Chapter Six
All the lights go in the berthing at 0600 and that prick second class is going around whipping open everyone’s curtains and yelling at them to get the fuck out of the rack and even saying drop your cocks and grab your socks, goddamn some people want to make chief so bad.
So you wake up from a dream where you were waterskiing and kept wiping out and then wait just a second for the two guys above you to swing out before you roll out to make sure they don’t kick you in the head, and then you sit on the edge of your rack and pull your pants on, then your socks, then your boots and you stand up and turn around and flip up your mattress and grab an undershirt and a shirt out of the coffin, and then you grab your shaving kit and close the locker and lock it and go into the head where its steamy and about twenty guys are all trying to shave at six mirrors.
You take a piss and consider a dump, and then go find a spot at the sinks and lather up and shave, and then push at your hair which is still pretty short and had a little of that ATD[66] swirl left over, when you hit boot camp they shaved your head and it grew back in a big swirl that, with the big black birth control glasses that they give you, pretty much ensure you won’t get laid for a long time, even a year and a three months later.
You dump your shit into your locker and head out for the mess decks and see that there are about a thousand fucking Marines already in the chow line, and so you cut back out of there and up to the hangar bay and across and then down the ladder by Personnel, and to the back way into the galley and you look in until you see that third class messman[67] you know and you catch his eye and he comes to the door and you hook up for a plate of real scrambled eggs and some bacon that he owes you for the paint hook-up[68] you got him when the messdecks office needed painting done, and you go out on the messdecks and eat before GQ.
And while you are eating, the first class from the berthing comes up and sits down by you and says that the chiefs got wind of how that guy got his head smacked in last night and how they’re going to process his ass off the boat in Rota and how that guy was on the Flying Squad as a phone talker and how that spot is open and how he got the chief to put you on it and how you get a red turtleneck and get head of the line privileges[69].
That the flying squad is the first responders to fires and emergencies on the boat and it’s a good job to have, especially since this gets you off low vis so no more getting your ass out of the rack to go out and stand on the catwalk in horizontal rain with the waves breaking over the bow at oh-dark-fucking-thirty, and the first class is looking at you like he just saved your fucking life and he’s really not a bad guy but you are so goddamn tired you think you’re going to puke, but you work up some enthusiasm and say thanks and where do I get the turtlenecks and he says to go down and see Senior Chief Rodriguez in Supply after GQ.
The alarm bell starts to gong, gong, gong while the Bos’un blows his pipe and says this is a drill this is a drill general quarters general quarters all hands man your battle stations and you get up and dump your tray at the scullery window while you trot by, because Repair One is just up the ladder, and then you remember up and forward starboard and down and aft port, and so you need to cut back across the mess decks to the starboard ladder to get up to the hangar bay.
The big blast doors are ringing and thundering shut across the elevator holes, and guys are running all over the hangar bay, their boots thudding to their battle stations and you cut across the hangar bay and into the Repair One locker where you get your sound-powered phones out of their little box and put them on and test your connection with DC Central[70] while the hosemen pull on their firefighting suits and OBAs[71] and helmets and then flake out the fire hoses and the chief is hollering the whole time and you are stuffing your pants into your socks and buttoning your collar too tight against your Adam’s apple[72] and he’s trying to take muster and when he’s done you shout down the wire that you are manned and ready while the 1MC ticks off five minutes.
It takes seven minutes for the whole boat to get to their battle stations and man up with the airdales on the flight deck spinning up the ready helo, Cobras with sidewinders on the rails, and the three-inch fifties’[73] rounds sliding into the racks and the mount spinning out on the bearing and the fifty-cals[74] loading up and the Sea-Whiz jerking around searching for targets, and the ship heeling into a turn to put the formation against the threat axis while the commodore puts on his helmet and sits down in his chair and bitches, but he knows that seven minutes is pretty damn good for a gator[75] as watertight doors slam shut on men who are now where we’d find them if this was real and not one of us isn’t thinking about that a little.
