37

EAST CHINA SEA
0600 HOURS ZONE TIME; AUGUST 20, 2006

“Captain, we’re ready for you on the fantail.”

“Very well. I’m on my way.”

Amanda returned the interphone to its cradle. Rising from behind her desk, she donned a dark uniform Windcheater and the overseas cap that she scarcely ever wore. She glanced back one final time at the Bible that lay on her desktop, then stepped out into the passageway.

The fiery multicolors of dawn had faded into the vibrant blue of a tropic morning sky. It was a blue that matched the sea, a sea unmarked except for the pale etching of the Cunningham’s wake as it curved away toward the horizon.

There were twelve others waiting for her aft: Arkady, Christine, Dr. Golden, Chief Hospital Corpsman Bonnie Robinson, and Chief Thomson. There were also the seven enlisted hands of the firing detail, each cradling an M-16 rifle.

Finally, there was the trestle right aft at the stern rail, and the form wrapped in white canvas and the blood-red flag of Communist China. This latter wasn’t standard issue in the flag locker of a U.S. Navy man-of-war, but they had improvised.

A strip of yellow plastic radiation-warning ribbon had been looped out on stands around the body of the Chinese submariner, separating the burial party from him in death as culture and ideology had in life.

As she approached, Chief Thomson gave the brim of his cap a short tug. “Good morning, ma’am.”

“Are we ready, Chief?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Carry on.”

Thomson nodded and barked out his next command. “Attention on deck!”

There was a brief shifting and scuffling of shoes on RAM tile as all hands hit a brace. Her were facing full forward, but still, Amanda could feel their eyes on her. This was a time to think about mortality, their own and others, and a time to seek for answers. Never more than now was she “captain under God.”

“We do not know this man,” she began after a moment. “We do not know his beliefs, his hopes, or even his name. We do know that he was a mariner, as are we all, that he did his duty to his homeland, as have we all, and that he hoped someday to return to those who loved him, as do we all.

“Though we may stand at war with his nation, our conflicts with this man are past. We are at peace, and we wish him well on his last and greatest voyage … Stop engines!”

“Stop engines!” Chief Thomson echoed her words into his command phone.

The steady pulsebeat of the Cunningham’s engines stilled.

“Salute!”

Hands flicked up with precision, fingers locked. The firing detail turned outboard, rifles coming up to their shoulders, slender barrels angling toward the sky. A rippling crack repeated three times, expended shell casings tinkling down to the deck.

Not requiring a command, Chief Thomson and Vince Arkady broke attention and stepped forward. Ducking under the ribbon line, they took up a position at the head of the trestle and up-angled the plank.

The body slipped back over the rail and down into the sea with that sizzling zip that is so unlike any other sound in the world.

“At ease. Carry on.”

The burial detail broke up, and Amanda was just starting to turn back for the deck house when the 1-MC speakers rang across the deck. “Captain, please contact the CIC.”

Wordlessly, Chief Thomson removed his headset and passed it to her.

“Captain here. What’s up?”

“This is Dix Beltrain, Captain. I just thought you might want to know. We just got the word from the hunt boss on the Enterprise. We just killed another one.”

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