The Cruiser (25 page)

“I'm not sure, Lieutenant. Master Chief, what's this about?”

“You said your door's open, Captain. Basically we—that is, some of the chiefs—have a grievance. I'm hoping we can defuse it before it escalates to the official level.” Tausengelt eyed Singhe. “Which would not look good for any of us. As I'm sure the lieutenant will agree, if she takes a moment to think it over.”

She started to speak; Dan held up a hand to silence her. “Let's hear what the senior enlisted have to say first, Lieutenant. You'll get to respond.”

Tausengelt said, “Well, basically, sir, we've all been excluded from the discussion groups the lieutenant here's been running. The chat rooms. I believe I informed you about that.”

“You did. Yes.”

“And you said we should run with it and see where it went. But today Chief Van Gogh here logged on under the name of one of his petty officers.”

“He lied to get into the chat room?” Singhe said, voluptuous upper lip curling.

“The petty officer gave me his password voluntarily,” Van Gogh said, his anger just as apparent. “He wasn't comfortable with what was being said on there. And when I saw it, I wasn't very fucking comfortable either.”

“What exactly was being said?” Dan asked.

Zotcher held out a printout. Dan ran his gaze down it, noting the exchanges highlighted in yellow. He pursed his lips. The foregrounded quotes seemed to be pretty much the kinds of summary and largely unfavorable judgments sailors had probably always made to each other around the scuttlebutt about their immediate bosses. Anatomically questionable references were made to the location of their heads vis-à-vis their anal canals, for example. But it did feel different seeing it in print. In particular, Zotcher and Van Gogh were coming in for a lot of criticism. At one point, where Singhe, leading a discussion on management styles, had asked the crew members to rate the chiefs in order of effectiveness, they'd tied for last place.

He cleared his throat. “Uh—interesting. All right … Lieutenant? Your response?”

Singhe cupped her elbows in both hands. “My response? The military's got to follow the path private businesses are blazing, as computerization and the importance of human capital increase. That means a less hierarchical, more direct interchange between the deckplates and upper management. I'm acting to facilitate the transition. You read my article, Captain! Our command structures are too slow, too cumbersome, and they stop us from adapting. Open and uninhibited discussion is essential to that process.” She scowled at the chiefs. “Which is exactly why I excluded these men. Having them in the loop would make frank interchange impossible. As you can see.”

Tausengelt shook his head. “Basically, nobody wants to escalate this. Like I said. But I'm sort of coming in on the middle. I understand the previous CO more or less tolerated this sort of thing. The lieutenant's … hobby.” Singhe bristled and he amended, “I mean,
research
. But Captain Lenson may have a different point of view.”

At that moment a sharp, loud crack reverberated through the metal around them. Dan flinched. He couldn't pin the sound down, but it hadn't been a noise he liked to hear a ship make in a seaway. He lifted a palm and they all fell silent, but it didn't come again. He thumbed his Hydra. “DC Central, skipper here. I just heard a cracking noise, below and just aft of CIC.… Uh-huh … Yeah, pretty loud … Right. Let me know what you find out.”

He holstered the radio, both wondering what it had been and grateful for the moment it had given him. “Well, to get back to what we were discussing. My ‘point of view' isn't really what's relevant here.”

Singhe's angry frown was focused on him now. He chose his words carefully. “I think both sides have valid points. But what really matters here is what Navy regs say. Encouraging discussion—that's a good thing. But, Lieutenant, I do think—and I know this wasn't your intent—but encouraging this kind of speech, especially the personal remarks, can be prejudicial to good order and discipline. A lot of it reads like the loudmouths you get on every ship, blowing off steam just because you've given them a forum. Isn't it possible to let the chiefs monitor the discussions? Or even participate? You'd get more informed opinions then.”

Singhe planted her boots farther apart. They all swayed together, as the passageway funhouse-leaned around them. “Then what's the point, sir? The whole idea's to surface issues that aren't being discussed, or
can't
be discussed, in the current forums. We have one group just for female crew. You might be interested, Captain, in what goes on. What they have to put up with, when the khaki's not around.”

