THE yellow raft bobbed gently on the blue. Three figures sprawled with heads back, eyes closed, bandages wrapping hands and faces. Seawater sloshed slowly under sagging bodies.
The last drinking water was long gone. The last food, a few dry bars in the raft’s survival pouch, had been eaten at the end of the third day.
A gull circled, first curious, then avid, onyx eyes agleam. It descended gradually, tilting this way and that, tee-tertottering on the westerly wind. A cruel beak gaped greedily.
None of the figures moved. Only the raft stirred, tossing uneasily on a gentle chop, under a burning sun.
The gull circled again, a wary eye cocked for competitors. It dipped lower, spreading white wings to land.
The figure in the blue coveralls suddenly twitched. A hand removed a hat. Red swollen eyes blinked. Blackened fingers dug at an itching rime of pus and salt.
Dan Lenson blinked up into the glare of the noon sun as the angry squawk of a frustrated bird drifted down. He panted, rubbing cracked, bleeding lips. Hoisted himself an inch or two, and peered around.
Flat empty sea. He couldn’t tell its color, he’d stared at it so long. Only that it glittered like a broken mirror, agonizingly bright by day, then chilled with an inky black stirred with streats of phosphorescence by night.
* * *
WILKER’S groping hand at his chest, in the cockpit of the sinking helo, had been for his own bailout bottle, which the pilots carried zipped into their vests. Once he’d gotten that into his mouth, holding his broken jaw closed with one hand, he and Dan had buddy-breathed until they’d extricated the pilot’s legs from the crushed-down instrument panel, popped their inflation, and made for the surface.
He and Wilker had bobbed for a time, calling out for other survivors. At last a weak response. Captain Hwang, breaststroking toward them, but with difficulty. His life jacket trailed uninflated. Something seemed to be weighing him down. Dan checked the jacket, but kept bumping something hard. At last, between waves, he’d sputtered, “What’s that you’re carrying?”
“Notebook.”
“You saved your computer?”
“Classified. Must save.”
“Let it go, Min Su. It’ll drown you.”
“I will go down with it … if so.” His head went under just then, and both Dan and Wilker had to haul him up. The Korean coughed desperately, but muttered, “Must safeguard. At all costs.”
Then his eyes had lit suddenly, and he’d raised a dripping arm to point. “Raft!”
They never knew where it had come from. Either deployed automatically by the sinking helicopter, or released, before he’d died, by the crewman. But there it was, riding high and about the most welcome sight they could have imagined, aside from a rescue helo. Unfortunately, it was drifting away from them, driven briskly by the wind.
“You guys wait here,” Dan had snapped, and struck out.
The swim had exhausted him, but he’d caught up, finally. Then, after a short rest, climbed in, and paddled back with the little emergency oar. A slick coated the waves, a stink of fuel, bobbing plastic items, paper debris. Hwang pulled himself in, with his computer. They tried to be gentle, but Wilker screamed as they hauled him aboard. “I think they’re both broken,” he’d gasped.
Feeling the pilot’s legs through his flight suit, Dan had to agree. But he couldn’t think of a thing to do about it, other than to find the survival kit. Unfortunately, the radio had absorbed a fragment from whatever hit their engine. At about that time, he also realized the raft was softening under them, leaking from multiple holes.
Fortunately, the patch kit was intact.
For the first day, after he’d wrestled Hwang’s computer away and thrown it overboard, they’d tried to paddle northeast, along the vector Wilker said he’d been flying to Hampton Roads. The breeze made it hard. Each time he lifted the paddle for a rest, it blew the raft’s blunt nose off course. And he tired all too quickly. Whether it was from lack of sleep, the shock of the crash, or whatever, he couldn’t seem to muster much energy, though he was still alert.
He just wondered how long he could stay that way.
* * *
NOT far into the second afternoon, Hwang had gasped out, “Submarine.”
Dan had stopped paddling after a spell that had left him so woozy he’d almost lost the paddle. He stared where the Korean was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”
“Wait until we rise.”
The slow Pacific swell lifted them, and he saw it. A low black shape was cutting their way. He frowned, shading his eyes. But submarines didn’t transit on the surface. Not in this century. And it didn’t seem as large as it ought to be. Also, the shape was wrong—
“It’s a hunter,” he said. “One of ours. I think.”
The autonomous semisubmersible glided silently on. Its course would lead it past, he saw, not directly to them. But there was a bare possibility.…
The others saw this too. Bending, they began prying and scooping at the sea with the plastic oars, with bare hands. The raft spun under their uncoordinated efforts, then straightened as they dug in together. It didn’t exactly speed over the waves, but they were making way. Dan paddled as hard as he could, aiming by seaman’s eye for a point where they might intercept the hunter. Assuming the thing didn’t change course. Which, since it was probably headed back to a preset rendezvous, didn’t seem likely.
