China Sea (36 page)

The warship shrank steadily, moving off to the southwest. Dan got a bearing and best-guessed her course. Then he cranked the sound-powered phone and asked Armey when they were going to have the emergency generator started and how soon they could get way on again.

Doolan slammed a big blue book down in front of him.
Jane
's
,
an old edition. Doolan flipped it open to an outline drawing. Dan stared, grinding his mouth with his knuckles.

“That what we just saw?”

“Sure looks like it. Without this top hamper here and those things aft of the stack—are those cranes?”

“Floatplane catapults.” The weapons officer lifted his hand, revealing the text. “Get this: Built for the Imperial Japanese Navy. Katori-class cruisers. Commissioned 1940 through '41. Most of them lost in WW Two. One used as a test ship at Bikini. China got the last one afloat as reparations after the war. The Nationalists left it in Shanghai in '49. This says it was laid up, going to be broken up.”

Neilsen, behind them: “We could use some help with this stretcher, sir.”

They grabbed the head end of the litter, helping to ease Tosito down the ladder on his way to sick bay, then came back to the chart table and stared down at the book. Dan was trying to wrap his mind around the concept of an ex-Japanese cruiser, a ghost from the Second World War, roaming the sea as a Chinese commerce raider. He couldn't imagine a more intimidating one. “Obviously somebody decided not to scrap it. What kind of guns were those? Does it say?”

“Four six-inch fifty-cal and scads of AA. Range not given, but it's got to be more than our five-inch.”

Suddenly all the radio remotes began to hiss, the radarscope cooling fans came on, pilot lights winked to life. Dan pushed buttons. “Main Control, Bridge: We have power back up here. When are we going to be able to move?”

Sansone said they were relighting one-alfa now and should have enough steam for steerageway in fifteen to twenty minutes. Dan considered, staring around the horizon. It was empty now, except for the hurtling clouds, the everlasting march of swells, and the white bulk of the
Marker Eagle.
He said to Doolan, “OK, call away the boarding party. Let's see just how bad things are over there.”

*   *   *

THE boarding party radioed back that everyone aboard the merchant was dead. They had found the master on the bridge, shot through the head. The other crew members were either dead or missing, presumably lost overboard. Hundreds of spent 7.62 × 39 cartridge casings on the deck told the rest of the story. There had apparently been a hasty effort to scuttle, perhaps triggered by
Gaddis
's sudden appearance on the horizon. The hull forward had been blown in either by a shell exploding close aboard or by some form of demolition charge. Dom Colosimo reported water coming in steadily, too much, in his judgment, to stanch with the men and gear they had available. He'd gotten enough watertight doors dogged to slow the flooding, but that was all they could do, postpone her final plunge for a few hours.

Dan stood on the bridge after he acknowledged, scratching his chin and thinking. Remembering the bluff captain who'd been so sure he could handle anything. His sparrowlike, vivacious American wife. Both dead.… And wondering how he was going to find, let alone attack, a ship that outgunned him four to one, that could range over a vast area of ocean, that operated in conjunction with fast patrol craft, that carried missiles he was helpless to retaliate against or counter.

A few minutes later, Dom called back to announce that their first report had been in error. There was one survivor. A woman who identified herself as Roberta Wedlake had barricaded herself in a laundry room behind the captain's cabin with a revolver. She wanted to stay with the
Marker Eagle
and her husband. Dan said that was impossible. The ro-ro was going down. She'd have to gather what personal gear she needed and come back to
Gaddis
in the RHIB. Then he added, “Dom, I'm going to test your resourcefulness. Can you and Pistol locate any hose over there? Fire hose or maybe something down in the engine spaces? As large-diameter as you can handle. Something that looks like it'll float.”

An hour later, with the white ship's bow riding noticeably lower in the water, the reservist reported back that Pistolesi had things jury-rigged about as well as they could expect. Dan moved in then and put
Gaddis
as close alongside upwind as he dared. Both ships had been drifting downwind all this time, propelled by the steady monsoon. The huge sail area of the merchant drove her faster than the relatively low frigate. The deck gang fired over a shot line, followed by a nine-thread. They hauled back a heavy manila line with one of the merchant's fire hoses slung beneath it. The snipes toiled cursing down on the main deck, spattered by surprisingly cold breaking seas, but at last reported they had a makeshift connection at the fuel riser. Dan told Colosimo to start the pumps when he was ready.

