The Last Ship (47 page)

“Thirty-four days, sir. There and back. Twelve-knot steaming.”

“Mr. Melville, take us through Suez. After the American trip.”

“Aye, sir.” Clipboard. A little longer at it, while we waited. I watched his hand move over it, the long black graceful fingers that made one think the word pianist. “Rough calculations here, sir. To Diego Garcia, thereabouts. Possibly beyond by a few hundred miles.”

“Never reaching the Pacific?”

“Well, we might
reach
it, using up reserves. Nothing left to look around for something when we got there.”

The cold known fact, stated, seemed to bring one’s heart still. I remembered: effectively, fetching up beyond the Horn one way; at Diego Garcia now the other. Removing in reality what in my innermost soul, not yet so much as alluded to, I was coming more and more to judge was our only hope. I asked what did not need to be asked of a man like my engineering officer. Making it with respect, something he would understand.

“No chance for error there, sir?”

“Captain, whatever else is hypothesis, that is not. There’s nothing hypothetical about our fuel supply.” The tone half sardonic, half apologetic, as if it were somehow his fault. Through the ascending sound of the sea I heard him say: “If we went the other way first, coming back, transiting Suez . . . well, sir, we’d end up, for all actual purposes, bobbing up and down somewhere in the Indian Ocean.”

The words, quietly as speech could be spoken, absolutely professional; the engineering officer’s voice in its even cadence cast in those unedged Southern tones, this oddly making what he had to say the more deadly; the verdict falling knell-like in the silence of the wardroom. As if his end and sole obligation was not to favor or weigh but simply to present options to his captain; as if to say, I have performed my duty; now perform yours.

The sound of a rising wind, a gathering sea, came leaking through the ports; then from afar off, a single clap of thunder, like a siege gun. I sat, reflective, spoke in reflective tones, wanting that atmosphere for what I was about to say; wanting perhaps to point them gently toward that other hope.

“There have to be others. It is simply impossible that we are the only ones.” Turning again to him whose evaluations would seem to be the most authoritative on that subject. “Mr. Selmon?”

His own voice fell softly, caught in the quiet tone of assessment which had descended upon the wardroom.

“It has to be so, sir. To think we are the only ones would in my view be irrational. We’re just on the wrong part of the earth to find them. The Russian submarine, of course. Maybe a few others. But principally I would bet on the Pacific, that part of it in the southern hemisphere. The islands, I mean, not Australia, New Zealand, not any land masses—they all had targets, one kind of target or another, that one side or another had to take out. Islands that had nothing on them but a few people, too insignificant to merit extinction and clear of wind patterns passing over heavily targeted areas. Best bets of live human beings on those. In my view, a conclusion almost inescapable.”

“Mr. Bainbridge?”

“I’d accept that but add that there are clusters of live human beings above the equator and in the other hemisphere. Of course I’m thinking of the Bosworth signals. If there are some there, likely there are some in other places.”

“It’s all possible.” I sighed. “None of this is contradictory. Gatherings of people scattered around the globe. Some of them maybe in quite excellent health. Anyone disagree with that general assessment?”

I waited. No one spoke.

Abruptly, perhaps from feeling pushed against the wall, nowhere to turn, having to strike back myself, something hard and angered—by what I could not tell, perhaps only at the way things were—arose in me.

“Sure,” I said. “Sure, there are probably a few people back home. In fact there’re probably a number of these ‘pockets’ scattered God knows where.” I spoke brutally. “We can’t simply go up and down the earth, looking for them. Not in the light of what Mr. Melville has just told us. Did everyone hear him? And if everyone did, is anyone suggesting we start some sort of fucking treasure hunt to find as many of those pockets as we can before our fuel runs out and we end up wallowing in some sea somewhere?”

“No, Captain,” Chatham said. “Only at home.”

I regretted already that outburst. “Gentlemen, ladies, I apologize to all of you for my language.”

