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  THE COMMAND

  Previous Books by David Poyer

  Tales of the Modern Navy

  Black Storm

  China Sea

  Tomahawk

  The Passage

  The Circle

  The Gulf

  The Med

  The Hemlock County Novels

  Winter Light

  Thunder on the Mountain

  As the Wolf Loves Winter

  Winter in the Heart

  The Dead of Winter

  The Tiller Galloway Novels

  Down to a Sunless Sea

  Louisiana Blue

  Bahamas Blue

  Hatteras Blue

  The Civil War at Sea

  A Country of Our Own

  Fire on the Waters

  Other Novels

  The Only Thing to Fear

  Stepfather Bank

  The Return of Philo T McGiffin

  Star Seed

  The Shiloh Project

  White Continent

  THE COMMAND

  DAVID POYER

  ST. MARTIN’S PRESS

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, companies, and organizations in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously, without intent to describe their actual conduct.

  THE COMMAND. Copyright © 2004 by David Poyer. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Map by Paul J. Pugliese

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Poyer, David.

  The command / David Poyer.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-31836-7

  EAN 978-0312-31836-9

  1. Lenson, Dan (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. United States. Navy— Officers—Fiction. 3. Americans—Persian Gulf Region—Fiction. 4. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. 5. Destroyers (Warships)—Fiction. 6. Persian Gulf Region—Fiction. 7. Ship captains—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3566.O978C66 2004

  813'.54—dc22

  2003028058

  First Edition: June 2004

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EX nihilo nihil fit. For this book I owe thanks to Bob Berkel, Steve Boyer, Ina Birch, Wayne Burch, Al Chester, Katharine Cluverius, Mike Cohen, Donald J. Davidson, Drew Davis, Bart Denny, Mona Dre-icer, Ernest Duplessis, Marie Estrada, George W Fleck, Clive Foster, Sohrab Fracis, Sloan Harris, Michael Holm, Donna Hopkins, Bill Hunteman, Chris Borroni Huxtable, Sarvar Irani, Deborah Lee James, Marty Janczak, Sean Jenkins, John Kirby, James King, Ted Koler, Shea Kornblum, A. J. Magnan, Bob Malouin, Edison McDaniels, John McE-leny, Peter Mercier, Paula Mills, Joe Navratil, Gail Nicula, Paula Paschall, Jim Pelkofski, Lin Poyer, John Pucky, Sally Richardson, Josea Salam, Scott Schwartz, Sandra Scoville, Asia Sharif-Clark, Matt Shear, Denny Shelton, Denise Strother, Terry Sutherland, Chan Swallow, Jim Tankovich, Bill Valentine, Kimberley Walz, Mark Young, and many others who preferred anonymity. Thanks also to Commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet; Commander, Second Fleet; the Eastern Shore Public Library, the Northampton Free Library, the Joint Forces Staff College, and to the crews, goat lockers, and wardrooms of USS Deyo (DD-989) and USS George Washington (CVN-73). Thanks to USS Donald Cook for the names of her ship’s boats, and to personnel of R/V Gosport and USS Hue City for live training in boarding and search. My most grateful thanks to George Witte, editor and advisor of long standing, and to Lenore Hart, best friend and reality check. As always, all errors and deficiencies are my own.

  The single best augury is to fight for one’s country.

  —Homer, The Illiad

  THE COMMAND

  Prologue

  1992: Central Asia

  THE mountains were silver and cobalt and jet. They flashed like jewels in the golden rays of the declining sun. Waterfalls arched over shadowy gorges. They were pristine and stark and very beautiful, and above them, floating in the crystal air like distant planets, towered range after range of the Himalayas.

  The base lay where the road ground upward from a dusty plain. For years the Soviet flag had flown above it. Its guard towers had been manned by the elite security troops of the Twelfth Department. For a while, after they left, the flagpole had been bare. Then, one night, had disappeared, leaving only a wrenched-off stub embedded in the concrete.

  Now the bunkhouses stood empty. Armor, heavy trucks, self-propelled howitzers waited in forlorn rows on the dusty hardstand. The guards had been hastily organized by a newly and equivocally independent state. The tanks, the artillery tubes, the other weapons might or might not belong to that state. Like much else in the wreckage of an empire, their status was … unclear.

  The base commander was eating rice and lamb shashlik by the light of a kerosene lamp when his subordinate, a captain, barged in without knocking. Neither was Russian, though they wore threadbare Soviet uniforms.

  The captain explained in great distress that one of the special weapons seemed to be missing.

  “When was the last inventory?” the commander asked, fingers halted halfway to his mouth. A clump of rice detached itself from the ball and fell to the floor.

  “Three months ago, when you arrived.”

  “But they must be counted! Every day!” the senior officer shouted, flinging his bowl down. It shattered, and rice and meat splattered the planks.

  “Yes, there’s an inventory—a count—we sign for them at each guard change,” the captain stammered. “But—well, you’ll see. But you have to come!”

