The Passage (11 page)

Read The Passage Online

Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
8.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“After the soldiers left, we all came out and looked around. I, too, came out, and I sat down beside Raimondo, who was still alive, but not for long.
“‘Armando,' he said to me, his mouth crushed from where they beat him, ‘it's no good. We've got to make a change here. Everybody together, we've got to make a change.'
“Then he died. And that night, I went into the mountains to take his place.”
Graciela passed her hand over his face again and again. She thought she should be afraid, but she wasn't. Her heart didn't know what to feel—just as it had been when the children had died, the children after Coralia.
“His brother gave his life for the revolution,” Coralia said. “You see, Mamá?”
Armando muttered, “It's true. And because of him, I believed. But the bearded one betrayed us. People said he was going to bring democracy, but Fidel, he's just the same as Batista. And the prisons … decent people cannot imagine such things. It's not for this my brother died.”
“Things will change, Papi.”
“That's what I've heard for twenty years. And they don't. They only get worse.”
“I can't listen to this,” said Coralia. Her face was hard in the candlelight. The door clacked behind her, and they were alone.
“We lost her,” he said, and his voice was so sad, it made her feel like crying now at last.
“She'll always be ours, Armando.”
“No, her soul belongs to them now.” He sighed, glanced around with his sightless eyes, then gestured her closer with a little motion of his fingers. “Do you remember when you tried to kill me with grandfather's machete—”
She smiled. “Yes.”
“Are you glad you missed?”
“Yes.”
He'd been smiling, but gradually it faded. “There's something I have to tell you. You remember when I was in the camp—not this time, the first time, on the Isle of Pines—”
“You never talked about it.”
“I know, because I was ashamed. I was afraid; they beat and threatened us.” He paused. “They released me because I gave in.”
“Armando—”
“Three years was long enough. I surrendered. I went to their indoctrination. I memorized Marx and Che; I signed petitions against the Yankees. Who cares, right? What did they do for us at the Playa Girón? But there were others who held out till they died. For giving up, I was ashamed … but in my heart, I never was one of them.”
“I know, Armando. You don't need to tell me that.”
“I thought I'd outlive them … someday it would change … but now I don't think I will.” He squeezed his eyes shut, and she looked away, understanding that he was weeping.
“Then what do we do,
mi vida
?”
“For me, it's too late,” Armando whispered, staring into a darkness that must, she thought, be blacker than any night. “For me, the time has come to leave this place. But my son—” He put his hand out, and as if he could see, it came to rest lightly on her, right where the baby was. “My son—I want him to be free.”
She watched his face in the guttering light of the candle, not believing for a long time that at last Armando Guzman Diéguez, cane cutter, son of a mechanic, and the man she had loved all her life, was dead.
Charleston
T
HE next week, the next to the last in the yard, took them into July. A high-pressure area stalled over the coast and the temperature climbed into the high nineties. Right on schedule, the air conditioning in
Barrett's
living spaces went down. Vysotsky kept driving them to get the remaining work done. Dan had to keep his guys late. When he did that, he stayed aboard, too, so the only time he left the ship was Wednesday evening, when he took Beverly to dinner. They didn't talk much. She looked tired, and she complained about her remedial math students. It was late when they got back, and he stayed overnight.
The next morning, a lieutenant and two first-class from the squadron staff came aboard for a surprise classified-material inspection. They fanned out, sealing all the safes and vaults. Then they disappeared with Harper, the classified materials custodian, for the inventory.
The same morning, Dan and Norm Cash sat down in the supply office with a civilian auditor from the Supply Center to try again to figure out what Marion Sipple had done with $15,700 in cash, $22,786.80 in controlled equipage, $900 in silver bars, and $176,218 in maintenance components before stepping or slipping off
Barrett
's brow to his death. The auditor was young and good-looking, but he barely noticed her legs. When they finally wrapped, he was so soaked that he had to go back to his room for a quick shower and change before touring his spaces.
He heard the shouting as he stepped into CIC. What now? he thought tiredly. He pushed the curtains aside and went into the little separate sonar room, ready to chew ass. He found Harper and Chief Fowler nose-to-nose and yelling.
“Knock it off. I said, knock it off, you two!”
“This son of a bitch is telling me I can't fix my fucking equipment.”
“It's not
your
fucking equipment—”
“Okay, that's enough. Chief Warrant, out of here. Chief Fowler, wait for me in my stateroom. Right now.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
Fowler, scowling, threw his clipboard against a safe behind the operators' chairs and stormed out. Harper shrugged, then sauntered out. Dan asked one of the petty officers, “Pezdirtz, what was that all about?”
“Not sure, sir. All I know, we were sitting around going over some sound spectra when the Super Goat come in and started pulling the access cover off number-one stack. Chief Fowler told him to get his hands off his gear. That's when it started.”
“Don't call him ‘Super Goat.' He's Chief Warrant Officer Harper.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay … . Did you see the command master chief about your bonus?”
“Yes, sir. I'm set. Thirteen thousand bucks in two increments for another four-year hitch.”
“Good deal.” Dan slapped his back and left, thinking he had to cut Casey Kessler in on whatever the resolution was. Then he remembered the division officer wasn't aboard. He'd taken a draft of guys over to damage control school; they'd lucked into twenty billets
Aylwin
had canceled out of.
The chief warrant was out by the antisubmarine air controller's station, glaring at the blank tote board. Dan said, “Outside.” He led the way up a deck and out onto the open air. The yard opened below them. A crane rumbled by; a helicopter sank toward a pad on the base. He said tightly, “How long have you been in the Navy, Jay?”
“Since shrimp learned to whistle.”
“Knock off the shit. How many years?”
“Twenty-eight, why?”
“You know why! That's long enough to know not to settle your differences in front of the whole fucking crew. What is this with you and Fowler? I heard something before—”
“Oh, the son of a bitch has a red hair up his ass about anybody else touchin' his goddamn equipment. He's a goddamn old maid is what it is. Just between you and me, I think he's a little south of the line. I ain't saying he'd suck a dick, but he'd hold it in his mouth.”
“I haven't had any complaints about him from anybody else.” Harper slid a knife out, clicked it open, and started cleaning his fingernails as he leaned against the bulkhead. “So it's me? I don't think so, Hoss. Look, you decide. There's gonna be some intense antisub ops when we hit Gitmo. The ASWO console keeps going
down, and I think the problem's in the feed from the sonar stack. You want that ping jockey homesteading his equipment, sitting on a four-decibel loss? Or you want me to take him down on the pier and show him what's inside the fucking piñata?” Harper held up a fist.
Dan sighed, looking down and across the pier to where the old destroyer was getting her final coat of haze gray. He wished abruptly that they were all far at sea, away from the yards, the heat, everything that fucked up a sailor's life. “Neither. I'll talk to him. But you've got to make an effort, too. He's right about one thing: It
is
his gear. He sits on it twenty-four a day under way.”
Harper sucked a tooth, leaning out. Dan followed his eyes down. At the bottom of
Barrett's
sheer, like a moat at the foot of a castle's wall, a ribbon of river separated her from the pier. A gull floated in that narrow strip of calm water, oblivious to looming steel and concrete. Harper took out a quarter, bombardier-aimed it, and let go. Halfway down, the wind caught it and it curved away and hit the water a yard from the bird. It swam toward the splash and dabbled its bill.
“Well, sometimes maybe I do come on too hard-assed. Want me to go scratch his ears, make him purr?”
“That might not be out of place.”
“I'll take care of it. Hey, you like to sail?”
He remembered as if from another life sailing in Newport with Betts and Nan—the baby just big enough for a life jacket; the hard wind, cool-edged even in summer up there; the sail, struggling like a living thing in the sunlight; her arms, tanned dark as a Polynesian's; body outlined by the sun under thin cotton … . “Yeah. Haven' t done it for a while, though.”
“Saturday's supposed to be nice. Want to slam a few brews, do a little sailing?”
“You have a boat?”
“A little one. Fun to kick around in.” Harper clicked the knife closed and put it away. “What you say? Not gonna be a lot of free time once we hit Gitmo.”
“Might be fun. I'll get back to you. Okay, I'm going to go see Fowler now. Next time you go into his space, make a point of asking permission in front of his guys if you can work on his gear. Got that? A sense of ownership, that's good. Let's make it work for us.”
Harper nodded, passing a hand over his bald spot. Dan left him standing there against the lifelines.
 
