And though he didn’t like to think this way, he had to cover his own ass and the command’s by making sure he followed the instructions on sexual assault — sending messages to God and everyone documenting every detail, everything he’d directed done, everything he’d been told to do. It would take time and command attention, time he desperately needed.
But he owed it to Colón. Her assailant must be the same guy who’d assaulted Terranova.
Or was it? He clung to the smooth steel of the handrail, and broke into a cold sweat just thinking about two sexual predators on the same ship. A copycat? No, Occam’s razor: Do not unnecessarily multiply entities. And the MO, which hadn’t been announced, was the same: finagling the lights, then abduction at knifepoint. Their perpetrator had started with fondling, and now progressed to manual penetration while masturbating. The next step, from everything he’d read, would be rape and possibly mutilation, or even murder.
So, how to proceed. One of the castaways had been hitting on her. But he doubted they’d know the ship well enough to screw with the wiring. Also, they hadn’t been aboard when Terranova had been… no, wait, they had. So that didn’t exonerate them. Especially this Behnam Shah.
But Toan had mentioned another suspect. One he “had his eyes on.” Dan hadn’t wanted to ask who in front of the others. Maybe they could identify a suspect. Isolate him, until they could offload the bastard. But he had to root this out. Before it widened the already deep chasm between the females, including the female officers, and the rest of the ship.
A damaged crew took much longer to repair than a damaged ship. Was it Jenn Roald who’d told him that? Or Nick Niles?
So he needed to address it. Not just officially, by the reporting requirements, but directly, to the crew. He lifted his head toward the top of the ladder as someone opened the door to the bridge. Cleared his throat, straightened his back, and climbed toward the light.
They cruised through the day and the next and then the next, midway between Karachi and Mumbai. The wind varied between twenty and thirty knots, consistently from the southwest, and the seas continued very heavy. Terranova picked up another strange high-altitude, slow-moving contact, like the one they’d tracked going through Hormuz. Or that had perhaps tracked them… On the second day a message relayed that Pakistan had both refused their refueling request and officially protested their presence within the Islamic Republic’s exclusive economic zone. The government had referenced its reservation, on signing UNCLOS, that it did not authorize military maneuvers by foreign-flagged warships within the EEZs of coastal states without the consent of said states. The U.S. was asked to remove its task forces and not to intrude again.
In sick bay that morning, Dan was examining a reddish stain on a cotton pad. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at here,” he confessed as the ship labored around them.
Schell, dark circles under his eyes, sagged back against the tier of bunks. Grissett sat on the lowest. The command master chief, Tausengelt, had pulled out a desk chair and reversed it. The doctor murmured, “It’s a culture. The stain brings it out. From one of your hot-water heating systems.”
“And?”
“We’d need an electron microscope to be certain, but I’m 90 percent sure it’s somebody new in the zoo. A previously unidentified amoebal pathogen. In other words, a variation of Legionnaires’ disease.”
Dan held the stain to the light as the physician went on to explain that Legionella bacteria had evolved to infect freshwater protozoa. “Such as amoebas. Now, we may not care for the idea, but we’re pretty much always surrounded by bacteria. And most of our freshwater systems — at home, in hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and so forth — are colonized by protozoa. They love warm water 24-7, same as we do, so it’s an ideal habitat. In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, they never cause trouble, because we’re adapted to them. But in the case of Legionella pneumophila—meaning, it likes the lungs — the bacteria can jump to us, infect us, and cause the symptoms you’re familiar with.”
Dan nodded. He still felt exhausted, even when he got enough sleep, and too many of the crew felt the same way, evidenced by the way they dragged around. “But, a bacterium? Doc here’s been dosing everybody with cipro—”
“You’ve obviously got a ciprofloxacin-resistant bug. Which we’re seeing a lot more of, by the way.”
“How, exactly, does it infect? What’s the route of transmission?”
“Via the hot-water systems.”
Dan shook his head. “No, you said it bred in the hot-water systems. How does it get from there to the crew? In the drinking water?”
Schell squinched up his face. “No, stomach acid’s usually up to the job of dissolving any bacteria. It’s still iffy, but I suspect your showers.”
Dan frowned. “You mean in them, or… or by taking showers?”
“The latter. Unfortunately. Aerosolized and misted by the nozzle, water’s easy to breathe into the lungs. Which are also wet, warm, and welcoming.”
Schell droned on about how the bacterium involved was atypical, which was why Bethesda hadn’t detected it in the sputum and blood from the first fatality, back in the Med. Dan interrupted. “I get all that, Doc. But how do we fix this? We thought it was in the vent ducts.”
“Right, your corpsman told me that.” He nodded to Grissett. “Not a bad guess, working with what you knew.”
“You’re certain it’s our hot water.”
“As I said, without an electron microscope to positively identify, no. But based on everything else, 90, 95 percent certainty. The fact that your bronchoalveolar washings came back negative makes me suspect a new strain. I plan to call it Legionella savoiensis.”
Oh, great. But maybe this wasn’t the time or place to argue over Latinate terminology. “All right, let’s go with that diagnosis. What do we do about it?”
“The book answer is, have the ship recalled and quarantined. Steam-clean every hot-water pipe and heater and fixture aboard. Especially any dead legs in your system. And wherever your cold- and hot-water systems mix, like heat exchangers. If I report this to Navy Medical, that’s what’s going to come back. Pull you off the line and send you home.”
“We can’t do that.” But as Dan rubbed his mouth, he remembered previous experiences with NavMed. Both professionally competent and fiercely independent, the Bureau of Navy Medicine was its own fiefdom. Pressure from outside, or even from above, merely hardened its stance. Recall and quarantine was all too possible. “We can’t leave now. Not with a war about to start.”
“You also can’t keep the guys on a gallon of water a day, sir,” Grissett put in. “Or keep the showers secured.”
“I sailed with the Korean navy,” Dan said. “They didn’t have showers. They bathed in buckets.”
All three men just looked at him. He grimaced, seeing how it was, and went on. “But, uh, obviously we can’t do that for more than a couple days. So, tell me what to do. Chemicals? Hyperchlorination? How do we fix this?”
Schell looked away. In a low voice he said, “You can’t use chemicals aboard ship. Not in the concentrations needed for eradication. We’re not talking just upping the chlorine count here. Trihalomethane, chlorine dioxide — you can’t use those in confined spaces.”
“There isn’t anything else?”
Schell hesitated. “Well… there is one thing you could try. It’s called ‘heat and flush.’”
Dan glanced at Grissett. “I’m listening. Doc?”
“Me too, Captain. But I think I know what he’s gonna say.”