Battleship Boys

by Paul Lally

  That DEA bust... did someone, somewhere in the Yucatán betray him?

  Of course.

  Who exactly, doesn’t matter—but most likely the Tigres cartel trying to recapture some of their lost turf. Thank God, he had the common sense to provide armed backup. But while his guards saved the drug shipment they failed to save Ernesto.

  A gentle knock on the flimsy bathroom door. “Táan k listos, señor.”

  “Ts'o'ok in,” Vargas says in Maya, then whispers in English, “We are coming, my brother.”

  The DEA’s video feed to SOCOM is crystal-clear; HD-4 quality and rock-steady.

  Not a good sign, Sergeant Wright thinks as he regards the all-too-familiar sight of hostages being flaunted as poker chips. How many of these has he seen in his thirty-five years of service?

  Too many.

  “Where the hell did they find orange jumpsuits?” he says.

  “Corrupt cops, where else?” Commander Goldstein says. “Go full screen, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” a voice says in the darkness.

  With a press of a button somewhere, the “screen wall” holding fifty different displays of varying sizes depicting data and real-time video from hot spots around the world, transforms into a single wide-screen view of a neatly dressed man wearing a blue sports jacket with an open collar shirt standing behind a kneeling hostage whose head is lowered.

  “Cue the asshole,” Wright says.

  “Buenos díaz, I am Miguel Lopez-Vargas. This in my hand is a machete.” He brandishes Osito’s shiny weapon-of-choice. “And in my other hand.....” he YANKS up the hostage’s head. “...is your last look at Corporal Rodriguez of the Infanteria de Marina, unless...”

  Wright warns, “Heads up, folks, this might get messy.”

  “...you return my brother, Ernesto Vargas. If you do not, then Corporal Rodriguez will be the first of many.”

  He looks to his right. The camera pans away to reveal a group of men similarly dressed in orange jumpsuits, hands zip-tied, black hoods over their heads, guarded by men wearing full-out tactical gear, black ski-masks, and brandishing automatic weapons.

  “Hostage hoods too?” Wright says. “These jerks have been watching too many movies.”

  “At ease, sergeant,” Goldstein says.

  Vargas continues, “Corporal Rodriguez has exactly twenty-four hours left to live. If, at the end of that time, you have not arranged to return the man you captured during your failed raid, we will send the corporal’s head to you and feed the rest of him to the buitres.”

  “Translation, please,” Goldstein says.

  A voice in the darkeness; “Vultures, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nice touch,” Wright says.

  “Freeze video, please,” Goldstein says.

  The picture halts Miguel in the midst of describing the how, when, and where to deliver his brother safely back to Mexico, and in return he will release the hostages.

  “We got anything on this idiot?” she says.

  “Still working on it, skipper. But either way, those guys are screwed.”

  “I know. But...”

  “But what, ma’am?”

  “There’s more to this than a drug bust gone bad.” She holds up a flimsy. “Did you read the DEA’s request to bump this up to make it SOCOM’s headache instead of theirs?”

  “What about it?”

  “The authority comes straight from the White House.”

  “Jesus, here we go again.”

  “Roger that. There’s other fingers poking in this pie that we don’t know about—my guess is they’re economic, but what the hell do I know?”

  “We don’t have any pixie dust, skipper.. Those guys are screwed and tatooed.”

  “Affirmative, just don’t tell the White House.” She points to the freeze frame of Vargas, his mouth open, arm upraised. “This jerk has a lot of nerve. I’ll give him that.”

  “He’s got a machete, too.”

  The ever-lightening sky promises to deliver a wintry sunrise above the ocean as the Rock sails steadily southward. After a night of steady steaming, she’s currently just off the Virginia coastline.

  Below decks, 258 (final head count) of navy veteran sweepstakes winners sleep the sleep of the just, while their inner ears register the gentle rise and fall of the battleship’s hull through the sea. A familiar feeling to them all and most likely not experienced for years.

