Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (19 page)

He remembered how during previous interferences with navigation, the Iranian state oil company had sold heavily as the price of oil futures peaked, then sold short as the West cleared the sea lanes again. Cashing in as the price rose, then again on the fall.

As corpses drifted in the warm Gulf, tossed by the waves, their sightless faces caressed by the dust-laden wind.

“Secure from general quarters?” Mills asked. Glancing at him, Dan saw awe. Respect. Saw the same expressions around him, from the consoles and watch stations. How strange, that they should look at him this way, while he himself felt only relief they’d survived.

Without a word, he nodded. Unbent, and lurched to his feet. Staggered once, weaving, as his calves cramped. Then stalked silently through his silent crew, until he could dog a steel door between him and them.

8

The United Arab Emirates

JEBAL
Ali, in the United Arab Emirates, was a gigantic commercial port, larger than Norfolk or Long Beach, with square miles of baking asphalt, mountains of containers, dozens of offload cranes. Then more square miles of petrochemical tanks, all shimmering in a baking sun that hit Dan like a red-hot bullet as soon as he stepped outside the skin of the ship. In deep summer, everything was shrouded in the shamal-borne dust, fine as triple-X sugar, that at times made it hard to see a softball-throw distant.

It was also only about twenty miles from Dubai City. But after a talk with the husbanding agent—and how Mr. Hamid loved to talk, droning on eagerly about all the flag officers he knew, all the U.S. ships he’d serviced—Dan decided, reluctantly, against granting liberty. The crew deserved R&R, and he wouldn’t have minded seeing the fabled city himself. But there was just too much to do—inspecting the damage to
Mitscher,
then getting his after-action report sent off. After that, arranging for sewage disposal, fresh food, currency exchange, line handlers, fenders, refueling, repainting the scorch marks from the launches, and offloading garbage and onloading ammo. Plus taking generators and pumps down for maintenance and maybe getting a freshwater washdown, if they could get enough water pierside.

Not to mention a thousand other details … all to be completed in forty-eight hours. Fifth Fleet wanted them under way again as soon as possible for a transit the other way, outbound. He didn’t look forward to that. The Revolutionary Guard had been able to study his tactics. Now they could game it out and, maybe, come up with something unexpected.

Also, after what had happened to USS
Cole
in a supposedly safe port, Dan was loath to leave his command half-manned, no matter how secure the locals assured him the place was. Aside from a UAE gunboat, he and
Mitscher,
moored on the far side of the basin, were the only two gray ships there. The security net, and the RHIB patrols both ships had out, made him feel a little safer. But if a terrorist decided to kamikaze alongside in a speedboat loaded with explosives,
Savo
wouldn’t be hard to find.

After a talk with Cheryl, he’d agreed to let the guys and girls spend down time in the Sand Pit, a fenced, air-conditioned, U.S.-only facility where they could phone home, listen to music, and play video games. Surrounded on three sides by oil field supply yards, tank farms, and container warehousing, it was unglamorous, but there was a pool, a shaded picnic area, a volleyball court.

And a bar, with American and local beer, below even commissary prices. That should cheer them up a bit.

*   *   *

HE
went over the last evening in port, maybe for a burger and fries that didn’t come off the mess decks. It was only three hundred yards from pierside, but he stopped a few steps up the shore and stood with fingers tucked under his belt, watching the water. Under the frosting of dust and scum it looked inviting. Small silver and black fish flickered in and out of the riprap. Familiar, but he couldn’t put a name to them. He lingered for several minutes, sweating, mind echoing as hollowly as a house after the movers have left. Just watching the fish.

By the time he got to the Pit his khakis were soaked and the airborne grit sticking to the sweat made every step a chafing torment. Rit Carpenter was sprawled with several chiefs and first class in lounge chairs in the bar. Some he didn’t know, likely
Mitscher
men. They fell silent as he came in. The yeasty, malted smells of booze and beer didn’t feel entirely comfortable. He’d had to stop drinking years before. But he didn’t feel out of place, the way he had when he’d first gone on the wagon. The idea of voluntarily ingesting a toxic chemical just seemed weird now. He said, only half joking, “Telling on me again, Rit?”

