The Gulf (62 page)

In two hours, they would be entering the mine field.

He jumped down and pushed through the blackout curtain into Sonar. The coffee was ready and he freshened his cup. The watch standers hunched over their displays—no longer did a sonarman depend on his ears—like bingo fans lacking one square for the grand prize. He glanced over the shoulder of the SQS-56 operator. The shallow, turbulent water broke up the impulses; the display was a shatter of green, like thrown divining sticks.

He brushed out through the curtains again. The bent backs over the EW display, the weapons consoles, told the same story. Even at the shut-down radars the operators sat before blank screens with the same absorption.

There'd been no official general quarters. Shaker had told the chiefs and officers to have the crew on station at 2330. They'd reported manned and ready well before. Now he sipped the hot brew, considered, then nodded to Wise. It was time. “Al, we set up?”

“Yessir. Except that Mark 92's still in antiair mode. I'll shift to shore bombardment when we get in sight of the island.”

“Sounds good. Puffball had those kittens yet?”

“Who? Oh. No, not yet.” The ops officer grinned like a skull. “It's been a long day.”

Dan smiled back, then went serious again. “Okay, like the captain said, you're going to be handling things down here. I'll be on the bridge backing him up. Keep us posted once the shooting starts. And don't be afraid to take action yourself if you don't get a response from us.”

Wise nodded somberly. Dan hung around the space for a few minutes longer, knowing that once he went to the bridge he'd be there for the duration, and then went up.

Charaler had the deck, Ekdahl the conn. McQueen and Stanko were in their usual nooks, the chief by the chart table, the boatswain near the 1MC panel, where he could answer phones, pass word, and still keep a critical eye on the helmsman. The bridge was even darker than usual. All the pilot lights had been taped over and dials and gauges turned down to where they could barely be read with adapted eyes. The windows were lit, though, by the wavering yellow glow of distant separation flares, and through them Dan could make out a coruscating pyramid of light to starboard.

“Engines ahead full, indicate twenty knots. Left ten degrees rudder, come to new course three-one-zero,” Ekdahl muttered.

Dan moved up beside Charaler. “What the hell is—oh. The baa-baa express.”

“Yeah, that's him.” They watched as the glittering mountain crossed astern, headed up the Gulf. It was an Australian freighter that went to Kuwait once a month. For days afterward, they would find the bloated bodies, the sheep who wouldn't make it to Saudi tables, floating in her wake.

“Where's
Adams?
”

Charaler pointed into the dark. “She's shut down her nav lights already. Dead ahead, about two thousand yards.”

“Is the captain up here?”

“He went aft for a leak. He'll be right back.”

The wind-borne stink of the livestock carrier hit them then, making the bridge team groan. Dan bent over the chart with McQueen, checking their track. There would be no long transit to the objective for NIMBLE DANCER. Nothing in the Gulf was very far from anything else. That was why the Pasdaran were so dangerous at Abu Musa. Even with short-range boats, they could find dozens of targets.

At the new speed they looked solid for a 0200 ETA. He made a very careful check of the loran position against the satellite fix. It was off three-quarters of a mile. Beside him, McQueen sucked a tooth.

Shaker came forward from the bridge urinal, cigarette glowing like a running light. He stood behind Charaler for a time. Then his chair creaked as he swung himself up.

A faint red circle flickered into existence ahead, brightened and dimmed, then began occulting rapidly. “Flashing light from
Adams,
sir,” said Charaler, at the same time fingering the intercom. “Sigs, Bridge: Message coming in from dead ahead.”

“Sigs aye, we're on it.”

Dan had his binoculars up, but the letters came too fast for him to follow. It was a long one. The signalman brought it down a few minutes after the light transmitted
PP
and went out. Lenson moved to the captain's side and held the faint rose beam of his flashlight on it for Shaker.

