The Med

by David Poyer

  And then, even before he could have hoped for it, he found in his traffic one day his orders as squadron commander, Amphibious Squadron Six. Not the choicest billet for an ex-destroyerman, but a long step up nonetheless. He had pondered it for weeks, worrying at the meat of meaning in the spare phraseology of Navy orders. At last he understood it. It meant that they were evaluating him, grooming him for his stars. It was a test.

  And they would be watching, waiting for him to fail.

  Leaning back in the rear seat, Isaac I. Sundstrom caught the glances of two Italians repairing their car on the street. He straightened his back, put on a look of concentration, and glanced down, as if he was studying important documents.

  He reflected comfortably that he was just forty-six years old.

  * * *

  The mayor was out. He left his card with an assistant, discussed garbage collection and fresh water for a few minutes, then left. He considered going up to Taormina; he remembered it as a pretty drive, but decided against it. The day was wearing on and he had work to do.

  “Fleet Landing,” he said to the driver. “And step on it.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The crew of the gig jumped up, ditching butts and squaring away their caps as the blue Fiat, lights on, pulled onto the pier. The orderly opened the door; the coxswain held out his arm to steady the commodore as he stepped aboard. He paused for a moment, looking around the quay. A civilian was watching them. After a moment he went over. “Going out to the ships?” he called.

  Sundstrom evaluated the dark suit, the tie. “That’s right. You’re—?”

  “American consul.”

  “Sure. Come aboard, I’m the man you’re going out to see.”

  Sundstrom remembered the wine only when the driver, stonefaced, swung it down into the coxswain’s arms. “Stow it below, sir?” said the sailor, equally expressionless.

  “No, goddamn it,” said Sundstrom, annoyed. “Dump it over the side.”

  “Dump it, sir?”

  “You heard me, son.”

  The coxswain, the linehandlers, and the driver stared at the gurgling jug. When the last of the ruby flow had disappeared into the water, the commodore nodded.

  He and the consul stood together in the stern as the gig backed out, then swung to seaward. The boat leapt forward, flag snapping in the wind, and they steadied themselves as it left the shelter of the bay and began to pitch, throwing spray. The engine was too loud for speech, and after a shouted word about the weather they stood silently together, watching the ship approach.

  Sundstrom watched it with pride, touched with flashes of anger as he noted rust or dangling lines. Guam grew rapidly larger as they approached. Like a small carrier, he thought, appreciating the straight sweep of the flight deck, the warlike sheer of her sides. She rode easily to anchor, veering slowly to the wind. Two ready helicopters crouched high above the sea, forward of the island. His eye moved upward. Yes, she was flying the holiday ensign. It was not strictly in accordance with regulations, but he’d always felt that the bigger the flag, in a foreign port, the better they were accomplishing the public relations part of their mission.

  He bent forward. He was unsure of diplomatic rank, but knew that consuls were important. “This is my flagship, sir,” he shouted. “Coxswain, circle her once before you make the platform; let’s show off a little.”

  “Aye, Commodore.”

  * * *

  He showed the consul around the hangar and flight deck, and posed with him for a picture on the bridge. He stayed for lunch in Sundstrom’s cabin, then left, pleading press of work. Sundstrom called the quarterdeck to let him have the gig. Alone, he relaxed for the first time that day.

  The flag cabin was not large; but aboard ship, it was luxurious, almost a suite. There was an office-cum-living room, with a desk, chart table, leather couch, and several chairs. A door led to his quarters proper, a sitting room, bedroom, and attached bath. He showered, changed to khakis, allowed himself ten minutes on the couch, then called his steward for a cup of coffee and sat down to work.

  Rota, Valencia, PHIBLEX; training anchorage for a week; Brindisi, Athens, Gythion, Thessalonika, Sicily, Valiant Javelin. It had been a full, busy deployment to date. MARG 2-2, his task force, had started sloppy. Exercises took too long and there were mistakes. He had corrected them. He felt that the squadron was shaping up, despite some of his captains’ laziness or lack of willingness to impose discipline. In some cases he’d had to impose his own. That took time, time he needed for his own job; but then, he thought, no one had ever said command was an easy task.

