DAWN, and still without sleep. He felt twinned from reality, stuck in a parallel universe that existed on some separate brane from the one he was probably supposed to be in. Exhausted, yet jittery from too much caffeine. “We should’ve had ’em both cold,” he muttered, shifting in his bridge chair. The newly risen sun burned like a forest fire directly in their path. Low clouds mounded like foam in a bug-juice cooler, orange and cotton-candy pink, while blue heaving swells tore apart into a salmon froth on either hand. They’d detached, and now southeasted over a lumpy sea toward the arced sector where they’d take station. Awaiting the starting gun … He kneaded his stomach; was that sensation hunger, or something else? He grabbed his freshly charged Hydra and slid down.
“Captain’s off the bridge.” The hollow pressed steel of the bridge door thump-clanged closed. He dogged it, then slid down the ladder, gripping handrails polished glossy-smooth by a decade of horny-palmed sailors. Enlisted in coveralls stepped aside as he slammed down, spun the corner, vaulted down the next ladder.
“Attention on deck!”
“Seats.” He took his place as the rest of the officers found chairs. Apparently the previous CO had preferred the head of the table, the traditional arrangement, but he liked the center. It was less intimidating, and he could talk to more of his JOs face-to-face. Still, it took a few minutes before the ensigns and jaygees resumed discussing whatever it was they’d been talking about. He checkmarked the slip for eggs and bacon and rye toast. Pushed away the coffee the attendant put beside him. He had to relax. Detoxify. Maybe today he could get back to the weight room—
As he forked the first bite the J-phone beeped. The mess attendant said, “Captain, for you.”
Dan rattled the handset out from beneath the table. Mumbled through a full mouth, “Cap’n.”
“Sir, Radio here. We have the quick-look report on last night’s VANDALEX. Do you want it in your in-box, or—”
“Hard copy to the wardroom.”
“Aye, sir, on its way.”
As he scanned the clipboarded message, the junior officers stood and excused themselves in muted voices. He grunted, skipping the boilerplate, looking for the name of his ship. At last he found it. Savo Island had let the Orange sub through the outer screen, and two hits on Theodore Roosevelt had reduced the carrier’s strike capacity to 70 percent. He all but snarled aloud. He scribbled his initials, and slammed the clipboard on the table. Then snapped his Hydra on. “XO, you up? Fahad? You there?”
“Yessir, on the bridge.”
How had he and Almarshadi missed each other? “Have you seen this quick-look? From last night?”
“Um, no sir, I—”
“Are you reading your traffic? Look it over. Or, wait, I’ll send the messenger up with the hard copy. Read it. Then call me back. I found our sonar chief sleeping on watch last night. I want to—” He caught the mess attendant’s wide-eyed gape and cursed himself. Shouldn’t have said that. “Anyway, call once you’ve read it.”
The exec said he would, and Dan hung up. He exhaled, and drank half the cup of coffee before realizing what he was doing. Slammed it down, just in time for a heave and roll to splatter it over the tablecloth. He sucked at a tooth, trying to sort through it. He was disappointed. Dissatisfied. Yet the anger felt good.…
A tap at the door. Tausengelt stuck his head in. “Skipper? A word, sir? After you’re done?”
“I’m finished.” He crammed half a piece of buttered toast, jammed his napkin into the ring. Tilted his head at the rear of the wardroom, where a settee and bookcases around a central table gave at least the illusion of privacy.
An ensign poring over a coffee-table book on the Titanic got up hastily and excused himself. Dan waved the elderly command master chief to the sofa. “Want some coffee?”
“No thanks, sir.”
“What’s on your mind, Master Chief?”
“Basically couple problems, sir. First off, I think, is what happened this morning.”
“This morning?”
A quizzical glance. “Al Zotcher, sir. You and him. In Sonar. Here’s the version I have so far. Basically, Chief Zotcher’s hard down with a respiratory bug. He was thinking about putting himself on the sick list when he got the word about the exercise. Knew that was important, so he took the watch. You came in, found him with his eyes closed, and jerked his head back. With considerable force. Now he’s got whiplash, maybe some kind of disc problem.”
Dan snorted. “That’s what he’s saying? He had his eyes closed? He was fucking snoring, Master Chief. He’s sea-lawyering both of us.”
