“Aye, Mr. Cole. I hear you.”
Jamie exhaled raggedly and ignored Kilkenny’s insolence. Discipline was not something that came naturally to him. “Well, anyway. You see anything out there?”
“Yeah. A blinking signal light on that destroyer.”
“When?”
Kilkenny glanced at the luminous dial on his wrist. “About forty minutes ago.”
“Where?”
“Relative bearing two-seven-zero at the time — but I don’t know which of these crazy zigzag courses we were on. I haven’t seen her since. She probably raced ahead of us or something, sweeping for subs. Isn’t that what they’re doing?”
Jamie grasped a lifeline cable and studied the sky. Using the Southern Cross as a guide, he guessed they were midway through the Solomons, somewhere in the seventy-mile-wide channel between Bougainville and Muyua.
In his inexpert opinion, plying the wider sea east of the Solomons and taking advantage of the broad sea-lanes would have been a safer route to Sydney, but
“Who’s relieving you tonight?” Jamie asked Kilkenny.
“No one. I’m on until first light.”
“I’ll get some coffee sent down for you.”
“Tea,” Kilkenny said. “Obliged, sir. And sorry about the ciggy.”
Jamie caught the forward superstructure ladder and pulled himself up the rungs to the wheelhouse. The watertight hatch was propped open by a metal bar. Humid air tinged with salt and ship exhaust swirled through the bridge now that the breeze was abeam. Jamie surveyed the dim red letters indicating
Stoney Stonebridge, the captain, leaned over a chart table and drew a line with a three-sided ruler. Even in the dim red light, Jamie could see the sun damage on the older man’s arms. The yellow buttons on the ship’s power panel turned his white hair blond.
With the GPS satellites out, Stoney had to navigate the old-fashioned way. He marked celestial fixes in pencil on a separate chart showing their track south. Jamie’s interpretation of the pencil marks was that
“How accurate do you think this plot is, Cap?” Jamie asked softly. He didn’t want the helmsman to think that any of
Stoney nodded at the sextant on the inert radar station and spoke in a normal tone of voice. Implicitly confident in his skills as a mariner, he saw no need to keep anything from the helmsman. “Shot two fixes. We’re bang on track, Mr. Cole, at least according to the stars.”
“Which ones?”
“Canopus, Hadar, and Achernar.”
“Any trouble finding them?”
“No. Come outside and I’ll show you.”
Stoney led Jamie through the open hatch to the bridge wing. The older man put his hand on Jamie’s shoulder to steady himself while he pointed. “There, Canopus. Back here, Hadar. Over that way, Achernar. Fortunately, we have a clear night to work with.”
“It’s a beauty.”
“All good with the sextant, then?”
Jamie dreaded that question. As the ship’s most junior officer, tonight was his first attempt at conning the ship by the stars. When he wasn’t on watch, he’d read
“I’ll be fine,” he stated.
“I want a celestial fix on the hour.”
Jamie grasped the sextant and examined its metal arc, constructed of bronze to ward off corrosion. “Okay, Cap. I got it.”
“Bet you wish your father could see you using that thing.”
“I wish just the opposite,” Jamie countered.
Stoney grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Very well. Let me finish the pass-down. The Navy has us zigzagging fifteen degrees at ten-minute intervals. Keep an ear out for short-range radio calls on the UHF guard frequency, though I expect they’ll maintain silence until we get through the picket ships off the Coral Sea Islands. The desalinization plant is at 20 percent capacity. The engine room reports gauges in the green. I can’t fill you in on any surface contacts because we’re basically running blind.
“Did we get an update from
“Negative. We only know they’re down. I’d wager on a Chinese cyber-attack. The news was going on about their hacking when we still had coverage.”
“If it’s a hack, then they’ll probably be back online soon.”
“Probably. Either way, you have the conn, Mr. Cole.”
“I have the conn, Captain. Go get some sleep.”
The skipper turned to leave with a wave.
“Oh, Cap?”
“Yeah?”