The two ships rode downwind coupled as if for a battlefield transfusion for an hour and a half, till
Gaddis
's tanks were overflowing-full with diesel from the doomed merchant's bunkers. It wasn't Distillate Fuel, Marine, but Armey assured Dan they could adjust the sprayer plates and burners to accommodate it. After which Dan cast his end of the rig loose for the sinking ro-ro to take down with her, circled around to the lee side, and ordered the inflatables back aboard.

The RHIBs plowed slowly back, buffeted by seas driven higher by a rising wind. They were loaded deep with the food, grease, consumables, and spare parts he'd ordered them to ransack the sinking ship for. It wasn't looting, exactly.
Gaddis
needed fuel and stores, and there was no point letting them go to the bottom. Behind them
Marker Eagle
was listing to starboard, down so far by the head now that her foredeck was awash in the breaking rollers.

When the boats were yet a couple of hundred yards off he could make out the woman's face. It was pale as a patch of spume, cupped by short dark hair. She was gazing up at the frigate as
Gaddis
loomed closer, then towered over her as the boat slowed, heaving violently, the coxswain snatching a sea painter tossed down from the main deck. Dan waved at her from the bridge but couldn't tell if she saw him, if she recalled him, if she recognized him; could not tell whether she was seeing, at that moment, anything at all.

20

THE next morning he stood in sick bay as the ship heaved and strained around them, feeling the delicate bones within Bobbie Wedlake's motionless hand. She lay huddled beneath a sheet on the upper bunk, the reliefs of her spindly arms and legs reminding him of a fallen bird. Her face was colorless as wax. The manic energy he'd seen in Singapore was gone. The corpsman had given her some kind of tranquilizer, but she was awake enough to talk. She'd told Dan what she knew, what she'd seen and heard during the boarding. He'd told her Eric had died a hero; she could be proud of him. She squeezed her eyes shut and murmured, barely moving her lips, “If he hadn't fought back, they'd have let us go.”

“You better not stay too much longer, Captain,” said Neilsen.

“I don't think they would have, Bobbie. Not these guys.”

“I told him, ‘You're not in the bloody Royal Navy anymore.' I heard them shooting down below. He told me to go to the hidey-hole, bar the door, and stay away from it, and that's what I did. He said he'd come back down and get me, when they left, not to open up for anybody till then.” She rolled her head on the pillow, then abruptly sat up. Clutched her temples, pulling the skin around her eyes back till he could see her skull beneath the flesh. “Oh, God. I feel so dizzy.”

The corpsman rushed over, putting his arm around her shoulder and giving Dan a warning glare. “You're gonna be fine,” Nielsen said. “All you need is rest. Do you want another shot?”

“No, I don't want any more fucking shots. And you get away from me.” She pushed him away and swung her legs over and slid down. Dan took her arm and she swayed there for a few seconds, fighting the ship's motion, then sagged and collapsed back against the frame of the bunk. “Maybe I'll try that again later,” she whispered.

Neilsen came back, silently disapproving, and together they lifted her back into the bunk. “You come up to the bridge whenever you feel up to it,” Dan told her. “Meantime, I'm going to be doing some thinking.”

Her eyelids fluttered closed, and a moment later her breathing smoothed out.

Lenson bent to check on Tosito, in the lower bunk. The sonarman chief was snoring stertorously, a plasma drip taped to his outboard arm. Dan crooked a finger at Neilsen. He asked for a prognosis in the passageway. Neilsen said the chief was stable; it seemed to be a clean wound; he was full of antibiotics and plasma. They just had to wait.

“OK, you seem to be coping. I just want to make sure you keep all accesses to sick bay locked at all times. If you need a piss break or want to go to chow, call Marsh Mellows and get one of his masters-at-arms down here to relieve you. Don't leave her alone, and don't let her leave.”

“She's restricted to sick bay? Didn't you just invite her to the bridge?”

“I changed my mind,” Dan told him. “I forgot we've still got somebody aboard who likes to kill people. Understand? Keep her here as long as you can. And don't leave her alone for a second without a guard.”