  Did they stay up late? You bet. Did their tall tales grow taller in direct proportion to the unlimited alcoholic beverages happily served by the hospitality kids? You bet. Are the students 21 and over? Hell, no, but we’re at sea, folks, and Captain Koga’s the Lord High Executioner, so relax, ask for more ice and praise the quality of the Chivas Regal scotch swirling around in your glass.

  You’ve got thirteen more days and twelve nights to drift back in time, recall your youth, stare out upon the limitless ocean during the day, and then slide between freshly laundered sheets and dream of the warm sun and beautiful beaches waiting for you in Cancún.

  That is, until a raucous voice on the ship’s loudspeaker penetrates the decks and your snoozing brain with a sentence you’ve not heard in years:

  “Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up. Reveille, reveille. The smoking lamp is lit in assigned areas above deck only. Reveille.”

  Not that you smoke anymore, God forbid.

  But the mere suggestion makes you crave a “coffin nail” as you swing your legs over your comfy “rack” sit up, stretch and—you can’t help it—smile at your luck at being a VIP in a time machine sailing through the waters at a steady twenty-seven knots.

  The good news is that you don’t have to gag down “bug juice” and powdered eggs for breakfast, then chip paint, polish brightwork, and stand watch like you did back in the day. Nossir, you’re on a luxury cruise to sunny Mexico that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

  And since you have all the time in the world, you stretch, lie back on the comfy mattress and catch another forty-winks, while your cabin mates fart and laugh and scratch themselves like bears coming out of hibernation.

  Not Stanley Albertini, though.

  He’s been up since 0300—being 93 years old, it’s his normal waking hour. (Your inner clock does a lot of sliding when you get to be this guy’s age).

  Once awake, he doesn’t lie in the rack and stare at the ceiling. He hustles topside, scurries aft, and undogs the entry hatch to No. 4 Turret. Once inside the heavily armored structure—ten inches of Class A armor plate on its sides alone—he turns on the lights inside the cramped space.

  Stanley being Stanley, he closes his eyes and pretends the turret’s filled with smoke from a pitched battle, and he’s got to find his way to his duty station without running into anything. He works from memory not faded by time as he effortlessly weaves past the turret officer’s talker station and undogs the hatch that leads through a transverse bulkhead to reach his goal: his beloved center gun pit.

  Not until he arrives at his station—as gun captain it’s to the right of the breech—does he let his hand rest unerringly upon the release handle like he did so many times before, almost 75 years ago.

  He opens his eyes and smiles.

  “Some things never change.”

  By 0700 hours, Stanley’s long gone from the turret and taking in the breeze topside, perched like Neptune in the pointer’s seat of Admiral Lewis’s restored 40mm quadruple mount, while he smokes the second of his four carefully rationed daily cigarettes.

  The retired vice-admiral’s there too. Upwind of the smoke, of course. A relaxed, comfortable interval of silence between the two men. Just the hiss of the sea below and the steady THRUM-THRUM-THRUM of a warship at sea.

  It’s still damned brisk but being 500 miles further south than when they first weighed anchor, it’s not as bad. Their pea coats and watch caps (Jack’s idea to provide them for everyone) keeps them warm.

  Stanley finally says, “Tommy said i
t was your idea to do the reveille thing with the guys.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “How’d they handle it?”

  “They rolled out of their racks.”

  “And rolled right back in, I bet.”

  JJ smiles. “Quite few did just that.”

  “Once a bluejacket, always a bluejacket.”

  “Affirmative your last.”

  JJ reaches out and pats the barrel. “Can’t wait to fire my babies.”

  “How much ammo did you and Jack weasel out of those armory folks, other than the big stuff?”

  “Enough.”

  “C’mon, don’t be coy. We’re partners in crime, y’know.”

  “Fifteen hundred rounds; half of them Mark 2, the rest Mark 3, clips and all.”

  “Sweet Jesus!”

  Stanley goes on a coughing jag; ten seconds of WHOOPING and HACKING.

  JJ says, “I can’t believe you still smoke.”

