The tug ranged alongside, unexpectedly small, more like a harbor tug than a salvage type, low, battered, with rusty patches like red lichen along her dented-in sides. Waves broke over her rear deck, which hardly showed, at times, above them. But the crew knew what they were doing. A gun cracked. A bright green projectile angled across, curving in the wind, and draped a line fluttering down across their bow. First Division hustled it aft and pulled across a heavier line, this one bent to the end shackle of the frigate’s hawser. The boatswains on the three ships seemed to be doing fine with hand signals, so Dan left them to it. He kept looking aft, studying the pilothouse with his binoculars, but didn’t see the Iranian captain again.
A whistle shrilled. The tug hoisted the black diamond shape that meant craft in tow. The phone talker said, “Fantail reports: Dropped the tow, sir.”
“Very well.” It looked like a damn small tug to handle something as large as that frigate, but it wasn’t his responsibility any longer. They still didn’t have any orders as to where to go from here, but this wasn’t a good place to linger. “Restow all gear and secure. OOD, let’s go to two-six-zero and fifteen, get clear of Syrian waters.”
They didn’t get a message responding to their after-action report until that afternoon. Iron Sky directed them back to a rendezvous with the main body of Task Force 60. A Naval Criminal Investigative Service team would be on its way shortly by helo. On rendezvous, Dan would crossdeck to Theodore Roosevelt, to appear before Admiral Ogawa. A senior O-6 from Ogawa’s staff would take temporary command of Savo Island.
Almost as an afterthought, it mentioned that defense counsel had been appointed for Captain Daniel V. Lenson, USN.
The Afterimage: USS Theodore Roosevelt, CVN-71
It felt all too familiar. Being led like a sacrifice through labyrinthine corridors smelling of latex paint and lubricating oil and stale refrigerated air. Stepping over an endless recession of knee-knockers, the oval openings of frame doors stretching away as if reflected in endlessly fleeing mirrors. The snapping to attention of flawlessly turned-out Marines in dress Charlies and white cap covers, complete with aiguillettes and holstered pistols. Then being ushered into a low-overheaded flag wardroom, cleared for the occasion of dishes and cutlery and idle junior officers. But the familiarity didn’t make him feel any less nauseated.
Oh, yeah. He’d been here before.
A court of inquiry. The faces that turned toward him, then quickly away, from a knot of service dress blue at the far end of the space told him that much. As had his counsel, a young woman also in dress blues. Dan himself was still in three-days-unwashed khakis, the best uniform he could muster. Her advice had been singularly unhelpful. Be forthcoming. Lay it all out. Tell the truth. It’s not a trial, just an inquiry.
Nothing he hadn’t heard before. Not that it had helped much then.
He drifted to the sideboard and found coffee. When the cup clattered as he poured, he leaned against the bulkhead, closing his eyes. He kneaded the bone and flesh around them until phosphenes coruscated digital patterns in the twin displays of his optic nerves. When he released the pressure a deep scarlet rushed around him, like a whirlpool of blood. When he opened his eyes the whirlwind was still there, just not completely red. The murmurs from the far end of the wardroom continued. No one came his way, no one approached to welcome or condole.
His mouth twisted in a crooked, humorless smile. He remembered a corridor floored in Italian marble, and a shaken-looking man with silver at his temples like the chromium eagles on his collar. And a bleak thousand-yard stare. The previous CO of USS Savo Island.
They needed a scapegoat. Make sure you’re not the next one.
Now he stood in the shoes of the dishonored captain he’d relieved. A strange turnabout, a full-circle return.
If he went out in the passageway, started opening doors, would his own relief look up, startled and abashed at being discovered, waiting in another room?
But half an hour passed. The moment stretched, stretched out. He finished that cup of joe and had another. He kept wondering how Chief Zotcher was doing, down in the carrier’s operating suite. How Savo’s crew were taking the loss of their second captain in a row.
He breathed deep and slow, trying to put regret, and a sorrow almost like losing a loved one, behind him. For Dan Lenson, USS Savo Island was history. Let it fall astern in the wake, grow tiny, rising on the last swell between him and the horizon. And vanish forever … At least he’d saved some lives. He tried to comfort himself with that. Enemy lives, Iraqi civilians, but saved nonetheless. It helped about as much as a maintenance aspirin on an amputation.
He had half a doughnut, then a third cup, and finished the doughnut up. He arrested his hand in the act of reaching for another pastry. Sugar wasn’t the way to shed the shakes. Damn, if he only could have gotten some sleep. More than the half hour’s nap on the helo that had left him groggy and nasty-mouthed. If only he’d brought the Freya Stark book with him. He’d left it aboard; would never finish it now.
What the hell. He knew how it ended: Rome fell. He paced around, noting how even as he ghosted past, ten feet away, not one of the men and women around the low table set with months-old copies of AFJ and Defense News and Approach acknowledged his existence.
But these men and women were not his shipmates. To judge by those carefully averted gazes, they weren’t even in the same navy.
He sighed and checked his watch. Nearly an hour now …
“Gentlemen?” An immaculately uniformed lieutenant (junior grade), blank-faced as a robot, at the door. The aiguillette proclaimed him a flag aide. “There’s going to be a slight delay. Please stand easy. — Captain Lenson?”
“That’s me. Yeah.”
“The admiral would like to see you privately.”
Hmm. This was not routine. The lifted eyebrows around the coffee table attested to that. The convening officer was supposed to stand clear of the proceedings of a court of inquiry. No, wait; he was supposed to stand clear of the members. Did that include the defendant? Maybe … or maybe not.
“This way, Captain.” The jaygee held the door open carefully, even solicitously, as if Dan were an eighty-year-old Mafia don.
CTF 60, the battle group commander — “Iron Sky” — was a rear admiral Dan hadn’t met before. He introduced himself, but didn’t shake hands. Perhaps he feared whatever Dan had might be catching. There was no mention of admiration for his Medal of Honor, or anything else. Just a blank “Good to see you. Let’s step into my office.”
The adjoining room was set up for videoteleconferencing. Two dead screens faced a padded chair. The one-star didn’t introduce an enlisted man sitting to one side. He pulled a second seat up to his own station for Dan. The petty officer addressed himself to a keyboard, and a ruby LED blinked on over a tiny camera pointed at them. Both screens lit, one after the other. The leftmost illuminated a brilliant noon-sky blue, but without video feed. Whoever was on it didn’t care to be seen. The right one came on to reveal Admiral Ogawa, Commander, Sixth Fleet, head lowered, reading something. Dan could make out the beginning of a bald patch on the top of Ogawa’s skull.