The Circle (48 page)

*   *   *

THE search party reassembled at ten minutes to midnight in the wardroom. Seven chiefs and petty officers, the four officers in the department, and the chief corpsman.

The master-at-arms, a pistol awkward on his hip, stood guarding the table. On it were three opened packs of cigarettes, two sandwich bags of marijuana, a half-empty pint of Seagram's Seven Crown, two wads of bills with rubber bands around them, two switchblade knives, a pot-metal starting pistol, and an assortment of pills and capsules in plastic bottles. Each item had a tag on it. Where it was found, whose locker, whose space.

The funny thing is, Dan thought in the frozen, waiting silence, not one tag had William T. Lassard's name on it. Not one had the name of any of the kinnicks.

They stood waiting uneasily, their bodies moving slightly with the sway of the deck.

At midnight, the door opened and the captain came in.

21

“WELL,” said the sarcastic voice in the darkness. “Here he is at last, the late Dan Lenson.”

“Lay off, Mark. I got enough trouble without you in my face.”

“Tough shit. I've had it up to here standing my watches and yours, too.”

Dan stared around, trying to conjure some hint of outline out of blackness. The bridge was darker than he'd ever seen it before. He was exhausted. But the familiar weariness of missed sleep bothered him less than the sick feeling he'd taken away from the wardroom.

James Packer hadn't ranted. His face didn't give much away. But they could see how terribly disappointed he was in them. And that hurt more.

Silver clicked on the light over the chart table. Dim at best, it had now been covered with paper till only a pink glow penetrated. Dan's formation diagram was taped onto the chart. He struggled to concentrate as the jaygee said, “Formation's on course zero-one-zero, making twenty knots.
Kennedy
's the guide, bearing zero-six-five degrees true, range three thousand yards. I'm on station, near as we can tell without radar. The sea's three to four feet. Wind's variable from the west. Radar silence and dimmed lighting in effect.”

“What have we been doing?”

“Mostly just maintaining screen station.
Kennedy
launched aircraft around twenty-three hundred. We were ordered to plane guard. I expect when she recovers, they'll want us back. The launch course was two-five-zero. Internal to the ship, we have three boilers on the line, one, two, and four. The plant's split; superheat temperature's eight hundred and fifty; both generators are on the line. Max speed is thirty knots. OOD has the deck and the conn. The captain's in his sea cabin. Any questions?”

“Did you write up the log?”

“A-firma-titty. Oh, and allow some extra time on speed changes. Main control's got some glitch they're checking out.”

“Okay, shit, I got it.”

He sipped at the coffee he'd brought up with him as he groped toward the radar. The all-revealing circle was dark. He brought his head back up, feeling stupid, and set his binoculars by feel. The carrier should be to starboard. He groped till he felt cold Plexiglas smoothness. The darkness was so solid, it made no difference whether his eyes were open or closed.

“Dan? That you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You oriented yet?”

“Uh, almost.” His penlight cast a russet oval over two square feet of deck. “What you want me to do?”

“Well, principally stay alert for bearing changes. Have you picked up the guide yet?”

“No. Where is she?”

“Mark should have showed you before he left. Look about zero-five-five relative. You can see it easier without the window in the way.”

He went out on the starboard wing and tipped up the alidade, then remembered it was fogged. Also that was degrees true, and Evlin had given him relative. He steadied his binoculars on the rail. A gelid breeze streamed past from straight ahead. Its invisible pressure felt eerie against his cheek. He could see nothing of the sea, and the sky was so lightless his retina formed inchoate coruscating patches that floated downward as he blinked. Being buried must be like this, he thought. Like being stuffed into a coffin and covered with cold powdered carbon.

Deprived of sight, his imagination supplied images. Bloch's bloody head against the oily deck. Isaacs's terrified tears. The expressionless tightness of the captain's mouth. One by one, they flashed up, then vanished, sucked back into the dark.

He shuddered. He'd never wanted to kill before. But Bryce deserved it. He threatened. He lied. Used helpless men as scapegoats.

