The Passage (36 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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“Ask him—” said Dan, but he didn't get to finish his sentence. The air controller said, “Mike twenty-eight, Mayday, going to autorotate; engine failure, power failure—”
“Son of a bitch,” said Dan. He sat frozen in the chair for an endless second. Then he remembered. Mike 28 had taken off to port;
Barrett
was
still turning to port—
“Bridge, TAO: Do you have the helo in sight?”
No answer. He didn't call again. Instead, he hit the deck running. Radarmen jumped out of his way. He slammed through the door, pounded up the ladder, burst out onto the bridge. “OOD!”
“JOOD, sir!” Kessler said, turning to him.
“Where's the chopper, Casey? Where the fuck is
Harper
?
”
Kessler goggled at him. Dan swept the bridge with his eyes, then leaned to look out. A shadow that had to be the helicopter, all lights off, was settling into the water dead ahead—so close, he could hear the rotors, powerless, windmilling down.
“This is Lieutenant Lenson. I have the deck and the conn. All engines back full! Left hard rudder! Flight crash alarm!”
The pilothouse broke into shouting, alarms. Harper ran in in the middle of it. Dan didn't stop, just kept yelling orders, dreading the crunch and slam that would mean they'd hit the chopper. But it didn't come. Then the starboard lookout shouted, “Helicopter, in the water, passing down starboard side!”
“Meet her! Steady as you go! Engines stop.”
“Mr. Lenson, I have the deck—”
“No, I do. Radio, Bridge: Patch helo control circuit to position six. Boatswain, call the motor whaleboat away.”
“Captain's on the bridge—”
“What in God's name is going on?” Leighty's voice cracked like a shot. Dan explained, pointing out to where the helicopter rolled
violently in
Barrett'
s wake. “He just called engine failure, sir, then autorotated in with his lights out.”
“Do you have comms?”
“Not since he went in. Sir, he came down directly ahead of us. I thought we were going to hit him. I took over and maneuvered to avoid.” He glanced at Harper and raised his voice so that everyone could hear. “I will now give Mr. Harper back the deck and the conn.”
Leighty frowned but didn't say anything. He went out on the starboard wing with Harper. The chief warrant called back, “This is Mr. Harper. I have the deck and the conn. Engines ahead one-third, right five degrees rudder. Boatswain, have you got the motor whaleboat on the line?”
 
 
TWO hours later, the tenor voice said, “Come in.” Dan opened the joiner door and stepped in, taking his cap off.
The captain's sea cabin looked the same as it had last time, except messier. The blackout drapes were drawn so tight none of the morning light bled in. Only the corner lamp was on. In the lowered light, it looked more intimate and less official.
Leighty swiveled from his desk. “Dan. How's the hook look?”
“It's holding, sir.”
“Grab yourself some joe. Make a head call, then I'll be right with you. By the way, we got some good news. Mr. Cash brought the message up. We've gotten a reprieve on the missing gear.”
“A reprieve?”
“Funding-wise, I mean. Since Sipple can't answer for it and the investigation dead-ended, the type commander decided to cover most of it out of his discretionary fund. Norm has the accounting data, but the big picture, they're picking up the tab for the controlled equipment. We're still stuck with the missing cash and the silver bars. That's sixteen thousand some—”
“Sixteen thousand, six hundred, sir,” said Dan. He'd worried over it for so long, he knew each sum to the dollar. “That's great news. It'll be a lot easier to cover that than a quarter million.”
“Good,” said Leighty. He seemed about to add something but then didn't.
Instead, he went next door and half-closed the joiner door. Dan heard water rattle while he poured himself coffee. The adrenaline rush when the chopper went down had evaporated, leaving him shaky and prone to snap at people. That
was
good news, about the funding, but if only he could get a little sleep … .
Leighty came out, toweling his face, in uniform trousers and undershirt. “Hairy there for a couple of minutes.”
“Yes, sir. But it turned out all right.” They'd stayed with the helicopter till the pilots located the problem, then maneuvered to provide a lee as they tested the engines and finally lifted off again in a blast of spray. Then they proceeded on in for the anchoring exercise. Leighty had decided to stay anchored out, swing around the hook and give the men rope-yarn Sunday.
“The shoot went well. How's the ACDADS effort progressing? Have you got the Crud tracked down yet?”
He cleared his throat. Yes, the shoot had gone all right, but only by blocking out most of the combat system and feeding in their designations and spotting corrections manually. Tracing the Crud
… they'd found its telltale damage on every tape that had gone through the computers. That included operating systems, modules, and data tapes, navigation, radio, and sonar. Everything except, for some reason, the Link 11 module, the one that linked
Barrett
to other NTDS-equipped ships. Then they'd hit an invisible wall. Though they could see traces of it everywhere, in the wreckage it left in the code, when Shrobo had tried to isolate the virus itself, it slipped through their fingers, vanishing like a ghost. He told the captain all this, and Leighty nodded somberly, listening. When Dan was done, he just said, “And the battle problem?” “I can only say it's going to be close, sir. Mr. Shrobo has some new ideas he's trying. Maybe we'll have a breakthrough.”
Leighty nodded again. “I hope so, too. There's a lot riding on it. Keep me informed … . Next subject. You took the deck from Jay this morning.”
“I felt I had to, sir. We got a transmission from the helo indicating they had engine trouble. I called the bridge, but there was no answer, so I left Combat and ran up. The officer of the deck was not in evidence. The JOOD, Mr. Kessler, is a good performer, but I judged that we were in extremis, so I took action.”
