O'Brien glanced at his watch and, for the first time during the cruise, had to stop and think hard about whether it was almost three in the afternoon… or three in the morning. He'd not been through the control room for a number of watches, now — his duties simply hadn't taken him up to the deck immediately above this one in longer than he could remember.
He had a feeling it was morning. He had that hollow-behind-the-eyes feeling he always got when he was up in the middle of the night, standing the mid-watch, or staying up all night during his school years. With his rhythms now regulated by Pittsburgh's eighteen-hour day, he tended to feel a bit log-headed all the time.
He hoped the condition was temporary. He felt like he was tired all the time these days, but wasn't sure whether that was because of having to adapt to the shorter day-night cycle, or because with his regular duties, his watch schedule, and the studying he was doing for his torpedo-room quals, he simply wasn't getting enough sleep.
"Hey, Ben? Is it day or night?" he asked, still staring at his watch.
Benson looked up from his coffee. "What does it matter?"
"C'mon, you've got one of those number watch thingies…. "
"It's called digital, Baldy. You have numbers on your wrist, too. It's just that they're old-fashioned analog, and don't come in nice, discrete packets like mine." He looked at his wrist. "At the tone, the time will be… 0250 hours … and thirty seconds… ahhnnn."
"Zero-dark-thirty, right." He nodded, glad to have his inner clock vindicated. "Thanks."
"Why do you want to know?"
"Oh, I don't know. I still remember sunlight once in a while. I like to imagine that it's up there, shining right now, even if I can't see it."
"Still shining on the other side of the planet, Doug. Not that it makes a bit of difference."
"What's the matter, Ben? You sound down."
Benson shrugged. "Ahh. I just get to wondering why I put up with this shit."
"Life in the boats?"
"That ain't so bad. You get used to it."
"The people?"
"Most of them are pretty good guys." He managed a small grin. "Most of 'em."
"Doershner?"
"Ahh, Doershner's a jerk. He gets on your nerves, sure, but he's mostly harmless."
O'Brien chuckled. Most of the men on board had been reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an oddball, comic science fiction book almost as popular among the crew as the usual collection of crotch novels. There was something about the work's quirky, off-the-bulkhead humor that appealed to the men. "Mostly harmless" was one of the book's happily memorable lines.
"So what's the problem, man?"
"Nothing." His face revealed the lie behind the blunt-spoken word. "It's just, well, the usual shit, I suppose."
"What are we doing here, and all that?"
"Don't you wonder about it sometimes, Doug? Why they put us out here in the Russians' backyard?"
"Hey, it's what we do! It's why we're here."
"Is it?" He shook his head. "I'm not so sure. I've been thinking about this a long time. A long time. And it gets worse each time I go out. I think I'm gonna get out."
"What, out of the Navy?" O'Brien asked, puzzled.
"How?"
"No, out of the Service. This is a volunteer outfit, you know. You don't have to stay if you can't take it."
"Aw, man! You can't do that!" Of all the men aboard, O'Brien probably felt closest to Benson.
Benson looked at him coldly. "Just watch me, Doug. Just watch me."
"But you can take it. I've seen you. You get on board a boat better than I ever could!"
"That's not the point. If I was aboard a destroyer, I wouldn't be sneaking around in the USSR's territorial waters, and maybe starting a war or something."
"The Old Man said we were outside of their waters. We only recognize the international twelve-mile limit, and he said we were, like, thirty miles or so offshore."
"We've had this talk before. That's not the point." He folded his arms. "It's this damned back-and-forth with the other guys, like it was some kind of obscene game. It's not enough that both sides have nuclear arsenals that could wipe out the whole human race several times over. It's not enough that a fucking computer error or a burned-out twenty-nine-cent transistor could blow us all up someday. No, we have to go stand eyeball-to-eyeball with them and rattle their cage. Well, I've had it. Next time we put into port, I'm outta here."
O'Brien felt as though Benson were attacking him somehow. Because he didn't feel the same way? Because he was supporting a position Benson felt was morally wrong? He was uncomfortable with the thought, and wasn't sure why.
"Well, I'll miss you, Ben."
Benson sighed, eyes closed. "I'll miss you. Hell, I'll miss this life. It's pretty good, in a lot of ways. The people are good to work with. I'm not sure how well I'd fit in aboard a target."
"Kind of strange, thinking of holding exercises with you trying to find us."
"That's the way of it, kid. Set a fox to catch a fox. That's how they recycle sub drivers, you know."
"Yeah. What time you going on duty?"
"Sixteen hundred hours." He gestured with the coffee. "This is breakfast."
"Me too. Think we'll get used to it?"
"Me, I'm thinking about getting used to a real, solid, twenty-four-in-a-day day, y'know what I mean? Aboard ship, or at a duty station ashore, somewhere. That'll be the life, man."
"You'll hate it."
"Don't tell me that. Let me enjoy my fantasies." He looked hard at O'Brien. "You should come with me."
"Nah."
"Why not? You were pretty miserable when this cruise started out, as I recall."
"Same's any other nub, I guess. I don't know. I feel like I'm starting to fit in."
"A whole year before you get your dolphins. That's a long time."
"I don't want to go this far, and back out. Besides, I feel like I have a lot more in common with the guys, now."
"Well, let me know if you change your mind."
"Sure."
The conversation lapsed after that.
O'Brien already felt as though he had less in common with his friend than he'd had before, a sense that Benson was a them, like the SEALs on board or the spooks, as opposed to an us.
The feeling was more than a little unsettling.
19
To say that it was dark was the grossest understatement. Randall looked about and realized that the effect was precisely like SCUBA diving in a pool filled with ink. When he switched off his powerful little underwater flashlight, he literally could see nothing… not even the rim of his own face mask.
Even with the light on, his visible world was limited to a misty glow of swirling, drifting particles, a snowstorm illuminated by the beam. The bottom was a featureless layer, tabletop smooth, of gray silt and organic sludge, deposits laid down over centuries by the outflow of the Amur River and by the indiscriminate dumpings from dozens of factories along the banks. The surface was so fine that a single careless flick of the flipper could send it all swirling up in a vast, opaque cloud, and it was long minutes before the detritus settled out again, or was carried away on the northbound current.
He felt a tug on his safety line and looked to his right. He couldn't see Nelson on the other end of the line, and that length of nylon was only five feet long. He kept moving.