by David Poyer
“We’ll make it with the goddamn bed. I just laid a hundred bucks out for that thing, and we’re taking it with us.”
“You got to be kidding.”
“Grab, boy.” Sullivan staggered back under the weight of the footboard; Wronowicz was reaching for the headboard when the first bersaglieri showed at the bottom of the stairs. One hand on the bed, he braced himself against the wall and sent the wardrobe sliding down the steps. It stopped halfway, stuck at the landing, and shouts came faintly from behind the heavy wood. “Take them a minute to get that stoppage free … let’s go. Unc, get on down there, and I’ll drop it down to you.”
“I don’t believe this,” said Blood, but he disappeared over the casement. Sullivan followed him, struggling with the footboard, and a moment later brass clattered in the heavy music of bells on pavement as Wronowicz let the headboard and rails go. The shouting from below grew louder.
“Signore…”
He turned, half over the balcony. She stood in the corridor, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed on her breast. He expected her to reproach him, curse him, and waited for it; but she said nothing. Only her eyes spoke, with the same mysterious understanding that had penetrated him from the first instant they had met his; and he knew then that his leaving was wrong. He was not denying her. He was denying himself, turning away from the last chance at happiness his life would offer.
“I’ll be back,” he said, and meant it.
And he turned from her, hung from the balcony for a moment, judging the fall to the roof below, and let himself drop.
“You sure got dressed in a hurry, Kelly.”
“What do you mean, Unc?”
“Nothing. Let’s beat feet out of here.”
“You got the idea, all right. Here, grab these rails. Sully, can you get—”
“Yeah, I got it. Let’s go.”
Staggering under the weight of the bed, the three chiefs pounded through darkened alleys, stumbling on the uneven cobbles, startling cats, kicking over trash cans, cursing at the night. And Kelly Wronowicz, machinist’s mate chief, found that suddenly it was too much. His chest began to heave, and once he started they all began to chuckle and then laugh, then roar, staggering along, and then choke it off to a wheeze for lack of breath. But inside he was still laughing, filled with that inexplicable elation that justifies, when it comes, so much of life without joy, so much of duty.
And then he remembered her. That he had left her, and that he did not know who she was; widow; daughter; mother; where she lived; even her name. And he staggered, strong as he was, beneath the weight, stumbling on the ancient cobblestones; and his cry followed the dying sound of laughter, echoing in the silent streets of Napoli.
6
Taormina, Sicily
Nodding in the bus the next morning, watching the rising sun redden the sea below the coast road, Lenson alternately yearned for coffee and nursed resentment that he had to leave Susan and Nan so early.
And for so little reason. Guam herself was on four-section liberty; only a quarter of her crew had to stay aboard. Things were different for the commodore’s staff. Hogan had made it plain they were expected back aboard every morning.
And we know where that order came from, he mused with sleepy bitterness.
The launch back was full of hung over sailors, and marines in even worse shape. It smelled of puke and piss from the night before. He stood beside the helmsman, scanning the roadstead carefully as they purred out. But the trip was routine. Three miles out from Fleet Landing they swung smoothly into the carrier’s lee. At the last moment the engine snarled into reverse and they slowed, bumping alongside the boarding platform. The late-liberty men watched blearily as he swung himself up the ladder to the quarterdeck, looking across the bay.
It would be another bright day. Beyond the already dazzling sea the land rose in greens and ochres. From the coastal villages, windows flashed the new sun back out to sea like signal lights. His eyes swept along it to the promontory. Yes, there was their hotel. Though he could not see their window he had a sudden warm picture of Susan, just as he had left her: breathing slow and still, one arm curled round the sleeping child, one brown shoulder showing above the sheets.
On the quarterdeck he came to attention facing the flag and nodded to the officer of the deck. “I report my return aboard, sir.”
“Very well, sir.”
He went straight to his stateroom and changed to fresh khakis. Sundstrom hated seeing his officers in civvies. He drew a mug of coffee from the wardroom pot and carried it up two decks to Flag Country.