  “They’re—COUGH,COUGH, filtered damn it.”

  “Please stay alive long enough to shoot the big gun.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  JJ spins the elevation wheel and the quartet of Bofors anti-aircraft guns rise effortlessly as one.

  Stanley says, “The guys are going to have a blast shooting that thing.”

  “It’s not a ‘thing,’ it’s a weapon.”

  “Begging the retired admiral’s pardon, sir, but the Rock’s sixteen-inch, Mark Sevens are weapons, as will be amply demonstrated when we de-construct Jack’s oil rig tomorrow. These dinky peashooters will make fancy splashes in the water is all.”

  Two hours later, after shooting the breeze with Tommy Riley at breakfast, then grabbing a quick “catch-up” nap to re-charge his batteries, it’s time for Stanley to repeat his “blindfold performance” inside No. 4 Turret. This time in front of guys who’ve volunteered to be “gunners” for the upcoming assault on Jack’s abandoned oil platform.

  Operating a three-gun main battery turret in wartime requires the carefully choreographed actions of almost eighty sailors per turret and barbette. But this time around, a total of fifteen will be doing the same thing.

  Three of the fifteen—former gunners’ mates themselves, like Stanley—have hands-on experience from the Gulf War. The rest will perform barbette duties ranging from loading the projectiles and sending them up from the handling room or doing the same below in the powder flat, wrestling propellant charges topping the scales at 110 pounds each.

  Which is no small thing, and why the younger, stronger vets are handling that part of the complicated firing sequence.

  As previously described, the turret’s built like a “layer cake,” starting with the powder flat at the bottom. From there, the guys will roll cylindrical-shaped bags of propellant onto a hoist and send them up to the gun pit via a hoist, six at a time.

  Directly above them is the projectile flat, where the guys use ropes and capstans to manhandle HC (High Capacity) shells onto another hoist that delivers them to the respective left, center, and right guns.

  Up in the gun pit where all the action takes place, Stanley’s four-man team have wedged their bodies (and beer bellies) into a space about the size of a walk-in closet that happens to also contain the back end of a 16-inch/50 caliber Mark 7 Naval gun.

  The cast and crew:

  Center gun captain: Stanley (New Hampshire BB-71)

  Rammer operator: Joe (Missouri BB-63 )

  Hoist operator: Jerry (New Jersey BB-62)

  Cradle operator: Andy (Montana BB-70)

  To start things rolling, Stanley yanks on the breech plug release handle. The five hundred pound, chromium steel Welin Breech plug pivots downward from the breech block, and by doing so, reveals its unique engineering design. Incorporating increasingly finer “interrupted stepped threads,” the cylindrical plug locks into place with minimum rotation, increasing the rate of fire to an astonishing two rounds-per-minute.

  “Mind repeating the whole sequence?” Jerry says to Stanley. “It’s been a while.”

  “Me too,” Joe says, “By the way, where’d you serve, pal?”

  “The Big J. Gulf war until de-commissioned.”

  Stanley pats the breech. “Same church, different pew, guys. It’ll all come back to you.”

  “A lot bigger pew.”

  “Amen to that, brother.”

  “Let us pray.” Stanley says.

  While the guys laugh, he raises his left forearm, swathed in a “bartender’s sleeve,” a thick cotton-padded sleeve running from wrist to elbow; the most visible sign that here stands a gun captain, master of all he surveys.

  He uses the sleeve to wipe the concave “nose” of the polished steel breech plug clean of any residue left over from the previous shot. To guarantee simultaneous detonation of all six powder charges, red fabric primer patches filled with ten pounds of black powder are quilted onto the back of every bag. Being brand-new and the gun unfired, the sleeve lacks that greasy, blackened look that will happen when those bags light off.

  Joe from the Missouri confirms this by saying, “By the time we’re done tomorrow, that pretty sleeve of yours will be nice and dirty,”

  Stanley pats the breech. “And that oil rig will be nice and gone, thanks to you guys.”

  Grins and high fives.

