed the word, Dan pulled on his gear and settled the steel bucket on his head.

Shaker came up a few minutes later, yawning. “XO, you ready for a boat ride?”

“Anytime, sir, but what do you mean?”

“Just got a message from Nauman. He wants somebody on the lead merchie's bridge. In case anything happens. I thought I'd put you over there.”

“Okay.”

“I'd send you by helo but the sand's too thick to launch. Take one of our walkie-talkies. And today's code page. I don't think you'll need anything else.”

“Got it,” said Dan. “When do you want me to go?”

“Soon as he gives us the word.”

“Do I have time for a head call, maybe a shave?”