Tipping Point: The War With China - the First Salvo (Dan Lenson Novels) (33 page)

He felt doomed. And guilty; the girl already hadn’t had a great life, with foster homes and abusive families. But she’d thought the Navy would be different. Better.

Instead … this.

The guidelines were clear. Once the report landed on the CNO’s desk, there’d be an NCIS agent en route at flank speed. Flying out from the nearest office, which was Bahrain, to the carrier, and maybe getting him or her on a helo, if the carrier was close enough. Or, if someone had planned a resupply and refuel, via the resupply ship. They wouldn’t let this stagnate. Too much chance of splatter.

And though he didn’t like to think this way, he had to cover his own ass and the command’s by making sure he followed the instructions on sexual assault—sending messages to God and everyone documenting every detail, everything he’d directed done, everything he’d been told to do. It would take time and command attention, time he desperately needed.

But he owed it to Colón. Her assailant must be the same guy who’d assaulted Terranova.

Or was it? He clung to the smooth steel of the handrail, and broke into a cold sweat just thinking about
two
sexual predators on the same ship. A copycat? No, Occam’s razor: Do not unnecessarily multiply entities. And the MO, which hadn’t been announced, was the same: finagling the lights, then abduction at knifepoint. Their perpetrator had started with fondling, and now progressed to manual penetration while masturbating. The next step, from everything he’d read, would be rape and possibly mutilation, or even murder.

So, how to proceed. One of the castaways had been hitting on her. But he doubted they’d know the ship well enough to screw with the wiring. Also, they hadn’t been aboard when Terranova had been … no, wait, they had. So that didn’t exonerate them. Especially this Behnam Shah.

But Toan had mentioned another suspect. One he “had his eyes on.” Dan hadn’t wanted to ask who in front of the others. Maybe they could identify a suspect. Isolate him, until they could offload the bastard. But he had to root this out. Before it widened the already deep chasm between the females, including the female officers, and the rest of the ship.

A damaged crew took much longer to repair than a damaged ship. Was it Jenn Roald who’d told him that? Or Nick Niles?

So he needed to address it. Not just officially, by the reporting requirements, but directly, to the crew. He lifted his head toward the top of the ladder as someone opened the door to the bridge. Cleared his throat, straightened his back, and climbed toward the light.

*   *   *

THEY
cruised through the day and the next and then the next, midway between Karachi and Mumbai. The wind varied between twenty and thirty knots, consistently from the southwest, and the seas continued very heavy. Terranova picked up another strange high-altitude, slow-moving contact, like the one they’d tracked going through Hormuz. Or that had perhaps tracked them … On the second day a message relayed that Pakistan had both refused their refueling request and officially protested their presence within the Islamic Republic’s exclusive economic zone. The government had referenced its reservation, on signing UNCLOS, that it did not authorize military maneuvers by foreign-flagged warships within the EEZs of coastal states without the consent of said states. The U.S. was asked to remove its task forces and not to intrude again.

In sick bay that morning, Dan was examining a reddish stain on a cotton pad. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at here,” he confessed as the ship labored around them.

Schell, dark circles under his eyes, sagged back against the tier of bunks. Grissett sat on the lowest. The command master chief, Tausengelt, had pulled out a desk chair and reversed it. The doctor murmured, “It’s a culture. The stain brings it out. From one of your hot-water heating systems.”

“And?”

“We’d need an electron microscope to be certain, but I’m 90 percent sure it’s somebody new in the zoo. A previously unidentified amoebal pathogen. In other words, a variation of Legionnaires’ disease.”

Dan held the stain to the light as the physician went on to explain that
Legionella
bacteria had evolved to infect freshwater protozoa. “Such as amoebas. Now, we may not care for the idea, but we’re pretty much always surrounded by bacteria. And most of our freshwater systems—at home, in hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and so forth—are colonized by protozoa. They love warm water 24-7, same as we do, so it’s an ideal habitat. In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, they never cause trouble, because we’re adapted to them. But in the case of
Legionella pneumophila—
meaning, it likes the lungs—the bacteria can jump to us, infect us, and cause the symptoms you’re familiar with.”

Dan nodded. He still felt exhausted, even when he got enough sleep, and too many of the crew felt the same way, evidenced by the way they dragged around. “But, a bacterium? Doc here’s been dosing everybody with cipro—”

“You’ve obviously got a ciprofloxacin-resistant bug. Which we’re seeing a lot more of, by the way.”

