The Seventh Angel - Страница 2

There was no time to sniff out a safe path through the minefield. If they reduced speed enough for sonar to detect the mines, the torpedo would catch them and kill them. If they tried to run without seeing the mines, they were nearly certain to hit one. That would kill them just as quickly.

On the big display screen, the Towers appeared as a small green cross, enclosed by a circle. A single green speed vector protruded from the center of the symbol, like the stick of a lollipop. The symbol was pointed southwest now, inching toward the irregular red boundary that represented the edge of the minefield. They were moving in the right direction — toward safe water — but the flashing red torpedo symbol was less than 2,500 yards behind now, and moving a lot faster as it continued to close the gap.

The mines didn’t appear on the tactical display at all, except the general outline showing the boundaries of the minefield. That information had come from COM Fifth Fleet, via the Special Warfare unit attached to U.S. Navy Central Command. But there were no coordinates for the mines themselves: no clues to their locations, or even how many were there. It might be a hundred, or five hundred, or five thousand.

The Towers couldn’t map a safe route through the minefield, and the ship could not survive without one. The only choice was to create their own path through the mines, clear a safe route where none existed.

Out on the darkened forecastle, the deck gun continued to pound the water with naval artillery shells every two and a half seconds. The forward machine guns and the two chain-guns continued to hammer their own projectiles into the wave tops. The ship was pumping a tremendous amount of mechanical force and shrapnel into the sea. Theoretically, some of that brute kinetic force should penetrate far enough down to reach the mines. That was the plan: to pulverize the water hard enough to trigger the mines at a distance, clearing the way ahead of the ship.

But it wasn’t working. Bowie’s crazy plan, which had seemed at least distantly feasible when he’d given the order, did not seem to be bearing fruit. There were no answering explosions to show that the guns were finding targets. For all of the racket and thunder, the guns had not yet triggered a single mine.

Bowie felt a hand on his left shoulder. He turned to find his second in command, Lieutenant Commander Peter Tyler, standing behind him. Pete was a good man, and a damned fine executive officer. Just the kind of guy you’d want in your corner if things got ugly.

He leaned in close, and spoke quietly into his captain’s ear. “Do you think this’ll work?”

Bowie shrugged. “Frankly, I have no idea. I just know that it’s better than sitting around waiting to die.”

His last word seemed to echo in the chilled air of CIC, and Bowie wished instantly that he hadn’t said it.

He opened his mouth to add something else—anything—to wipe that dreadful word out of the air. Before he could speak, a thundering boom shook the entire ship.

For a half-second, Bowie thought they’d been hit, but the Officer of the Deck’s voice came over the Tactical Action Officer’s communications net. “TAO — Bridge. Close-aboard explosion off the port bow!”

The TAO keyed the microphone of his headset to acknowledge the report, but his voice was drowned out by a second explosion.

“TAO — Bridge. Close-aboard explosion dead off the bow!”

All around him, the members of Bowie’s CIC team began exchanging glances. He knew what they were thinking. Maybe the skipper’s crazy plan was going to work. Maybe … just maybe, they were not all going to die tonight.

On the Aegis display screen, the symbol for Towers was moving toward the boundary of the minefield. The torpedo had closed within 2,000 yards and was gaining fast, but it looked like the ship might be clear of the minefield before the weapon struck. If the ship could make it that far, they could maneuver without fear of mines. They could crack the whip—run the tricky evasion maneuvers designed to throw pursuing torpedoes off the scent. They might have a chance.

“I think this is working,” a voice behind him said. “Looks like you might still pull the fat out of the fire, sir.”

Bowie turned, expecting to see his XO. Instead, he found himself staring into the eyes of Lieutenant Clinton Brody, the pilot of the USS Towers helicopter, Firewalker Two-Six.

A prickle ran down the back of Bowie’s neck. Something wasn’t right here. He felt a stirring in his gut: an indefinable certainty that some crucial element of reality had suddenly veered off in an unexpected direction.

The gun roared again. The sound had a different character to it — muted, with a sort of weirdly-metallic echo. A report blared from one of the overhead speakers, but the voice was tinny, and too garbled to understand.

