Beltrain reached up to an overhead repeater and tapped in a data access. “Sixty-four percent remaining on bunkerage.”
“Good enough. We’ll steer two seven zero at thirty knots until twenty-four hundred hours. Then we’ll come about, reduce speed, and start sweeping back. With any luck, we’ll sprint right past these guys and turn this bucket into a box.”
“Sounds real good to me, Captain.”
“Okay. Contact the hunt boss aboard the Enterprise. Advise him of our intentions and see if it meets his approval. If so, then advise the bridge and execute.”
“How about our helos, Captain? What do you want to do with them?”
Amanda hesitated for another moment. “Keep them on the deck. As long as the carrier’s helicopters are covering us, we’ll give our people a rest. Hold one of the Retainers on five-minute alert and the other on fifteen.
“Well, and one other thing, Dix. Once all of this gets set up, turn things over to the duty officer. I want you to get some sleep and a real meal. I can’t have my best tactical officer burning out on me.”
“Okay, Mom … I mean ma’am.”
Beltrain’s grin saved him from a backlash. Amanda joined in the joke with a weary smile of her own.
“Just you see to it, young man.”
She left the CIC again, heading for the deck ladders in the passageway aft.
That space was deserted for the moment, filled only with the perennial rumble of air through the ductwork and a wisp of burnt kerosene leaking upward from the power rooms. It was safe here to briefly let herself stand down. Sinking onto one of the ladder treads, Amanda closed her eyes.
Throughout that afternoon, she had maintained her own personal “Condition Zebra,” keeping her emotions carefully compartmentalized and away from her decision-making processes. Now those compartment doors were opening, allowing a backwash of terror, despair, and panic to flow into her consciousness.
They were all secondhand by now: ghost emotions, the lingering record of battle being replayed in her mind. It would pass eventually, leaving just another layer of scar tissue on her warrior’s psyche. But for now, there was the sudden reknotting of her stomach, the sheen of cold sweat, and the sensation of treading on the edge of an abyss.
Amanda gritted her teeth and hugged herself against her internal chill, striving to ride through it. She had not managed completely before she heard voices and the clatter of footsteps coming from below.
Swiftly, she got to her feet and scrambled up one level to officers’ country. A long-standing sophistry within the armed forces was that commanders were not allowed to exhibit human vulnerability in front of those they led.
There were exceptions, though.
Without conscious decision, Amanda found that she was moving down the passageway toward Vince Arkady’s cabin, cursing herself for the weakness and the luxury of what she was about to do.
“Come in.” The response came swiftly to her knock.
Arkady was stretched out on his bunk, and now, as she entered, he rolled to his feet in the balanced and coordinated flow of movement that she had come to recognize as part of him.
“What’s up?” he asked, alert and concerned. Her coming here was not a usual thing.
Amanda went to him, slipping her arms around his waist.
She rested her head on his flight-suited shoulder, listening to the strong beat of his heart as an affirmation of life.
“I almost lost her today, Arkady,” she whispered. “I almost lost her today.”
“But you didn’t.” His embrace closed around her, locking out the rest of the world.
Out in the passageway, another figure silently approached the door to Arkady’s cabin. As alert and as wary as a snow fox, she paused and listened for a moment, and then moved on.
37
“Captain, we’re ready for you on the fantail.”
“Very well. I’m on my way.”
Amanda returned the interphone to its cradle. Rising from behind her desk, she donned a dark uniform Windcheater and the overseas cap that she scarcely ever wore. She glanced back one final time at the Bible that lay on her desktop, then stepped out into the passageway.
The fiery multicolors of dawn had faded into the vibrant blue of a tropic morning sky. It was a blue that matched the sea, a sea unmarked except for the pale etching of the Cunningham’s wake as it curved away toward the horizon.
There were twelve others waiting for her aft: Arkady, Christine, Dr. Golden, Chief Hospital Corpsman Bonnie Robinson, and Chief Thomson. There were also the seven enlisted hands of the firing detail, each cradling an M-16 rifle.
Finally, there was the trestle right aft at the stern rail, and the form wrapped in white canvas and the blood-red flag of Communist China. This latter wasn’t standard issue in the flag locker of a U.S. Navy man-of-war, but they had improvised.
A strip of yellow plastic radiation-warning ribbon had been looped out on stands around the body of the Chinese submariner, separating the burial party from him in death as culture and ideology had in life.
As she approached, Chief Thomson gave the brim of his cap a short tug. “Good morning, ma’am.”
“Are we ready, Chief?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Carry on.”
Thomson nodded and barked out his next command. “Attention on deck!”
There was a brief shifting and scuffling of shoes on RAM tile as all hands hit a brace. Her were facing full forward, but still, Amanda could feel their eyes on her. This was a time to think about mortality, their own and others, and a time to seek for answers. Never more than now was she “captain under God.”
“We do not know this man,” she began after a moment. “We do not know his beliefs, his hopes, or even his name. We do know that he was a mariner, as are we all, that he did his duty to his homeland, as have we all, and that he hoped someday to return to those who loved him, as do we all.
“Though we may stand at war with his nation, our conflicts with this man are past. We are at peace, and we wish him well on his last and greatest voyage … Stop engines!”
“Stop engines!” Chief Thomson echoed her words into his command phone.
The steady pulsebeat of the Cunningham’s engines stilled.
“Salute!”
Hands flicked up with precision, fingers locked. The firing detail turned outboard, rifles coming up to their shoulders, slender barrels angling toward the sky. A rippling crack repeated three times, expended shell casings tinkling down to the deck.
Not requiring a command, Chief Thomson and Vince Arkady broke attention and stepped forward. Ducking under the ribbon line, they took up a position at the head of the trestle and up-angled the plank.
The body slipped back over the rail and down into the sea with that sizzling zip that is so unlike any other sound in the world.
“At ease. Carry on.”
The burial detail broke up, and Amanda was just starting to turn back for the deck house when the 1-MC speakers rang across the deck. “Captain, please contact the CIC.”
Wordlessly, Chief Thomson removed his headset and passed it to her.
“Captain here. What’s up?”
“This is Dix Beltrain, Captain. I just thought you might want to know. We just got the word from the hunt boss on the Enterprise. We just killed another one.”
38
Captain Hikaru Ichijo was out of his cabin bunk and heading for the control room even before the intercom could summon him. His ears had popped as the main induction valve had slammed shut, awakening him. Now the diesels had grumbled down into silence and the decks of his ship, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces submarine Harado, were angling steeply as she broke off her snorkeling run and dove for the wet dark.