Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (20 page)

But now … His first marriage had gone into the same kind of death spiral. He’d seen it over and over; deployments were hell on both sides. There was so damn little he could
do
from here. His daughter from his first marriage didn’t need him anymore; she had her own life now. Maybe it
was
time he thought about getting out. A fucking cat … it was sad that Blair felt the need for company. If that was what it was.

And there she was, Staurulakis, not Blair, at the window in the port wing door. Checking him out, then undogging the door. Unsightly red grooves engraved her cheeks. The duty radioman fidgeted behind her, a clipboard over his crotch. Dan sighed and pulled his shemagh tighter.

“Sir? Update from Fleet. The Pasdaran announced the end of their exercise. Iran lifted the Notice to Mariners. Also, chief corpsman wonders if you can spare a minute.”

He sighed again, and swung down. Took a last look around. Through the low churning haze, he could see fuck-all. Something could be bearing down on him right now, and he’d never know. Except through radar, of course. Thank God for radar. He couldn’t imagine trying to navigate, much less fight, around here without it. “All right, let me read that. I’ll see the corpsman in my sea cabin.”

*   *   *

GRISSETT
looked upset. Dan pointed to the spare chair, wedged into the corner of the tiny compartment. “Grab a sit, Bones. What’cha got?”

“Not good news, sir, I’m afraid.” The chief medic handed over stapled sheets. “Today’s sick list.”

“Some of the troops overindulge at the Sand Pit?”

“No sir. Well, maybe a little. But mainly, I’m getting a big uptick with the crud.”

Dan studied the list as the chief corpsman went on, “On the next page, I made up a graph. Trying to figure out what this thing correlates to—port visits, whatever. And it does seem to correlate with in-port periods.”

“Is that right? We get more cases in port?”

“Yessir—I mean, no sir. The opposite. Look at the graph.” Dan flipped to it. “It’s a negative correlation. The numbers go
down
when we’re in port, like in Crete.”

“Not sure I see it.”

“It’s only about minus zero point two, but it’s there.”

“What’s minus zero point two?”

“The correlation coefficient of the two variables, in-port time and reporting cases.”

Dan whistled. “Are you telling me you calculated the correlation coefficient?”

“Well … yes sir. Just divided the covariance of the variables by the product of the standard deviations. I brought along my calculations—”

“That’s interesting, Chief. I didn’t know you were into statistics.”

“A lot of medicine’s based on it nowadays,” Grissett said stiffly, as if Dan had insulted his competence. “It’s basic stuff.”

“I see. Sorry, you just took me aback there. I’ll look over your figures. Point two is a pretty weak correlation, but still.” Dan flipped through a couple more pages, groping for a connection. “Anything from Bethesda?”

Grissett said no, aside from anomalous antigens in the urine samples he’d sent, and waited expectantly. Dan scratched his neck, trying to come up with something. “We scrubbed down the ducts and changed all the filters. Maybe the sequence of events? Did the new filters go in before or after the duct sterilization?”

“After, sir. And I supervised the duct cleaning, with the Top Snipe.”

“Meaning Commander Danenhower, I take it.” Dan regretted the reproof immediately, and hastened to gloss it over. “Yeah, the Top Snipe. Think his guys did a thorough job?”

“If hot water and bleach could’ve killed it, we’d have wiped it out, Captain.” Grissett nodded at the sick list, still in Dan’s hands. “But five new cases this morning. Added to fifteen already off duty. And what worries me is, people don’t seem to be fully recovering, like with a flulike illness. A couple even developed pneumonia.”

Dan’s eyebrows lifted. “Pneumonia!”

“Yessir. I dosed them heavy with cipro, and I think we got it, but even the ones that recover just drag themselves around like zombies. You’ve heard them coughing.”

He had indeed. Pushing his hand back over his hair, he searched his mind. “And it correlates negatively with in-port time … but it doesn’t live in the ventilation. Could we have picked up a brand-new bug? Some Middle Eastern bad boy nobody’s seen yet?” Another possibility occurred, uglier than he wanted to voice, but forced himself to. “It couldn’t be, um, sexually transmitted, could it?”

Grissett said, a touch patronizingly, “Most viral infections can be passed by close physical contact. But that’s not sexual, in the way I think you mean.”