They paddled like demons, until their lungs burned and their hands bled. The slanted side of the conning tower, or whatever you called it on a robot vehicle, barely broke the water. The deck itself was awash. The prow peeled up only the slightest wave, though it had to be doing six or seven knots. He couldn’t remember what powered these semisubmersibles, fuel cells or batteries, but it was absolutely silent.
“We’re only gonna have one shot at this,” he panted. “Hwang, grab that line. Make it up in a bowline.”
“A bow—?”
“In a loop. A circle.” He eyed the swiftly nearing craft, searching for protrusions. Hitting at any speed, it would just bounce the inflatable aside. Their only chance was to lasso some mooring point or sensor stub, then scramble aboard as the raft was towed along. Once on board, they could probably find some way to get below. The things must have accesses for repair and rearming, and surely there was some way to steer them from inside. This could be their ticket home.
If they could get aboard … “Harder,” he gasped, paddling with all he could muster. “Almost there.”
Hwang held up a loop of line. “I see a place to put it.”
A vertical jut, halfway back from the bow. Either a sonar receiver or some sort of digital transmission head. “Go for it, Min Su. But don’t miss.”
Beside him, paddling with one hand, Wilker groaned encouragement.
They covered the last yards with a rush, and now he could hear it, a low hum as the thing powered through the water. A rotating optical sensor atop the pyramidal black fin stopped revolving, swung back, and locked on them.
“Stop,” Dan shouted, knowing it was probably silly, that the thing wouldn’t respond to voice commands. But he couldn’t help it. The others cried out too, waving, shouting.
The unwinking eye of the optical seeker tracked them. He felt a thrill of hope. It had noticed. Whatever intelligence guided it had registered their existence. It would have to take action of some kind. It couldn’t just pass them by.
The oculus stayed on them, even as the black craft neared. Suddenly a chill ran up his spine. Something about its unwavering yet passionless gaze implied both recognition, and an inhuman, pitiless dismissal.…
“What the fuck,” Dan breathed. “No.”
The black silhouette was altering.
The stern swung toward them. The chuckle of water increased. It was speeding up, too.
“Avoidance subroutine,” Wilker croaked though his shattered mouth.
In a few minutes it was a speck, shrinking away.
* * *
SINCE then they’d drifted with the wind. Searching the sky for aircraft, seeing only the distant traceries of high contrails. But none swerved their way. They squinted into the reflected glare until their eyes teared and dazzle played inside their skulls. But never saw a ship.
It was strange no one had vectored a search-and-rescue helo to the crash site. Well, maybe they had more pressing issues.
Now Dan pried crusted, sticky lids open once again, peering at a bank of clouds. The raft jostled uneasily. Thank God they hadn’t had to ride this thing, patched and overloaded as it was, through any storms. So far, anyway. That would finish them for sure.
Instead they would die slowly from dehydration. There’d been only two cans of emergency water in the raft, and the desalinization kit hadn’t worked beyond a drop or two.
The gull was back, circling lower, evaluating him with head cocked. Hoping to feast on his eyes, no doubt. Hadn’t someone in another life raft, another castaway, caught a curious gull, wrung its head off, drunk its blood? He half closed his lids and lay totally still, hand concealed but ready to grab. But the bird just kept circling, and uttering its harsh reproachful cries. Actually, he could understand what it was saying now. It was quite plain. “Die. Die.”
“Yeah, soon enough,” he muttered through cracked lips. Squinting between salt-swollen lids, he examined a paler patch of sky.
Then hoisted himself, shading his stinging eyes.
A white sky. Which often signaled surf ahead.
He shook the others back into consciousness. They stirred, murmuring, groaning. Then stilled as he pointed to the east.
Over the next hour, as the steady wind scudded them, it came into view. A low island, maybe half a mile long. Ringed by white surf as long swells built, toppled, and broke. They watched silently as a dark mass pushed up out of the sea, becoming beach, palms. Eventually they could make out individual trees.
Dan reached over the side to scoop up water. He grunted as the salt seared into scabbed eyes, burned skin, bleeding lips.
There would be coral under that surf. Sharp-toothed, razor-edged reefs. A hundred to one the raft would capsize going through those breakers, and they’d be torn into sharkbait. Who knew what island this was, or who held it. The three men stared hungrily. None of them spoke.
Shuddering as the surf-line crept nearer, they gripped one another’s hands.
The voyages of USS Savo Island and Task Force 76, and the story of the war with China, will continue in David Poyer’s Deep War.