The Med

by David Poyer

  “Sounds good.”

  “What’s Ault doing?”

  “She’s not on the scope yet.”

  “That’s a hell of a note. You hear what happened?”

  “She touched bottom getting underway, I heard.”

  “That’s the short version.” Flasher leaned a little closer. “Want the straight poop? What really happened was, when Foster—that’s her CO—got our emergency sortie message, he came back and said he couldn’t raise a local pilot that time of night, that it was a difficult channel out, and unless otherwise directed he was going to wait till first light. Well, Sundstrom went crazy; he was screaming around up here about how everybody wanted to make him look bad; he wanted to report the task force clear of land by dawn. He sent Foster back a direct order to get underway immediately. So he did, but in the dark he got out of the main channel and went over a mudbank at ten knots.”

  “Wow.”

  “You said it. But then, when her grounding report came in, Ike said to hold on to it.”

  “It hasn’t been forwarded to Sixth Fleet?”

  “Nope. It’s sitting on his desk.”

  “Wow,” said Dan again.

  “Well, I got it,” said Flasher a moment later, turning away to the radarscope. Lenson saluted again, feeling relieved; he was always nervous on watch, on some subliminal level. But now Flasher was on deck. No matter that he looked like a bum and saluted like a seagull with a busted wing, he was the best watch officer on the staff, competent and unflappable. As he headed for the ladder Dan grinned suddenly in the darkness. Zero-four-hundred now, with staff quarters at seven; he could skip breakfast and get in a solid three hours in his rack. The thought was overpowering.

  He reached for the door, knowing where the handle was just as he knew where all the instruments on the bridge were, by touch and not by sight, but even as he grasped it it turned under his hand. He stepped back, thinking it was another of the watch reliefs, and said, “Who’s that?”

  The man didn’t answer, just shoved by him. “Hey,” said Lenson, annoyed, turning to follow. “I said—”

  “Take it easy, Dan,” said Commodore Sundstrom.

  Even in the dark Lenson could feel the silent shock of his presence run through the flag bridge. Glazer and McQueen, still briefing their reliefs around the chart table, straightened from their slouches. Cups disappeared in cleverly shielded prestidigitation. The messenger fitted himself behind the vertical plot with the instinctive dive of a rabbit. The drone of the gyros, hissing phones, the muffled roar of the wind took on a deeper tone without human voices. In the silence the commodore’s footsteps were audible, scuffing across the slowly slanting tiles of the deck. “Dan—what is this? I want my bridge watch to have their heads up. Who’s keeping an eye on the surface picture?”

  “Sir—”

  “What’s happened to that contact you called me about? What course are we on now?”

  Oh hell, thought Lenson, fear and rage gluing his feet to the deck. Just now, just when he was going off watch. “Zero-one-zero, sir. I—”

  “Excuse me, Commodore,” said Flasher’s voice, coming from the darkness of the wing. “I’ve got the watch now, sir. The surface picture is as follows: Oscar, that was the contact you were called about, is abeam of Coronado, starboard-to-starboard passage. They’re at a ten-thousand-yard CPA, and with your permission we’ll come back to base course now.”

  Sundstrom ignored him. “Is that right, Dan?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where’s the Ault?”

  “She’s still somewhere astern, sir.”

  “Christ.” Sundstrom sounded both angry and afraid. “That stupid bastard … well, fortunately there was no harm done. He’ll catch up with us. What about other contacts?”

  “We have two skunks to the north, passing at over twelve miles. No visuals,” Flasher told him.

  “Dan?” Sundstrom said again.

  “Uh, those were too far out to call you about, sir. I was just going off watch—”

  “I understand. Well, I’d like to see you for a moment before you go below; we have some things to do … Mister Flasher! Let’s stop wasting time. Get back to base course! We’re losing ground every minute we spend heading north.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Flasher happily, and picked up the phone.