“How, exactly, does it infect? What’s the route of transmission?”

“Via the hot-water systems.”

Dan shook his head. “No, you said it
bred
in the hot-water systems. How does it get from there to the crew? In the drinking water?”

Schell squinched up his face. “No, stomach acid’s usually up to the job of dissolving any bacteria. It’s still iffy, but I suspect your showers.”

Dan frowned. “You mean
in
them, or … or by taking showers?”

“The latter. Unfortunately. Aerosolized and misted by the nozzle, water’s easy to breathe into the lungs. Which are also wet, warm, and welcoming.”

Schell droned on about how the bacterium involved was atypical, which was why Bethesda hadn’t detected it in the sputum and blood from the first fatality, back in the Med. Dan interrupted. “I get all that, Doc. But how do we fix this? We thought it was in the vent ducts.”

“Right, your corpsman told me that.” He nodded to Grissett. “Not a bad guess, working with what you knew.”

“You’re certain it’s our hot water.”

“As I said, without an electron microscope to positively identify, no. But based on everything else, 90, 95 percent certainty. The fact that your bronchoalveolar washings came back negative makes me suspect a new strain. I plan to call it
Legionella savoiensis.
”

Oh, great. But maybe this wasn’t the time or place to argue over Latinate terminology. “All right, let’s go with that diagnosis. What do we do about it?”

“The book answer is, have the ship recalled and quarantined. Steam-clean every hot-water pipe and heater and fixture aboard. Especially any dead legs in your system. And wherever your cold- and hot-water systems mix, like heat exchangers. If I report this to Navy Medical, that’s what’s going to come back. Pull you off the line and send you home.”

“We can’t do that.” But as Dan rubbed his mouth, he remembered previous experiences with NavMed. Both professionally competent and fiercely independent, the Bureau of Navy Medicine was its own fiefdom. Pressure from outside, or even from above, merely hardened its stance. Recall and quarantine was all too possible. “We can’t leave now. Not with a war about to start.”

“You also can’t keep the guys on a gallon of water a day, sir,” Grissett put in. “Or keep the showers secured.”

“I sailed with the Korean navy,” Dan said. “They didn’t have showers. They bathed in buckets.”

All three men just looked at him. He grimaced, seeing how it was, and went on. “But, uh, obviously we can’t do that for more than a couple days. So, tell me what to do. Chemicals? Hyperchlorination? How do we fix this?”

Schell looked away. In a low voice he said, “You can’t use chemicals aboard ship. Not in the concentrations needed for eradication. We’re not talking just upping the chlorine count here. Trihalomethane, chlorine dioxide—you can’t use those in confined spaces.”

“There isn’t anything else?”

Schell hesitated. “Well … there is one thing you could try. It’s called ‘heat and flush.’”

Dan glanced at Grissett. “I’m listening. Doc?”

“Me too, Captain. But I think I know what he’s gonna say.”

The physician said, “You have to get your water up almost to boiling. At least a hundred and eighty degrees. Two hundred is better. Hold it there for thirty minutes, and you’ve got a sterile system. We do that with outbreaks in hospitals.”

Dan said, “Okay. The downside?”

“It doesn’t work for long-term infestation management. You’d have to follow up with some form of continuous chemical disinfection. The main problem for you is how labor-intensive it’s going to be. We’re talking isolating every section of the system, cleaning out any incrustation or scale that can harbor colonies, then charging with superheated water and maintaining it at that temperature for half an hour. The thermal expansion—”

“We’re gonna burst some pipes,” Dan said.

“Which means potential burns and scalding.”

Dan nodded, tracing the plumbing systems in his mind. He turned to Tausengelt. “Sid, an interrelated issue. CMC, you can speak to this, maybe. We’re really stressing this crew. If we break them, we can lose this ship, with or without eliminating the crud. We’re seeing equipment degradation—the reduction gear assembly on number one gas turbine generator, the water intrusion on the CRP prop system. This heat and flush Dr. Schell is describing … can we impose this extra level of work? Deployed, at condition three, in heavy seas?”

Tausengelt rubbed his face in what might be unconscious mimicry of his CO. When he took his hand away his leathery features were contorted in what looked like extreme pain.