Dan sighed. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. “I don’t have any direction for you, Doc. We can’t divert. This is a national-level mission. I can ask again for a medical team, but we don’t seem to be getting much support out here. Let me talk to Fleet medical, see what they think.”

“I’ve already done that, sir, but maybe the additional horsepower can jar something loose.”

Dan nodded. He glanced at the door, and the corpsman stood. But hesitated, not yet leaving. “Feeling all right yourself, Skipper? I’ve seen you coughing. Wrapping that scarf over your nose.”

Dan shrugged. “I sucked some smoke on 9/11. The dust out here doesn’t help. Could the crud be related to dust? The commodore mentioned dustborne illnesses.”

“Right, bronchiolitis, and dustborne asthma.”

“Could we be picking up some kind of toxics in the dust, on the wind?”

Grissett’s gaze went distant. “I don’t think so. But I’ll run the numbers, see if there’s a correlation with the rates that spend a lot of time outside the air-conditioning envelope. Boatswains. Lookouts.”

Dan got up, and unwrapped a bundle of thin stitched cotton. “I might have something we can try.”

*   *   *

HE
passed the word about the Official USS
Savo Island
Shemagh via the chiefs. Hermelinda’s storekeepers handled the issuing. He’d bought three hundred with the CO’s discretionary fund (and documented that the ship’s store price equaled what he’d paid, so he couldn’t be accused of profiteering). On the mess decks, Kaghazchi demonstrated how to wear them. The exec made her policy clear: they weren’t uniform items, or a replacement for flash gear, but something to wear on a voluntary basis, when you were on lookout or on watch. The crew seemed doubtful at first, but by that evening, when he went up to the bridge, everybody was wearing his or hers, sometimes in novel ways. The women especially liked them; their eyes, peering out from folds of cloth, seemed alluring and mysterious.

*   *   *

THEY
headed for the channel out at 1700 local, with CAP and SUCAP en route from
Vinson
. According to Fleet, Tehran was crowing about how they’d “damaged two warships of the Great Satan.” No one there seemed to have made much of a fuss over the butcher’s bill: four boats missing, presumed sunk, five more damaged. At least that’d been Dan’s estimate in his after-action report, and his numbers had lined up with Stonecipher’s, as seen from
Mitscher
.

Settled into the pocket of his command chair in CIC, he stared at the displays, puzzled. Aside from a few scattered contacts along the coast of Qeshm, the waterway looked normal. Commercial traffic was resuming, to judge by the string of merchants on the surface picture.

Could it just be …
over,
with nothing really settled? But no radars locked onto him as they steamed past Jaziriyeh-ye Forur and reported in to Omani traffic control. The Omanis had been conspicuous by their absence during the entire fracas the week before. Preserving a careful neutrality by looking the other way. Well, they had to live next door to the Iranians. In this part of the planet, just staying out of trouble was an all too elusive goal.

Mills nudged him with the handset, rousing him from reverie. The call was a Dr. Somebody, from Bahrain. Dan drew a blank, then recalled: the Fifth Fleet medical officer. They discussed
Savo
’s problem. Dan pointed out they’d been reporting the same syndrome for months now, had already had one unexplained death. At last the medico agreed to ask for an epidemiology team from Bethesda. He couldn’t promise when they’d get to the ship, though. “Until then, I recommend focusing on basic sanitation, on the food handlers and meal preparation.” Dan doubted that was the source, but vowed to hold additional training, and inspect for cleanliness.

Mills cleared his throat and nudged him. A new contact had popped up, sourced from Silver Ghost, the Air Force AWACS out of Oman. Seconds later
Mitscher
reported it too: Track 7834, out of Abu Musa. The island was disputed between Oman and Iran, but had been garrisoned by Iran since the days of the shah. EW detected a radar corresponding to that of a PBF. These were modest-sized gunboats based on the North Korean Chaho class. Dan kept an eye on it as they passed, and had his surface warfare coordinator develop a gun solution. But the C-801s and 802s were the real threats—plus, of course, any Iranian air.

But nothing rose to challenge them. As they steered for the Knuckle, more small craft popped up. The supertankers churned serenely on. Presently the C-802 batteries began illuminating as well, though none locked on. Dan set his team to correlating them, trying to figure out if they’d relocated during the days between the transit in and the way out, or if they were parked in the same locations. They also passed four dhows that the cryppies picked up as verbally transmitting targeting data.