 
HE found Fowler pacing outside his stateroom. “Come on in, Chief,” he said, opening the door. His roommate frowned up from
a pile of papers. Dan closed it and said, “Well, maybe we can talk out here. Look, I told the chief warrant to back off. It's your gear; he can't work on it without your say-so. But you need to lighten up, too, Chief.”
Fowler stood silent, molding invisible spheres with his hands. Finally, he said, “Sir, I don't want him in my spaces—
at all”
.
This was unexpected. He studied the chiefs face. Sonarmen were all a little strange, true. If they didn't start that way, staring into a screen twelve hours a day made them weird. And now that Harper had pointed it out, Fowler
did
seem sort of … fussy. In one way, that was good; he was great on the paperwork end. But Dan didn't know yet whether he was going to cut it as a supervisor, running the stacks watch after watch. Dan remembered the cramped, dirty sonar room of USS
Reynolds Ryan
. He remembered in the soles of his feet the week they'd spent tracking a submarine that refused to surface, refused to identify itself as a winter Arctic storm gradually tore the old destroyer apart. He blinked and said harshly, “What the hell are you talking about?”
Fowler wilted. His narrow shoulders slumped and his eyes slid aside. “I don't know,” he mumbled. “Just don't like it.”
A seaman came around the corner and they stood apart to let him pass. Dan said, “Look, I don't know what the two of you have going, but we won't have time for personality conflicts at Gitmo. You guys are going to have to work it out. Any questions?”
“No, sir,” Fowler said, still shifting the invisible balls from one hand to the other.
 
