The Passage

16

And now it was the wet season. The sky poured rain on the empty fields, lying flat and untended under the drumming downpour. They looked brown and dead. But beneath the glistening soil, the cane was growing, putting out silent secret roots so that one day soon it would shoot upward into the light.

And like the cane, something secret was growing in Batey Number 3, as well.

Graciela stood at the central, under the dripping metal eaves of the machine station. Shivering, she looked off across the water shining dully in the wheel ruts, and beyond that at the empty fields and the palely glowing sky.

The men had begun work on the boat. She hadn’t seen it yet; it was too deep in the swamp, too hard to get to through marsh and mangrove. Mangrove was nearly impenetrable; you had to chop your way in, then wade through water filled with leeches and snakes — not for her, not now. Her other pregnancies hadn’t bothered her this much. She’d worked in the fields right up till the pains began. But this time felt different. Perhaps because she was older. Or the shock of Armando’s death … Whatever the reason, this baby seemed restless, disturbed. It kicked as if to punish her. And where before she’d been able to work all day, now she felt fatigued even as she woke. Some days, she was so exhausted that it was all she could do to drag herself to the clinic for the ration of German dried milk, reserved for children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers.

Today, the médico had told her it was gone, that the supplies were exhausted. But as soon as she’d stepped out of line, there was more for the others, behind her.

To hell with them. She was leaving. She hadn’t seen the boat yet, but Miguelito had come, full of himself, and told her about it — how Tomás and the others had studied his book, a child’s book about boats, only that one picture showed how the ribs and stringers were put together. The men had discussed this picture and measured it and finally started stealing materials and smuggling them piece by piece back to the marsh at night.

“And what does it look like now?” she’d asked him.

“Right now, two curved sides and no bottom.”

“It has no bottom?”

“Not yet. Tomás is building it upside down. The bottom will go on last. It’ll be tin. Then they’ll turn it over and put the deckhouse on, just like it shows in the book.”

“This tin bottom, it won’t leak?”

“Where they nail it, sure, but Xiomara stole inner tubes from the tractor shop. They’ll glue rubber over the nail heads to keep the water out.”

“Can they see this?” she worried. “If an airplane flies over—”

“It can’t. They cut fresh branches each time they go and put them over the boat. Julio says that’s what they taught them in the Young Pioneers. And Uncle Augustín, he says he’ll make that motor run.”

“And you? What will you do?”

“Oh, I just provided the plans,” the boy said, shrugging, but she could see how proud he was. “And I carry things and cut branches and help.”

Now she sighed. The downpour roared hollowly above her, arching off the corrugated metal roof in evenly spaced streams. It didn’t look as if it would ever stop. Settling her palm-leaf hat to shed the rain, she stepped heavily out into the yard.

Tomás had taken leadership of the plan to escape, just as she’d known he would. He’d assigned each person something to do: this one to steal plywood from the sugar mill, where they were pouring new footings; that one to get a compass; another to get gas and oil. Since she could neither go into the marsh nor carry anything heavy, he’d given her three tasks. First, collect foods that would not spoil on the trip. Two, find a map. And three, stitch rice sacks together to make a small sail.

Food — she’d found a little today. It was in the bag at her waist. The map was more important, though. They were peasants. They could go without food, even water, but without a map, they’d be lost out on the bahía. Beyond the marshlands lay the Camagüey archipelago, a labyrinthine scatter of deserted cays, islets, reefs, and lagoons that sealed off the interior of central Cuba like a great barred gate. She had to find a map …. Where had she seen one?

… Pinned up on a dirty wall … Where was her mind going? She didn’t mind being pregnant, but she hated what it did to her thoughts. Like scrambled eggs. She wished she had an egg; it would be good for the baby ….

“Compañera Lopez.”

She came to a halt, recalled to rutted earth, the smell of pig shit, the rain that soaked her thin jacket, the pain in swollen bare feet she could no longer force into boots. To the serious, slightly puffy face of Nenita Colon Marquez, wife of Rámon Colon and a member like him of Cooperative Number 179’s Committee to Defend the Revolution. Her black hair was pinned up under a uniform cap. Her wet fatigues were smeared with mud at knees and elbows, and she had a semiautomatic rifle slung over her shoulder. The muzzle was pointing down. To keep the rain out, Graciela supposed. A smear of soot on Nenita’s cheek made her coffee-colored skin look pale.

Graciela felt her knees start to quiver. A word from this woman and she’d be in a truck, on her way to the police station in Alcorcón.

“You look confused, comrade. Are you all right? Do you need a hand?”

“No, gracias, compañera.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh yes, oh yes.” She dropped her eyes to Nenita’s boots, forced a stupid smile. “You’ve been out in the mud. Militia duty?”

“A surprise recall. Fifteen minutes to dress and muster. You don’t have to go every time, but I try to do my duty when I can, with the children and my husband and all …. We get in trucks and they take us to the range for shooting practice. It makes my ears ring.” She looked at Graciela’s bare feet. “Have you had your tetanus shot?”

“Yes, comrade, but thank you for the reminder.”

“How’s the baby?”

“The baby … he’s not sitting comfortably today.”

“It’s a he, eh?”

“They say when the baby sits low, it is a male child.”

The smile ebbed from the other woman’s face, leaving a cold regard. “I was sorry to hear about your husband. I knew him only a little, but I regret his death. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, comrade.”

“I understand you’ve been buying food. Is this true, what they say in the store?”

She stood motionless. The militiawoman’s eyes held hers with a faint smile, as if she knew everything, as if she dared Graciela to admit it. Then she thought, It’s a trick; all they know is that I’ve been in the store. She shrugged. “Isn’t that allowed, to buy something to eat when you are hungry?”

“Certainly, but what’s wrong with your rations?”

“The rations are quite generous. We are well provided for. But I am embarazada, no? You’re a mother; you know how it is. One craves other things — tinned meat, chocolate.” She nodded to the bag she carried. “The little pickles in the glass jars. I think and think about these things, and finally I have to have them. And baby food, that might be gone when I need it, no?”

“But the money, compañera? Such things are expensive.”

“My husband was thrifty. I have a little money he saved from his wages.”

“Interesting,” said Marquez, “that he had money hidden away at the same time he was stealing food, isn’t it? But it’s not wise to keep cash. You should deposit it at the office. No matter how close we are to neighbors and relatives, we never know who can’t be trusted, do we? With money, with a husband — with a secret.”

Graciela kept her eyes down and her expression bovine. Was Marquez playing with her? Did she know about the midnight meeting, the plan? But if she suspected, why didn’t she just let the police know, or the pale gallego who’d spoken to Graciela in the cane? She knew she should keep on playing the idiot, act like she didn’t know anything. But instead, maybe just from being tired, a little flame flared. “Nenita, why do you ask me these questions, por favor? Is it really the business of the CDR to concern itself with a pregnant woman’s little treats?”

“Everything in the cooperative is our business, dear. But believe me, whatever your husband thought of us, we want what’s best for you. Your daughter Coralía is a dedicated socialist woman. We still remember when she addressed our Marxism-Leninism study circle. I want you to consider me a personal friend.”

“Thank you, Nenita. I appreciate that.”

The militiawoman looked around casually, as if, Graciela suddenly thought, she, too, was afraid to be overheard. The next moment, she was astonished to hear her mutter, “I’m worried, Graciela.”

“Worried, comrade? What about? We’re a little behind schedule, but—”

“I don’t mean that. I’m afraid hard times are coming.”

“They’re not going to cut the rations again, are they?”

“I mean politically. There were other prisoners released along with your husband. These other men were not as law-abiding. They were antisocial elements, enemies of the revolution. They swore to abandon their opposition, but apparently had no intention of keeping their word. They’ve burned a tobacco warehouse in Pinar del Rio. They burned a movie theater in Havana, with two hundred people inside, women and children.” She tapped the stock of the rifle. “It’s being coordinated by the CIA. That’s why we’re stepping up our training. If there’s fighting, we have to hold the line till the army arrives.”

“You think there might be trouble here?”

“Let me ask you something. If you knew people who were plotting against the state, what would you do? Would you inform the authorities?”

“What kind of plotting, Comrade Marquez?”

“I don’t know. Sabotage, rebellion, hidden arms, attempts to escape. Would you tell me?”

“Of course, compañera. Instantly.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“No, Comrade Marquez.”

“I would be grateful. No one would ever know it was you. And it could help your situation. You know, you are under a cloud now with the manager. Because of your husband.”

“Armando paid for his mistakes.”

“For stealing food, yes, but you see the cooperative no longer had his labor. They don’t lower the production quotas when our labor supply goes down.”

“Then they shouldn’t have sent him to prison.”

“That’s not the point. We’ve all gotten lax. Private vegetable plots, economic crime of all kinds, theft — a line has to be held. Otherwise, the campesinos would loot the state blind.”

“Instead, it is the campesinos who go blind.”

She could have bitten her tongue; it wasn’t smart to taunt a committee member, especially now. Sure enough, Nenita gave her a strange look. “Graciela, is something going on in Batey Number Three? What’s happened to Xiomara’s roof?”

“It was leaking. They’re replacing it with thatch; it lasts better and it’s not as noisy.”

“And I saw Tomás Guzman with his cousin a little while ago and they were carrying a sack. I asked them what was in it and they said they didn’t know. So I made them open it. Scraps of red cloth, and cooking oil. They said they’d found it and were taking it home. Well, of course it had to come from somewhere, and I had to be quite strict with them. If they try such things again, I shall have to report them.”

“Examples have to be made,” said Graciela. “Nenita, I’m getting cold; my legs hurt—”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Keeping you out in the rain, in your condition! I have some Bulgarian wine. I will open it and bring you a cupful.”

She looked after Marquez as she crossed the yard and disappeared into the office. She didn’t know what to make of what the committeewoman had said. What did it mean, there might be trouble? Marquez couldn’t mean their escape preparations. Everyone had been very careful. Even Tomás and Julio getting caught with the sack — unless you knew what it was for, you wouldn’t know it had anything to do with escape.

Or did she mean something bigger? “Counterrevolutionary activity”—everybody knew about the rebellions in the Escambray and the Sierra Maestra. The army had put them down — killed hundreds of peasants, relocated thousands. Could that happen here?

The thought of the army, war, killing made her feel faint. She began picking her way through the mud again. We have to leave, she thought. Maybe we’ll die, but we have to leave as soon as we can.

Wet, fatigued, and cold, she turned onto the lonely rainswept road that led to her batey.

But that thought, that she might not be here much longer, made the familiar muddy road look new to her as she trudged heavily along. It gave the glistening soil, the wide fields scattered with the tiny green shoots of new cane, such bittersweet beauty that she found herself wanting to cry. Her tears and her sweat had fallen in those fields; years of her life had passed in them. This was her home, and poor as it was, she would not leave it without regret.

Then the baby kicked and she thought quickly to it: I will tell you of this one day, of cane fields and mangroves. But you will not eat the bread of slavery, to fear and obey, to work all your life for distant masters. Your father fought till he could fight no more. I owe him that, that his last wish for you be granted, even if it has to be in a foreign land.

Either this child would be born in freedom or it would never see the light of the sun.

17

The sun burns through the noon sky in a blaze like a near-death experience. Below it lies a ship. From across the pier, through chain-link fences, a renewed burst of cheering and waving comes thin and already faint from three hundred throats. Kids flourish flags, pretending to one another they can send semaphore. Women wave with their free hands as hip-slung babies suck their thumbs. Carefully made-up girlfriends twist glossy fingernails into metal mesh, searching the ranks that line the rails. A nearly invisible rush of brown-tinted gas shimmers above the stacks. On the bridge, a knot of men lean out, looking down on it all.

On the starboard wing, standing with the captain, the starboard lookout, and two phone talkers, Dan drummed his fingers on the varnished ash bolted on top of the splinter shield.

Where the hell was the tech rep? The quarterdeck had taken a call last night that he was flying in, would be aboard before they got under way. But since then, nothing. Leighty had held up getting under way for nearly an hour now. Now he turned from the crowd, shaking his head, and said to Dan, “I guess he’s not coming. We’d better get out in the stream.”

“Aye aye, sir. Fantail: take in the brow. Forecastle, Fantail, Midships: Single up all lines. Engine Room: Stand by to answer all bells.” And a little while later, after sweeping his eyes down the pier one last time, he ordered, “All engines ahead one-third. Ship’s whistle, one prolonged blast.”

“Under way. Shift colors.”

The forecastle detail, spotless in summer whites, puts their backs to the last line. A moment later, the eye splice slithers through the chocks, dripping. At the bullnose, a petty officer hauls down the jack, folding it with quick stiff motions like a Nutcracker Suite toy soldier. Others detach the jackstaff toggles. As they finish, the deck division falls into ranks, facing where slowly, slowly the space of water between USS Barrett and the land widens. The sun glitters across the murky water. From other quarterdecks, other ships, men watch with professional interest, and something else: a reluctant fascination, affected by beauty almost against their will.

In an ancient festival, the people of Venice tossed a gold ring into the waves. The most beautiful thing they could make, they gave to the sea.

To the sea …

“Navigator recommends come right to course one-seven-five.”

Dan checked to starboard, then up and down the channel. It was clear — no ships, no barges, no pleasure craft. The radio, set to the harbor channel, hissed unmodulated, a voiceless somnolent sibilance. They had a different pilot today, not Papa Jack. Dan had told him he’d try taking it out without direction. The pilot had nodded and went out on the port wing. He was out there now enjoying a cigar; the men inside the pilothouse could smell it, that and the damp rich smell of the river …. God, it was nice being able to see. And slack tide, they didn’t have to fight the damn current this time.

From his chair, Leighty murmured, “Boot her in the ass. Get out of here, Mr. Lenson.”

“Aye, sir. Right fifteen degrees rudder, steady course one-seven-five. All engines ahead standard, indicate pitch and rpm for fifteen knots.”

Barrett accelerated smoothly and stood tall down the channel, rendering honors as she passed the senior officer present aboard USS Shenandoah. The buoys slid by like street signs, and after the forward marker of the Mount Pleasant range passed down the side, Dan turned the conn over to Horseheads. A cannon boomed out from Fort Sumter, and they rendered honors again, in case it was meant for them. The Park Service ran Sumter now; maybe they were doing some kind of historical thing.

The long arms of the jetties released them, and Barrett nodded slowly, remembering the rhythm of the sea. Then they, too, lay astern, and the sky fell unhindered to meet the dark flat blue. Dan stood on the wing as the pilot climbed down into the pilot boat. He looked up, gave them a casual salute, and Dan tapped one off to him. The boat cast off and curved away, throwing spray, and he told Horseheads, “Put her on base course and speed, what the navigator recommends. Make sure you run the dead-reckoning line out well ahead and check it on the chart.”

Horseheads nodded and went inside. A little while later, Dan watched the bow swing to a southerly heading. He went in then, too, and looked over the charts.

Morris, the chief quartermaster, pointed out their track: a thousand-mile great circle course from Charleston to the Caicos, where they’d alter course southwest to run through the Windward Passage to Guantánamo, on the south coast of Cuba. “Twelve hundred miles,” said Morris. “Speed of advance twenty knots, take us three days.”

Dan studied the Bahamas, the shallow sounds and islands where Columbus had struck land — San Salvador or Eleuthera or some other island, but somewhere in there the Old World had ground its keel on the sand of the New. He picked up dividers. They’d pass twenty-three miles off Punta Maisi, the eastern tip of Communist Cuba. He looked around the pilothouse, studied the surface plot — two contacts well astern, another with a closest point of approach of 11,000 yards — then went out on the wing again.

He stayed there for half an hour, letting Horseheads get a taste of being in charge. He leaned on the splinter shield and watched the sea go by fifty feet down, the deep summer blue-green of the Atlantic, frothed by Barrett’s skin friction as she drove through it.

The land had dropped out of sight when the radioman came up with the message that a helicopter was inbound to them, two hundred pounds of cargo and one passenger.

Dr. Henry S. Shrobo looked down from the hurtling aircraft, staring through the plastic window as beneath him land gave way to a wrinkled, blazing sea. He’d used the bathroom three times waiting to take off, but now he needed it again. He squeezed his eyes closed. It wasn’t healthy to compress the sphincter, but he didn’t seem to have a choice. He was pretty sure there was no bathroom anywhere in the vibrating aluminum cylinder that curved now in a clattering circle out over the glitter. Sunlight flickered over his sweating face. The way the men in flight suits had pushed him into his seat when he started to ask a question, roughly strapped him in when he tried to explain he needed out again just one more time … well, he just didn’t think he’d better unbuckle the straps.

It was hard to believe he’d been at work yesterday, secure in his routine, and that now he was hurtling outward to sea off South Carolina. Headed farther than that, to Cuba. The first hint was when he’d been asked to step into the office of the commanding officer, Fleet Combat Direction Systems Support Activity, Dam Neck, Virginia.

“Hank, I’m sorry to have to say this, but it sounds like our prototype ACDADS has developed a glitch. Who’ve you got available for a little on-scene consulting?”

But as he’d told the captain, all his senior programmers were in Hawaii, at the annual Advanced Combat Direction Systems Fleet Working Group conference. He’d have gone himself, but Hawaii was one of the most polluted areas of the country, as far as agricultural chemicals and insecticides went.

“You didn’t go because they spray the pineapples?” The captain sounded incredulous.

“Those are organophosphates, Ted. They don’t just stay on the crops; they contaminate the air, the roads, everything. And they don’t have a good effect on the body.”

That night, he was in a C-12 headed for Charleston. And then this morning, the helicopter had arrived, and they’d bundled him in — despite his changing his mind — and the well-padded, doublewrapped, nylon tape — strapped box with him.

He sat crouched in the seat, six feet three, thin as a rail, breathing hard and saying his mantra over and over.

Half an hour later, someone clapped his shoulder. He flinched and opened his eyes. The crewman was pointing out the window. He looked out and saw the boat.

It was so little and so far down. It moved steadily through the blue sea. He stared down as they approached. How were they going to get him down there?

“Get up, man.”

The crewman again, smaller than the others — and without much caring, Hank noticed he wasn’t a man; she was a woman. She flicked his buckles open and helped him up. He started to collapse back into the seat, but she swung him bodily and jammed him against the wall. Then she was putting a round yellow collar around him and another crewman was clacking a safety harness on beside the door.

Suddenly, he realized what they were going to do. He would have fought, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. He closed his eyes as his bowels let go.

The woman was screaming something from a contorted face. He couldn’t make it out over the suddenly world-filling roar as the outer door slid back. He stared out into blue blinding space.

They shoved him through the door like butchers handling a side of beef. His legs kicked helplessly at the air. He swung out, back, helpless in a blast of hot air and sound, dizzy, sick, terrified. Then steel slammed up under his feet. Hands pulled off the collar. His legs gave way and he fell. The hands tightened under his arms. He felt the rough steel surface grind at the knees of his suit as he was dragged across it.

They took him down to a clean, well-lighted place deep in the ship. Two men helped him out of his dirty torn suit. He told them he had clothes in his bag, but they just exchanged looks. “We didn’t see any bag, tall guy. They dumped a box and a briefcase with you, that’s all.”

He closed his eyes again. He’d shoved it under his seat as he got into the chopper, then forgotten it; the crew hadn’t seen it, and now here he was without clothes or toothbrush or even his vitamin supplements. They were all still aboard the helo — wherever it was now.

After a shower and a change, he climbed the ladder behind one of the sailors. He was surprised how large the ship was. It had looked so small from the sky. There were a lot of people aboard, too. Somehow he’d thought of boats as smaller, with just the computer systems and, of course, a few men to handle the ropes and motors and things.

The “bridge” turned out to be a control center high up in the ship. Several men were standing around, not doing much of anything. “Sir, here he is,” the corpsman said, and he was led over to someone in a chair.

“Welcome aboard Barrett. I’m Thomas Leighty, the captain.”

“Hi. Hank Shrobo,” he said. “I don’t shake hands, but I’m glad to meet you. Nothing personal. It’s just that rhinoviruses propagate that way.”

The captain, a small man in a white uniform, looked down at his own extended hand, then put it back on the arm of his chair. “Did sick bay take care of you?”

“Oh, yes. Just shaken up a little.” He swallowed. “It was a rough flight.”

“Just out of curiosity, why are you wearing scrub greens?” the captain asked him.

“My clothes didn’t make it, and my suit’s torn. The nurses loaned me these.”

“Nurses? Oh, the corpsmen. George! Come over here. This is the tech rep just came off the helo. This is George Vysotsky, my exec.”

“Did you bring the tapes?” the blond officer asked.

“Yes. Version Three-point-one ACDADS. A new version of the NTDS operating system, with double the track capacity. New comm and sonar modules. And a new Link Eleven tape, too, though your message said yours was okay.”

The blond guy was looking him up and down. His voice sounded hoarse. “You’re what? GS-eleven? GS-twelve?”

“I’m not a civil servant. I’m with Vartech Research, Incorporated. We support software for all NTDS-related systems.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” the exec asked him.

“No, I don’t feel too well. Actually, I’ve never been out in a boat before.” Shrobo swallowed, catching their exchange of looks: amused, condescending.

“Normally we call her a ship. Well, anyway, welcome aboard. George, have you got a place to put him?”

“We’ll fix something up, sir.”

“Dan, can you step over here? This is Lieutenant Lenson; he’s the combat systems officer. Dan, the tech rep from Vartech. We should be in Gitmo three days from now, uh, Hank. Hopefully you’ll have everything fixed for us then. Just in case you don’t we’ll get a message out, have them hunt your bag down and get it to us in Cuba.”

As he followed the exec down ladders and through passageways, all alike, till he no longer had any idea where he was, he wondered if he’d done the right thing. He hadn’t said he was not just a technician but also a Ph.D.; not just “with” Vartech but the head systems analyst, too. It would have sounded like he was puffing himself, but it was also something else.

He resented the way they looked at him, amused, pitying, as if knowing how to work with your mind wasn’t as manly as working with your hands. That had always enraged him, but he’d never really known how to react to it.

Dan stayed on the bridge till 1145, phasing into the normal watch rotation. Quintanilla came up and posted a four-section watch bill with Dan, Dave Cannon, Burdette Shuffert, and Jay Harper as OODs, and Van Cleef, Cash, Paul, and Kessler as JOODs. The engineers were off the watch bill, preparing for the arrival inspection. Dan told Morris to advise the navigator he had the next watch. The chief said Cannon knew, that he was eating early and would be right up.

The boatswain’s mate said, “Sir, Ensign Lohmeyer wants to have the at-sea fire party muster on the helo deck.”

“Make it so,” said Dan, thinking it was good to see the new officer taking hold. He’d seemed bewildered when he first came aboard, almost slow. “Ed, take another look out there at that freighter. Does he look like he’s coming right to you?”

When Cannon relieved him, he went down to lunch, feeling better than he had for days. Just being at sea made his problems seem less pressing. He dealt rapidly with spaghetti, pizza, canned beets, and steamed broccoli, then took a quick shower.

When he stopped by the computer room, Harper was briefing the tech rep. He watched them for a minute, amused at the contrast. The chief warrant, grizzled but fit, in his faded khakis, knife sheath, and steel-toed boots. He laced technical terms with the salty obscenities gleaned from a life at sea. The civilian — why was he wearing scrub greens? — was going bald, though he couldn’t be very old. He didn’t look like he got much exercise. His long, knobby fingers rested lightly on a panel as he listened, as if he could sense through them the streams of data coursing through the humming gray machines.

“Excuse me. I’m Lenson, the combat systems officer. We met on the bridge.”

“Hank Shrobo.”

“Glad to have you aboard. Anything you need, ask Mr. Harper here, or Chief Dawson. Got a bunk? They show you the mess decks?”

Shrobo said quietly that they had. Dan felt something strange about the guy. His color wasn’t good, as if the motion of the ship didn’t agree with him. Maybe it was just the scrub greens, though.

“Got him up to speed on our problem?”

“Just about.” Harper looked worried. Dan wondered if the glitch was worse than he thought. He wanted to ask, but he knew he was interrupting, so he just said he’d be back later and left, dogging the door quietly behind him.

He got an hour in with Cephas on the administrative package. They got through the rescue and assistance bill, the replenishment at sea bill, and the visit and search, boarding, and prize crew bill. Then they started on the departmental correspondence file. Around 1400, the boatswain’s call shrilled “attention.”

“This is the captain speaking.

“In three days we’ll be pulling into Guantánamo Bay for the toughest training the Navy provides. I want all division officers and chiefs to take one last look at the admin package. If there are any problems, let your department heads know now.

“This afternoon, and each morning and afternoon till we arrive, we’ll practice basic fire fighting, damage control, and engineering casualty control under the direction of the XO. He and Mr. Giordano have designed a series of walk-through drills to refamiliarize us with the basics. We’ll go through each one slowly and explain each step. Please ask questions and give all your attention to these drills.

“We will now go to general quarters, then break for training from there.”

The bong of the alarm. Dan reached for the phone and dialed the computer room. He told Dawson to have the guys working on the computers stand fast but to break off the others to the drill.

He found CA, CF, and CG divisions sitting in a circle on the fantail, in the swaying shadow of the after launcher. The props rumbled under them as the sea marched by. The air was very warm. He squatted, joining them as a damage controlman lifted a mass of black rubber, straps, tubes, and buckles. “The Model A-four quick-starting oxygen-breathing apparatus consists of four parts — one: airtight face piece with eyepieces and speaking diaphragm, two: exhalation and inhalation tubes; three: oxygenproducing canister; four: breathing bag ….”

They secured from GQ at 1630. He put in another hour in the office, stopped in the computer room, then went up to his stateroom.

The buzz of the phone woke him. He had the watch, the 20–24, eight to midnight. He told the messenger he’d be right up.

The bridge was almost dark and he felt his way around at first. Then, gradually, stars appeared beyond the windows; pilot lights on the radio remotes; the faint radiance from the binnacle, occluded as the helmsman leaned against the console, talking to the boatswain. Frowning — the bridge was supposed to be silent — he checked the chart, then the surface plot.

They were two hundred miles out of Charleston, off the Florida-Georgia border. It would be a long run now parallel to the Florida coast, then the southeasterly tending string of the Bahamas. There weren’t many ships out here. The glowing circle of the radar repeater showed him only two flaring pips. The radio circuits hadn’t changed since his watch. The ship was on split-plant operations, port steering system in operation, starboard in standby.

He was ready to relieve, but he couldn’t find Harper. He bumped into someone beside the bridge scuttlebutt and said, “Who’s that?”

“Hey, your quartermaster of the watch, Mr. Lenson. Quartermaster Third Class Lighthizer.”

“Evening, Lighthizer. Where’s Mr. Harper?”

“Check the port wing, sir. He’s been out there most of the watch, the guy I relieved said.”

Dan stopped in the door, looking out into the night. The wind flowed by steadily, warm but not uncomfortable. The stars looked blurry and huge; no moon yet. Two silhouettes stood at the port pelorus, and he heard the murmur of conversation. As he stepped out, it clarified into words.

“I just don’t see how she could do that, go out there, get her picture taken with them. Remember that, her with the antiaircraft gun? Shit, why didn’t the Commie bitch pull a trigger on our guys herself? I never bought a ticket to one of her pictures after that. Fuck her!”

Something inaudible from the lookout. The shadow turned, and a red glow came into view, brightening, then dimming.

“Oh yeah? Try SEAR school. Escape and Evasion. They put you in this mock concentration camp. The guards are sadists. Army Special Forces, Marine Corps, Air Force MPs. Hit you with the side of their fists. No food. A cup of rabbit soup. Some of the guys cooperated. Did whatever they told them to, spit on the flag, sign petitions. Not me. I escaped. Got under the wire, walked all night through the fucking swamp, turned myself in the next morning at the post headquarters. Nobody ever made it that far before—”

“Excuse me,” said Dan.

“Just a minute. So they give me a Spam sandwich and a glass of milk and take me back in a truck. The guards beat the shit out of me and throw me in the cage. Example to the others.” The shadows separated and Harper said, “You’re late, Lieutenant.”

“I was here. I spent fifteen minutes getting familiarized. Now I’m looking all over the bridge for you. What is this, you’re out here telling the lookouts sea stories?”

“It’s a long watch. So I passed a word with the guy.”

“He’s also smoking. You don’t let them smoke, and you don’t distract the lookouts, Chief Warrant. Where are the binoculars?”

“Binoculars … Hey, Lighthouse, where’s the fucking binoculars?”

Dan controlled himself. “Never mind. I’ll find them. What’s the engineering status?”

“It’s all on the board, night orders.”

“The night orders aren’t up yet.” Dan suddenly became conscious of other ears around them. “Who’s got the conn?”

“I do,” Kessler said from the darkness.

“We’re going in the chartroom for a second, Lieutenant.”

The red light in the little attached space made Harper look emaciated and diabolical. “Another ass-chewing?” he grunted.

“You rate one, Chief Warrant. You don’t know where the binoculars are because you haven’t been using them. You don’t know the engineering lineup, electric load, or what tonight’s ops are going to be. Do you?”

“What kind of Mickey Mouse bullshit is this?” said Harper. “Look, I’ve been OOD-qualified on ten ships and every CO gave me four-oh evals. You can chew the fat with the guys without breaking discipline, long’s they know you’ll turn around and beat their fuckin’ ass. Why don’t you just chill the fuck out?”

“I’m not going to match sea years with you. And chewing the rag — that’s not the point. They’re smoking outside the skin of the ship. That’ll cost us points in Gitmo, not to mention it ruins their night vision.”

“I’ve been to Gitmo five times. Robinson knows he can’t smoke in Condition Three. And he won’t.”

“And I’m telling you, you condone smoking on watch now, he’ll sneak a smoke later. And the next time I relieve you, I expect a proper turnover from a properly organized watch!”

“I stand relieved,” said Harper, tossed him a contemptuous salute, and left. Dan stood in the chartroom, so taken aback he didn’t respond. But when he went out, Harper was already gone. He said loudly, “This is Lieutenant Lenson. I have the deck and the conn. Belay your reports. Boatswain’s mate!”

“Sir.”

“Check all the lookouts. Any of them smoking, give the JOOD their names. Quartermaster! Inventory the binoculars and report to me if any are missing. Combat! Recalculate all contact courses, speeds, and CPAs. I want a complete update on the board by time fifteen. Mr. Van Cleef, call Main Control and update the plant lineup board. We’ll be doing a lost-steering drill this watch, then a maneuvering-board drill.”

When bridge and lookouts and combat had settled down again into the dark silence that meant a tight, alert watch, he checked the surface picture one last time, then turned the conn over to his new junior officer of the deck, Van Cleef. He leaned against the XO’s chair, looking out at the passing sea.

It was so black, it seemed to pull all light into itself. Yet even this long after sunset, a glow lingered far to the west. Water crashed and rumbled as Barrett’s ax-sharp stem cut it apart and peeled it back. Beneath it whirled the blurry luminescence of the suddenly exposed deep, mysterious and beckoning, more profound than any man could ever know and still live. The Gulf Stream, he remembered. They were breasting the greatest river on earth, the shoreless stream that carried the heat of the equator from tropic to pole.

But he was remembering another night, the shriek of the storm in an old ship’s top-hamper as Alan Evlin had explained the world and human life to him. Looking out now, he seemed to see again a huge Arctic comber, moving in on them out of the north, black on deeper black, a green phosphorescence rippling and flickering along its crest.

“There are things you can’t say in words,” the gentle lieutenant had said, Dan so green then that he’d hardly known his way from one side of the bridge to the other. “Just look out there, and think about it.”

The wave was almost on them. “Get ready, Ali. Here comes a big mother.”

“Got her clamped, sir.” The strong black face behind the wheel.

“Coffee, sir?” muttered Pettus. Yeah, he remembered Pettus, too.