But aside from that, there seemed to be no massing of forces. “They’re backing off,” Staurulakis murmured, standing beside him with arms crossed. “Letting us out.”

She looked frazzled, gaunt, a little unsteady on her feet. He eyed her doubtfully. Execs could burn out … as her predecessor had, all too spectacularly. “I wouldn’t let down our guard just yet, Cheryl. Still a couple hours until we’re out of missile range.”

“Right … right.”

“Feeling okay? Get any sleep while we were in port?”

“Not much. We had to get those Harpoons onloaded, and coordinate everything with the port security people.” She coughed into a fist.

“You’re not coming down with this thing, are you?”

“Nope. Just tired. I’m okay.”

He glanced around, abruptly realizing that almost everyone else looked just as hollow-cheeked, just as red-eyed. And equally apathetic. The port visit should have helped, but they’d had so much to do. He cleared his throat. “Look, we need to get out of GQ as soon as we clear the strait. Condition three, but only until we’re over the horizon. Then, the normal steaming watch, so the off watch can catch some Zs. And maybe a rope yarn Sunday.”

“A what?”

He blinked. “Never heard of a rope yarn Sunday?”

“You’re losing me, Captain.”

“Well, it’s old Navy … a half day’s work, to catch up on your mending, pick oakum, that kind of thing. Tomorrow’s Sunday, right? What’ve we got scheduled?”

“I wasn’t sure where we’d be at that point. So I didn’t really—”

“Let’s leave the afternoon free. And what else could we do? To sort of let everybody’s hair down. Swim call?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea in these waters, Captain. Sharks. Snakes—”

“How ’bout a steel beach picnic?” Wenck put in. Dan swiveled to face him. “And a beer call,” the chief added. “We earned it.”

Dan nodded slowly, gaze drawn back to the displays. Where the lumbering behemoths they escorted were turning the corner, bound for the Indian Ocean. The Combattantes they’d passed on the way in, and which had trailed them up to the exercise area, were still out there. He was keeping an eye out for them, and for any bogeys rising from the new airfield farther south, near Chabahar. East of that was the Chinese-built port in Pakistan, Gwadar. He’d love to take a look at that, see if he could pick up any electronic intelligence. If they made it out without further incident.

He nodded slowly. “Steel beach it is. Good suggestion, Donnie. Cheryl, let’s get our heads together, see what we can do.”

*   *   *

“CAPTAIN. Captain?”

He wasn’t really sure, for a moment, if he was still dreaming. No. In his bunk. Having finally,
finally,
gotten his eyes closed. He coughed, hard, bringing something sticky and thick and gritty up from inside his chest. Under way …
Savo Island
 … Arabian Sea. He groped for the Hydra. “Yeah … yeah. What is it, Chief?”

“We got some kind of light low in the water. Bearing zero-four-zero. No radar contact.”

Fuck. But you couldn’t say that, or betray in any way that you resented being woken. Or they might not call you, next time, when you really ought to be there. He muttered reluctantly, “I’ll be right up.”

*   *   *

THE
pilothouse was utterly dark. He groped his way around the helm console, barking his shin on something steel. Muttered, “OOD?”

“Here, sir. Chief Van Gogh.”

“What’ve we got, Chief?”

Van Gogh led him out onto the port wing, where Dan stared into one of the blackest nights he’d ever seen. The warm wind blustered in his ears. “What am I looking at?”

Hands gripped his shoulders and aimed him. “Out there, sir. Right below the horizon.”

What horizon? But he caught, just for an instant, what might’ve been a flicker of yellow. Van Gogh said, “Port lookout reported it. Young kid. Good eyes. Otherwise we’d have missed it. Zip on radar. I slowed and called you. We’re at five knots.”

“Okay. Where’s
Mitscher
?”

“Astern, Captain. CIC put him there to do some kind of beam calibration.”

A pair of binoculars was pushed into his hands. Dan found the lights of the destroyer, well astern, then searched off to port again until he picked up the flicker once more. But the 7x50s didn’t give him much more than his naked eyeballs. “Phosphorescence?”

“Look down, sir.”

He looked straight down, to a greenish flicker, along the turbulent layer where the steel skin of the ship slid through the sea. “We have luminescent organisms, but they’re green,” Van Gogh said. “That’s yellow out there. Almost like a flame.”