Comphibron (Commander, Amphibious Squadron) Six Staff, sixteen officers and twenty enlisted men, were aboard, yet not of, the Guam.
A squadron no longer operated, as it had when Decatur scoured these seas for pirates, under the command of the senior captain. Instead, there was the Flag. Senior to the ship’s captains, the commodore and his staff directed the operations of the entire Mediterranean Amphibious Ready Group, Task Force 61, when they were at sea. He promulgated the schedule of exercises. He set and maneuvered the formations they steamed in. He dealt with the NATO and host-country authorities. And in war—if war, or anything like it, ever came—he would lead them together into battle. In theory the Flag was mobile, but only the helicopter carrier had quarters that Sundstrom considered fitting to his rank. It was not a comfortable situation—there was friction between the ship’s officers and the staff, who had to enforce the commodore’s orders—but it was, like so many other things in the Navy, unavoidable and thus treated by all as just another pain in the ass.
Most of the staff were already waiting in SACC, the supporting arms coordination center, when Lenson went in. He took a seat at the rear, glancing as he did so at the map. The intel data from the last exercise had not yet been removed. Sundstrom liked such things scrubbed up without delay. He was about to call McQueen over when the chief staff officer came in and everyone stood up.
“Sit down, sit down,” said Commander Hogan. He sat down himself, a lean, gray, avuncular man, and pulled out a pipe and a pack of Velvet. “Everyone getting along adequately ashore?”
“Fantastic,” said Red Flasher instantly. He shifted in his chair, ready to elaborate, but the CSO just smiled and handed him a sheaf of paper.
“Your traffic, Red. I noticed you hadn’t picked it up.”
“Uh, not yet, no.”
“Gentlemen, I want you all to read incoming messages before morning meetings. Otherwise we won’t know what we’re discussing.”
The other officers nodded, and Lenson felt a touch of guilt. He resolved to get in earlier the next day.
“The commodore’s ashore at the moment,” Hogan went on, and suddenly the tension that had been in the room was gone. The men stretched; some of them lit cigarettes; Flasher took a sugared doughnut out of his hat and began to gnaw at it, dropping crumbs on his pants. “So I’ll summarize what we have to do this morning, we’ll get on it, and hopefully you can head for shore around noon. Dan, we have an inquiry from Sixth Fleet, something about ammunition. Please see if we have to respond. Stan, one of the LSTs needs some parts. Squadron Supply is here to help them out, so let’s see what we can do. Mr. Byrne.”
“Sir.”
“Jack, you and I need to get together pretty soon on some of our intelligence requirements for Flaming Lance. And then there’s this.” He held out one of the red folders that meant Secret. “Just came in. Take a look at it, would you, and then see me.”
“Will do.”
Hogan glanced through the rest of his papers, made a few more comments, and then got up, heading back to his cabin. Flasher got up too, brushing crumbs to the deck, and made a face. Dan sent McQueen up to scrub the board, then went over to Byrne, who was standing with the folder open in his hand, looking puzzled and angry.
John Anson Byrne was the N-2. The squadron intelligence officer was dark, tall, and distinguished-looking. He kept a Florida tan current with nooners on the flight deck. Scuttle
butt had Harvard and money behind him somewhere, though Byrne only smiled at attempts to probe. He had a master’s in international law, and Dan had been there when he had translated a flashing-light message between two Soviet destroyers. Passing Byrne’s stateroom at night, Dan would see his face casual behind tinted aviator’s glasses, staring into a book or scribbling onto yellow pads that he kept locked up along with the demolition charges for the crypto equipment. He must have hated Sundstrom; the commodore loathed him, and didn’t hide it; but Byrne never remarked on that, either. Once, on the bridge, he had admitted to Dan that this assignment was a mistake for him. He’d been lined up as personal aide to Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic, but had turned it down for a sea tour. A lieutenant commander, next junior to Hogan, he still had the junior officers call him “Jack.”
“What’s it say, Jack?” Dan asked him. As he half-expected, Byrne slid the message into the red leather intel pouch he carried even as he glanced up.
“Nothing important. Warning order.”