The sea hit them square, so hard that the old tin can’s bones shook. He reached out to grip steel, but it was Barrett’s fabric he gripped, not Reynolds Ryan’s. It was tonight and not years before. He was older now and not nearly so naïve, so trusting, and so idealistic.

He suddenly missed Evlin, Packer, all the guys who’d died in Ryan. Did their spirits linger over the sea, as their bodies had become part of it? Because they were all still out here, in the greatest graveyard on earth — or at least the dissolved atoms that had once been their bodies. Maybe they were spinning through Barrett’s screws right now. Atoms remembered nothing; they were changeless and eternal. But what had happened to their spirits? Was there such a thing as an immortal soul, or, as Evlin had thought, a little splinter of the infinite within each creature that had the capability of choice?

Van Cleef, beside him: “Night orders, sir.”

He clicked on the red light over the chart table. The captain’s handwriting slanted big and bold across the form. He read down the own-ship and weather data, noting moonrise later that night; temperatures in the mid-eighties, visibility unlimited; independent steaming, remain alert for small contacts not registering on radar. Sonar to conduct self-noise testing at midnight. The engineers to do casualty control exercises from 0130–0500. He signed the 20–24 block and passed it back.

Yeah, this was what the Navy was all about: going to sea. Or was it? Maybe it was really about the stuff they spent 90 percent of their time doing — paperwork, messages, drills, inspections, administration. Was it about responsibility and honor? Or about making decisions he didn’t want to make, serving under people he didn’t trust, making compromises he hated?

“Say, sir,” said a voice beside him, and he flinched, but it was only Van Cleef. “I was wondering … when you were getting under way the other day, you used the mooring lines to get the ship around. How do you know how much force to put on them? Is there any trick to that?”

“You have to have the lines over right. If you can get the bow and stern lines perpendicular to the pier, you can control the lateral position of the bow and stern. Then take in on the spring lines to move you fore and aft ….”

He thought again of Evlin and Norden and Packer as he tried to pass on some of what he’d learned to Van Cleef. For just a moment, staring at his silhouette in the dark, he saw himself again in the young man: eager to learn and contribute and perform.

And when someday the Cowcatcher was standing here, explaining shiphandling to someone else, where would he, Dan Lenson, be then? He’d always remember the nights at sea, the camaraderie, the fatigue, but one day he’d go ashore for good, and all this would be memories or less than that. His passing was as inevitable as that of every wave under the keel. All that would remain of him was what he could hand on to others — the knowledge and the craft — and beyond that what meaning he could wrest or guess at from the world and the sea, the glittering of Sirius and Deneb and the faces of human beings, each clouded or bright in his own way, like the stars.

“Mr. Lenson.”

The rough-edged voice could only belong to one man. He turned quickly, to find Vysotsky’s shadow between him and the helm console. “Yes, sir. Good evening, XO.”

“Evening. Everything quiet?”

“Yes, sir. I was just telling Keon how you use warping lines to get under way.”

“I don’t think you can do better than emulate Mr. Lenson, in terms of watch standing and shiphandling.”

“Yes, sir,” said Van Cleef. Dan didn’t say anything. Praise made him feel uncomfortable, especially from someone who would dismiss a set of charges at his superior’s say-so.

The executive officer stood motionless for a while, then hoisted himself up into his chair. “How’s the computer expert doing? Shrobo?”

“He doesn’t have any sea legs, but he seems to know his way around a YUK-seven, sir.”

“Any progress?”

“He’s down there working the problem, but it’ll take a while to get the new programming loaded and checked out.”

“I want your guys to pick up all they can from him, in case it happens again after he leaves. And it’s a great training opportunity for them.”

“Yes, sir. They’re down there, Dawson and Williams and the others.”

Vysotsky didn’t say anything for a time. Dan glanced back as the phone talker began jotting up data on a new surface contact. “You have that on radar, Mr. Van Cleef?”

“Yes, sir. Closest point of approach, eight thousand yards at two-two-zero.”

“Very well.”

“Has Mr. Harper been helping him?”

“Sir?”

“I said, has Jay been helping out with the ACDADS?”

“Uh, I believe so, sir. As much as he can with watch, running his division, the classified accounts, and all the other things he’s got on his plate.”

“What’s your opinion of him?”

“What, of Jay?” Dan considered. They’d had their frictions, especially lately, but he didn’t feel like going into that with the XO. “He’s a real asset to the ship, sir. He’s a good electronics czar, knows the systems. He gets things fixed.”

“How about as a division officer?”

“Well, he has his own way of doing things, sir. Kind of the old-style ‘square the fuck away or I’ll kick your ass myself’ kind of leadership. But it seems to work for him. Why?”

“No reason,” said Vysotsky. “Just asking.”

Dan raised his glasses and leaned against the window. A diffuse light like a faraway fire glowed off to port. The moon, still below the horizon, was advertising its impending presence.

“Well, I’m going to turn in.” Vysotsky swung down; Dan moved aside to let him past. “See you in the A.M.”

“Good night, sir.”

After the XO left, Dan checked the radar and satisfied himself the contact ahead would pass clear. He looked out to starboard for a while, then drifted over to the chart table and stared down at it. “Lighthizer,” he said. “This last loran fix you took, is it—”

From out of the darkness, the suddenly energized voice of the JL phone talker cut in: “Aft lookout reports — man overboard! Starboard!”

“All engines stop! Hard right rudder,” he and Van Cleef shouted at the same second. Dan kept going, dodging shadows on his way to the wing, yelling as he went: “OOD has the conn! Sound six blasts. JOOD, call the captain. Boatswain, pass ‘man overboard.’”

He was startled but not terribly excited. It was probably a drill, get the guys shaken down for Gitmo. As the horn blasted into life, he reached the wing, jerked the ready float off its holder, pulled the pin, and heaved it overboard. It ignited as it hit the water and fell rapidly astern, disappearing as the stern wake swept over it, then flaring up anew, bobbing crazily. Barrett leaned into the turn. The horn stopped, started another blast. Simultaneously Dan saw another flare astern, more distant, but on the same line of bearing as the one he’d just dropped. Good, the after lookout had popped a float, too.

The last blast cut off and other sounds became audible. “Combat reports, shifting to two hundred yards to the inch, commencing man overboard plot.”

“Very well. Keep an eye on that contact, see if he’s going to embarrass us if we heave to.”

“Man overboard, starboard side. Man overboard, starboard side.”

Dan bent to the pelorus and lined it up on the glowing marks to the reciprocal of their original course. The night orders said the wind would be ten to fifteen knots from the east. The ship was slowing rapidly. He saw it all in his head and made his decision. “Port engine ahead full,” he called in. The rapidly swinging bow eclipsed the first, more distant flare. He waited, then a few seconds before it came in line with his own, he shouted, “Steady as she goes. All engines ahead one-third. Mark your head.”

“Engine room answers, all ahead one-third. Steady as she goes, aye. Mark my head, zero-two-three.”

Dan hit the 21MC button for the signal bridge. “Sigs, Bridge: Get our lights fired up. Man in the water, port bow, five hundred yards ahead.”

The captain came out on the wing. His torso glowed strangely. He was in his undershirt. “Where is he?” he said. Dan pointed ahead to the guttering flares. “The far one, the after lookout threw as soon as he saw him. I placed the other one.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Modified Anderson recovery. Line up on the two floats, take him aboard with the boat.”

“Bridge, Midships: Boat crew’s mustered. Request permission to lower to the rail.”

“Hold off,” said Leighty. Dan repeated the order into the pilothouse. The captain said, “It’s calm enough for a shipboard recovery. The water’s warm. Go in slow along the reciprocal. Don’t run over him. Any idea who it is?”

Dan said, “No, sir,” realizing only then that this was a real man overboard, not a stuffed dummy to be hauled back aboard with a grapnel. The phone talker shouted, “Bridge, Combat: Man bears zero-one-eight, three hundred yards.” Leighty disappeared inside. Dan heard him yelling, “Is the XO here? Have you got a muster yet, George?”

Part of the normal response to a “man overboard” was to muster the crew at stations for a quick head tally. Dan wondered for another second who it was, then dismissed it from his mind. They were closing in on the southernmost flare. When it passed down the port side, tossing on the waves, he could hear it hissing and sputtering as its flame fought the sea. It cast a fitful glitter on the black waves around it. Then it moved past and aft. “Left hard rudder, starboard engine ahead full, port engine back full,” he yelled into the pilothouse.

The boatswain’s mate of the watch said, “Sir, the lookout says—”

“Which lookout?”

“After lookout. He says he wasn’t really sure it was a guy.”

“What!” Dan rounded on him, and the man shrank back. “What do you mean, he isn’t sure it was a guy? He just told us man overboard!”

“Sir, he says he saw something white go over from the helo deck. It hit the water hard, but he couldn’t make out in the dark what it was. So he called in—”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, he did right.” Dan debated passing that to the captain, then noticed suddenly that his bow was swinging too fast. He yelled, “All stop! Right full rudder, steady course three-four-zero.” At that moment, the little twinkling star ahead of them winked out suddenly.

“Aw fuck,” Van Cleef muttered beside him. Dan asked him, “Have you got a report from the fo’c’sle?”

“Yeah, they’re ready down there.”

Dan leaned forward, confirming that they were indeed ready, five men spaced along the side of the ship. Only it was the wrong side. He cupped his hands and yelled down, “Port side! Port-side recovery!” They waved back and ran to the opposite lifeline.

The searchlights had been playing ahead, searching here and there across the gently heaving blackness. Now they all swung to one point and steadied. Dan checked the wind again and corrected.

“There he is! See him, sir?”

“Yeah, there’s something there all right. Can’t tell if it’s a man. Okay, let’s shift to the port wing for the pickup. Get some paper cups from the chart room.”

But as they coasted in the final few hundred feet, the white patch disappeared. Dan gave the engines back one-third, then dropped a cup overboard. It sailed down fifty feet, hit the water, then drifted slowly aft. The captain and XO came out and they all three stood there, searching the water. The lights held steady a few dozen yards off the bow, but they couldn’t see anything. “What the hell?” muttered Leighty.

Above them, a signalman leaned over the rail, gripping binoculars. “Didja see him?” he yelled.

“No. Where is he?”

“He was right out there — a guy in whites. When we came up on him, he dived down. You could see him a little while in the lights, under the water, but now he’s not there anymore.”

Vysotsky pulled another float off the rack, stripped the waterproofing tape off it, and pulled the pin. He heaved it over in the direction of the focused lights as it ignited. A sulfurous cloud enveloped the wing, then blew away downwind.

Dan yelled up, “You’re sure it was a man? Not a bag of trash that sank when we came up?”

“No, sir. We could see his arms moving. He was looking up at us as we came in. Then he dived down, like he was trying to get away.”

They stared down into the water. Finally, Leighty said, “Lower the boat. Do a careful search all around where he … went down.”

Chief Oakes came out, Barrett’s chief master-at-arms. He handed a piece of paper to Vysotsky. The XO read it, then looked up.

“One of yours, Dan. ETSN Benjamin Sanderling.”

The snort of a motor, and the whaleboat charged around the stern. Then it slowed, purring out toward where the beams were drifting apart now, growing uncertain, groping over the unmarked surface of the sea.

Dan put his flashlight on the 21MC and punched the call button for the computer room. Williams answered. He said, still hoping it might not turn out that way, “Petty Officer Williams. Sanderling turn up yet?”

“No, sir. Ain’t here, and his rack’s empty.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“Just after he got off watch. He had the second dog in Combat.”

“How’d he seem to you? Anybody else see him after that?”

“Chief Dawson here, sir. He was acting kind of down. Said something about going to the XO about something. I didn’t ask him what. I guess I should’ve, but he’s like always in your face about something or other.”

Dan told him not to blame himself, then punched off. He looked out to where the boat was searching, the pale thin beams of the battle lanterns probing down into black depths. Beyond, below, around it, only the black.

Cannon came up early and relieved him. Dan went to combat systems berthing, where Sanderling had slept. Its other occupants squatted in the passageway. Inside, all the bunks were empty and all the lights were on. Harper, Oakes, Dawson, and the departmental yeoman were waiting in one of the bays.

“Here’s Mr. Lenson.”

Dan said heavily, “Okay, Senior Chief. This everybody we need?”

“Yes, sir. Actually the inventory board just needs one officer, according to—”

“Cephas, what’re you doing here? Oh, the secretary. Okay, Senior Chief. Cut it.”

Oakes positioned the bolt cutters and leaned on the handles. The jaws slipped through the hasp of the padlock and met with a click. Dawson hoisted the mattress, exposing the under-bunk locker, a three-by-six-foot slab of six-inch space. He started sorting things into a cardboard box, giving Cephas a running description. “Web belt, black, one. Blue chambray shirt, four.” In the personal compartment were a marking kit, a wallet, a key ring with three keys, the USS Barrett stationery kit that the ship’s store sold, Sanderling’s boot camp copy of The Bluejacket’s Manual, and a mending kit.

“That’s it. Mostly class-two and — five stuff.”

“What else we got?”

“Hanging locker, then the seabag locker,” said Dawson.

The upright locker held a reefer jacket and two sets of whites still in their dry-cleaning bags. By the time they were through inventorying it, the master-at-arms had the seabag locker open. The duffel stenciled B. G. SANDERLING USN held civilian clothes and carefully folded winter blues. It didn’t look like it had been opened for a while.

“Anything else?”

Cephas cleared his throat. “Sir, there’s a luggage locker some of the guys keep stuff in.”

They found a green suitcase with a chain tag marked “Benny Sanderling, 205 West Fifth Street, Eugene, Oregon.” It was locked, but a little stamped key on the ring opened it.

“Yeah, I figured we’d find something like this,” said Harper.

Dan looked down silently as Oakes snapped on a set of rubber gloves. He started laying the magazines and objects out on a piece of plastic.

“What do we do with this, sir? We don’t want to send this … stuff back to his family, do we?”

“No,” said Dan. His face felt rigid. “Dump it overboard. Leave it off the inventory, Cephas.”

“Yes, sir,” said the yeoman.

“How about these magazines?” Harper picked one up, displayed a foldout page to the others. “How about it? Turn you guys on?”

“Put it down,” Dan snapped, and the chief warrant grinned and dropped it.

Oakes took the last magazine out of the suitcase, and there was the book. It said DIARY on it.

“Overboard,” said Dan. “Don’t even open it.”

“Wait a second,” Harper said. “This might be evidence.”

“Senior Chief? What’s the regs say about diaries?”

“Uh, I guess class five, sir. Miscellaneous personal stuff—”

Harper picked it up with the tips of his fingers, just as he had the magazine. He thumbed through several entries. He cleared his throat, then flattened it so they could read, underlining one passage with his fingernail.

“Uh-oh,” muttered Oakes. His old face looked furrowed and resigned.

“I knew it,” said Harper. “I knew it. He’s been cornholing this kid, and he couldn’t take it anymore. So he jumped overboard. This is dynamite.”

“We better get the XO in on this,” Lenson said.

“Fuck we do! He’s covering for him, if he isn’t one himself. If it goes to Vysotsky, it’ll disappear.” Harper turned to the master-at-arms. “Oakie?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Harper. I don’t know what to do.”

They looked at Dan. He picked the diary up and made himself look through it. It was Sanderling’s all right. He recognized his handwriting from the special request chits, applications for officer training, protests of his evaluation marks. He turned to the last entry, dreading what he’d find. A farewell message, a declaration of love, a cry of revenge? … But there was no entry for that day, and not for several before that. The last entry was a poem he’d copied from somewhere: “Invictus.”

He took a deep breath and put the diary in his back pocket. The others looked at him.

“The rest of this stuff, throw it overboard,” he said. Cephas rolled up the plastic, hefted it.

“Off to the fantail,” he said, and left.

18

The hills loomed up like a rampart built across the sea. They stretched off gradually, dropping below the limits of sight, with no sign of human habitation except directly ahead. There, east of where the land opened, a water tower and antennas rose on the far side of what the chart named the Cuzco Hills.

Dan stood on the flying bridge, looking down and forward over the venturi bulwark. Behind him, two enlisted were cracking jokes as they greased the rotating barrels on the Phalanx.

“So the boatswain’s mate gets a blow job from this fireman in the after machine shop. And when he’s finished, the fireman spits the come into a jar. The boatswain asks him why he did that, and he says, ‘One of the radiomen’s doing the same thing, and whoever gets his filled first gets to drink them both.’”

He moved away, feeling sick, but not just at the joke. He’d felt that way for the last two days, since the night Sanderling went overboard.

He’d read the diary, read it unwillingly, but he didn’t see any other choice now that he’d taken custody. He’d thought he might send it back to the seaman’s next of kin with the rest of his personal gear, maybe with a page or two missing. But now he’d read it, he knew he couldn’t do that. He’d have to tear out most of the diary. He couldn’t send it back to Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Sanderling, Eugene, Oregon — not with the things it described.

How strange that he knew the young seaman better dead than he’d ever known him alive.

Shit, he wished he could stop thinking about it. He leaned over the bulwark as Barrett passed between the two points that guarded the entrance to Guantánamo Bay and wheeled slowly right. Burdette Shuffert had the watch. Shuffert would be the general quarters officer of the deck during the training. Dan, of course, would be TAO most of the time.

Now he looked down as Barrett felt her way in, the world rotating about her pivot point, Leeward Point Field and Hicacal Beach walking down the port side. A freighter came into view upriver, steaming down from the upper bay. The hills gradually moved apart to starboard, revealing behind them the buildings and water tanks of the harbor proper, inside Corinaso Point.

He’d been here before, and looking up at the dry steep hills, he remembered the history. Guantánamo was a small but strategically situated harbor on Cuba’s southeast coast. The U.S. presence was a relic of the war of 1898, when the marines had landed to support operations against the Spanish at Santiago. A few years later, Teddy Roosevelt had leased the bay, not for a hundred years, like the bases in the Philippines, but without any terminating date, as long as the Navy needed it and paid the rent.

The gates dividing the base from the rest of Cuba had closed the day Fidel Castro took power. But the Navy had stubbornly maintained its toehold, building desalinization and power plants when the Cubans cut off electricity and water, and both sides had fortified and mined the boundary between the base and the rest of hilly, dry, sparsely populated Oriente Province.

Since it lay on both sides of the harbor entrance, the base was divided into Leeward and Windward sides. The main piers and repair facilities lay along the east, shielded from hurricanes. It wasn’t entirely an armed camp. Dependents lived here; there was a high school and a fishing tournament. But it wasn’t like being in Charleston or San Diego, either. The base only covered forty-five square miles, most of that water or rugged hills. And it was the only U.S. military installation actually in a Communist country.

That isolation made it a good place to train, and that was Gitmo’s primary mission. Ships could go out in the morning, train and shoot all day in deep water, then be back pierside the same night — something they couldn’t do anyplace else on the East Coast. Every ship in the Atlantic Fleet had to complete refresher training here before it deployed, shaking down crew and systems into a battle-trained whole. And as almost any sailor would tell you, deployment usually turned out less stressful than the four to six weeks at the hands of the Fleet Training Group.

The marks of the Hicacal Beach range began to diverge as the bow swung slowly right. The piers came into view, with another destroyer, a Coontz-class, and a Newport-class LST with its unmistakable “horns” at the bow. An oiler lay opposite the destroyer, and a small craft that looked like a PT or hydrofoil, but not a type he recognized.

As Barrett shaped her course the last few hundred yards to the pier, the freighter upriver grew larger. Dan saw the hammer and sickle on its stack. On its bridge, a stocky woman focused a camera. Dan glanced down; Barrett’s officers, Shuffert, Leighty, Vysotsky, were on the starboard wing, concentrating on the pier.

He lifted a hand as the merchant swept past. He’d seen Russians at close range before, in the Med. Usually, you could get a wave and sometimes a grin out of them. But the stolid round faces looked through him as the stocky woman snapped off pictures. Then they were past, dwindling away, the wake rolling Barrett as she lined up for the final approach.

Sanderling’s diary was a look into a world Dan hadn’t known existed: of furtive couplings in bus station toilets, night-shrouded beaches, cheap motel rooms; of fear and longing, but also a kind of desperate joy, a passion that sometimes transcended itself into an existential freedom.

Some of it, Dan couldn’t imagine. But some was the way he’d felt himself at Sanderling’s age, the desperate, awkward, searching time when you looked for everything you needed outside yourself.

What he found strangest was the anonymity, the rapid succession of partners — strangers, maybe not even seen clearly. He couldn’t understand it at first. Then he remembered Sibylla Baird. He’d met her … gone out to the garden …. What was so different?

No, the only real distinction was that Sanderling had loved men.

He wished now he’d tossed the diary overboard with the magazines. But Harper and Oakes knew he had it. If it had been purely a matter of Sanderling, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d have called the other witnesses back to the fantail, shown them the diary, pitched it into the white boil of screw wash.

But it wasn’t just Sanderling now.

And he had to decide what to do about it.

He resolved to do it now, today — to bite the bullet and get it over with just as soon as the lines went over and the brow went into place.

A battered white pickup was waiting for them at Pier L. Dan stood by it, waiting for Oakes. He looked down the side of the ship, under the ship. There were the twin rudders, the twin screws. Incredible how transparent the water was. He could see every pebble on the bottom. Barrett seemed to hover, not float, suspended in a medium only a little denser than air. From there, he glanced up at drylooking bluffs dotted with cactus. The palms and the verandas gave the harbor a tropical feel.

“Ready, sir?” Senior Chief Oakes, already sweating, was coming down the brow carrying Sanderling’s gear. Dan took the suitcase from him and threw it into the bed of the truck.

Commander, Naval Base headquarters, was a mile south of the piers, up the hill from the Blue Caribe Club. It was a World War II — era two-story, white paint flaking, with a tower that must have had something to do with the airfield once. The duty driver dropped them in front of the concrete-roofed entranceway. Dan told him to go back to the ship, figuring they could walk back once they got rid of the luggage.

A female petty officer was typing at a steel desk on the quarterdeck. He said, “Lieutenant Lenson, USS Barrett. We just pulled in. Is there a legal officer here?”

“Do you want that for a will, power of attorney—”

“No, this is official. We have to turn in some personal effects of a man who died en route, and I need to ask a couple of legal questions.”

“That would be the judge advocate general on the staff. Lieutenant Commander Arguilles is the officer in charge.”

Arguilles was a mountain in sloppy khakis. He had a big mustache and dark hair. Looking at Dan’s name tag, he said as they shook hands, “Lenson. Lenson … You know a guy name of Johnstone? Stanley Fox Johnstone?”

“Yeah. The Ryan inquiry. He was the counsel for the court.”

“I served with him on the COMNAVFORCARIB staff. He mentioned you — the guy who asked to be punished, after they told him to go and sin no more. What do you think about that, Senior Chief?”

“The Navy ain’t that big of an organization, sir.”

“I don’t mean … well, never mind.” The JAG officer told them to sit down, said they could smoke if they wanted. “What can I do for you?” he said, propping his shoes on the desk.

“Well, sir—”

“Call me José.”

“Sir — José—I think we’ve got a problem aboard Barrett. And I thought maybe I’d better get some advice.”

“We got your message. About the kid who went missing, right?”

“Yeah.”

“This his gear? You sanitize everything? Take out the rubbers and cunt books?”

Dan took the inventory and forwarding letter out of its messenger envelope and handed it over. Arguilles glanced down it, nodded, and flipped it into his in box. “Page two, next of kin’s address, beneficiary form, looks good. Stack the stuff in the corner, my evil dwarfs will take it from here. That all?”

“Senior Chief, I’ll see you back at the ship, okay?”

Oakes looked disappointed, but he stubbed out his butt. When he was gone, Dan cleared his throat.

“Ice water?”

“No thank you, sir. I don’t know how to start this. I’m not sure I ought to be here. But I don’t think keeping quiet is the right thing to do, either. And it might have a bearing on why Sanderling jumped.”

The phone rang. Arguilles picked it up, listened, said, “Tell her to come in. No, I can’t advise her over the phone. Hold my calls, okay? Sorry, go ahead,” he said to Dan.

“Yeah, well … I don’t know, like I say, if this is the right thing to do or not.”

“Why don’t you tell me in confidence,” said Arguilles. “You say it’s related to Sanderling’s death.”

“It might be. We found … homosexual literature in the kid’s effects.”

“You mean cock books — naked guys with big, big hard-ons.”

“Right. We also found a diary.”

“Go on.”

“The diary describes his acts with other people.” He cleared his throat again. “Including the captain.”

“Go on.”

He was puzzled by the lawyer’s lack of reaction. “Well … that’s about it.”

“Was there a final message, a note or letter? Anything that mentioned his intention to do away with himself?”

“No.”

“What did your commanding officer say when he saw this diary?”

“He hasn’t.” Dan took it out of his pocket and placed it on the edge of the desk. “I didn’t tell him or the XO about it.”

“Why not?”

“I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t disappear.”

“What happened to the other material?”

“I had it thrown overboard.”

“You this kid’s division officer?”

“Department head.”

“He a good sailor?”

“Not the best I’ve ever seen. But not the worst, either.”

“Why do you say it might be related to his death? Does he write that in the diary?”

“No. The last entry was four days before he jumped. The diary was kept in the luggage room, by the way. So he couldn’t get to it every day. He must have gotten the key now and then and brought it up to date.” Dan shifted in the chair. “The relationship to his death … well, it seems like you could make that inference.”

“That he committed suicide because he fucked the captain? Or that the captain fucked him? Or that the captain fucked him once but wouldn’t do it again?” Arguilles grimaced. “Let’s go back to why you didn’t turn the diary in. Why did you think it might ’disappear’?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t trust your CO or XO not to destroy evidence.”

“I guess not,” Dan said. “Did you want to look at it?”

“No,” said Arguilles.

“You don’t want to see it?”

“For the moment, I want to be able to say I’ve never seen it. Okay?”

“I guess.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“I need some advice. That’s why I came in.”

“Advice? Let’s not say I did that. I can point out some choices, though.”

“Okay.”

“One: You go out the door, then turn around and come back in here with it officially. Turn the diary over to me, get a receipt, and file Article One twenty-five charges against your commanding officer.”

For some reason, Dan remembered his interview with Jack Byrne just then. “What’s Article One twenty-five?” he asked cautiously.

“Sodomy.”

“Whew.”

“Yeah. Make yourself popular, plus, if he’s found guilty, all he’s got to do is call you a jealous lover and down you go with him. Choice number two: Lose this hot potato over the side next time you get under way. Punch a hole through the middle of it, get a shackle from the boatswain’s mates, make sure it never sees the light of day again.”

“Any other choices?”

“You can make an anonymous complaint.”

“What happens then?”

“The Naval Investigative Service investigates anonymous complaints of homosexuality. They’ll come in like a ton of bricks if it’s the CO, an alleged participant.”

“What’s your feeling on that?”

“I don’t want to put anybody down,” said Arguilles. “But they’re not bound by rules of evidence on homosexuality investigations. They get one pansy, they lean on him for names. And I mean, they lean hard. There’s gonna be enough mud flying around to splatter everybody aboard. You start a witch-hunt, you’re gonna lose some of your best people.”

“None of those sounds like good choices, sir.”

“I hate faggot cases,” said Arguilles. “Avoid ’em whenever I can. The first case I ever handled—‘the Night Crawler.’ Guy used to crawl into guys’ racks after taps and blow them. Never alluded to it in daylight. He said he did it for years and nobody ever turned him in. Finally he went down on this nigger boilerman and the guy just about killed him with a piece of wire rope. You think your CO’s really a fag?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does anybody else think so? Or are you a voice in the wilderness?”

“I’ve heard remarks.”

“Is it affecting good order and discipline?”

“It might be starting to, sir. That’s really why I’m here.” He looked at a colored print on the wall: sailing ships in battle, powder smoke billowing above shattered spars. “If I didn’t, I might not think it was any of my business.”

“Is it your business? Order and discipline are the captain’s and XO’s responsibility.”

“They’re everybody’s responsibility.”

“Yeah, but who appointed it specifically yours? Oh, I get it.” Arguilles peered at him. “Same as with the Ryan thing, huh? You appointed yourself.”

Dan said, irritated, “Call it whatever you want. What should I do about it?”

Arguilles leaned back and locked his hands behind his head. “Well, there’ll be an investigation of the suicide. Diehl is wrapped around the axle now on this bad-check ring over at the marine barracks; it might take him a few days, but he’ll be over. Is this diary evidence leading to suspicion that the captain or others named or unnamed contributed to that suicide? I’m not sure. The thing is, from the legal point of view, anything in it is either hearsay or unsubstantiated — if not fiction. The kid’s not around to answer for it. Does he name anybody else aboard the ship?”

“No.”

“No other partners?”

“He mentions a couple, but no names. The only one he names is the captain — and actually he doesn’t use his name either, just calls him ‘the captain.’ Most of his uh … activity seems to center around a bar in Charleston. That’s our home port.”

“Uh-huh. You realize he might have made this up? Whatever he says he did with your skipper? Like you or me daydreaming about going to bed with Farrah Fawcett, okay? A sex fantasy, power fantasy. He might even have put it in on purpose, to protect himself if anybody else ever got hold of the diary. See what I mean? I’ve seen that before in cases like this. First thing defense counsel is going to bring up.”

“I don’t think—”

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Dan. He’d started to say, “I don’t think Sanderling would do that,” but he knew now he’d never known the first thing about Sanderling. Maybe he didn’t know any of his shipmates, or any human being, not deep down, as they really were. It was a bitter knowledge. He reached out for the diary, weighed it for a moment, then slipped it back into his pocket.

“I ask you one question?” said Arguilles. “In confidence.”

“Sure.”

“Are you gay?”

“No!”

“Take it easy …. I know, soon as you start talking about them, that’s like the next question, isn’t it? But there’s something else eating you, isn’t there? Other than this Sanderling thing. You got something against ’em?”

Dan sat hunched over, giving it a few seconds’ thought. He didn’t like homosexuals … didn’t like the idea; it made him feel ill to think about doing the things Sanderling had described … but sometimes it got to be too much, the jokes, the sniggers that were common currency aboard ship, the relentless official indoctrination about their undependability, their vulnerability to blackmail, their danger to discipline. Then he remembered Byrne, what he’d told him about the torpedoman on the Threadfin. So maybe it was true that they could be dangerous aboard ship. But Sanderling hadn’t seemed dangerous, just immature and screwed up. He honestly didn’t know how to answer the lawyer’s question. So he just muttered, “I don’t know, not particularly.”

“Then why fall on your sword over it?”

“I just want to do what’s right.”

Arguilles blew out like a surfacing dolphin as he hoisted himself to his feet. “Ohhkay. You just wanna do what’s right …. Well, Lieutenant, do us all a favor. You let us know when you figure out what that is.”

The sun outside was incredible — like a tanning salon. By the time he got back down to the pier, his khakis were soaked.

Leighty was standing on the quarterdeck in whites. He looked through Dan as if he knew everything he’d said to Arguilles. He returned Dan’s salute, then motioned him into the shade of the helo hangar.

“Dan, where have you been? The FTG team’s here; we’re starting the arrival conference in ten minutes. Where were you?”

“Sorry, sir. I was over turning in Sanderling’s gear at Base Legal — and asking them some questions about how to proceed.”

“What did they say?”

“Uh, there’ll probably be somebody from the local NIS detachment coming down to check it out.”

Blinking in the sun, he tried to see Leighty clearly. For a moment, he had the feeling, the illusion probably, that if he could see him clearly, he’d understand somehow what to do.

Thomas Leighty wasn’t much bigger than a boy. His face was small and his forearms, exposed in the starched short-sleeved trop whites, were almost like an adolescent’s. He stood straight, balancing himself on the balls of his feet as if about to lunge for a ball. The way he cupped his left elbow in his hand might be effeminate, or might not. The captain’s uniform was spotless, ribbons new and precisely aligned. A hint of silver glinted at the temples under the gold-crusted visor. His eyes crinkled at the edges, narrowed against the sun.

