The lieutenant flinched away. Dan said, “Okay. All right. But you’re saying, what our two fatalities are from, might not be the same as the… Savo crud?”
“It might. It might not.” Grissett looked bewildered for just a moment, before the curtain of professional detachment dropped again.
Dan tried again. “What did Scharner just die from, then?”
“Looks to me like some kind of atypical pneumonia. Leading, I guess, to something like toxic shock syndrome.”
“Atypical how?”
“In that we didn’t see the progressive fluid buildup, the other classic signs of pneumonia. High fever. Heavy mucus production. Breathing difficulty, pain in the chest, so forth.”
“Instead—”
“They just wake up dead.”
Dan had about three dozen more questions, but he needed to get back to the bridge. He left them there, gathered around the bunk, no one saying much. Except for a sharp intake of breath from Garfinkle-Henriques, when Grissett rolled the body over to begin taking samples.
Dan was climbing the ladder when the nausea returned. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, his stomach had to spew out something raw and dark inside him, right now. He clamped his hand over his mouth, barely holding it as he undogged a door and bolted outside. It was raining, a soft mist that felt like part of the clouds. Its breath cooled his face as he craned over the rail, gagging. Fortunately he was on the lee side, opposite the still-accompanying destroyer.
Above all else, he didn’t want them to see that.
He stopped in his at-sea cabin to rinse his mouth. It was raining hard when he got up to the bridge. Mitscher rode a mile to the east, her haze gray melting in and out of the squall’s skirts. The Chinese destroyer lay close to the freighter, as if protecting her from further harassment.
Staurulakis updated in laconic sentences. Mytsalo was on his way back. The Chinese had sent a boarding team to Patchooli. He heard her out, looking away. Scharner’s death only made it worse. Something was stalking his crew. Deadly, persistent, and it was taking down more and more people. Not only that, the aftereffects were worrisome: difficulty sleeping, malaise, weakness, continuing lung problems, something like asthma.
He stayed on the bridge until the RHIB was back aboard. Mytsalo saluted, but Dan was in no mood to hear his report. He leaned back in his chair, the bridge absolutely quiet. No one spoke, not even in the usual murmurs, as Savo slowly hauled around to southward.
He hadn’t figured to get any sleep that night. Hadn’t been able to eat anything; felt like he’d never be able to swallow again. He didn’t need psychoanalysis to know why. The most shameful and miserable day in his career. Maybe the worst, for the United States Navy, in its two hundred — plus years. It had been surprised, defeated, stabbed in the back, and crushed — but it had never backed down.
Until now. He shuddered, a vomity taste still lingering, and pulled the blanket over himself.
The CO’s buzzer woke him. He clawed up, coughing and hacking. Something was wrong with his throat. The darkened room was distorted. Larger than he remembered. Was this his cabin? Dark shapes loomed and leered. A sensation like rough noodles sandpapered his tongue. He fumbled a vague response to whatever the OOD was asking. Hermelinda repeated her statement, tone insistent, and Dan finally understood: a message from Strike One; the Pakistani armed forces were going to full alert. He mumbled, “Okay, got it… How far’re we from Karachi?… Bearing, range to Wuhan?… Let’s set self-defense condition three. Just in case. And, uh, have the chief corpsman report to me. Yeah, now.”
With no transition, in the blink of an eye, Grissett was by his bedside, shining a flashlight on a thermometer. “Fever. Dry cough. How you feeling, Captain?”
“Like… shit.”
“Afraid you’ve got it, sir. The Savo crud. Or whatever you want to call it. Take two of these. Drink this. How’s that trachea? Any breathing difficulties?”
“No… not yet.” But his lungs were wheezing and crackling, deep down, when he breathed out. He fought panic. Unable to breathe… back at the Pentagon, inhaling smoke.…
“Brought you up an inhaler, in case. Don’t be too proud to use it. I’ll tell the XO you’re down hard.”
The corpsman eased the door closed. Dan coughed and coughed. When he got up to urinate, he staggered into the side of the little head compartment. Only its tight confines saved him from falling. Having voided, he felt his way back out into the cabin. Clicked on the shaving light and stared at the mirror.
Remembering the skipper of USS Reynolds Ryan, and how one wrong order, when he’d been sick, had killed a ship and most of her crew.
12
He passed the rest of the night in fevered dreams, each with some aspect of frustration or terror. He took Savo, now a huge silver spaceship, down to land on an asteroid where she displaced all the air, leaving them unable to breathe on the surface. Yet they had to accomplish some shadowy mission… He didn’t remember the rest, but each dream was unimaginably detailed, vivid, scary. Each time he was about to die, or the missile was about to hit, he battled to wakefulness, panting and coughing. He sucked on the inhaler in the dim light from the radio remote. Listened to distant creaking, voices. Then let his eyelids drag shut again.
Cheryl woke him at 0800. Grissett hovered behind her, with Longley in the doorway. They looked concerned. “Sir, we doing all right?” the exec murmured. Her hand hovered over his brow, but she didn’t actually touch him.
“Yeah… still here.” He coughed and cleared his throat. Tried to roll out, but found he just had too little horsepower to sit upright. “Um, maybe some coffee—”
“Right here, Captain. And some nice rye toast, with butter.” Longley set the tray down, poured half a cup. Dan eyed the plate, but it made him feel like hurling.
“Try to eat,” Grissett said. “Even if it comes up again, you’ll get some nourishment.”
“Look, you guys don’t need to fuss over me.” He gathered all his strength and hauled himself upright. Then grabbed the bunk frame just before he went down. “Where… where’s Wuhan? Mitscher? Pittsburgh? What about this increased alert status?”
Staurulakis explained, but Dan couldn’t get traction on the answers. Something about the Chinese task group re-forming south of Karachi. Something else about submarine activity off Singapore. He sagged back into the bunk. “I’ll be up to the bridge in a little while. If anything serious goes down, Commander Staurulakis has command authority. Chief, Longley, you can witness that.”
Staurulakis patted his blanket. “Stay here, Captain. There’s nothing to worry about.” Grissett drew a glass of water from the tap and set it and two white oval pills beside the bed.
The door closed, leaving him staring at the overhead. “Nothing to worry about.” With the newly confident and aggressive Chinese moving into what might very well be a blocking position, and tensions escalating between Pakistan and India?
If only that were true.
He slept until 1030, when guilt goaded him out of bed. He felt very slightly better, or at least stronger, though every muscle ached, his head still felt stuffed with bronze wool, and his thinking was not exactly first-class. He started to shave, but his hands shook; he quit after the second sting that meant he’d cut himself. He stepped into yesterday’s coveralls, made sure he had a pen and his Hydra, and lurched into the passageway.