  “Let’s go over here,” said the commodore, his voice dropping. As they leaned over the papers he placed on the ruddy dimness of the chart table, Lenson saw that, contrary to his usual nighttime custom, he was in uniform; faded wash khaki trousers, tight at the waist; khaki shirt, sparkling with eagles at the collars but sweaty and wrinkled. Under the bagged, tired eyes, the heavy chin, gray hairs curled over a triangle of T-shirt. The other officers disappeared about their business, moving to darker areas of the bridge.

  “Before you hit the hay, Dan, I have a job for you. You did a fine job on the Sardinia oporder. You seem to have a knack for moving out on things, more than my other officers.” He pronounced the last three words with distaste. “So, though this is really the chief of staff’s and ops officer’s area of responsibility, I’d like you to take charge of it—just in case. I know you’re bushed, but can you take this by the horns and get it over the finish line for me?”

  “Uh … yes sir,” Lenson said reluctantly. Writing an oporder could take weeks, but whenever Sundstrom wanted something he wanted it yesterday. He would be up the rest of the night, what little of it remained, and probably well into the next. Inevitably he would have to take shortcuts, make assumptions and guesses. Meanwhile the other officers, those whose job it was, would be sitting on their hands. Or worse, he thought bitterly, asleep. And then Ike would make changes, and be dissatisfied, and want it done over—

  But even to think a complaint made him uneasy. Annapolis stamped the habit of obedience deep, far past logic. And didn’t the fact that the commodore wanted a draft oporder mean something might really be up? “Sir,” he said cautiously, “I’ll need some information. Number of supporting units, to write the schedule of fires with—a map—”

  “Of course. See the N-2 for those. And the oparea map—here.”

  Sundstrom slid it from its manila jacket under the scarlet light. Shielded by their bodies, it was hidden from the other men on watch. Lenson took the red folder hesitantly, flipped one corner of it back.

  It was a 1:500,000 military map of Cyprus. He stared at the title with fatigue, then disbelief.

  “Sir—”

  “This is hush-hush, Dan,” Sundstrom muttered. “Discuss it only with Byrne, and then only if you have to. I don’t want people in this organization getting excited, riding off in all directions before we get the word to go. Thinking the problem through, and being ready for the worst case—being prepositioned, in an offensive aspect, when the need occurs—that’s what makes a professional, in my book.”

  “Aye, sir,” he said, refolding the map. He was still sleepy, but now he felt excited, too. Beside him Sundstrom seemed for a moment a commander with foresight. The commodore slid the packet across the chart table to him, and as he did so his eyes dropped. Lenson saw him examining the chart, and then his head jerked up.

  “Mister Flasher!”

  “Yessir!”

  “Come here. Look at this mess.” He laid his finger on a brown ring west of Pantelleria. “I gave specific orders that coffee wasn’t to be brought on the bridge without a saucer. That’s to prevent things like this—and just look!”

  Flasher bent to look, his gut crowding Sundstrom away from the table. “Sorry, sir,” he said, and reached for a pencil.

  “What are you doing, Lieutenant?”

  “Erasing it, sir.”

  Sundstrom stood rigid, his hand trembling on the chart table for a moment. The two officers waited. “Lieutenant Flasher,” he said at last, “there will be no more coffee on my flag bridge. None at all!” Then, before either of them could speak, he turned away suddenly, into the darkness.

  “Commodore’s off the bridge
,” the messenger sang out.

  “Christ, I’m sorry, Red. It’s not Mac’s fault. I told him to bring it up. I didn’t think he’d be up here.”

  “Ah, forget it,” said Red. “Excuse me. I got more important things to worry about than that crapola.”

  He moved to the radarscope and fell into conversation with his assistant. Lenson looked after him for a moment, thinking that this was just the kind of thing that could ruin a career when you were around Isaac I. Sundstrom: the kind of thing that he would pore over for months, and showcase in Flasher’s next fitness report as “willful disregard of a plainly stated command policy.” He was responsible for the coffee—for the ring on the chart—but Flasher hadn’t said a thing, hadn’t even left him an opening to accept the blame.

  He wondered, and then recalled the oporder. He gathered up the chart and headed below. It would be a long day, this one, after a second sleepless night. He found lukewarm coffee on the deserted mess decks. In his stateroom he rubbed his eyes as he bent over the charts and timetables. Nothing would happen. He was certain of that. Still, he had to do his best.