But … they'd found the whiskey in Isaacs's locker. And they'd found drugs, a lot of them, in a lot of lockers, though the individual caches were small. The only thing he still didn't understand was how Lassard had come off clean.

I don't care, he said to himself. I won't condone it. Not the way he does it. I won't condone and I won't forgive and I'll never be the way he is.

He shivered then and recollected and searched around what he figured to be zero-five-five relative. At last he made out a blue pinprick haloed by mist, or moisture in the old binoculars. Without the glasses he couldn't see it at all. He went back in. “That's the carrier?”

“Yeah. Dimmed stern light. Need bearings on it every ten minutes. Can do?”

“Can do, sir.”

He sensed the unseen existences of Coffey, Connolly, Yardner, and Pettus as he crossed to the centerline gyro. A red spark on the wing caught his eye. “Bos'n.”

“Sir.”

“No smoking under blackout conditions. Make the lookouts ditch their cigarettes. Don't let them light up again.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Stay on them tonight; we're depending on them, with the radar off.”

“Aye aye,” said the third-class resentfully.

He decided to use the centerline alidade; it was warmer inside the pilothouse. He focused it on the faint luminosity Evlin had said was
Kennedy.
“Zero-six-six, Lieutenant.”

“Very well. Keep an eye on her.”

He marked the time on his watch with a grease pencil. He felt groggy and disoriented. He slapped his face, then the other cheek. It helped. He went to the chart table and shielded his flash over it.

The task group was in the same formation he'd plotted yesterday. The carrier was in the center.
Talbot
was due north of her at six thousand yards.
Calloosahatchee
was northwest, tucked inside the screen at four thousand. He picked up a dim glow that might be her stern light.
Dewey,
with the best antiair armament, was to the east, seven thousand yards out in the direction of the enemy threat.
Garcia
was to the southeast at five thousand yards. He went outside again and tried to pick each of them up. He caught an intermittent twinkle far out to starboard but couldn't tell whether it was
Dewey
or the frigate.

Christ, he thought, how are we going to maintain station like this? It was like asking blind men to juggle. But they'd done it in World War II, and before. No radar then. He thought about that. Then went back inside and got another bearing.

“Guide's dropping aft, sir.”

“How much?”

“Two degrees in ten minutes.”

“Engines ahead standard, indicate ninety rpm.”

He studied the diagram again, rubbing his mouth. Evlin was slowing. That should make them drift back onto station. But how had he figured out how much to slow, and converted that to rotations per minute of the screws?

The lieutenant muttered, “Making out okay?”

“Yeah. Just trying to figure out what we're doing.”

“It'll make sense after a couple of nights. Just keep those bearings coming.”

He stood uncertainly for some minutes, musing over his problems. At last his mind switched off and let the anxiety gnaw at his guts without putting words to it.

“You're quiet tonight.”

“Yeah, guess so.”

“Too bad about Bloch.”

“I should have been down there with him.”

“Blaming yourself doesn't do any good.”

“I guess not. But I still feel guilty. Then all the shit they found.… Bryce's got us where he wants us now.”

Evlin was silent. Then he said abruptly, “Come out on the wing.”

They leaned against the shield, and out of habit, Dan screwed the glasses into his eyes. Nothing showed. Not even a star. The overcast must have closed in again, he thought. Well, we had blue sky for a day.

“You're taking this pretty hard.”

“What do you mean, sir? My chief's dead, leading PO's in the brig, my whole division's under suspicion. How would you take it?”

“Are you responsible for any of that?”

“Damn it, they're my men. Of course I'm responsible.”

“In a legal sense. In a real sense—what any reasonable man would take into account—you've only been aboard for two weeks.”

“You think my fitness report will include that little fact?”

“You're not really worrying about that, are you?”

“Well … no.”

“I hope not. Isaacs was on the sauce long before you got here. Those drugs came aboard before you did. From what I've seen, you've been trying your best to recoup a difficult situation. And maybe even making some headway.”