He imagined himself saying, “Sir, did you go to bed with Sanderling?” Or maybe, “Sir, was there anything between you and Sanderling?” What would Leighty say?

“Sir, did you notice anything strange about Sanderling?”

“Strange?”

“You saw a lot of him, I understand he was working on your entertainment system.”

The captain blinked, but it could have been the glare. “He didn’t seem very happy, but he didn’t talk about it to me. I wanted to ask you, how’s our fire-control system doing? Has our civilian made any progress?”

Dan started explaining it to him. Midway through the 1MC interrupted: “All officers and chiefs assemble in the wardroom.”

The table was cleared and bare except for pencils and lined notepads. Four men in blue coveralls sat at the foot, and another was passing out a document, one copy to each officer and chief.

“Attention on deck.”

Everyone stood as Leighty took his seat at the head of the table, then sat with a scraping of chairs. “Can we have that ventilator turned off?” the captain said to Vysotsky. “All right, let’s begin.”

The man who stood had lieutenant’s bars on his coveralls, a blue breast patch with FTG embroidered in gold, and above that the gold ship-and-crossed-sabers insignia of a surface warfare officer. “Good afternoon, everybody. I’m Wes Woollie, Lieutenant USN, and I’ll be Barrett’s training liaison officer, the TLO. I represent the Commander, Fleet Training Group. I’ll monitor and grade your progress and provide liaison between the ship and the commodore. My mission is to make sure you get trained right, and that anything that hinders that is dealt with fast. I’ll ride the ship for the major training evolutions and then for the ‘final exam.’

“Captain, I’ve arranged calls for you on the Commodore, FTG, on COMNAVBASE, and on CO, SIMA. The car will be here at fourteen thirty.”

Leighty nodded and Woollie went on, addressing the room now. “Guys, I know most of you have been to Gitmo before, and those who haven’t have heard the stories. There’s no point telling you what is or isn’t so, because starting tomorrow you’ll see for yourself. Our mission is to train you, and in order to do that, we impose some stress. A guy once called us ‘boot camp for the ship.’ Very true.

“We like to say there are only two ways to do things: the wrong way and the Gitmo way. What we give you’s the latest gouge; it’s how Sixth Fleet or COMIDEASTFORCE or wherever you’re deploying will demand you do business. But we’re open to criticism. Any disagreements, forward them to me through Captain Leighty and we’ll get them solved so we can move forward.”

Woollie introduced the chiefs, Schwartzchild, Bentley, Narita, and Ferguson. “The senior instructor — we call him ‘senior rider’—is DCCS Schwartzchild. He’ll act as TLO in my absence and will report to you, Captain, when all instructors are aboard each morning. He will also notify you if any unsafe or unready condition precludes commencing a training event. Today, they’ll be giving first-day briefs and looking over your lectures. I understand we have a main space fire walk-through, CIWS upload training, and they’ll be going over your closure logs and some other documentation. Tomorrow, we’ll all get under way. Reveille at oh-four hundred, under way at oh-six hundred.

“A couple of things to note about the base. Are you giving liberty tonight, Captain?”

“Yes. I thought, Let them get ashore for one night, see what it’s like—”

“Yeah, let ’em see they aren’t missing anything.” Woollie smiled with them. “I did want to say something about the security status here. Emphasize to your men not to stumble around in the dark or go for hikes. You always want to know exactly where you are around Gitmo, sea or land. The Cubans took a sailboat crew prisoner and kept them for a year as spies. You don’t want to screw with them.”

“You get a lot of refugees?” Dan asked him.

“Not so many by land, since Castro planted the Cactus Curtain. We still get people who swim across. That’s no joke, swimming Guantánamo Bay. We figure half of them make it. The rest, they drown or get eaten. There’re a lot of sharks.”

“What exactly is the readiness status?” Vysotsky asked.

Woollie swung to face him. “It’s Condition Bravo. We use ships’ guns to back up the marines along the perimeter. We’d like to have one of your five-inch batteries at standby and have you monitor the fire control coordination net twenty-four hours a day.”

“What’s the threat?” Leighty asked. “Why’s the readiness been upped?”

“I’m not sure I can answer that to your satisfaction, sir. There’ve been indicators of increased activity in the Cuban armed forces; that’s all I can say. It happens occasionally and we respond. It may not mean anything, but we’d rather play it safe.”

“I understand. Can you handle that, Mr. Lenson?”

“Yes, sir.” Dan made a note.

Woollie went into the schedule. The four-week cycle would start with basic damage control and engineering exercises, battery alignments, tracking drills and close-in live firing exercises, then move on week after week into more complex antiair, antisubmarine, and engineering drills. It would end with a battle problem, a flooding, battle damage, and mass conflagration drill, and an engineering operational readiness examination, all conducted simultaneously for a final score. Then he asked for questions. Giordano had a few about port services. The exec asked about pier security, mail, and recreation, and Quintanilla wanted to know about the radio guard.

Finally, Leighty said, “What’s the latest on the Soviet battle group here in the Caribbean? The Kirov and her escorts?”

“Uh, sir, last I heard, they were in port at Cienfuegos. But I’m primarily training; you could get the latest from the commodore when you call on him.”

“Good idea. Well, is that it? I guess we’ll go ahead and break now, get training started. And I’ve got to make those calls. Thanks, Lieutenant.” He stood and everybody else did, too, as he left.

Dan had a little more preparation, but it wasn’t the kind of frantic catch-up he’d had to do on his last visit, in Bowen. The ship was quiet; most of the crew was over at FTG getting the initial classroom briefs. He had to admit, Leighty had prepared well. If only Sanderling hadn’t jumped overboard, if only they could get the ACDADs running … maybe it would all work out somehow.

The ear-drilling keen of the boatswain’s pipe came over the 1MC at 1600. “Liberty call, liberty call. Liberty commences for Sections Two and Three to expire on board at oh-two hundred.”

Dan took his sweaty uniform off and pulled on shorts and a polo shirt. He went back to the fan room, jingling his keys, and unlocked his bicycle and carried it down to the quarterdeck. They had maps there and he studied one, then carried the bike down the brow, did a couple of stretching exercises, and headed up Sherman Avenue, the winding two-laner that ran the length of Windward.

He pedaled for a long time, miles, past the clubs and the phone exchange, base housing and hospital. The road reached open country. Gradually, his muscles warmed and he started taking the hills in higher gear, pumping hard — till he looked up, to find his way blocked by a closed gate. He slowed on the dusty road, then stopped. Suddenly, he realized he was alone; there was no traffic here, nothing but the sigh of the wind as it bent the bushes that littered the dry hills. He’d never been out this far before. He got off the bike and walked it up a little rise. A green line of cactus and wire came into view a hundred yards off.

“That’s it,” said a voice behind him. “Castro territory.”

When he turned, a marine lance corporal was standing twelve feet away. His M16 was unslung, not exactly pointing at Dan, but not pointing away, either.

“This area’s off-limits, bud. How’d you get here?”

“On my bike. Came up that road.”

“Don’t you read?”

“Read?”

“Yeah, like ‘Off-limits beyond this point’ signs?”

“I didn’t see it. If I had, I’d have turned back.” He swung a leg over the bike and started turning it around. “That’s the perimeter, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” said the marine, relaxing a little. He lighted a cigarette, looking up at one of the guard towers. “See that hill? The one with the bunker on top of it? Sometimes you see a white Mercedes parked over there. They say that’s Castro’s; he comes down once in a while to make sure we’re still here.”

“Is that so?” Dan looked again. “What’s on our side?”

“On our side? The biggest fucking minefield in the Western world, that’s what’s on our side.”

“I don’t see any.”

“You’re not supposed to,” said the marine. “Tell you a story, though. Couple sailors get drunk at the club, decide they’re going to walk back to the ship. They walk for a couple miles in the dark— they’re lost. Suddenly the guy in front hears this terrific explosion behind him. He starts running, but he runs fill tilt into a sign. He lights his Zippo and reads it. Knows enough Spanish to figure out it says he’s in the middle of a minefield. So what’s he do? The smart thing: lies down right there and sleeps it off. We saw him out there in the morning. Had to send a chopper out for the son of a bitch.”

“How about his buddy?”

“Chili burger.” The marine jerked his head down the road. “Take off, buds. Don’t let me see you around the perimeter again.”

He cycled back slowly, cooling off. The shadows of the hills lay long across the dry dust. When he came to the turnoff for the officers’ club, he swung right and coasted down a steep hill and then out a narrow point surrounded by the bay. He locked the bike and went in.

He treated himself to a martini — one, he told himself, just to relax — and went in to dinner. They had fresh grilled tuna and he had a leisurely meal alone. When the waiter asked him if he’d like a refill, he said why not. Two martinis with dinner weren’t going to hurt him.

When he came out, he saw unfamiliar uniforms at the bar. They turned out to be Venezuelan, off the patrol boat he’d seen coming in. It was a Venezuelan Navy missile boat named Federación. They were there for joint training, they said, and would be doing some exercises later with Barrett and the other destroyer, USS Dahlgren.

“Dahlgren?”

“That’s right.”

He had a classmate aboard DDG-43. Shoot, he thought, I’ll have to stop over and see Larry while we’re here.

“You will have a planter’s punch with us?”

“Sure,” said Dan. “If I get to buy the second round.”

Around eleven, some of the other officers from Barrett came in — the XO, Quintanilla, Shuffert, Lohmeyer, Horseheads, Martin Paul. Dan weaved over, glad to have an excuse to say hasta la vista to the South Americans. They drank like they’d never seen alcohol before.

Vysotsky called for dice from the bar and they played ship, captain, and crew for each round, slamming the cup down, the dice spinning out over the table. A six was the ship, five the captain, four the crew. You had to have a ship before a captain, and a captain before a crew. The XO kept the conversation light — sports and jokes, teasing Paul about his new kid. After a round, Dan got up. He told them to save his place and went to find the head.

He was standing at the urinal when another body slid in next to him. Then the XO grunted in relief. “I needed that.”

“Yeah. Same here.”

The exec cleared his throat. “You know, I’ve been meaning to say, I’m glad you went along with the shaving issue. I’d have hated to lose both you and Mark.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dan, though the bare mention of it made him angry all over again.

“I know it got your goat. But I figured that after you thought about it, you’d see I was right.”

“About what, sir?”

“About the issue, especially for officers. If we expect a seamanlike appearance from the men, we’ve got to look good. If we expect performance, we’ve got to know our jobs, too. If we expect honesty and dedication, we have to show them we’re dedicated, too.”

Dan peered drunkenly down at the urinal, trying to keep the stream steady on the little white cake. “I can’t disagree with that, sir. I just didn’t see the linkage between any of that and a welltrimmed beard. It just seemed like — like somebody’s blind prejudice.”

“Well, I thought about that after you and Mark made your arguments. I sort of had to consider what the difference was. And you know, I found it.”

Dan said unwillingly, “What’s that, sir?”

Vysotsky zipped up, then paused, hand on the flushing lever. “I think the prejudice, if that’s the right word, comes in when you judge somebody on the basis of something he can’t change. Like that fellow at the Schools Command was judging me on the basis of my name being Russian. I think the only fair way is to judge every man on the basis of his performance, not things he was born into, like his race or his religion or how his name sounds.” He shrugged and flushed. “And a beard, that’s a voluntary choice; that’s just grooming.”

“Maybe so, sir. But my reaction was just that here’s another rule telling me what I’ve got to do.”

“But we already had that discussion, right? About how it’s an even trade?”

“I guess we did, XO.”

When he got back to the table, there was another round waiting. Dan kept drinking. He kept winning, too. Again and again, he slammed the cup down and lifted it, seeing six, five, four, and then whatever the number of the crew would be. Then he rolled a perfect score: three sixes, a five, and a four. He laughed and ordered again, and somewhere in there he stopped remembering anything at all.

19

The night spread out on every side, from the calm black bay to the looming hills to the east. Here and there, a lighted window shone from base housing, and the beacon flashed steadily from the airfield across the harbor.

All the way forward on the main deck, forward of the ground tackle, a lean dark figure stood with a boot propped on a chock, bent forward against the lifeline at the very bow. It looked down into the black glossy water, in which the stars flashed from time to time. A flashlight came on and played idly along the mooring lines. It ran along the pier. It probed down into the water, spreading a fuzzy, unfocused glow. Then it snapped off, and the figure straightened as another shadow came out of the breaker and climbed the rising slope of foredeck. When it got forward of the gun mount, it tripped in the dark, cursed, and then stood still, looking around.

“Over here. Jesus. Took you long enough.”

“I had some things to do. What, now I’ve got to drop everything when you call? Like I’m some fucking dog?”

“You sound hostile tonight, shipmate. On the rag?”

“I don’t have anything to say to you. Just this: I’m out.”

A low laugh from the darkness. “You don’t remember too good, do you? I told you when we started, don’t sign up unless you’re sure you want it. ’Cause once you’re in with me, there’s only one way out. The way Marion took, or our little pansy friend Sandy.”

“What are you saying?”

“I think you understand what I’m saying.”

“I ought to blow the whistle on you, you lying asshole.”

The lean man slowly took out a clasp knife. Clicking it open, he started cleaning his fingernails deliberately. He said, “You turn me in, you go down the tubes five seconds later. Remember? Our little deal? You had a nice taste of what that brought in, as I remember. What, now it’s all gone, you’re getting an attack of conscience?”

“I had time to think about it. That’s what happened. Who did those kits go to, anyway?”

“I told you. Raytheon makes that system. There’s a company that wants to bid against them. They want to make ’em, they need to take apart some of the cards, figure out the manufacturing tricks. That’s how America works. Hey, what you sweating it for? It ain’t no big deal, Lieutenant. All it’ll do, bring the cost of spare parts down a little bit.”

“Yeah, but this stuff you’re talking about now …”

“All the same ball of wax, shipmate. All the same ball of wax.” The taller figure’s voice fell suddenly as a party of sailors passed by on the pier. Both men looked down at them, then off across the calm starry bay. “Pretty night,” said the taller one.

“Yeah, this isn’t a bad place to spend time.”

“You should have been here in the old days, before Castro. We used to put into Havana then. Tell you some stories … Shit, don’t change the subject on me. You want out? No problem. Only, hey, all of a sudden somebody might find out what happened to those parts. Then you can kiss your career good-bye. And kiss off about ten years of your life, too. Cause that’s gonna be how long you spend in federal prison for grand theft.”

The other didn’t answer. “But you ain’t gonna do that. You’re going to hang with the program and keep on collecting that little supplement. You’re going to keep on helping us out. And keep on helping yourself out, too. Right?”

The other didn’t answer for a time. Together, they listened to the far-off sound of laughter, of boisterous singing, the sudden screech of brakes far off.

“What do you want me to do?” the voice murmured at last.

When the second man left, the first lingered at the bow, looking out at the hills. He considered going over to the club later. But then thought, No, it might be best not to.

He had a great deal to do and not a great deal of time left to do it in. Thinking of this, he took a notebook out of his back pocket and turned the flashlight on once more, ran down the list of names, checked his watch. Then clicked the light off again and stood pondering in the darkness.

And after a time, another shadow detached itself from the superstructure. It hesitated for a time, looking searchingly around at the forecastle, the pier, the distant hills. A match flared and lips drew nervously on a cigarette. Then it made its wary way up to the man, who waited casually for it to draw near, one boot propped on a chock, his upper body leaning easily forward on the lifelines, looking off toward the waiting shore.

20

And three hundred feet aft, another man, balding and gawky in too-small scrub greens, stood too, blinking down at the inky tropic shadows, the dark hills, at a flashlight spot that someone shined on the pier for a little while from up forward, before it went out. And above everything were the stars, caught in the black cage of Barrett’s masts and antennas.

Hank Shrobo blinked slowly and pulled his glasses up, rubbed his eyes. The eyeballs felt like hot ball bearings. When did we get here? he thought. Was this Cuba?

He stood motionless for a few minutes, mind still seething with the convoluted syntax of computer language. But his eye muscles spasmed at the thought of reading another line of code.

Standing there, swaying-tired, he massaged his face and then his neck as his mind moved back again to square one. Sometimes that helped you break out of a logic jam, going back to the start. He needed some new ideas. Because right now, he was locked up solid.

Back when he’d come aboard, still feeling ill from the helicopter ride, he’d started in the DP center, the “computer room,” as the sailors called it. Already it sounded dated; soon there’d be computers in every room, and not long after most likely embedded in everyone’s skull. Trying to push the queasiness away, he’d settled on a stool as the men there gathered doubtfully around him. He’d caught the whisper behind him. “Shit. Who’s this? Mr. Peepers to the rescue?”

“So what’s the situation?” he asked the black man in dungarees, who stared at him, then turned to look at the monitor, as if he could talk only like that, face-to-face with the data.

“Well, we got a … major glitch here. I’ve been working this thing for four solid days. Thought I could patch code, but when I do the software runs okay one minute, then it wanders off into the weeds and the system locks up. Takes a full-system reboot to get it running again. I can’t make shit out of it.” He told Shrobo how they’d discovered it, about the missile shoot and the way everything had gone haywire. Told him how they’d found the bad code, corrected it, but then found more, not just in the Version 3 but in the older version, too.

He pondered this. “Did you run the module-level diagnostics that come with the op tape?”

“About fifty times. Every time it reports a different glitch. When I take the recommended action, the system just hangs solid.”

“Have you got the problem in other modules? The communications program, the satellite navigation program, the Link Eleven?”

“Haven’t gotten that far.”

“Have you taken the system down completely and reloaded it? I mean down all the way — cold start.”

“Mr. uh … Shrobo,” said one of the men in khaki, and Hank swiveled the stool slowly to him. “I’m Chief Dawson. This is Chief Mainhardt. And, ’scuse me, but we aren’t idiots. Every time we do that, it comes up clean for about an hour, then craps in the NTDS module.”

“I know you’re not idiots,” he’d said carefully. If only the compartment would quit rolling … “I just like to start the faultlocation logic from block one. Does it lock up in the same segment every time?”

“No, it jumps around inside the module.”

“Have you looked closely at the source code when it does?”

“Shit, Mr.—”

“Hank,” said Shrobo.

“Matthew,” said the black man. “Shit, Hank, we been banging our heads against CMS-2 so long, we’re about done in trying to do this manually.”

He thought about this for a while, looking around at the compartment, the memory units, the hulking gray slabs of the shock-mounted, water-cooled mainframes. CMS-2 was the standard Navy programming language. But the executive program itself was written in assembly language, computer-specific code, because it ran faster. It had to run fast because of everything it had to do: schedule and dispatch program modules, manage memory, service input/ output communications requests, as well as the internal stuff, the redundancy, fault tolerance and alternate configuration schemes built into the system architecture.

These men were just technicians, but they sounded competent. So he could assume it wasn’t the kind of problem that could be solved by swapping cards or patching a few lines of code. He rubbed his face. It felt wet, though ice-cold air was blasting out of the ceiling. His stomach felt like he was still in the helicopter. That sensation of utter terror, then swinging around at the end of the line—

“Grab that swab bucket, quick,” said Dawson. “Get his head down. Take him out to the deep sink, Matt.”

When he felt better, he rested in the little broom closet, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve — there was nothing in the closet he felt like touching — and followed the one they called Matt back down the hall.

“Sorry I got sick.”

“No problem, Hank. Hey, call me Ted, okay?”

He looked rather shakily around the room. “Yeah, sounds like you got a problem. My box — there it is. I brought some software tools from the lab. Maybe we need to load those and take a look at this thing.”

“Okay by me.” Williams pulled a knife, sliced through the strapping tape.

As he loaded the program, Shrobo opened his briefcase and put on his working glasses. Thank God he hadn’t left them in his suitcase. He perched on the metal chair in front of the screen.

“Uh, you gonna be a while? We’re thinking of breaking for chow—”

“Go ahead,” he mumbled.

“Somebody better stay with him.”

“I’ll stay,” said Williams. “Bring me a sandwich. Chicken, if they got it. You want one, Hank?”

“Half the chicken sold in the United States is contaminated with salmonella,” Shrobo told him.

“Say what? That mean you don’t want one?”

“I prefer organic foods.”

Dawson said slowly, “Oh. What — you mean like liver?”

“No.” He swallowed again, wishing they’d abandon the subject. “Look, I’m not really hungry. You go ahead.”

When they finally left, he ran some of the test tools. Williams sat close to him, staring at the monitor. Occasionally he asked a question. Hank replied absently, tapping in commands, then twisting to watch the lights flicker across the face of the computer. He pulled a pad toward him and started jotting numbers in columns. “Huh,” he said at last.

“What’s that?”

“Take a look. See this segment here?”

“Uh-huh. What about it?”

“There’s something strange about it. Look at these pointers.”

Williams looked at it. “This pointer here,” Hank said, putting his finger right on one line.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“This WRITE instruction here creams whatever instructions are in that location.” He swallowed again as the room and the console took a lean and his chair tried to skid away across the deck. “Do boats always roll like this?”

“Naw, this is nice’n calm tonight,” said Williams. “I better make us some fresh coffee. Sounds like it gonna be a long night. Or would you rather have a Coke?”

Hank thought of the herbal tea he’d tucked into his suitcase. “Yeah. Coke,” he muttered.

Now, standing by the rail, Shrobo remembered that night and the long nights and days at sea after it. At first, he’d been intrigued, then entranced, then fatigued, and now he was starting to feel angry and bewildered. The loud warrant officer, Harper, coming in two and three times a day; and his boss, the serious-looking lieutenant; and twice the XO, the one with the Russian name. That didn’t bother him; he just shunted them off to one of the chiefs to explain things in one-syllable words. What disturbed him was that he couldn’t figure out how so many errors had gotten onto the tape.

The first thing he’d tried was to systematize what the sailors had already attempted randomly. He’d loaded the new Version 3.1 tape he’d brought, ran it for an hour, then done a diagnostic. To his surprise, it tripped over several bad segments, although this same tape had run perfectly back at Vartech. He marked them with break points and started patching line by line, comparing what was in the computer with the printed source listing. That had taken two days, stripping in correct code everywhere he found bad.

But today when he ran it, the computer had locked up on a section he knew he’d already fixed.

Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. That was what was so disturbing. The great Henry S. Shrobo, B.S. from Brigham Young, M.S. and Ph.D. in applied physics from Johns Hopkins, senior analyst for Vartech and sometime member of the JHU/APL Advanced Computer Architecture Working Group, stopped in his tracks by an elusive bug in an already-fleet-approved system architecture. If he couldn’t crack this one, he’d better start thinking about running an organic vegetable farm.

He stood staring out into the dark, no longer seeing the stars or the hills. The warm wind fanned his face, bringing the scents of the land. But he didn’t smell them.

Sometime later, the door opened behind him, and he started, surprised. “Sorry,” someone said.

“Matt?”

It was Williams, startled, too. “What you doing out here, Doc? Thought you’d be ashore.”

“Doc?” He didn’t see how they knew. He still hadn’t told them.

“‘Doctor DOS.’ You picked up a nickname, man.”

“Are we permitted ashore? I didn’t know.”

“Remember when they passed the word—‘Liberty call, liberty call’? That’s what it means.”

“Why are you here, then?”

Williams grinned painfully. “Duty section. Yeah, you get over and grab you a beer while you can.”

“I don’t drink. Maybe I’d better just stay aboard, get back to that bad code in the tracking module.”

“Jesus, Hank. You’re like one of those Guild Steersmen, aren’t you? Can’t get enough of that spice.” Williams punched his arm. “How about a workout?”

“I don’t think I’d be able to—”

“Be able to?”

“I’m not what you’d call a physical person.”

Williams punched his arm again. “We got us a nice weight room — machines and everything. Me an’ Baby J and some of the other dudes, we go down there every night, break a sweat. Get you down there for a couple weeks, I bet you’d be pressing two hundred.”

“Two hundred pounds?” He had to smile. “I don’t think so.”

“Give it a try. It’s organic, man. Like that good Navy chow.”

He had to laugh at that. He’d been appalled at the food on the mess decks. Milk and hardboiled eggs, that’s all he’d found that looked safe to eat. “Okay. Maybe a little exercise will clear my head.”

Taking a last breath of the sultry air, he followed the petty officer below.

21

The next morning, Dan slumped nervelessly in the TAO chair, grateful for the cool dark. CIC was dim and quiet, the ideal place for a guy with the hangover of the decade.

He couldn’t remember it all, but he had to have had at least six planter’s punches with the fucking Venezuelans and four or five drinks playing dice after the other officers arrived. After that was a black curtain. He couldn’t remember where his bike was. Had he left it at the club? Like he had his motorcycle in Charleston? He didn’t think he could have kept it pointed straight all the way downhill to the pier.

Reveille had jerked him awake at 0400 with a feeling of horror at what he’d done to himself. He took one look at breakfast and had to leave and barf in the urinal. Fortunately, he had a break now as Barrett got under way.

How could he have done it again? Going into the club, he hadn’t planned to get drunk. He’d told himself, One martini with dinner. But that first one had softened his resolution, and the second had washed away any idea of restraint. After that, he’d just drunk and drunk, not caring what, just that the glass was heavy in his hand and then light and that there was another behind it.

I’ve got to stop drinking so much, he thought. Maybe cut out the hard liquor. It was stupid to get plastered the night before he had to think fast and make the right decisions.

Now he leaned forward. The big SSWC scope showed the land as a green fluorescence, the channel as jet studded with jade. They were second in the morning parade going out. Dahlgren led, then Barrett, Federación, Manitowoc, the LST, and last the oiler, USS Canisteo.

Lauderdale, the CIC officer, came by and Dan said, “Herb, what have we got this morning?”

“I taped a schedule up between your chair and the skipper’s, sir.”

He blinked at it. Right now, the bridge team was conducting a low-visibility piloting exercise. Offshore, they’d do test firing, engineering drills, a CON-1-EX — whatever that was — seamanship, tracking and electronic drills, and finish with general quarters for chemical, bacteriolocial, and radiological training before heading back in.

“Herb, this CON-one—”

“That’s a general quarters, then whatever they assign. Usually like rocket hits or shell hits, to get us spun up for damage control and casualty repair.”

One of the blue coveralls passed through, and the atmosphere seemed to chill. Dan recognized the senior instructor, Schwartzchild. He didn’t stop, though, just kept going, swinging his clipboard. Headed down to the engineering spaces, most likely.

“Coming up on the sea buoy,” said Chief Kennedy.

“Then what?”

“We’ll be coming left to one-three-seven and slowing to conform to the swept channel. Stand by—”

“Now secure the special sea and anchor detail. General quarters. General quarters. This is a drill. All hands, man your battle stations—”

Life jackets flew through the air to outstretched hands. Dan buttoned his collar and settled his helmet. Into the meat grinder, he thought. It was going to be a long morning.

They went from the swept channel transit to a main space fire drill, simulating a mine hit. Combat and Radio were tied down with system control, tracking, and electronic surveillance and countermeasures drills. The training team moved them along, not very fast yet, but without letup except for a half-hour lunch break. Dan kept chugging coffee and Cokes and gradually lost himself in the exercises.

In the afternoon, they moved farther offshore for tracking and comm drills with Dahlgren. At first, they were miles apart, then joined up for the seamanship exercises. When the 1MC called the replenishment detail to stations, Dan got a break to go out and observe.

The day was so bright it hurt his eyes, closed down from hours in the cave. The sky and sea blazed as one, luminous with tropical light, and the deck was baking-hot. He found a vantage point on the Harpoon deck as First Division rigged for under-way replenishment.

His first job in the Navy had been as first lieutenant. It felt strange to be looking on as they sweated and swore, frantically rigging for a high-line transfer as Dahlgren edged closer. He saw himself in Ensign Paul, saw old Harvey Bloch when he looked at Chief Giles. Over the young taut faces seemed superimposed those of his old division — BM1 Isaacs, “Popeye” Rambaugh, Petty Officer Pettus, the loose league of bad boys that called themselves the “Kinnicks.” As both ships steadied up into the wind, the sea went mad between them, leaping and frothing as the two hulls closed on it. Then the line-throwing gun cracked.

At 1400, they broke off and headed for their assigned firing area. Dan checked their coordinates carefully against the surface grid warning areas before requesting “batteries released” from Leighty. Shortly afterward, he heard the tapping of the .50’s as they fired the antimine exercise.

The GQ alarm bonged again at 1500 for the chemical and nuclear attack drill. The ventilation died as all over the ship intakes closed and fans stopped. The Kidds were the first U.S. ship class that could completely seal themselves off from outside air.

“Now contamination has been detected inside the skin of the ship. All hands don gas masks.”

They started heading back in at 1700, but the drills continued till they were pierside. When the 1MC announced, “Moored,” Dan took off his earphones and sagged in his chair. Maybe he could snatch a shower, lie in his rack for thirty seconds—

“Now all chiefs and officers assemble in the wardroom for postexercise critique.”

“Okay, next, the chemical attack.”

Woollie sat and Chief Schwartzchild stood. He read off his clipboard with a poker face, every word the same inflection, so you couldn’t tell what was important from what wasn’t; you had to listen to it all. Dan, on the settee, made a note in his wheel book.

“It took seven minutes to set Zebra throughout the ship. Nonessential people were still present on weather decks. Ventilation was secured and Circle William was set expeditiously. The damage control assistant passed the word properly and the team was in appropriate dress. However, it did not exit the ship or carry out rescue or decontamination of the wounded. Overall grade, unsat.”

Lohmeyer sat openmouthed. Vysotsky said, “Mr. Lohmeyer, why in God’s name didn’t you send the decon team out?”

“Uh, I was waiting for orders, XO.”

“Don’t wait on normal procedure! In future, just do it, and inform the officer of the deck they’re going out. If he has a problem with it, he’ll have to let you know.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The next chief, Narita, stood up. “I was inside the skin of the ship when Chief Bentley dumped the wintergreen into the intakes. I checked four interior spaces ten minutes after GQ went. I found fifteen people without Mark five masks on or with bad seals. Both gun crews and Aux-One personnel were deficient in putting on masks. Number three switchboard operator has a broken mask. Overall grade, unsat.”

Hell, Dan thought. Woollie was saying something about how this wasn’t for score yet, but the way the XO glared around, he was grading, even if FTG wasn’t. Leighty leaned back, looking detached.

Dan tuned back in to Schwartzchild. “The nuclear burst casualty and decontamination drill. Initial notification and water wash-down activation satisfactory. It took one hour for the external survey team to find the hot area on the Harpoon deck. One reason may be it isn’t on their route chart. The chart is supposed to show all vital equipment. Is Harpoon vital?”

“I’d say so,” said Vysotsky, staring at Dan. “Mr. Lenson, is the Harpoon a vital system?”

Clenching his teeth, he said, “It’ll be on the route chart tomorrow, sir.”

“First aid was not rendered to casualties. No attempt was made to help them until prompted by the observer. Forward decon team did not know assignments or procedures for decontamination. Forward decon station was unusable, with no supplies in place. Overall grade, unsat.”

“Chief Narita?”

“I observed from aft. Eleven men were caught on the weather decks when the blast went. Repair Three didn’t know how to rope off or scrub down a hot spot. You need to map out other routes to the decon station; you can’t carry wounded up thirty-foot ladders. The damage control officer did not know how to do a log-log of radiation decay. Overall grade aft, unsatisfactory.”

Lieutenant Woollie said, “The overall grade was unsatisfactory. Next was the casualty drill under conditions of nuclear contamination. Chief Bentley?”

“The after director casualty was troubleshot quickly and creatively. However, Petty Officer Fisher was sent for a part. He requested a battle route to supply but decided to take a shortcut over the weather decks. Chief Schwartzchild nailed him on the hot spot. So the part didn’t get to the casualty and it didn’t get fixed, and the overall grade is unsat.”