“Well, sir, that does put a different light on it. But, basically, he’s still got neck issues. Were you planning on taking him to mast?”
Dan thought about this, wishing he felt more alert. “You restricted him to quarters,” Tausengelt prompted. “Threw him off the watch bill.”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember. His inattention let a sub past us. I didn’t know he was sick. But that isn’t germane; he’s either on the sick list or he isn’t. And if he’s on watch, he’s got to be alert and in charge.”
“Absolutely, sir. No one’s arguing that.” The older man was respectful but firm. “I’m just trying to see if there’s any middle ground here, okay? He’s willing to admit he wasn’t doing all that great a job last night. Problem is, this allegation you pulled his head back. Basically, I’m thinking of you now, sir. That could get sticky, any of the legal eagles got word of something like that. The way things are getting these days.”
Dan stifled a yawn, not meeting the other’s gaze. Recognizing what wasn’t actually being said, though it was, and very clearly. Knowing too the senior enlisted adviser was right; a commanding officer laying hands on a subordinate, causing injury, would be cause for instant relief. He didn’t care that much, as far as his career was concerned. Whatever happened, he’d go out a captain, with the Medal and full retirement. As well as the Navy Cross, Silver Star, Navy and Marine Corps Medal, Bronze Star, and the rest … not that many end-of-tour awards, but not a bad career.
But this wasn’t about Dan Lenson. Savo Island didn’t need another failed skipper. And Jen Roald, and Ogawa, and the U.S. Navy, and, yeah, the residents of Tel Aviv, didn’t need a ship that couldn’t meet its commitments, when a war was slated to start in days.
To balance against that: his authority as captain. He needed the senior enlisted. Without their cooperation, nothing would improve. But giving them the idea you were a rollover was never good.
But was admitting you were wrong actually a rollover? He cleared his throat. “I appreciate the heads-up, Sid. How’s the chiefs’ mess taking this?”
“Well, sir, basically, you know how it is. They’re a good bunch. They support the command. But right now I’d say they’re … divided. This happens just once, well, we can keep it inside the tent. But you don’t want to get a rep for going off on a hair trigger, sir. Or putting your hands on people. You really don’t.”
The Hydra buzzed. “Skipper, Bridge. You there, sir?”
Dan reached down. “I’m in the wardroom.”
The officer of the deck reported a contact that would cross their bow close aboard. Dan made sure he had it visualized, then told him to increase speed to put the closest point of approach behind them. “Check my solution. If it doesn’t look safe, call me back.”
“Aye sir. Bridge out.”
Back to the unsmiling chief across from him. A friendly warning, from a peacemaker? Or a threat? It sounded like both. He decided to take the extended hand. “Okay, I admit, I flew off the handle last night. But he was asleep. You really think he’s sick?”
“Looks like it to me, sir. You can go down and see him. He’s in his bunk right now. And, you know, Captain, the guy’s got three Good Conduct Medals.”
“He does? And … well, never mind. Okay, you made your case. I’m willing to lift his restriction.”
“Will you hold mast on him? For sleeping on watch?”
“Not this time. Just formal counseling. But, for the good of the ship, I don’t want him back in Sonar until he’s certified fit for duty. Carpenter can take his watch section; he’s more than qualified. If I catch him napping again, though, I’ll bust him to seaman. That’s a guarantee.”
“Fair enough, sir. Let me take that back and see if we can arrange some kind of modus vivendi there.”
Dan raised his eyebrows. “‘Modus vivendi,’ Master Chief? Nice.” The roar of an electric motor; the mess attendant was vacuuming the carpet at the far end of the space. He looked at his watch—sleep?—dusted his trousers, got set to rise. “That all?”
Tausengelt grinned apologetically. “Not quite, sir. One other issue. Lieutenant Singhe.”
“What about her?”
“Have you seen what she’s doing on the chat function? On the LAN?”
The LAN was the local area network, the ship’s hardwired internal network. He knew it included a chat-room function, but hadn’t checked it out yet. “No. No time. What?”
“Basically, she’s organizing work-center quality circles.”
“Uh … okay. Is that a problem?”
“Some of the guys don’t like it. At least, not the way she’s setting it up.”
“You mean, some of the chiefs?” Tausengelt nodded. “What don’t they like?”
