THE CCS space, which used to be called Damage Control Central and often still was, lay one deck below the mess area. It was already standing room only when he got there. Bart Danenhower was there, along with the top snipe, Chief McMottie, and the damage-control officer, Jiminiz. They and the damage-control technicians were so preoccupied they almost didn’t make way for him. But he had no problem with that. They were the ones who were going to have to fight this thing.
A fire in the vertical launching system was a whole other beast than one in the Aegis power supply room. The difference was many tons of high-energy solid fuel and explosive warheads. The aft system held sixty-one missiles, each with its booster, standing vertically in a sealed canister, eight missiles grouped four in a row in a module. The modules were two decks high, separated by shoulder-width metal catwalks.
Standing there, Dan tried to organize his thoughts, but it all felt increasingly fuzzy. Too much. Too fast. The module was normally unmanned. “There’s no one in there?” he said, just to get that clear.
Jiminiz shook his head without looking around. “No sir. We’ve cleared everyone out aft of here. Except for the damage-control teams.”
“No possibility these missiles are going to launch?”
Danenhower said, “No sir. Combat shut down launch control. Those orders come in via a remote enable panel and a status panel.”
Dan was clear on that. Once the fire order came through, the LCUs selected a ready bird and began the prelaunch commands. Part of that algorithm was opening the deck hatch assembly at the top of the selected cells, out on Savo’s main deck. This not only let the missile emerge, but exhausted combustion gases through a separate plenum that vented vertically through one uptake hatch for each cell. “Okay, but I read a class advisory on magazine authorization. It said something about being able to remove mag launch authorization, but the launcher still being able to fire.”
“You’d have to ask the missile supervisor that. Sorry.”
A picture came up on one of the monitors: the passageway outside the module. The heavy steel red-and-white entrance door was clearly visible. As was the damage-control party, in coveralls, hoods, helmets, boots, and gloves; masked, OBA-rigged, dragging extinguishers, hoses, and axes, manipulating stingers into position. Giving the impression of milling around, but actually, Dan could see, getting ready to unseal that door and go in.
The easiest and safest way to deal with an electrical fire was to get in quick, before it spread, and douse it with CO2 or a low-velocity spray, so it didn’t electrocute someone. Though the power supplies in the modules weren’t high voltage, as far as he was aware. He didn’t envy those masked crewmen their mission one bit, and they’d have to do it fast, before whatever was going on in there lit off one of those closely packed solid-fuel rocket engines. “Is this on the video recorder?”
The chief engineer said, “Bringing it up now, Captain.”
“Have we got a camera inside the module, Bart?”
“Actually, we do, sir, but we couldn’t see anything.”
“Put it up.”
Danenhower was right; the interior camera, aimed down the centerline passageway, showed only gratings and the white-painted, black-stenciled vertical walls on either side of the square-canistered missiles. There might be a trace of smoke-haze in the upper field of view. It was hard to be sure.
He crossed to the J-phone and, after some seconds, managed to get the missile system supervisor on the line. The petty officer said yeah, he knew about that advisory, but it didn’t apply to Savo.
“Why not?”
“We got that change in version 2.3, Captain. I tested it and the cue lamp for the VAB blinks right.”
“Does that mean it can’t fire?”
“Correct. But that’s not exactly the problem occupying us at the moment, Captain,” the petty officer explained patiently.
“So what is the problem? Other than that something’s on fire in there?”
“We can’t open the hatch.”
“Oh, fuck me. Why not?”
“Well, that’s the biggest problem with the VLS, sir. The hatches. They get old, the seals fail, or they stick when you try to open them.”
“Wait a minute. We can’t open any of the hatches?”
“No sir, that’s not what I said.”
“What exactly are you saying, Petty Officer?”
“Sir, we can’t open that hatch.”
Dan told him to keep trying, but the tech said there was no power any longer to the module, so it was no use. So actually, Dan thought, they really couldn’t open any of the hatches. Which meant that if a missile caught fire and ignited, he had no way to get rid of it.
