The Passage Read Online Free PDF Page A

looked across the desk at Chandler. The old man was watching him, eyes narrowed.
    â€œYes, sir,” he’d told Veeder. “Thanks for the chance. I want it, and I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”
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    THE wind changed, carrying the public-address system up to him more clearly, and he came back to the present. One of the suits from the shipyard was speaking.
    â€œWe are here today to deliver the last of five ships built under a contract awarded six years ago. Originally, these were not intended as U.S. Navy ships at all. Under the military sales program, the Kouroosh -class destroyers were to be built to U.S. standards, equipped with U.S. weaponry and sensors, and sold to the Imperial Iranian Navy. Ironically enough, all the Spruance- class destroyers were originally intended to be armed as heavily as these ships are. Due to cost considerations, however, the U.S. units were cut back
to one short-range missile launcher apiece, and many other items were deleted.
    â€œBut events supervened. The lead ship was nearing delivery when revolution broke out in Iran. Following the new government’s demonstrated hostility to America, Congress and the President authorized purchase of all five destroyers to fulfill the Navy’s requirement for increased general-warfare capability.
    â€œThe basic Spruance- class hull and propulsion, already proven in fleet service, will provide Barrett with speed, maneuverability, and extremely quiet mobility. She is powered by four General Electric gas turbines, the same engines used in commercial airliners. Their eighty thousand horsepower can drive the ship in excess of thirty knots. Her weapons include five-inch guns, triple-barrel torpedo launchers, Harpoon surface-to-surface missile launchers, Phalanx close-in guns, and fore and aft twin launchers capable of firing surface-to-air and antisubmarine missiles. The ship is equipped with highly capable sonar, radar, and a remarkable new weapons-control suite … .”
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    DAN stared down at the audience—at the female guests, at the wives and girlfriends and mothers. Wind rippled their dresses, contrasting with suits and uniforms.
    His white-gloved hand struck steel.
    Betts and Nan had been taken hostage when he was in the Med. She’d done what she’d thought she had to to protect their daughter. After her release, they’d seen a chaplain; talked it out; cried over it. And for a while, he’d thought it was over and that their marriage was stronger for it.
    He’d only slowly realized something else was wrong. She subscribed to feminist magazines, then joined a group. The more meetings she went to, the angrier she got. It seemed to him they were designed to make women unhappy with men and marriage. He’d tried to explain that to her, but she’d turned on him, angrier than he’d ever seen her.
    He’d fought to keep her, tried to become what her magazines said a man should be like. He didn’t object when she went out or ask where she’d been. But it didn’t seem to work. Somewhere in there, the sex had stopped, too. Then one day, she gave him a choice. He was gone too often; it wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she married him; either he left the Navy or she was leaving him.
    It hadn’t been an easy decision. But if it was that kind of choice, he’d lost her already. They’d had five years—not long by civilian terms, but a good run for a Navy marriage.

    He’d come back from a two-week underway period to find the apartment empty. The note said she and Nan were going back to her parents till she decided where to live. She’d left his things, half the furniture, and the new vacuum was still in the hall closet.
    He’d gone out and gotten a fifth of scotch, then sat on the floor, holding an old pair of her jeans and an old, outgrown set of Nan’s jumpers, and cried. He drank till it didn’t hurt anymore, till