“Thanks, Al. But I still feel I could have prevented Bloch's death … and what they're going to do to Isaacs.…”

“How? It was a combination of a green conning officer and a piece of metal that didn't do what it was supposed to. An accident.

“Look, I've been watching you work. You make errors, but you don't make the same one twice. When you're not actually conning, you've got some pub out studying. You're capable and conscientious, and you'll do fine, no matter what your first fit rep says. And Isaacs—you're right, that's a travesty, but it goes on Bryce's account, not yours.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Stop arguing and listen. The one thing I see wrong with you is that whenever something goes wrong, you condemn yourself. You talk about Bryce suspecting everybody? You suspect Dan Lenson.”

“I just think—”

“I said listen. Keep your ideals. But don't be too tough on yourself. You're as good as the next man. If you act like you're not, you'll end up convincing everybody you're right.

“You can't control the world, Dan. Sometimes I think that's what the captain's trying to do. He's trying so hard to make everything right, trying so hard not to make a mistake, that he gets tired, he misses things—”

“Somebody's got to be responsible.”

“Of course. But we're only human, Dan. You've just got to do your best, and after that, let go. The
Gita
says we have the right to labor; but we have no right to the fruits of our labor. That's what it means. Doing our best, then—letting go.”

Dan felt like punching the bulkhead. He should have relieved Isaacs from the refueling detail after the first screwup. He'd failed leading the division, failed with Lassard, failed with Bryce. He'd dicked up all along the line, from the moment he'd stepped aboard.

He saw now where Evlin was wrong. Men weren't fundamentally good. Maybe in an ashram, with a bunch of saints. Not aboard ship. They were greedy, vicious, lazy, incompetent. They needed discipline and punishment. If they kept screwing up, they had to be purged. Bryce's methods were questionable, but you couldn't argue with his goals.

Tears stung his eyes, welling up from some vast reservoir of pain and anger and guilt. He'd wanted to succeed on
Ryan
—to accomplish something, to
be
someone. But he'd failed.

Who could he blame for that? Somebody else, like the XO did?

“Do you understand .me, Dan?”

“Yeah,” he said. His throat ached. There were tears on the eyepieces of the 7 × 50s. “I hear you, sir.”

*   *   *

AT a little past two
A.M.
the pritac came on, a soft mutter. He reached for the message log. “Angelcake, this is Beacon. Message follows. Turn niner. Execute to follow. Over.”

The screen ships answered one after the other. When
Ryan
's turn came, Evlin said briefly into the handset, “Snowflake, roger, out.” The transmit light died. Dan heard him fumbling in the dark. “Captain, Bridge.”

Silence. Then, “Sir, message from force commander, changing course ninety degrees to starboard, execute to follow.”

Pause. “New course will be one-zero-zero, sir. Figure they're getting ready to recover the air strike.

“Roger, sir. Aye aye, sir.” The phone holder rattled.

“Angelcake, this is Beacon. Turn niner. I say again, turn niner. Standby. Execute.”

“Right standard rudder, steady one-zero-zero,” said Evlin to the helmsman. Then, into the transmitter, “This is Snowflake, roger, out.”

Packer came up after they steadied. He bumped into Dan, sneezed, and muttered, “Sorry.” He and Evlin huddled over the chart table. Parallel rules clicked. At one point, Dan heard them arguing. He was on the wing and caught the tones rather than what they said. The captain sounded tired.

He felt sad again, then angry. Over a pound of marijuana in bags, and more in cigarettes. Plus pills. That fucking Lassard. It
had
to be Lassard's. He could be wrong, but he couldn't be
that
wrong.

At the thought, he glanced around. Where was the port lookout? He found him at last curled into a corner away from the wind. “Lookout,” he said.

“Ay.”

“Slick. What the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing, man. Nothing.
Nada, rien, nyetu.…
”

“Goddamn it, Lassard, you're on watch! I've warned you before. What good are you doing down there?”

“Who you puttin' on? It's pitch-dark, man. There's nothing to see.”