Launchers in older cruisers had included provisions for ejecting duds or hot runs, physically booting the round overboard with a big hydraulic ram. But the VLS had no “launcher” as such and no provision for ejecting a contrary missile. He was stuck with it; they had to deal with the thing where it was. He hung up, whispering, “Shit. —Where exactly is the fire?” Danenhower, who was standing in front of the alarm panel, that silly engineer’s cap hanging off his temple, didn’t answer. Dan jabbed him in the ribs and asked again, louder.
The engineer flinched and pointed to a red indicator. “Module two. The GMMs are saying SCMM.”
“Power’s secured?”
“Yes sir. All power aft secured.”
“I guess that’s good, except it means we can’t open the hatch now.”
“Oh, no sir. We can open them from here,” a petty officer said. “That’s hydraulics. As long as we got hydraulic pressure—”
“What’s the temperature in there now?” Dan interrupted, getting more anxious by the second.
A console operator said, “Aft module, air temperature ninety-nine, cell two readout, six hundred. And going up.”
On the screen a damage controlman—was that Benyamin under the mask and hood?—pulled off a glove and laid his palm against the heavy steel door. He left it there for only a moment, then jerked it back. His mask turned back and forth; he was shaking his head.
Dan said, “There’s obviously a fire. What happens when your team opens that door? Especially if we can’t get the deck hatches open?”
“They go in and fight it.”
“Right, but I mean, what happens in the p-way? If that’s one of the boosters burning, we’re gonna have massive toxic release. All through the ship.”
Danenhower blinked. “The module’s sealed, sir.”
“Against blast? From a Standard warhead?”
The engineer grimaced. “We’ve got Zebra set, but that’s a good point—any penetration and we’d get contamination all through the aft end.” He snapped to McMottie, “Chief, tell the team leader to hold up opening that hatch. Have the backup team rig blowers and put positive atmospheric pressure in the firefighting area.”
Dan nodded. “That’s good, Bart. Now. We can flood—right?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Me neither. But how many missiles do we lose if we do?”
“Each canister has its own deluge system. We can flood the whole launcher, too.”
“We can’t flood by modules? It’s either one missile or everything?”
“Correct.”
“Flood that canister,” Dan told him. “Right now. I know, you’re not sure. And I know water alone’s not going to put it out if one of those boosters ignites. But I don’t want guys walking in there if—you know what I’m saying. And crank open all the hatches—both exit and exhaust. If one of those engines lights off, at least it’ll reduce the pressure.”
He wasn’t sure this was the best course, and every canister he flooded cost at least a million dollars. But right now, they had to get a handle on that short circuit, or whatever it was, before it cascaded. The module held more than enough explosive and high-energy propellant to tear the ship in two and kill everyone aft of the stacks. And in this cold water and heavy sea, even those left alive would probably die before Lahav and Pittsburgh could get there to help.
Danenhower seemed about to object, but instead rasped to a petty officer on one of the consoles, “Flood it.”
Dan got his Hydra out, gaze still locked on the red-and-white door, the damage-control team, fidgeting as they waited. “Bridge, CO.”
“Bridge, aye.” Singhe’s silky voice.
“To both Lahav and Pittsburgh: high-temperature alarm, fire in my aft missile compartment. Stand by in case I require emergency assistance.”
“Bridge, aye. Do you want them to close?”
He gave that a half second’s consideration. “Yeah. But no closer than a mile.”
“Good luck, sir. Bridge out.”
McMottie said, “Flooding complete.”
“Temperature?”
“Six hundred and eighty. Six hundred and seventy … six hundred and seventy.”
They waited. It seemed to be getting hotter in CCS, but Dan wasn’t sure that wasn’t his imagination. He blotted his forehead surreptitiously with the back of one hand. “… six hundred and eighty. Six hundred and ninety. Seven hundred. Seven hundred and ten.”
“It’s not in the canister. Or it didn’t fully flood.”
“Fuck. Fuck,” Danenhower whispered.
“I put full firemain on it, sir,” the petty officer on the console said. “And I’m showing pressure drop, so we got flow in there.”
