“No sir, I think you’re right.”
“At the same time, I don’t want it to be a career breaker. I know things have changed since I had Horn—”
“Yes sir. They have. The guys call a captain’s mast a ‘delayed admin discharge.’ One conviction at mast, they can deny your reenlistment.”
“Well, I don’t want that. Can you do XO’s mast? What exactly are the regs now?”
“I can do XOI, yessir. The maximum award is twenty hours of extra military instruction.”
The newest euphemism for punishment detail. “What kind of EMI?”
“Typically mess duty, or extra cleaning.”
Dan said, “I don’t want to be too much of a stickler here, Fahad, but I’m recalling extra military instruction can’t be punitive, it has to be actual training.”
“Yessir. That’s OPNAV Instruction 3120. It has to be bona fide training to improve unit efficiency, not a substitute for punitive action under the UCMJ.”
No question, the days when a captain could lash a recalcitrant to a grating and let the cat out of the bag were long gone. “So we can’t punish them without mast, but if we do take them to mast, they won’t be able to reenlist?”
“About the size of it, Captain.”
They went back and forth about this for a while, Dan actually enjoying the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate on Navy regs and how to best skate around or in between them. It was more pleasant than thinking about what occupied most of his plate. Finally they got it boiled down to an agreement. Almarshadi made a note, then glanced around, as if making sure the others on the bridge were still out of earshot. “However, this brings up another issue. A personal one, sir.”
“Go ahead.”
“I would like to be relieved.”
Dan tried to mask his surprise with a squint out the window. Through a gauze of snow the Israeli corvette seemed, through some queer fluke of the waning light, closer than ever. In the U.S. Navy, officers didn’t ask to be relieved. It was theoretically possible, but he couldn’t remember ever hearing of such a thing. “Uh, Fahad, what exactly are you telling me here? Relieved as what?”
“As exec. I do not feel, any longer, I am performing to your satisfaction.” When the Arab inclined his head with a dignified courtesy Dan caught the beginnings of a bald patch under a careful comb-over. “You said I am the … point of failure in our system. I don’t want that responsibility. Therefore, I would like to be released … I mean, relieved.”
“This is a surprise. I don’t really know how to respond.”
“I am being accurate? That I am not fulfilling your expectations?”
“Hey now. I admit I was ticked off the other night. About the near miss. And I chewed your butt. But that doesn’t mean I wanted to fire you. Believe me, if I did, you’d have been on that helo to the task force, the one we sent back with Goodroe.” He glanced away, then back, trying to read the closed stubborn face. Remembering the anger and pride he’d seen a flash of, there in the passageway, when he’d used that phrase. Point of failure. Obviously it had sunk deep into this man’s soul.
He had to try harder to remember how powerful a CO’s words could be. But couldn’t the guy take a reaming and keep on steaming? Any XO, by design, had a stressful job: to demand more than anyone could offer, and keep the standards of performance, cleanliness, and professionalism in the stratosphere.
In other words, he was almost guaranteed to be unanimously hated by everyone beneath him. Dan smiled as he recalled the joke about it, about why the insignia for lieutenant commanders and commanders was an oak leaf. The punch line was “So the pope gave the order to cover all the pricks with leaves.” Dan had been there, executive officer aboard USS Turner Van Zandt, in the Gulf, under Benjamin Shaker, for Operation Earnest Will. It was a hard role. Was Fahad Almarshadi just not going to fill the bill?
“Fahad — surely you’ve gotten chewed out before. The idea’s to take direction, reorient, and keep charging.” The head remained stubbornly lowered; the dark gaze didn’t rise. Past him the helmsman and JOOD were watching curiously. They looked away quickly.
Or was something else going on here? “Wait a minute. This wouldn’t be about Iraq, would it?”
That called forth a furrow down Almarshadi’s brow. “Iraq?”
“It’s not that, then. For a minute, I wondered — never mind.”
“You wondered that since I was Arab, I would be on their side?”
“I didn’t say that, Fahad.”
“Now you insult me. First I am a point of failure. You would rather have Cheryl as your XO. Now I am disloyal, not to be trusted.”
Jesus. The guy had remembered every word he’d said, then made up some he hadn’t. “Cool the fuck down, XO. And lower your voice.” Dan swung out of his chair. “We’d better take this to my cabin.”
“No sir. I think we have said what we both needed to say.”
Almarshadi started to turn away, but Dan caught his shoulder and none too gently jibed him back around. “I’m not done talking, XO. You’ll stand there and listen. And look me in the eye when I’m speaking to you.”
“Yes sir.” The murmur was submissive, but the dark eyes were blazing now, as they had been once before.
“You need to start paying less attention to what I say to you, especially when I’m not getting enough sleep, and more attention to your job. The only thing I see wrong here is that you lack self-confidence. But do you think you’re the only one who feels that way?” No answer. “Do you?”
“I do not know.”
His gaze had dropped again, but Dan saw he’d hit some kind of nucleus. Maybe not hard enough for fission, but the angry flame seemed to be turning down to simmer. He started to lower his voice, then looked past the small man and instead raised it, so the others in the pilothouse could hear. “XO, sorry for losing my temper last night. Hear me?”
“I hear you, sir.”
“I have every confidence in you. Do you hear me?”
“Yes sir. I hear you.”
He lowered his voice again. “And something else. If you don’t think you’re up to the job? Neither do I.”
“Yes, you made that very—”
“No. I mean I don’t feel, deep inside, that I’m up to mine either.”
Almarshadi’s eyes widened. They came up and locked with his.
“That’s right,” Dan said, still keeping it low, between them, his grip on the guy’s shoulder digging to thin bone beneath the slight musculature. “I feel like I’m going to fail and give way. Like I’m making it up as I go along. And I’m never sure I’m doing the right thing.”
“But … you are the captain,” the little man whispered. “You have the … you have the Medal of Honor. You mean you do not…”
“No,” Dan said. They stood there face-to-face for a second, then another. Then he added, turning on just a little anger again, “So get used to it, and grow the hell up. We’re at war. Do your duty. Get us ready to fight. Press on. Then you’ll do everything I expect of you, and you’ll be a leader, Fahad.”
He opened his hand, releasing his grip. The little man held his gaze, still looking as if he did not quite believe, but in that moment unguarded as Dan had not seen him before. He nodded, once, then again. Stepped back, and turned away, catching himself with an outstretched arm as Savo rolled.
He vanished down the ladderway, leaving Dan, soaked with sweat and feeling as if he’d run many miles, listening to the hissing whisper of the snow.
He was back in Combat when GCCS and high-side chat came up more or less at the same time. He narrowed his eyes at the screens, then called up the DIA classified site and looked up the ship.