  A radioman knocked, entered, and laid the morning’s message traffic before him. He read each one thoroughly, starting at the top of the stack and going down. Those he did not understand he scribbled on with a red felt-tip: Chief of Staff: Check this out and report. Three from COMSIXTHFLEET, Admiral Roberts, he laid aside for further study. Then he turned to his outgoing pile, messages and letters that had been prepared for his approval. He read these even more closely, lapsing into a scowl.

  His staff, he thought, was lazy. They were satisfied with quick answers, off the top of their heads. They did not want to put in the time a real job required. But he would not let them get away with sloppy work. His pen slashed across the paper, asking questions, demanding references and clarifications. He tossed them back into the basket for revision, then reached again for the admiral’s messages.

  They were situation reports, secret, covering the entire Med. Particular attention was given to the larger than usual number of Soviet Fleet units in the east. He carried them to the chart table. There were seven ships off Kythera, a favorite anchorage for the Russians, and two more submarines than usual this time of year. Sundstrom wondered why. No use asking the intelligence officer, Byrne; he would indulge himself in his usual games, disguising his incompetence with sly generalities and effeminate mannerisms. The commodore’s scowl deepened.

  He reread the last message, about Cyprus, twice. He frowned at the map, gnawing at his lip. Cyprus … Turkey … the concentration of Soviet units … no, he was probably reading too much into it, worrying too much. If anything hot looked likely, Roberts would have them to sea at once.

  But how much better it would look if, when he got that message, Ike Sundstrom could report that Task Force 61 was already underway.

  But then, he couldn’t take fright at every hint of trouble. If he did that, the MARG would never touch land at all. The whole eastern Mediterranean was a hotbed, like the Balkans in 1913. Lebanon was a running sore, the Persian Gulf a powder keg since the Iranian disaster. Turkey and Greece, ostensibly allies, were circling like wrestlers seeking an opening. A new Arab-Israeli war could happen anytime; Syria, heavily backed by the Soviet Union, was building up its forces once more. Libya and Iran, powerless against regular U.S. military forces, had resorted to funding terrorists, a cheap way to make war.

  He sat and stared at the paper, gnawing his lip.

  Isaac Sundstrom did not consider himself brilliant or creative. He was not a genius, a fire-eater, or a risk-taker. So many nights, aboard the Nitro, he had lain awake sweating in his bunk after the officer of the deck called him, hoping he had made the right decision on a closing contact, waiting for the scream of the whistle; but his fitness reports had always mentioned his dependability. He was short, and that was a drawback. Most of the golden, the select, were tall men. But there was nothing a man could do about that but watch his posture, and of course his weight. He knew that his caution and thoroughness made enemies, as they had at the Bureau of Personnel, that there were people who cared less than he did for doing things the safe way. These people would make him look bad if they could.

  But he was too close now to falter or even waver. The path was narrow, the ascent steep, and the competition keen. But he was still young. If iron determination, iron will, and tireless attention to detail counted for anything, Ike Sundstrom was sure he could make it.

  The essential thing, he tho
ught, is never to make a mistake.

  5

  Naples, Italy

  When word came down at last to secure main engines something relaxed inside Kelly Wronowicz’s chest. It was as if the dying whine of Ault’s turbines, spinning down for the first time in two weeks, was a part of himself shutting down.

  He watched the throttleman spin the worn wheel with one finger, cutting the invisible bloodstream of steam that kept the old destroyer alive. The pressure gauge above his head spun down to zero.

  “Closed tight?”

  “Yeah, Chief.”

  “Stewie, remember the jacking gear. We don’t need no bowed shafts. And I want lube oil temps below ninety before you wrap up the watch down here.”

  “Aye.”

  “And take that leftover coffee. Dump it on the deckplates with some scouring powder and get Blaney to kaieye it down before he secures.”

  “Right, Chief.”

