A watertight door thunked open, and they emerged onto a wide-windowed bridge filled with sunlight and thronged with uniforms. Conversations stopped. The faces turned to him were appallingly young, unlined, apprehensive. He pushed through a nearly tangible web of quickly dropped glances to the centerline of the pilothouse. Shading his gaze against the glare, he swept the harbor. Peered down at the anchoring detail, who were standing about in yellow hard hats down on the forecastle. Then paced out onto the wing to check aft. He didn’t much like leaving port stern-first, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it at the moment, since the tugs had her in hand.
The officer in charge introduced himself and offered a few terse sentences. Savo Island was in a lightened condition. The barges alongside held her fuel. All potable water had been pumped into the harbor. The six hundred five-inch rounds forward had been walked aft to raise the bow. Dan asked about damage. The OIC said the ship’s damage-control teams had found no leaks or sagging bulkheads. A port engineer from Norfolk and a combat systems engineer from Surflant were aboard. Savo was proceeding to anchorage Bravo 4, where divers would inspect the shafts, screws, and hull. “You might actually get off without a dry-docking,” he finished.
Dan said, “That’d be nice. How do you want to handle the turnover?”
“Ready when you are. Here and now, if you want.”
“Got the keys?”
“Firing keys? Right here.” He lifted them off over his head, on a glinting steel-bead neckchain, and handed them over.
When Dan settled them around his own neck they still felt warm. He searched around the harbor again, glanced astern. “Thanks, I’ve got it. — Who has the conn?”
“I do, sir.” A woman’s voice. A lieutenant. Raven hair, black arched eyebrows, the profile of a Hindu goddess. “The pilot’s on the starboard wing.”
He went out and introduced himself. The pilot, a cigarette stuck to his lip, looked him up and down, grimaced, then went back to instructing the tugs in rapid Italian on his handheld. Dan studied the distant double hump of Vesuvius, a powdery purple against the glorious gold morning light.
Usually there was a ceremony. The crew was mustered with traditional pomp to witness the turnover of command. But he didn’t have an outgoing skipper present; there would be no briefings by the man he was relieving, and by now every man and woman aboard knew he was here. Probably his official bio was being circulated on the LAN, and anyone who knew anyone who’d served with him was regaling his shipmates with embroidered Dan Lenson sea stories.
So … forget the ceremonials. As, he vaguely recalled, Ernie King had done without, when he’d left Lexington back in the thirties. Maybe what they needed most was just to know someone was in charge. “Shipwide circuit. All hands,” he told the boatswain’s mate, who flicked switches and bent to the mike, fitting his pipe to his lips. An earsplitting shriek echoed from every speaker on deck and rebounded from the slowly receding castle walls. The forecastle team flinched and looked up.
Dan gave it a second, then took the mike.
“This is Captain Daniel V. Lenson, United States Navy, speaking. In the next day or so I hope I’ll have the opportunity to meet each of you. I will now read my orders.
“‘Proceed to the port in which USS Savo Island may be and upon arrival, report to your immediate superior in command, if present, otherwise by message, for duty as commanding officer. By order of the Chief of Naval Operations.’”
He lowered the paper to find everyone on the bridge looking away. When their gazes swung back, something had altered in them. Infusing them with a new wariness. With … foreboding? Suspicion? Respect? It was difficult to say exactly, but it was plain; some invisible barrier now stood between him and every other person on the bridge.
The dark-haired woman cleared her throat. “Captain, this is Lieutenant Singhe. I have the conn. We’re under way cold iron, en route to anchorage B4.”
“Very well.”
“Do you have any orders for the conn?”
“The standing orders will remain in effect until further notice.” He stood waiting, but no one said anything. After a moment more, he went out on the wing, to consult again with the grimacing pilot.
He told the XO he’d meet with the wardroom that afternoon. When the anchor was down and holding and the divers’ barge was alongside, Almarshadi called the bridge to say they were ready. Dan glanced down a ladderway on his way aft to see a steady stream of sweaty sailors hustling along the main deck passageway. Curious, he called down. They were coming back from up forward, where each had dropped a five-inch shell off at the forward magazine, then headed aft for another.
Standing in the torn-up passageway, he examined the maze of pipes and ductwork in the overhead. Noting dust, flaking paint, the evidence of too-casual maintenance, but not really thinking of that yet. Mulling, instead, how he was going to roll in, and fighting a gut-worm of nerves. Shit, you’d think he’d have gotten over this by now. But apparently not.
He’d taken on troubled ships before. Gaddis. Horn. But Savo Island was a major command, the kind of unit the Navy expected to be forged of hardcore blackshoe haze-gray steel through and through. Instead something had infected and dispirited her crew. He hoped they could avoid a dry-docking. That’d get them under way faster, and a ship under way was happier and tighter.
But fixing a damaged crew could be harder than repairing a damaged hull.
He remembered Imerson’s tortured glance, and his muttered, “They needed a scapegoat.” Had Savo’s last skipper been the victim of a deeper problem? Or had he been the problem?
He wouldn’t have long to make that determination, and figure out what to do about it.
“Attention on deck,” Almarshadi shouted. Twenty men and women around the long blue-leatherette-covered table and in the lounge area started to their feet. A few he’d already met, the major department heads, as they’d come up to the bridge that morning. Cheryl Staurulakis, from an old Navy family, was his operations officer. Hermelinda Garfinkle-Henriques was the supply officer. Ollie Uskavitch was Weapons. It turned out he already knew his chief engineer. Bart Danenhower, a black-mustached Baylor grad, wore a blue-striped locomotive driver’s cap along with his ragged coveralls. He’d gained weight, and Dan recognized him only with difficulty; he’d been the repair officer on Horn. Almarshadi — his exec — was standing off to the side, wringing his hands.
They all looked so very damn young. Even the lieutenant commanders. How savvy and grizzled his own department heads had seemed, back when he’d first joined the aging and foredoomed Reynolds Ryan. Which lay now deep in the Irish Sea, some of those same men sleeping with her.
He shook his head, dismissing those memories. The glances of these young officers were all pinned to his chest. To the racks of ribbons that signified that, like the Cowardly Lion, he’d once or twice been brave.
Forget that, too. He started to gesture them to sit, then left them standing. “Good afternoon. I’ll make this brief. I’ll be putting my guidance out in detail in the form of a printed command philosophy and changes to the operations and regulations manual. But I wanted you to hear a few things from me personally.
“First of all, and above alclass="underline" I believe in you. I’ve looked over your records, and this is a solid wardroom. As far as I’m concerned, those who fouled up have already paid. I’ll trust you, and I expect you to trust me.”