Tomahawk (41 page)

But looking at it coldly, he had to conclude this was probably all there was. One of Szerenci's catchphrases: “Free yourself of all illusion.” The simplest explanation, and therefore the most likely to be correct: that the cold equations of matter and the void described all that existed. That his own encounter with the dead had been just that,
illusion, spun of morphine and stress. One life, seventy or eighty years, then oblivion.

And never, never would he ever meet her or anyone remotely resembling her again.

He was wiping cold tears from his eyes when his neck prickled.

Above him the city was a glowing jewel. The bridge was a floating arch of salmon-colored light. But behind him was only darkness. His straining ears caught only the faraway descending roar of an airliner. He floated his gaze above the black emptiness, using his peripheral vision. Still nothing, but… He slid as quietly as he could off the path, blundering into a crackle of brush, and crouched. He slid the gun out and held it, cocked and locked, thumb on the safety.

Nothing happened. No one came down the path. He waited till his thighs ached, till the cold crept through his boot soles and chilled the steel inserts and, within them, his toes.

Finally he straightened and went on again, glancing back every few seconds to make sure he wasn't being followed.

He went all the way to the second milepost, lingered there, then walked back. In all that time, he saw no one. He stood by the steps for a few more minutes, shivering, and then climbed them and walked slowly back across the bridge to the car.

Halfway home, he pulled off the road into a lighted lot. He didn't think about it; his hand turned the wheel, his foot tapped the brake, and he was there. He was opening the car door when he realized where he was and what he was doing.

It was a liquor store, and crystallized in his mind was the image of a bottle of Cutty. He could smell it. He could taste it on his tongue. A couple of glasses, straight, no ice, and it wouldn't hurt anymore…. He sat staring at the glittering glass and colored labels that filled the window. Any of them would do. As long as it wasn't the one she'd left the note on.

Please don't Not till you talk to me.
…

He rubbed his forehead, found it slick with sweat.

Look, you know you're going to get drunk sooner or later. One of these nights. So why put yourself through this? You might as well get it over with.

Or was that him thinking? Because there were two people inside his head. One wanted to blot out his regret and rage with the only thing he'd ever found that made him feel as good as everybody else. The other wanted just as desperately not to.

He got out, but before he reached the store, stopped again. Remembering her hands on his face, the night he'd gotten shitfaced in Annapolis. The way she'd reasoned with him after his blackout. And for one despairing moment, he prayed,
Kerry, help me.

A moment later, his shaking hands groped for the key. Somehow, he backed out of the lot and out onto Lee Highway again. For a moment, he grinned with wolflike glee. But then the smile faded.

With a sinking heart, he knew he wasn't going to be able to do it again.

24

 

 

 

He spent the next morning getting things set up for the upcoming operational evaluation aboard
Merrill.
TASMEX I, on the Pacific Coast test range, would be the first operational—meaning, it would be done by fleet personnel rather than contractors—firings of the all-up antiship round.

At eleven o'clock, he picked up the phone and tapped in numbers he knew by heart. Said, “Detective Ogen, please.”

He listened to the background noise of the squadroom as he waited, shoving a pen around on a scratch pad, drawing sharks with bared teeth, lashing tails. Finally, the slow voice said, “Ogen here.”

“Dan Lenson. Any progress on Miss Donavan's murder?”

“You know, the more time I spend on the phone, the less time I can be out working the street.”

“That would make sense, except that every time I call, you're right there in the office.”

“You call in the morning, Lieutenant. Late afternoon, evening's when your sleazebags come out to play. That makes my day twelve hours long. Why don't you get off my desk and let me work the case?”

“How many murders have you had since hers?”

“Six. And no, none of them were on the C and O.”

“You're telling me she's just another in a—”

“No, I'm telling you I'm working it. And that's all I'm gonna say.”

Dan slammed the phone down. Breathing hard, he looked around the office. Burdette and Sakai had their heads down. He got up and went down the corridor, into the head, and washed his hands ferociously, slamming the paper towel into the wastebasket. Knowing even as he did it that he was acting all the angrier because he felt so totally helpless.

At 1120, Lucille put her head in. “Commander? Captain Foster's here. Captain Westerhouse says stand by in the outer office, they'll start the meeting in a few minutes.”

He tried to organize his thoughts as he pulled files out of his desk. “Sparky, CO of
New Jersey's
in the admiral's office. Can you come along?”

But when they got there, Niles's door was closed. Westerhouse was on the sofa, reading that morning's
Early Bird,
the Pentagon-generated world-news summary. The headline read DIA CONFIRMS LIBYAN TIES TO TERROR BOMBING. Carol smiled at them, not interrupting the steady clicking of her keyboard.

The door opened a few minutes later. Niles leaned out. “Come on in, Dale …Mr. Lenson… Mr. Sakai. You all know Bill Foster.” They settled in the office, Dan and Sakai against the window. It looked like rain.

Niles rumbled, “The captain was just telling me about the commissioning.”

Foster gave them a quick recap: how President Reagan had arrived by chopper, given a fifteen-minute speech, then formally put her in commission. “He was like a kid, touring the ship. I never saw anybody over ten that happy before.”

