The Command

Dan sat with legs crossed and ball cap pulled low against the brightness in what was once more the skipper’s chair as Horn steamed slowly past lace-bordered islets and emerald green reefs. Past the sky-pricking needles of the great southern oil fields, as if the sea had grown steel hair. Saleh. Mubarek. Fateh. Maybe the only reason the Middle East mattered to the West at all. Those distant needles, and the great tankers always in sight, high out of the water standing in, sunk deep with crude plowing out. He sat watching them pass, sink from sight, as they merged into the dusty obscurity that was all too familiar to him. As the anonymous and abusive kibitzer Americans called the “Filipino Monkey” came over the radio, hearing McCall on the bridge to bridge. “Fuck-a you, American bitch,” and less quotable remarks.

He sat listening, letting her deal with it. Until his gaze was suddenly riveted to a speck. A speck that grew as they churned onward into a shape he knew.

The dread grew like ice around his heart. He’d forgotten, till now.

Pushed it back, not even consciously, as if his mind itself didn’t want to know it knew. Didn’t want to go back into this dark realm of pain and defeat.

The speck was Abu Musa Island, and this achingly beautiful sea was where Turner Van Zandt had gone down. Years before. But the sky looked the same, the air smelled the same — dry, dusty, with a hint of burning. Above all, the lancing, penetrating blaze above them was the same.

His fingers turned the heavy ring. Feeling where they’d soldered it back together, after sawing it off his sea-swollen finger.

A hundred and forty-two men had gone over the side. Two days later, after sea snakes, sharks, the bullets of Iranian patrols, and the endless, burning, remorseless sun, a passing dhow had pulled a hundred and ten out of the water.

He was staring into the play of light when Lieutenant Schaad, Horn’s combat systems officer, cleared his throat beside him. He flinched back to the present. “Casey. What you got?”

“Sir, wanted to check with you about security in port. XO told me you wanted a boat in the water.”

“Not just ‘a boat in the water.’ I want an armed perimeter security patrol.”

“Sir, I don’t think we can do that.”

“Why not?”

“Bahraini regulations specify national authorities — their own— provide security in their waters. Foreign warships are required to secure all weapons and lock down all ammunition. They permit handguns for brow security, but that’s all.”

He reflected on this. “What about the Naval Support Activity?”

“Well, I’d assume they have guards.”

“You’re an Academy guy, Casey. You know what the word ‘assume’ means.”

As he might have expected, Schaad took it without the slightest grain of humor. “Yes, sir. Assume means, make an ass out of you, and an ass out of me.”

“So let’s not, okay? Does Naval Support Activity provide afloat security for visiting fleet units?”

“I don’t see anything in the lessons learned database or the port descriptor.”

“Then I want a boat in the water. Put them about two hundred yards off our berth, cruising back and forth. Random movements. No pattern. Chambers empty, but loaded magazines ready. That clear?”

Schaad looked doubtful. “That’s not in accordance with port regs, captain. The weapons, I mean.”

“Then we’ll keep them under tarps,” Dan told him. “But I’m not going to sit around naked. I may change that after I talk to the shore staff, but that’s what we’ll start with.”

Schaad said aye, aye, and left. Dan raised his eyes again to the island, remembering the men whose very atoms had merged with the sea and air around him. They’d paid the price. For freedom? For democracy? Or just for those who jammed the nozzle into their tank and whistled idly as the numbers flickered?

While he still looked out over this deceptively calm blue. This time, in command.

At least, until they got to Bahrain. After that, someone else might be sitting in his seat.

He glanced again toward the distant land. And the black fear came on him, the one that squeezed cold sweat and made his breath patter rapid and shallow, spiraling his mind toward terror. He groped for control. Trying to talk himself out of it. None of it was going to happen again … he wouldn’t be captured, tortured… Horn would not die as Van Zandt had.

His fists clenched. Who was he kidding? This was the Gulf. Anything could happen here. Anything.

Plodding along at ten knots, Horn passed slowly into the most dangerous sea on the planet.

* * *

He spent that day strolling through the ship. He might not get another chance to say farewell. So he made a point of asking about each man and woman’s family, finding something to praise about their work. They were still excited from the strike. Delivering ordnance made a sailor’s day. It wasn’t bloodthirstiness, though it might sound like it. More like how a surgeon must feel washing up after an operation that he felt went well.