The old sonarman waved a longneck. “Hell, Skip, we been through some shit, right? I can’t tell a sea story, what’s a deployment for? Hey, guys, it’s oh-beer-thirty. What say, let’s buy the skipper one.”

“Maybe in a minute. After I check out the store.”

“We’ll be here.” Chief Slaughenhaupt looked drowsy, already half in the bag. “Hey … Lois says she got your message out to the dependents. They appreciate it.”

Dan nodded. “Thank her for me, Chief. I’m gonna check out the store, then grab a burger. Join you after, if you’re still here.”

“Where else could we go?” Carpenter muttered. He drained the longneck and signaled for another. Dan took the slender, ponytailed bartender for a girl at first, then realized at a second glance he wasn’t.

He checked out the little store, bought postcards. Looked over the tourist-trap trinkets, the heavy gold jewelry. Not Blair’s style, nor his daughter’s, either.

Then he noticed, against the wall, stacks of colorful cloth.

Shemaghs, desert-style cotton head-wraps with distinctive stitched designs. The clerk, who was Pakistani or Bangladeshi, spread them out on the counter, said they’d just come in. He explained how they protected the face from sun, the lungs from dust. Dan asked what the various colors and designs meant, and got more explanation than he needed, plus a demonstration of the various ways to wear one: a turban, a face-wrap, a bandanna.

There were bales of the things, and the prices were reasonable. He bought one in olive and black, after the clerk assured him this didn’t belong to any particular nationality or tribe. The postcards went to his brothers and his daughter, a few words apiece on the back of a glossy colorful shot of Dubai. When they were stamped and in the blue U.S. Mail box he slid into a diner booth and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. The waiter talked him into a Lebanese nonalcoholic beer. At the first taste, he grimaced at the unexpected bite of lemon. Well, he wouldn’t have to worry about scurvy.

He kept glancing at the phone booths. On most the handsets dangled, the international signal for “out of order.” He’d e-mailed Blair almost every day, though of late his messages had been short, as had her replies. But all at once, he yearned to hear her voice. He checked his watch as he sipped the lemon beer … okay, so it grew on you. The time difference was eight hours … so it’d be around seven. She was usually an early riser.

To his surprise, his Verizon card worked. She picked up on the third ring. “Who’s this?”

He smiled, picturing her lying in tumbled sheets. A little grumpy and disoriented, the way she was first thing, before her coffee. Maybe in the black silk pajamas he’d given her, practically see-through, breasts and nipples and the swell of her mons all perfectly outlined in glossy, sheer fabric. Shit, he was getting hard.

“Dan? I almost didn’t pick up. Where’re you calling from? God, there’s a huge delay.”

“Someplace hot and dry. Here for two days. Under way again tomorrow.”

A pause, which he broke with “How’ve you been doing? Any progress on the fund-raising?”

“Oh, we’re all right … ugh, the fucking fund-raising. I spend two hours every morning calling people and asking for donations. They all want something for their money. Guess I can’t blame them for that. They’re talking about redrawing the district … oh, let’s not talk about that. I guess the big news is we have a new member of the family.”

Dan blinked. “What?” Had Nan gotten—

“He’s black and white. And cute as hell.”

“He’s a … what? A puppy?”

“Puppy? No, you’ve always got to be there for a dog. I learned that from Checkie, and his Labs. So fucking needy. No, a kitten. I got it from Ina.”

Ina was her English girlhood friend, who lived several miles away in Maryland. “Well, I guess that’s good. Has he, she—has it got a name?”

“It’s a ‘he,’ and his name is Jimbo. How’s your cough doing? Your throat?”

“Not too bad. The dust irritates it, though. You remember what it’s like out here.”

“Yeah. How’s your crew?”

“Oh, fine … We’re still seeing that respiratory bug. But they’re holding up. Actually, I’ve been trying to think of things to weld them together better, give them a little more esprit.”

“Oh! You made the
Post
. Third page, continued from the second. ‘Renewed Friction in Strait of Hormuz.’”

