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Dan whistled. “Are you telling me you calculated the correlation coefficient?”

“Well… yes sir. Just divided the covariance of the variables by the product of the standard deviations. I brought along my calculations—”

“That’s interesting, Chief. I didn’t know you were into statistics.”

“A lot of medicine’s based on it nowadays,” Grissett said stiffly, as if Dan had insulted his competence. “It’s basic stuff.”

“I see. Sorry, you just took me aback there. I’ll look over your figures. Point two is a pretty weak correlation, but still.” Dan flipped through a couple more pages, groping for a connection. “Anything from Bethesda?”

Grissett said no, aside from anomalous antigens in the urine samples he’d sent, and waited expectantly. Dan scratched his neck, trying to come up with something. “We scrubbed down the ducts and changed all the filters. Maybe the sequence of events? Did the new filters go in before or after the duct sterilization?”

“After, sir. And I supervised the duct cleaning, with the Top Snipe.”

“Meaning Commander Danenhower, I take it.” Dan regretted the reproof immediately, and hastened to gloss it over. “Yeah, the Top Snipe. Think his guys did a thorough job?”

“If hot water and bleach could’ve killed it, we’d have wiped it out, Captain.” Grissett nodded at the sick list, still in Dan’s hands. “But five new cases this morning. Added to fifteen already off duty. And what worries me is, people don’t seem to be fully recovering, like with a flulike illness. A couple even developed pneumonia.”

Dan’s eyebrows lifted. “Pneumonia!”

“Yessir. I dosed them heavy with cipro, and I think we got it, but even the ones that recover just drag themselves around like zombies. You’ve heard them coughing.”

He had indeed. Pushing his hand back over his hair, he searched his mind. “And it correlates negatively with in-port time… but it doesn’t live in the ventilation. Could we have picked up a brand-new bug? Some Middle Eastern bad boy nobody’s seen yet?” Another possibility occurred, uglier than he wanted to voice, but forced himself to. “It couldn’t be, um, sexually transmitted, could it?”

Grissett said, a touch patronizingly, “Most viral infections can be passed by close physical contact. But that’s not sexual, in the way I think you mean.”

Dan sighed. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. “I don’t have any direction for you, Doc. We can’t divert. This is a national-level mission. I can ask again for a medical team, but we don’t seem to be getting much support out here. Let me talk to Fleet medical, see what they think.”

“I’ve already done that, sir, but maybe the additional horsepower can jar something loose.”

Dan nodded. He glanced at the door, and the corpsman stood. But hesitated, not yet leaving. “Feeling all right yourself, Skipper? I’ve seen you coughing. Wrapping that scarf over your nose.”

Dan shrugged. “I sucked some smoke on 9/11. The dust out here doesn’t help. Could the crud be related to dust? The commodore mentioned dustborne illnesses.”

“Right, bronchiolitis, and dustborne asthma.”

“Could we be picking up some kind of toxics in the dust, on the wind?”

Grissett’s gaze went distant. “I don’t think so. But I’ll run the numbers, see if there’s a correlation with the rates that spend a lot of time outside the air-conditioning envelope. Boatswains. Lookouts.”

Dan got up, and unwrapped a bundle of thin stitched cotton. “I might have something we can try.”

* * *

He passed the word about the Official USS Savo Island Shemagh via the chiefs. Hermelinda’s storekeepers handled the issuing. He’d bought three hundred with the CO’s discretionary fund (and documented that the ship’s store price equaled what he’d paid, so he couldn’t be accused of profiteering). On the mess decks, Kaghazchi demonstrated how to wear them. The exec made her policy clear: they weren’t uniform items, or a replacement for flash gear, but something to wear on a voluntary basis, when you were on lookout or on watch. The crew seemed doubtful at first, but by that evening, when he went up to the bridge, everybody was wearing his or hers, sometimes in novel ways. The women especially liked them; their eyes, peering out from folds of cloth, seemed alluring and mysterious.

* * *

They headed for the channel out at 1700 local, with CAP and SUCAP en route from Vinson. According to Fleet, Tehran was crowing about how they’d “damaged two warships of the Great Satan.” No one there seemed to have made much of a fuss over the butcher’s bilclass="underline" four boats missing, presumed sunk, five more damaged. At least that’d been Dan’s estimate in his after-action report, and his numbers had lined up with Stonecipher’s, as seen from Mitscher.

Settled into the pocket of his command chair in CIC, he stared at the displays, puzzled. Aside from a few scattered contacts along the coast of Qeshm, the waterway looked normal. Commercial traffic was resuming, to judge by the string of merchants on the surface picture.

Could it just be… over, with nothing really settled? But no radars locked onto him as they steamed past Jaziriyeh-ye Forur and reported in to Omani traffic control. The Omanis had been conspicuous by their absence during the entire fracas the week before. Preserving a careful neutrality by looking the other way. Well, they had to live next door to the Iranians. In this part of the planet, just staying out of trouble was an all too elusive goal.

Mills nudged him with the handset, rousing him from reverie. The call was a Dr. Somebody, from Bahrain. Dan drew a blank, then recalled: the Fifth Fleet medical officer. They discussed Savo’s problem. Dan pointed out they’d been reporting the same syndrome for months now, had already had one unexplained death. At last the medico agreed to ask for an epidemiology team from Bethesda. He couldn’t promise when they’d get to the ship, though. “Until then, I recommend focusing on basic sanitation, on the food handlers and meal preparation.” Dan doubted that was the source, but vowed to hold additional training, and inspect for cleanliness.

Mills cleared his throat and nudged him. A new contact had popped up, sourced from Silver Ghost, the Air Force AWACS out of Oman. Seconds later Mitscher reported it too: Track 7834, out of Abu Musa. The island was disputed between Oman and Iran, but had been garrisoned by Iran since the days of the shah. EW detected a radar corresponding to that of a PBF. These were modest-sized gunboats based on the North Korean Chaho class. Dan kept an eye on it as they passed, and had his surface warfare coordinator develop a gun solution. But the C-801s and 802s were the real threats — plus, of course, any Iranian air.

But nothing rose to challenge them. As they steered for the Knuckle, more small craft popped up. The supertankers churned serenely on. Presently the C-802 batteries began illuminating as well, though none locked on. Dan set his team to correlating them, trying to figure out if they’d relocated during the days between the transit in and the way out, or if they were parked in the same locations. They also passed four dhows that the cryppies picked up as verbally transmitting targeting data.

But aside from that, there seemed to be no massing of forces. “They’re backing off,” Staurulakis murmured, standing beside him with arms crossed. “Letting us out.”

She looked frazzled, gaunt, a little unsteady on her feet. He eyed her doubtfully. Execs could burn out… as her predecessor had, all too spectacularly. “I wouldn’t let down our guard just yet, Cheryl. Still a couple hours until we’re out of missile range.”

“Right… right.”