“You okay, Master Chief?”

“Touch of trigeminal. Comes back now and then. Feels like a skilletful of hot chicken grease on your face. Uh, basically, Captain, it’s your call.”

“I know that, Master Chief. My question is, what’s going to be the effect on the crew?”

Tausengelt said slowly, “Basically, Skipper, I’d say they’re scared.”

Schell plumped down on the lower bunk beside Grissett, looking interested. He locked his fingers around one knee and rocked back.

Dan nodded. “Okay, that’s something solid. Scared of what?”

“Basically, sir, of you.”

“Scared of
me
?” He frowned.

“Basically, sir, you gotta understand. Now obviously I wasn’t here for the previous regime, Captain Imerson and Fahad Almarshadi and so on, but it was apparently more easygoing then.”

“It was slack and slipshod.” Dan shook his head. “And the command climate survey showed it.”

“Yessir, no argument. But some folks like it easygoing, and they haven’t been happy about all the condition three and stepped-up drills. The reinspections, and so forth. There’s always that element that wants the eight-hour day, even under way.” Tausengelt waved that away, though the grooves around his mouth dug deeper. “But it ain’t even just that. Going aground in Naples, then you coming aboard, Goodroe dying—it was like the start of a downward spiral.”

“The spiral started long before that.”

“Basically, no argument, sir, I’m just passing along what I hear. Then the crud, then all the shit since—it’s like, fatigue’s setting in. They were in awe of you at first. The Medal of Honor. How you seemed to know everything. Your, um, your command presence. But since then, it’s been operate, operate, operate—only one port call, to blow off steam—and everybody getting sick—and now it’s like, they don’t have a clue what we’re doing parked off Pakistan.” The old master chief shrugged. “The deckplates know there’s a war about to start, and we’re supposed to stop it.”

“That’s not exactly—”

“Well, it’s what they
think.
Sir. And those stories … the scuttlebutt about
Horn,
and what you did in the China Sea … that you hung a guy for murder—”

Schell whistled, leaning forward. “
Hung
a guy? A crewman, you mean? Actually
hung
?”

Dan said, “This is the Navy, Dr. Schell. Sea stories get embroidered. As you know, Master Chief. Look, let’s cut to the chase. Regardless of what the crew feels, we’re here on a national-level mission. That means we have to stay on station unless we’re totally unable to continue.

“So, Doctor, I’d like you and the chief corpsman here to huddle with Bart Danenhower. See what CHENG thinks about how many man-hours it would take to heat and flush one of our shower systems. When he’s ready to discuss it, I’ll be on the bridge.”

*   *   *

DAN
climbed slowly to the bridge, pausing at each deck level for a breather. Like an old man, hunched, trembling, and panting.

Legionnaires’ disease. Christ! If Schell was right, they should report this. Take whatever orders NavMed came back with, most likely, return to Dubai for overhaul. The crew would bunk ashore while workers swarmed over the water systems.

But to do that,
Savo Island
would have to abort Odyssey Protector. And not just leave her station untenanted, but the Navy out of the ballpark on the missile defense mission.
Defense News
had just published a piece on the recent speedup in the sea service’s TBMD program. Which, as he recalled, Admiral Niles had mentioned too. But the follow-on ships in the pipeline—
Monocacy, Hampton Roads, Omaha Beach, Salerno, Java Sea,
and
Guadalcanal—
weren’t ready yet, though the first two were almost operational.

He stood by his command chair, clinging to it as the ship rolled. Heading: one-one-zero, nearly beam to. Van Gogh had the watch. The bridge team stood wordlessly, gripping handholds. The sea was dark blue, furrowed by the endless monsoon wind.
Mitscher
rode between
Savo
and the land, far over the horizon.

He was still up there when Bart Danenhower came up. The CHENG fingered his striped locomotive-driver’s cap, staring past Dan at the sea as they went over the fuel-consumption figures. On patrol off the Levant, they’d evolved a nonstandard, unapproved low-speed mode, with one shaft powered and the other idled. They could loiter at six knots and still be quiet, if submarine detection ranges were a consideration. Which they were; if either Pakistan or India decided
Savo
was an impediment, a torpedo might be the most readily deniable solution. Dan made a mental note to jack up Zotcher’s sonar team. “Okay. So, how many days’ steaming left? Before we have to leave station?”