The Circle (11 page)

“What's going on in here?”

“We're at GQ, man.”

“Where're your helmets?”

“Boat crew don't wear helmets inside the boat.”

“Where does it say that?”

They exchanged glances. After a moment, Coffey said sullenly, “We never did with Lieutenant Sullivan.”

“You do now. Get them on. And tie those life jackets properly, damn it.”

“Ain't no cause to swear at us, Ensign,” said Lassard. In the dimness of the cabin, his eyes were wide and blue. Like an optical illusion, they alternated from second to second between innocent and depraved. Dan found it hard to meet them. “Navy regs say officers can't swear at enlisted.”

“Navy regs say you do as you're told, Lassard. That goes for all of you.” He turned away, then remembered something else and stuck his head back in. “And put those cigars out. No smoking during general quarters.”

“Hey, whatever you say,” said Lassard slowly. The four of them regarded Dan with unblinking hate. “Whatever you say, man, that's what us fuckin' peons got to do.”

*   *   *

AS he was folding himself back into the director, the 1MC passed “abandon ship.” A pessimistic sequence, Dan thought. He went to his station and waited, reading the directions on the raft placard as sailors trickled back. It was full of interesting advice. “Attempt to swim underneath burning oil.” “Take your shoes and cap along when you abandon ship.” “Tie yourself to others; don't drift off alone.”

He was imagining himself breaststroking toward a palm-fringed atoll when one of the men asked, “Sir, who's senior on this station?”

“Ah—I guess I am.”

“You're supposed to be mustering us, I think.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

The muster list was a plastic plate on the bulkhead, the names smeared, old, nearly obliterated. He began calling them out. Only a couple of men answered. He paused, halfway down it, with that feeling something was wrong.

“You got me on that, sir?”

“No.” He ran his finger down it. “Hell, I'm not here, either. I wonder—”

The 1MC: “Ensign Lenson, lay to the bridge.”

“Oh, crap.”

He stood beside the XO's chair for ten minutes while Bryce subjected him to a leisurely tongue-lashing on the importance of accurate abandon-ship lists. The raft placards, it seemed, had not been updated since before
Ryan
went into the yards. They were the first lieutenant's responsibility. Bryce expected more from an Academy man. Perhaps he was wrong to expect much of anything. Lenson had better start buckling down, or unpleasant things could happen. Packer smoked silently on the starboard side.

When at last they secured, he was at a slow boil. Half the morning was gone and he'd been reamed for something he didn't even know was his responsibility. Damn, he thought, clattering down the ladder to the main deck. Damn this excuse for a ship.

He found Bloch sitting on the forecastle, his legs crossed, like a guru spoiled by good eating. Rambaugh was flemishing down distance line, the soiled little flags fluttering in the breeze. Pettus sat between them, surrounded by colored hard hats, life jackets, signal paddles, spanner wrenches, coils of line and wire. Beyond the deck edge, the sea ran by swift and dark and close, bulging up occasionally to lick at the scuppers. “Ax,” the chief was reading from a list as Dan came up.

“Check,” muttered Pettus.

“Pliers, side cutter.”

“Check.”

“Two marlinespikes, eight- and sixteen-inch.”

“Check, check.”

Neither of them seemed to notice Dan. “Chief,” he said tightly, “let's talk.”

“I'm listenin', sir. Sledgehammer, ten-pound.”

“Let's go aft.”

Bloch sighed, handed Rambaugh the list, and lumbered up. They strolled aft. “Let me guess,” said the chief. “The raft musters?”

“That's right. Damn it, who's in charge of those?”

“I guess we are, sir.”

“Sure we are, but who's supposed to
do
it? That's not our job, writing names on bulkheads with grease pencils.”

“Well, it was Ikey's, before we went in the yard. I guess over the summer, it just slipped his mind. And mine. So I'm responsible, too.”

The admission disarmed him. He's been in longer than I've been alive, Dan thought, looking at the age-faded tattoos. How many chewings out had Bloch endured? How many green ensigns had he broken in? “Well, let's get them updated,” he said at last.

“You want that done before or after we refuel and paint, sir?”

“Now, goddamn it!”

