The Gulf (43 page)

Dan stared at the screen. Their targets could still escape. Turn tail and outrace the oncoming weapons … chaff wouldn't decoy a Standard, even if they carried it … the symbols jumped forward again.

Twenty miles. “Standby,” said Pensker. “Intercept!”

The update came. There were only two symbols on the screen. At the next sweep, there was one.

“Bogey three's outbound.”

“Combat, Bridge: We see smoke on the horizon. What's the scoop?”

“Two bogeys off the scope, sir, presume splashed. The third one”—Pensker hung fire for a moment, straining his eyes into the fluorescent glow—“third one's turned tail. Headed back for shore.”

Shaker's voice again, boisterous as a boy's at recess: “Nice work! Damn nice work! Teach them to fuck with the U.S. Navy!”

Dan stood by the plotting table while the room went noisy around him, men slapping each other on the back, laughing and yelling. Something brushed his face and he glanced up.

IRANIANS ARE SHORT, DARK, AND

His hand came up without thought, and the paper tore, half staying with the tape, the rest coming free in his fist. Crumpled, it bounced on the deck, rolled under a repeater.

“Hey, XO!”

“What'd you do that for, sir?”

He almost couldn't speak through the sick feeling. “They were brave men. They died for their country.”

“They were
ragheads,
XO!”

“You can bet
they
were cheering, Commander, when they shot down Buck and Chunky,” put in another voice: Pensker's.

Someone gripped his arm. It was Al Wise. “Sit down, Dan,” he murmured, steering him for the CO's chair. “Maybe you're right. But they don't want to hear that now. Right now, they think they've won.”

*   *   *

Half an hour later, from the fantail, he looked back as
Van Zandt,
still last in line, hammered westward at flank speed.

Behind them the Gulf was burning. Flames guttered orange-red, licking upward along twisted steel. They writhed inside a cocoon of sooty smoke like snakes fighting to be born. And from them, welling and then slowly toppling to lie along the whole eastern horizon, was an implacable blackness, like an early and unnatural night.

He clung to the rail, and the weight of the helmet bent down his head.

Destruction! The sole and last communication possible between those who had defined each other as evil incarnate. Only the flight of weapons could cross the walls Iran and America had built between them. And like flames in oil, each act of revenge inflamed the other side to greater hate and greater vengeance.

If you are struck, you strike back twice as hard; this was the law every child learns on the playground, and the relationship among states. This time, America was lucky. This was a war fought at sea and in the air, where her technology, resources, and military skill gave her triumph after triumph. But her very success drove her enemy to the tactics of the weak: suicide craft, terrorism, hostage taking, the whole spectrum of “uncivilized” warfare.

But how could it ever end? How could the scales ever balance?

And now what horror would the other side commit?

*   *   *

“Now secure from general quarters. Set the condition two underway watch. On deck, watch section port, officers section port.”

He sat listlessly in the padded chair in Combat. They'd passed the twenty-eight-degree line, then. He hadn't been up to the bridge to see. Now Wise groaned, got up, stretched. “What do you say, sir, grab some dinner?”

“I guess so.”

He shuffled below unenthusiastically. Sat with the other officers in the TV nook, none of them speaking, avoiding even each others' eyes. Firzhak fiddled with the television. They could get a grainy black and white image of a man in a burnoose reading something, but no communication penetrated the sand hiss of static. At last, he snapped it off and picked up the February
Naval Engineers Journal.
On the end table, stripped of its walnut veneer to bare metal, lay a sweat-stained fore-and-aft cap with scratched lieutenant's bars. No one touched it, though they looked at it from time to time. It had been Schweinberg's.

Have to write a letter, Dan thought through the numbness. Parents. Next of kin. The last he'd heard, a patrol boat was searching for the wreckage. He doubted they'd find anything. No, the rowdy young pilots were gone. Just … like … that.

“Bastards,” muttered Guerra. The engineer's pitted face was poisonous. No one asked who he meant.

“Sir, we're ready to serve,” said the steward, leaning over Dan.