Dan nodded. They were running out of options. “Send them in,” he said, and some inner self marveled at how he could sound as if he weren’t sending men to their deaths. “—Wait. No! Wait.”
Heads turned. McMottie said, “Hold on—Captain says stand by. Yes sir?”
“The missiles around it,” Dan said. “Flood them, too. Before you send the team in.”
The chief said, “We’re not seeing much of a heat increase there, sir. And you’re gonna lose all that ordnance—”
“You heard me. Flood. All eight. Every canister that—that touches the one we’re seeing the heat in, that’s contiguous to it. Flood it. Now.”
The petty officer, looking scared, keyboarded seven million dollars more away. Dan couldn’t watch. He located the temperature readout—the simulacrum of a thermometer, on one of the screens—and walked over to monitor it. It seemed to vibrate, to tremble. For a few seconds no one spoke.
Into that silence penetrated a distant roar, like a waterfall miles away. Shoulders hunched. Hands reached out as if to brace against a roll. A few sailors left, drifting out unobtrusively. No doubt, to run forward, away from the unleashing hell back aft. The roar drew nearer, and began to shake the overhead. But no one at a console moved. “Ignition!” someone yelled over the rising din.
He lifted his chin, trying to look calm. As if they might not all be random atoms in the next moment. Battleships had disintegrated in World War I, in World War II, when their magazines had exploded. Torn apart from inside in a fraction of a second, consigning those not killed instantly by fire and blast to the sea.
The roar swelled, rose. The steel around them began to hum and shake. Something fell out of the overhead and bounced off a console. Everyone flinched away. The thing rolled this way and that on the deck, clinking. It came to his boots like an eager pet. He lifted his foot and stopped it. It was a butane can, the kind you refill cigarette lighters with.
McMottie had found an exterior camera. When the screen came up heads lifted. Someone whispered, “My God.”
A stream of mingled flame and steam was vomiting up out of Savo’s deck, like an erupting fumarole. The plume trembled and wavered, but jetted on, sun-white at its center, the edges shading to marigold yellow, then sunset orange. Ash … no, snowflakes drifted past the lens as the ship rolled. Past that the sea was a forged-iron gray as the camera compensated for the brightness of the flare. The very tip of the flame, fifty feet up, vanished into a complexly folding shroud of white steam and chalky smoke, billowing endlessly as hot gases rushed up.
He leaned forward, squinting. The cell in question was at the aft edge of the module, not far from the turn of the deck. The five-inch gun mount was just visible behind it. Past the mount huddled a small dark bundle: the aft lookout, pressed against the life rail, arms clamped over his head. The hatch of the defective cell was still closed. Jammed, probably. But those around it stood open like the popped lids of tumblebug burrows. It was from those hatches, and from the exhaust plenum between them, that the flame and steam and what looked like sprays of water were jetting, like superpowered geysers.
He hoped the water and steam were absorbing the heat load, because somewhere down in that burning hell, perched right above the burning booster, was a missile warhead. If it caught fire, it was supposed to burn rather than detonate. But a high explosive didn’t care how you hoped it would behave.
The chief tapped the keyboard, and the screen changed: to the module interior again, the central corridor, the upper deck. Unfortunately, each time white smoke blanked the screen. Only one distant flash of orange flickered through the murk, then disappeared. The camera switched back to the exterior view. It retreated, zoomed out; now the smoke plume was tending away, dropping lower over the waves, then seeming to sink into them. At least they weren’t sucking it back into their own ventilation.
The roaring went on, but maybe not quite as loud. Then it began to lessen. Yes, the sound was diminishing. The shuddering was easing off.
“Get ’em in now, sir?” The petty officer, head lifted.
He nodded. “Send ’em in.”
More minutes dragged by. The plume continued to shrink, but hot gas still jetted up, now and again blasting out bursts of spray and steam.
“Fire team leader reports: Reached the fire. Commencing cooling surrounding canisters.”
They weren’t out of the woods. Dan couldn’t help pacing, glancing at the screens and gauges each time he turned. The name of the game now was to surround the fire, isolate it, cool it down. Wall it off until it ran out of fuel, or the continuing firemain flood dropped the temperature enough that it doused itself. He suspected, though, that rocket fuel, carrying its own oxidizer locked into the grain, would burn until it was all gone.