The phone buzzed. Leighty snatched it off the bulkhead. “Captain … . Hi, Dwight … . How many gallons? Are the evaps in limits? Send it to potable and bromate them. Yeah.” He hung up and rubbed his eyes. “So, where was Mr. Harper?”
“He says he was in the ET shop.”
“He had the deck, and he was in the electronics shop?”
“He said he was there only a moment, sir. It's fifty feet aft of the bridge and on the same level. He wanted to find out our grade on the radar-repair exercise.”
“I don't buy that. That's not the way I want my bridge run.”
“No, sir—but he's always been a good shiphandler, in my estimation.”
“Mine, too. But I've noticed a falloff in his level of performance, his level of interest lately.” Leighty pinned him with a glance. “The exec has noticed it, too. Mentioned it to me. Have you?”
“Maybe, sir,” he said reluctantly.
“Have you discussed it with him, this decline? How close are you to him, Dan?”
“I've been to his house. Went sailing with him once.” He sipped coffee. “But I think you're right, sir. He's not an easy guy to tell he's wrong. But I'll give him a talking-to.”
The captain sat down. He said, closing his eyes, “Okay, let me know how it goes … . We're all locked down on Gitmo right now. And that's as it should be. But I don't want to get so focused on the drills that we lose track of what's going on in the real world.”
“No, sir.”
“You know, I don't entirely believe in the way the Navy runs things, Dan.”
Dan thought this was an abrupt change of subject. But maybe the captain had made some sort of transition he hadn't followed, tired as he was. “You don't, sir?”
“No. It's as if we can only do one thing at a time. Engineering readiness, or shipboard security, or racial awareness—they're all good, but we need to do them all the time, not just two weeks before the inspection. I'm not even sure we ought to have inspections.”
“You get what you inspect,” Dan said. “Isn't that what Admiral Rickover said?”
The phone buzzed again. “Captain. What? Permission granted. Make it so.” He hung up and stared blankly at Dan. “What were we talking about? … Oh, inspections.
“I'm not sure who said it, but it's exactly right—and exactly wrong. The XO and I should spend half our time preparing the ship for battle—tactics, intelligence, training. Instead, we spend all our time preparing for the next inspection. Here in Gitmo's the only time we actually train to fight. And even here, there's too much emphasis on doing things the approved way.” Leighty frowned. “I'm a radical in a lot of ways, Dan. I think we micromanage too much. We strive for control, but what we get is bookkeeping. We say we want tacticians and innovators, but what the system selects for is adminstrators and inspection-passers.”
Dan wondered why the captain was telling him this. It seemed like a conversation he ought to be having with Vysotksy, or better, with another skipper at the club. “I agree with some of that, sir,” he said. “But I'm not sure why you're telling me.”
“You're one of my best officers,” said Leighty, shrugging. “You seem like a serious person, someone who reflects on things. You have ideals, but they're not inflexible. But you also seem lonely. I know you've been upset about losing your wife.”
He couldn't help sighing. “I guess it takes a while. Actually, I miss my daughter more.”
“You're dating?”
“That didn't work out too well, either.”
“You know, friendships are important in the service.”
Dan looked at Leighty's leg, crossed toward him, and at the captain's bare arm. For a moment, everything seemed relaxed, commonplace, homelike—not at all like sitting with the commanding officer. It was more like having a talk with an older buddy. He could smell the captain's aftershave. The skin on his arms looked smooth and pale.
For just a moment, he saw that skin as not belonging to another man, or as not belonging to either a man or a woman, but simply as bare flesh. He imagined what it would feel like: warm, slightly hairy, slightly damp.
Suddenly, the compartment seemed dim. The air was cool, air conditioning blasting out of the diffuser, but he started to sweat. “Sir, I feel uncomfortable about this,” he blurted.
“Uncomfortable. Why?”
“I have a good deal of respect for you, sir, but I just feel … uncomfortable.”
“I wasn't talking about much of anything, Dan. Certainly not about anything I thought would upset you. You mean about friendship?”
“Sir, I'm not sure it would be appropriate between junior and senior.”
“I know what you mean,” said Leighty. “But I don't see anything inappropriate about two officers having a private discussion. You know, when you get a little older, get some shore duty under your belt, you'll understand how things are done. You've heard of the ‘rabbi' system, I'm sure. Well … there are different kinds of rabbi systems.”
Dan looked at Leighty, his heart hammering. “What about Diehl? The investigation?”
“Diehl's been satisfied. I don't mind telling you, he suspected you—”
“He suspected
me
?”
“Oh yes. He came to me with that, including some statements he'd gathered from others aboard ship. I told him that whatever they thought, they were wrong; that I had the highest confidence in you; that in destroying the diary, you undoubtedly acted in accordance with the most honorable intentions; that his suspicions about you,
whatever they might be
, were groundless.”
Dan stared at the captain. Leighty looked back, holding his eyes.
He lurched to his feet suddenly, onto legs that felt numb and separate. Without saying a word, without being dismissed or asking for dismissal, he let himself out, closing the door quietly behind him.
He stood in the corridor, heart shaking his chest so hard he felt
dizzy. Then he heard a movement from inside. He flinched, went around the corner to the ladder and slid down it, and jogged aft till he had several compartments between himself and the sea cabin. Sailors walked by, giving him quizzical glances.
Had the captain just made a pass at him?
Or was he weird from fatigue, imagining things?
Had he actually been attracted to Leighty for a few seconds? Had he really wanted to
touch
him?
He thought again of Diehl, realizing with horror that what he'd done with the diary, and everything he'd said to the NIS agent, had been based squarely and solely on Leighty's word that he wasn't gay—Leighty's
unsupported
word.

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