  “Okay, swabbies, ready to run the drill?”

  “Aye, aye.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Rock and roll!”

  The men hustle to take up their respective positions. Stanley stands on a small, elevated platform beside the breech. Jerry, the powder hoist operator stands directly across from him by the powder shuttle door. Joe, the rammer, takes up his position near the transverse bulkhead, and Andy, the cradle operator, directly behind Stanley.

  Using a sound-powered “talker” that a Rock volunteer rigged for him before leaving Boston, he communicates directly with the guys down in the barbette’s projectile flat and powder flat.

  “Send up a dummy round!”

  In battles past, over forty sailors worked in the barbette flats feeding the turret’s three sixteen-inch guns the projectiles and powder charges needed to engage the enemy. Today it’s just eight guys (counting the docents) doing what needs to be done for Stanley and his crew.

  It’s not like Dante’s Inferno down here in the projectile flat. Instead of fire and brimstone, it’s more like an operating room; bright lights, spotless walls, and the smell of fresh paint. Docents from the Rock are here to coach the volunteer teams. It’s been a while since most of these guys have pulled duty on a battleship. They need all the help they can get.

  The first task is using capstans and braided nylon lines to lasso a dummy round from its storage space next to the live rounds.

  With a cowboy-like twist, the docent rotates it onto a turntable like device, and sends it to the hoist, where one of the stronger, younger vets guides it inside and closes the cage.

  “Hit that button to your right,” the docent says.

  He does so. A bell rings shrilly, somewhere above them.

  “Let’s them know it’s on the way.”

  A half-second later, the round lifts vertically, on its way to Stanley’s team.

  Directly below in the powder flat, they’ve been busy, too. The first set of three practice propellant bags is already in the hoist. But they won’t head topside until the next set arrives. Back when these vets were twenty-somethings and full of piss and vinegar, working down here was a walk in the park.

  Not anymore.

  Everybody’s pooped and they’re only halfway done.

  One of the guys grunts and groans as he shoves bag #4 onto the lift cradle. “Jesus Christ, what’s in these things? I thought they were dummy bags.”

  “Sand to approximate the weight,” the docent says.

  He lets out a WHOOSH of air as he grabs bag #5. “Remind me again.... I volunteered for this?”

  “I saw you raise your hand,” says his buddy, who’s sweating but smiling at the sam
e time.

  “Next time, shoot me.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  Practice powder bag #6 THUMPS into place.

  The docent closes the lift door, hits the “UP” button and the six-bag charge (three per tray) ascends toward the Stanley and the vets waiting for it in the gun pit.

  By now, the projectile hoist has delivered a dummy round to the center gun pit. Andy, the cradle operator, swings over an articulated tray, secures the round, then slowly unbends the cradle’s elbow-joint to lower the 2100-pound round from vertical to horizontal.

  Stanley’s strictly business as he points to Joe and raises his thumb for him to start ramming. Then he turns and stares into the depths of the breech block as a chain-driven piston slowly shoves the round home.

  “HOLD!” Stanley hollers, then checks again to be sure the round is seated exactly the way he wants.

  Satisfied as only a good gun captain can be, he turns his attention to the powder shuttle door. Again, no words. Just his authoritative finger pointing in silence—this time at Jerry, the powder hoist operator, who hits the switch that raises the door to reveal the first three bags resting on their tray.

  Stanley says, “Let us feed the beast!”

  He and Jerry roll three bags onto the loading tray. They THUMP into place. Stanley shoves the first one deep into the breech while Jerry slides the two others to the rear to make room for the next three.

  The process repeats for the next three bags. So do the guys’ grunts and groans (they aren’t teenagers anymore). But smiles too, as each man performs his proscribed duties as a key member of a turret team.

  As complicated as it is to load this weapon, aiming and firing it is equally complicated.

  When the Rock was an operational warship, her Mk 38 GFCS (Gun Fire Control System) filled the bill by controlling the sighting, tracking, and firing of her primary and secondary batteries.