The Circle (23 page)

“What else?”

“What do you mean, what else? Whatever I got.”

“It's against the law. Doesn't that worry you?”

Lassard squinted in mock disbelief. “It ain't the
law,
Ensign. It's just Navy Regs. Fun and zest? Better believe it. According to Article One-twelve, fucking Coca-Cola's illegal aboard ship.”

“Do you know who tried to put me overboard?”

“I was after lookout. I was tied to those phones, man.”

“Did you tell your kinnicks to do it?”

“I might have suggested they push you around some. Not put you overboard, though.”

“That's comforting.” Dan felt his hands tighten on the arms of his chair, tighten till his fingers hurt. Too late, he was realizing how Lassard had suckered him, turned the tables. “You know something? I think you're the most dangerous man on this ship. I think you belong in the brig. Or a hospital. Yeah, a hospital. Because there's something wrong in your head.”

“Yeah, I'm Mister Psycho Bad Ass.” The cabin tilted, paused, tilted farther. Magazines shot out of Ohlmeyer's rack. Their chairs began to slide and both men half-rose, grabbing for handholds. “Jesus. Why the hell are we out in this? Look, I'll give you some advice, Lenson. Don't fuck with me. All I want's to not get hassled. You leave me alone and we'll get along fine.”

“We could do that on one condition. Stop selling drugs. And throw what you've got left overboard.”

“I'll have to think about that one real hard, boss. Maybe for two or three weeks.”

“I'm also going to search the boat.”

“Go ahead. You'll never find anything, man. Not unless you got a cop dog or something.”

“Thanks. That's a good idea. I'll request one when we get back to Newport.”

“Oh, get off it,” said Lassard, scorn in his voice. “We got you zeros figured out. You guys sit up there in your gold-braid underwear and quack-quack ‘Left rudder, right rudder,' and think you're running the show. There's so much shit happens on this ship you don't know about it isn't funny. You're living in a dream world.”

“What else goes on?”

“What, you want me to tell you? How about Bloch? He's got a half a gallon of Dark Eyes in his rack right now. How ‘bout Isaacs? The silly fucker's shitfaced half the time. I don't know how he can go around totally obliviated, breathing it right in your faces, and you just don't get it. Two of the officers, they buy shit from me all the time, get wasted ashore. And most of the machinists' mates are round-eye raiders.”

“They're what?”

“Asshole bandits, Ensign. Chocolate-divers. First-class caught two of them drillin' each other in after steering and didn't do a thing; he knew he'd never get replacements if he turned them in. Down in the hole, it's crazy down there, they strip the new recruits and string them up and cover them with grease. Talliaferro don't say nothing. There's a running poker game in the signal shack.”

“I know about that.”

“Whoa, I'm impressed. Do you know the gunners' mates rip off forty-five ammo and sell it ashore? And the ship-fitters steal copper and lead, and the ETs take meters and stuff home? Did you know one of the torpedomen porked this asshole's old lady?” He pointed with the cigarette to Cummings's desk.

“I don't believe that. I don't believe half of that. It's just scuttlebutt.”

“Keep tellin' yourself that, man. Maybe life's easier with your eyes closed. You know the captain's getting a divorce?”

“No, I didn't.” Despite his revulsion, he was interested. It would explain Packer's subterranean tension. “How do you know?”

“Duty driver's been taking him to the BOQ. June Cleaver told him to pack it in, he don't live with her and the Beav no more. Most of the lifers on this ship are divorced. How's your new frau like sitting at home alone?”

“Leave her out of it.” He decided it was time to wind up the conversation. “Slick, this is all real interesting, but the bottom line is, you've got to cut out dealing. Aside from the fact it's illegal, it's dangerous as hell to have people use aboard ship. There's just too much can go wrong. So—either you stop, and get rid of it, or I'm going to find it. Or catch you using it. When I do, I'll do whatever's necessary to get you off
Ryan.
”

The seaman laughed out loud. “Like that rabbit says, man, do it to my ass! Maybe I should turn myself in, huh? No, they'd slap me with a summary court, I'd pull twenty years. That's why I love the fucking Navy, 'cause it loves fucking me.