“Fuck,” Harper muttered beside him. “Are these guys for real? Fish would have gotten back fine. It was only — what, a hundred rads an hour up there?”

Vysotsky glared, and Dan elbowed Harper into silence. The warrant officer sank back sullenly.

“Attention on deck.” They rose as Leighty got up, nodded to Woollie, and left. Then he stuck his head back in. “Lieutenant Lenson, could I see you in my cabin, please.”

“Take a seat. Be right back,” said Leighty, disappearing. Dan squatted on the settee and looked blankly at the picture of the captain’s family. He had a knot in his stomach already.

Leighty came back in T-shirt and trou, combing wet hair. “It gets hot in that damn wardroom when the AC’s off,” he said.

“Yes, sir, it gets pretty ripe in there.”

“But if you leave it on, you can’t hear a word anybody says. Maybe I’m going deaf?”

“No, sir, it’s hard to hear in back even with the blowers off.” He’d expected Leighty to take the seat opposite, but instead the Captain settled beside him on the sofa. “I need to know what’s going on with the fire-control system, Dan. We’re doing air tracking tomorrow and live firing the day after. Will we be able to shoot without having it go crazy on us again?”

Outside, the 1MC announced: “Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms. Give the ship a clean sweep-down fore and aft. Sweep down all lower decks, ladder backs, and passageways. Now, sweepers.”

Dan said, “Sir, my guys have been working on it eighteen hours a day. Dr. DOS has tried several things—”

“Who?”

“Mr. Shrobo. That’s what the guys call him. He seems to know what he’s doing, but apparently this is new to him, too.”

Leighty extended an arm along the back of the sofa, and Dan sat forward to avoid it. “So what is it? Operator problem, hardware problem, software?”

“Sir, we’re pretty certain it’s software. But Shrobo swears nothing that dicked up would have left FCDSSA.”

“Can it have happened in the supply system?”

“They don’t run the tape in the supply system. I don’t think they can. They have computers but not UYK-sevens.”

“So it happened here. Who has access to it? Only your guys, right?”

“Sir, it’s like this. The ETs and DSs fix the hardware when it’s down. The DSs put the tapes on and alter the software routines, usually with the menus, when they have to. The other rates actually operate the programs — the STGs the sonar programs, the FTs the fire-control modules, et cetera.”

“But it’s all in your department.”

“Well, no, sir. Dave Cannon’s people run navigation programs. The radiomen run the comm system. ACDADS is the first place we noticed the problem. But that doesn’t mean that’s the first system it hit, see that, sir? Only that it showed up there first.”

Dan felt a trickle down his back. It was hot in the captain’s cabin, too. Leighty’s foot, propped on his leg, was nearly touching him. The captain’s bare arm lay right against his back.

“Okay, tell me how we can shoot without the computers.”

“Can’t, sir. Not and have any chance of hitting anything.” Dan took out a pen and pulled a copy of the plan of the day toward him. He turned it over and drew a hierarchical diagram.

“Sir, you remember how it’s set up. ACDADS proper is just the controlling program. CDS processes the fire-control data. WDS directs the weapons systems to engage and destroy the target. All three have to be running in order to go to automatic mode. WDS is the only leg that can stand independently. We could fight the ship with just WDS, but we’d have to detect, track, and designate manually.” He looked at the diagram. “Shrobo may have something better to suggest. Can I get back to you after I discuss it with him?”

“Okay.” The captain reached out then and patted Dan’s leg, and Dan tensed. Yet it seemed innocent enough, the kind of thing any CO might do to encourage one of his men. He got up. “Uh, is that all, sir?”

“Almost. One last thing,” Leighty said, looking up at him. “The investigator spoke to me. Diehl. He mentioned a diary. Did Seaman Sanderling leave a diary?”

“A what?” said Dan. He knew it sounded stupid, but Leighty had blindsided him. He’d been thinking about the ACDADS, had that program loaded in his brain, didn’t have his Sanderling file ready to run at all.

“A diary,” Leighty said patiently. “He said Sanderling kept a diary, and that he was going to interview you tomorrow and find out what happened to it.” The captain gave it a beat, glancing at the clock as it chimed eight bells. “Have you got it?”

There it was, point-blank, and he’d played dumb long enough. He cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. I have it.”

“I didn’t see it on the inventory. Why not?”

“Sir, there were several things that weren’t on the inventory. You know the procedure. Certain things we don’t send home to the family.”

“Okay, but the presumption is that we destroy those items. Did you destroy the diary?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I … Diaries are personal items, like letters. I didn’t want to just throw it away.”

“But you didn’t inventory it either. Which is it, Dan? Is it a personal item, in which case you inventory it, or is it something scurrilous, in which case you destroy it?”

“Neither, sir … or both.” He struggled in the vise Leighty was gradually closing on him.

“Okay,” said the captain. He jiggled one white shoe. “Neither, and both. So, are you going to turn it over to NIS?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Sit down. Go on — sit. Dan, I have the feeling we’re dancing around something here that maybe we both know but for some reason you don’t want to talk about. Why don’t you trot it out and we’ll at least have it on the table.”

Dan started to sit on the settee, hesitated, then took the chair opposite Leighty, with the coffee table between them. He rubbed his hands together. His palms were as wet as if he’d just taken them out of the sea.

“Okay, sir. Judging by the stuff we found, Sanderling was a homosexual. In the diary, he named you as one of his partners.”

The silence was suddenly deafening in the little cabin. Dan felt detached, unreal, as he waited for the captain’s response. For a moment, there wasn’t any, though. He added, thinking maybe the captain hadn’t heard him right, “He named you, sir. In the diary.”

“And you think that I’m homosexual, too,” said Leighty. “Which is why you kept it. Correct?”

Dan took a deep breath. “Sir, it’s not something I could rule out. Because of the diary, you see.”

“What if you knew that the accusation was false?”

“If I knew it was false? Then I’d destroy it,” Dan said.

“Okay,” said the captain. He got up and stood looking at the portrait of his family.

“Tell me, Dan, what is a homosexual? Can you answer that for me?”

“Well … I guess, it’s somebody who engages in homosexual acts.”

“How do you know someone engages in homosexual acts?”

“You see them?”

“Without actually witnessing it, I mean. Are they effeminate? Do they wear women’s clothing? Hold hands with other men? Wear earrings in the right ear? Tell me how we know, Mr. Lenson.”

“They tell you. That’s how you know.”

“Ah.” Leighty put his hands on his back and stretched, as if his spine hurt. “So a homosexual is someone who admits that he engages in such acts.”

“I guess so,” Dan said. Then he thought, What? “Sir, let’s cut through this ‘how do we know’ stuff, all right? I’m sorry to be blunt, but is what he says true? Were you his lover? Or partner, whatever?”

“That’s blunt all right. But maybe you’re right; maybe that’s the best way — cut through it,” said Leighty, still looking at the portrait. “Okay, I’ll answer it. I’m a family man. I love my wife. I love my children. I did not engage in homosexual acts with Benjamin Sanderling.”

Dan stood up, feeling his heart physically lighten. “Thank you, sir. That’s a relief — a big relief.”

“And now you’ll destroy it?”

“Yes, sir. That’s good enough for me.”

“Good,” said Leighty. He patted Dan’s shoulder, then put his hand on his back, steering him toward the door. “It’s going to be another long day tomorrow, so—”

“Yes, sir,” said Dan, shaking the proffered hand. “Thanks. This is really a load off my mind.”

As he left the captain’s cabin, the 1MC intoned, “Now taps, taps. Lights out. All hands, turn into your own bunks. Maintain silence about the decks; the smoking lamp is out in all berthing spaces. Now taps.” The lights waned from white to red along the passageways. He felt tired but relieved. The channel ahead was narrow, but the fog had burned off and it lay marked and navigable. It hadn’t been a bad day, he thought. Not a bad day at all.

22

Arms throbbing, Shrobo sidled warily through the passageways, glancing into doorways. His tall, awkward form lurched and zigzagged as the ship rolled around him, and he put a hand out to the bulkheads from time to time to stop himself from staggering.

He moved warily because from time to unpredictable time the whole ship became a madhouse. A bell would start ringing, and within seconds the passageways were jammed with running, shouting men in various stages of undress. Once he’d been climbing the stairs when it happened, and suddenly about twenty people had appeared from nowhere, all headed down while he was still trying to go up. The language had been shocking.

He mused on it as he drifted along, rubbing his arms. They felt numb from half an hour at the workout machines that the black technician, Matthew Williams, had introduced him to.

It wasn’t that the men didn’t accept him. When he went into the dining room, they made room for him, then stared in disbelief at his tray: raw vegetables and bread — the only things he figured weren’t loaded with nitrates and pesticides. When he went into sick bay for clean greens, they greeted him like a long-lost brother. But the Navy was a foreign country, a foreign language. He still wasn’t sure which was fore and aft and port and starboard — how did you know when you couldn’t even see the water? What about the strange things they kept saying over the public-address system? What was “material condition Yoke,” and what did all those whistles mean? He knew the difference between officer and enlisted, but where did chiefs fit in? They were older than most of the officers and seemed to know more, but they called even the youngest officers “sir.”

He recalled himself with a start and turned around. Lost again. The Kafkaesque corridors all looked the same: narrow, lined with complicated masses of pipes and wires, roofed with the horrible fluorescent lights. He snagged a passing sailor. The man had a shock of dirty blond hair in front, tapered close in back, and a Band-Aid on his nose. His thin shoulders were hunched under a short blue jacket; he sniffled as he stared at Shrobo. “Say, uh, can you tell me how to get back to the computer room?” Hank asked him.

“Go forward to frame two hundred, take the starboard ladder up to the oh-one level.”

“Thanks,” he said. “But which way is—”

“Forward? That way. Say, you’re that dude come to fix our computers, ain’tcha? They running yet?”

“Uh, not really. But we’re working on them.”

“I heard a you. Hey, welcome aboard. Glad to have ya.” The boy seized his hand before he could react, pumped it twice, then dropped it and disappeared around a corner. Hank looked at his hand, remembering the boy’s sniffle. His resistance was down anyway; lack of sleep and the omnipresent fluorescent light reduced immune system activity.

He went forward, trying to remember not to touch his lips or eyes with the hand he held out in front of him. The thought made his nose itch, of course. He twitched it like a beleaguered rabbit. Passing sailors eyed him strangely. Behind him, a speaker announced: “Now the seabag locker will be open for approximately twenty minutes.” Finally, he saw a rest room. A sailor looked up angrily from a swab and bucket but shrugged when he pointed to the sink. He squirted liquid soap and worked up a froth, staring into the mirror as his mind reverted once more to the problem.

He just couldn’t understand how you could ship perfectly functional taped programs, then have them degrade when they hit the ship’s computers. Things simply did not work that way. A computer was an incredibly complex but totally dumb machine that was capable of doing only what it was told. The program didn’t change. What was on the tape couldn’t change. And once it was used to program the computer, that couldn’t change, either.

But it did aboard Barrett. Was he dealing with some kind of computerized poltergeist? Something that transcended normal physical laws? Ridiculous. It had to be an error of some sort, an error of replication—

Then he stopped.

He looked at his hand, where the sniffling sailor had touched it. Slowly, he rinsed off the rest of the soap.

Why had he just washed his hands?

Because that was how rhinoviruses were passed.

Cold viruses.

Viruses were replicating molecules.

His mind shifted now to a discussion he’d participated in on Arpanet. Arpanet was a secure DOD-wide network of computers, interconnected in a wide area network. It serviced major defense labs and research facilities with electronic mail and file-transfer services. It also connected to mainframes in the academic and business world via a much larger network called Internet. Internet was the exchange media for a number of electronic forums and debates on the burning technical issues of the day. A typical query from a scientist seeking information or ideas, for example, could generate literally thousands of comments from all over the world.

What he remembered now was a debate about a new and rather sinister development beginning to plague university computer departments. A few malicious computer-science students, called “hackers,” had unleashed a new kind of mischief. They got their giggles from making computers do things they weren’t supposed to do, or getting into computers they weren’t supposed to have access to. At the cost of hours or days of intense, tedious work, the hacker could break into it, apparently thereby gaining some sort of rush or excitement. Using techniques born of the innate cleverness of the kind of people drawn to computers and programming, some didn’t stop with gaining access. Instead, they disrupted the system’s operation in a number of interesting and sometimes catastrophic ways.

He also recalled an Internet conversation with a doctoral candidate at USC, Berkeley, who was doing a dissertation on what he called “virtual disease emulators.” Their conversation had been theoretical, but the student had made some thought-provoking speculations about how a properly written program might be able to propagate itself—

“Hey, you okay?” a voice behind him asked. It was the sailor with the swab.

“Excuse me?”

“Said, you okay? You just standing there, like you froze or something.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Just thinking, thanks.”

When he got back to the computer room, Dawson and Williams were looking at the new code for the weapons-assignment module. Their faces were appalled. Shrobo said, “What now?”

“It’s lousy with it, Hank.”

“Bad code?”

“Are you kidding, bad? It’s … garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage.” Williams turned a suspicious eye toward him. “And it’s in the sections I already patched. We got gun shoots and tracking drills tomorrow. What are we gonna do? This ain’t gonna cut it.”

“I know.” He sat down and took a breath, thinking about it. The more he thought, the more certain he felt. Everything fit — the good tapes that mysteriously went bad; the patched code that over time slowly degenerated back to noise; the origin of whatever it was in one module of the tape, but then, as they looked, gradually revealed itself in more and more segments, more and more cells, more and more modules. It was as if the very act of looking for it spread it.

“I think I have an idea what might be going on,” he said tentatively, looking up at the rows of flashing lights. “And you know what? I sure hope I turn out to be wrong.”

23

The machinists stopped talking the second he stepped through the door the next morning. Dan looked around the shop: racks of hammers and mallets, machines for bending and cutting metal. Smells of oil and acid flux and hot coffee surrounded him.

“Morning, sir. Help you?” said a tired-looking first-class; his dungaree shirt said BAKOTIC in Old English script.

“Wondered if you had any scrap wire, strapping iron, anything like that.”

“We got rid of most of our good scrap before we got here, sir. Inspectors don’t like a lot of crap layin’ around the shop …. Studie, can you help the lieutenant out? What you need it for, sir?”

“I just need some scrap wire, but it’s got to be heavy.”

He left the shop with five feet of battery wire, soft copper cable half an inch thick. He twisted its heavy ductility into a coil as he went aft. He stuck his head into the laundry as he passed. Despite fresh paint, the smell of fire still lingered.

He emerged on the afterdeck, into the lingering cool of dawn. The sun bulged out of the sea like a thermonuclear detonation, glinting and winking off glass or metal far down the coast in Cuban territory. Dan rubbed his eyes. He’d been up past midnight fixing the casualty routes; then at 0400, reveille again ….

The Kidd-class destroyers, like the Spruances from which they’d inherited hull and machinery layout, had a dropped weather deck at the stern. The twin tapered rails of the Mark 26 launcher rose above him, pointed straight up; the tapered barrel of the after gun aimed at the departing land. He stepped over flemished-out mooring lines and around bitts and scuttles. After so long locked inside, in CIC and office and wardroom, he had a moment almost of agoraphobia as he stopped on Barrett’s broad, open fantail.

Back here, at fifteen knots, the rumbling vibration of the screws was like riding a tractor over a potato field. Twin whip antennas drew circles on the sky. The wake tumbled under the counter, a white-green maelstrom thirty feet across. The sharp-cornered stern dragged little whirlpools after it, then left them spinning and rocking in a sea the color of chrysoprase till they dissolved into a welter of hissing foam.

Dan half-trusted his weight to the rail. There was one patch of turbulence about ten feet back from the stern where the sea seemed to be sucked downward, as if into a huge open mouth just below the surface. He nodded to the after lookout, who gave him one incurious glance, then lifted his binoculars again.

Wondering if he was the one who’d spotted Sanderling, Dan took the diary out of his pocket. He wrapped the cable around it tightly, then twisted the ends together till they locked.

He looked out at Cuba, the low hills sinking astern. A dark speck caught his eye above a gleam of white. He frowned, then understood; it was the submarine, following them out. Barrett was headed straight out to the operating areas today. As he recalled the chart, the hydrography was fairly steep here. The hundredfathom curve was only about half a mile off Windward Point.

Leaning out, he tossed the diary into the sea. It curved out and fell into the vortex and disappeared, sucked down into the continuously beating froth. He shaded his eyes, watching for it to reappear farther aft, but it didn’t.

It was gone. When he straightened, it felt like some heavy yoke had been lifted from his shoulders. He should never have kept it, never have read it. Maybe the legal officer, Arguilles, was right. He was too quick on the trigger when it came to taking responsibility.

He turned from the lifeline, to find a man in civilian slacks and short-sleeve shirt watching him from the deck above. He had closecut dark hair and muscular arms crossed over a middle-aged paunch. They stared at each other for a second. Then the man looked around, found the ladder to the afterdeck, and let himself down it.

He held out his hand. “Lieutenant Lenson, I presume.”

“That’s right.” Dan met flat blue eyes. “Who are you?”

“Bob Diehl, Naval Investigative Service. Looking into ETSN Benjamin Sanderling, USN, decease of.” Dan looked at the ID card and nodded; Diehl flipped the case closed. “Pretty morning.”

“Yeah.”

“I like riding the ships. Put in eight years in diesel boats myself, Carbonero and Medregal, then the old Rocketwolf. Ever heard of her? USS Requin, SS-four eighty-one?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I remember I was the lookout in a hurricane once. Nineteen hours stuck on the bridge. Couldn’t get down. We had twenty feet of green water breaking over the top of the windshield; that fiberglass sail kept shuddering like it was going to break off. Well, I know you have a busy day planned. I thought I’d try to talk to some of the men who knew this fella jumped overboard, in the inbetweens. The XO — hey, what kind of name is Vysotsky? Sounds Russian.”

“It is,” Dan said, wondering why every ex-sailor you met had to tell you all about his old ship.

“That so? Well, he said okay. That all right with you?”

“Sure,” Dan said. He gave the guy a second to ask anything else, unsure whether he’d seen him get rid of the diary. When he didn’t, Dan added, “Will you want to interview me?”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Division officer, leading chief, the guys bunked with him — that’s the usual procedure. I don’t imagine you saw much of him.”

“No. Not much.” Dan checked his watch. “We’ll be going to GQ for a local firing pretty soon—”

“Sure, Lieutenant. See you later.”

Doors and hatches slammed as he went through the by-now-mindless motions of donning battle dress. He checked the gas mask, making sure the snap on the cover didn’t stick and that the rubber “spider” was prefolded so he could slap it on his face, pull the webwork down, and have an instant seal. The requirement was fifteen seconds from “go” to breathing through the activated-carbon canister.

“Harpoon, manned and ready.”

“SSWC, manned and ready.”

“UBFC, manned and ready.”

“Sonar, manned and ready.”

“AAWC, manned and ready.”

Lauderdale hit the intercom near Dan. “Bridge, Combat; Combat, manned and ready. Can you give me a visual range and bearing to the sub?”

“Roger, stand by.”

“Mr. Lauderdale, I’ll be in Sonar,” Dan told him. The CIC officer said, “Aye aye, sir.”

The sonar room was separated from the rest of CIC by a black folding curtain. When he closed it, he found himself in a blue-lighted space the size of a camping trailer, completely filled with the three huge sonar stacks, chairs, safes, racks of pubs and tape reels, and the sonobouy and passive-tracking cabinets. A Barbie doll in a sailor hat, naked legs spread, dangled from an overhead light. Fowler glanced up as he slid in. “Mr. Lenson, howzit going? … Start a standard beam-to-beam search. Depression angle two.”

There was the eerie song of the outgoing pulse, three notes repeated over ten seconds, then a click from the speaker by the port stack.

“What are we doing in active, Chief?”

“They’re starting us out in active mode, sir. See how good the tracking team does, I guess.”

Barrett carried one big SQS-53 sonar. The radiating elements were far below the waterline in the bow dome, a huge bulge beneath the sharp overhanging cutwater. The sonarmen “listened” from up here, but not with their ears. On the number one console a ring of white light expanded slowly from the center to the limits of the round scope, then disappeared. Below it on the B-scan, amber lines marched from the bottom to the top of the screen. The number two console operator sat glued to a jade shimmer like moire silk, fingers resting on a joystick. He looked drawn. Dan leaned against the safe, thinking they were all going to be exhausted before this was over. He noticed the sign on it. NO ONE WILL REMOVE ANY PUB FROM THIS SAFE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. CHIEF FOWLER.

“You and the chief warrant getting along better these days?”

Fowler molded an invisible snowball. “We got an understanding, sir. He stays out unless I ask him in. He comes in, one of my guys stays with him. Hey! Freeze that, around two-one-six. Tweak your gain up.”

The curtain rattled back and then closed again; Lieutenant Woollie loomed up through the dimness. “Got a track yet?” he asked briskly.

Fowler pulled the mike down. “Evaluator, Sonar: Active contact bears two-one-six, two point five kiloyards, bow aspect, up doppler. Recommend we come left; he’s nearly in our baffles.”

“It doesn’t do any good if we’re the only ones know about it, Chief,” Dan told him. Fowler grimaced.

Woollie quizzed the sonarmen about equipment settings, power out, depression angle, and pulse length and asked to see their sound-velocity profile. Then he left. Dan searched around for a place to perch, and someone handed down a folding chair.

Corpus Christi dived shortly after that, and they did sonar detection and tracking exercises through the morning. Active pinging went okay, but when they went to passive, to listening, everything fell apart. Corpus Christi was a new boat. Everybody expected her to be quiet. But when they passed within five hundred yards of her without a detection, the captain called down and roasted Dan. As soon as Leighty hung up, Dan dialed the computer room. Williams answered. “DP center.”

“Lieutenant Lenson, in Sonar. We’re not getting shit on passive tracking here. How’s the program look?”

“Sir, all you’re getting on the fifty-three is straight-stick passive output. I told Sonar that.”

“Are you telling me we’re not running any digital processing?”

“Sir, the Doc says we run those programs, we lose them. Until we get the diaphragm in place—”

“The what?” Dan said to Fowler, “What the hell’s he talking about?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Stand by. I’m coming down.”

When he got to the computer room, he looked around for Shrobo. He was about to ask for him when he came out from behind one of the UYK-7s. His glasses gleamed blankly, filled with light. “Uh, Hank,” Dan said, “I know you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong, but you can’t just shut the computers down till you find out. We’ve got to keep working with what we’ve got, okay?”

“Sorry. Can’t be done that way.”

“Uh … sir, I’m gonna break the guys for lunch, it’s almost time for the mess line to close.”

“Okay, Chief.” When they left, Dan turned on Shrobo. “What is this? You’re supposed to be here to help us, not shut us down!”

“That’s what I’m trying to do. But if you keep running these computers, there’s not going to be any system.”

“What do you mean?”

Shrobo gazed at the overhead for a second, as if receiving divine guidance, then reached for a pencil. “Let me show you.”

Dan sat in CIC, worrying about what Shrobo had just told him. Things were worse than he’d thought. Everything was affected, not just the fire-control systems but everything that the computers controlled. And it was getting worse.

Finally, he clicked the light on and checked the schedule.

They were well offshore now, fifty miles south of Guantánamo Bay. The afternoon’s drills would begin with antiaircraft target designation, followed by tactical antiaircraft exercises. A-4 Skyhawks from Fleet Composite Squadron Ten would simulate attacks on the formation while the ships practiced tracking them and handing off engagement responsibilities. At the same time, an EA-6 over the horizon was testing their electronic surveillance capabilities. On completion of the tracking exercises, the ships would split into two parallel lines and another plane would report on-station with a towed target, making runs on each ship in turn for live firing.

He clicked the light off, slid down, and leaned over the surface scope. It showed four pips on a line of bearing, steaming southwest at fifteen knots. Dahlgren was guide, followed by Barrett, Manitowoc, and Canisteo. “What’s our watch zone?” he asked Lauderdale.

“Port and starboard, thirty degrees to one-five-zero degrees from the bow.”

“And how are we tracking?”

“The usual way, sir, on the UYA-fours—”

“We’d better practice our manual plotting. Shut down the consoles. Get the guys up on the phones. I want a surface status board, tote boards, and air plot.”

“We can’t just shut down the NTDS, sir. They’re going to be throwing a lot of targets at us during the battle problem.”

“We’ve got serious problems with the combat direction system. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to count on having it up.”

“It’ll be awful slow.”

“Not if we get them drilled right. Anyway, I want to give it a try. Get them all up on the phones. Use red for hostiles or unknowns, white for friendlies. Plot everything inside two hundred miles. That includes commercial air out of Jamaica and Haiti. Draw big — I have to be able to read it from here. Get on it fast, Herb; they’re gonna start the first run in seventeen minutes.”

One by one, the edge-illuminated boards came on and the men took their positions behind them. Dan caught more than one doubtful glance through transparent plastic. Hell, he thought. I don’t know if it’ll work, either.

If antisubmarine work was chess, antiaircraft defense was jai alai. It took more computer power and electronics than anything else a surface combatant did.

Modern warships weren’t designed to fight alone. They fought in formation, defenses interlocking to form a vast shield hundreds of miles from edge to edge. But to take its place in that phalanx, each had to drill and report to a common standard. Radar, radio nets, patrol aircraft, lookouts, electronic sensors, and intelligence estimates all fed the stream of data. The task group commander stationed his ships to make the best use of their weapons and sensors. The force antiair warfare coordinator controlled the combined air defense. The outer edge of the shield was carrier-launched jet interceptors. Then came long-range missiles, point defense missiles, and last, gunfire.

It all moved so fast that Dan wondered if manual plotting was still possible. The plotters worked from behind the boards, so everything had to be written backward. You got used to that, but updating everything every three minutes, a skilled plotter could still only keep six contacts current. Two could work at one board, ducking and whirling around each other, but still that made twelve the upper limit of human ability.

In three minutes, a Soviet SS-N-7 cruise missile traveled thirty miles. Launched from a submerged submarine, at a maximum range of thirty-five miles, it would be manually plotted once before it crashed into the ship.

As the first event started, a murmured chant began behind the hum of the blowers, the crackle of radio transmissions.

“Mark, bogey track three, green zero-six-zero one-five-zero, altitude thirty-five, course zero-six-four, three-fifty knots.”

“Say again, didn’t catch that … no … gimme the next one.”

“Bogey track four designated to Alfa X-ray.”

“Bogey track five in a fade, handing off to Sierra Lima.”

“EW reports racket, Ice Drum radar bearing two-five-three.”

The men leaned into the boards, eyes abstracted as they listened, then intent as they etched in symbols and information. They gradually warmed to the task, but it was still dreadfully deliberate. Midway through the exercise, one of the instructors came in, clipboard under his arm, sat down near Dan, and began writing.

The faces in the wardroom that night were haggard. Leighty looked exhausted. Dan, looking at him, realized the captain had been everywhere; the engine room, the hangar for fire-fighting drills, then the bridge again as they came in at dusk. Vysotsky looked just as wrung-out. He blinked, making himself concentrate as Woollie started to speak.

“The exercise with Corpus Christi. Active tracking was adequate, but the passive tracking was unsat. Based on your grades to date, I don’t think you’re going to stand a chance of passing the antisubmarine portion of the battle problem.”

“Mr. Lenson?” The captain pointed at him, and for a second Dan regretted he’d broken him of his habit of calling on Harper. He stood up.

“Sir, what he’s calling a degradation in performance is due to the fact that we weren’t running any digital processing. It’s part of the overall problem in the ACDADS.” As he spoke, he wondered where he should stop. It was never good to give the commanding officer bad news in front of the troops. But then he thought, Hell, he asked me. “It’s worse than we originally thought, sir.”

“What’s our new ETR?”

“We don’t really have an estimated time of repair yet, XO,” he said, turning to face Vysotsky. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to let Dr. Shrobo brief on the problem.”

Leighty raised his head from the test results. “Is he here?” he said. Shrobo stood up in back. “Can you enlighten us as to what’s going on?”

“I’ll try, Captain.”

As the angular figure stalked forward, Dan realized how out of place Shrobo looked. “Dr. DOS” was still wearing scrub greens, which apparently had become a uniform for him. At least he had a clean set on, but he still hadn’t shaved, and his hair dangled, snarled around his bald spot. Half-inch-thick glasses transformed his eyes into polished gemstones under a magnifying glass. As he reached the front, he unsnapped a rubber band from a scroll. He handed one end to Vysotsky, who looked surprised and not overly pleased, but he stood up to help display it.

“This is a block diagram of the subordinate modules of the Automated Combat Decision and Direction System, Block One, Version Three-Point-One,” Shrobo muttered. “I drew it out when I was explaining things to Lieutenant Lenson today. The first thing I need to tell you is that I think I know now what we have in our system. There’s a short name for what we’ve got.”

“What’s that?” Leighty asked.

“A virus.”

“A virus?”

“A computer virus. That’s what they’re called.”

Leighty said mildly, “I’m drawing a blank on that, Doc. How can a machine get a virus?”

“Not a biological virus. These germs are actually little programs. They ride in on a tape or a disc and burrow into memory. Then they multiply — erase the original programming and write themselves over it, or lock up the keyboard, or display a message — whatever the programmer who wrote them wants them to do.” Shrobo glanced at Leighty. “It’s something that’s started around the fringes, since they started making personal computers. We’ve never seen one in the Navy before, but I think that’s what we’ve got.”

Leighty said, “Some kind of rogue program that goes around eating memory … sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, they’re real all right,” said Shrobo.

“I see. Well, how do we know if we’ve got one? And if we do, how do we get rid of it? And are we talking just the fire-control system, or—”

Dan said, “It’ll depend on what we find, sir.”

“What do you mean? What could we find?”

He took a deep breath. It was always better to let your seniors know the worst that could happen up front. And now that Shrobo had explained how the thing worked, it was easy to visualize how badly it could damage a ship that depended on computers for almost everything it did. “Well, sir, it depends on how long it’s been in there replicating itself. From what Hank says, it may have infected everything the computers handle — the message-processing system, pay records, personnel, admin, sonar programs, navigational programs. And of course the fire control and combat direction systems.”

“This may be serious, then,” said Leighty.

Shrobo said, “It’s like the lieutenant says, depends on how long it’s been in there. Thing is, like for the message processing, you’ve got tapes with all the back messages on them. The virus could be on those tapes, too. You’ve either got to eyeball every piece of data you own or else try to put some kind of routine together to search for it and tell you where it is.”

“Can we do that? Eyeball it, I mean?”

“I don’t believe it’s possible to sanitize everything manually. There are a quarter of a million lines of code in the operating programs, but there are millions more in the memory units and data tapes for radio messages and the other records. All we have to do is miss one iteration and the virus will regenerate and crash the system again.”

Everyone looked grave. Finally, Vysotsky said, “Then how about the search routine? Dan? Is that within our capabilities?”

“I don’t know yet, sir,” said Dan. “We really need to get deeper into how it’s done. Dr. DOS is going to have to lead us.”

“But how did we get this?” Vysotsky asked him. “Where’d it come from?”

“We don’t know that, sir,” Dan told him. “But we’ll try to find out.”

Shrobo said, “I need to emphasize one thing. I wouldn’t waste any time. Every hour you run your system, you lose more data. The thing’s growing in there right now. I’ve been trying to isolate what I’ve tentatively named the ‘Barrett Virus’—”

“I don’t like that name,” said Leighty.

“Well, some of the sailors call it the ‘Creeping Crud.’”

“I’m glad you’re here, Doc,” said Leighty. “No disrespect to you, Jay, and Chief Dawson and the rest of the DSs, but it sounds like this is beyond them technically. Okay, go on. You were talking about counteracting it. How?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Shrobo took a turn back and forth, hands behind his back, looking more like a stalking heron than ever. “First, I have to isolate it. Break it, read it, and understand how it works. Then maybe I can write a program that operates within the computer to protect it.”