Meanwhile the team inside were running a terrible risk. Trying to cool the surrounding canisters and keep their boosters from cooking off too. Trying to keep accident from escalating into disaster. A glimpse now and then through the smoke by the passageway camera showed them struggling with cumbersome, turgid pythons of firehoses. Maybe that had been the right thing to do, sacrifice the contiguous cells. Dan prayed that, please, it could be so. He tore his gaze away to key his Hydra. “CIC, CO: How’s it going up there?”
“Sir, Cheryl here. Lahav’s closing in. Distance four thousand yards. Captain Youngblood wants to know if they should surface and stand by us.”
“Not yet. Not yet. It’s too rough. Unless he hears an explosion … How far away are they?”
“A mile. On the other side of us from Lahav.”
“Good. That’s good. Fahad up there?”
A short pause. “No sir. XO’s not here. Isn’t he down there with you?”
What the hell? He let up on the key, then forgot about it as a figure stumbled out of the smoke and lurched across the camera’s field, clutching its mask. “Is he all right?” Dan asked the petty officer who had the direct line to the team leader.
“One man fallen out with smoke inhalation, sir. But they say they’re getting water in all around that one missile. It’s … says it’s boiling off, but not as hard now.”
Dan crossed again to the temperature readout. The affected cell read zero. He frowned. McMottie explained it had probably melted or shorted. “But the temps in the cells around it are starting to fall.”
“How high did they go?”
“Around five hundred. Hit that, then steadied out.” He touched the display. “Right now: only three fifty, and falling.”
“Keep that firemain flood going,” Danenhower growled.
Dan said, “How about the cells across the catwalk? What’s the temperature on those?”
“High, but within normal limits.”
“Good. Okay, who’s in charge of the Mark 41? The VLS?”
A mustached chief pushed forward. His name tag read Quincoches. Dan gripped his shoulder. “Chief, the firefighters might have it under control. Once we’re sure, you can go in. We’ve got to get as many missiles back to operational status as we can, just as soon as possible. What’s first? Dewater?”
Danenhower said, “Already dewatering, Captain. Or we’d have flooded the module.”
“Good. Chief, I need you in there just as soon as the fire’s under control.”
Quincoches drew a deep breath. “There’s a mandatory thirty-minute wait time.”
“We don’t have half an hour to sit around with our thumbs up our ass, Chief. Maybe in peacetime. Not now.”
Quincoches paled. “Uh, right, sir. In that case I’ll go in first. Alone. With a screamer on my belt. I’ll manually safe the missiles we flooded. Isolate that cell, then restore module power. Then we can get the guys in and desmoke. First thing, we’re going to have to pull and dry out all the cables. The cells are supposed to be waterproof, but not the connections. Got to see if the heat warped any of the connectors, the hatches … then run a DSOT and see who answers up.”
“Good,” Dan said. “Do it.”
The chief started to leave, then seemed to recollect something. Dan said, “Yeah?”
“I’ll go in there, check it out, Captain.”
“Yeah?”
“Because that’s what we do. That strike officer, she ain’t down here. Us chiefs, we are. Us middle management. I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, but—”
He nodded. Grinned tightly. “Point taken, Chief. And I’ll be sure and pass it along.”
Bit by bit, as the temperature dropped, everyone in CCS began to murmur, then talk aloud. Dan blew out, and massaged his eyeballs, then stopped; it would make him look tired. The camera focused down the centerline passageway of the module gradually showed a clearer picture. On the exterior camera, the pillar of flame had waned to a jet of brownish smoke, which was lessening as the flooding went on. He breathed deep. Then again, flushing out the tension. “That might’ve been bad,” he said to Danenhower.
“Damn close.” The engineer nodded soberly. “How many birds you figure we lost?”