“No, I think I'll just go with the flow, try to enjoy myself a little when I can. Look, I got watch in half an hour. Was it good for you, Ensign? It sure was for me.”

“I think you can shove off now.”

“Sure.” Lassard sat a moment longer, still grinning, then got up. He picked up his hat. “You know, I got nothing against you personally, man. See, I figure you for a straight arrow. That's why I talked to you. I trust you, you know?”

“That's good. If you want to talk again—”

“Plus, I figure if you keep hassling me, why, you might not be lucky enough to grab the screw guard next time.”

“Get the fuck out of my stateroom.”

“See you on deck, prick,” said Lassard, and slammed the door as Dan came out of the chair.

III

THE SUBMARINE

11

Latitude 67°–0′ North, Longitude 00°–0′ East: 330 Miles NNE of Iceland

THEIR first official warning of the storm arrived during the dark hours. It was coming in from the southwest, the midnight Fleet Weather advisory said, and would pass west of them, between
Ryan
and Iceland, over the course of the next three days. As it built they could expect seventy-knot winds, gusting to ninety or more, and thirty- to thirty-five-foot seas in the vicinity of the polar low.

Around ten the sky lightened. The sun was invisible, but enough light bled through a driving wrap of cloud for Dan to see the great swells that rolled now in confused patterns, random, jagged masses, but with the prevailing seas more and more evidently from the east. By 1800, when he came on again, it was long past the brief Arctic twilight, and pitch-dark once more.

Even so, he could tell immediately that the wind was rising. Even inside the pilothouse, enclosed by steel and glass, he could hear it. Not the eerie whistle they'd lived with for days past. This was a violent, vibrating scream. And it was still building. He watched the needle on the anemometer twitch upward, wavering with each laboring buck of the ship.

He looked down at the forecastle as a sea boarded, boiling across the gear, rising like a tide till it gleamed and bulged a few feet below the whipping wipers. The phosphorescent foam glowed feebly in the light of the forward range. Aside from that, the world was black. Pancake ice clattered against the hull. He clung to the overhead wire, wondering groggily what would happen if they hit something sizable. Destroyers were compartmented, but then so was the
Titanic.

The 21MC crackled hollowly above the shriek. “Bridge, CIC,” it said under his hand. He pushed the lever twice, meaning, go ahead.

“Bridge, CIC: We have a high-altitude bogey on the air search. Racket shows Short Horn and Bee Hind radars.”

“Uh … can you translate that for me?”

“Those are Soviet airborne ASW and early-warning radars, Mr. Lenson. Assignment Ten in your JO Journal.”

The ship rolled, came back a bit, and stopped there, lying over uncertainly, like an aging dog wanting to obey but at the same time longing to curl up and rest. He pressed the lever. “Bridge, aye. Lieutenant Evlin—”

“I heard him. Right rudder, quick,” said Evlin in a low voice.

That was right; he had the conn. He tore his attention back. “Right full rudder,” he said loudly, pitching his voice against the unearthly scream.

The helmsman responded, his voice high. “Right full rudder! My rudder is right full, sir, no course given.”

We can't stay on this leg, he thought. We've got to abandon the racetrack. Find a better course, and steady up on it. He turned his head to Evlin, an invisible presence beside him. “What course, sir?”

Ryan
was trembling like a live thing under the lash of the wind. She'd started to come back upright, but now sagged off even farther to port, driven over by uncountable tons of wind pressure on the superstructure. He twisted, searching the dark for Evlin's face. The lieutenant was watching the sea.

At last the OOD reached for the phone—the captain had gone aft a few minutes earlier, after spending all day in his chair—but just then Packer came through the weather door. Spray battered through it behind him. The dank-smelling wind battled with the overheated air, then was sliced off as the door sealed. The captain's foul-weather gear was soaked. Water ran off his face like rain off a mountain.

“Get her head around,” he said. “Forget the wind. Head her into the swell.”

Dan steadied his voice before he said, “Sir, I have my rudder right full. She's not responding.”

“That so? No sweat, Mr. Lenson. Use the engines. Wind direction?”

“Veered another ten degrees, sir.”