*   *   *

THEY met in his sea cabin, Dan, Jim Armey, Chick Doolan, and Dom Colosimo. Dan hadn't invited Juskoviac. Zabounian was on the bridge, holding her bow on into the increasingly heavy seas, and Englehart was still getting the missile damage repaired and the radars back up. The first thing Lenson told them, after getting them down around the table that the heavy pitching had wiped clear, dumping everything off onto the deck, was, “This is a council of war.”

“We're not at war, sir,” Armey said. He leaned back, his long, slim frame radiating fatigue and tension even as it relaxed slowly into the cushions of the settee.

“Yes, we are. Ask Chief Tosito. But first, how we doing with that diesel fuel?”

The chief engineer cleared his throat. “Well, what we got from the merchant tests real close to the JP-5 we use in the generators. So I changed out the burner barrels to a smaller orifice, to tune for the right air/fuel mixture. Then I checked for leaks on the burner front. The flash point for JP-5 and DFM is the same at 140 degrees, but the diesel's a lot less viscous. You'll burn white due to the air/fuel mix—”

“Burn white. More white smoke?”

“Correct.”

“Are we going to make as many RPMs?”

“I guess the short answer, we ain't gonna make thirty-one knots anymore no matter what we burn. We're using baling wire and Band-Aids down there, sir. And diesel burns hotter than regular fuel. More dangerous, less margin for error.” Armey hesitated. “What's this typhoon doing?”

“Robidoux says it's parked over Luzon for the moment. He's watching it.”

“Did you look in on Tostito? I've been on the bridge,” Doolan said, tapping a pencil, his face withdrawn, watchful.

“Neilsen's got him stabilized. Says the wound's clean.”

“That's good. OK. Why did you say we're at war?”

Dan leaned back and laid out an abbreviated version of Bobbie Wedlake's story.

She'd been on the bridge when the two gunboats appeared. Eric had been unconcerned at first. Then, as their shadowers drew nearer on converging courses, suddenly became agitated. He'd called all hands on deck and ordered them to man fire hoses. At that time he had sent the first distress message, the one
Gaddis
had intercepted ninety miles to the south.

The craft, which Bobbie described as large gray speedboats with guns, had closed rapidly from two directions, closing a pincers on their solitary prey. At a range of about half a mile, one had signaled them with what she called an Aldis lamp. Instead of replying or heaving to, Wedlake had increased speed and sent another distress message.

At that point, with the crew mustered and under cover, he'd opened the lockers and distributed the shotguns.

“I told him not to fight,” she'd told Dan, looking straight up at the overhead from tearless eyes. “That they'd rob us but let us go. But he said if everybody thought that way, it would just keep happening. If once in a while a master upped the price, the bastards wouldn't consider them all easy pickings.”

Dan had sat awkwardly silent, not sure what to say. It was one of those situations where there was right on both sides. It had just happened to fall out that this time the captain had gambled and lost.

The end had been signaled by a sudden burst of automatic gunfire from both boats. One had fired into the superstructure, aft of the bridge, obviously trying for the radio room. The other had let loose two spaced rounds into
Marker Eagle
's engine spaces. At that point the engineers had stopped the diesels, despite Wedlake's keeping the throttle forward from the bridge. As she lost way, the attackers had swung in and boarded over the stern. The stern ramp itself was swung up, like the drawbridge of a garrisoned castle, but a platform the men smoked and fished from off watch had been undefended. Dan nodded, remembering the Sikh watching TV there, armed with a baseball bat. The boarders had shot the lock off the door and swarmed forward through the cavernous vehicle storage area.

Several crewmen had made a stand there, firing back amid the containers and vehicles, but had been shot down.

At that point, Bobbie told him, Eric had ordered her to the hiding place. He'd prepared three spaces for an extended siege: the crew's workout room, the purser's office, and the master's cabin. She'd begged him to come with her, but he'd refused. Said his place was on the bridge. He'd given her a quick, apologetic peck on the cheek, then turned away and begun shouting at his men, as if to avoid speaking to her again. So at last she'd obeyed. Gone below, bolted the door, and dropped the steel locking bar into the brackets he'd had welded to the bulkhead after they'd been boarded in the Strait. Then crawled into the little laundry space and waited.