VAN ZANDT
DE
ADAMS
BT ATTACK PLAN FOLLOWS X PRIMARY OBJECTIVE ENEMY CRAFT SECONDARY SHORE INSTALLATIONS X I WILL LEAD AT 500 YDS INTERVAL X MAINTAIN ELECTRONIC SILENCE UNTIL CLEAR OF MINE FIELD X
ADAMS
WILL OPEN PARTY WITH MIXED ILLUMINATION AND POINT DETONATING X
VAN ZANDT
THEN OPEN FIRE AT WILL X WILL ILLUMINATE FOR YOU FROM MOUNT 52 DURING YOUR PASS X CONFORM TO MY MOVEMENTS UNTIL PAST PIER COMMA THEN TURN INSIDE ME WITH RIGHT RUDDER AND TAKE LEAD X KEEP SHOALS IN MIND X
VAN ZANDT
WILL LEAD GOING OUT X COMMUNICATIONS DURING ACTION ON FLEET TACTICAL X RETIREMENT COURSE ONE SIX ZERO X SPEED THREE ZERO X GOOD LUCK FROM THE JACKAL BT

“There a response, sir?”

“Yeah.” The click of a ball pen was followed by rapid scratching. Shaker handed it to Dan.

Adams
de
Van Zandt
BT Plan acknowledged X Upon your open fire will lay spread of five standards on batteries in heights behind pier X Then carry out attack as per your message X Except may open slightly for torpedo firing X Good hunting X Whoever bags most boats buys drinks Regency Manama Friday BT

“Looks good, sir.”

“Okay, send it. Let's go to battle dress. Pass the word on the phones.”

In the darkness shadows donned life jackets, crouched to roll socks over trousers, buttoned their shirts to the throat. Dan pulled one of the makeshift flash hoods over his head, then fitted the steel helmet McQueen handed him over it. It smelled like an old gym shoe. He licked his lips. The heat was oppressive. Where had he left his coffee? He found it wedged behind a cable run and finished it off.

Pensker came up and he and Shaker held a short confab. The weapons officer had figured out a way to slave the Phalanx to the TDT and shoot in surface mode. Shaker seemed happy at that.

Time went by very slowly.

With the radars shut down, only the sinking lights of the tankers astern gave them a sense of movement. Ahead was only blackness. Dan watched the penciled triangles of his fixes creep closer to the island.

Finally, when he couldn't stand it any longer, he went out to the port wing and propped his elbows on the coaming. He was lifting his binoculars when he realized he didn't need them.

They couldn't see the planes, long-range bombers and electronic suppression birds off
Forrestal,
hundreds of miles to the southeast. Not at this distance. Only the glowing meteor trails of missiles. A ripple of flashes, then a subterranean, earthquake rumble reached them across the choppy dark. Then a distant tapping of guns.

The air attack had begun.

Dan hoped the Intruders' radar-homing missiles worked. And that their jamming was blanking out the enemy's remaining radars. The display was spectacular. There were flashes all along the eastern shore now. Unfortunately, the aircraft, unless they got down nose to nose with the shoulder-fired missiles, wouldn't accomplish much against the real targets: the small, fast boats that used the island to refuel and rearm between attacks.

But that, of course, was why the surface Navy was here.

Dan dropped the glasses. He flicked the switch on the night-vision goggles that hung around his neck, and fitted them to his eyes.

Through the eyepieces the world became two scintillating circles of green. Electronically amplified, the device showed him the island, and at the same moment, in the foreground, the still-distant silhouettes of three boats stern to them—moored, and swinging to the tidal current.… He tracked his gaze around till it was cut off by the corner of the pilothouse. The fires and gun flashes from shore made the goggles strobe erratically, hurting his eyes.

He moved back inside the pilothouse. “Targets on the port bow, three gunboats, anchored,” he reported. The captain's face loomed huge and distorted, limned in sparkling green fire. Dan heard his words repeated by the phone talker to the guns.

He shoved the goggles up. It was beginning, the slowed-down sense of time he always had in action. Yet they still had miles to get through. Miles and minutes. He wished they could go in faster, but that would be insane. They had to negotiate the mine field. He thought for a moment of the EOD divers, somewhere ahead. That took guts, to deal with a mine hand to hand. Salty water trickled down from under the helmet and he licked at it without noticing it. The ruby circle flickered again from
Adams,
otherwise invisible, black as the moonless sea itself, and Shaker dropped their speed to fifteen.

At 0150, the forward lookout reported small boats ahead.

Adams
's silhouette kept growing. Shaker said angrily, “Where the fuck's he going? Come right, damn it, come right! Slow to ten knots. Helmsman, follow that blue light on her stern!”

“I'll follow it into hell, sir.”