“Have you done that before?” the XO asked him.

“No one’s ever done it before. You have to understand, this is a new field. Of course, you can trace it back to Von Neumann and Turing’s work on automata and Shannon’s work on information theory—”

“That’s all very interesting,” said Vysotsky, “but how long will it take you to fix the computers?”

Shrobo said, in the tone used to placate a child, “How long it takes is not important. Understanding what’s happening—that’s important. I don’t want to wipe out this virus. I want to capture it alive.” Vysotsky looked incredulous, started to say something else, but Shrobo went on. “To address your immediate problem, I propose a short-term fix. It may be possible to erect an electronic fire wall or placenta between weapons control and the rest of ACDADS. The interface to designation and identification functions will be manual. But it should control the guns and missiles well enough to permit engaging one or perhaps two targets simultaneously.”

Woollie spoke up then. “Sir, I don’t think we can go along with that.”

Leighty looked at him. “Why not, Lieutenant?”

“Sir, it’s not that we don’t want to cooperate. It’s more of a point of philosophy. You’re the first ACDADS ship to go through refresher training here.”

“That’s right, so?”

“So … Sir, we have no objection to your doing the preparatory exercises any way you want to. The question is how you do the battle problem. Our philosophy is, you train the way you’d fight. Normally, you’d fight in full auto mode, right? That’s why this juryrig mode the man here is suggesting — I don’t think we can go along with that. If things are really that bad, maybe you should be back in the yard, not here getting ready for deployment. I’d be glad to set you up with the commodore, though, let you argue your position.”

Leighty placed two index fingers to his lips. Then his eye caught Dan’s. “Mr. Lenson, you’re the combat systems officer. What’s your recommendation?”

“Sir, I did a practice run-through today in CIC. Plotting by hand.”

“And?”

“Sir, I recommend we start training everyone that way. Full manual, plotting and everything, right now.”

“Tell me why.”

He sat for a second marshaling his thoughts, then leaned forward. “First, if they want us to do the battle problem in a standard mode, manual makes the most sense. We’d have to fight that way if we had battle damage. The battle problem’s three weeks away. That gives us time to train the talkers and evaluators. By then, we should be able to isolate and run the weapons control systems independently. And, best case — Shrobo gets everything up and running again — we switch to auto, but we’re still well trained on the backup mode.”

“Then what’s the point in having this class of ship?” Vysotsky said. “Without the computers — we’ve already proved we can’t detect a sub even with his nose up the crack of our ass. We’d never be able to operate as part of a carrier battle group.”

“But we can’t depend on the computers in automatic,” Quintanilla said. “Last time we shot at a drone, it hit the ship.”

Dan glared at him across the table. Thanks, you son of a bitch, he thought.

They discussed it back and forth for a while. Finally, Leighty held up his hand. “Okay, here’s my decision. I believe Commander Vysotsky is right. Your recommendation is noteworthy, Mr. Lenson, but I’m not going to step back in time.”

“I don’t think it’s—”

“Let me finish,” said Leighty mildly, and Dan bit his tongue. “The Japanese lost at Midway, maybe lost the whole war, because one squadron of dive-bombers got through unnoticed. In a general war at sea, we’ll have upward of a hundred Backfires, Badgers, and Blinders in a strike, all firing air-to-surface missiles, and more cruise missiles from their Echoes and Charlies. The results of the Velvet Hawk series of fleet exercises are pretty consistent. Screen units — like Barrett—can expect to engage up to twenty incoming missiles at once in a major strike.”

Leighty paused, then went on. “This ship is the future, and we’ve got to make it work. If we can’t, if the computers have become a liability instead of an advantage, maybe it’s best we get that on the record by failing the battle problem.”

Vysotsky looked stunned. Dan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Leighty didn’t seem to register that failing refresher training could mean both he and the XO would be relieved. The captain continued, “We have three weeks. Mr. Lenson, I want you to pass off as many of your duties as you can to Mr. Shuffert, then supervise the effort to get ACDADS back up.”

“Uh … aye aye, sir.”

“It’s in your hands. Maybe Gitmo can help, though I don’t know how much smarts they have on software. But bottom line is that we’ll do the final battle problem in full auto. The system will work by then in mode three, or we will accept a failing grade.”

Harper looked grave. Shrobo shook his head slowly, gaining him a virulent look from Vysotsky.

Woollie broke the pause. “That’s a risky course of action, Captain. Really, if this new software’s the problem and a senior software engineer says it’s not working right, maybe I can persuade the commodore to grant you some kind of waiver on the—”

“I see what you mean, but I don’t think that’s the issue.” Leighty tapped his lips with a pencil. “These ships are going to have to fight someday — without software engineers aboard. You can’t ask for a waiver in the middle of a battle. Thank you for the offer, but I believe I’ll stay with what I just said.”

“All right, sir, I’ll notify the commodore of your intention. Otherwise … today’s exercises were unsatisfactory.”

“Thank you,” said Leighty. He stood up, and glancing at one another, the officers and chiefs got up, too, and filed out.

Dan was sitting glumly in his office, contemplating the fact that the captain had just bet his career and the possible future of a whole ship class on him and his team, when someone tapped on the door. “Yeah,” he called.

It was Diehl, the NIS guy. “Lieutenant. You said if I had any questions …”

“Yeah. Come on in.” He tried to force a casual tone as he cleared off a chair beside his desk.

“This a good time? You look busy.”

“I’ll probably be here all night. So you might as well ask whatever it is you want to ask me now.” He forced a smile. “Cephas, how about getting Mr. Diehl some coffee. Me, too. Sugar? Cream?”

Diehl said black, and the yeoman left. He and Dan were alone, with the upper half of the Dutch door open. Diehl reached over and closed it. “Keep it private,” he said.

“How’s the investigation going?”

“It’s an interesting situation. Did you know Sanderling was a fruit?”

“You mean did I know before we went through his belongings, or—”

“Before.”

“No.”

“No hints to that effect? No suspicions?”

“I’d hear the guys make jokes occasionally. He was kind of the runt of the litter in the division. But they talk that way all the time.”

“Sailors, you mean? Enlisted?”

“Not just enlisted.”

“The kind of ‘suck my dick,’ ‘whip it out’ kind of stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh-huh.” Diehl sat slumped, looking vaguely around the office. His eye lingered on Dan’s desk. “That your daughter?”

“Yeah.”

“No picture of your wife?”

“We’re divorced.”

“Uh-huh. Tell me, did he have any special friends he hung out with, went ashore with?”

“Not that I know of. The leading chief, Dawson, or Petty Officer Williams, they might know.”

“Uh-huh. I sure wish we had a body, or a note. You know, eighty percent of suicides leave notes. The stuff the signalmen are telling me, just that they saw something white, that it was moving, then it sank — that he jumped overboard, then finished himself off when the ship was making up on him — that’s like only one way of looking at it.”

“What do you mean? They saw him go down.”

“They saw someone struggling in the water, then sinking. How about this: Somebody knocks him on the head and throws him over. He comes to, tries to swim. Maybe he’s hurt. He almost makes it, but he goes down just as the ship’s getting ready to pick him up. It would look exactly the same.”

“Now taps, taps. Lights out,” announced the 1MC. Diehl waited till it was silent again. “You sure this is a good time for you? Now, you were on the effects board for his stuff. Who was there? You, that chief warrant—”

“Harper. It was me, Harper, Oakes, Dawson, and Cephas, the recorder.”

“Uh-huh. Cephas says you told him to bag and dump all the boy mags.”

“Right.”

“Why’d you keep the diary, Lieutenant?”

Dan blinked, suddenly angry. They couldn’t keep quiet, like he’d asked them to. The question was whether they’d also told Diehl that Sanderling had mentioned the captain. He was starting to answer when the door banged open suddenly, as if kicked from outside. “What is it?” he said sharply.

“Sorry, sir.” The yeoman stopped halfway in. “You asked for coffee …. Should I come back later, sir?”

“No, leave it here. Thanks,” Dan said. Then, to Diehl: “You already talked to the yeoman here?”

“Yeah, hi,” Diehl said. “You want to give us a couple more minutes? Thanks. Close it …. Man, this is shitty coffee. Okay, why’d you keep it?”

“I couldn’t decide if it was better to throw it away or forward it to his family. So I decided to look through it.”

“Why didn’t you look through it there?”

“I thought I’d do it later.”

“Uh-huh. Where is it?”

“I finally destroyed it.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what you were doing back on the fantail this morning?”

“Yes. I wrapped it in—”

“Five feet of copper wire and threw it overboard.”

“That’s right.” The guy had done his homework, Dan thought.

“Let’s see, you were court-martialed once, weren’t you?” Diehl asked him, offhand, sipping coffee as he waited for an answer.

“Not a court-martial. Court of inquiry.”

“Letter of caution, not good. And according to your service record, you had to respond to some of the fitness reports you got as a jaygee.”

“I didn’t know you were allowed to go into our service records.”

“Sure I am. Anybody I think might be subject to charges.”

“So I’m a suspect?”

“You got to admit, it looks suspicious. The kid’s queer, he dies and you steal his diary and throw it away. Makes me wonder what it said.”

“I took charge of the diary as the ranking member of the effects board. I didn’t ‘steal’ it.”

“This could just be a murder investigation, Lieutenant. Why don’t you can the coy act and tell me what the book said. It could save us both a lot of trouble.”

“It was a record of his feelings. Part of it, he wrote about his sex life. Like anybody does in a diary.”

“He’s open about being a faggot? In the diary?”

“Yeah.”

“Mention partners?”

“Sometimes.”

“Anybody on the ship?”

“It mentioned some contacts on the ship.”

“This ship. Barrett.”

“Yes.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. Names?”

Dan said carefully, “It gave no proper names.”

“That’s hard to believe. Are you in there?”

“No.”

“No reference to you at all?”

“Only that I kept turning down his special-request chits.”

“Come off it, Lieutenant. Where did you fuckee-suckee this kid? Your stateroom? The office here? You didn’t do it down in the bunkroom with the enlisted.”

Dan controlled himself. This was the guy’s interrogation technique, that was all. “I told you, I didn’t have relations with him,” he said.

“You got a girlfriend, Lieutenant?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“Show me a letter.”

“Wait a minute. Are you really asking me to prove I’m heterosexual by showing you a letter from my girlfriend?”

“Maybe. How about it?”

“I don’t have any letters from her. She’s in Charleston; we only left last week. And I don’t think she’ll write, anyway. We had an argument before we got under way. Anyway, does that mean a guy’s not gay, if he’s got a girlfriend? How about a wife and daughter?”

“You’d be surprised, Lieutenant. I personally think there’s a hell of a lot more guys out there go both ways than anybody thinks. Anyway, you ain’t got a wife; you said you were divorced. How about if I call the ex — Mrs. Lenson, find out why?”

“Why we broke up is our business. I’m not giving you her number.”

“Not cooperating, that’s not the way to clear things up, Lieutenant.”

“That’s outside the scope of this investigation.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Diehl. “You sure you never snuggled up with this Sanderling kid? When your shoreside pussy wasn’t available?”

“No.”

“Who are you protecting, Lieutenant?”

“I’m not protecting anyone.”

“You don’t lie good, Mr. Lenson. Fact, you lie real bad.”

“I’ve told you the truth. I read the diary; it couldn’t be returned to the next of kin; it had no remarks indicating an intention to commit suicide; it gave no names of partners aboard ship.”

“One, two, three, four, six,” said Diehl. “What’s five? I don’t need a polygraph machine to tell me you’re speaking me sau about something. Ask you this: If it isn’t that you like to suck boys’ dicks, is it worth flushing your career down the toilet for? ’Cause I’m gonna find out what it is sooner or later.” He sipped coffee and looked at the overhead. “What exactly is the problem here? Have we got some kind of personality conflict going?”

“I don’t think so. I just find your questions offensive.”

“Oh, I’m the bad guy because I’m asking questions? Clue you in, Lieutenant. I haven’t even started asking them yet. I’ll tell you something else, something I learned in submarines. ‘Don’t sink the boat.’ Everything else is secondary to that. But these asshole bandits can do it. It’s not a matter of one guy. That, maybe we could live with. But these buddy fuckers start linking up. They get this chain going, and it grows and spreads …. When the roaches get out of hand, somebody’s got to come in and spray the kitchen.” Diehl took out a Skilcraft and a pad of paper. He put them beside Dan’s hand, on the desk. “Now, I’m gonna leave you alone here for a while. I want you to write down what you know. This is your last chance to get straight with me. After that, cross your legs; I only got one more nail.”

“Take your paper with you,” said Dan. “I don’t have anything to add to what I said.”

When Diehl closed the door, Dan sat without moving. His mouth was dry. Shit, he thought. I handled that all wrong. Well, at least he’d kept suspicion away from the captain.

Yeah, real good work. So now he suspects me.

A tentative knock turned out to be Cephas. Dan waved him in, seeing from his face that he’d have to mollify him now for yelling at him. He sighed. The Weapons Department yeoman was either ingratiating or else sullen; he seemed to want something, some acceptance or approbation, but even when Dan complimented him on a typing job, it didn’t seem to be enough …. He started to reach for the growing stack of paper in his box, then remembered that as of now, when he wasn’t on watch, he was on the ACDADS problem full-time. He said the necessary few words to Cephas. Then, hoisting himself wearily to his feet, he made his way through darkened, empty passageways toward the computer room.

24

The first rocket detonated with a flash and roar, showering hot sparks down over the crowd. The glow washed over the stillwet streets from the rain that had just ended. Then all at once, the searchlights came on, the bands started to play, and the first float rumbled into the square to a gasp and then a wild, tumultuous cheer. Burning white shafts clashed like sword blades, then focused on the goddesses who waved from it. Gold and white plumes nodded from their heads, making them eight feet tall. As their dazzling smiles beamed across the plaza, the air throbbed with ecstatic rhythm, amplified till it made all thought impossible.

Graciela stood against the side of a building, crossing her arms over her stomach to protect herself as the dancers whirled by. Greasepaint and sweat melted down their faces in multicolored rivers. The smells of perfume and sweat and popcorn, dust and rum and the choking exhaust from the Hungarian trucks made her feel like throwing up.

The people had spent months preparing for the Carnaval, stitching together costumes, floats, decorations out of wood and papiermâché, colored paper and cloth and tinsel laboriously cut from foil. All stolen from the state, yet the Party looked the other way. Tonight the bands played Silvio Rodriguez and Pablito Milaués, not the “Internationale,” and no one wore militia uniforms.

Tonight the worn-out engines of the dented trucks rumbled beneath immense and gaudy wedding-cake disguises, and on them perched workers and peasants who for three heady nights would be kings and queens. They passed in regal splendor, retainers throwing candy and flowers to the screaming crowd. Chinese-made firecrackers ripped the night apart in a stitching of flame and smoke. The beat of “Yolanda” grew faster as the floats glittered and flashed with sequins and rhinestones. Behind them gyrated Santería dancers, dressed in the red of Changó, god of lightning, fire, and war, or the yellow and white of Ochún, goddess of love. Then came students, workers, teachers, but now they were Spanish dons in cocked hats and swords, showgirls, magicians’ assistants. Smoking fusees smeared scarlet light over the face of a strutting Red Death with the back of his hand on his hip. By the hundreds they danced and pushed in a slow peristalsis into the heart of town, a thickening gruel of robots, eyeless reptiles, zombies, fairies, giant rats with the faces of Reagan and Kennedy.

As each float reached the plaza, its riders dismounted, joining the crowd that gradually jelled into a quarter mile of partying flesh. Though she fought for the safety of her wall, she gradually found herself squeezed out into the circulating mass. A skeleton thrust a bottle into her hand, its black maw soundless in the massive, solid impenetration of music and noise. She put it to her lips, tasting the raw sugar spirit, then thrust it back, staring over his head at the cathedral tower that loomed like a ghostly reproach of centuries past over the riot in the square. The hands of its ancient clock pointed to nine. Undertakers, Arabs, mummies rocked and tottered under the green putrescent light of exploding fireworks, the dazzling arcs of militia searchlights. Between low clouds, the stars swayed crazily above the drunken pullulation.

Gradually, the beats of the different bands melted into one another as their members, too, dissolved into the swirling, bobbing mass. It was the rhumba and the conga, the bolero and pachanga, the mambo and the son bembe, every African and Cuban beat blaring together at once. Half Spanish, half African in origin, now the Carnaval was supposed to commemorate the beginning of the revolution. But one glance at this seething mass told her that for four days now revolutionary discipline was gone. It was the perfect time to escape.

Clutching hands circled her; a hot breath scorched her cheek. She pushed herself away, screaming at the packed, swaying crowd. Eyes glared through masks, dropped to her belly, slid away.

For a moment, she thought she saw one mask turn to follow her, thought she saw someone threading the melee behind her. But when she searched the crowd, it was impossible — there were too many faces, too much noise. And so she turned again, cursing and striking out as the mass pressed in, as anonymous hands felt her buttocks and slipped boldly between her thighs.

At last, the crowd broke apart and she staggered out, dizzy but free. She ran awkwardly, till she couldn’t run anymore, then walked on, breath sawing in her throat. At last, she saw the dusty green ZIL where it had pulled up to let the workers from Cooperative Number 179 join the revelers.

Julio stood tensely by the tailgate. He saw her and gestured furiously. “Come, hurry!” he shouted. “You’re the last one. Where have you been, Tia? Have you been drinking? Get in at once; I’ll boost you up.”

Inside, the others sat in anxious silence on the board seats that ran the length of the bed. Tomás, Xiomara, Gustavo, Julio, Miguel. As she settled uncomfortably on the hard wood, Tomás banged on the cab with his stump, yelling, “Everybody’s here. Let’s go, chico,” and a moment later the engine started and the wheels slammed and the truck lurched, throwing her into the others as it jolted down off the sidewalk.

Suddenly she was filled with pure fear, simple physical terror so intense she almost vomited in the swaying darkness. Was this really it? Was it really tonight at last? The first night of Carnaval, the Carnaval that would end with them all free, or dead.

For the first part of that night, things seemed to go very swiftly. The truck rumbled through the dark, rain pattering on the canvas top from time to time. It stopped at the central to pick up the gas and the motor, and twice at Batey Number 3, once for old Aracelia, again for Augustin and Xiomara’s twins, Temilda and Gracia. Everybody was ready, dressed and with their little bags with them. The children were quiet, obedient, little faces frightened. Then it stopped one last time to let them off at the path that led into the marsh.

When they were all out, Augustin leaned out of the cab, talking to Tomás. Then Guzman stepped back and he gunned the engine and put it into gear. They heard it blundering down into the swamp, through the brush, till at last the snapping and crashing died away. Augustín limped out a few minutes later, cursing; he’d hurt his foot jumping down from the cab.

Then they went into the woods.

As the vegetation closed around her, her fear returned. Her heart was pounding and her hands and feet felt like the prickly leaves of the guao were sticking into them. Now there was no way back — not after destroying the truck. Now, if light shot suddenly out of the darkness, backed by angry shouts and the rattle of gun bolts, they were lost. The batey would be broken up ruthlessly, its members scattered to labor camps and corrective farms. She’d lose her baby to a state foundling home. If anyone had informed on them

… She shoved the fear back, sucking in her breath as sharp fronds sliced at her swollen legs. The men cursed in low voices ahead of her, carrying the engine on poles. The path seemed endless, and she had to stop and rest. When she did, Xiomara and the girls squatted with her, none of them speaking. Finally, they had to bend over and feel their way. Not even the stars penetrated into the tunnel bored through the mangrove.

Water splashed under her feet. The mud was slippery and she fell, but the twins helped her up. The warm water deepened swiftly. She felt the things living in it fastening themselves to her flesh. It reached her waist, but she waded on. If it got any deeper, she’d drown; she couldn’t swim at all.

Then there was nothing above her head but sky, clouds, the black palms bent by the wind. She stopped, panting, listening to the thudding in her chest. Then she forced herself on.

The boat was only a shadow under the eclipsing stars. A faint light flickered. She heard murmurs, the clank of tools. When Tomás called her name, she got up and felt her way to the side. Hands pulled and boosted her up.

In the little cramped cabin, she unclenched her fingers from the bag with the canned meat, fish, formula, and the folded doublestitched sail. In the light of a candle, Tomás glanced through it, then passed it to Julio. More hands steadied her as she moved toward the stern, picking her way clumsily over hard sharp things in the bottom of the boat.

“Aracelia”: The name went around the waiting circle of men, women, and children.

Aracelia was the oldest among them, an ancient crone dark as the bagasse pressed from the cane. She shuffled forward as Tomás held up a small object that squealed. There was the rapid murmur of an invocation, a sharp, terrified scream, then silence and the drip of blood into black water.

The piglet’s throat slit, wrapped in red cloth, it was set adrift now on a little raft. A sacrifice to Yemayá, the ferocious and unpredictable god of the sea. Graciela muttered a prayer to the Virgin of Cobre, too, and Santa Barbara …. The gods had many faces, many names. But her heart had always told her they would listen no matter what you called them, like a mother who answers any cry in the night. The old santera blew the conch shell, calling the wind to aid them on the voyage. The muted mournful moan sent a shiver up her spine.

“No more noise, that’s enough.” Tomás murmured. “Are we ready to board?”

“I think so, chico. It feels like more rain, though.”

“If it rains all the way to Miami, I’ll be happy. Okay, everybody get in — one at a time. Then move all the way back.”

She felt the boat start to move, start to slip down the mud and into the water.

Then someone said, from the darkness of the shore, “Stop.” “Oh no,” someone whispered. The men sucked quick gasps of breath and rolled out again, quietly. She heard the scrape of machetes being drawn from leather scabbards. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the lights, the shouting, the flash and crack of bullets.

“Who is it?” Tomás called.

“It’s us.”

They stared into the darkness as shadows took on shape. “Who is it?” Tomás said again, louder.

“It’s us, the Colons. Is that you, Guzman?”

“You bastards! What are you doing here?”

“Don’t be frightened! We knew you were going to escape, but we didn’t turn you in. We want to come.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Now they were close enough that Graciela could recognize Nenita Marquez’s heavyset form. Rámon said, “We only figured out you were going tonight. Why didn’t you tell us? We could have helped.”

“Bastards, who told you? We’ll kill them.”

“No one. But too many things were missing, too many strange things going on. We saw Graciela leave the Carnaval, and we followed the truck. It’s true, isn’t it? How are you getting away? Is the CIA coming for you?”

“Are you joking? You have everything, you fucking Communists. Why would you want to come with us?”

“There’s a crackdown on the way. We want out too, damn it! Look, we’ve got money, if that’s what you want.”

“Forget it. We don’t have room; we’ve got ten people here. That’s all this boat can carry.”

But Rámon insisted that they had to come. As they argued, Graciela suddenly understood something else. If Tomás didn’t let them come, he had to kill them. Otherwise, they’d go back, sound the alarm, and everyone would be captured out in the bay. So they couldn’t just let them go.

They had to know that, too, Graciela thought. It took cojones. The men could simply slit their throats, the kids, too, and leave. Or pretend they agreed, then kill them at sea and feed them to the fish.

And Tomás must have reasoned just as she had, because she heard his faintest whisper to Julio and Augustín: “Get around behind them. Strike when I say the word.”

There was a single faint splash as a foot slipped into the water.

The two groups of shadows stood apart, melting second by second into the darkness, only a desperate whisper stretched tenuously between them.

“Tomás, you won’t regret it. We’ll paddle all the way to get away from here.”

“No.”

“You say no, Guzman. But what do the others say?”

“I’m the leader; I speak for them. We don’t have room or food. You want to escape, good luck. Build your own boat.”

The round shadow made a sudden motion, and Rámon shouted, “All right, you chose this. Nenita’s got her rifle aimed at you. I’ve got a gun, too. Tell those men behind us to drop their knives or we’ll kill you, kill all of you, understand? Then we’ll take your fucking boat! We’re in charge now.”

Julio, from the darkness: “What about it? Kill them?”

Guzman hesitated. “No. They’re just the kinds of bastards who’d do it.”

“That’s good. Now you’re being smart! Get in, Nenita. Arturo, Pilar, Leonor, get in. Okay, are we ready to leave?”

Graciela felt the boat roll beneath her, then slide into the black water with a sucking sound and a splash.

The sharp things under her feet turned out to be concrete blocks. She didn’t want to think how hard it must have been to carry them all out here, and the motor, which ran unevenly and incredibly loud just behind her back. Over them hovered the stars; around them slapped the shallow, choppy water of the Bahía Jigüey. She could put her hand over the side into the water, they sat that low. It was warm, and when she sucked her fingers, it tasted bitter, just like tears.

“A little to the right. Pick out a star and steer by it,” came a mutter from the cabin. From time to time a glimmer escaped from where Tomás, Julio, and Rámon bent over the map she’d stolen from the médico. She smiled gleefully in the dark, remembering how she’d just walked in, just before they left for town, and torn it down off the wall of his office. It didn’t tell how deep the water was, but it showed the cays and the passages between them, and that was what they needed, wasn’t it? Someone else had contributed a toy compass. And so they were setting out.

Only there wasn’t enough room.

With five more shoved in than it had been designed for, the boat was packed so tightly that it was hard to breathe. Without the Colons, they’d have been cramped, but they could have moved around a little. Now no one could move or stand up — Tomás had forbidden that — and sometimes the waves splashed in. Behind her, Augustín handled the little motor. They’d wrapped it in rags to keep down the noise, but it still sounded terribly loud.

But they were moving; they were on their way. She could hear water chuckling past the hull. In the dark, it wavered with a greenish spirit glow, and she wondered if this was good. Was Yemaya protecting them? Or was it bad, a curse? She tried to pray, but the baby started kicking so hard, she had to lean back and try to catch her breath. It had dropped the week before. Its head was pointing downward, and she couldn’t eat more than a handful of rice at a time. And she had to pee all the time … like now. She fought it, but finally there wasn’t anything to do but let it go right there, on the hard seat.

The murmuring from the cabin drifted back, became words. “It’s getting rougher. This wind’s kicking up the waves.”

“It’ll be worse at sea.”

“We’ll worry about that when we get there, all right? We’re a long way from the sea, Rámon.”

“Morning in five hours. We’ll be across the bay by then if Agustín can keep the engine going.”

“Then what?”

“Hide. Then go on when it’s night again.” Sarcastically: “You agree, Comrade Colon? After all, you have appointed yourself comandante, no?”

“What about the border guard? They patrol the cays with airplanes, boats—”

“We’ll look for mangroves,” Tomás said. “That’s good cover.”

“Is that a boat?” Augustín called in a hushed voice.

“What?”

“I thought I saw something out there.”

“Whatever it is, steer away. Stay low, everybody. Throttle back; go slow.”

She stopped listening, her attention concentrated now not on what lay ahead but on what was happening within her body. Gripping the gunwale, she stared up into the racing darkness, hoping that the child would wait until Miami to be born.

25

Silent, darkened except for running lights, part of the shore detached itself from the black loom of the hills. Black upperworks wheeled through the scarlet tatters of dusk. Water began a muted chuckling as the bow swung in a long outward curve. From the bridge, eyes and binoculars peered into the heart of night.

Dan strained his eyes, fighting to stay awake. Sweat oozed from his armpits, crept down his back. The night air was stiflingly hot, like an oven on low. Beside him, the lookout straightened, muttering into his phones, “Yeah, I’m awake, Rectum Face. Are you?”

Two weeks into training, they were all walking in their sleep. They fought fuel fires, topside damage, flooding, loss of power, fractured piping, helicopter crashes. They treated compound fractures, chest wounds, abdominal wounds, amputations, burns, mass casualties. They evaded torpedoes, cleared shells jammed in hot guns, rigged emergency power, towed and were towed. Then the exercises compounded: loading weapons and treating wounded while the decks were contaminated by fallout, meanwhile conducting an attack on a surface raider. And every moment he wasn’t on watch or on deck, he spent in the computer room with Mainhardt and Dawson, Williams and Shrobo and sometimes Harper, when the chief warrant wasn’t on watch. Living on two or three hours of sleep a night …

Dan saw the NIS agent talking to men in the passageways, and once, in the wardroom, talking to Harper. They’d gone silent when Dan came in. Diehl smiled when they met and turned sideways to slide past. But they hadn’t talked since their discussion in his office. And then for the last few days, the agent hadn’t been aboard at all.

He stared into the dark, mind scraped clean. By now, every action, every moment and phrase had been scripted and drilled and corrected and drilled again. When they weren’t drilling, the men just stopped, sat down on the deck wherever the last order had left them, or stood vacantly, waiting for the next command. Barrett was no longer a machine manned by individual men. She had become all machine.

Dan wondered tiredly why it was men resented becoming machines. They didn’t think or suffer. They never agonized over what to do. They didn’t have moral quandaries or feel sad or afraid.

It was easier, being a machine.

Around him, Barrett turned slowly, and the lightless mass of Fisherman Point wheeled past like the night around the spinning earth. A muted bell pinged and the chuckle of water increased to a roar.

He stood at the rail, staring out at the passing shadows, then turned away, feeling his way aft, fingertips tracing hot, smooth enamel, till they brushed the raised coaming of the watertight door.

CIC met him with a blast of air like the wind off a glacier. After the featureless night, the tote boards and displays were a carnival fairway of blinking green and yellow. His wet clothes stuck to his skin as he hauled himself into his chair. He’d slammed his leg into a hatch coaming, running full tilt down a passageway, and his shin ached so that even when he had an hour to sleep, sometimes he couldn’t. Most of the men around him had shaven heads. A gunner’s mate had started it and now half the crew looked like Zen zombies.

“Dan.”

“Evening, Captain.”

Leighty checked the surface scope. “Feels different, getting under way in the dark,” he muttered. “What’s the order of events?”

“Night sea detail; one-on-one against Corpus Christi for area search, passive tracking, close-range attack; long-range antisurface gunnery; night helo refueling.”

“Are we set for this SEPTAR shoot?”

SEPTARs were self-propelled targets, high-speed radiocontrolled boats. “I think so, sir.”

“But we’re not sure?”

“We’ve isolated the missile and gunfire-control systems from the rest of ACDADS. It’ll run slow; we have to do manual inputs when the program asks for data, but I think it’ll work.”

“That’s the electronic placenta Doc was talking about?”

“That’s what he calls it. We’ll detect with the SPS-forty-eight and hand off tracking and identification manually.”

Dan examined his profile as Leighty asked a couple more questions — nothing he didn’t know the answer to. The captain hadn’t shaved his head, but his haircut was shorter than it had been in Charleston. He had black circles under his eyes and his hands shook as he flipped the board closed and hung it up again.

“When’s the prefiring brief?”

“As soon as we secure from sea detail.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The brief was just that: brief. By now everyone knew the procedures. Dan put out the essentials — times, safety bearings, openfire ranges — and repeated the mandatory safety precautions. The men listened dully, making ballpoint notes on hands or arms. A few minutes later, the GQ alarm went.

The ship no longer thundered with men running, hatches slamming. They were already at their stations. Setting material condition for battle took only seconds now. Sealed, alert, darkened, Barrett glided out into the open Caribbean.

In Combat, Dan gathered with the plotting team around the dead-reckoning tracker. He watched the lighted pip of the ship creep down a sketched-out lane as Shuffert briefed that night’s play.

Tonight they were matched one-on-one against Corpus Christi, which had sortied during daylight and now lay submerged somewhere along a transit lane starting twenty miles southeast of Guantánamo and stretching sixty miles into the Windward Passage. The nuclear boat was restricted in speed and depth to simulate a Soviet Juliet-class diesel submarine. That was loading the dice, Dan thought as Shuffert covered the rules of engagement. But Barrett was handicapped, too; during deployment, she’d have two helicopters dropping sonobuoys and sweeping magnetic anomaly detectors across the surface of the sea. This exercise was one-on-one, hand-to-hand, and Leighty was determined to win. He wanted to detect the sub first and attack it before they knew Barrett was there. Just as the skipper of USS Corpus Christi, SSN-705, was going to try to close to torpedo range without Barrett hearing a whisper.