Bowie’s gaze was still locked on the young pilot’s face. Lieutenant Brody was not supposed to be here. No, that wasn’t right. He couldn’t be here. It wasn’t possible.

The realization came instantly, and it brought another abrupt shift in the fabric of reality. The world seemed to stutter and then freeze in place, like a film break in an old-fashioned movie projector, the last frame of broken celluloid still trapped behind the lens. All action had stopped, but that last image persisted, Combat Information Center and its crew held motionless in an instance of frozen time.

Lieutenant Clinton Brody could not here, because the man was dead. His body had been burned and cut to ribbons by the Siraji missile that had ripped his helicopter from the sky.

He couldn’t be here. But here he was, staring back at Bowie.

The world had gone eerily silent. The pounding of the guns, the murmur of the CIC crew, the whisper of cooling fans, the surge of the ship through the water, were all gone. The sound of Bowie’s own breathing suddenly seemed almost painfully loud.

“You’re dead,” he said softly. It was somehow both a statement of fact, and an accusation.

The dead helicopter pilot nodded, and a long slice opened in the flesh of his left cheek — skin parting almost magically — blood spilling down the side of his face as the cut widened and the ivory-yellow of the man’s cheekbone was revealed. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I am.”

He squared his shoulders and saluted, as though presenting himself for inspection. As he lowered his hand, it fell limply at his side, injuries manifesting instantly, leaving the pilot’s arm mangled and fractured in numerous places. “My crew are dead too. Both of them.”

The other two members of the helicopter aircrew were suddenly standing behind the dead officer: his copilot, Lieutenant (junior grade) Julie Schramm, her brown hair singed and twisted, her once pretty face scorched and nearly black with bruising and blood; and the aircraft’s Sensor Operator, Petty Officer Second Class Daniel Gilford, his right leg missing from the hip, the side of his head a mass of ragged tissue and splintered bone.

Bowie had only a second to register this hideous sight before more of the grisly figures began appearing. Commander Rachel Vargas. Lieutenant (junior grade) Alex Sherman. Seaman Terrence Archer. Petty Officer Gerald Blake. Fireman Apprentice Thomas James Keiler. Each of their bodies burned, or bleeding, or broken.

The gathering of corpses continued to grow, and Bowie recognized every one of their faces.

This was the accounting of souls. Every man and woman in that growing crowd had died under Bowie’s command.

His chest tightened until he could barely breathe. He had tried to protect them. He had done his best to lead them well. He had tried to keep them safe from harm. But they were dead, despite his intentions.

Every one of them was dead, and there was nothing Bowie could do about it.

The thought seemed to break the spell. The transition from dream to wakefulness was instantaneous. Combat Information Center vanished, and the bodies of the dead Sailors were gone with the flicker of an eyelid.

Bowie lay in the bunk of his at-sea cabin, staring up into the darkness and feeling the pounding of his heart and the gentle rolling of the ship. The sheets had gotten themselves twisted around his legs, the way they always did when he had the dream. He knew without checking that his cheeks were damp with tears.

He made no move to wipe them away. The commanding officer of a warship is not supposed to cry, but Bowie thought — as he always did after the dream — that his tears were an honest tribute to Rachel Vargas, and Alex Sherman, and Clint Brody, and the rest of them. They deserved his tears. And, like it or not, Bowie knew that he deserved the dream.

He supposed that it was technically a nightmare, but he rarely thought of it that way. In his mind, it was something different. It was a reckoning. It was a balancing of karma: a none-too-subtle reminder that human lives depended on his actions and his orders, and that he did not always wield that power with perfect judgment.

He fumbled for his watch in the darkness, found it, and pushed buttons until the dial lit up. It took him a couple of seconds to focus his eyes well enough to read the time. It was 02:07, just a few minutes after two AM.

Bowie tugged the sheets away from his legs and groaned. Two in the morning. Damn.

He could have used more rest than that, but he knew from past experience that it was no good to try again. Once it got started, the dream was with him for the night. If he went back to sleep now, the dream would come again. And again.