David Poyer
The Cruiser
He who wishes to serve his country must have not only the power to think, but the will to act.
1
They’d been in the air for two hours from Spain when the copilot made her way toward him, bracing a hand on the back of each seat. “Coming up on Naples, Captain,” she murmured over the hum of the engines. As the wing of the vice CNO’s private jet lifted, she bent over him to point outside, giving a flash of cleavage at the neckline of her flight suit. “There’s Vesuvius, sir. Harbor’s coming up on your right.”
The immense double mounds of the volcano barricaded the sky. Below stretched miles of roofs, streets, apartments, their windows flashing flame-orange in the winter sun. The air was hazy with mist, or maybe smoke. What must it be like, living in the shadow of a volcano? The very volcano — if he remembered correctly — where Hephaestus had forged the weapons of Mars, the god of war.
Then a great glittering rose-silver arc rolled up into view, and Dan leaned into the seat belt, shading his eyes. The pilot kept the wing depressed, as if to give his only passenger the opportunity for a long look down.
Captain Daniel Valentine Lenson, U.S. Navy, traced the tracks and roads that edged the sweeping concavity of sea that was the Bay of Naples; the inner harbor; the stone moles, spidery thin and knobbed as a movie alien’s fingers. Cruise ships lay alongside the Mussolini-era passenger terminal, deck on deck shining in the sun like white steel wedding cakes.
A cliff of masonry, the fortification that had guarded the city in days past, frowned half a mile south of the inner harbor. Two hundred yards short of it lay the gray wedge of a Ticonderoga-class cruiser. A tug was nudging a barge alongside; smaller craft sketched foamy orbits around it. Those would be force protection, small boats guarding the helpless giant.
“Can you see it?” The copilot, leaning even farther over him. Blond hair swung forward, wafting a perfume he hadn’t caught before. “We can notify Traffic Control and circle. Get you a better look.”
“No, thanks.” One glimpse had seared it into his retinas. The orange of spill-containment booms. The blues and greens that paled abruptly to shoal water a third of the way back from the stem. USS Savo Island was hard aground. That much was clear, even from five thousand feet.
“We’ll be wheels down in ten, then. Is your seat belt secure? Just let me check—”
“I’ll snug it up, thanks.” Dan scratched his chin. He wore two rings: the heavy gold Annapolis one, and the thinner, traditional Navy wedding band, with stars and anchors. Glancing at his hand, she opened her mouth, as if about to say something. Then seemed to think better of it, and headed back to the cockpit. Still, he could appreciate the curve of her receding ass, firmly outlined by the tight-fitting flight suit.
The turbines whined up, then down, and dust floated and sparkled in the sunlight slanting through the window. No wonder Admiral Barry “Nick” Niles had diverted his personal aircraft to get a newly promoted surface line captain here as quickly as possible. An Aegis cruiser. The envy of other navies worldwide. Yet now she lay helpless on a shoal everyone knew was there, that was plainly shown on charts and even marked with a warning buoy.
How could it have happened?
And what was he going to do about it?
He descended the deplaning ladder feeling like a member of Congress, carrying his briefcase and with his notebook computer slung over the other shoulder. Into hot exhaust and chilly, smoke-smelling wind. Down the line, airliners nuzzled a glass-walled commercial terminal. The U.S. Naval Support Activity, Capodichino, shared the runway with Naples International Airport.
A tall, eager lieutenant in khakis. “Captain Lenson? Lieutenant Mills.… Matt. It’s a real honor.”
He returned the salute awkwardly, and the junior officer relieved him of the computer. “I need to see Commodore Roald as soon as possible,” Dan told him.
Mills glanced up from Dan’s ribbons. He swallowed, looking intimidated.
“They don’t make me any different from anyone else, Lieutenant. The commodore?”
A fresh blast of exhaust swept over them. Turning away, Mills yelled, “Right, sir. She, uh, told me she didn’t need you until tomorrow, sir.”
“My orders were to report to her.”
“It’s a legal issue, sir. She can’t meet with the relieving commanding officer until the decision’s made that the outgoing CO is actually outgoing. As I understand it.”
That made sense. Niles had insisted that he see Roald the instant he arrived. But Nick Niles wasn’t here. Mills was ushering him into a small room with a plush brown suede sofa, a low table, and a modernistic, chromed Italian coffeemaker. “This is our distinguished-visitor lounge, sir. The head’s through there. We’ll get your luggage and bring your sedan around.”
“I may not need a car. Where’s the court being held?”
“Court of inquiry’s in Admin Two. That’s further down the Spina. Or I can just take you to your quarters.”
Dan sank into the sofa. “So. Matt, is it? What do you do for Commodore Roald?”
“Actually, I’m the Aegis go-to guy on the DesRon staff. Did my previous tour on Anzio. Why she sent me to meet you, I think.”
“Can you give me any background? I know the investigation’s still in progress.…”
Mills closed a door Dan assumed led to the main passenger area. “I can tell you what I heard from the Port Ops guys. But I can’t vouch it’s true.”
“Always good to hear the scuttlebutt.”
“Yessir. Long’s you know I’m not exactly the burning bush … Savo went aground day before yesterday. Coming in early, in the rain, bound for anchorage A4. What I heard, the quartermaster chief noticed they were coming in off bearings. The navigator told the conning officer she was coming in too fast and to change course. She — the conning officer — she thought she was right, and the CO backed her. The navigator tried to relieve her, and the skipper told him to, quote, ‘shut the fuck up,’ unquote. Then ordered him off the bridge.”
Mills glanced at the door. “At that point — and again, this is secondhand — kind of an argument-slash-clusterfuck broke out. Suddenly the castle looms out of the rain. The bo’s’un sounds the collision alarm. The captain takes the conn, but they lose steering or maybe engine control, and when he orders the anchor dropped, the deck gang can’t get the brake released in time.”
A shiver harrowed Dan’s back. A concatenation of errors and failures leading to disaster. “How fast did they hit?”
“Fifteen, sixteen knots.”
He winced. “How bad’s the damage?”
“They’re still looking at it. A team from Surflant’s down there. And, um, a lot of Italians.” The aide’s cell went off. “Excuse me, sir.… Yeah … yeah, he’s here, in the DV lounge.… Yes ma’am. I’ll tell him.” He snicked it closed. “She says you might want to go down and take a look. I can drive you, if you want.”
Dan wavered, torn between waiting for Roald and wanting to see the ship that very soon might be his own. Then took a deep breath, and nodded.
Five or six demonstrators pumped placards as Mills flashed his ID at a police barrier between crumbling ancient bastions. Some of the signs were in Italian; others, English. One read NO TO SHOCK AND AWE. They were waved through, though a car that tried to follow them in was surrounded by the shouting crowd. They rumbled over a concrete causeway, past a marina. A tunnel yawned in a looming pile of decaying volcanic stone. “The Castel dell’Ovo,” Mills said. Dan assumed they were headed for the tunnel, but instead the road zagged and they skirted the massive sloped buttresses until the Mediterranean, blue and soft as a newborn’s eyes, opened ahead.