“Friction, huh? It was more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

She sounded surprised, and he checked himself, wondering. Were both sides close-holding accounts of the action? He checked outside the booth; the senior enlisted were still talking and drinking. Outside, in the falling dark, lights were coming on, and it looked as if a drunken volleyball tournament was starting. “Um, well, more than I want to discuss on the phone. I’ll send you a detailed e-mail. You still have that covered account through SAIC, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’m still listed as a consultant.”

“Look, I’m putting stuff out to the dependents through Chief Slaughenhaupt’s wife, but if it’s in the papers, it might be good to reassure the families. Have them get something personal from you. A note, or an e-mail. Think you could take up some of the slack? Maybe—”

“Dan, I understand, the CO’s wife is supposed to do that stuff. But I’m not a traditional captain’s wife. Running for office is like having two full-time jobs. Unless you really, really have something you desperately need me to do, I’d rather you stayed with your regular ombudsperson, or whatever.”

He glanced out again, pulled the sliding door shut. Not a cheering answer, but pretty much the response he’d expected. And maybe it wasn’t smart to ask the next question, either. The mid-deployment phone call … so much had to be crammed into these minutes, so much else left unsaid … “Look, are we still good? You and me?”

A pause. “We still need to talk. What you’re going to do, if I’m a sitting member of Congress. And what
I’m
going to do, if I lose.”

“That’s about our careers. What about
us
?”

She sighed. “I’m still thinking. Maybe it’s just, I don’t know, getting older, losing my looks—”

“Good grief, Blair. You haven’t lost anything! If this is about your ear—”

“Not really. I’m not
that
shallow—”

He said, “I didn’t mean to say you were,” but the delay made it awkward and she was speaking again by the time his words reached her, leaving them talking over each other in a not-quite-argument, not-quite-friendly exchange that petered out into silence. Until there was nothing more to say but an awkward good-bye.

When he went back into the bar the chiefs looked him over, tsk-tsking. “Rough call home?” Zotcher said. When Dan shrugged, he beckoned the barkeep. “You like those lemon pops? I saw you makin’ a face.”

“I guess they’re all right.”

“Another of those for the skipper,” Carpenter called.

Dan opened the plastic bag the clerk had given him. He pulled out the shemagh and unfolded it on the table. The chiefs frowned at it, then at him.

“Let me run an idea past you,” he said.

*   *   *

THEY
got under way just after dawn, beneath a sky the color of a sander belt and a wind that blew banks of airborne grit past them like mist on some haunted moor. Then steamed in six-knot squares through the morning, as the supertankers they were to escort were delayed getting under way.

At last their monstrous shadows loomed through a pale red half-light as if some lander were televising it from Mars.
Mitscher
fell in astern as they joined up off the Great Pearl Bank. The tankers eddied in and out of sight in a ruddy, tricky haze that closed in with a rising wind. Dan placed his task group to the north, intending to transit the outbound lane with
Mitscher
ahead this time,
Savo
bringing up the rear. He went to general quarters an hour from the western entrance, developing a thorough air and surface picture.

Face taco’d in one of the shemaghs, he leaned back in his wing chair, coughing. The very air hurt to breathe. The sun microwaved through the haze. The bridge wing thermometer stood at 125 degrees. He wouldn’t be able to stay out long. The only other person outside was the mine lookout, up in the eyes of the ship. He stood motionless as a figurehead, one hand on the wildcat, staring ahead.

But he didn’t want to go inside. Since the battle, he’d felt depressed. In there, the line would form. Messages. Reports. Decisions. He’d told Cheryl to manage the routine stuff. Only if something hot came in would she route it out to him. She was taking hold. Which wasn’t easy—the XO’s basic job description being to act as the leading asshole. To demand more than anyone could offer, and keep driving standards upward. It had broken the previous exec, and come close to breaking Dan, back when he’d had the job. In some ways, being the skipper was easier.

Aside from making those life-and-death decisions, of course.

He shaded his gaze into the wind. The sand, the dust, the scarlet sky, the sheen of brown scum on the weirdly still sea, reminded him of Earnest Will. The escort mission that had ended with
Turner Van Zandt
’s sinking. But also where he’d met Blair, on a fact-finding mission for the Armed Services Committee.

For a long time, the relationship had been on and off, passionate when they were together, but comfortable apart, too. Then they’d gotten married. And for a time it had all seemed fine.