Dan couldn't help his eyebrows lifting. “Are you telling me there's—what? If there's any harassment, hazing, criminal activity, I want that reported immediately. Not walled off in some special chat room.”

“Criminal activity? Maybe. Maybe not,” Singhe flashed back, as much to the chiefs as to him. “But let's get this straight. You're backing them? Instead of me?”

“Let's not make this a personal issue, Lieutenant. It's a question of command philosophy and discipline. We all have to work together, officers, chiefs, and enlisted. Not create splits in the crew.”

Singhe's face had gone mottled, blood suffusing her smooth cheeks. “
Personal?
Who's getting personal here, Captain? Maybe you should be asking them who Molly is. Instead of accusing
me
of undermining discipline.” She said the last word as if it left a poisonous taste.

Dan looked from her to Van Gogh, who'd paled. “Molly?” Dan asked. “Who
is
that? Chief?”

“Nobody.”

“Molly's nobody?”

“Right. There isn't any such person.”

Singhe shook her head sadly. “Isn't that the point?”

Dan looked from face to face. Then, abruptly, lost his patience. “Okay, what kind of game is this? We're on TBMD station. A war's about to start. Who the fuck's Molly, and what's Lieutenant Singhe hinting around about?”

“Yeah,” said Tausengelt, and the steel in his voice this time was for his fellow chiefs. “Who is it? Come on. Give.”

Zotcher and Van Gogh glanced at each other, deflating inside their coveralls. The sonar chief jangled keys in his pocket, avoiding Dan's eyes. Van Gogh was examining the overhead as if inspecting a diamond for inclusions.

“I get a straight answer, right now,” Dan said, and despite his resolve to stay cool he couldn't keep his volume down. “Or everybody here's going to regret it.”

Zotcher looked at his boots, or tried to; the neck brace brought him up short. Despite the seriousness of the situation, and what looked like embarrassment, he also seemed to be stifling a laugh.

“All right,” he said. “I'll take you down to meet her.”

*   *   *

DAN
called Almarshadi and asked him to take the chair in CIC, then followed the party down and aft. Aft and forward, then down again, until they were far below the main deck level and had to wriggle through scuttles feetfirst. Finally he pushed open a door inscribed
SONARMEN DO IT AURALLY.
The space was so far forward in the stem that its bulkheads slanted inward. He'd poked his head in here during his initial inspection, but now faces turned, more men than one would expect in such a remote space. Guilty, startled faces. And all male.

Rit Carpenter rolled his chair forward and reached for a computer keyboard. Dan's hand intercepted his wrist. “Rit. I should've guessed.”

“Guessed what? Hey, Dan. Good to see you down here with us peons. And who's this? The beauteous Lieutenant Singhe? Oh,
yeah
.” The retired submariner had established his own nook, with a black-and-white photo of his beloved
Cavalla
taped above it and his copies of
Hustler
and a shot of him with a fourteen-year-old Korean girl, both players naked from the waist up. Dan remembered that girl, and her little friend Carpenter had sicced on him, and how narrowly all of them had evaded a military prison.

And again: Carpenter nearly getting them whacked after a sharia court in the Philippines, when he'd gotten caught banging the wife of one of the imam's best friends.

Same old Rit. Never overly concerned with political correctness, or even halfway decent taste. Pretty much a caricature of what the typical U.S. Navy sailor had once been stereotyped as, but which, since Tailhook at least, was supposed to no longer exist. Dan had thought it would be safe having him aboard, to help with the manning shortfall. But apparently Carpenter had managed to get on Singhe's bad side. Dan gripped the expostulating sonarman's hand and examined the screen. At the ladder, a seaman tried to maneuver past a glowering Amarpeet Singhe. Her raised arm blocked the exit, and he shrank back.

“So, boss, come down about that self-noise figure? We got the whole stack dried out. Purged it with nitrogen and a hot plate. Learned that trick on
Skate.
I got the numbers here someplace—”

“Who's Molly, Rit? Are you screwing around with one of the female enlisted? I'm only gonna ask once. So how about a straight answer?”.

“Molly?” Carpenter reared back in the chair, which protested alarmingly. “What, you wanna meet her? Can do, amigo.” He turned the monitor toward Dan, chuckling.