“For where? What’s going on?”
“Whoa.” The intel officer’s smile creased handsome wrinkles around blue eyes. “The usual troubles—someplace east of here. I wouldn’t worry, most of the time things quiet down again.”
“Oh.”
“Say, how’s Susan? She was supposed to meet you here, wasn’t she?”
Lenson smiled. Within the gray walls of the ship, the accustomed business of the day, her name had a sudden sweetness. “Yeah, she’s here. So’s Nan. We’re up at the Piazza Vecchio, the stone mausoleum on top of the hill. Why don’t you come up tonight, have dinner with us or something?”
“Yes, perhaps I will,” said Byrne politely, and Dan knew he wouldn’t; but still he had remembered her name, asked about her. “I’ve got to go in and see the CSO, Dan. Excuse me, will you?”
“Sure, Jack.”
He shot the bull for a few minutes with the others. Flasher, it seemed, had gotten entangled with a waitress. When the whole sad story had unwound itself he laughed, then strolled back toward his stateroom.
He began work with the message Hogan had handed him. It said, when he had tracked down the references, that duds had been reported in one lot of three-inch ammunition. COMSIXTHFLT, the headquarters commanding all U.S. ships in the Mediterranean, wanted an immediate inventory of the ammo TF 61 carried. He wondered about the urgency while he consulted his files and jotted out a reply.
The rest of his morning’s work was routine. He read his traffic, then put an hour in on a tentative schedule for the next amphibious exercise, Flaming Lance. They would be heading east for that as soon as this port visit was over. Next he finished up a memo Sundstrom had requested on fire support during the Gythion exercise. Dan left plenty of room on his draft for changes. Sundstrom loved to hack things up, adding inanities and non sequiturs, and spreading plenty of flattery on anything likely to go up the chain of command. Just the sight of red ink—only “00,” the commodore himself, was allowed to use it—sent Flasher into a rage.
When he was done with that he checked his watch. He might, if he moved out, make the noon boat. He checked his uniform in the mirror and rattled up the ladders toward the staff offices once again. If Sundstrom was ashore maybe the CSO would release the ammo report. Save everybody a lot of hassle.… He tapped at Hogan’s door.
The commander looked up from an old Navy Times. “What can I do for you, Dan?”
He explained, and laid the form before Hogan. “So, since he’s ashore, I thought you might sign it, sir.”
The chief of staff chewed on his pipe, looking uncomfortable. “Is it urgent?”
“Priority, sir. I don’t know why, but—”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Hogan, slotting it over his desk. “I’ll give it to him when he comes back aboard. He said to expect him around noon, so it should go out a little after that. If there are changes, I’ll handle it.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“No—well, yes, sir. Request permission to go ashore.”
“Caught up?”
“Yes sir.”
“Go on, then. Tell Mrs. Lenson I said hello.” Hogan smiled wearily. “Alicia says she’s quite a feisty young lady. We’d like to have a drink with the two of you, if I can get ashore this trip.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He puzzled for a moment in the passageway. Obviously Hogan didn’t want to release the message. In fact, now that he thought about it, he had not seen the chief staff officer sign a thing for at least a month, though his job was to handle the administrative load so that the commodore could spend his time preparing the task force to fight.
Conclusion: Sundstrom wouldn’t let him. Lenson nodded to himself, contemplating what that might mean.
Dan tried hard to maintain the right attitude toward his seniors. That was just good leadership; mutter against them, and your own juniors will lose respect for you. But he had to admit that some of the things Sundstrom did were out of the ordinary. Like this. More and more, he insisted on handling all the detail work, the administrative stuff, and he nitpicked it to death. It was the latest evidence of his growing suspicion, his mistrust of others’ competence and even their motives, that was cutting the officers of the squadron and staff off one by one from their commander.
It wasn’t a good situation. But his mind’s business with the item did not last more than a second, because just then two slow bells sounded over the announcing system. He had ten minutes before the next boat ashore. He tore down the ladder and through the passageways, flattening a seaman recruit against the bulkhead as he went by. In his stateroom he ripped free of his uniform, tossed on his civvies, and beat it for the gangway.