Dan crawled back into the eyepieces, staring ahead. The lightless water sparkled pallidly as electrons fired at random. Where in God's name was their lane? If they didn't see it soon, they'd have to abort. But would Shaker admit defeat like that? Would he turn back, this close to the enemy?

Suddenly, for the first time that night, he remembered to be scared.

0130 HOURS: ABU MUSA ANCHORAGE

Gordon sank almost lifelessly into the dark. Into the gulf of night … He was exhausted, confused, shuddering with cold. He'd been in the water for four and a half hours now, most of it at seventy feet, breathing mixed nitrogen and oxygen.

He still had air. Not much, but enough for one more dive. But he wasn't sure he had the strength.

The trailing line tugged at his waist. Ahead of him, Everett's light wavered like a lone firefly on the last night of summer. The chemical solution was almost exhausted. Gordon tried to swim, but he could barely move. He clung to the buoy line, letting it slip through his numb fingers. Sinking …

As they'd left the Z-bird, he'd seen the flash of bombs ashore. Invisible as a Yankee God above the hell they created, the planes had arrived. The sea squeezed his chest and eyeballs. Detonations shuddered through the water. He hoped they kept their drops out of the anchorage. A diver didn't have to be close to an explosion to be stunned or killed.

But there was no reason they should. By now, according to the schedule, he and his team should be miles to seaward, motoring to safety.

The job wasn't over, though. There was one more mine to clear.

He was thinking this when he struck mud. Softer, more yielding than the sand farther out. He uncrimped his fingers from the line and shook his head, trying to discipline his thoughts through the drunken fatigue. Everett's beacon flared thirty feet away. He fumbled for his flashlight, aimed it, and punched the button.

The weak glow from the dying batteries showed him the mine. Showed him, too, the gargoyle figure of a diver already almost on it.

Gordon shoved himself forward, mumbling into his mouthpiece. Lem knew not to rush in. But the banker, older than he, had been in the water just as long. He must be tired too, gas-intoxicated too. But this was no time to make a mistake.

Not with two ships due through minutes from now.

The mine lay on its side, nearly covered by the muck. Velvety brown silt was drifted up its flanks, current-carried. He angled without conscious thought into the proper approach. He had to check himself. He wanted to rush in, get it over with. But disoriented as he was, tired as he was, he still knew that haste and carelessness were their deadliest enemies.

Everett lifted his gloves and moved back. Gordon saw the bulky yellow cover of the bag flutter free. The other chief had bent it to the shipping frame. He was paying out the lanyard that would inflate it.

Gordon held up a fist. He waited till Everett was clear—no use tempting whatever infernal detonator this thing contained—and then finned forward with exquisite, tired caution to focus his flashlight.

This one had been down longer than the others. The black paint was almost gone. The steel frame was rustier. On impulse, knowing he shouldn't, he reached out to touch it. A few flakes of sea-corroded metal came free and drifted slowly to the mud.

He reversed his grip and pulled, and a section bent outward.

Hauling himself up and over it, Gordon yanked savagely at the knot Everett had just tied. It resisted him and he had to take his glove off. No feeling in his swollen fingers, immersed for so many hours. He fought a sudden crazy desire to attack it with his teeth.

The knot came apart at last. He slipped it off the frame and swam over the mine. Yes, the lugs. He got the line through one at the fourth try and put three half-hitches on and then a keeper figure eight.

Now for his own bag. He fought it out of his belt, stripped the cover free, and found the line. He started to fasten it and realized no, that was the trip line. He found the right one and put four half-hitches on. Then breathed out and backed slowly away, looking it over.

The mine lay like a piece of rusted, discarded pipe. For a moment he wondered whether it, if all of them, were dummies. Inert. No, that was stupid. He was in bad shape.

Now, when they tripped the flasks, a ton of lift would tug the weapon out of the mud. He hoped. And he hoped the inevitable jarring wouldn't wake whatever slept beneath that brass plate. But even if it did, if in fifteen seconds or thirty he and Lem Everett no longer existed, at least the lane would be clear.

He realized suddenly that he wanted very much for this mine not to explode. He wanted to go home again. Why had he come here, eight thousand miles from Crevecoeur Farm, Stonefield, Vermont? Just then he couldn't remember. But he was here, and he'd at least finish this goddamn job.