Free Korea Strait by David Poyer Page B

from an ice bucket by the bed. More paperbacks lay on the night table. They were all science fiction: Greg Bear, Alan Dean Foster, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle.
    They stood awkwardly a moment before O’Quinn pointed to the chair. He took the bed himself, reached for the cigarette. Said around it, “So, you Naval Academy?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œWorked my way up from the spaces myself. Worked for some ring knockers over the years. Nothing personal, but I found ’em pretty much obsessed with themselves. Thought they had some kind of inside track. But they weren’t all that smart. Some of ’em, pretty damn dumb.”
    â€œSome can be that way.”
    O’Quinn scratched grizzled stubble and half grinned. “Like I said. No offense.”
    â€œNone taken.” But Dan didn’t buy it. The guy either was deliberately being offensive, or had been hiding behind the door when they were passing out social skills. He’d met men like that. Some surprisingly senior. Either way, the only way to meet it was to be just as blunt as they were. “How about you, Joe? I heard what happened on
Buchanan
. A lot of guys would have just quietly slunk away after something like that. But here you are. Still on the government payroll—or wait, no, it’s Titan, right?”
    The older man stubbed the cigarette out. His face was controlled. “Joe O’Quinn never slunk away from anything,” he said at last. “What’d they tell you happened?”
    â€œJust that there was a collision. Guys died.”
    â€œNot in the collision. Which was the freighter’s fault, by the way. Failure to keep a proper lookout. Henrickson say they died in the collision?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œâ€™Cause they didn’t. They drowned because I locked down on them. The pumps were falling behind. Firemain pressure, zip. I had to keep her afloat. The sea was too cold and too rough and we were too far out, this was way down in the South Atlantic, even to think about abandoning.”
    O’Quinn was staring at the drapes. Dark plush maroon, they were drawn against the light, against the jagged mountain panorama Dan knew lay on this side of the hotel. He wondered what the older man saw against that screen. O’Quinn drank out of the can, hesitated, then added a solid slug from the bottle. Amber drops bounced on the carpet. “Unfortunately, I should have waited and seen if the flooding reports were right. Yeah, there was a court. And yeah, I ended up on the beach. You were a skipper. Ever had to make a call that turned out wrong?”
    â€œYeah. I have.”
    â€œAnd lost people ’cause of it?”
    Dan nodded again. You could argue they’d had to die, it was just the mission. Or that it was the commander’s lack of resourcefulness, seamanship, judgment, that had doomed them. You could talk about risk analysis too. The line was there. But sometimes it was buried in darkness, and all the analysis went to shit, and shit happened. And in the dead watches of the night, faces and screams drifted back and woke you, if you’d been able to close your eyes in the first place. Now he knew why O’Quinn slept alone. If he slept at all. He cleared his throat and scrubbed his hand back over his hair. “I know what you mean. It’s not an easy row to hoe. So I might have a little more sympathy than—”
    O’Quinn jumped off the bed and thrust his face into Dan’s. Pepsi and rum spattered brown foam on the bedspread. “I never asked for your fucking
sympathy
Mister Annapolis. Mister fucking
hero
How many lives did that Medal of Honor cost you?”
    â€œYou’d better shut up,” Dan said. His hands were claws around the armrests. “And back off. Sit down, O’Quinn.”
    The older man laughed as if he didn’t care anymore. “Fucking ayI will. Don’t worry. I’ll keep it shut around the boys. I just