“Eye's getting closer. But it'll be a while. Bring her on around to the right.
Carefully.
Remember you got the fish down aft. Steady on one-one-zero, see how she rides there.”

“Aye, sir. I'll watch it, but Mr. Lenson seems to be doing pretty well.”

“That's good,” said Packer, looking at him, actually seeing him, Dan felt, for the first time since he'd come on the bridge. “We can use another qualified OOD.”

“Sir, did you get the word about the high flyer?”

Packer turned to the radar, bent over it, began peeling off his soaked jacket. The boatswain helped him with the sleeves. “Yeah. It's a Bear. The antisubmarine variant. Probably out of the Kola. He's got all his gear turned on and he's doing what looks like a grid search.”

“What's he doing out here?”

“Beats me.” Packer leaned into the intercom. “Sonar, Bridge. I'm securing the racetrack due to worsening weather. Do you still hold that hundred-fifty hertz contact at zero-seven-five?”

“No sir, it faded about an hour ago.”

“Uh-huh. Well, are we wasting our time? Do you want to bring the VDS up?”

The voice of the 21MC changed, became Reed's. “ASW Officer, Captain. Sir, this is what we came out here to find out: whether the AN/SQS-thirty-five will cut it in adverse conditions.”

“Goddamn it, I know what we're
doing
here, Aaron. Right now, I'm worried about losing the damned thing.”

“I don't see that as a problem, sir. The catenary should absorb our stern motion before it affects the fish.”

“What if it doesn't? I'm thinking about bringing it up.”

The metallic voice hesitated. “Well, sir, actually we can't recover, not pitching like this. According to the technician, the cable'll snap. I recommend we lower it to six hundred feet and ride it out.”

Ryan
seemed to draw a long breath, then launched herself into a tremendous roll. Things clattered downhill in the dark, then clattered back as she reared almost as far to starboard, shaking herself like a horse frenzied by flies.

The captain must have signed off, given Reed some final order, because now he swung on Dan. Lenson stepped back. In the darkness Packer's eyes were invisible, but something in his bent shadow, the waiting shapes around it, the still-increasing shrieking outside evoked unreality and horror.

“What's the anemometer say? Can't quite make it out.”

“Varies between fifty-five and sixty, sir, gusts to around sixty-five.”

“Sounds higher than that. May be reading low. Barometer?”

“Twenty-eight eight and falling, sir,” said Yardner, the quartermaster, through the porthole behind them.

“Steady on two-one-zero, sir,” cried the helmsman. “No … swinging past it.”

“
Two
-one-zero?” said Evlin instantly.

“Sorry, sir, I mean one-one-zero, swinging left—”

“Hold her as close as you can,” said the captain. He sounded bored again, after that flicker of interest about the aircraft. “Use as much rudder as you need.”

“Aye, sir.”

Dan clung to the cable as
Ryan
recovered. The sea streamed off her foredeck as she staggered upright. In the dim wash of the navigation lights, long streaks of foam burned with the cold luminosity of watch hands. His mind gave him two lines of Coleridge: “About, about, in reel and rout/the death-fires danced at night.” Only that had been in a calm.… A swell high as a two-story house rolled toward them, a black monolith whose crest the wind peeled off even as it began to break, tore off and blew across the surface in a boiling pearly fog that froze the instant it hit glass and paint and steel. It kicked the bow upward, till he was looking at the boiling blackness of the night sky.

Then she toppled, like a woman executing a swan dive. He felt light, then abruptly heavy as she buried herself. The bullnose disappeared, black water closing over the anchor and wildcat. The wipers whined and grated at full speed, throwing spray off into the night.

“Sir, she's falling off again!”

“Mark your head,” said Dan.

“One-two-five—drifting right—my rudder's hard left—”

“Give her a full bell on the starboard shaft,” said Packer, face pressed to the window. “We've got plenty of power. As long as the engines hold out and our stability's good, it'll punch us around, but it won't hurt us.”

“Starboard engine ahead full, indicate RPM for twenty knots,” said Dan, trying to keep his voice as even and casual as the captain's. Unfortunately, he was starting to feel sick again. The combination of violent motion and darkness was intensely nauseating.