For a horrible second Dan wondered if they’d just toasted all the modified SM-2s. If so, their mission was over before it had really begun. Then remembered: two were up forward; only two were aft. The aft module held mostly land-attack Tomahawks, standard Standards, and most of their vertical launch Asroc. But that was why they were mixed loads, so a casualty to one magazine would still leave both offensive and defensive capabilities. “What was in those cells we flooded? Anybody know?”
He looked around for Quincoches, but the chief was already gone. “I’ll find out,” said Danenhower, and went after him.
Dan found an empty chair and sagged into it. Should he go out and observe as the gunner’s mates, missile, went in? No. He’d just be in the way. Where was Almarshadi, though? He called CIC again, then the bridge, but the exec was at neither, and didn’t answer on his Hydra. “What the hell,” Dan muttered.
He got up, and raised his voice so everyone in CCS could hear. “Good job, everybody—plus we got lucky. Bart, I want you and Matt to head up an investigation team. Find out how that fire started and what we can recommend as a class change, so it doesn’t happen again.” He paused, wondering if there was anything he should add. If so, it wasn’t occurring to him. His head felt like cast lead. “Okay, well, I’m headed back up to the bridge.” He slapped McMottie’s shoulder, gave a thumbs-up to everyone else, and stepped through a door someone jerked open for him.
* * *
BY the time he got back to Combat the reaction, whatever it was, was slowing him down. His throat seemed to be closing up. It was harder than usual to catch his breath after climbing four sets of ladders. He leaned on the back of his chair and took slow deep breaths, contemplating the large-screen displays. Lahav had closed; their two pips were nearly merged. The group out of As-Suways, the Iranians, were tracking northeast at twelve knots. Aside from that, the east Med was empty. He started to tell Mills what was going on, but the combat systems officer said quietly he’d already put the word about the fire out over chat. Task Force staff wanted a status as soon as he could get it but were glad it was under control. And the leading chief aft, Quincoches, was in the module now inspecting damage. He’d make a report as soon as possible on how the fire had initiated.
Dan nodded. “Good. I’m gonna depend on you to write that up, Matt. Then get with Quincoches and Amy and Hermelinda about what we need for repairs. Maybe they can helo-lift us some spare cables or whatever from Cape St. George or San Jacinto when this fucking snow lets up.”
He ran a hand back over his hair, which felt greasy and sweaty. Unfortunately, he could forget about fresh missiles to replace the burned-out and flooded ones. VLS-equipped ships had such a large capacity to start with that the Navy had pretty much dismissed any provision for underway replenishment. He checked the status board; not surprisingly, the MISSILE READY number had dropped by half. He caught Donnie Wenck’s eye on the far side of the compartment and went over. Christ, I’m juiced, he thought. He lifted his hand and watched it shake, as if it were someone else’s. As he reached the Aegis consoles the door to CIC creaked and a slim figure slipped through. Singhe nodded, and he remembered Quincoches’s dig. “She ain’t down here.”
“Afternoon, sir,” she said. He nodded back coolly.
Wenck said, “Damn, sir, glad we got that sucker put to bed.”
“You and me both, Donnie. But now we’re down to two Block 4s. How’s ALIS doing?”
“She’s hanging in there,” said Terranova from her console. “Actually, we got a little good news, sir. The space track system’s back up.”
“You’re kidding. How’d you get that fixed?”
Wenck got that distant look. “Well, glitch was, when we downloaded the TLE data file, the Space Five wouldn’t display any satellites. Like they wasn’t there at all. So we’re like, what the fuck, over? It was like, the system just wouldn’t display any acquisition requests. Right?”
“Yeah, uh, I guess—”
Singhe said, “I can background you on that, sir. If you’d like it.”
“All right. Sure.”
She said, “When we’re in tactical mode, SCUS develops the SAR messages based on satellite orbital data, own ship position, and common Aegis time-slash-date. This queues the array to search a given volume of space for something that meets the acquisition parameters. Turns out one of Petty Officer Terranova’s team made a slight mistake. Eastwood downloaded the wrong bulk two-line element catalog data from a training-mode file. Not hard to do, by the way—”
“Just a second.” Dan keyed the Hydra and checked in with CCS. Temperatures were still falling in the affected cells. They’d gotten the hatch in 16 pried open, and dewatering was under way. “Sorry, go ahead. You were saying—”
“Sayin’, they oughta have some kind of warning flag when you’re accessing training-mode stuff,” Wenck said.
