“Oh! You made the Post. Third page, continued from the second. ‘Renewed Friction in Strait of Hormuz.’”
“Friction, huh? It was more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
She sounded surprised, and he checked himself, wondering. Were both sides close-holding accounts of the action? He checked outside the booth; the senior enlisted were still talking and drinking. Outside, in the falling dark, lights were coming on, and it looked as if a drunken volleyball tournament was starting. “Um, well, more than I want to discuss on the phone. I’ll send you a detailed e-mail. You still have that covered account through SAIC, don’t you?”
“Yes. I’m still listed as a consultant.”
“Look, I’m putting stuff out to the dependents through Chief Slaughenhaupt’s wife, but if it’s in the papers, it might be good to reassure the families. Have them get something personal from you. A note, or an e-mail. Think you could take up some of the slack? Maybe—”
“Dan, I understand, the CO’s wife is supposed to do that stuff. But I’m not a traditional captain’s wife. Running for office is like having two full-time jobs. Unless you really, really have something you desperately need me to do, I’d rather you stayed with your regular ombudsperson, or whatever.”
He glanced out again, pulled the sliding door shut. Not a cheering answer, but pretty much the response he’d expected. And maybe it wasn’t smart to ask the next question, either. The mid-deployment phone call… so much had to be crammed into these minutes, so much else left unsaid… “Look, are we still good? You and me?”
A pause. “We still need to talk. What you’re going to do, if I’m a sitting member of Congress. And what I’m going to do, if I lose.”
“That’s about our careers. What about us?”
She sighed. “I’m still thinking. Maybe it’s just, I don’t know, getting older, losing my looks—”
“Good grief, Blair. You haven’t lost anything! If this is about your ear—”
“Not really. I’m not that shallow—”
He said, “I didn’t mean to say you were,” but the delay made it awkward and she was speaking again by the time his words reached her, leaving them talking over each other in a not-quite-argument, not-quite-friendly exchange that petered out into silence. Until there was nothing more to say but an awkward good-bye.
When he went back into the bar the chiefs looked him over, tsk-tsking. “Rough call home?” Zotcher said. When Dan shrugged, he beckoned the barkeep. “You like those lemon pops? I saw you makin’ a face.”
“I guess they’re all right.”
“Another of those for the skipper,” Carpenter called.
Dan opened the plastic bag the clerk had given him. He pulled out the shemagh and unfolded it on the table. The chiefs frowned at it, then at him.
“Let me run an idea past you,” he said.
They got under way just after dawn, beneath a sky the color of a sander belt and a wind that blew banks of airborne grit past them like mist on some haunted moor. Then steamed in six-knot squares through the morning, as the supertankers they were to escort were delayed getting under way.
At last their monstrous shadows loomed through a pale red half-light as if some lander were televising it from Mars. Mitscher fell in astern as they joined up off the Great Pearl Bank. The tankers eddied in and out of sight in a ruddy, tricky haze that closed in with a rising wind. Dan placed his task group to the north, intending to transit the outbound lane with Mitscher ahead this time, Savo bringing up the rear. He went to general quarters an hour from the western entrance, developing a thorough air and surface picture.
Face taco’d in one of the shemaghs, he leaned back in his wing chair, coughing. The very air hurt to breathe. The sun microwaved through the haze. The bridge wing thermometer stood at 125 degrees. He wouldn’t be able to stay out long. The only other person outside was the mine lookout, up in the eyes of the ship. He stood motionless as a figurehead, one hand on the wildcat, staring ahead.
But he didn’t want to go inside. Since the battle, he’d felt depressed. In there, the line would form. Messages. Reports. Decisions. He’d told Cheryl to manage the routine stuff. Only if something hot came in would she route it out to him. She was taking hold. Which wasn’t easy — the XO’s basic job description being to act as the leading asshole. To demand more than anyone could offer, and keep driving standards upward. It had broken the previous exec, and come close to breaking Dan, back when he’d had the job. In some ways, being the skipper was easier.
Aside from making those life-and-death decisions, of course.
He shaded his gaze into the wind. The sand, the dust, the scarlet sky, the sheen of brown scum on the weirdly still sea, reminded him of Earnest Will. The escort mission that had ended with Turner Van Zandt’s sinking. But also where he’d met Blair, on a fact-finding mission for the Armed Services Committee.
For a long time, the relationship had been on and off, passionate when they were together, but comfortable apart, too. Then they’d gotten married. And for a time it had all seemed fine.
But now… His first marriage had gone into the same kind of death spiral. He’d seen it over and over; deployments were hell on both sides. There was so damn little he could do from here. His daughter from his first marriage didn’t need him anymore; she had her own life now. Maybe it was time he thought about getting out. A fucking cat… it was sad that Blair felt the need for company. If that was what it was.
And there she was, Staurulakis, not Blair, at the window in the port wing door. Checking him out, then undogging the door. Unsightly red grooves engraved her cheeks. The duty radioman fidgeted behind her, a clipboard over his crotch. Dan sighed and pulled his shemagh tighter.
“Sir? Update from Fleet. The Pasdaran announced the end of their exercise. Iran lifted the Notice to Mariners. Also, chief corpsman wonders if you can spare a minute.”
He sighed again, and swung down. Took a last look around. Through the low churning haze, he could see fuck-all. Something could be bearing down on him right now, and he’d never know. Except through radar, of course. Thank God for radar. He couldn’t imagine trying to navigate, much less fight, around here without it. “All right, let me read that. I’ll see the corpsman in my sea cabin.”
Grissett looked upset. Dan pointed to the spare chair, wedged into the corner of the tiny compartment. “Grab a sit, Bones. What’cha got?”
“Not good news, sir, I’m afraid.” The chief medic handed over stapled sheets. “Today’s sick list.”
“Some of the troops overindulge at the Sand Pit?”
“No sir. Well, maybe a little. But mainly, I’m getting a big uptick with the crud.”
Dan studied the list as the chief corpsman went on, “On the next page, I made up a graph. Trying to figure out what this thing correlates to — port visits, whatever. And it does seem to correlate with in-port periods.”
“Is that right? We get more cases in port?”
“Yessir — I mean, no sir. The opposite. Look at the graph.” Dan flipped to it. “It’s a negative correlation. The numbers go down when we’re in port, like in Crete.”
“Not sure I see it.”
“It’s only about minus zero point two, but it’s there.”
“What’s minus zero point two?”
“The correlation coefficient of the two variables, in-port time and reporting cases.”