“It’s just basically turning out to be bitch sessions for the no-loads. The dudes who work, they don’t have time to sit around and discuss working. She’s encouraging the seamen to come up with better ideas. That doesn’t square with the senior enlisted. They already know how it should be done.”
Dan frowned. No, a lot of the enlisted khaki wouldn’t like it. Not after they’d spent ten or fifteen years learning the right way, or, anyway, the Navy way. But how else would you come up with innovation? “Well, I’m not sure she’s not right, Master Chief. Sometimes the best ideas come from the deckplates.”
“We already got a way to do that, sir. The Bennie Sugg. Pass it up the chain. She’s chairing these discussion groups. Bypassing the goat locker. Like, they don’t know where she’s going with this.”
“Are they participating?”
“The chiefs? She doesn’t want them in the chats. Blocked them, in fact. To ‘encourage free discussion.’”
That didn’t sound good. “I wasn’t aware of this, CMC. Have they taken it up with the XO?”
“The commander doesn’t get involved that much, Skipper.”
“Have you discussed it with him?”
Tausengelt glanced away. “No sir.”
Dan leaned back. “Well, look. Amy’s a hard charger. She’s got some bright ideas from business school she wants to try out. Unless it’s actually hurting readiness, even if there’s some steam being let off on these chat boards, I don’t see it as a major issue yet. Let’s let her run with it for a while and see where it ends up.” He hesitated. “Unless you don’t think that’s wise.”
Tausengelt’s face was unreadable. “You’re the skipper, sir.”
* * *
HE checked with the OOD on the Hydra while climbing the ladder to his at-sea cabin. The contact to port had a left-bearing drift now; it would cross in their wake, three thousand yards astern. Dan told him to maintain thirty knots and keep a close eye on it until it was clear. He switched channels and talked to the navigator as he let himself in, unbuttoned his shirt, and fell into his bunk. They’d reach their patrol area tomorrow at noon. He called Cheryl Staurulakis and got the ops officer started on their reporting-in message.
Then lay staring at the overhead while the decisions he’d just made buzzed around inside his skullcase like trapped wasps.
Any choice a skipper made could lead to disaster under the right circumstances. Screw up the geometry on a closing ship, and it could cut you in two. He’d seen that happen, aboard USS Reynolds Ryan. One wrong rudder order, and almost two hundred men had died.
So … Zotcher. Had he come down too hard? Or not hard enough? Knuckled under to the chiefs, or just shown them he was reasonable?
Was Singhe really ambitious, hard-charging, innovative? Or was there something suspicious about the way she was bypassing the chiefs and the senior enlisted adviser? He didn’t think she had anything malevolent in mind. But blocking the ship’s middle management from online discussions didn’t sound like a good way to advance a serious agenda. Of any kind.
He remembered dark eyes studying him, and seemed to smell sandalwood again. Then, somehow, he was asleep.
* * *
THE buzzer jerked him out of a confused pursuit through endless corridors. It had seemed to be the Pentagon, but in some hotter, less affluent country. The windows were boarded up, and through those endless refuse-strewn passageways something stalked him. He had a pistol, but when he tried to use it the trigger malfunctioned, again and again, as he struggled to keep the sights on a shape he couldn’t clearly see, that shifted identity and appearance even as it pursued him.
The buzzer went off again, and he rolled over, flinging an arm out. The back of his hand hit the brass lever and tore skin. “Captain,” he grunted. What time was it anyway? Apparently he’d missed lunch.
“Sir, OOD here.”
“What you got, Bird?”
“Sir, corpsman called a minute ago to report a man dead in forward berthing.”
He rolled out and put bare feet on the chilly deck. “Say that again.”
“It’s Seaman Goodroe. In Weps berthing.”
A heavyset, truculent man in coveralls, hunched over a mess tray. “I … dead, how? I saw him on the mess decks just yesterday. Talking about … Dead? From what?”
“Sir, I didn’t get the impression the chief corpsman was real sure.”
“Forward berthing? I’ll be down right away. Does the XO know?”
“I’ll notify him soon as I get off, sir. Figured you ought to hear it first.”