Mills nodded. “I’ll put it in my recommendations. But when the system bumps that against its own source selects for current ops, it deletes them all, because the satellite header data doesn’t match. And you go blank screen.”
The chief said, “Once we got that figured out we redownloaded from the right catalog and suddenly everything lines up cherries and bells ring and quarters start coming out.”
Dan had more or less followed this explanation. “And who actually did figure that out? Just for my own information?”
Singhe pointed to Terranova. So did Wenck. “Okay, really good,” Dan said. “Well done, Petty Officer. But I’m surprised Dr. Noblos didn’t catch it. He’s the one who’s been telling us we’re not up to expectations.”
Wenck lowered his voice. “I’m not sure he’s as much of an operator as he’s, like, more of a high-level guy, Dan. I mean, Captain. He’s got the math at his fingertips, sure. But when it’s a question of which line of code you go to to pick up satellite ephemeridae, he’s like a deer in the headlights.”
Dan blinked, trying not to look like a deer. “Uh-huh. Well, good. So all your troops are straight on this now, Terror? I mean, Petty Officer Terranova? Eastwood’s not gonna do that again?”
“Yessir, all my guys are on step. Got a checklist to run through when we download the data set.”
“And how often do we do that?”
“Every twelve hours.”
“We miss an update, what happens?”
“The solutions degrade,” Wenck said. “But gracefully. We can miss one update and it’s not a big deal. Miss two or three, the track starts to wander off. You don’t know if you’re looking at your own system degradation, or increasing uncertainty exactly where that piece of space junk you’re tracking really is.” Singhe nodded.
Dan nodded too. He started to turn away, then remembered. “Hey, any of you seen the XO?”
“They were looking for him a while ago.” Wenck shrugged. “Wasn’t here, or in Strike.”
“He hasn’t been on the bridge since before the fire.” Singhe looked concerned. “We called his stateroom several times.”
“Anybody go down and knock?”
“I’m not sure, Captain.”
Dan clicked on his Hydra, but got a blinking low-battery alarm. He swapped it for a recharged battery and called the bridge. “CO here. Anybody seen the XO yet?”
Pardees’s languid voice murmured that they hadn’t. Dan told him to send the boatswain’s mate down to check Almarshadi’s stateroom. “Tell him we need him online right away, and where’s he been—he was supposed to—no, never mind. Just tell him to contact me right away in CIC.”
Singhe frowned. “Should we put out a man overboard, sir?”
“That’s the next step, but let’s see if he’s just crashed so hard he’s not answering his phone.” Actually he didn’t want to think about a man overboard. Not when he remembered how depressed and upset Almarshadi had been at their last meeting. If he’d thrown a leg over the lifelines, they’d never find him in these seas. He pushed that vision away. “Okay, we’re still up on ALIS, our SCUS is back online, and we’ve got two Block 4s live. Eric, let Lahav know our fire’s out and we no longer need his presence close aboard. So thanks and he can resume his … uh, his station on us. Or no—just thank him. Say we’ve got everything under control. Same to Pittsburgh. Okay, any updates from the war zone?”
Mills said nothing much new had come through from Iraq or the task force. The Coalition land forces seemed to be punching through the initial defenses. “They’re saying this might not be a very long war.”
“That’d be good.” He slicked back his hair again. Why was he still perspiring? Maybe because if his defenses were crumbling, the dictator might not wait to wind up his Sunday punch. Savo might be the only shield between helpless people and that roundhouse, whatever shape it came in.
A stir at the door from aft. He lifted his gaze to Almarshadi, in darker than usual blue coveralls. The little man’s onyx eyes slid aside, wandered back. The XO nodded to Mills, who pointed to Dan. As he reached them Dan saw the darker tone was dampness; Almarshadi’s coveralls were wet through.
“Skipper? Looking for me?”
Dan kept his voice down, but with an effort. “Where were you, Fahad? We had a fire aft. I needed you on the bridge. We’ve been looking all over.”