  When the jacking gear had been engaged and tested, Wronowicz left the throttle board and walked aft through the engineroom. To either side they loomed up, his evaporators, his pumps, generators and reduction gears, the steel-shining complexity of steam and cooling lines, reach rods, wiring. He hardly noticed the hundred-degree heat, the dank smell compounded of steam, lube oil, hot steel, and baked insulation. The walkway rang under his boots, slippery with condensation and oil, and his ear tuned without conscious thought from the slight off-pitch of number-one ship’s service generator, to the hiss of steam through the gland exhausts of the air ejector (he would have to repack it soon, but not today, not today), to the gay shout of one of the watchstanders as he threw his log board onto its peg. Absently wiping his fingers, black with grease and soot, on a rag from his back pocket, he rubbed them over the casing of the low-pressure turbine. Around him, for the length of the engineroom, the grease-softened light of the fluorescents glowed off piping and ductwork, off hose reels, colored bottles of compressed gas and firefighting chemicals; off coils of emergency cable as thick as his hairy wrists. He paused at the ladder, looking back toward the throttle board. The top watch was making the last entries in the log, the lower level men were stowing their tools, oiling cans, rags, wrenches.

  Machinist’s Mate Chief Kelly Wronowicz looked over his kingdom, breathed one deep sigh, and went up the ladder toward the main deck.

  By the time the mooring lines were fast, the ratguards rigged, “A” gang busy on the pier connecting water and telephone lines, Wronowicz was exhausted. Although he did not show it. He never showed weakness or exhaustion to the thirty roughnecks he bossed in Ault’s “M” Division, and especially not to the main propulsion assistant, Ensign Callin.

  The chiefs’ quarters was noisy with men showering and dressing, readying themselves for the first wild night in Naples. He peeled off his coveralls, noticing for the first time in days their smell, the grease and soot ground in so deep the ship’s laundry had long ago given up on them, and sagged two hundred and twenty hairy pounds into his rack with a grunt. The mattress was soft, welcoming, and he felt that part of him that had relaxed with the shutdown ebb toward sleep. He wanted nothing more in the world. The last two weeks at sea—with materiel inspection, replacing a dozen failed flexitallic gaskets because Foster forgot he was driving a ship as old as he was, landing exercises, underway replenishment—had been hell. And Callin on him every minute, ignorant as a tick … he pulled his mind away from work. They were in port at last, and the machinery could cool into immobile metal, cool and shrink and rest. He rested too, and the whine of electric razors faded into a long-awaited unconsciousness.

  “Hey, Kelly,” said a voice. “Lieutenant Jay wants to see you out in the passageway.”

  Wronowicz turned over heavily in his bunk. “Whatever it is, tell him to grease it good and cram it up his ass.

  “All right,” he added, after a moment of silence. “I’m coming.” Three deep breaths later he got up, pulled a pair of pants over his belly, centered the buckle, and went up into the chief’s lounge.

  The engineering officer was small and finely built. He was fresh off the bridge, in tailored trop whites, and gold glittered at his shoulders and on the cap he held under one arm. Wronowicz felt his glance at his gut, at the dark circles of sweat under the armpits of his T-shirt, but he knew Jay didn’t really mind. If a snipe was clean he wasn’t doing his job, and the lieutenant, despite his crispness on watch, got just as filthy when something needed doing down in the hole.

  “You wanted me, sir?”

  “Yeah, Chief. I can’t find Mr. Callin. Some things have to be done before the department goes ashore.” Jay glanced around the lounge; Wronowicz shrugged. That meant, in the shorthand of men who worked together every day, that Jay didn’t want to say anything critical in front of the other chiefs, and that the machinist’s mate didn’t mind.

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Thing is, after the fueling, they didn’t clean up right. There’s oil on the deck and handprints all over the bulkhead. The exec brought it to my attention.”

  “Yessir, I know about that. I figured the duty section could get it, sir,” said Wronowicz. He wiped what remained of his hair back with one hand. “I hate to keep the snipes turned to when everybody else is walking off the brow, after the hours they’ve put in this last couple weeks.”

  “I do too,” said Jay. “But we’ve been through this before, Chief. If they’d clean up after a job we wouldn’t take this flak. I want the same people to clean it who were on station when it happened. And I want it done now.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” he said, rubbing his belly sadly. Jay left.