Dan rubbed his face. They weren’t deaf anymore. They could run digital signal processing now, so they could hear. But the sub’s ears were sharper. Barrett had only two choices: to steam as quietly as she could, searching in passive, and hope the sub screwed up or to go active, pinging her way along, and attract the sub like a cat to a squeaking mouse. Crap, he thought, his tired mind searching for alternatives.

Then he had one.

On the forecastle, the electricians mates cursed the boatswains, who cursed them back. Then they all hoisted together, and the twenty-foot spar rose into the darkness. “Forward stay fast” came back on the wind.

“Aft, fast.”

“Okay, give her power.”

The erected pole blazed suddenly into brilliance. Barrett’s sidelights and masthead lights went to full brightness. Then her sides, too, flared up as the dress ship lights, draped along her lifelines, glowed on, each bulb backed by a paper plate taped to the socket.

On the wing, Dan blinked in the sudden glare, sweeping his gaze from bow to stern. The deck-edge lights shone in gay colors behind plastic filters from the signal shack. The paper plates glowed just like the round cheery disks of lighted portholes. He ducked back inside and asked Harper, “Okay, how about the screws?”

“Starboard engine, stop,” the chief warrant said. “Left five degrees rudder; carry left rudder to steady on course zero-four-five.” He pressed the intercom. “Secure the radars. Secure all electronic emissions. Boatswain’s Mate, start the music.”

A hiss, then the strains of a marimba band boomed out from all the topside speakers. And suddenly Barrett was a cruise liner, portholes glowing, the pool area lighted, the slow beat of a single screw throbbing out into the ocean.

“All we need are some women out on deck in bikinis.”

Dan turned, to find the captain looking out beside him. Another shadow looked like Vysotsky. The XO was muttering something that didn’t sound too positive. It finished, “ … not in the manual.”

“The class tactical manual is not the universe of tactics, George,” said Leighty mildly.

“It’s an artificiality. There wouldn’t be any cruise liners out here in wartime.”

“It’s a stratagem, George,” said the captain. “A ruse de guerre, like sailing under a false flag. They’re acceptable in war, why not in exercises? Anyway, lighten up. The worst that can happen, the sub lets us go by. The best case, he picks up our screws, can’t decide what we are, and comes in close for a visual ID. We get a passive detection, ping once for a solution, and nail him.”

Dan excused himself and slid down the ladder.

In CIC, men leaned back from dead displays, faces blank as their screens. Only at the SLQ-32 did a petty officer frown as he listened for the whine of a submarine’s periscope-mounted radar. The “Slick-32” told you instantly if anything within a hundred miles emitted an electronic signal, identified it, and gave you a bearing. In Sonar, Fowler and his men were equally intent on the passive display. A yellow tag-out hung on every switch that would put sound in the water identifying them as a warship.

The captain came in and stood by the DRT. Dan joined him and Kennedy and Shuffert. They leaned silently, like late-night drinkers at a quiet bar, watching the rosette creep northeast. Barrett’s course meandered left, then right, a shallow zigzag toward the Windward Passage. If Corpus Christi was here—

“Racket,” said the EW operator. “Mark! Time three-three: a Snoop Tray radar, bearing one-nine-seven.”

“There she is!”

“Suckered ’em in. Stupid bubbleheads.”

Chief Kennedy was drawing the line of bearing in red pencil when Dan blinked. “You mean a simulated Snoop Tray — right?” he called to the operator.

“No, sir. Racket ceases! Time three-four, Snoop Tray ceased radiating.”

“Check the characteristics.”

“L-band radar with a pulse repetition rate and frequency match. It’s a Snoop Tray all right.”

A Snoop Tray was a Soviet submarine radar, carried on their latest nuclear-attack sub classes. “Can Corpus Christi alter the output characteristics of her radar?” asked Leighty at last.

Neither Hiltz nor the sonarmen had any idea if a U.S. sub could detune its radar to imitate a Russian boat. Dan remembered the Kirov battle group. It was still reported in port, in Cienfuegos. But what if it had a sub attached and they’d decided to do a little scouting?

He went over to the 32 and put a hand on the EW’s shoulder. The petty officer lifted an earpiece. “How many sweeps did you get before he shut down?” Dan asked him.

“Four, sir.”

“Was there a bearing drift?”

The man typed in a couple of commands and regarded the screen. “There was a right drift.”

Behind him, Leighty said, “So he’s headed down the Passage.”

“Toward us, yes, sir.”

“Okay,” said the captain slowly, cocking his head in that slightly theatrical way. He walked his fingers across the chart, measuring.

“Here’s my reading. He’s doing the same thing we are: trying to fox us. He popped up, radiated a Soviet signature, and went deep again. He’s on this line of bearing. Got to be at least twelve miles off Haiti, right? That puts him … here.” Leighty laid a finger across an area of sea that did, if you looked at it right, block the lane Barrett had to transit. “Actually, he’s playing fair. He’s imitating a Soviet. He’s running slowly southwest, popping up and looking for us, then going back down.”

“I vote we go over there,” said Vysotsky.

“What’s predicted active sonar range?” Leighty asked Dan.

“Ten thousand yards.”

“So we’d have a detection diameter of ten miles. He can be anywhere in this roughly thirty-mile area. If we go in and suddenly start pinging, we’ve got a thirty-three percent chance of nailing him.”

“Unless he’s under the layer,” said Dan.

“Let’s head on over,” said Leighty. “If he radiated once, maybe he’ll do it again. Then we run another line of bearing and up our probability. Drop a bathythermograph. Whoever’s our best guy on gram analysis, get him up here.”

“Increase speed, sir?”

“Hell no. We’re the Love Boat. Let’s cruise on over and play him some marimba.”

They steamed slowly east, burning all their lights, for forty-five minutes. The sonarmen listened till perspiration glowed green on their faces in the light of the screens, but they got nothing. Dan wished again they had a helo aboard. Drop a line of sonobuoys ahead of the sub and nail him. Minute by minute, the lighted rosette of their position neared Corpus Christi’s estimated position.

Finally Leighty lifted his eyes. “Are we set to go active?”

“Yes, sir.”

“See if Woollie’s on the bridge. Underwater Battery, stand by to simulate firing.”

When the senior observer joined them, Leighty explained what was going on, how he planned to carry out the attack. Woollie nodded noncommittally. “Sound like a good plan?” Dan asked him.

“Anything that works is good. This is a free-play exercise.”

“Sounds fair.” At Leighty’s nod, Dan said, “Simulate deploying the Nixie. Go active.”

The sonar sang out. Seconds later, Fowler’s voice came through the speaker above their heads. “Evaluator, Sonar: sonar contact! Bearing one-niner-five, range five thousand, two hundred yards. Classification: possible submarine. Confidence value: high.”

“Remember, I want an ID before we shoot,” Leighty muttered.

Dan went over to the curtain. The sonarmen looked back at him. “Hey, can you guys get anything on passive? A turn count, blade count?”

“We’ll give a listen, sir. But those six eighty-eights are awful quiet.”

Kennedy plotted the datum as Dan told the bridge to put both engines on the line, come right to 195, and increase speed to fifteen knots. Casey Kessler hovered tensely as his men set up the shot.

“Up doppler. Bow aspect. Contact’s increasing speed.”

“Can we get any kind of identification?” Leighty said again.

“They’re trying to, sir.”

“Evaluator, Sonar: contact has two props, strong radiated noise level, broadband machinery noise—”

“That’s not Corpus Christi,” said Shuffert.

“All stop,” said Leighty. “Secure pinging. Come about!”

“You backing off, sir?” said Woollie.

“We’ve got to. The Agreements for Preventing Incidents at Sea. We’re not supposed to ping on a Soviet boat, track it, or harass it.”

“Are you sure it’s Soviet?”

“There’s no way a six eighty-eight can fake two screws. Dan, make it clear we’re departing the area. Come all the way around and increase speed.”

“Range, three thousand yards. Still holding a bow aspect.”

“Bridge, this is the TAO. Come about. Come about—”

“Reciprocal is zero-one-five—”

Leighty barked, “Come to zero-one-five; go to flank speed. Now!” Barrett shuddered as her spinning props suddenly went to full pitch, chewing into the sea. She rolled as she came beam to the easterly swell.

“Green flare! Two green flares, fine on the starboard bow!”

“Turn toward!” Leighty barked, then, instantly: “Belay my last — do not turn toward. Steady on zero-one-five.”

“Sir, that’s Corpus Christi over there. We’ve got to evade—”

“Steady on zero-one-five, I said.”

Green flares meant a simulated torpedo attack. Woollie raised his eyebrows, made a note. Dan couldn’t help grimacing. That was a major gig, not taking evasive action. “Sir, why are we—”

“That’s a Soviet boat astern of us, Mr. Lenson. For some reason, he’s conducting a submerged transit. We just snuck up on him and pinged him out of the clear blue.” Leighty swung on Woollie. “Lieutenant, gig us if you like on the exercise, but I don’t want a real torpedo up my ass, okay?”

Dan clutched the edge of the DRT, wondering if the next words out of Fowler’s mouth were going to be “Torpedo in the water.” A minute stretched by, long as a week, and then another.

At last Leighty sighed. “I guess we’re clear. Dan, draft a Firecracker message.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The Firecracker system reported contacts with Soviet and Warsaw Pact vessels at sea.

They resumed pinging twenty minutes later, well to the north, but never made contact with Corpus Christi.

At 0300, they broke off play and set course for the firing area. Barrett ran at flank speed for nearly an hour. Dan sat in Combat as the ship rolled and buzzed.

He had to admit it, he was tense. Would Shrobo’s fix work? Or would the system crash again, exposing Barrett as a billion-dollar high-tech paperweight? Maybe it would be better just to engage in manual, forget about the weapon direction system ….

Fuck it, he thought then. Let’s do like Leighty wants. Take a risk for a change.

When they crossed the border of the firing area, they made radio contact with Evelyn Kay, the control tug for the self-propelled targets. Dan told them Barrett was ready, that they could start the event at their pleasure. “Attention in Combat!” he yelled. If he’d overlooked anything, it was too late now. “This will be a long-range radar-controlled gun engagement. Mount fifty-one will fire first.”

As the others rogered, he fitted the earphones to his ears and clicked the selector to the fire-control circuit. He made sure all stations understood the revised designation procedures. Then he turned the shoot over to Horseheads, watching the screen anxiously as the glowing pip of the remote-controlled boat drilled inward at them. It wasn’t a big target.

“Stand by to illuminate.”

“Intermittent paint. Growing stronger.”

“Designate hostile, priority one. Illuminate,” said Dan. The man at the weapons-control console reached for the track ball before he remembered this was a manual designate, then pressed the button of his phones instead.

“Fire Control, Combat: your target, drone boat, bearing three-zero-eight, range nineteen thousand yards.”

“Designate to forward director, mount fifty-one.”

“Forward director reports acquisition. Lock on.”

“Load fifteen rounds BL&P ammunition to the transfer tray.”

BL&P was an inert-loaded target round that would splash but not explode. “Hold fire,” Dan reminded them, then pressed the intercom. “Bridge, Captain: Request batteries released.”

“Batteries released,” said the captain’s voice.

The slam of the five-inch going off shuddered through the deck. Twenty-five seconds later, it slammed again. Dan thought for a second he saw the splash on the screen, but it faded too fast. They were firing by radar, walking the rounds onto the target. But the drone boat was maneuvering, skating back and forth as it drove toward them. “Speed, twenty-five,” Kennedy reported.

“Fire for effect,” Dan muttered, but he didn’t press the button. It was up to Horseheads, Glasser, and Adamo now.

“Fire for effect,” Horseheads shouted.

Slam … slam … slam.

A voice shouted over the radio, “Cease fire. Cease fire! Target destroyed.”

The compartment erupted in jubilant shouts. Dan, grinning, punched up the DP center on the intercom. “Computer room, Combat: Good work, guys! Tell Doc he just earned his coffee bill.”

After two more runs, Woollie said he’d sign them off on the exercise. The gunners begged to keep shooting, but Dan told them they still had the helicopter refueling to do before they went in. He called the control ship and thanked them for their services as Barrett secured from GQ.

The helicopter reported in as early breakfast was being piped. The air control petty officer relayed it to him. “Mr. Lenson: Mike twenty-eight reports, bustering inbound from homeplate with forty-six hundred pounds of fuel.”

“Ask him what’s bingo fuel.” Dan, feeling more cheerful than he had for days, searched the pub shelf for the checklist and wind envelopes.

“Mike twenty-eight says bingo fuel twenty-five hundred pounds.”

“Have we got a true wind, Chief Kennedy?”

“Zero-eight-zero, fifteen knots, sir.”

He looked at their course and came up with five knots of wind, on the starboard bow. The anemometer agreed. It was 0447, still dark outside. After some quick figuring, he hit the intercom. “Bridge, TAO: Make this a port approach. As soon as he’s in visual range, come right, steady up at two-nine-five.”

“Bridge aye.”

It was Casey Kessler’s voice, not Harper’s, but Dan figured Jay was in hearing range. He pressed the lever again. “Let’s go ahead, set flight quarters.”

“Bridge aye.”

He called the captain’s cabin and told him the helo was inbound for the refueling exercises, that the checklist was complete; they were within the envelope and had no surface contacts. Leighty yawned as he acknowledged. “Sounds like you got it covered.”

“Yes, sir, he’s got plenty of fuel even if we dick up.”

“We aren’t going to, though, are we?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay, commence the evolution. I’m gonna get my head down for an hour. Keep a sharp eye out.”

“Yes, sir.” Dan hung up. He had the ship now. He checked the radar and then the chart. Do the refueling as they steamed in, then, when the helo left, steer for the bay entrance for the precision anchoring exercise.

“While Barrett is at flight quarters, all hands are reminded to refrain from throwing objects over the side. Remove caps; stand clear of weather decks aft of frame one sixty. Smoking lamp is out topside.”

“Helicopter bears two-seven-two, forty-two thousand yards, radial inbound.”

“Pass it to the bridge. Are we up on—”

“Yes, sir,” said the air controller.

Dan told Lauderdale he was going out on deck for a second.

“Red deck,” said the 1MC as he let himself out onto the 03 level. The night wasn’t as black as he expected — moon and stars, and a faint pinkish radiance to the east that presaged day. Barrett drove through the sea with a hissing crash. He strolled aft, stopping under the steel web of the after mast, looking down.

Work lights illuminated the refueling party, crouched in colored jerseys along the narrow deck-edge outboard of the hangar. The landing signal officer waited quietly, lighted wands dangling as he watched a distant flashing star.

“Green deck,” said the 1MC. A few seconds later, the flutter of rotors came across the sea.

The pulsing star reached Barrett’s stern. Then suddenly it became not flashing lights in the sky but a huge unsteady machine dropping slowly toward the deck. The rotor blast battered at his ears. It veered off at the last moment and dangled unsteadily thirty feet up. It only took seconds before the hose was connected and the huge clattering aircraft, dipping and swaying like a drunken hummingbird, began sucking fuel aboard.

When he let himself back into CIC, nothing had changed. He checked the scopes again, then the coffee situation. He got a fresh cup, and punched the intercom to the helo control station. “Tower, Combat: How’s it going?”

“Ninety percent fuel transferred. Six minutes to break and waveoff.”

He clicked the lever twice, acknowledging, and leaned back, thinking about their brush with the Soviet sub. That could have turned nasty. But what was it doing transiting so covertly? Was it related to the Kirov group? Had it known Barrett and Corpus Christi were out there too, due to operate in the area? And if so, how?

“Refueling complete. Stand by to pop and drop. Mike twenty-eight requests permission to depart.”

“Permission granted. Notify the bridge.”

He dimly heard Kessler acknowledging. The whine and clatter of the rotors increased outside, and he heard it pass to port and decrease ahead. “Give the officer of the deck a course and speed to reach Fisherman’s Point at oh-six thirty,” he told Lauderdale.

“Bridge, Combat: Recommend come left to two-seven-eight, speed eighteen.” A moment later, the deck leaned in a turn.

“Alfa Sierra, Mike Twenty-eight: We seem to have a little trouble here,” said the nonchalant voice of the helo pilot.

“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.

A naval officer didn’t lie. Everything was simple that way, clear — like ice, thick clear ice that you could walk out across without worrying about whether it would crack under you.

But now he wondered if he’d been naive.

If he couldn’t trust the captain’s word … then not only might Leighty be gay but he might be the reason Sanderling had killed himself. And Dan had helped him cover it up.

What was the meaning of Leighty’s offer of friendship? Of a friendship that could help his career?

Suddenly, his legs gave way. He leaned against a stanchion, buffeted by alternate waves of rage and fear as he struggled to understand.

26

The humid heat surrounded them, close as a blanket over their faces. Above them, the wind made the dangling black runners clack like castanets. But not a sigh penetrated the nightmare branches that knitted an impenetrable canopy of dense green. Only shadow, a rotting smell, and the sounds of hushed furtive beings living and dying: the creak of frogs, the ripple of tiny fish, the whining cloud of biting mites that had tormented them since dawn.

Graciela lay with her head pillowed on her arm, looking over the side of the boat. Like a thick, flexible mirror, the black water pulsed slowly between the prop roots the trees dropped to support themselves. Such a clever plant, the mangrove … so shallow she could see the bottom, a sticky-looking tangle of roots, mud, and debris that bubbled as if heated from below. Gone abruptly noisy, then deathly quiet as they’d pulled in, the swamp had gradually resumed its normal life around them. Finches flitted between the branches, scarlet bills sharp and impeccably clean, as if polished that morning. Butterflies vibrated like flying flowers. Shrimp stirred the water like tiny silver spoons, and striped snails measured roots centimeter by centimeter. She watched a crab hunch patiently, then lunge for a tiny fish so fast that the eye couldn’t follow.

She was the fish, and the planes that droned overhead from time to time, they were the crabs.

They’d reached the patch of mangrove just as the sun rose in a bloody boil of cloud. The motor had run out of gas during the night, but when Augustín put more in, it wouldn’t start. For the last few miles, the men had paddled savagely toward the dark line of cay, racing the sunrise. As the great bay had gradually brightened, making their hearts racket with fear, they’d seen three other boats in the distance, black silhouettes against the delicate shimmer of dawn. They couldn’t tell what they were — patrol boats, fishing boats — and Tomás had ordered them tensely to row, row till their lungs burst; they had to reach cover before they were seen.

And at last, they had. Julio and Tomás and Miguelito, on the bow, chopped furiously with machetes as Augustín and old Gustavo and the women, Nenita and Xiomara and even the bent, ancient Aracelia, pulled on the bulging humped roots to move them forward. The tin bottom boomed and scraped over root clumps as parrots exploded from the trees like screaming green-and-yellow fireworks. Branches trembled as steel sang through them, then collapsed onto the huddled children. Till finally they’d come to a halt. The twins had been throwing the fallen branches overboard, but Tomás ordered them to stop at once. Woven back together, they’d serve as a screen, shielding them from both the sea and the air.

Breakfast was a mug of guarapo, warm cane juice, passed from hand to hand. Tools clicked as Augustín disassembled the motor. The other men conversed in the cabin, jabbing fingers at the map and pointing shoreward. Finally, Julio and Gustavo and Miguelito swung down into the mud and slogged away, sawing through the thickest patches with their machetes instead of swinging them — the pock of a blade on a hollow root could carry for hundreds of yards.

And now she and the others were waiting, sweating in the windless heat, trying to ignore the insects, so thick sometimes that you couldn’t help breathing them in. Xiomara smeared gasoline on her skin to discourage them, but Graciela couldn’t stand the smell. So she just pulled her dress tighter around her and closed her eyes.

For years, she’d dreamed of escape. When Armando had closed his eyes forever she’d sworn she’d get out at any cost — even if she never saw Coralía again. But you lost her long ago, she told herself coldly. No, even if she had to leave her, and two tiny graves, even if her heart shattered like a dropped bowl, she had to go. No matter that she was pregnant or that she felt like throwing up. She’d had enough.

But part of her still wanted to stay.

Cuba, beautiful Cuba, it was still her country and always would be, and she longed for it even as she left it behind: the cry of the owls at night; the thud of bongos and cricket click of the guayo; the smell of the fields in the spring, of mariposa and frangipani …. Did they have mariposa in the United States? She didn’t know. She wished she didn’t have to go. Lo hago por ti, hijo, she thought. I do it for you, loved one, child.

Eyes closed, she put her hand softly on a mysterious hidden movement only she could feel. Did it understand that it was leaving its native land forever?

Mi hijo. Again and again she said it, and after a long time, the fear stepped back a pace.

The boy threw dripping hair back, trying not to think about what lived under the lightless spotted surface, brushing his bare legs as he plowed through the black water. Lizards ran like iridescent mercury up misshapen roots. Birds waited till he was inches away, then burst shrieking from concealed nests. Each time, he froze, gripping the slippery handle of his machete. He wanted to run away, back to the boat. But he couldn’t. Tomás had sent him out, two hundred paces along the water’s edge, to stand picket. He had gripped his shoulder and said quietly that he depended on him. That meant that no matter how scared he was, he had to do it.

He circled to skirt an immense tangled mass of roots and fallen trees, finding himself at the edge of an open bowl of water so black and still it mirrored his frightened face. He waded into it, then scrambled back, flailing his arms for balance. The bottom had dropped away, the mud crumbling under his toes. Strange, this empty crater. As if the mangroves had been blown apart …

His eye picked the skiff out of the debris before he realized what it was. It was lying on its side in the tangled roots, vines twisted through the hull. His head came up and he waded the rest of the way around the pool. He grabbed it and tugged, experimentally, to see what was inside.

It rocked down and splashed into the black water, then slowly started to fill as he stared at the tumbled mass inside — crude handcarved paddles, plastic bottles of water, still capped, just like the ones their own boat carried. But along with these were faded cloth, white bone, a skeletal hand gripping a crucifix, a boiling of black insects within a skull that regarded him for a long time, staring into his eyes, into his soul.

He turned away at last, unable to meet that chill and distant regard. Miguelito Guzman swallowed hard, not because he was afraid of the dead, but because he was afraid of joining them.

The patrol boat came that afternoon, in the hottest part of the day.

She lay there, her mouth parched, panting for water. In the moist heat, you wouldn’t think you needed it, but she did. Finally, she asked old Aracelia to hand her the bottle. The water was warm and tasted of resin. She held it in her mouth, letting it seep into her tongue, but when it was gone, she was still thirsty. She looked at it again longingly, then capped it and wedged it down beside her. She was used to going without in the fields. She put her hand over the side of the boat, wet it, and drew the moisture over her face. It cooled her a little as it evaporated. Beside the boat, the little chalana, the skiff, was drawn up, the one Miguelito had found in the mangroves. He and Gustavo were working on it, plugging the bullet holes with whittled chunks of wood and patches of inner tube.

At that moment — maybe because her cheekbone was resting against the wood and the sound came through the water to it, not through the air — she heard something. It grew nearer slowly, out beyond the whispering screen of the mangrove leaves.

“A boat,” she murmured, and the others lifted their heads. Barefoot, moving in a crouch, Tomás stepped between the packed children and squatted on the stern. Extending his machete, he parted the hacked-off branches, slowly, slowly.

Looking past him, Graciela saw it. Framed by the leaves, as if she was looking out at a moving picture. Not sharp, to her nearsighted eyes, but she could make it out.

The motorboat was painted camouflage brown and green. A curl of white rippled along its bow. At the stern fluttered the Cuban flag, blue and white stripes, red triangle, white star. A man in a shoved-back cap was scanning the shoreline with binoculars. A soldier in fatigues leaned on a machine gun.

Tomás turned his head very slowly, so slowly it might have been swayed by the wind. “Silencio,” he whispered. “¡No se muevan! They’re looking for us.”

A moan from one of the children was instantly stilled by its mother’s hand.

“Rámon. Nenita. You’re the only ones armed. If they discover us, what?”

“I say we fight,” said Colon, his throat moving as he swallowed.

“What of the children? The women?”

“You’ll just go to prison, but they’ll shoot us. We can’t let them take us.”

Aracelia spat. “Why you ask him, Tomásito? These lousy Communists. They found out about us; maybe they turn us in already. Why you listen to them?”

The big man with one hand looked back at Colon for a while, his face thoughtful. Finally, he said. “So they were Communists. And I was in the army, grandma.”

“That’s right, amigo. They fooled us all, the bearded ones,” said Rámon. “The only question, how long it took us to wise up.”

“Which ‘bearded ones’ do you mean, exactly?”

“All of them — Marx, Lenin, Castro. Ever notice? They’ve all got beards.”

Tomás said, shrugging, “Okay, we fight. Nenita, you any good with that, or is it just jewelry?”

“I can shoot it.”

“We’ll see. Better get up here, get sighted in.”

As she squirmed back, Tomás told Graciela, “Get as low as you can. The children, too.”

“Shouldn’t they get out, Tomás?”

“Even better, but wait a minute. Let’s see if they keep coming this way.”

They waited. The buzz of the motor came through the leaves like the drone of a huge and remorseless mosquito. Then it changed.

“He’s altered course. Toward us.” Guzman narrowed his eyes. “Think you can hit the officer? The pale one, the gallego?”

“I think so, but I’m not much good at judging distance. At the range, they always tell us how far it is to the target.”

Guzman raised his handless arm to shield his eyes. “Call it four hundred meters,” he said.

Nenita Marquez flicked the leaf on her sight forward, settled the stock on the gunwale, and turned the safety down. Graciela, looking up at her from inside the boat, saw beads of sweat quivering on her upper lip. Nenita took two deep breaths, then settled her cheek to the lacquered wood. “You want him first? Or the one on the machine gun?”

“You choose, but try to get them both. Everybody else, quietly now, into the water. Miguelito, Tia Graciela’s your responsibility, okay? Stay with her. If we have to split up, run, swim, get as far away as you can. When we stop shooting, come back. If we’re dead, go ashore, find a militiaman and give up. Say we forced you to come, okay? Nenita, three hundred meters.”

The motor droned louder. Graciela felt the boy tugging at her. She knew she was supposed to get out of the boat, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t going to get over that thwart without a lot of noise. “I’d better stay,” she whispered. She looked up at Nenita again, at the bottom of her chin. A drop of sweat gradually gathered, then dripped off it. Over both their heads, a seedpod hung above the boat. It looked like a miniature plant, and she realized the tree must spread that way, the seed growing till it became a little tree itself, then dropping into the mud and rooting itself another few inches farther out from the shore. How perfect, how clever, how beautiful! She stared at it for a long time.

The click of the safety going back on made her flinch. Tomás sighed, and Marquez slid back down into the boat. She mopped sweat with the sleeve of her shirt. “He didn’t see us?” Graciela asked her.

“Apparently not. But I don’t see how. He had the glasses right on us.”

“It’s dark in here. He couldn’t see past the shadow.”

Tomás, rocking the boat as he dropped down to where the women were, said, “Okay, he’s gone. Everybody back in! Let’s try to get some sleep; we’ll be awake all night.”

Thomás squinted at the plug, then reversed his machete and tapped it. He asked Gustavo, “You’d trust your life to it?”

“Sí, jefe. Wood swells when the water hits it.”

“Don’t call me chief, Uncle; we’re all equal here — even those who think a gun makes them a king.” Tomás straightened and passed his hand over his hair, looking once more out at the darkening bay.

His stomach felt like a ball of concrete. It was like the hours before an assault. Remembering Africa made him think of his hand. He examined the stump clinically. It looked like the puckered end of a chorizo, the spicy Cuban sausages he’d loved in the days you could still get them. Some said when you lost a limb, you could still feel it, like a ghost. He never had. It was gone as if it had never been. Four years now since the South African mortar shell had taken it off.

It had crossed his mind that maybe in Miami the doctors could do something. Perhaps one of the metal claws, or a plastic hand? But mierda, he was lucky to be kicking around at all. Too many guys had died there. And for what? Once he’d believed it, that they were fighting for the poor and starving of the world.

“Mierda,” he whispered again, and his thoughts left his missing hand and moved remorselessly ahead. It was a miracle they’d found cover in time. If they made it to sea tonight, it would be another miracle. If they could find Miami, yet a third.

He hoped old Aracelia had done her ceremonies right. They were asking an awful lot of the gods.

Colon came climbing over the huddled, waiting women and children, his cheeks quivering like jelly. He levered himself over the side, splashed into the water, and waded back to join Guzman. “That was close. They almost saw us,” he muttered, looking curiously at the skiff.

“Yeah. But they didn’t.”

“Who you putting in here?” he asked, adjusting the pistol holster around his paunch.

“Whoever wants extra room. You?”

“Fuck no, not us. That’s all you want, get us in there, then cut the rope some night! What’s wrong with the big boat? Get rid of the cement, it’ll ride better.”

Tomás said patiently, “We need it for ballast, but this boat will not stay afloat with fifteen people in it. You hear that wind. It’ll be rough out there. We’ll just turn over and sink, and the fucking sharks will eat everybody. ¿Entiendes?”

“Maybe we can’t take everybody,” said Colon, fingering the holster. “We don’t have much food.”

“I figured you’d come up with that sooner or later, compañero. That’s why I got the skiff fixed. And speaking of food, let’s not forget, you didn’t bring a fig, not one mouthful of rice, not one bottle of cerveza. You didn’t bring a thing but that gun and your big mouth, and you want us to abandon somebody else so we can take you? You’re an asshole, a culo. Get out of my sight.”

“My family’s staying in the big boat,” Colon repeated.

Tomás shrugged. He waded over and looked in. The old woman sat staring at the twins, who were playing with a lizard they’d caught, making it run around inside the hull. It could not escape, and so darted here and there in frantic silence. It had already lost its tail. Graciela lay with her eyes closed, sweat shining on her face like a coat of varnish. He gnawed his lip. She couldn’t take much of this. And the way she looked, the kid could arrive any second.

Augustín straightened and wiped his hands on a piece of rag, grimacing at the motor. “Will it run now?” Tomás asked him.

“Think so. But it used a lot more gas than it should last night. Half of what we brought … in only three hours. These Russian machines are shit.”

“We can put the sail up once we’re out of sight of land. Okay, listen, everybody: Some of us are going to get in the chalanita. We’ll tow it astern. That will give us more room and be safer.” He glanced at Colon. The fat man shook his head, scowling. “Okay … Gustavo, you patched it. Get in. You can fix the plugs if they work loose. Uh, Tia Graciela, do you want to stay where you are?”

She opened her eyes slowly. “I can if you want me to, Tomás.” “Yes, but you have a choice, okay?”

“Room to stretch out would be nice.”

“You can lie on the bottom; it’s flat.”

“Maybe it would be better there. Yes.”

“Help her up, Miguelito. That means you go, too, and Julio — he’s the best swimmer we’ve got. That’s four — no, five. I want Aracelia with her, in case the baby … Give them a bottle of water, food, a paddle. Hand me the rope. Is this all we have? Okay, tie it tight; we don’t want it to slip.”

All at once, it was dark, like a great eyelid closing on the world. Tomás swallowed again, wishing the lump in his gut would dissolve. Looking at the dead bones had made him afraid. Those bones had dreamed of freedom, too. Had come the same way, across the Bahía Jigüey. Only the patrol had caught them. No burial, nothing. Just shot them like dogs, like animals.