  THE jeep wouldn’t start. There was no money for parts or repairs, or even blankets for the men, and the winter nights at this altitude were cruel. Usually no one got anything on payday, either. The commander reflected he could hardly blame his troops for looting the buildings for scrap metal, gutters, wiring, furniture, doors, windows. He’d seen small arms in the marketplace in town, and prisms and sight telescopes and radios, obviously from tanks. The two officers seized rusted bicycles instead. As the captain shouted to a grizzled sergeant to sound the alarm, they cycled with soft-tired wobbly haste across the compound.

  The bunker was sunk into the earth. It was surrounded by barbed wire, light towers, and a sign that warned of great danger, special security, severe penalties. But the wire hung loose, the lightbulbs had been stolen, and the guard who met them was drunk.

  The captain pointed to a lock that looked impressive, but wasn’t locked. The alarm panel was dead; outside power had been sporadic for a long time, and there was no fuel for the base’s generators. The commander nodded silently, expression menacing. Sensing disaster despite his condition, the guard staggered after them, muttering and weeping, as they entered the cage and moved from weapon to weapon.

  It looked as if six bulky shapes filled out their gray plastic shrouds. But when the commander ordered the sniveling guard to pull them back, only five of the oblate cylinders met the eye. Where one had rested on a transport dolly, cardboard ration boxes had been stacked and cleverly shaped. The dolly was gone, too.

  Staring at the remaining weapons, at the ranting, reeling trooper, the broken strands of rope and skid marks on the concrete floor, only one conclusion remained to the commander: where there had been six 203-millimeter nuclear artillery shells in his custody, there were now only five. Behind him more guards poured in, pointing rifles, shouting in a babble of Kazakh, Uighur, and Russian.

  “These shells weigh a metric ton,” the captain said, wringing his hands. “This took many men. A truck. A cra
ne. Someone knows how they got in here, who they are, where they took it.”

  The old sergeant came in, and snapped to attention in the rigid Soviet style. He reported that the guard company was present and accounted for except for two men. He gave their names.

  “Chechens,” the captain said, face paling. “Oh, God is great, God is great. It was the Chechens.”

  “We must report this at once.” The commander’s voice was outraged. “Close the gates instantly. Post double guards. Muster patrols in trucks to search the town. Get me the Defense Ministry. Also the Russian liaison. We will find who did this, and where the thieves have gone.”

  A truck engine faltered, then roared into life. A shot cracked as a stumbling recruit dropped his rifle. As his troops scattered, shouting, the commander slid his hand into the back pocket of his uniform trousers.

  To feel the tight thick roll of American currency nestled there.

  I

  DUST AND SMOKE

  1

  Pier 8, Norfolk,Virginia

  GLANCING through the porthole in the at-sea cabin, the tall man in choker whites checked the sky. Overcast but clearing. The wind light, the air warm. He rubbed his mouth. It might turn out to be a good day after all.

  Daniel V. Lenson, Commander, U.S. Navy, had spent most of his career in destroyers and frigates. Some of those tours had been enjoyable. Others had not, and he’d seen shipmates die, had killed other men, and come close to dying more than once. Five rows of decorations were pinned above his breast pocket. The topmost was light blue, set with small white stars. His sun-darkened face was beginning to show the years at sea. Sleepless nights and tension had crimped crow’s-feet around the gray eyes and scattered silver in his sandy hair.

  His watch gave him ten minutes until he took command of USS Thomas Horn, a helicopter-capable Spruance-class destroyer. Just now he was having weak coffee and sugar cookies with the skipper he was relieving. For someone who was turning over command, normally a time to celebrate, the balding little man seemed tense and disappointed.

  “You heard about the three envelopes?” Ross said, turning his cup in gnarled fingers. Dan wondered why he was so nervous, as if in the waning minutes of his watch some disaster might still overtake him. As to his own feelings, the less said the better.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder, the civilian shrink had called it. From being caught and tortured by Saddam’s Mukhabarat. That was behind the icy sweat, the breath-stopping sense of impending doom. When he declined her prescription, she said he could try to go on without drugs. But if he gave in to his fears, avoided stressful situations, or showed panic, the terror that hunted beneath his conscious mind would take over his life.

  He cleared his throat. “Three envelopes?”

  “Fella comes on board to relieve, the outgoing CO gives him three envelopes. He says, when you get in trouble, open the first envelope. When you get in real trouble, open the second envelope. And when you’re ass-deep in gators and there’s no way out, open the last one.

  “So sure enough, the fella screws up and he opens the first one. It says, ‘Blame your predecessor.’ So he does, and it works. Then later on he gets in real trouble. He opens the second envelope, it says, ‘Reorganize.’ So he does that, and he’s out of the shit. But then at last he gets in real, real deep kimchee and can’t see any way out short of a court-martial. He opens the third envelope.”

  “So what’s it say?”

  “‘Prepare three envelopes.’”

  Dan chuckled, but then the silence came back. They’d gone over everything they had to talk about. Unfortunately, what he’d learned hadn’t contradicted his first impression, which was of a ship that needed attention.

  He’d heard things were less than rosy during his precommand training. The regional engineering training and readiness inspectors said Horn’s engineering department lacked leadership. A master chief told him the ship got a present when it passed its reexam for certification. The second recurring theme was sexual fraternization. Dan took waterfront tales with a grain of salt, but the fact they were going around wasn’t good.