Niles said, “Bill tells me we're not going to make his sailing date.” He didn't sound as enraged as he could have been.

Westerhouse nodded. “Yes, sir, due to the delay on the software. We reported that some time ago.”

“But the ABLs and the other equipment are aboard.”

“Right, sir, Dan's people got that produced and installed faster than I expected.”

Niles said, “Tell me again when we're delivering software.”

Dan wondered why, since he'd covered this all in his reports. Finally, he decided it was just to make sure there were no misunderstandings. So he gave a summary brief. He finished, “As a backup, we're working on a lash-up alternate programming set. All I can say is, we'll get it to the ship as soon as humanly possible.”

Foster said, “There's been a lot of heat on everybody. I think we've done pretty well.”

Niles grunted. “What's your predeployment schedule look like?”

“Structural firing of the sixteen-inch guns. Harpoon firing. Then refresher training, a week in Long Beach to catch our breath; then we'll shove off for the Med.”

“We'll have you operational before then,” Dan said. Niles tilted back and laced his hands behind his head. A moment later, he came back upright, groped for an Atomic Fireball, and leaned back again.

When the admiral relaxed, so did everyone else. Foster started packing a corncob pipe. “You know … I'm already seeing how this is going to be the start of a whole new mind-set for surface guys. I came up through destroyers, cruisers. Started out on
Willis Lee, Des Moines.
On the
John R. Craig
off Vietnam. I had
Ault
during the Syrian incursion.”

Dan sat up. “You were skippering
Ault,
sir? I was the guy directing your gunfire that day.”

“Is that right? I remember your voice. Sounded like it wasn't exactly a unanimous decision…. Have to compare notes sometime.

“Anyway, I came up through the classic surface pipeline, and tactically we'd think offensively—seize the initiative, strike first, manage the battle in our favor—but our basic mind-set's always been defensive. Defend the carrier. Defend the convoy. Defend ourselves. We left the offensive to the aviators.

“But having Harpoon and now Tomahawk on board— it's going to be like the days when Preble could stand off Tripoli and everybody knew, tick this guy off and he'll blow away your palace.”

After a few more pleasantries, Niles and Foster left for lunch with Admiral Willis.

Dan got a dog from the cart and was eating it at his desk when the phone rang. “JCM, Lieutenant Commander Lenson, this is a nonsecure line,” he said, holding the phone with a cocked head.

“Dan? Steve here.”

“Oh. How are you doing?” It was Manhurin. “Where are you calling from?”

“We're back at Provo. How's the frostbite?”

“Getting better. What you got? There're a million things on my desk.” He pulled the scratch pad over.

“It's about T two-oh-seven. The bird you slept with. Here's what we found out. We originally figured it was either the booster not separating or the tailfin shrouds hitting something on the way back after they opened. Well, when you found your missile, there wasn't any booster with it. So that cut the booster nonseparating theory to hell. Then we took a close look at the tail.”

“That chewed-up area?”

“Yeah. You noticed it, too. The top and starboard fins are gnawed to the point where they finally gave way. Looks like a big beaver got hold of them. Here's what we figure happened. You know you got two cables between the missile and the booster? They come out of the right side, through an access plate, and go back into the booster.”

“Right.” He reached out for a pub as the Air Force officer talked. He stopped at a diagram of the pyrotechnic separation system headed “Cable cutter at tail cone.”

“Well, the booster's bolted to the airframe during launch. When it burns out, there's a ring of shaped-charge explosive that runs around it.”

“Right, to blow away the booster and clear the exhaust port. We checked all that out.”

“Yeah, but that still leaves the cable. There's a separate cutter for that, inside the tail cone door. It's not explosive. It's pneumatic, actuated by the pressure cartridge that runs the valves and the thrusters. Follow so far?”

His mind jumped ahead. “So what you're getting at is, it doesn't cut clean.”

“Right, a half-assed blade strike, or none at all. That's
a big cable. It's got a slew of wires in it; it carries the power to run the thrust vector tabs.”

“But if it doesn't cut, it'll still tear out of the booster as it blows free.”

“Right, only there's a steel bracket that helps the cable bend down as it runs into the booster. It tears out at the roots, but it's still got that bracket hanging on at the end of about a foot and a half of cable. And it flails and flails in that five-hundred-mile-an-hour airstream till it shreds the tailfins. The guidance keeps trimming to correct, but eventually it loses so much control surface, it falls out of the sky. Kerblooey.”

He swung his chair, visualizing it. “What's the cutter look like?”

“We opened that port up and, bingo, it's got a big crack in the housing. Factory's taking it apart.”

“So it's not thrust tabs, not the booster; it's some sloppy-acting cable cutter? Why'd it take us so long to figure this out?”

“My guess is that sometimes the blade works, sometimes not. It might mean you're getting low pressure off the cartridge. Or grit, corrosion … anything that keeps that piston from sliding. But why it took so long … well, when it crashed before, when the airframe hit the ground, the cable must have sheared away then. The only way we could have found out what was really going on would have been if we had a soft recovery of a failed bird. Like the one you brought back.”