Dan told him he was right and hung up. Dressed as quickly as he could. The blue coveralls were a forgiving uniform, though he didn’t care for the way they showed a corner of your skivvy shirt. He pressed his pins into his chest with the palm of his right hand and let the door lock click behind him.
* * *
FIVE decks down, in the muzzy humidity of the berthing compartment. When he’d first joined the Navy, these had been pipe bunks, metal frames four high, a thin pallet and a worn fartsack sagging on a crisscross of webbing. Now each sailor had his own nook with reading light and curtain. Not exactly roomy, with fifty men in a compartment, but there was some privacy, at least.
The man who lay in bunk 24 was past privacy. The face, immobile as dark wax, and staring eyes told him that. The corpsman, Grissett, looked up from ballpointing notes. An astringent smell edged the air. Grissett wore thin blue latex gloves. A transparent tube lay on the bunk, still sealed in plastic. Behind him stood Chief Toan, the master-at-arms, badge glittering, hands behind his back. They both swung as they caught sight of Dan. A very slight, ugly young man with a dirty tee, scuffed, torn boots, and coveralls peeled down to his waist hovered a few feet away. “What happened?” Dan asked.
“Morning, sir. I mean, afternoon. The Troll here—”
“The Troll?”
“Sorry—the compartment seaman, here. He called the master-at-arms when he couldn’t get Goodroe up.” The corpsman nodded at the body. “Cold. No pulse. He’s been dead awhile.”
Dan looked the corpse over. By no means the first he’d seen, but definitely one of the most peaceful-looking. The heavy-jawed face was expectant, as if at a joke just heard but not yet fully grasped. The nude chest was covered with thick curling black hairs that shriveled to stubs as they approached the beard line. A trace of what might be dried foam at the corner of bluish lips. He bent closer; a hint of brown in it? Started to reach out, then, at a cautionary flinch from the corpsman, retrieved his finger before touching anything. “Is that blood? At the corner of his mouth?”
“Take a sample in a minute, sir. Downie here”—the compartment cleaner grinned, then sobered—“he says he, I mean Goodroe, felt a little down and had a cough. He was off watch, so he turned into his bunk. That’s all.”
Usually you looked for an off-watch sailor in his work center during the day, but the era when all hands were expected to turn to at daylight was long gone at sea. These days, a sailor off watch, and not feeling well, might well decide to turn in for a Tallerigo. “What’d his work-center supervisor say?” Dan asked the CMAA.
“On his way down, sir. He knew Goody was in his rack, but didn’t know nothing else.”
“Any history? Anything … Any idea what’s going on here?” Dan scratched his head. He’d been talking to the man, what, just yesterday? A young, husky, jock-type guy. Maybe a little … antagonistic, with his remarks about how the crew needed to be in the picture more. But he hadn’t seemed ill. “Is this a natural death? Or what?”
The corpsman frowned. “A lot of possibilities right now, sir. You know most of our guys are strong, healthy specimens of testosterone-filled manhood. So the first thing, you look for signs of strangulation, or beating. But I don’t see any. Could be a drug OD—”
“I’ve seen those,” the CMAA murmured.
“—or poisoning, accidental or deliberate. He could’ve had underlying valve disease. A heart murmur they let go, or didn’t hear, when he enlisted. If he got septic in the night, maybe endocarditis—the infected valve sends emboli to the rest of the body, like fingers. But, bottom line, this is gonna be a coroner’s case, sir. We got to handle it by protocol, and get the body to the medical examiner ASAP.”
“Okay, I get it. Anything in his record?”
The chief corpsman slipped a file folder from beneath a clipboard. “His last entry’s the final installment of the anthrax inoculation. That we got in Naples.”
Dan scratched his head again. He’d had a course of what he assumed was the same vaccine, experimental then, during the Gulf War. “This vaccine. Is it, I don’t know, ever dangerous?”
“It’s a mandatory inoculation.” The chief shrugged. Flipped pages. “A three-shot buildup and booster. No record of any adverse effects to the first two shots. No, wait … he reported fever and swelling after the second. Two days later, follow-up, he’s fine.”
“Good records. When’d he get the booster?”
“Two days ago. I gave him that myself.”
“This is the AVA stuff, right? Is this a documented side effect? Sudden death, I mean?”
“Anthrax vaccine adsorbed, yes sir. No sir, there’s no such warning on side effects.”