  Four men had been standing on the quarterdeck as he’d come up the brow the week before. By the time he’d finished saluting, only the officer of the deck remained. When crew scattered at the sight of khaki, something was wrong. His unease grew as he filtered through the spaces, talking to chiefs and white hats, learning who the shitbirds were, what gear was due to fail and which was bulletproof. He’d met department heads and reviewed inventory letters. Spot-checked ammo and crypto materials and the controlled equipment like night vision devices and handheld radios and computers. Signed the admin and relieving letters, and looked over the disbursing officer’s audit of cash on hand.

  Now he had to stand in the noon sun and show them their new skipper.

  A trilling tone from the ship’s service phone. Ross flinched and snatched it off the bulkhead. “They’re mustered.” He stood too fast, knocking over his cup. The dark fluid just missed Dan’s whites.

  Looking at the oily black liquid dye the carpet, suddenly he didn’t feel well. A shadow moved over his perception, darkening the very light. He didn’t want to go out in front of these people. Didn’t want this command. All he had to oppose to fear was duty. That and the blue ribbon he wore. Which attested, like the Cowardly Lion’s medal, that he had once been brave.

  He followed Ross out into sunlight and the wind.

  STANDING on Horn’s flight deck as a cloud strains the sun into searching beams of golden light. Looking down past the Sea Sparrow launcher to the after five-inch, its tapered barrel centered and elevated.

  Spruances were no longer the most modern destroyers in the fleet. But they were bigger, roomier, more comfortable than the Gearings and Knoxes he’d begun his career on. They carried antiship Harpoons between the stacks and Tomahawks forward. A tug churned by, screws whipping the Elizabeth River into malt frappé. He held the salute as the honors tape played over the 1MC, the ship’s public address system. As a smiling, glasses-shining Commodore Saul Aronie, Commander, Destroyer Squadron Twenty-Two, passed between saluting sideboys. The sun was blazing now, right in his eyes. He was standing with Ross and Ross’s wife, what was her name, he couldn’t remember whether it was Cecilia or Cynthia or Cindy.

  His own wife couldn’t make it out of D.C. With the new administration, Blair had moved from Senate staff to the executive branch. It was one of those long-distance relationships. The week after the wedding, he’d been off to the Naval War College, while she briefed the new administration’s transition team.

  The day was as bright now, the wind as warm as his glance out the porthole had promised. The crew were phalanxed ranks of white. The commodore settling into his chair, adjusting his sword. At the podium, Dan’s new exec. From behind he contemplated the small waist, the swell of her hips. This would take some getting used to.

  Claudia Hotchkiss was a head shorter than he was, an energetic woman with apple cheeks and dusty blond hair. She looked like the actress who held the torch for Columbia Pictures. The same enigmatic expression, too. Horn would be the first warship in history to deploy to a combat zone with an integrated male/female crew. Hotchkiss had served in oilers and ammunition ships and had done her department head tour aboard Mount Whitney before screening for exec. She stretched on tiptoe to reach the mike. “Captain Carter Llewellyn Ross, commanding officer, USS Horn.”

  Ross lifted his cover, smoothed what was left of his hair. Gripped walnut-stained plywood and faced the ranks, the seated rows of guests, with the embattled crouch of one resolved to tell the unwelcome truth, come what may.

  “Commodore Aronie; Commander Lenson; distinguished guests; officers and men of USS Horn. Thank you for joining me on this morning, on what should be a happy occasion.

  “It should be happy; yet for me, it is not.

  “I must speak out against what is happening to this navy I have loved and served.”

  A stir rippled across the sailors, listening
at parade rest. Here and there Dan caught a bark, a grunt, a low, questioning growl.

  “The United States military cannot be a laboratory for social change. We cannot allow the freedoms civilians take for granted. Nor can we accede to every fad or frenzy that agitates the body politic. We see this in the current attempt to welcome to the armed forces those who are not only condemned by Scripture, but dangerous to cohesion in battle.

  “Linked to this is the attempt to place women in harm’s way, aboard warships such as Horn.”

  The murmurings swelled to agreement, approval. Hotchkiss was straining forward like a small pit bull on a tight leash. The commodore sat motionless, legs crossed. His face had lost its tolerant smile. But he made no move to interfere. Dan understood. This was Ross’s swan song. For the only time, maybe, since he’d joined the service, he was free to say exactly what he liked.

  “Now, I have nothing against women. My parents taught me to respect and honor and care for them, as Cindy I think will attest. My daughters are smart and capable. That’s not why I’m uneasy with those who, for their own political gain, are thrusting females into places they don’t belong.

  “Battle is a brutal business. It requires choices and actions no woman in any culture is prepared for. It also takes total concentration. Concentration that will be disrupted when young men and women are attracted to each other—or sidetracked from their jobs by the kinds of accusations and rumors that are inevitable in a mixed environment.

  “Women personify creation and caring. In many ways, they’re better than we are. Kinder, more helpful, more willing to sacrifice for those around them. They alone are capable of perpetuating and nurturing the species. This is their great mission.”