So you sit and you sweat, with little drops pooling up in your ears and you listen hard because these sound-powered phones don’t work very good, and you need to peer down them with your ears listening to the ghost crackle of the electricity, and the other guys breathing hard all over the boat, and you still listen while you scrabble around in the angle iron looking for a grease pencil, and you find one and pick it out and unwind the paper around the tip so you have something to write with, and then you find the Windex bottle and some paper towels and you wipe down the plotting board, all the while hearing the pops and the snaps and the breathing hard of the guys all sitting like you are in the repair lockers one, two, three, four, five, and seven (why not six?) and in DC Central, all sweating with their phones on their heads and the mouth piece tucked under their chins and you all are waiting.
You hear a whisper Hey Kieffer heard you had a fag in your berthing last night you hear and you swear under your breath and you push the talk button and you say I hear you guys have a fag in your berthing every night, baby and he says I heard the guy fell up the stairs into a dogging wrench and you push the talk button and say I don’t know what happened, but he was bleeding pretty good and the guy says you guys don’t fuck around in Deck and you say it was the third time the motherfucker tried to crawl into the guys rack and then you hear a click as the DCA dials on to your circuit and tells you guys to shut the fuck up.
And the first call comes out incoming missile starboard side brace for impact, and you do that thing from Airport or whatever and lay yourselves over OBA cylinders and cans of fire-fighting foam, and get a good laugh out of the chief but the ensign looks like he doesn’t know whether to laugh or chew your asses, and then you hear hit alpha starboard side (which is the side you are on), and Repair One provide, and then the guys go clumping out of the repair locker dragging hoses and axes and infrared sensors that look like big camping flashlights, and it’s all the sudden real quiet in the repair locker with just you and the chief and the ensign all waiting to get the report.
And then this guy runs into the locker with a little piece of paper with triangles and shit written on it and he hands it to the chief who hands it to you, and you push the talk button and say DC Central Repair One Class Bravo fire[76] in the hangar bay starboard side frame 96[77] and the guy in central (some yeoman shit) repeats it back to you, and then you go to the plotting board and draw a little triangle with an A in it at frame 96 hangar bay starboard side on the map of the ship and then you hear on the 1MC fire, fire, fire, class bravo fire hangar bay frame 96 Repair One provide, and then you hear incoming missile starboard side and then brace for impact, and this time you don’t do the comedy bit, and then hit bravo starboard side, and you listen for the report and then hear fire, fire, fire, class bravo fire on the flight deck, starboard side, frame 30 and then you hear on the phones to set primary and secondary fire boundaries, and you write it all down on the message blank and hand it to the chief who hollers for a runner and sends him off.
The fire is under control, and then out, and then a reflash watch is set, and then they dewater[78] the compartment, even though it’s the hangar bay and all the water would just run out the elevator doors, and while all this is going on you can feel the seas getting bigger and watch the spare OBAs rock back and forth, wider and wider, and you are more tired t
han you were last night when you stood on the catwalk, and then you remember that you need to get your ass down to supply to get the flying squad shirts so you can have head of the line privileges, and then the whole ship secures from GQ and you wrap up the phones and stow them in the little box, and wipe down the plotting board and put the grease pencil up in an angle iron and make a little note in your head where you left it for the next time, and then you head on up on the hangar bay where the blast doors are opening back up, as the ship heels to port as it comes back on course with the MARG and you all are heading into Rota and the Med[79] finally.
So it’s late at night and you just came off your last bridge watch with the Bos’un pissing and moaning about having to re-do his watch bill, and you type it in and print it out for him, and really like it that your name is not on it finally since you are on the flying squad now, and can’t take the wheel because you’d need to go to a fire but still you already miss the feeling of that wheel in your hands and the way you have to use a little back rudder to pull the boat right on to the course the Officer of the Deck sets, and how the whole ship does what you tell it to but still who wants to sit on a dark, dark bridge with the faces reflected in the windows and the Skipper snoozing away in his chair and snoring, and everyone laughing a little at that and then right five degrees rudder new course 275 sir my rudder is right five degrees coming to new course 275 and the compass clicking around to 273 and then you put the rudder over left five to steady and then sir steady on new course 275 very well.
With the GQ and your last watch done you are feeling pretty good about your day, and so you fill your mug of coffee on the mess decks and head down to the berthing, but the movie on SITE-TV is Roadhouse[80] again and you are tired of beating off to that shit so you get up and go up on the hangar bay.
You Are Free Page 6