“So what killed this apparently healthy guy? Best guess?”
“Captain, I just can’t give you an informed opinion right now. If we had an MD aboard, maybe, but I doubt he’d want to come out and tell you something that might turn out to be a hundred and eighty wrong either.” The chief snapped the latex on one glove, then tore open the plastic wrapping on the flexible tube. He peeled down the corpse’s boxers, dug out the slack flaccid penis, spread its meatus, and began threading the tube into it.
Dan said, “Uh, what exactly are you—”
“Drug screen. Gotta catheterize him. And we’re gonna have to take lots of photos, at the highest resolution we can.”
Dan got Almarshadi on the Hydra and told him to get the ship’s photographer down to forward berthing, and then to meet up with him. “Okay, do the protocol,” he told Grissett. “By the book. Then body-bag him, and back to the reefers until I can get direction on disposition. Can you decontaminate, I mean, disinfect the rack? Would that be something we’d want to do?”
“Yes sir, that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. Once we get him out of the compartment. I can use an alcohol solution. A spray bottle. And take his linens to the laundry in a separate bag, do ’em in superhot water.”
“Good. Anybody else touch him? Uh—Troll?”
A flinch; a grin. “No sir, I didn’t touch him.” Then a frown. “Well, yeah, I did. To sort of shake him. To, uh, wake him up.”
“I’ll get his hands disinfected too, just in case.” The corpsman studied the body and snapped the glove-rubber again. “You didn’t touch your face afterward, did you?”
Dan left them there, gathered around the drawn-back curtain like a nineteenth-century tableau: grave visages around a sickbed, silent and respectful in the unexpected, yet never faraway, presence of the Dread Leveler.
* * *
ALMARSHADI caught up as he was letting himself out on the main deck. Dan wanted to get some fresh air; the old-socks-and-deodorant man-reek of the berthing space seemed ominous once associated with death.
They stood by the lifeline, buffeted by a cold wind, as sailors ducked into the breaker—the covered walkway, almost like a highway tunnel, that led from the port side midships up to the forecastle. The sea roared as Savo ripped through it, peeling off curving chunks of whitecap that toppled to either side like dump-truck loads of shiny pale green and white marbles, and now and again she rolled and the wind tore a spatter of spray across them, the scent and taste sharp and refreshing. At intervals, when the sun broke through, crystalized salt sparkled on the bulkheads by the refueling station, on the chocks, bitts, life rails, the davit socket, like gypsum deposits in a cave.
Dan allowed himself ten seconds to stand in silence, swaying with the roll, one with the morning and the wind and the endless topple of the bow wave. Communing, for just a moment, with the ancient sea, the mariner’s eternal mother and eternal enemy. Then told Almarshadi to report the death to CTF 60 and request instructions.
“But we outchopped … right?” The smooth dark face was uncertain; the black hair ruffled in the breeze. Dan smelled cigarette smoke. Red coals glowed in the dimness of the breaker. The best execs were shadow selves, masters of detail within the skin of the ship. They freed the commander, instead of continually pulling him in, as this sparrowlike Arab seemed to do all too often. But he’d had worse seconds. Remembering Greg Juskoviac, his totally worthless XO aboard Gaddis, he could appreciate Almarshadi a little more. At least the guy was trying.
“We’re not under his tactical command, no, but he’s the closest force commander. So let’s see what he can do for us. Meanwhile, I’ve told Grissett to clear out one of the freezers. And not to let anyone else touch the body.”
The exec inspected his boots. Scuffed the nonskid. “Do we want to slow down? In case they want to offload it?”
Dan frowned. “No. I want to reach station as soon as possible.”
Almarshadi kicked at a scupper. “Okay, sir. Oh. By the way. I think you did the right thing. About Zotcher.”
Dan looked aloft, at the snapping flags atop the signal bridge. A lookout was studying them from the wing, decks above; when he caught his captain’s eye he swung his binoculars out again to sea. The barrel of a machine gun pointed in the same direction. “Glad I have your confidence. What about Amy Singhe? Am I picking up bad blood between her and some of the chiefs?”
“Amarpeet doesn’t get along with them. Considers them beneath her, I guess. You know she’s got an MBA from Wharton?”