“Sure thing, sir. Ikey's down gettin' a current muster from the XO's yeoman.”

“Good. Now, how about showing me how to set up for replenishment.”

“You're just in time,” said Bloch. His face was serious and respectful again, the face of a junior to a senior; but Dan thought he looked a bit, just a bit, tired.

5

AT 1500, he broke off and went back up to the bridge. He found Packer nodding, his pipe in his hand, and Evlin bent over the radar. Dan was fidgeting, waiting for a chance to ask about the oiler, when the phone talker said suddenly, “Sir! Starboard lookout reports a ship. Hull down.”

“Where away?” rapped out Evlin.

“Zero-eight-five relative, sir. Wait one … says it's a big one. Four or five mast tops.”

“That's
Calloosahatchee,
all right.”

The captain woke and swiveled his chair, narrowing his eyes out along the bearing. He glanced around the bridge, saw Lenson, and waved him over with the pipe. Dan waited while Packer relighted it, studying the sagging flesh under the captain's eyes. The tobacco smelled heavy, like incense. He wondered why everyone in the Navy smoked.

“Mr. Lenson, what's the status of my underway replenishment detail? Is First Division ready to go alongside?”

“Uh, I can't say I really know, sir, but I think Chief Bloch's got it in hand.”

Packer frowned. “You haven't been around here too long, so I'll let that one go by. But I don't want to hear that answer again, understand? I want you to take charge down there. You lead a deck gang, you can lead anybody anywhere. Besides, the chief won't be there forever.”

Dan wondered what that meant. But one of the many things they made plain at Annapolis was that you didn't ask somebody senior to you to explain himself. “Aye, aye, sir,” he snapped, trying to look savvy and aggressive.

Packer relapsed into silence. After a minute or two, Dan drifted over toward Evlin. “When do we rendezvous, sir?” he muttered.

“We just did.”

“I mean, when will we set the refueling detail?”

“Basically whenever the skipper says.”

“Okay, but how far in advance does he usually call us away?”

“Oh. If that's what you wanted to know, why didn't you ask? Forty, forty-five minutes.”

“Thanks.”

“Let's get on the horn, Al. Let's not keep these pump jockeys wondering who the hell we are.”

“Aye, Captain.” Evlin turned away, picking up the radiotelephone.

The 1MC called away refueling stations at 1538, when the oiler, now a low gray island, was still some miles distant. The early dusk of high latitudes was falling fast. Dan was already on station, pulling the life-jacket ties through the D-rings. He felt bulky and cumbered by the heavy kapok, the hard hat. He stood forward of Unrep Station Three, watching Bloch and Isaacs and Rambaugh chivvy the arriving seamen into position, rehearsing in his head what he had to remember.

Navy ships stayed at sea for months. Their appetites for fuel, food, spare parts, and mail were satisfied by oilers and ammunition ships. The transfer was the tricky part: moving cargo in bulk between two rolling and pitching platforms on a constantly moving element. Fuel was the hardest. Instead of winching across a few slings, the connection had to be maintained for as long as an hour, depending on the pumping rate.

It was the most challenging deck evolution there was, and the most dangerous. Green as he was, he knew it was one of the ways you rated a ship, a division—and a first lieutenant. Ships got names as fast fuelers or slow. Word of screwups or accidents got around the fleet fast. With names attached.

“Now bear a hand manning the refueling detail,” said the 1MC. Dan watched his refueling team gather forward of the fuel trunk, buckling their vests and bitching in resigned voices. Rambaugh had his pipe in his mouth bowl down. Pettus and Isaacs wore yellow cotton work gloves with the fingers cut off. Coffey was yawning, settling the sound-powered phones over his ears. They were all dressed warmly, foul-weather gear, black wool watch caps. He heard Bloch: “Got 'em all, Ikey? Count 'em.”

“Ain't got but fifteen hands here. S'posed to have twenty?”

“Well, what you gonna do?”

“Send somebody up to the whaleboat,” Dan said. “There'll probably be a couple guys caulking off in there.”

The oiler changed course as
Ryan
closed, steadying up into the oncoming seas. He watched them burst into spray against the gray hull, deep-laden, massive as an iceberg. As the two ships converged, the destroyer vibrated and began to turn.