 
HE didn't go to lunch. Instead, he changed into gym gear and went for a run, dodging forklifts and trucks. He ran hard and felt pleasantly tired when he climbed the brow again. As he faced the ensign, then showed the petty officer of the watch his ID card, he resolved to cut down on the drinking and try to get more sleep.
He started the afternoon by clearing out his in box in the department office. He signed off on changes to quarterly maintenance schedules, looked over the revisions to a tacmemo, signed three outgoing speedletters. At the bottom of the box was a special request chit from ETSN Sanderling to get Thursday afternoons off to take a class at a junior college. Harper had checked “disapproved.” Dan started to, too, then stopped. He got two or three chits a week from Sanderling. It was annoying, but that shouldn't mean each one didn't merit consideration. He put it in his hold box to think about.
He gave the other things to Cephas, the departmental yeoman,
to distribute and then checked his wheel book. Time to see how yard work was wrapping up. He grabbed the clipboard off the bulkhead and went out.
Things looked good up forward. Horsehead's gunner's mates were greasing the new guiderails for sea. The other jobs were on schedule or close to it. His spirits rose a bit. A centerfold in one of the missile-maintenance rooms reminded him of Sibylla Baird. He'd called twice but hadn't caught her in yet.
But as soon as he walked into the computer room, he knew something was wrong. A portable air conditioner was whining, but the air was still close. All the equipment fans were on. Mainhardt and Dawson and the other DSs were staring at logic diagrams, plugging and unplugging boards. He propped an elbow on a workbench and waited till Mainhardt glanced up. “What's broke, Chief?”
“Can't get these subprograms to run, sir.”
“Which system?”
The data processing chief blinked, bringing himself back to the world around him. “New Version Three software for the ACDADS. It's supposed to have a self-installation feature; you just get it talking to the operating tape and it erases the old code and writes the new in. But it ain't working.”
“Why not?”
“Williams, answer the lieutenant. He's been on it all night, sir, trying to get it to run.”
DS2 Williams was tall and black. He wouldn't look directly at Dan. He paused after every few words. The pockets under his eyes were deep enough to sink a cue ball into. He said, “I figure it's a configuration control problem, Lieutenant. The … software contractor has got a computer lash-up that's a little too unique. The system they built this version on don't look quite like what we've got here.”
“You mean different computers?”
“No, Lieutenant, I mean just little differences, like the RAM configuration, or the interface lineup. Maybe they're using a different version of operating system software. Things can get fouled up easy, sir. They ain't supposed to, but they do, and more often than they should. The result is, they make a tape and send it out to us, we try to load it, and it craps.”
“Can you locate the problem?”
“Trying, but we don't have the tools the whiz kids got. I think it's in the software interface between the operating system and the NTDS module.”
“Go back a step,” said Dan.
Williams blinked at the far wall. “Okay, sir, you know how NTDS works. The net control station does the roll call … polls
each participating unit in turn for bearing and range to its contacts.”
“I'm with you so far.” Dan knew the basics of the Naval Tactical Data System. After the Pacific Fleet's hammering by kamikazes in World War II, it was obvious that grease pencils, plot boards, and voice radio nets would never cope with jets and missiles. So NTDS did it electronically. The radar operators on each ship identified and tracked incoming aircraft on their consoles. Computers derived the track data (course, speed, altitude, identification, threat level) and transmitted it automatically to the net control station. The carrier put together the big picture and rebroadcast it, so that if one ship got a contact, everyone in the task force knew about it in seconds.
“Okay, and you know that the most common problem is that the NCS and the PUs can't talk to each other, usually because the crypto gear ain't set up right. But it's all … gotta be encrypted because if the bad guys can read it they can see where our defense is, our combat air patrol and missile ships, and skate around them and plaster the shit out of the carrier.”

Other books

Savage Hearts by Chloe Cox
Hustle Me by Jennifer Foor
Alien Caged by Tracy St. John
Escaping Fate by Delsheree Gladden
Dichos de Luder by Julio Ramón Ribeyro
Shadow Girl by Patricia Morrison