How many thousands lay along the shores of their country, at the bottom of the sea, buried in mass graves, victims, victims? … One man had aborted the glorious revolution into bloody tyranny. And then like an infection, it had spread. Bolivia, Venezuela, Zaire, Angola, Somalia, Nicaragua. “One, two, many Vietnams,” Castro had ranted. And darkness and terror, murder and war had stretched their shadows from Havana across the world. How long would it last? He’d given up asking. It was time for him to go, that was all he knew.

“Okay, let’s get moving,” he said.

They emerged with a clatter and rustle, a scrape and bump. Paddles splashed. Then they were afloat, and the wind came gusty and faintly chill. Blowing from the east, he thought. That would help.

During the day he’d memorized the chart. He didn’t know the ocean, but he could read a map and judge distances. He figured they were three or four kilometers from a passage between Cayo Romano and Cayo Coco. It was narrow; on the map, the two almost touched. There had to be guard posts there. So he didn’t dare use the motor. He didn’t dare put up the sail, either. It would be too easy to spot through binoculars or a night-vision device.

No, they’d have to paddle.

They moved through the darkness, helped by a wind that felt heavy, cold, stronger than he’d expected. The boat was pitching already. The skiff was a black wedge astern. He worried again about Graciela, then put it out of his mind. He couldn’t help, if this was her time. He didn’t see how women stood it, blood, pain …. All he had to do was get them through. If they could just do that … if they could only do that.

He figured they had about an even chance.

Three hours later, hours of paddling and drifting and anxious peering through the dark, he figured they must be near the passage. The sea had smoothed, which meant they were in the shelter of land. He clambered up onto the corrugated-metal roof of the cabin and balanced there, opening his eyes wide.

He gradually became aware of two darker masses hemming in the black of the water: two points of land, stretching out to meet ahead of them. Only the map convinced him they didn’t, that there had to be a way through, however narrow.

Suddenly, a light stabbed out, swept around ahead of them. A string of red balls arched up, hung in the sky, then went out. Finally, the searchlight went out, too, slowly, fading gradually back into the somber, chill darkness. Only then did the tap-tap-tap of the gun reach them.

He stood there for a long time, watching, listening. Tracers, but what were they firing at? Was someone else trying to get through? If so, they’d send out a boat to check for survivors, no? But the only sound was a muffled thunk as a paddle, thrust by tiring arms, knocked against the hull. Then came a whisper that might be the wind in palm trees off to the right. The searchlight stabbed out again, scribed a semicircle across the black water, the beam clearly visible in the humid air; then it faded out. He wished desperately that he could run the engine. But that would be fatal. They’d be out after them in minutes. No, they had to paddle. Too bad he had only one arm.

But looking back and down, he could tell even in the dark that one man wasn’t rowing. He leaned down and grabbed. Colón’s shoulder quivered under his grip.

“You son of a bitch! Why aren’t you rowing?”

“I’m tired. Let the others row!”

“Gordo hijo de puta,” Guzman said in his most intimate exsergeant tone. “I don’t give a fuck who you used to be; you’re a worm now, a gusano, just like me. And if you don’t put your back to that paddle, I’m going to kick your ass overboard and let you swim in to your border guard buddies. And I don’t give a fuck if you shoot me or not.” He shook him. “Grab that paddle, cabrón!”

Fifty feet behind, in the skiff, Graciela lay sprawled under the thwarts. Her back lay flat against the bottom. It felt good, being able to lie down. But she felt so huge, so swollen, as if she were ready to split apart. She was barely aware of the cold hand of the old woman gripping hers.

Ahead of her, Miguelito stared into the darkness. His hands hurt where they clenched the wood. He wished he was in the bigger boat. But Tomás had told him to stay with Tia Graciela. But what if they started firing? All he had was a machete. Maybe he could cover her with his body …. Would that stop the bullets? He shivered in the cold wind.

A drop went spat, then, sometime later, another.

It began to rain, gently at first, then with increasing force. And gradually the two boats started going up and down, only a little at first, a suggestion. Then they began to roll.

Tomás swung himself down from atop the cabin. He crouched behind it, squinting out as the rain stung his eyes like cold wasps. He couldn’t see what was ahead, only that it was black. The boat rolled harder, a strange heavy motion, and someone screamed as a wave broke over the side and showered them all. “Start throwing the blocks over,” he ordered. “Hurry. Hurry! Not all, about half of them. Not you, you men keep paddling!”

“We can’t, Tomás. We’re exhausted.”

“Can’t we put up the sail?”

“Not yet. This wind’ll push us right back on the shore. Just keep paddling, damn it!”

“We really can’t,” Julio said. “Tomás, we really can’t. It’s really hard; we’re finished.”

Tomás didn’t answer him. It was too dangerous. But in the end, he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

“Okay, Augustín, start the engine.”

The clatter when it kicked over was incredibly loud. Tomás felt cold sweat wring out all along his body. The wind would blow the sound west. If the border troops heard them, they’d either fire or else send out a boat. It wouldn’t be that hard to find them. They couldn’t evade. They could still end up like that other boat, only on the sea beach instead of the bay. Like those skeletons …

After a long time, the light stabbed out again. Only this time, it had crept aft a little.

“How far out do the patrols extend?”

“I don’t know,” Tomás said. “Rámon, you know that?”

“Ten miles?”

“And after that?”

“We’re clear, I think.”

“There they come,” said Julio quietly.

Tomás whipped his head around and saw the lights come out from the shore. Red and green and white, startlingly bright against the black land, they moved rapidly out across the water. The light smeared off the waves in long trails. They could hear the motor, too, a deep grumbling song of power.

“What do we do, Tomás?”

“Guzman? Now what?”

“Shut up. Just keep going,” he shouted at them, but his bowels felt loose. They’d gambled and they’d lost. No chance of fighting them off out here. The patrol would stand off and shoot them to pieces. If they surrendered, they might save the children’s lives, at least.

The motor ran and ran. The boat rolled dizzyingly in the dark. Clutching the top of the cabin, Tomás stared alternately into the lightless gulf ahead and back at the lights behind. They grew steadily brighter. They were gaining. He couldn’t think of anything else that he could do, though. Just hope Augustín could keep their worthless motor running, that some current wasn’t pushing them backward, that they wouldn’t capsize or smash themselves on some reef unmarked on the rudimentary map they sailed by. And that the beasts that guarded the perimeter of their cage would blink or yawn or look away.

After a long time, it started to rain again. The lights of the other boat stopped closing. They dimmed, then faded as the rain pelted down.

Staring into the darkness, he listened tensely to the uneven, faltering throb and hum from aft.

But when the sky grew light at last, the motor was still running, and they saw that they were surrounded by the open sea. When a wave lifted them, they could glimpse a dark low line astern. That was all that remained of the cays, of the border guards, of Cuba. Looking at each other, they tried tentative haggard smiles. They’d made it. They’d escaped.

Then, as the light increased, they looked out to the east, to the north, at the low, sullen, tumultuous sky. And their smiles faded to horrified stares.

From the east, from the north, waves beyond anything they’d ever conceived in nightmare toppled in endless ranks. The boat rolled with sickening jerks, slamming down with a hollow metallic thunder. Already vomit stained the gunwales, and the fragile boards and plywood and nailed tin that cupped them groaned as they worked.

They weren’t sailors. Most of them had never seen the sea before. They hadn’t expected green waves taller than houses, or a sky gray as poured lead, with the flicker of lightning from low, menacing thunderheads.

But to their surprise, they weren’t alone.

They’d expected that, to be alone. But other boats dotted the waves around them. They disappeared and reappeared as the waves shouldered under them. Some had sails up. Other were only specks. But they were all headed west. And they were all moving, borne along on an immense river in the sea itself.

Seasick and afraid, the fifteen people in the two little boats faced the ocean with a hand-stitched sail, a toy compass, and a motor that against all expectation ran on and on, steady save for a choked, bubbling snarl when the violently pitching stern plunged it down into the foaming sea.

27

The metal gangway that rattled under his boots, the quarterdeck he paused at were low compared with Barrett’s. The fantail was small and cluttered. But the OOD looked squared away in summer whites. Dan saluted the flag, faced left, tapped off another. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Permission granted. Help you, sir?”

“Here to see Lieutenant Prince. He aboard?”

Waiting, snatching an hour away from the ship, he stood looking down the length of USS Dahlgren, DDG-43.

The Coontz class had started life as “destroyer leaders,” DLGs. Now they were guided-missile destroyers. Whatever you called them, he thought, they looked like warships. They had the big raked stacks that had descended in U.S. destroyers in a straight line from William Francis Gibbs’s great liners. They bristled with guns, antennas, masts, directors. Most striking of all was the beautiful curve of their main deck. It swept in one rising line from counter to bullnose, then terminated abruptly in a bow like the nose of a mako. They looked capable and dangerous, as if they could punch through a sea or an enemy with equal ease.

And Dahlgren had. Her waffle-ironed hull plates showed where the seas of decades had hammered them in. Her rows of combat ribbons and the stenciled symbols on guns and directors showed that she had bombarded hostile coasts, guarded convoys, shot down enemy aircraft.

“Dan?”

“Hey. Larry!”

Larry Prince was one of the greatest épée fencers the Naval Academy had ever produced: Eastern Intercollegiate, NCAA, three times Maryland state champion, Princeton-Cornell Memorial Fencing Champion. “Good to see you,” he said, shaking Dan’s hand. “You’re keeping yourself in shape.”

“Heard you were over here. Thought I’d come over, say hi.”

“Glad you did. How’s Betts? Didn’t you have a kid?”

“She left,” said Dan, and Prince looked at him for a moment. “Took my little girl with her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Well … come on up. Meet the guys.”

They ascended through decks and passageways, Dan feeling steadily more oppressed, as if the low cable-festooned overheads were pressing down on him. The hot fan-stirred air smelled of food and oil. Finally, Prince held a door open. Dan hung his cap on a wooden peg and went in.

The wardroom was half the size of Barrett’s, with worn carpets and comfortable-looking metal chairs. Officers in khakis were sitting around drinking coffee, smoking, reading the Guantánamo Bay Gazette and limp worn copies of Playboy and the Naval Engineers Journal. They glanced up as Prince introduced him. “Dan came over from Barrett,” he finished. “What are you over there, Dan — Operations?”

“Combat systems.”

“What, plain old weapons officer ain’t good enough anymore?” one of the men said.

“We don’t have mess decks, either,” Dan said. “Now it’s the ‘enlisted dining facility.’”

“You guys classmates?” a heavyset black guy asked, getting up, holding out a big soft hand. “Leo Abbott. I was a plebe when you were segundoes.”

“Not another frickin’ ring-knocker,” said one of the smokers in the chairs.

“You’re surrounded. Dan, this is Wilson Benedict, our tame mustang. Jaze Walberg, he’s in charge of keeping all the scuttlebutts broke-dick.” Dan tried to register names as he shook hands. It was always disorienting going aboard another ship, as if the people you knew so well, the chief engineer, the comm officer, the bull ensign, had been reincarnated with different faces, different voices. It made you wonder how much of what you knew of any man was just a role.

“Want some eggs? Mess decks do eggs benedict Sundays, with hollandaise sauce. Gonna win us the Ney award one of these days. We grind our own coffee, too.”

“Sounds good. Thanks.” The messman set him a place and for a while they didn’t say much.

“When you doing your battle problem, Dan?”

He said around a mouthful, “Friday. You?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Good luck.”

“I think we’re ready,” said a lieutenant. “The skipper got Ming to promise the guys three days in Jamaica if we pass. I think we’ll make it.”

“Ming?”

“Well, you call the chief engineer ‘Cheng,’ right? We call the weps officer ‘Wang,’ the ops officer ‘Fang.’ That makes the exec—”

“Ming the Merciless. I get it.” Dan grinned with them. “How about the captain?”

“He’s just ‘the captain.’”

“We got some sheet cake from last night. Want a piece?”

The others came over as Prince dipped a knife in a glass of water and subdivided the cake with navigational precision. The steward poured more coffee.

“Hear you got trouble over there,” said Abbott. “On BFB.”

“What’s BFB?”

“Butt-fucking Barrett,” he said. The others laughed.

Dan laid his fork down. “What the fuck’s that mean?”

“Take it easy. We heard you lost a queer, that’s all. Isn’t that why the kid jumped overboard?”

“We’re not really sure.”

“Did you know him?”

“He was in my department. Yeah, I knew him.”

A lieutenant (jg) said, “Be tough on his parents, but you know, it was probably the best thing for him.”

“I don’t see how,” said Dan. He didn’t like hearing his ship put down, and he didn’t like talking about Sanderling as if he were some kind of defective part best disposed of over the side. “I wish he’d talked to me before he did it. I’ve been … wondering how to look at it.”

“How to look at queers? Shit, it’s unnatural.”

“Tell ’em, Marco.”

“What’s it say in the Bible? I forget exactly, but it’s against it. Like, isn’t that why God destroyed Sodom?”

“‘For even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly.’”

“Wayne’s our Protestant lay leader. Isn’t it the worst sin there is, Wayne?”

“Not exactly, but you can’t be a Christian and a practicing homosexual.”

“You mean God won’t forgive them?” Dan asked him.

“God will forgive everyone, but only if they repent and have a sincere determination never to repeat their sin.”

“I’m not religious myself,” said the lieutenant (jg) they called Marco. “I don’t know about the theological stuff. I look at it from an evolutionary viewpoint. Like, nature doesn’t do anything doesn’t help the species to survive. You ever see two gay mallards together? Or a lion sucking another lion’s dick? Faggots are sick, that’s all. Doc, what do you think?”

“This is Doc Gehlen,” said Prince, nodding to the civilian who’d just come in, “our resident shrink. He’s teaching one of those extension courses. What do you think, Doc? Ever run into any queers?”

“Lots,” said the civilian, helping himself to the cake. “Is it a sin? I don’t believe in sin. Is it a sickness? The ones I’ve seen have all been disturbed individuals in one way or another. I would call it a … personality disorder. A compulsion, like pyromania or bestiality.” He took a bite, considered, then added, “Of course, my sample may be skewed. The happy ones might not bother coming to see me.”

“Are they born that way?”

“I don’t buy Freud’s theory that it’s rooted in the relation with the maternal figure. But it happens early.”

Marco said, “Hey, whatever. I knew a guy — he was standing in the shower on the Iowa when this pansy comes up and just grabs his dick, you know? He told me they caught eight guys in a daisy chain on the Oh-four level one night. Every one of ’em tested positive.”

“Yeah, they all got that gay cancer. They just don’t show it yet.”

“I don’t want them around. What if they sneeze on you?”

“That’s not what I joined the Navy for. I thought it was one place where you didn’t have to put up with the fucking feminists and lesbos and gays.”

“They’re security risks. Every spy we’ve ever had has been a homo.”

“Dan, no offense, but I heard there was more than one over on Barrett.”

Dan put his fork down again.

“Mr. Marco didn’t mean that,” suggested one of the senior lieutenants.

“Uh, I guess not. It’s just scuttlebutt, you know.”

The lieutenant turned to Dan. “It’s not a complicated question. Homosexuals don’t fit in, because the other guys aren’t going to accept them. You get one in the berthing compartment, the other men don’t want to sleep with him. They don’t want to shower with him, or take orders from him, or have anything to do with him. Now, you feel guilty about your guy, the one who jumped. Think about this. If they’d have kicked him out, he’d still be alive.”

“Jack’s right. I was on an LPD once; they found out they had some. They had marines embarked. They pulled liberty in Sydney, and the marines went into this bar and found them there in drag. And they just beat the shit out of them.”

“They’d be happier on the outside, with their own kind.”

“Unless they had one ship, made it all gay.”

“Sure, put ’em all on one ship.”

“Then sink it.”

Dan said slowly, “But isn’t that what they used to say back when they didn’t want blacks in the service? And then women?”

“Hey.” The black officer put his hands on the table. “I resent that, man. I resent comparin’ me to some faggot. It’s natural bein’ black. My dad was black. My ancestors was black. Guarantee you, their ancestors wasn’t faggots.”

Prince said, “I see what you mean about women. But you keep men and women apart. You don’t have guys showering with the girls. You want to bend over, with one of them behind you? Or four or five of them?”

“Let me tell you about the discharge board I was on,” said a supply officer. “Lebanon was getting hot; we just kept ironing out the water in the east Med. The captain was the junior skipper, so we kept getting hosed on liberty. We had such lousy liberty, we thought Soudha Bay was great. And this commissaryman starts seducing the kids in the galley. Eighteen, seventeen years old, they’d get detailed to mess duty. He’d take them down in the storeroom and tell them they didn’t cooperate, they’d be there forever. Then he’d fuck them, till another kid came along he liked better. Finally one of them turned him in.”

“That’s not seduction. That’s rape.”

“Call it whatever you want. You just can’t have seventeen-, eighteen-year-old kids in crowded berthing compartments with these people. Doc?”

“You’ve got a point. Young men often have profound doubts about their masculinity.”

“How are we gonna recruit? Nobody wants their kid going to sea with a bunch of fags. Maybe it ain’t their fault. I don’t know. But if they can’t help hitting on them, that means you got to keep them away from normal people.”

The senior lieutenant said, “Bottom line: What are we out here for? Ships exist to sink other ships, okay? We need to focus on that, not get diverted by affairs among the crew. The day they let them in, they can let me out.”

“Not on my ship. Not in my Navy.”

“Yeah, at least with women you can put them all in the same compartment and have them indifferent to one another.”

“You never been on the Norton Sound. Fucking bull dykes, all of them.”

Dan looked around the table, at a wall of faces that had turned hostile.

“’Scuse me, gentlemen, I got to clear the table now.”

As they rose, he glanced at his watch. “Larry, I’m going diving this afternoon. Want to go? Any you guys want to come?”

“Not me. I don’t go under the water unless I got a submarine around me. We got any divers?”

“Jonesy, but he got mono.”

Dan said so long, shook hands. A couple of the men left before he got to them. Prince grabbed his cap off the peg and held it out.

“I can find my way out. You got things to do.”

“No way. Gotta escort you, man. You could be one of those security tests.”

“Thanks for coming over,” Prince said when they got to the quarterdeck. “Stay in touch, hear? You goin’ to the game this year?”

“We’re going to be deployed for Army-Navy.”

“Oh, yeah, us, too. What’m I thinking about? Well, we’ll catch it on the tube. So long, buddy. Oh, and—”

Dan stopped as Prince did, looking up at the aft launcher, then glancing casually around. It was incredibly hot. The steel absorbed heat and radiated it again, cooking you from all sides. “What?” he said.

Prince extended an imaginary blade. He went to en garde in quarte, waited for Dan to respond, then lunged. Dan did a halfcircle parry and riposted to the inside; Prince beat parried, laughed, and they disengaged. Dan felt slow and clumsy. He’d fenced for only one semester before going to lacrosse, mainly because Prince had beaten him every time they put the masks on. He saw the OOD watching in astonishment from the far side of the quarterdeck.

“A touch, I do confess it.”

As they shook hands, Prince said in a low voice, “Dan, better lay off this homo stuff. It doesn’t take much to make them think you’re one.”

“I’m not.”

“I don’t care if you are.”

Dan’s gaze locked suddenly with his classmate’s. “You don’t? In there, you said—”

“What else am I going to say in front of everybody? Like I said, I don’t care. But if you are or think you might be — that happens sometimes — do what you have to do. But don’t talk about it … to anybody, ever. Understand?”

Dan stared at him, catching his breath — at Larry Prince, the deputy brigade commander the year they’d graduated, someone he’d known for years.

“Thanks for the advice,” he said quietly.

They were waiting by the brow when he got back. Jay Harper was standing by a pile of gear. Gary Lohmeyer was talking to the messenger. The damage control officer had asked to come along, said he was a diver, which had surprised Dan, since it didn’t jibe with the impression he gave. Maybe he had misjudged the kid. Harper looked irritated as Dan trotted down the pier. “There he is. You about ready to go, shipmate?”

He and the chief warrant had had their “talk” out on deck one morning as a squall moved across the face of the water. To his surprise, Harper hadn’t flared back at him. He just said quietly that yeah, he’d been in the wrong, that he wouldn’t leave the bridge again. Dan had asked him then if there was something bothering him.

Harper had just shrugged. “I guess just that the King Snake is looking at punching out of this flea circus.”

“Retiring?”

“It’s getting to be time.” The older man had looked off across the sea to where the sun braced the clouds with golden beams. “It’s like after a while, the challenge is gone. There’s nothing you haven’t done a hundred times. No thrill, no kick.”

“And?”

“I’m just thinking about when,” Harper had said.

Now Dan told him, “Yeah, I’m ready. Let me run down, get my gear. Did you reserve tanks?”

“Waiting for us over near Base Ordnance. We’ll swing by and pick ’em up in the truck.”

He was in his stateroom, pulling out fins and mask, when Hank Shrobo put his head in. Seeing him, eyes like used ashtrays, brought back all the last two weeks, deep in the complexities of signal-flow diagrams and fault isolation: the anxiety, the everpresent sense of urgency, the glimpses of hope, then despair as once again the solution eluded them. “Yeah,” Dan said. “Make my day; tell me you caught the Crud.”

“Not quite. But we’re nailing the fence closed.”

“The battle problem?” Dan unwrapped his regulator, examined the hose.

“Oh … that. The program’s almost finished. Then we’ll load a clean tape and boot Elmo up.” Elmo was what Williams had started calling the ACDADS. “We just might make your captain’s deadline.”

“Do you need me down there?”

“Not right now. Maybe for a test run later.”

“Good. But you look like shit. Want to take a break, go swimming? I got a spare mask—”

“I’d better not, but thanks. I don’t swim very well.” The civilian seemed embarrassed by the invitation. What a strange guy, Dan thought. Could he be gay too? Or was he getting tunnel vision, like Harper had warned him about?

Harper and Lohmeyer were waiting in the truck when he got back to the quarterdeck. He ran down the brow and threw his gear in, and climbed up.

Harper picked up the charged tanks at the Reef Raiders’ shack, wedged them into the bed so they wouldn’t roll, then headed south along the bay. The road clung to the hills, and as they bounced along, he could look off across the entrance to the airfield, and beyond that to the hills. They pulled off onto the sand not far from the lighthouse on Windward Point.

“Here it is,” said Harper with a grand announcing gesture, as if he owned it or had discovered it. “The best fucking diving in the western hemisphere.”

Dan looked out at it with the same mixed anticipation and dread he always had before a dive. Beyond the surf, the sea was a light blue, clear and pure, darkening rapidly to azure. Between blue and blue was a darker mottling, which meant sand between patches of grass or coral. Harper was telling them how nobody fished here, how clear it was. He pulled a speargun from behind the seat.

“They allow spearfishing here?” Dan asked him.

“You see anybody keeping tabs? There’re groupers down there that’ll swallow you alive.” He grinned. “Kind of like my fucking wife, you know?”

The surf creamed among dark jagged rocks. Lohmeyer went in first, balancing on his fins till a sea reared in front of him, then diving in over it. Harper waded in, skinny legs gradually submerging but perfectly visible, bent, as if they were both broken. Dan waited for a wave, then swam out through the surf line. When he put his mask under, he could see powdery white sand engraved with riffles and small white fish the color of the sand.

He followed the others out, watching bubbles swirl as their fins pulled air down into the water. White sand crept past beneath him. A pale fish with spines drifted a few inches above it. It didn’t swim off as he approached. It just waited, lifting its spines slightly. He decided anything that confident had to be poisonous, so he angled back toward the heaving silver surface.

A greenish shadow took shape: a coral head. Beyond it was another. The sand made fine white paths between them, like a Japanese garden. Angelfish browsed among the sea fans, and a school of blue tang angled away into the haze.

Silver bubbles drifted up. Lohmeyer and Harper sank slowly, hands to their masks. Dan felt for his mouthpiece, cleared it, and sucked a breath: air, cold and dry. He jackknifed down and the sea sealed over his head.

His breath squeaked and bubbled in his ears. He cleared them as he sank, then again. A sea turtle swam past a hundred feet away, thrusting itself through the water like a round rowboat. It trailed a huge appendage Dan hoped was its tail. They swam together over the coral heads, looking down. He kept craning around, looking for a ’cuda or a shark. But the enormous blueness seemed empty. Aside from the turtle, he didn’t see anything at all, just the little chaetondontidae, bright as butterflies, that drifted in clouds above the coral heads.

Ahead, Harper pointed. Lohmeyer followed him around, angling left, and Dan, too. And they saw the wreck.

It lay at the base of a rock pinnacle. Reels of rusty steel cable sagged from the afterdeck. Hundreds of fish moved in and out of a black gape in its side, as if the wreck were breathing. The anchor chain stretched out across the bottom. Dan saw what looked like a circus wagon upright on the sand. As they closed, he saw it was a motor-generator truck, sitting on the bottom as if it had been parked there.

They investigated the wreck for a few minutes, then Harper pointed seaward. They followed him along the sloping bottom. Dan checked his depth gauge, then his watch.

As they dropped, the sea grew cooler against his skin. The light grew green, then blue. The vegetation dwindled. Again he noticed, with a thrill of apprehension, that there weren’t any fish around at all now.

Then he saw where Cuba ended.

It was a drop-off, a sharp one. He checked his gauge again as they crossed the ragged rocky lip: 120 feet. Lohmeyer stopped and hovered, looking down. Harper glanced over his shoulder but kept swimming outward. Dan hesitated, then followed, feeling the upwelling in his face like a cold slow wind.

As they descended, a shudder crept up his back — a primeval fear of being trapped, of the dark, of the cold. It was deep blue above him; below, only an immense darkness. Was something moving down there? He imagined falling away into that abyss, being crushed …. No, the pressure wouldn’t crush him; he’d just run out of air … a thousand feet deep out here ….

Something took shape from the blue-black. He blinked, not really comprehending what he saw. A steel hawser, big around as his thigh, stretched parallel to the cliff face. Coral festered slowly in brainlike knots. Harper hovered above it, looking off to the right and then the left, to where it stretched into invisibility again.

Something jabbed his side and he almost cried out. But it was only Lohmeyer, holding up his tank gauge and pointing upward. Dan wasn’t sure he wanted to go back up. Part of him wanted to keep swimming down till he understood the dark, fathomed it, grasped it, knew.

But maybe you couldn’t understand it till you were part of it ….

Harper turned, saw them, and at last nodded slowly to Lohmeyer’s urgent pointing toward the light.

He ran out of air and surfaced half a mile out. He turned on his back and finned slowly shoreward, trying to relax as the sea washed over him and came down the snorkel. It tasted bitter and warm. He felt vulnerable, like a lure being trolled slowly across the surface. He couldn’t think of anything that was likely to look better to a shark than he did, silhouetted against the surface.

But at last the bottom came into view again, and he rested, letting the waves toss him around. He couldn’t see the others. He’d lost them when he had to surface. Finally, he decided to go in on his own.

He came in at a bad place and got knocked around, but finally he staggered out. He looked up and down the beach, but he was alone. He was wondering if he ought to go back in and look for them when he caught sight of two black dots far out. He waved and the sun flashed off their masks and after a while one of them waved back.

When they came ashore, he helped them with their tanks. Lohmeyer pulled his mask off and blew his nose. A red thread mingled with the mucus. “A little squeeze,” he said. He looked at Dan’s leg. “You’re bleeding, too.”

“Lost an argument with one of those rocks.”

Harper pulled the cooler off the truck. “Beer, anybody? Chips?”

The beer tasted great and so did the salty snacks. They stripped the rest of their gear off, then lay around and popped cans till Dan felt light-headed and detached. He forgot about the battle problem and the computers and Leighty and lay on the hot sand with his arm over his eyes and his mind as close to being turned off as it could get. Only the sand fleas kept him awake.

“Man,” said Harper, “this is great. Isn’t this great? All we need is some cunt bitches and we’d be in hog heaven.”

“Did you see that manta?”

“You saw a manta ray, Gary?”

Lohmeyer fitted his glasses back onto a reddening nose. “On the way back in. I saw him from the side and I thought he was a shark. Then he sort of canted over and I saw the wings. Jay tried to get close enough to shoot him, but he couldn’t catch up.”

Harper was still talking about women. “Ever teach a fifteen-year-old to suck cock? San Juan, when I was a radioman … Hoss, I got somebody I want you to meet, we get back to Charleston. Little lady name of Mary.” He winked at Dan. “The lieutenant knows her real well.”

He felt annoyed. “Isn’t there anything else you can talk about but pussy, Harper?”

“Oh sure. Gash and twat and cooze and poontang. And bearded clams, come holes, fur burgers, beavers, nooky, muff pie …” He went on for at least five minutes while Lohmeyer giggled in admiration. Dan gave the younger officer a disgusted look.

“So,” he said, hoping to change the subject, “you’re really thinking about getting out?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen it all so many times, nothing’s new anymore. And I need to put some time in on the bars.”

“I think you put too much time in at the bars.”

“I mean the ones I own. Need to show that forty-five to a couple people. Fuckers rip me off, I’ll jam it up their assholes and pull the trigger.”

Dan looked sideways at Harper’s weak-chinned profile. He’d put his glasses back on after the dive, and his bald patch was getting burned. Sometimes he couldn’t figure the chief warrant. “You better cover your head,” Dan told him. “You’re gonna burn.”

“Hey, ask me if I give a fuck.”

“You’ll make this deployment with us, though, won’t you?” Lohmeyer said anxiously.

“Oh sure. Don’t worry about that, shipmate. There’s a bar in Istanbul I’ll take you to. Best belly dancers in the world, and you get a free massage after you get your ashes hauled.”

“How are you ever gonna give the Navy up?” Dan asked him. “You enjoy it too much.”

“There’s some good times, Hoss. Never said there weren’t. But it’d be different if they paid us. You might not notice. Officers don’t do too bad, but half the junior enlisted are on food stamps. You know Chief Alaska? He works at a pizza place when we’re in, evenings and weekends, to make ends meet. I shit you not, he’s the goddamn guy flings them up in the air.”

“Like that Marion Sipple,” said Dan.

“Sipple? What about him?”

“I figure that’s what he was into. You know, stealing the funds, the stuff. I figure that’s what happened to the silver.”

“What happened to the silver?”

Dan blinked. He was a little toasted, but he’d racked his brain long enough over the audits to have an opinion at least. “I figure, I never met him, but say he needed money for something. Maybe he was into gambling. And so he stole the cash from the operating funds, and then he saw silver anodes in the supply catalog and ordered them, then took them to a jeweler and sold them. Then he goes after the night-vision scopes and stuff. Ever been to those pawnshops down on Spruill? You see binoculars and stuff there all the time; you know it’s off the ships.”

“You could be right,” said Harper. “And you know what? That’s going to keep happening just as long as they don’t pay us a comparable wage. This is shit, scraping along from paycheck to paycheck. And guys like you, got three-quarters of what you make tooken out before you ever see it. I don’t see how you stand in line for that.”

“It sucks all right,” said Dan. He felt bitter about it again. Why couldn’t she get a job? She was so fucking independent, sure, till it was time to fend for herself. Then she was happy to run to the judge and take the biggest handout she could get.

Harper said, “Say, did you see that movie about the guy and the girl who find the treasure? What was it? They were divers. Jacqueline Bissett was in it.”

“The Deep,” Lohmeyer muttered.

“That’s it, The Deep. Remember when they find the gold? I was really into that. Did you see that?”

“Everybody likes those kinds of movies,” Dan said. “It’s like wish fulfillment.”

“You want to go in again, Jay?” asked Lohmeyer. “Try to catch one of those waves?”

“Naw, I’m just gettin’ dried out. Watch those fucking rocks or you’ll break your fucking head.”

The ensign went down to the water again. Dan turned over, watched the black dot of Lohmeyer’s head bobbing around.

Harper said, “What you think of that kid?”

“Gary? He seems okay.”

“He’s kind of slow. Always around, but he never says much. Kind of a klutz.”

