He wheeled back to the EW stack and cleared his throat again. “You mean two two five?” It must be Alborz. Or her smaller, faster consort, trying to nail them from a distance. Strange, though; tactically he’d have expected them to separate, angling for different bearings for a coordinated launch.
“No sir. One two five. K-band radar; correlates with Eilat-class corvette.” The petty officer darted him a glance. “It’s Lahav.”
He couldn’t help whispering “Crap.” What the hell was Gabi Marom doing? “Could they be illuminating Alborz? And we’re just in the way?”
“Don’t think so, sir. I might pick up a side lobe, but … no sir, he’s locked solid on us.”
Dan’s fists tightened. The Israeli corvette, which so far had seemed to be escorting him, riding shotgun, from the hints her captain had dropped, was now scanning him with its fire-control radars. Could the Israelis have intuited, guessed, his so-far barely formulated intent? And now were warning him? They were inside Savo’s Harpoon range. If they attacked, all he could do was hope to slap down their missiles with Sea Whiz, then take them under fire with his five-inch gun.
He didn’t like how this was developing. Coincidental or not, it was becoming all too much like the classic three-point attack, with threats developing from widely spaced bearings all around the horizon. Stretching even the most capable combat suite’s ability to detect, track, and respond.
He was standing by the command desk, unable to decide even whether to sit, when a murmur ran through the space. Cheryl Staurulakis said something under her breath, and gripped his arm like a falcon alighting. He could actually feel her nails. It was so unlike her that he flinched. Glanced at her, then looked where she was staring.
Fahad Almarshadi stood just inside the doorway from aft, beside the dark gray rubberized curtain that partitioned off Sonar. The slight little XO was holding something down close to his leg. Dan frowned. What the hell was going on?
Slaughenhaupt, on the right of the command table, half turned his head. Murmured, “He’s got a gun.”
Ice ran down through Dan’s arms. He sucked a breath and straightened. The motion must have attracted the exec’s attention, because his face came around. The thin hawklike visage steadied on him.
Almarshadi took a step toward Dan. Another. Holding his right arm down close to his side. As he advanced, the petty officers scattered, jumping up, backing away, to the far end of CIC. Leaving a cleared space around the command table. Now what the little XO held was visible, pointed muzzle-down alongside his thigh.
Voilà, Dan thought. The mystery of the missing nine-millimeter was solved.
Almarshadi halted. He peered around, then back at Dan. Who’d frozen, bent forward at the waist, half-standing, palms flat on the desk. Beside him, apparently not having noticed anything amiss, Staurulakis was typing away, head down.
Dan cleared his throat. “XO. What’s going on? Thought you were on the bridge. This is a real-world contingency. I really need you up there.” A reminder of the guy’s duty; maybe that would snap him out of whatever this was.
“You should have cleared me.”
No, duty wasn’t going to work. Dan straightened. If the guy was going to shoot him, he’d take it standing. An image: his own pistol — locked in his weapons safe, in his at-sea cabin, as it so happened. Only about fifty yards away, but as inaccessible as the Andromeda galaxy. “Cleared you? Of what, Fahad? I’ve never charged you with anything.”
“They say you were tortured. In Desert Storm. Maybe that’s why. I don’t know.”
Dan lifted a hand, slowly, and smoothed his hair. Trying to get his breath, which was suddenly coming hard through his damaged airway. “I’m not following, Fahad. I had a bad experience. True. But I think I’ve treated you just as—”
“Shut up.” The exec didn’t look enraged, or berserk. Just more determined than usual. “This time, you listen to me. Cher! Stop typing.”
Staurulakis flexed her shoulders and glanced over. And only then looked surprised, as if realizing just now that an armed man was in the space. “Move away from him,” Almarshadi told her. “This is between the captain and me.”
Staurulakis braced herself on the arms of her chair but didn’t rise. “Go ahead,” Dan told her. “He’s right. This is between us.” To the exec he said, “How about if we take this out on the weather decks? The two of us? No reason to put anybody else at risk.”
“They’re all on your side.”
Dan cleared his throat, trying for a reasonable tone. “There are no sides here, Fahad.” A gross oversimplification, his brain commented dryly. But let it stand. He took a step forward, but halted as Almarshadi’s weapon rose. He presented his palms. “How about putting that away? Or at least telling me what you want?”
“What I want? It’s what I wanted. But it’s obvious that’s beyond what you felt like accommodating.” Almarshadi swallowed visibly; the muzzle, though, hardly wavered. “I’m the second-most-experienced officer aboard. I screened for command! But to you, I’m only here for the paperwork. Maintenance documentation. And to dump on when you’re pissed off. You don’t want me on station when we’re alongside. But you call away a shipwide search when you can’t find me.
“Face it, Captain Lenson. It isn’t Fahad Almarshadi you’ve got it in for. It’s anybody with an Arab name.”
Dan glanced aside, to see Amy Singhe crouched tense as a panther five yards away. Unfortunately, one of the ASW consoles, a hulking mass of metal six feet high, was between her and the man with the Beretta. He switched his gaze back quickly, but not without sending her a thought message: Don’t. He took a step left, and the muzzle followed him. The little open black hole described tiny circles, but never seemed to leave his center of mass.
Dan murmured again, “If that’s the case, you don’t have a problem with anybody else here. Let’s take it outside. Commander Staurulakis?”
She flinched. “Sir?”
“Take my seat.” He raised his voice so everyone in the space could hear. “TAO has tactical command. CO and XO are … uh … offline.” For once, naval terminology failed him. The only military term that seemed at all applicable to what was going on seemed to be “mutiny.” But it didn’t seem politic to throw that word at the sweating, desperate man who stood irresolute a few feet away.
Despite himself, Dan glanced at the vertical displays. And took another quick breath; the tracks of the incoming Iranian contacts had split. They were on diverging courses now, opening their bearings to Savo, though still closing the range. Like muggers in an alley, spreading out to confront a cop with one bullet left.
But he had to solve the more immediate problem. “Okay, XO. You’re in charge now. Where’re we going? Out on the weather decks?”
Almarshadi wavered. He glanced at the screens, then back at Dan. “They’re attacking?”
“Doesn’t it look like it? You did the TAO course at Newport.”
Almarshadi blinked and took another step back toward the door. He frowned at the displays. “Aren’t you going to preempt?”
“Not in the ROE, Fahad.”
“You’re a strange guy, Captain.”
“I just follow orders, Fahad.” Dan took another breath, but it seemed to be getting harder, as if his throat was closing up again, as it had after the firebombing in Naples. Could the guy be right? That he’d regarded him with suspicion from the first … because of his ancestry, and his name? He didn’t want to believe that. He didn’t think it was so. But maybe … maybe some of the blame was his.