“All right, Lenson, I have my N3 on the line here and he confirms your previous direction to board and search.”
“Yes sir. We have Mitscher on radar. She’ll be here in half an hour. My intentions now are to continue—”
“However, in view of the lack of flag country authorization, I’m countermanding. Break off contact and depart the scene. Confirm. Over.”
Dan and Staurulakis exchanged startled stares. “Ah… say again, Dark Horse? You’re directing me to recall the boarding team? They’re already aboard and executing.“
“You already boarded? Recall your people at once.”
He coughed into his fist, not believing what he was hearing. “Sir, with all due respect… We have a Chinese warship alongside that’s just ordered me to disengage. I refused to do so. Is this a signal we want to send?”
His Hydra crackled. Dan cursed, but hit the Transmit button. “Matador. Go ahead, Matador One.”
“Sir, this is Ensign Mytsalo. Forward hold’s clean. But they’re trying to stop me going aft.”
The satcomm phone said, “This is Dark Horse. Confirm receipt of disengage orders.”
Dan cleared his throat again. Then he held the handset out from his face, over the sea, where the wind came up against the wing bulwark, so that the moving air blustered in it. He said, “Dark Horse, this is Matador. You are breaking up badly. Say again all after, ‘I have my N3 on the line.’ Over.”
Staurulakis blanched. She backed up against the door. He told her, “Let’s get Red Hawk back aboard. He’s out there burning fuel to no good purpose. And have him make a close pass over this guy to starboard on his way in.” He clicked the Transmit button on the handset in the middle of an angry-sounding tirade and said, “Dark Horse, Dark Horse, this is Matador, Matador. Say again your last transmission. You are breaking up. Suspect sync problems. I am checking settings on my cards. Over.”
“Sir, what are you doing?”
“Take it easy, Cheryl. Remember Nelson at Copenhagen? He couldn’t see the recall flag. Because he was holding his telescope to his blind eye.” He sighed, sorry he’d let her in on his deliberate mishearing of the order. Far better, for her, to not know.
“Sir, you can’t deliberately disobey.”
“I’m not disengaging on a Chinese order.” Dan nodded to the ship that rolled a hundred yards off. “That’s not the signal we want to send.”
His exec had a look in her eye he’d never seen before. The kind of look Maryk must have given Captain Queeg, just before he relieved him. And the dead silence on the bridge told him that if she tried, the others might back her up. “Sir, you’re not disengaging on his word. You’re doing it on Fifth Fleet’s orders.”
“Fifth Fleet isn’t eyeball to eyeball, Cheryl. I am. And backing down is the wrong message to transmit.”
She glanced back into the pilothouse, then leaned in. “Captain, sure you’re not getting some kind of testosterone thing going? And you’re putting Max and his men at risk over there.”
“It’s my responsibility. But can we keep it between us, until we see how it all shakes out? I don’t want you catching fire too, if I have to go down.”
The 21MC on the wing lit. “Bridge, Radio. Fifth Fleet flash message. Direct to CO. Is he up there? Shall I read it?”
Staurulakis pressed the lever. She said evenly, not meeting Dan’s eyes, “He’s here. Go ahead.”
“From: Fifth Fleet. TO: CO, USS Savo Island. Break off inspection of Pakistani-flagged vessel M/V Patchooli and resume preparations for Exercise Malabar. Confirm receipt.”
The bridge was quiet again. The helm creaked as the helmsman corrected.
At last Dan nodded, reluctantly. He turned back to the ship opposite, and raised the megaphone again. Said across the water, “We are ceasing our inspection. Please stand clear while we recover our boarding team.”
“This is Wuhan. Thank you for your cooperation. We will remain in the vicinity.”
He coughed and lowered the loud hailer, numb, detached. The U.S. Navy had backed down, at sea, in the face of a threat. He swallowed again and again, and succeeded, just, in managing not to throw up, although he located the bridge wastebasket in the corner of his eye just in case.
He was cursing to himself when he turned, and saw the chief corpsman’s sagging face.
Mitscher reported in by VHF, but by then Dan was off the bridge. He was in engineering female berthing, experiencing a chilling sense of déjà vu.
The petty officer lay curled like a comma, turned away in her bunk, face to the bulkhead, where an iPod played softly. A flash flickered as a corpsman bent in with a camera. “No one’s touched her?” Dan asked the master-at-arms.
“No sir. Couple of her friends came down to check on her, take her to chow. Found her like this.”
“She was on the sick list,” Grissett said from behind them. “From yesterday. She complained of malaise and muscle aches. Had a dry, unproductive cough and a slightly elevated temperature. A hundred and one, I think. Maybe a hundred and two. I issued ibuprofen and prescribed fluids and bed rest.”
The compartment was empty except for them; the petty officer’s division chief; Bart Danenhower; and McMottie, the leading chief. Dan leaned in close to examine the face he’d last seen at mast, taut with accusation and outrage. Now Petty Officer Sherri Scharner looked as if she were zonked out after an exhausting watch. Only a fleck of brownish froth on her upper lip appeared out of the ordinary. Dan reached out, then drew his hand back as Grissett cleared his throat. “You’re going to take samples?” he asked the chief corpsman.
“Yessir, respiratory fauna. Urine and stool samples.” Rubber gloves snapped, and the corpsman laid out tubes, swabs, and needles on a stainless tray. Talc smoked the air. Grissett added, “In view of, uh, what’s been happening, we better take a vaginal swab, too.”
Dan blinked, then realized what he was saying. He looked at the others in the compartment. All male. “Um, how about holding for a couple of minutes, until we can get either the exec or Lieutenant Singhe down here. No, wait, maybe Garfinkle-Henriques. I’d just feel more comfortable if there was a… you know what I’m saying.” They nodded and stepped back. Dan jerked his head toward the door and headed that way. Grissett accompanied him.
“Chief, I’ve got to get back to the bridge. There’s a situation I have to make sure stays sorted out. But we’ve had this conversation before.”
“We did, Captain. In the Med. When Seaman Goodroe died.”
Uncannily like this, except the previous victim had been a strapping young man. “I need your best guess as to what’s going on,” Dan told him. “We reported this and got nowhere. We scrubbed down all the ductwork, but that only bought us a break. How many of our crew are down with this now?”
Hermelinda Garfinkle-Henriques clattered down the ladder. Dan explained to the supply officer what was going on. She frowned and went on into the compartment. Grissett murmured, glancing back at where the supply officer was leaning over the body, “Sir, I have to caution you about drawing direct lines between whatever most of our people are reporting, which is some kind of flulike illness, and the deaths. They may be linked. They may not— Don’t let her touch it! We don’t want contamination.”