When he reached the quarterdeck, out of breath and feeling smothered in the tropic heat after the ship’s air conditioning, he saw that Flasher had beaten him. The paunchy lieutenant was leaning against the rail, watching a gig angle in toward them. Dan shaded his eyes to look out at it, and then froze. He exchanged glances with Flasher.
“It’s him, all right,” said Red. “Quick, up here. He always goes down the starboard side.”
“Right.” The two junior officers faded behind a bulkhead, and watched as Commodore Isaac I. Sundstrom stepped from the launch to the ladder and hauled himself up, with deliberate dignity, toward the quarterdeck.
Simultaneously they realized that they were the only ones to have seen him approach. “Someone’s going to catch it,” breathed Flasher. “Hey! You! Officer of the deck!”
The ensign on duty swung around at the stage whisper. He followed Flasher’s urgent finger, and his face suddenly matched his whites. The petty officer of the watch flicked switches on the 1MC, raised his hand to the ship’s bell, but far, far too late.
Ike Sundstrom stepped aboard, smiling tightly. He had been standing behind another man, Colonel Haynes; that was why the OOD had missed him. But that was no excuse. In the engine spaces, in the troop berthing where marines sprawled still hung over, in offices and repair shops and through the cavernous hangar deck where the helicopters waited, the clang of the bell and “COMPHIBRON SIX, ARRIVING” echoed through the ship; and the captain of the Guam started up from his desk to meet him, glanced out a porthole to see the launch already alongside, and covered his face with his hands.
On the quarterdeck the ensign saluted, anguish and fear in his boyish face. Sundstrom asked him his name, and nodded. In another man it might have been taken for amiability. He turned for a word with Haynes, then strolled forward along the starboard side. It was empty. The sailors who had been working there moments before had vanished, taking their tools and portable radios with them.
Sundstrom went up the Flag ladder and disappeared from sight. The ensign smiled helplessly at Flasher and Lenson, and then nodded to the petty officer. The final “bong” quivered away into the steel acreage of the ship.
“That chocolate-coated bastard,” muttered Flasher. “That son of a bitch is a horse’s ass, and t
hat’s all he is.”
“Knock it off, Red, people can hear you.”
“That’s right, I forgot Mister Straight Arrow was with me. You really go for this bozo’s style, huh?”
“I don’t ‘go for’ him. But he’s in charge. And we’re his staff.”
“Be realistic, Dan-o.” Flasher looked, for once, as if he meant what he was saying. “This guy’s a sundowner. He wants stars so bad, he’ll leave a trail of bleeding bodies behind him to get there. You want to be one of them?”
Lenson didn’t answer. After a moment Flasher continued. “Your problem, Dan, is you believe things are just the way they told you at the Boat School. Honor. Responsibility. Duty. Well, real life ain’t that simple, boy.”
“One jerk doesn’t invalidate the concept, Red.”
“Oh, forget it.” Flasher turned away. “Let’s get off this madhouse. I’m three drinks behind already today.”
“You said it,” said Lenson. And as he clattered down the ladder toward the waiting boat, tossing on the blue translucent sea, he had already left the ship, the commodore, and the entire Navy far behind.
* * *
Four days, Dan had told her that first evening; four days in Taormina, four days together.
She wanted every minute of it, and wanted every minute to be wonderful.
Sitting together in a taberna that evening, listening to violins, Nan beside them in a little chair the manager brought, it was for a while everything she had hoped for.
Susan leaned back in the delicate iron chair, toying with her second glass of wine.
They had so little time together. She had counted it up. Married four years; together four hundred days of that. Oh, he’d mentioned the separations before they were married. She remembered how she had thought it might be nice; time alone to pursue her own career. She hadn’t realized how it would really be. How could she, when her father had been home with his briefcase every night of her childhood, dependable as a rock? And then Nan had come. She knew now what the Navy demanded. Six-month deployments, more months at sea for work-ups and exercises, and even when he was home, a seven-to-five working day and duty days aboard twice a week.