“He’s got a tough job, taking over damage control right here in Gitmo.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said Harper. He belched. “You know, stuff like that — finding treasure — sometimes it happens. Sometimes it really happens.” Ice rattled as he rooted out another beer. “Lemme ask you something. What would you figure, you were in that guy’s shoes?”

“Lohmeyer?”

“No, fuck Lohmeyer. I mean the guy in the movie. Say you could make a pile of money. Nobody knows about it; nobody gets hurt. Only thing, it’s illegal. What would you do?”

“What, if I found a wreck full of gold and jewels?”

“Yeah. Would you turn it over to the cops?”

“Hell no.”

“Course not. And what would you do with it?”

Dan said, knowing it was a fantasy but warming to it, “What would I do? First thing, get my own place. I’d like to have an apartment, not have to make out on the damn couch, wondering if the girl’s kid is going to come down in his jammies. Then I’d send some money home to my mom and my brother.”

“Didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yeah, two. One of them’s trying to work his way through college; he could use some bucks.”

“What else?”

“I’d probably save the rest of it.”

“You don’t have very expensive tastes,” said Harper. “No boat? No big new motorcycle?”

Dan shrugged. Already the momentary gloss had worn off the daydream.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Just that there isn’t any cargo of gold and jewels. And even if there was, my fucking ex-wife and her lawyers would end up with three-quarters of it.”

“Yeah, but there’s other ways to make spending money.”

“Like how?”

“There’s some things I could let you in on,” said Harper, “if you wanted.”

“What kind of things?”

“That would depend on what kind of risk you wanted to take on. What if I let you in on the bar business?”

“What, you mean invest money? I don’t have any.”

Lohmeyer came back then, and Harper fell silent. Dan thought about his proposal for a little while — if it was a proposal — then dismissed it. He didn’t have anything to invest, and if he did, it wouldn’t be in anything Harper ran. The sun beat down as they dozed, and his thoughts drifted. Harper’s raunchy talk and the sun and the beer made him wish he was somewhere he could at least see a woman. He’d have to make some kind of decision when he got back about whether to see Beverly again. Or maybe Sibylla Baird. His prick went hard between his belly and the warm sand as he remembered the garden, the smell of roses.

A battered station wagon turned off up the beach and a black woman and a little girl got out. The child ran toward the water, and Dan’s eyes followed them. The woman swung past them, carrying a picnic basket. “Man, you see that?” muttered Harper.

Dan said, “Nice legs.”

“But not great,” said Lohmeyer. “A little fat—”

“You’re wrong, Ensign. They’re perfect,” said Harper lazily, lifting his head to watch. Sand coated one cheek, like a sugared doughnut. “All women got perfect legs — feet on one end and pussy on the other. Man, look at that. It’d be just like licking the cream filling out of an Oreo.”

Dan lost it then. His sorrow and his apprehension dissolved, and the others grinned at him as he quivered on the hot sand, holding his stomach in helpless laughter.

They were interrupted by the sound of engines snorting and echoing from the hills. Dan rolled over and looked.

Two jeeps were bumping along between the dunes, followed by a truck. They turned before they got to the station wagon, the woman watching them, shading her eyes, and braked at an observation tower. The gate of the truck came down and several marines jumped out, then slid out a long box.

“What the hell?”

“They’re setting up a machine gun.”

“M-sixty, looks like,” said Harper. “Fuckin’ Commies’ll be sorry, they try and come ashore here.” He got up abruptly, mimicked tommy-gunning the sea. He howled, “Nuke ’em till they glow, then shoot ’em in the dark!”

“We better find out what’s going on.” Dan got up and trudged over. The sand was hot on his bare feet. But before he got there, one of the marines cupped his hands and yelled, “This beach is closed. Leave immediately. The beach is secured.”

The woman called to her daughter, waving her in from where she stood examining a dead fish. “We better get back to the ship,” said Lohmeyer, and his voice held a note of alarm.

When they got back, they found that the base had gone to full alert. Dan immediately checked that the ready mount was manned and that CIC had comms with the Fire Direction Center. He made sure Adamo had the Phalanxes loaded and that they had war shots lined up in the launcher drums and that Horseheads was setting up a watch rotation. When he was satisified they conformed to the new alert status, he stopped by his room, pulled some clean khakis on, and went down once again to the computer room.

28

Leighty shoved himself back from his desk in sudden irritation. The notice he’d just read directed all ships’ commanding officers to form a communications security review board. The board had to meet immediately, review all records and clearances pertaining to classified materials, and make a letter report to their respective type commander. It had to be comprised of the exec, the operations officer, and at least two other officers or chiefs, none of whom could be the primary or assistant CMS custodians.

More lost hours, more pointless palaver and time-eating correspondence. His teeth set in helpless anger. Every year, it got worse. Higher authority’s reaction to every failure or shortcoming was to impose a straitjacket of reports and checklists on subordinate commands. Each new fleet or type commander instituted new programs, inspections, requirements, but the old ones were never canceled. And of course no one ever considered that the total number of man-hours aboard ship was finite. He glanced at the next document in the stack the yeoman had brought up. It was the preoverseas movement inspection checkoff list. An accompanying letter requested an initial report no later than August first and weekly progress reports thereafter. He stared at it, shaking his head slowly.

He rolled his chair back a few more inches and rubbed his face, then kneaded the nape of his neck. A headache throbbed at the rear of his skull. I’m letting it get to me, he thought. Can’t let myself get too stressed out. Back in port, he’d have strolled down to the basketball court, burned it out in a fast pickup game. But right now, he was juggling several anxieties at once: the NIS investigation, refresher training, the problem with the ACDADS, the alert status, and whether the presence of a powerful Soviet task force in Cienfuegos had anything to do with it. And whenever he tried to deal with any of them, the paperwork began to pile up …. Well, it’s only for a few more days, he told himself, digging his fingers into the knotted muscle of his shoulders. Then they’d leave Cuba and hopefully more than one of his problems behind.

He rested for a few minutes, trying to calm himself, but the headache pounded on. Finally, he got up and went into the bedroom. He stripped off his uniform and bagged it for the steward, laid out fresh khakis on the bed. He did a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups, then stepped into the shower. He turned it on, wet himself down, turned it off. He soaped down, working it into a lather in the distilled water the ship’s evaporators made, then rinsed down again with fifteen seconds of steaming water.

When he came out, he felt better. He put on a dressing gown his wife had given him and sat on the sofa.

At least they were doing better training-wise. Their overall score was rising after a lackluster start. Making progress here and there …. But it seemed that as soon as he defused one situation, another grew worse. The Sanderling thing had worried him most. For a time, he’d feared it would explode, tearing apart crew, ship, wardroom.

He’d seen it happen before, and had carried that horrifying example in the back of his mind ever since. He’d been a junior officer then — in Vietnam, in a riverine squadron, the Brown Water Navy: not massive ships, but landing craft and PBRs; not missiles and computers, but men in fatigues with .50-caliber guns and grenade launchers and M16s, patrolling the shallow swampy tributaries of the Mekong. Ninety percent of trade and traffic in the Delta moved via river and canal, not by road, and the Delta covered nearly a third of the Republic of Vietnam. He’d arrived in-country in the middle of an ambitious attempt to blockade the Viet Cong’s southern logistic pipeline out of Cambodia. After six months setting up and leading sweeps and strikes, establishing bases deep in VCCONTROLLED territory, and nearly getting his ass shot off several times, he’d gotten orders up to the COMRIVRON, to squadron headquarters in Saigon.

He’d known almost at once about the commodore and his staff. And there had been opportunities. But that had been when he was still uncertain. Homosexuals wore dresses and imitated Bette Davis. He could not be one of them. In heat, humidity, fatigue, and danger, in the shared risk and terror of combat, there was emotional closeness to other men that didn’t necessarily result in physical affection. Yes, he’d loved those he served with. He’d wept when they died. And so had the other men. Then, too, something about the senior officers at his new command put him off. They were too obvious. It was tolerated; that was the unspoken message. But something about it had made him wary, so he’d rebuffed their advances.

Only two months later, his self-imposed isolation had saved him. In a moment of mistaken judgment, the commodore put one of his friends on the staff in for a Bronze Star. Said friend, unfortunately, had never been out in a Swift, never been in the field, never been shot at in his life, in fact. The resulting investigation, initiated and controlled directly from COMNAVFORV, had torn the staff apart and reached out into the operating forces, uncovering a network of liaisons that had ended dozens of careers with dishonorable discharges. A career marine, a master sergeant, had gone out into the center of the command compound and pulled the pin on a grenade, then stood looking down at it as people shouted to him to get rid of it. Before a burst of smoke and dust obliterated him.

Yes, he’d learned from that.

So when Diehl had come aboard, he’d given him full access, full cooperation. He could talk to anyone about anything, Leighty had told him. If there was a homosexual ring, no one aboard was more eager to uncover it than the commanding officer. And the agent had done his snooping, collected a dredgeful of innuendo and rumors. But when they sifted through it, nothing was left. There was no evidence of murder and no evidence that anyone aboard had been sexually involved with the seaman. As far as the Navy was concerned, Benjamin Sanderling could lie quietly in his watery grave.

The outside phone rang. He started, then crossed the room. “USS Barrett, commanding officer speaking,” he said.

“Captain, this is the base duty officer. Do you have a moment to discuss your readiness status?”

Leighty briefed him on his weapons status and readiness to get under way. Then he asked if there was any new word. The duty officer didn’t know of any, said he was just verifying that they were on alert. He asked about the tropical depression. The duty officer said it was tracking to the north and that they wouldn’t even feel it in Guantánamo Bay. He sounded hurried, as if he had other ships to call, so finally Leighty let him go. He looked at the desk again, file folders, messages, the blue covers of official correspondence, and made himself sit down and pick up the pen.

Instead of working, though, he found himself thinking again about Sanderling.

Yes, he’d been attracted to the boy. Sanderling, too, had been trying to come to terms with his sexuality, but in incredibly risky ways. He’d tried to advise him. But it hadn’t worked, and the boy had destroyed himself. And he could not even cry about it, locked in his carapace … could give no outward sign or demonstration of his rage and sorrow. He himself had always felt life was a gift, something to be grasped and prized. Everyone had pain; no one had a monopoly on that. Accepted for what it was, life was full of beauty.

Like Lenson … clean-limbed, spare, even graceful in a way, with those steady, serious gray eyes. Losing the beard had made him even more attractive. Sitting next to him during their interview, he’d felt the temptation. And for a moment, he’d fancied Dan felt it, too. But then he’d taken fright, rushed out. Well, he hadn’t meant anything by his offer of friendship. He’d tried to keep it professional.

He rubbed his chin absently. Or was he fooling himself?

He blinked and found he was still at the desk and that he had not yet made even a dent in his evening’s work. Sighing, he picked up the POM checkoff list and started to read, absently rubbing the back of his neck.

An hour later, he let himself quietly out of the cabin. He spent a few minutes on the bridge, talking with the officer of the deck. At this ready status, the OOD stood on the bridge, not the quarterdeck, and the engine room was skeleton-manned, too. Everything looked good for a quiet night. He looked out at the other ships ranged along the pier, the way the shadows stretched out from them as the afternoon waned into evening. “I’ll be taking a turn around the ship,” he said. “Maybe half an hour. Then I’ll be back in my cabin.”

“Yes, sir.”

He went down to the main deck and strolled aft, stretching his legs as the dusk stole in, and he reached the stern at the same time as it did. He stood there with the evening smokers, looking across the bay as some duty boatswain in the sky flipped the stars on one by one. They shimmered in the flat water, hanging above the black hills to the west. Somewhere beyond them was Havana. One more week, he thought, if we pass. Hit their liberty port for a few days of R and R, then back to Charleston, back to Dougie and Heather and Jeannette.

The ACDADS was the big question mark. He’d wondered on and off whether he should go over and see Captain Grieve. It was probably not too late to retract his commitment to run the battle problem in Mode 3. Woollie had offered the out. But he still felt he’d been right. If the concept of an automated ship had validity, there should be a test — preferably before the ultimate test of battle, and before vast amounts were sunk into follow-on classes. A version of ACDADS was being considered for the new Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers, and no doubt it would be incorporated into the next destroyer class, the as-yet-unnamed DDG-51’s. If the concept was faulty, now was the time to find out. True, he was running some personal risk, but he had covered himself with a speedletter to Commodore Niles explaining his reasoning. The commodore had acknowledged it rather tersely, but he hadn’t disagreed with his decision.

He stood with his hands in his pockets, revolving it all in his mind. And again his thoughts drifted back to the interview with Lenson. Had he acted honorably? Telling the younger officer what he had?

He didn’t enjoy lying. But you could evade questions only so long. At some point, you had to answer them. But what choice did they leave you? If he admitted what he was — and it wasn’t all that he was; he was also a father, a family man, active in the church and the PTA, a dog lover, and a professional naval ofncer — if he was honest, he’d be pulled from command within hours and find himself out of the service as swiftly as a board could be convened.

He had decided long ago that if the only way he could serve his country was under false colors, then he would accept that as a condition of service. What had he said to George not that long ago — that a stratagem, a ruse de guerre, was not considered dishonorable? When you were on your own in enemy territory, no one condemned you for lying, not if it was the only way you could accomplish your mission.

The point at issue, really, was whether his sexual orientation affected good order and discipline. If it made no difference in how well he did his job, then he could defend a certain level of subterfuge as a justifiable circumvention of an unenlightened and mistaken policy. It was a trade-off: his family, position, and career in exchange for his silent acceptance of the mask. But all of human existence consisted of trade-offs. Life did not consist of choices between good and evil. It was a buffet-table selection among a multiplicity of goods, a plethora of evils. If what was within his heart remained there, what difference did it make? None at all, as far as he could see ….

Two men were talking not far from him, back by the antennaservice platform. He wasn’t really listening, but whatever part of your mind stood watch while you wool-gathered thought he heard his name.

“Yeah, he’s one,” the mutter came, barely interpretable on the sultry wind.

He turned his head slowly. He couldn’t see who was speaking, whether they were black or white, only that they were both smoking — two red coals, like dying stars transmitting to each other in the dark.

“If you ask me, all the fucking officers need a goddamn testosterone transfusion. This fuckin’ ship is full of fuckin’ pansies.”

“What can we do about it?”

“We can’t do a fuckin’ thing, man. Just watch your ass when you pick up the soap. The fuckin’ skipper, he’ll suck your dick, anybody goes up at night, knocks on his door.”

“I knew something was funny … but the skipper? You’re shittin’ me.”

“I shit you not, Jack. You can tell there’s something sick waiting to blow on this banana boat. Hey, one of ‘em touches me, I’ll beat his fucking ass, you know? I’ll fucking kill the fucker. Just among us chickens, they ought to round them all up, put ’em in a camp. Then we figure out what to do with them ….”

He couldn’t tell who they were, even what department. All he knew was that his hands tightened on the lifeline. He cleared his throat and they fell silent. The coals wavered, then described outward arcs. The butts hissed in the still water. When he looked back again, both shadows were gone.

He stood motionless in the hot darkness, looking across the bay. He panted shallowly, quickly. When he was sure he wasn’t going to throw up, he headed back to his cabin.

29

“On-scene leader! Cooling compartment two-fifty-four-Echo!”

The instant the water spray hit the dogged-down door, it flashed into steam. Dan manhandled the nozzle into the porthole, angling it to play around inside the compartment on the other side. He counted ten seconds, straining to hold the heavy nozzle up, then jerked his head. The access man knocked the dogs free with six fast hammer blows and jerked the door open. “Compartment door cooled and undogged!” he bawled.

Staring into the wall of yellow flame, blinking behind the mask, Dan had a moment of wholehearted fear. His lungs pumped pure oxygen in and out rapidly.

Sweeping the blast of water from side to side, he gathered his courage and jumped through.

At his feet, a black pool glowed with a faint blue unearthly flame. Then, faster than the eye could follow, it ignited with a hollow whump into a roaring lake of white fire. Fluttering yellow tongues raced across above his head, into a webwork of soot-blackened pipes and I beams. He wheeled, trying to quench it before it reached the crack in the pipe. But he couldn’t turn fast enough; the heavy hose resisted him.

The fine oil mist ignited with a hollow boom that knocked his mask askew and blew him into the men behind him. He got a lungful of the lighter-fluid stink of distillate fuel before he could clear and restart the OBA. “Water curtain,” he coughed, then yelled, “On-scene leader! Class Bravo fire, compartment two-fifty-four-Echo. Advancing! Move in!”

The fire roared around them now, licking up through the gratings under their boots. The heat scorched his face even through the shield. Suddenly, a halo of water appeared around his head, snuffing back the writhing torch of burning oil. The men behind him surged forward. Dan dug his boots in to avoid being pushed into the flames. Squinting into the glare and heat, he hauled desperately at the unyielding iron-stiff canvas of the charged fire hose.

Around the scared, sweating men, the flaking concrete of the fire-fighting training building was blackened by decades of burning oil. Above them, inky smoke rolled away into the bright sky. A jeep marked with a red cross waited on the apron. The instructors hovered just out of range of the flames, which were directed and controlled by valves. One was yelling, but Dan couldn’t make it out over the roar. His mask was still awry and he was getting more smoke than oxygen. His skin felt like frying chitterlings. But he held his ground, sweeping the blast of mist steadily across the base of the flames that leapt up from beneath his feet, from above, from all around them.

Today, the last day before the battle problem, Barrett lay pierside while the crew tweaked and peaked before the final test. The alert condition only added to the sense of urgency. Transports screamed in, wheeling over the piers to touch down at Leeward Field. They were landing advance elements of the 38th Marine Amphibious Unit, and they screamed out filled with dependents and civilian personnel. A squadron of Air Force OV-10s had reinforced the armed A-4s, and he saw them orbiting occasionally, low-winged two-engine jets that looked slow but that could maneuver amid the low dry hills like crop dusters.

The funny thing was, there was no official word as to what was going on. There were rumors, of course. Castro was dying; there was going to be a civil war. Or that he’d sworn to take Guantánamo Bay at last. But officially it was just that “intelligence sources” had detected increased Cuban activity and the alert and buildup were purely precautionary.

It looked like a lot of activity for a precaution. But like everyone else aboard, he didn’t have time to think about anything but what was in front of him at any given moment to do or solve, and when lights-out went, he fell on his bunk without taking his clothes off or brushing his teeth. Only another five days, he’d think before the black closed over him. Only another four. And last night: Day after tomorrow, and that’ll be it.

And now it was only one more day.

When the last flicker was extinguished, he started backing his team out. “Line One, level out …. Water off at the Y gate …. Don’t kneel down; you’ll get a grate burn.” When they were all out safely and the open sky burned above him, he stripped his mask off and leaned against a bulkhead. The steel scorched his shoulder through the suit and he flinched upright, staggered, almost fell.

“On-scene leader: Fire is out throughout the compartment.”

“Set the reflash watch,” Dan bawled, then started to cough and couldn’t stop. He dropped the hose and doubled over. He could breathe out fine, but he couldn’t inhale without setting it off again. The corpsman ran over with the green cylinder of oxygen, but he waved him wordlessly to wait. Finally his breath came back a little, then a little more. The others bent or squatted on the shimmering asphalt, sweat running off their faces as if they’d just emerged from a river. Finally, he was able to croak, “Get the gear off. Get in the shade and drink some fucking water before you guys pass out.”

He showered and changed, feeling weak, as if he’d been fasting. He had a steam burn on his neck, but it didn’t seem bad enough for sick bay. He was sitting in the department office looking vacantly at his crammed-solid in box when Ensign Steel stuck his head in. “Mr. Lenson, got a second?”

“Yeah. What is it, Ron?”

Steel let himself in. “I got my maintenance hat on today, sir.” The electrical officer was also in charge of reviewing and running the ship’s planned maintenance system. “Okay,” said Dan, trying to refocus. “What is it?”

“Jeez, what’s wrong with your throat? You sound like the XO.”

“Sucked some smoke over at the trainer. What you got?”

“Sir, Chief Narita was aboard doing spot checks this morning. He hit on CE division.”

Dan glanced up. Harper’s division. “They failed,” Steel said, then explained why.

“You mean they’re not doing the maintenance? Or that—”

“Not the item they spot-checked-the filter on the UCC-one teletypewriter converter. The monthly record said they’d been changed, but when the instructor pulled them, they were dirty.”

“I’ll take care of it,” said Dan. Steel nodded and left, and Dan started punching buttons on the phone. The filter itself wasn’t a big deal. But saying it was done when it wasn’t, that was bad news.

Harper wasn’t in the computer room, the electronics repair shop, or his stateroom. Dan frowned, then dialed the quarterdeck. “Hi. Mr. Lenson here. Can you pass the word for Mr. Harper, please?”

The 1MC said, “Chief Warrant Officer Harper, dial two-three-four.” Dan’s phone buzzed two seconds later.

“Jay, where are you?”

“In the crypto locker. I’m classified materials custodian, remember?”

“You’re also the electronic maintenance officer, and I just got a report about gun-decked maintenance.”

“Oh, fuck me …. Cool your jets, Dan. The guys’ve been busy as a dog with two dicks.”

“I understand that, but you don’t mark maintenance done when it isn’t. Who’s your PMS petty officer?”

“Williams, and you know how busy he is. Anyway, those filters, the periodicity’s wrong; they change them way too often.”

“If the periodicity’s wrong, submit a feedback report and get it changed.” Dan felt his temper going. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you. I want your maintenance either done or properly postponed in accordance with the manual. Is that clear?”

Harper didn’t answer. A second later, to Dan’s astonishment, came the unmistakable click of the phone being hung up.

“You bastard,” he muttered. “Okay, let’s have this out.”

The red light was on over the vault door. Dan pulled a wrench off a bracket and hammered on the thick steel so hard, a chip of gray paint came off. But no sound came from inside. Enraged now, he went down to the quarterdeck, looked up the number of the registered publications room, and dialed Harper there.

“Crypto, Harper.”

“Did you just hang up on me?”

“I think we got cut off.”

“I was beating down your door. Didn’t you hear me?”

“Nobody has access to this space but me and the comm officer, Lieutenant.”

“I want you out in the passageway in four seconds or you’re going to spend your next liberty restricted to the ship.”

“Working,” said Harper, and Dan heard again that sardonic, insolent note.

When he got back to the centerline passageway, Harper was locking the vault. He turned coolly to Dan. “Okay, what you need?”

“First, I want that weekly schedule fixed. Then I want you and Williams in my office with your maintenance records.”

“I’ll do that, Lieutenant, but I got something to say, too. I don’t like being threatened with the loss of my liberty. You do that to some fucking seaman, not to me.”

“Oh,” said Dan. A tide of fatigue-fed anger was obliterating his self-control. “Is that right? Or else what?”

“Or else you and me go down on the fucking pier and go head-to-head, shipmate.”

Suddenly, the fire curtain descended between him and his anger. He knew what it was made of: the fear that he was like his father. “I’ve got a better idea. How about this: You shut the fuck up and do as you’re told,” Dan said coldly, turning away.

But to his surprise, he felt Harper’s hand on his shoulder. He whipped around, doubling his fists. But just at that moment, the 1MC said, “This is a drill; this is a drill …. Security alert! Security alert. Away the security-alert team and the backup alert force!”

He froze as Harper sprinted away. The chief warrant was in charge of the security-alert team, the force that responded to unauthorized personnel attempting to board the ship or to intrusion alarms in the missile magazines or Radio Central. When they were called away, everybody else stayed in place or else got “shot.” Within seconds, two gunner’s mates stormed forward from the hangar. One carried a .45, the other a pump shotgun. “You see the intruder?” the guy with the riot gun yelled.

“No.”

When they were gone, he sidled cautiously to the nearest door and let himself out onto the weather decks.

Below him, the sound of boots on metal told him they were sanitizing the main deck. A whistle blast echoed, followed by Harper’s shout. Dan looked down, to see him standing by the lifelines, gesturing furiously. “Move, move, move, move, move, move! Secure each area, then move on! Stay out of your partner’s goddamn line of fire! He can’t shoot through you!” Faces running with sweat, Chief Miller, Cephas, and Antonio broke from behind a bulkhead, one by one, the two others covering the runner, crossed an open area at a sprint, and skidded to cover behind a coaming. A second later, their weapons leveled and a sharp series of clicks sounded as they steadied and squeezed off at an imaginary opponent.

Dan had to admit that usually the chief warrant was dedicated, sharp, effective. But lately, he seemed to be dropping the ball, getting a short-timer’s attitude. Like this maintenance thing … but how important was it? Maybe Harper was right, changing filters wasn’t that big a deal.

And maybe even gun-decking your records wasn’t that big a deal, either, considering some of the other things that went on aboard Barrett.

He stopped, blinking in the sunlight, wondering what was happening to him.

That evening at 2100, all hands met in the helo hangar. Dan went up early, but everybody else had the same idea; the hose reels and boxes were all occupied. The men squatted, heads in their hands. They looked tired beyond caring, and he heard voices raised in the midships corridor. Angry shouts were quelled by Chief Oakes’s roar. Yeah, everybody was on edge.

He found a place he could perch. As he did so, something crackled in his pocket. He felt around for the letter and opened it again.

It had come in that afternoon at mail call — a plain envelope, his name and the ship’s name in pencil. An adult hand had added the Fleet Post Office zip code. Inside was a piece of lined school paper.

He folded it again. Poor kid. He’d send him a USS Barrett hat, and a T-shirt …. The smile left his lips gradually. He leaned back against the bulkhead and closed his eyes.

“Sir …”

He flinched awake. Ensign Paul took his hand off Dan’s thigh and said, “Sorry, sir. You were about to fall off.”

“Thanks, Martin.” He straightened and saw the XO fiddling with a mike. The next moment, Vysotsky’s voice rolled out.

“Can I have your attention, please.”

Men shook the sleepers awake. Dan frowned, glancing around, but didn’t see the captain.

“Okay, listen up,” said Vysotsky. He paused, glancing at his watch, then went on. “Tomorrow morning is the final exercise, what we’ve all been waiting for. The instructors will test everything we’ve learned and see how well we put it together under stress. To pass, we’ve got to show we can fight the ship, take a hit, extinguish fires, stop flooding. We’ve got to show them we’ve learned our first aid and self-aid and that we can transport and care for a large number of wounded.

“Now, remember, there won’t be a single thing they ask us to do that we haven’t drilled over and over. The only new element will be the mass conflagration. Again, we’ve drilled all the damage control and fire fighting. The difference will be that tomorrow there’ll be live fire hoses, foam and smoke generators to make things more authentic. It will be as close to battle as we can get without actually taking a hit. There’ll be fifteen evaluators, so don’t even think about breaking your seal or sneaking a cigarette.

“After that, if we pass — I know you’ve all been waiting for this — the next port is …”

The crew was riveted. Vysotsky milked the suspense before he finished: “ … Guadeloupe, in the French Windward Islands.”

The crew murmured as the exec went on. “Not a port the USN visits a lot, but Senior Chief Oakes has been there. He says it’s a great place to relax and unwind. I think you’ll enjoy it.

“Okay, Mr. Lohmeyer, over to you.”

The damage control officer looked daunted and sleepless. He adjusted his glasses as he said, “Okay,” cleared his throat, said louder, “Okay! I went over last week and talked to the DCA on the Canisteo after their mass conflag to get a feel for what they’re going to throw at us. They’re basically going to try to burn us and then sink us. First will be the fighting portion, when the ship goes to full auto and defends itself against air and surface threats — what — ever they decide to heave at us.

“That’ll be graded separately, but it’ll end with either a torpedo or a missile hit. That will knock out all comms except for the sound-powered phones and messengers. We’ve got to find the holes and plug them, find the fires and put them out. The damage control chief and the XO will track damage from the bridge. I’ll be in DC Central working the structural-strength and overall stability problem.

“Now, we may think we got this stuff memorized, but it’s gonna be different when we’re taking water, injured guys are screaming and running through the compartments, and the smoke’s so thick that you can’t see your hand in front of your face. In the middle of everything, they’re gonna rupture our fire main, and we’ll have to patch it. There’s gonna be shoring needed, and it’s gonna be someplace with a curving bulkhead, so we got to figure it out right the first time.

“The good news is, that last part is only about an hour. When they’re satisfied, they’ll pass ‘silence’ over the 1MC and Woollie will come on and announce the grade. So we’ll know right away if we’ve passed or not.

“Okay … that’s all I have, sir.”

Vysotsky took the mike back. “Thanks, Gary. Okay, where are my department heads? Instead of eight o‘clock reports tonight, let’s do them right here, let the whole crew know where we stand. Mr. Giordano, are our engineers ready? How do we stand on the louver intake heaters?”

“We got the parts kit, but the bolts are the wrong size, sir. Anyway, that won’t hurt us tomorrow. We got a problem in the number one gas turbine generator, the fourteenth stage bleed adjust valve, but I think we can get it fixed tonight. The fire pumps—”

“What’s wrong with the fire pumps?”

“Number three motor is grounded. We can maintain loop pressure, though.”

“Even in a casualty mode?”

“Yes, sir,” said Giordano. “Aside from that, my major worry’s water. SIMA overhauled the pumps in the distillate plant, but we broke the flex pipe putting them back in. That and the way the safeties keep lifting on the waste heat boilers means we may have to go on water hours in Guadeloupe.”

“We’ll be able to get fresh water there. I’m more worried about tomorrow. Mr. Quintanilla?”

“Sir, the starboard anchor windlass is back in operation. No other casualties in the Operations Department. Comms will be set up in accordance with Annex K of the CTG forty-three point two opgen.”

“Combat systems?”

Dan stood and said, “Phalanx electronic cooling system, the water low-flow switch is inoperative. Parts are on order. No operational impact.”

“How do we stand on alert status, Mr. Lenson?”

“Sir, all the ships in port have been issued new targeting plans, comm plans, and call for fire procedures. We can control aircraft, as well. If they want us to come on-line to defend the base, we can.”

“Okay, the big question: Are we going to be able to fight the battle problem in full auto, like we committed to?”

Dan took a breath. “We’re going to try, sir.”

Vysotsky went down the other departments, then looked around. Dan did, too, but Leighty still wasn’t there. The XO cleared his throat. “Well, that’s about it. The overall score so far is forty of forty-eight evolutions sat. Not terrific, but enough to pass if we ace this bear tomorrow. If we don’t … we’ll just do it all over again.

“I guess that’s all …. Any questions?”

“Any word on that hurricane, sir? Is that going to hurt our liberty?”

“Lieutenant Cannon?”

The navigator: “Don’t worry about the weather. It’ll be a little rough, but the storm should pass to the north of us.”

There were no other questions. Vysotsky dismissed them, and the men stood slowly and began to file out.

Dan made a last check of his spaces, telling people to knock off, get some sleep. Shrobo and Chief Dawson were optimistic about the ACDADS fix, which cheered him up. He turned in a little before midnight.

Then he lay wide awake in the darkened stateroom, brain buzzing like a cycling relay. Through the hiss of the ventilators, he could hear an occasional clank as the boatswains finished rigging something. His eye returned to the green luminescence of his clock. In four hours — no, three and a half now — reveille would go. And it would be time to find out if all their work would succeed … or go for nothing.

He forced himself to close his eyes.

He was jerked awake in the dark by the phone. He heard the cursing from the bunk below as his roommate groped for it, listened, then said, “It’s yours.” Dan leaned over and the smooth curved plastic found his hand.

“Dan? This is the XO.”

“Yes, sir.” He blinked sleep scum off his eyeballs, trying to make sense of the clock. “Is it … is it reveille yet, sir?”

“No,” said Vysotsky. “It’s only oh-three hundred. But I need to get you on your feet, give you a quick heads-up to what’s going on.”

“Okay, sir, what’s going on?”

“We’re not doing the battle problem today.”

“We’re not?”

“No,” said the heavy grating voice. “We’re still getting under way, but not for that. That’s all on hold now. There’s been … a little change of plan.”