“Yeah, I knew that. You call her Amarpeet? Not Amy?”
“That’s her name.”
Dan looked aloft again. “Not a smart attitude. Looking down on the chiefs, I mean.”
“I’ll counsel her.”
“Okay. But first check on how they’re doing with Goodroe. And get that message out.”
* * *
HE walked the deck yearning to try to nap again, but knowing he wouldn’t. The immobile heavy-jawed visage, its last sight on earth probably the stained underside of the next mattress up, haunted him. One day joking on the mess decks. The next, in olive plastic, being slid into cold storage.
You expected death in battle. And going to sea in ships crammed with explosives and fuel and heavy machinery was always dangerous. You lost people overboard, or sucked into turbine engines on carriers, or from smoke inhalation, or asphyxiation in voids. But what killed healthy young men in their bunks? Cocaine? Didn’t that stop the heart? But there’d been no sign of a coke problem in the Command Climate Survey, and it usually showed up either there or in the urinanalysis program. Navy drug use was way down, and Goodroe’d had no record. Heart attack? The man had been in his late twenties; it seemed unlikely.
He dropped down a deck and strolled the length of the ship, stepping over knee-knockers, absentmindedly noting the condition of firefighting stations, dogging mechanisms, repair-party lockers. Putting a hand up now and then to check for dust on the top of the insulated ducts that ran along the overhead, painted cream-white and stenciled every few yards with black arrows denoting direction of flow. A knot of men and a blond woman stood around by the barbershop, nearly all the way aft. Navy didn’t salute inside the skin of the ship, but they came to their feet, nodded, murmuring, “Afternoon, Captain.”
“We doing okay? How’s the service here?”
“Turbo Mouth, he does okay. Talks pretty much nonstop, but he does a good haircut.”
“Price is right,” another sailor said. “Go on ahead if you need a trim, sir. We can wait.”
“Thanks, maybe tomorrow.”
The woman asked, “We keep hearing rumors on the news, sir. We gonna invade?”
“Seems to be a possibility.”
“I hear they’re threatening that if we attack, they won’t limit the war to the Mideast. What do you think that means?”
“That’s a good question. It might be why we’re headed where we’re going. But all I can really say is, we just need to be ready. Just all do our jobs and stand by.”
They didn’t look satisfied, but there weren’t any more questions. Strange that they hadn’t gotten the word about the death yet. Or maybe they had, and were just wary about bringing it up. He’d ask the corpsman to put something out, to all hands, before the scuttlebutt started to fly.
He looked into torpedo stowage, had a short discussion with the leading torpedoman, then ambled forward again up the port side. Halfway to the mess decks his radio crackled. “Skipper, XO.”
“Go, Fahad.”
“Got that message done, about Goodroe. Waiting for your chop.”
“Run it past Chief Grissett.”
“Already did, Captain.”
“Okay, good.”
“There’s a message from DesRon in your in-box. They want to schedule a red phone call at 1500 local with Two Six Actual.”
Jen Roald. His commodore. He checked his watch. The sea; the ship, the crew. And the captain. Like the old game played for decades with dice and drinks. Did they still play that, in officers’ clubs, in petty officers’ clubs, in what had once been Acey-Deucey clubs? Or had it too gone, another tradition eaten by the locusts? “Okay, XO, thanks. I’ll take that in CIC.”
* * *
HE got there at 1445 and logged in at his chair. The vertical displays were blank, all but the central one, which showed the Global Command and Control picture. A lot of air traffic to the east. To the west, far behind now, glowed the bright pips of the battle group. He found Almarshadi’s draft message about Goodroe, went through it, started to correct a phrase, then shrugged and hit Send. Too many skippers wasted time massaging text. If it said what it meant to say, without having to be read twice, so be it.
The news summary carried press speculation that operations against Iraq were about to start, but there was no confirmation in the official traffic. A Chinese general had made threats against Taiwan. “Kill one rabbit, to scare the monkeys,” he’d said. A message slotted to both Matt Mills and himself from Naval Weapons Center Dahlgren, Network Systems Directorate, caught his eye. The header: SPY-1 Flight 7 Upgrade. He opened it.
Referring to the request Donnie Wenck had sent, it turned down Savo Island’s request for new software. The upgrade was in Open Architecture Computing Environment (OACE) Category 3 infrastructure, which had not yet been approved for fleet issue due to considerations of operational security.
