by Brandon Webb
Captain Eagleberg felt no need to explain himself to his XO. He knew it might seem capricious, even cruel. It wasn’t.
It was necessary.
This deployment had been one problem after another. And then that helo squadron disaster—he’d caught six kinds of hell from Selena for that fiasco, and no surprise. A $43 million Knighthawk and crew of four at the bottom of the Persian Gulf was no kind of blemish to have on your record. Someone’s head needed to roll for it. If he’d had his way, that preening idiot Papadakis, the squadron’s CO, would’ve been drawn and quartered, but the man had managed to come out of that investigation clean as a virgin’s dipstick.
All Eagleberg wanted at this point was to finish out this deployment, get his admiral’s star, and go ride a desk somewhere on the Beltway. God knew he’d earned it. But right now his promotion was hanging by a hair. Eagleberg may have become three-quarters politician and two-thirds administrator (and yes, that added up to a hell of a lot more than 100 percent) but he was still a sailor in his bones, and no fool. He could still feel the currents and read the winds. Sailor’s instinct told him to get out of there now. The longer he stayed, the worse it would get. And the Iranians were so goddamn skittish; if some mullah farted in Tehran and the winds in Arlington shifted again, who knew if the Strait might shut right down—for real this time, leaving them stuck in there for days or even weeks? Or, God Almighty, for months?
Captain Eagleberg stood on the bridge of the USS Abraham Lincoln peering into the northeast at the distant coastline of Iran, and silently prayed the prayer of Job.
Dear God, there is no one who compares to You. I come before You and humbly entreat You, in Your almighty wisdom, to spare us from any more tests or torments, deliver us out of this Christforsaken bunghole, and bring us safely back to terra fucking firma.
He bowed his head.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
22
That night Finn sat out on the port-side Gatling gun catwalk, watching the ocean, sketching in the faint illumination of a waning crescent moon as jets blasted off the flight deck above. Incredible, that no one had spotted him out here and dragged his ass inside.
Incredible, that they were leaving the Gulf without completing their search.
This ship was a mess, all right. But not his mess. How had he put it to Schofield, that first night? Just a passenger.
Besides, he had his own concerns to worry about.
He took out his ring knife and sharpened the charcoal pencil to a fresh point.
The sea looked like hammered silver tonight, the moon’s arc fracturing into a million slivers of glass on its surface. Finn knew exactly what that looked like gazing up from underneath, dozens of meters down, diving under the hulls of great ships like this.
As part of their SEAL workup, Finn and Boyd had gone through a dive exercise, planting explosives on the hull of a destroyer in the San Diego Harbor. Visibility was close to nil and because their Dräger rebreathers emitted no bubbles, they couldn’t orient themselves by the usual upward bubble trail from their exhale. The boom of the ship’s generators was incredibly loud, and sound didn’t work in water the way it did in the air—it pinged and echoed so that it seemed as if sounds were coming at them from every direction at once.
“It’s easy to lose all spatial orientation,” he’d explained when he told Carol about what happened. “The way to beat the panic is to find the seam of the weld on the ship’s hull and follow it with your fingers. You have to ignore everything else, because the moment you go chasing after up and down you lose connection with the seam of the weld.”
“And that was Boyd’s mistake,” said Carol.
And that was Boyd’s mistake. When he lost orientation he fought to get it back. He let go of the seam, unclipped his buddy line, and went chasing after up and down. The more it eluded him the more frantic he got.
Finn couldn’t reach him in time.
Those ballast pumps sucked in seawater with tremendous force. The ship was supposed to have shut down their pumps for the exercise, but some dipshit in admin forgot to pass along an order to someone else. Boyd got sucked into the ballast tank.
The next moment Finn’s sniper partner was nothing but a cloud of red mist.
It was ruled an accident, of course. A tragic training mishap. No one was charged. The circle-jerk of military politics.
A few weeks later Finn was at the funeral, seated next to Boyd’s stone-faced sister. Halfway through the service she leaned sideways toward him and whispered, “You’re Finn?”
Finn nodded, smelling the coffee and stale funeral-home cookies on her breath.
“He told me, if it hadn’t been for you, he’d never have got through that sniper course. That he would’ve washed out and gone home.”
Finn said nothing. It was true. Boyd was a phenomenal shot, but couldn’t stalk worth shit. Finn had practically carried him through the course.
After a long pause the sister leaned closer, her hand on his arm now, and whispered directly in his ear.
“I hope you burn in hell.”
Finn didn’t blame her. Boyd shouldn’t have died.
“Know what I think?” Carol had said after hearing the story. “In a court of law they’d probably find you insane.”
Because?
“Because the courts define insanity as not knowing the difference between right and wrong—and as far as you’re concerned that definition completely misses the point of reality.”
How so?
“Right and wrong? Might as well chase after up and down. And in the dark there is no up and down. There’s only the seam of the weld.”
Finn had no response to that.
“So here’s my question,” she said. “For you, what is the seam of the weld?”
Finn didn’t have an answer.