He started and glanced around. “Anyone seen the captain?”

“Still on the bridge, I think, XO.”

He got up wearily and punched the bogen. Shaker answered. His voice dragged, too. They were all feeling it, Dan thought. He hung up. “He'll be down in a second.”

The JOs took their positions around the table, standing behind their chairs. Shaker came in a few minutes later. “Sit down, guys.”

Dan ordered the salad. When it came, he was suddenly hungry. For a while there was no sound but the clink of silver, a muttered request for salt.

“Well,” said Shaker at last, clearing his throat. “Frank, Terry, your gear worked pretty good today.”

“Yessir.”

“I don't know how we looked overall out there, though. The four of us must have fired a thousand rounds at that thing. Saw a hell of a lot of misses. Right through the trusswork, or under the platform.”

“I saw that,” said Bob Ekdahl. “But if it was a ship, sir, one of their gunboats, those would all have been hits.”

“Good point,” said Shaker, his face lightening. “But those are bum gun targets. Tell you what, tell the gunners to brush up on their demolition. Next time, we'll just scare the Persians off it, send the whaleboat over, and blow it up.”

Dan didn't say anything. He felt detached from this conversation, though he wasn't sure why. Shaker turned to him next. “Nice work down in CIC, Dan, Al. And I mean nice. Blew them out of the air clean as a whistle. Two out of three.”

“I was thinking about that,” said Proginelli eagerly. “Sorry, sir—”

“No, go ahead, let's hear what our CIC officer thinks.”

“I think we fired too fast, sir. Three rounds, just like that. Could be two of them hit the same bogey.” His eyes slid to Dan and he added hastily, “I don't want to ping on the guys in the hot seat, but maybe next time we fire on multiple targets we should space our rounds out.”

They discussed that for a while, some arguing that on a gaggle of bogeys the thing to do was get ordnance there fast and lots of it, which was the way TAO school taught it, the others taking Proginelli's side. Dan said to the steward, “Yeah, coffee, black. Thanks.”

“Now,” said Shaker, “I understand we had one person who didn't think we did so well.”

Dan registered the words after a moment. He glanced up. “Are you talking about me, Captain?”

“Uh-huh.” The faces along the table turned his way; he saw their expressions—puzzlement mixed with polite interest. The captain pushed back his plate and shook out a Camel. He searched his pockets for a light; Guerra pushed him matches. Shaker poised the flame off the tip, looking past it at Dan. “I understand you don't think we did the right thing, sending those assholes to Paradise.”

“That's not exactly how I feel, Captain.”

“How exactly do you feel, XO?”

“I felt that cheering, like the men were doing, was inappropriate.”

“Let's see, that's Naval Academy, isn't it? Mr. Ekdahl, supply the quotation.”

The ensign flushed; junior man in the wardroom, just out of Annapolis, he was unused to being singled out, except for ragging. “Uh, yes it is, sir … let's see … ‘Don't cheer, boys, the poor devils are dying.' Captain John W. Philip, USS
Texas,
at the Battle of Santiago, 1898.”

“That kind of what you mean, Dan?”

“Kind of, Captain.”

“Uh-huh. Well, that's not my attitude. I remember a little of that stuff myself. Georgie Patton, what'd he say … ‘Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country. The object is to make the other poor son of a bitch die for his.' Or something like that.”

The JOs chuckled. “Dessert, Captain?” said the steward, picking up his plate.

“What we got?”

“Peach cobbler and ice cream.”

“I'll have that.” Shaker winked at him. “As long as it's nocal.”

Dan refused with a shake of his head.

“In my view,” the captain went on, “the operation was a success in spite of the stinking orders we were given. Dash in, shoot up a dime-a-dozen oil rig, then run for it with our tails tucked. Get real! We were just lucky they came out after us. We ought to go in there like we own the place. Blockade 'em. Dare 'em to come out and fight. This whole ‘proportionate response' idea is a no-brainer. We ought to jam it in and break it off. When they get the picture we're mad dogs, the mining, hostage taking, all that'll stop.”

“The Saudis wouldn't like that,” said Dan.