I could hear the rain begin.
We would never be satisfied unless we had a look.
Yes, an immensely powerful argument. I had to give him that. But what would the price be? No man should be given that choice, no group of men. No, not even Navy men, in whose lexicon no words stood higher than the ones he had uttered. Duty. Responsibility. Then I heard Chatham, something insinuating and sly in his voice:

“Captain, there’s something that hasn’t been mentioned. The Bosworth NCA signal: It’s as much as an order to go home. By that very designation. National Command Authority—the highest. Using TSP ciphers. In addition to that,
Navy
people are obviously sending it, doing the transmitting.
Navy
message form.
Navy
code security procedures—changed every twenty-four-hour day. Just as the
Navy
does.”

He had come on stronger than I had ever known Chatham to do, and done so shrewdly, employing what seemed to be forceful evidence. Had come on also, I had to admit, with every sense of personal conviction in the right of what he was saying. But there was something more to come. A great deal more. He paused in the gathering silence, for all the world like the gunnery officer he was, waiting until his target came dead in the cross hairs. Then he let go.

“If we can’t take orders from the Navy—not to mention the National Command Authority—from whom, in God’s name, are we to take them? I don’t think it’s time for Navy ships, Navy officers, any Navy command whatsoever, to start disobeying Navy orders.”

So here it was, at last. Slowly my eyes came back from looking at the sea to looking point-blank down the table at the CSO. I became aware that a peculiar tenseness had invaded the wardroom, penetrated the last one of the officers, their eyes, all of them, looking up the table at me, expectant; every officer as aware as I was myself of the implications in his words: the first open questioning of my authority; not direct, but a manifest testing of the waters. A silence unlike any other held sway with something of fear and shock in it, something absolutely ominous. No sound save that of the augmenting rain drilling down into that atmosphere. How clever that was of him to save it until the last, like a surprise witness. Myself knowing that it was the last possible choice of a moment to seek confrontation; knowing as well that I must not altogether let it pass. I listened to the rain.

“There’s weather coming,” I said. “We have but a few moments. As to your point, Mr. Chatham, naturally the captain of this ship will decide whom, if anyone, we are to obey. All others need be concerned only with obeying him.”

“Of course, Captain. I meant only . . .”

I cut that off. “I think we’ve pursued the matter sufficiently for today, Mr. Chatham. You’ve made your various points.”

Somehow then looking down the length of the wardroom table to where those two always sat, mute, the Jesuit at its very end, facing me, the doc to his left, thinking I never knew what with either. I should mention that in these officers’ meetings, neither ever volunteered an opinion—each had to be explicitly asked for one; this not a peculiarity of theirs, rather the way of Navy chaplains, Navy doctors, their area of authority lying in healing, one physical the other spiritual, not in the decisions to be made as to the ship’s course and action, these matters the Navy in its wisdom reserving for officers of the line. Nevertheless, seeking counsel wherever it might be found, something making me ask.

“Doc?”

“I’m not sure it makes sense,” he said. “But I feel we have to go home.”

“Commander Cavendish?”

He waited a moment, a man who by vocation and choice heard far more words than he spoke, these always offered with the least of portentousness. “Not much, Captain. It seems pretty clear: the question, I mean, not the answer. Mr. Chatham speaks of duty, of responsibility. They’re the right words. I might suggest that we give more thought to what the fulfillment of those two really consists of, in our special circumstance . . .”

An immense scar of lightning flashed across the starboard port, the following thunder breaking directly above the ship, for a moment silencing all talk.
In our special circumstance.
The words striking into me with the quickness of the lightning flash, words entering me both as sword and as comforter . . . the weather had stopped him, or he had stopped anyhow. No time now to attend to them in any case. For suddenly I was paying heed to the ship. I looked now with intention through the ports upon a whitening sea; listened now not idly but with a seaman’s ear: The roll accompanied by a deepening pitch as she moved into the troughs, the ship slower in coming up. I glanced at Chatham, at Bainbridge, attempting to assess my own assessment of these two curiously allied officers. Together they were a considerably potent force in shaping the opinion, the sense, of the ship. Their motivation to my mind as far apart as could be. Bainbridge: simply innocent hope. Chatham:
From whom are we to take orders.
And the other:
It’s what the crew wants.
The two phrases seemed coupled, part of one thing, bringing altogether near the one terrible danger of all. Control of this ship: that was the missile officer’s intent, the sea herself seemed to speak to me, telling me so; secretively reserving any answer to that other question: to do what with? Not just to take her home: Nothing could convince me the intent stopped there.
Control
of her, her immense striking power: That was his every purpose. I came away from this. I must have felt that their position had to be given its every shot; we could not turn our back on it; not yet. I had the deepest fear of the consequences should I do that. Added to all this, surely, that long and almost unbearable talk of home. Almost helplessly I turned to the communications officer.