After a minute Carol said, “Know what I think?” She leaned over and whispered in his ear.
“I think it’s loyalty.”
Finn watched the coast of Iran recede, its oil derricks lighting the sky.
Was that true? Was that what kept him connected to Carol? To Kennedy?
Loyalty?
He didn’t know. All he knew was, he was sitting here saying goodbye to a man he hardly knew.
They were leaving Schofield behind.
Finn had never been big on the leave-no-man-behind ethic, noble as it was. He didn’t disagree with the sentiment; it was a good code and he’d fought for it himself, more than once. But he didn’t believe in it. Some men got left behind. That was just how it was. It wasn’t karma, it wasn’t fate. They didn’t deserve it or not deserve it. There was no reason for it.
No up, no down.
But Schofield should not have died.
He turned to a fresh page and went on sketching the glassy slivers of moon.
He thought again of Schofield the night before, striding purposefully past in the direction of the fantail. The hot prickling up the back of his neck.
The next moment, he’d been sitting out on the CIWS mount astride the great Gatling gun at dawn, hearing Captain Tom’s voice in his head.
Two scenes, side by side in his mind, seamless, like a smash cut in a horror flick or a skip in an old vinyl LP.
And of the sequence of steps between those two moments? He had no memory.
No memory at all.
II
Bolter
23
Command Master Chief Robbie Jackson glanced down at his cooling coffee. Master Chief Jackson was not a patron of Jittery Abe’s. He liked his coffee the traditional navy way: from the mess, black and nasty. A description that he himself had answered to on more than one occasion. Though he was not in fact a nasty man; an even mix of drill sergeant and Creole den mother, Master Chief Jackson was revered among his crew, even loved. Also feared.
No one a
board the USS Abraham Lincoln had ever seen him smile.
When he roamed the Abe’s passageways Jackson moved like an Abrams tank that had taken a few semesters of ballet. This morning, though, he was planted behind his desk watching his coffee cool to the point of bitterness.
He took a sip. The brew tasted like scorched chicory cut with mud. Perfect, to his way of thinking. He set the mug down, its ceramic base making almost no sound as it touched the desk’s steel surface, and thought about the man who had just left his office.
It hadn’t been an easy interview. Lieutenant Bennett had been having an illicit relationship with another officer, now missing and presumed dead. All of which meant this guy was torn up emotionally, which was understandable, and at the same time terrified that his career was about to slide into the ship’s trash incinerator. Also understandable. Jackson had probed gently, asking the kinds of short, open-ended questions that lead to very long answers. Mostly he listened.
By the time he released Lieutenant Bennett from his office, he was satisfied on three questions, and greatly mystified on a fourth.
Jackson picked up his mug, swirled the bitter grounds, then set it down again.
He withdrew a sheet of plain white paper from his top desk drawer, placed it on the desk in front of him, and read the typed text one more time.
Tired tonight, really tired. Long day, long year. Just another clod, washed away, no piece of any continent. Perhaps some men really are islands after all. Another day, another dolor. Oh God, I’m so very tired of all of this. Weary to the bone.
Just another clod, washed away. John Donne, “No man is an island,” and so on, but all mixed up. Another day, another dolor. Colum McCann? Jackson shook his head. Apparently the man liked poetry. He slipped the note into the desk drawer, pushed his chair back a foot.
So.
His first three questions seemed to have pretty solid answers. Had Lieutenant Schofield been especially depressed lately? Were there significant conflicts at work? Problems in his personal life?
No, no, and no.
That note notwithstanding, by all accounts Sam Schofield was not a moody guy. The opposite, if anything; steady, solid, looked up to by his peers. Yes, being a gay man in the military was no picnic. Still, from what Jackson could tell, there was no particular climate of intolerance, no overt hostility or pattern of discrimination. According to his staff, everything at the ATO shack was normal as eggs and grits that day. Nor was there any real crisis in his personal life, assuming Bennett was telling the truth, which Jackson was inclined to believe that he was. They’d had a minor spat the day before, but it was all patched up. No big deal.
So what possessed the man to type up this weird suicide note, then walk out to the fantail in the middle of the night and throw himself off?
24
First morning out of the Gulf. After a breakfast of plain oatmeal and smoked herring from a can, Finn headed above to the ATO shack. Campion, the young airman who’d processed him in that first night, was stationed at Schofield’s desk, staring at some paperwork. Two others moved around the cramped space, going through the motions of office work as if they were all inhabiting the same bad dream.
The young airman looked up. Stood and shook Finn’s hand, like he didn’t know what else to do. “Morning, Chief Finn.”
“Hey,” said Finn. “I was sorry to hear about Lieutenant Schofield.”
This was true. The world would be better off if Schofield were still here.
“I can’t believe he’s just, just…” Campion couldn’t bring himself to say the words “dead” or “gone.” “I mean, I wasn’t like him, you know?” Finn nodded. Wasn’t gay, he meant. “But man, I loved that guy. I mean, everyone did. You know?” Campion fought to keep his composure but couldn’t stop his eyes from welling up.