Almarshadi glanced at Singhe, Wenck, Terranova. “Where was I? Down in the breaker. Having a smoke.”
“A smoke? We just had a magazine fire. For Christ’s sake…” Dan got a deep breath, let it out. Not now. Not in front of their juniors. “Let’s go over there and—”
Mills called, “Captain? McMottie on the line. Wants to ask about debris disposal?”
“Over the side.”
“Got it, sir.”
At the far end of Combat, by the darkened nav table, they were finally out of earshot of everybody but the Phalanx operator. Dan put his back to the console and muttered, “Damn it, Fahad. We had a burning booster in the VLS. You weren’t on the bridge. Weren’t in your rack. I was about to call away a man overboard! And you’re down smoking in the breaker? This is totally unsat. I mean, there’s got to be two of you aboard. Just one guy couldn’t mess up this bad.”
“I apologize if I don’t meet your standards.”
Dan slammed a fist at an equipment frame, pulling the punch at the last microsecond, so he didn’t break his knuckles. “They’re not my goddamn standards, Commander! We’re in Condition Three ABM. We can get a missile down our throats on fifteen seconds’ notice. I needed you to spell me in the command seat. Can I depend on you to be there?”
The liquid eyes slid aside. The exec was at parade rest, hands locked behind him. The ship leaned, creaking around them. A metallic snap somewhere aft. The superstructure again? Dan almost missed the softly spoken reply. “I’m not sure you can, sir.”
He cleared his throat, suddenly at sea in more ways than one. What was going on here? He’d had difficult subordinates before. Been a headache to his own seniors more than once. But he’d never come across someone like this. How had this guy made commander? How had he made jaygee? “I’m sort of at a loss here, Fahad. You’re saying … I can’t count on you? Or I’d better not? Or what? Exactly?”
“No sir. It was you who said that.”
“So what’s your take on it?”
“I was in the breaker.”
“Why are you all wet?”
“There’s spray coming over the bow. It’s getting rougher out there.” The little man tilted a wrist to check his watch. His voice quavered, but he appeared to be growing more resolute, not less. Dan was fitting together words, exploring how to ask whether he’d been down there contemplating doing away with himself, when his second in command murmured, “I don’t believe this was my scheduled time in CIC anyway. Not according to the rotation.”
“True, but I needed you.” He remembered the Motorola, and glanced at Almarshadi’s belt line. The XO wasn’t wearing it. “Where’s your Hydra? We’ve been calling you on that just about nonstop.”
“It’s back in my stateroom. Recharging.” Almarshadi frowned, as if taking back the initiative. “Captain, I have to protest. I was off duty. I went to my stateroom, put my battery on charge, then went down to the breaker for a smoke. Yes, I heard something aft. I didn’t know what it was. But the next thing I know, when I come in, you’re about to call away a man-overboard muster for me. And then you’re insulting me in front of the junior officers. Even the enlisted.
“To be frank, this is unjust. I know your wife was injured in the attack on the World Trade Center. I know you were hurt at the Pentagon. And yes, I am an Arab. I may have my shortcomings as an exec. If I’m not performing to your expectations, relieve me. But I’m not your enemy, Daniel.”
Dan splayed his fingertips to his temples. What was this asshole saying? That this whole fuckup was his fault? He said thickly, “This discussion’s over. Go to your stateroom. Don’t leave it again. Until I get … until I decide what to do about you.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Fahad nodded, about-faced crisply, and faded like a specter down the row of antisubmarine consoles, past the curtains of Sonar, passing from sight.
Dan lowered his hands, shaking. He’d pressed them to his temples so he couldn’t wrap them around Almarshadi’s throat. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered. Every time he faced off with the guy, he understood him less. He was sinking away, losing contact. Only who was actually receding? The other, or himself?
Mills, voice lifted to reach the far end of the space. “Captain? Prelim bitchback from Chief Quincoches. On the 21MC.”
“I’ll be right there.” He cleared his throat, which seemed to be closing up again. Then with swift, tired strides, headed back for his post.