  “You look terrible, Kelly,” said Chief Sullivan, coming out of the pantry with a cinnamon bun. He was already dressed for liberty in a loud Hawaiian shirt and seersucker slacks. “You said to stop by before we left … you sure you want to hit the beach tonight?”

  “Yeah, I’ll hit it,” snapped Wronowicz. His sleep was wrecked now. “Just give me a couple minutes. I’ll meet you on the pier.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  He made it to a chair before his legs gave way. Two shots of Chief’s Mess coffee, as much darker and more virulent than regular Navy coffee as that is to the weak stuff civilians brew, put strength back into his limbs. His heart began to beat. He felt mean again, as a chief should, and the lights got a little brighter.

  One more cup, black, and then he went down to engineering berthing and collared Roberts and Smee, chewed them out, and sent them up to the refueling station. He took a quick shower and put on a fresh set of whites, cocking his cap in the mirror. He started out into the corridor; Callin was there, talking to one of the men. Wronowicz left by the other door, going through sick bay. He made sure that his men were at work; they were scrubbing away in their liberty clothes, their backs to the town, cursing him.

  He sighed and walked on. Sullivan was waiting beside the after five-inch mount. They saluted the quarterdeck watch and clattered down the gangway; and then he was ashore, the wind cool with evening and the familiar strange scent of land, and all responsibility, all worry dropped away from him, and he was on liberty.

  * * *

  “Yeah,” grunted Chief Wronowicz, stretching backward in the cramped front seat of the cab till his cap bent against the soiled roof. “Naples again, the asshole of the Mediterranean.”

  A molehill beside the chief’s mountain, the little swarthy driver slid his eyes sideways. “Better put a lid on that,” said “Unc” Blood, the quartermaster, wiggling his goatee from the backseat. “Remember, we’re what’s passing through.”

  Wronowicz grunted, then remembered a joke himself. “Yeah … reminds me of this guy, he can’t get it up, right? His snake’s on a Swiss vacation.”

  “Like your mind.”

  “Like your morals. Shut him up back there, bo’s’n.”

  “Tell the joke,” said Chief Sullivan mildly. “You half-Irish son of a bitch, tell the joke.”

  “So he goes to a doc, and the pill-pusher say
s to him, ‘Mister, it sounds like what you need is more variety in your sex life.’ ‘Yeah?’ says the guy. ‘Like what do you mean? Another woman?’”

  “The chief snipe makes these up as he goes along,” Blood muttered to Sullivan. “That’s why they take so long.”

  “Shut up, you turd.… ‘Naw,’ says the doctor, ‘What you do is the same thing, but you do it different.’

  “‘Like how?’ says the guy.

  “‘Well, you ever see two dogs goin’ at it in the yard?’ says the doc. ‘Try it like that. See if it makes things more interesting.’

  “‘I don’t think my wife would go for that,’ says the guy.

  “‘Ah, give her a couple of drinks, I’ll bet she would,’ says the doc. So the guy says he’ll go home and try it.”

  “I think I heard this before, back in Sunday school,” said Blood.

  Wronowicz ignored him. “Anyway, the next day he comes back to the office. ‘Did it work?’ ‘Not real good, Doc,’ says the guy. ‘She got drunk as hell, but she still wouldn’t take her clothes off on the lawn.’”

  The three chiefs grabbed suddenly for handholds as the driver braked, sending the taxi slewing. He leaned on the horn, his narrow face ferocious, cursing out the open window as traffic roared by, missing the cab by clearances that made his passengers flinch back.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Sullivan, rubbing his bald spot. “This bastard is going to kill us all.” They shouted at the man, ordered him to drive on, but he ignored them, screaming at the driver ahead, who was looking back at them, making an occasional small gesture with his thumb. The other Neapolitan, a much younger man, looked cool and self-possessed.

  Their driver became frenzied. Spittle flew onto the windshield. A truck rumbled by, missing their fender by inches, the horn loud but absurdly high. The cab surged forward, the driver jerked the wheel, screaming unintelligible maledictions, and the two men in back yelled at Wronowicz, “Grab the wheel! He’s trying to ram the bastard!”