Finn put his hand on Campion’s shoulder. “I know, man. I know how you feel. I get it.”
This was a lie.
Finn didn’t have the slightest idea how Campion felt. Whatever muscle or tendon or connective tissue it took to make genuine empathy happen, it was missing from Finn’s physiology. Or atrophied. Or maybe surgically removed when he was a kid. Whatever the deficiency was, Finn had no clear experience of compassion or emotional resonance. However he did have a great capacity for appreciation. If he couldn’t quite feel what Campion was feeling, he could witness it, down to the finest nuance. So while it may have been a total fabrication when he said, “I know how you feel,” he was fabricating from accurate observation.
It was a lie with a basis.
Campion looked up at him through damp eyes. “Thanks.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “I don’t know, man,” he said. “I just don’t get it.”
Finn cocked his head slightly, doing puzzled concern. “Don’t get what?”
Campion sniffled once and sat up straighter. “The whole, you know, suicide thing. I mean,” he leaned forward and spoke in a whisper, “when that kid crashed their helo, we all felt terrible. That was awful.” He took a big shaky breath. “But…Lieutenant Schofield?”
“Really,” Finn agreed.
When that kid crashed their helo?
“I mean, what do I know,” said Campion. “What does anyone really know, right?”
Finn nodded. What did anyone really know. He could go along with that one.
“But, man,” the boy said. “I did not see that coming.”
* * *
—
After determining that, no, his satphone replacement had still not arrived, Finn headed over to the library, where he waited for a PC. Checked all his email boxes. Nothing. Not from Kennedy, not from anyone.
Give me twenty-four.
People were, by and large, a mystery to Finn. He could read their intentions like a meteorologist tracked weather patterns, see inside them like an X-ray tech. But he didn’t really understand what went on in there. Which made him wary. Human beings could always still surprise him. It was therefore a rare thing for Finn to put his trust in another person.
Lieutenant Michael Joseph Kennedy was one of those exceptions.
They’d been on the battlefield together. Charged into potential death traps together based on nothing but each other’s read on the situation. Borne teammates’ dying bodies on their backs while running through rubble and gunfire following no map but each other’s instincts. People said that kind of shared experience created a uniquely strong bond. Finn didn’t know about that. The whole idea of a “bond” was as mysterious to him as the inner working of quarks.
But what he had with Kennedy was special.
Part of it, Finn guessed, was that they were so different from each other. Finn built intel networks. Kennedy made friends. He had an ability to relate to anyone and everyone that Finn both admired and found baffling. Most people passed through life making friends along the way, but as far as Finn could see those friendships came and went. Not with Kennedy. He never let go of a friendship, ever. Even now, in his late thirties, he was still running around with the guys he’d known when he was three. He had a gift for it. Everybody’s best friend.
And his sayings. “Scrotal disaster.” (Said of especially fucked-up individuals or situations.) “Moses blows us.” (Meaning: Uh-oh, we’re in trouble.) And that grand catchall phrase, the ultimate expression of exasperation: “Christ on stilts.” Which made zero sense to Finn (Why would Christ be on stilts? What did that even mean?), but he still found himself repeating the line. There was little about Kennedy that made sense to him.
But he trusted him.
Four days now and still no word.
Where was his platoon?
He needed to talk to someone up the food chain, someone in Coronado. Which was not a call he could make through AT&T Direct Ocean Service.
He headed below to the Public Affairs office, where he spoke with an ensign named Olivia, a writ
er for the ship’s newsletter whom he knew from the Jittery Abe’s line.
“I was wondering if you could help me out. I don’t have my satphone, and I need to get a secure line with WARCOM at Coronado for a few minutes, check in with my command.”
“Totally no problem,” she said, practically gushing. “Let me just tell my boss and we’ll hook you up.” She trotted off into a suite of back offices.
Finn waited for a minute, then another. Not wanting to be conspicuous, he took a seat. He noticed the young photographer he’d seen blushing on the flight deck his first morning there when she’d looked at the deck-status LSO. A full ten minutes later Olivia came back, looking embarrassed.
“She says,” Olivia straightened her spine and cleared her throat to make it clear that she was now quoting her boss, “ ‘I’m very sorry, I don’t have the authority to grant that access.’ ”
“Oh, hey,” he said. “Forget about it. No big deal.”
Finn left the PAO and went to change into his service khakis with his SEAL trident and three highest ribbons—Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Combat Action Ribbon—then walked over to the Combat Intelligence Center at the foot of the island. After gaining entrance and introducing himself, he explained his mission.
“I need to get a SITREP on my unit back on the beach.” He jerked his thumb back in the general direction of the Arabian Peninsula. “I’ve been given clearance to inside-channel comms to Coronado, on authority from McDill.” Which wasn’t strictly speaking true but sounded true. He doubted they would bother calling SOCOM headquarters at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa to check.
In a most apologetic tone the ensign on the desk told him to wait there one moment while they set up a private space for him.
And came back more than ten minutes later, even more apologetic.
“I’m so sorry, Chief Finn. I’m being told we don’t have the authority to grant that access.”