“What have they got to do with it?”

“The Iranians can make real trouble for the little states. It's hard enough just getting them to let us refuel.”

Shaker blew smoke at the overhead. “Jesus Christ! That's exactly my point, XO! Why won't they support us? Because they can't depend on us when things get tough. They think we'll cut and run! But if we took a hard line, the way the Soviets do … You see the Iranians taking any Soviet hostages? Like hell! They'd have bombers over Teheran the next day!”

Dan felt it wasn't that simple. First of all, there
were
Soviet hostages. He had a point to make, but he wasn't sure what it was. Maybe just that it was smart to think twice before taking on 60 million fanatical Iranians.

But the whole discussion seemed out of place to him. They'd killed some of the enemy, but lost three good men. The feeling of disgust, of futility, he couldn't seem to shake it off. Looking at the others, though, he could see this just wasn't the time.

“Well?”

“It's just not in our orders, sir. So I don't think it's a good thing to discuss.”

Shaker stared at him. The JOs were deathly silent. Then, suddenly, he hoisted himself from his seat. “Okay, Mr. Lenson,” he said. “Maybe we better have a little private confab.”

“What's that, sir?”

“My cabin. Right now.”

He followed the CO's short-legged roll through the passageways. The captain groped in his pockets for a moment, then unlocked the door. “Sit down,” he said, jabbing at the chair. “We got to get some things understood here. Such as, whether you remember our first little talk when I took over.”

Dan occupied the seat he pointed to, steeling himself for a reaming. He found himself facing the mutilated photograph. Shaker was angry, all right. His face, already picking up a Gulf sunburn, was drawn tight. “Yes sir, I remember that.”

The captain wheeled suddenly and slammed his fist down on the table. “Then what the
hell
do you think you're doing, contradicting me in my wardroom? Telling the men there's something shameful about shooting down people who are attacking you? What the
hell
do you think we're doing here?”

“We're carrying out policy.”

“The U.S. Navy wasn't built to ‘carry out policy,' Lenson! It wasn't built to show the fucking flag and impress people! We're here to kick the living shit out of whoever gets in Uncle Sam's face! That's the kind of spirit I'm trying to build.”

“I understand that, Captain. I think—”

“I'm not done. When I took this ship over, it was nothing but a showboat. And I don't think it was Charlie Bell's fault. I think you took charge when he got sick and, just coincidentally, the fighting spirit went to hell!”

“That's absolutely wrong.”

“Shut your mouth when I'm talking to you! I'm telling you, Lenson, you piss me off. Your attitude pisses me off. I gave you your marching orders when I came aboard. You seemed to understand them then. What is it with you? Is it a moral problem, shooting down those assholes?”

“I gave the firing order, Captain. I just think we approach the issue differently. We're two different people.”

“We're not two different people, God damn it! You're my
exec!
You're
me,
Lenson! Everything I want, you want! Everything I think, you think! And everything I say, you say!
Have you got that?
”

He shouted the last words. Dan knew the bridge watch, directly above, could hear them. He thought for a moment Shaker was going to come at him over the table. He'd never seen a commanding officer so angry. And he'd never had one curse him to his face. For a moment, he wondered whether Shaker was sane.

Then he stopped thinking. His fists crimped together under the table. Rage rose in him, blurring his sight. “What are you asking me to do, Captain? Swear unquestioning obedience to you? Then I'm telling you right now: you don't rate that. Nobody does. Even whatever made us, even he left us free will.”

“I'm asking you to do your fucking job, that's all!”

“And I'm telling you I am!”

Shaker hung there, half over the table, and each man stared into the other's eyes. Then, slowly, the captain swayed back. He crossed the room, coughed violently, then dropped onto the settee and lit a cigarette. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. Without looking at Dan, he said, “Yeah. I
am
asking a lot. But think about it this way.

“I lost forty-two men on the
Strong.
And three more today. In the face of that, I conclude we're at war. In wartime, morale and leadership are all-important. Weapons are necessary, but it's fighting spirit and leadership that determine victory or defeat.