Which, he guessed, frowning, meant they were unsure it was hardened against hacking. Everybody wanted open architecture, but the easier programming was to write and change, the more vulnerable it became. He started a reply, then saved it to his draft folder.
As usual with Jennifer, she called five minutes early. “Commodore,” he said, then released the button on the handset.
“Dan. I guess you saw the response to your message to Dahlgren.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You made a good case, but you might want to hold off on pressing that issue. You’re handling an emergent tasker. You don’t want to degrade your system right now. Believe me.”
“I was thinking along those lines. Any, uh, idea when the balloon goes up?”
“You know as much as we do. I called my relief at the Sit Room and he can’t shed any light.”
Dan rubbed a bristly chin. Ought to shave soon. “Uh, apropos of that, we may have mutual interference, with the Israeli Patriot battery at Ben Gurion. Our geographic sectors overlap and our freq bands are real close. We’ve asked for a copy of a Patriot/Aegis interoperability test they did at White Sands, but we haven’t been able to break that loose. It’d be good to have some kind of direct channel to the Israelis too. To be able to deconflict in real time.”
“Sounds reasonable. I’ll take that for action and get back to you. Otherwise, how’s it going? Over.”
“I had what seems to be a natural-causes death this morning.” He gave her the details, and ended, “I just hit Send on the full report. I’m requesting an autopsy. There’s just not too much my chief corpsman can pull out of his—tail. Other than that it might be a vaccine reaction.”
Her voice sharpened. “To AVA? The anthrax vaccine?”
“Correct. Over.”
“That’ll involve Bethesda. You’ll be getting calls from Clinical Investigation. Has the family been notified? You did what’s right, right? Over.”
“My XO looked it up in the manual and did the death report and the next-of-kin notification. You and your N4 are info’d on those. Over.”
“Okay then … keep me in the loop on that. Anything else you need?”
“Those parts for the chassis rebuild we requested. We got some of them helo lift from the TF, but there’s still outstanding requests.”
“My loggies are working it. Oh, and by the way—almost forgot—NCIS identified the guy who threw the gasoline at you, at the gate. Over.”
This was news. He pulled his consciousness out of the phone, checked the display, checked his own personal six. Then wondered what he was looking for, in the chill, darkened, equipment-packed space. The shapeless void-thing that had stalked him in the corridors of dream? “Really? They got him? Over.”
“Well, identified him. Unfortunately, the Italians had already let him go by then. And don’t seem to be able to find him again—no surprise, I guess. Anyway, want to know who he worked for?”
“Uh … yeah.”
“There’s an al-Qaeda link. Maybe not directly, but we’re pretty sure they pulled the string.”
Dan thought of several things he might say, but the one that came closest to actually getting voiced was: And I know why.
After 9/11, at first, no one had known for sure who was responsible. Then they had, but hadn’t been able to locate him.
But TAG had been able to retask a modeling agent framework, originally intended to data-mine a littoral environment to locate submarines, into a program that integrated communications, intelligence, and social relations to predict the location of a unitary actor. Such as bin Laden. Dan, Henrickson, and Wenck had taken CIRCE active at Bagram Field, Afghanistan, and had nailed Osama’s location closely enough that a SEAL team had come within an ace of taking him out.
Now, with a titanic conflict impending, maybe OBL was taking the opportunity to settle his books.
Or was that simply megalomania? To think a randomly thrown bottle had been aimed at him? Surely he wasn’t that important, in the great scheme of things. He grimaced. No, they’d seen an official car, and thrown a firebomb. That was all.
“Dan? You there?”
“Yeah. That’s interesting. An asymmetrical response.”
“Or something like that. Okay, we’re up-to-date, right? Info me on your on-station message. I’ll keep working on this end. Out.”
He signed off and resocketed the phone. Looked once more at the display, at the symbology and overlay and now, coming into the picture on the right, the east, the curved-bow shape of the most fought-over land on earth. Next year in Jerusalem. Next year in Al-Quds. The Holy Land of the Crusaders and Salah ad-Din. Israel. Palestine.
He took a deep breath and let it out. Toggled to the next screen, and started his on-arrival message.