“Fuck,” Dan breathed. He touched the keyboard gingerly. It felt sticky. He hoped it was from the empty Pepsi cans heaped in the wastebasket. “What … where the hell did this come from?”

Carpenter shrugged. “Brought it along for shits 'n' grins. The boys need a little R&R, and they ain't getting any shore time.”

The game was called Gang Bang Molly. Cycling through three scenes told him all he needed to know. Dead silence reigned in the confined space, except for the whoosh of passing seas and the never-ending, very loud creaking of the sonar, like an iron wheel slowly revolving inside a too-tight, never-oiled socket.

“Just harmless fun,” Carpenter suggested, but sweat glistened at his hairline.

Dan took a deep breath. “This is about the most unprofessional thing I've ever seen. I know you're retired, Rit. But we have standards of conduct. Which you must have at least heard about.”

Carpenter grinned, lopsided, the same little-boy-caught-and-unjustly-persecuted half-smile he'd offered before. “Hey—boss man—tell me you ain't taking this seriously.”

“I take anything that contributes to poor crew morale and a hostile command climate seriously.” He snapped his fingers. “The disk.”

“The what?”

“The disk. The game disk.”

“Hey, there's no
disk
. This puppy's on the LAN. Brought it aboard on a thumb drive. You can have that if you want, but—” Carpenter began making a show of slapping his pockets, looking around his pookah.

An audible intake of breath from Singhe. Dan closed his eyes. On the LAN? Being played all over the ship? He asked Tausengelt, “You knew about this, Master Chief?”

“No sir. I didn't.” The leading enlisted looked as angry as Dan felt. “Well—I
did
hear a rumor. But I had no idea it was—basically, I agree, this is beyond the—this is not what people should be putting on the ship's network.”

“Track it down. Pull it. And I want a list of everyone who's downloaded it.” He snapped his fingers again and Carpenter reluctantly yielded up a small black memory stick. Dan buttoned it into a pocket. “I'm confiscating this. Delete it from the LAN. And get me that list of names,” he repeated, and headed for the ladder up.

*   *   *

TOPSIDE
, main deck. With Singhe standing silent beside him, he held the drive out between thumb and forefinger over the braided sea. A cloud trailed silver skirts miles off, but for the moment, though the decks glistened with rolling laminations of condensed spray, it wasn't raining. “Thanks for bringing this to my attention,” he told her. “How long did you know?”

“One of the girls e-mailed me this morning.” She stood erect by the lifeline, hands locked behind her in a textbook parade rest, looking out to where a distant silhouette melted into the squall. When she turned her head, those remorseless dark eyes set in that goddesslike face met his. “Are you saying you didn't know? Sir?”

“Of course not! No.”

“Carpenter's one of yours. You brought him aboard. You didn't know he'd do something like this?”

Dan had to look away. Because the uncomfortable truth was, the guy
did
have a history. He'd never expected this … but on the other hand, he wasn't exactly surprised, either.

She added, “The truth is, sir, the chiefs on this ship—okay, some, not all—but the majority are more of a barrier between the enlisted and the officers than a link. They don't want change. They obstruct and stonewall organizational innovation. That's the kind of middle management an effective CEO gets rid of. Or at the very least, isolates and bypasses until he can downsize them.”

“Uh, that's a pretty damn harsh indictment, Amy,” Dan said. “I'm not sure I can totally buy into that. It takes a little while for everyone to get with any new program, and the Navy's not exactly out front in managerial reform. I'm sure most of the chiefs are doing the best they can.”

“Really.” She put her hand on his sleeve. “Then how do you explain obscene games like that? And not even played privately, but on the ship's network? I'm glad you saw it. Now you know what they've been trying to do to me. And to the other women aboard. They failed with the board of inquiry. But they haven't quit.”

To her? To the other women? The grounding board? Somehow she thought this was all aimed at her. Dan looked down at her hand, the tapered graceful fingers, and suddenly felt like shaking them off, as he would some poisonous centipede. The brown eyes burned into his, trusting, demanding, but with something else behind them.