“Mr. Bainbridge,” I said. “Concerning Bosworth, Missouri, here it is. The wraps are off. You may identify ourselves, our position, tell them anything else you judge might elicit an intelligible response. Prepare and show me the messages. Starting right now. Get cracking.”

Even as I rose, from down both sides of the wardroom table, the officers of the USS
Nathan James,
heads turned, half of them right, half left, all, including Bainbridge, looking at me with the one expression of startlement, as if it were the last decision they expected from me. Then the communications officer found his voice, a miraculous lift in it.

“Aye, sir. Immediately, Captain.”

Almost as if synchronously, the elements let loose. A great blaze of lightning shot through the ports, filled the wardroom; the following thunder breaking close aboard. The ship shuddered through a sudden pitch, trembling and lurching as she moved into the valleys of the sea, the sound of wind and waves rising above the ventilation and machinery noise. Then, tired of waiting, the torrents of rain exploded and began to hammer the ship. Jennings, the junior officer, moved quickly to close the ports without being told to do so.

“I think the ship needs us,” I said, rising. “Let’s batten down.”

 *  *  * 

I listened to that plaintive sound, forever mysterious and poignant to sailors, of rain falling into the sea, quietly now, haunting as chords in a requiem; the mists hanging low in the water, visibility no more than a couple of ship’s lengths; the ship seeming to move through a void of nothingness; now and then a low soughing of wind as from sentient beings emerging from the spectral darkness. I looked up: masthead and range lights barely penetrating the haze. I had stayed for the changing of the watch; stepped then from the pilot house onto the starboard bridge wing for this final captain’s check, after the strong weather we had been through over the past hours, before making below for my bunk.

The day had seemed forever, the emotion of the wardroom lingering, heart still rended by what my officers had had to be put through, the thoughts of home from that stronghold box where they had so long resided in silent agony ever since the launching in the Barents now forced brutally into the open; each officer forced at last to think, in considering our decision, of his own hometown, what it might be like there, was anyone alive in any one of them, was one of these a wife, a daughter, a son . . . a father, mother, sisters, brothers . . . if so, what might be their condition . . . torment added upon torment until at last the intolerable memories, thoughts, feelings, the whole great horror was stuffed almost violently back into its locker. Not all achieving this success. Later, walking along the passageway in officers’ country to my cabin, I had heard from behind two closed stateroom doors the sounds of sobbing; hesitated, hand almost coming up to knock softly; continued on. Chatham had spoken well into that awful tide of remembrance; his argument had every worth argument could have: We would never be satisfied until we had seen it with our own eyes. It was wisdom itself; the words, once uttered, became something like a commandment, engraved in stone, haunting the mind. As for myself, I had no one to go home to, not any longer, and quite often I had felt that this constituted my chief strength. I was not at all certain I would have possessed the courage of my own officers, having others—wives, children—back there and yet with every fortitude carrying on, fulfilling their duties. A wave of the most intense respect and affection for them held me for a moment in the night. Who could now blame them if they came down on Chatham’s side? To go see with their own eyes; even, as the Jesuit had said a time back, if it meant seeing the nail prints in the hands, the spear wound in the side. Who was I, lacking their motivation, their desire like the passion of the Lord, to oppose them? The thought seemed to lead directly to what the Jesuit had said this day.