China Sea by David Poyer

valve open. Sansone braced his boots on the grating and pulled the bail back to Mist. Suddenly the smoke vanished, the water bloom cutting through the haze. The flames retreated as the mist advanced, the blast of seawater fog not so much quenching the flames as sucking heat from them till they could no longer sustain ignition. They circled the casing, Sansone bending to send the mist probing and swirling into the bilge, chasing and exterminating a final lunge of the flames.
    Then it was out. The boiler tech laid the hose carefully out in the aisle, and they took a break, wheezing, clutching their knees.
    Armey came down the ladder with a flashlight. He pulled up a grating and disappeared beneath it. He emerged from under the lube oil purifier, forearms and chest smeared with oil and soot. “It’s out!” he bawled, over a clamor Dan realized was lessening, winding down.
    He recalled himself then, remembering the haste and terror with which the engine-room watch had shoved past him, and sprinted to the log desk and grabbed the handset. No one answered. He tried the 21MC next and finally raised a voice that switched only reluctantly to English. “We abandon the ship,” it said. “Get on deck. Help us put boats in water.”
    â€œYou’re what ? Listen. I’m in the engine room. The fire’s out. Get the steaming watch back down here. We need the repair party, need a blower rigged for desmoking.” He had to argue for some time before he was sure the message had gotten across.
    â€œWhat’s going on up there?” Armey said, coming up, wiping at his eyes with a bright blue bandanna.
    â€œApparently they were trying to launch the boats.”
    The engineer gaped. “For a li’l lube oil fire like that?”
    Sansone said, “That’s the way it’s been down here since day one, sir. Anything goes wrong, it’s the will of Allah. No point doing anything about it. I figure we watch over ’em every second, it’s even money we get to Karachi before it all goes to shit in a real serious way.”
    Dan nodded slowly. He looked around the space, then looked at his hands. Armey offered his bandanna. Silently Dan took it.

7
    THE AZORES
    THE land was a black barrier, mountaintops erased by the low overcast. They’d been volcanoes in the dim past, the spiny outcroppings of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The sea heaved uneasily, deep blue as an old watch cap, still dimpled by rain from the low steel clouds. When Dan lifted his binoculars he could make out the humpy peninsula that screened the old city and, past it, straggling up the mountain, the glowing whitewashed buildings of Horta, capital of the Azores and the largest city on the island of Fayal.
    For a week after the fire they’d steamed east by southeast, angling toward an imaginary point well south of Fayal. In all that time the seas had grown, harried and maddened hour after hour by a roaring wind that had backed around, opposing itself to all progress eastward. Fleet Weather reversed its original recommendation after forty-eight hours, advising ships in the central Atlantic to stay north of forty degrees north latitude. Too late for them, of course; they’d doglegged south following the meteorologists’ earlier advice and had to pay for it in two days of thirty-foot seas and seventy-knot winds.
    They actually could have made port last night, but Khashar had decided not to run in close under the island during the night; they’d passed the darkest hours steaming slowly on an east–west course, then turned north at 0500. The sky was still overcast, but the wind had dropped during their final leg in and the anemometer wavered now between ten and fifteen knots.
    Ever since the fire, a standoff had existed between the halves of the crew. Like a creature with two brains, two wills, Tughril had staggered eastward with a divided heart. Dan had pulled all his men off training and reorganized them