Ryan
curved round
Calloosahatchee's
stern in a mile-wide circle, then steadied up on a parallel heading. Her motion changed to a pitch that from time to time rolled, too, throwing him against the lifelines. She slid gradually into position a thousand yards astern of the oiler, offset slightly to port. Despite the failing light, he could see the rounded stern clearly, the black letters of the oiler's name. He wondered what a calloosahatchee was, and who made up these crazy names. Along
Ryan
's starboard side, the deeper ship's wake was a streak of foam over a gentled sea, as if she crushed down the waves as she passed.

A red and yellow flag snapped abruptly open at the oiler's yardarm. The intakes whooshed and whined above him and
Ryan
leapt forward again. He saw Evlin and Packer leaning over the splinter shield. Evlin had his binoculars on the tanker. Packer turned aft, searched the deck, then saw him and cupped his hands. But what he called was lost on the wind.

“Say again, sir?” Dan shouted.

“… Word, you ready down there?”

“Ready, aye, Captain,” shouted Bloch.

Ryan
closed and the tanker grew. Then, suddenly, they were no longer behind it but alongside. He stared across a rushing river of sea to her. He could see men moving about, could make out the expressions on their faces. The oiler's deck was a mass of piping, valves, hoses. It looked more like a refinery than a warship. She moved to the seas in a slow, majestic seven-second roll, showing twenty feet of her copper-colored bottom.

He glanced back at Bloch. Shouldn't they be doing something? But the chief stood with hands on hips, riding with the motion, the straps of his life jacket cutting grooves in his paunch.

The engines whined again.
Ryan
surged ahead, and the illusion of motionlessness was broken. He caught Packer's voice, followed by the engine bell. The destroyer drifted back slowly. The bell pinged again, and she stopped, settling in as if welded to the oiler by an invisible bar of steel.

Dan sucked air uneasily, chilling his tongue. He couldn't feel anything in his hands. He plunged them into his pockets. The wind was freezing.

Now he could tell the ranks of the men opposite. Hundreds of miles from land, the two ships were barreling along only a hundred steps apart. The seas roaring in from ahead were trapped between the parallel hulls. The bow waves, meeting, battered upward into concave peaks that were somehow familiar. Then he had it: a Japanese print, the kind with volcanic islands and monks on rafts. The sea had the same flamboyant elaborations as the wind shredded the crests in its teeth.

They were still too far apart. The book said 140 feet was best for the span-wire method, with 180 maximum. It looked like more than that to him.

“On the
Ryan:
Stand by for shot line forward,” crackled a bullhorn from the oiler. A whistle blew, and a man in a red helmet raised a rifle. Beside him, Isaacs slapped his pockets suddenly, found his whistle, and replied. The rifle recoiled; a faint
pop
floated past on the wind. The men around Dan ducked for cover. The dart detached itself from the sky and arched down, spinning out an orange spider thread.

It dropped across the forecastle, tangling itself in the lifelines. Pettus ran forward and came back holding it carefully aloft. Curved by gravity and wind, it hung in a long, fluttering arc back across the rushing sea to the oiler's midships station.

“On your feet! Get off those lifelines! Lazy, lay-down fuckheads!” shouted Rambaugh. His corncob hung empty. Dan smiled to himself. “Popeye.” He even trailed his curses off into a mumble.

The men forward of the fuel trunk got up, rubbing their hands and clapping their arms. Pettus reeved the string through the snatch block on the bulkhead and passed it to the first linehandler, who began hauling in, passing the end to the next. At first, it looked comical, a dozen sailors gravely hauling in a piece of what looked like wrapping twine, but then he saw a heavier piece of line coming over.

A still-heavier rope followed; then, making the linehandlers show their teeth, a heavy steel span wire. The scarred metal gleamed dully as red work lights flickered on. Behind a shackle were taped three lighter lines, two of them insulated wire.

The men hauled in steadily, grunting at the weight. The shackle was almost to the ship when one of them slipped and knocked down a companion. The line ran through their hands with startling swiftness, and several men cried out in pain. The shackle dipped into the running sea. He started forward, but before he could think what to do, Pettus had belayed the line around a cleat. The runout stopped.