The Command

Now they were passing the amphib, lined up down the midpoint of the dock. Civilians called piers “docks,” but to a seaman, docks were the water spaces between the piers. Horn was still moving too fast for comfort, but Dan thought he read the exec’s intent; a swifter passage to the berth meant less time for the wind to work. Unfortunately, the bow was swinging to starboard now as the rudder took effect.

“Port engine back full. Starboard engine back one-third.”

Good, she was using the engines both to slow the thousands of tons of moving metal and to twist them to port. Dan blotted perspiration furtively from his forehead. Enlisted men looked down from the am-phib’s bridge. One pointed at Hotchkiss, who gave him an annoyed glance, then turned her back.

Horn was slowing. Slowing … He felt the moment loom, then slide into the past when he’d have stopped his engines had this been a steam-powered ship. But gas turbines responded more quickly. There, she was ordering “All stop.” The lee helmsman slid the throttles back, and suddenly seven thousand tons of destroyer was perfectly motionless, perfectly placed, parallel to her berth and fifty yards off. She’d stay there for only a few seconds, though. Then the wind would begin carrying her down on a Dutch frigate so close to starboard Dan could have beaned the guys gawking from her deck with a baseball.

“Rudder amidships. Captain, can we have the push boat now?”

“Captain” meant in this case not him but the pilot, a confusing form of address but traditional. The pilot put his handheld to his mouth as Hotchkiss strolled over to Dan. Close up she wasn’t as cool as she’d looked from yards away. Wisps of hair from under her cap clung to flushed skin. She gave him a questioning glance; he cleared his throat and blinked, looked away.

Beside and below them the tug was blasting out diesel smoke. The engine vibrated the air. Something was making him uneasy. Just as he realized what it was, Hotchkiss went on tiptoe to peer over the bulwark.

“We don’t seem to be going anywhere,” she said.

The momentary stillness was gone. They were drifting downwind, away from their berth. Dan stood in his chair to look down over the splinter shield. The tug’s skipper was staring up through his windshield. A middle-aged, reddened face. Their eyes met, and the other shook his head rapidly.

“Clelia Gracie’s dropped gears,” the pilot said, relaying off the handheld.

“Just fucking great,” Hotchkiss said. He followed her gaze across to the Dutch warship. The strip of water between them was narrowing as Horn’s drift accelerated. Yet still he waited, forcing himself to stay nailed in the chair.

“I’m going to need help here, sir,” she said, several beats before a male officer would have.

He came out of his chair. “Left hard rudder. Port engine back full. Starboard ahead full.” In the pilothouse the chorus, “Captain has the conn.” Glancing down, the tug’s master still shaking his head. A whoop, whoop from the Dutchman; his collision alarm, he was shutting his watertight doors.

His only remaining chance to avoid a low-speed but still unpleasant, expensive, and diplomatically embarrassing collision was to get his bow into the right angle the pier made with the quay wall. The maneuver would also push his stern perilously close to the Dutchman. But under the suddenly increased drive of the screws the bow was already pivoting. His glance crossed the pilot’s. The man said another tug was on its way, ten minutes. Dan nodded, but they both knew it’d be over by then, one way or another.

As he walked briskly to the port side, the bridge team flattened against consoles. Hotchkiss followed. Good, she was still in the game. Watching and learning from the Old Man. While that Old Man, anxious but trying not to show it, braced his palms on the bulwark and eyed a swiftly widening gap of brown water fingernailed with scalloped wavelets. The wind was stronger than he’d thought. Spruances had high superstructures, a lot of surface for the wind to grab. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to pull this one out of his ass.

“Engines stop. Both ahead one-third. Rudder hard right.”

Now the bow was nearly in line-heaving range, though the stern was swinging far out, but in the process Horn had gathered forward momentum. The quay was marching up on them. Its cracked concrete face was so near he saw a rat watching from behind a bollard. “Engines stop,” he shouted into the pilothouse, registering the repetition of his command, the ping of the engine order telegraph.

It wasn’t enough. He looked down to see the boatswain’s mates staring grimly across at the pier, lines sagging in their hands. Too far to throw.

One trick left. “Right hard rudder,” he shouted; then, “Engines ahead full.”

Heads whipped around in the pilothouse. He leaned over the splinter shield, waiting, listening.