  Bent close to his desk, he worked silently on into the dawn.

  8

  U.S.S. Spiegel Grove

  “On your feet, shithead!”

  Will Givens opened his eyes to another gray steel day. To the same words, the same tone, and the same voice that had torn his dreams to ribbons every morning since the beginning of the float.

  “Roll out of that rack, Oreo. On deck! Day’s too far along to let spittoon-faced niggers waste my time. Get your ass into the head.”

  A hand reached in between the bunk bars and shook him. He sat up, too fast, and the long, queasy, gut-tightening roll that had tormented his sleep all night long lightened him suddenly and his head banged into the framework of Liebo’s rack, just above.

  He had accepted, though he tried not to use, the omnipresent obscenity of the troop spaces. But now he thought: Cutford shouldn’t use that word. Not even between the two of us.

  He swung his legs out and dropped naked to the deck, glaring after Cutford’s retreating back. “And get that fucken git-tar off your bunk frame,” added the corporal, turning in mid-passage through the yawning postreveille stir of elbows and bony knees, hairy men momentarily without rank in their nakedness and their mutual need for a leak. “I like to caught my head on it. Ain’t no room in a troop space for something that big.”

  “All right,” Givens muttered. He had resolved during the long, half-nauseated periods of sleeplessness that night to not let Cutford bug him. He would just do what he said, let it slide off him and not bother him anymore. But it was already an effort, ninety seconds after his first moment of full consciousness. He trudged toward the head, made angrier by his inability to ignore the corporal’s petty tyrannies.

  The morning went on, though, and gradually his mood ebbed back into resignation as shipboard routine, the normal day for the three hundred embarked marines of the old landing ship’s reinforced company, wore on in the grooves that three months in the Med had already cut deep. His utilities were a little dirtier, that was all; the ship’s laundry was hopelessly behind; but for that it could have been yesterday, or the day before, or tomorrow. After finishing in the head he joined the line of hungry, morning-bleary men, all of them cursing the wait, and held his tray for the surly cooks to dish out what was left over after the sailors had eaten. He balanced his food against the slanting table and held a cup of tepid coffee in one hand so that an unforeseen roll wouldn’t spill it; spooned down mushy grits and overcooked eggs, the stale hard sausage, and shoved the empty tray at another scowling peon in the scullery.

  It was six-thirty.

  Back in the compartment he lashed the guitar up into his bunk, changed into his one clean blouse for morning inspection, and dragged his way in line up four ladders to the helo deck. The marines clung to the handrail as the ship rolled, grabbing and cursing and stumbling against one another. The sky was gray, gray as the ship, and the sea a muted gray-blue, running strong. They formed up, muttering and blinking at the sky. Hernandez lurched past him, looking ill. “Another beautiful Marine Corps morning,” he grunted to Givens.

  “No shit.”

  The ship rolled heavily, and their ranks swayed drunkenly to it. The men half-listened to the top sergeant as he read the plan of the day. They were watching the horizon ahead for a squall, darkly expecting whoever ran the ship to steer for one if it offered just to get them all wet. As if sensing their mood, the officers kept their remarks short. Givens watched Cutford’s neck darken as they saluted and strolled away, and felt the same way. They were going back to the wardroom, to drink hot coffee and shoot the shit with the Navy officers while the Top strolled through the platoons, doling out shit details. Fourth platoon drew a new watch bill, and he saw Cutford glancing around for him. He got a noon-to-sixteen roving patrol, and was pleased; he’d expected worse, maybe the graveyard shift. Silkworth moved past, inspecting; a missing button here, a scummy boot, unbloused trousers there. They stood at attention in the reeling ranks, shivering as a sudden chill breeze swept the open deck. By Christ, the men muttered around him, they were going to get rained on; and then the Top barked an order from up front and they broke, straggling again into queues for the ladders down.

  It was zero-seven-thirty.

  He and Washman and Liebo went down together to the tank deck, and waited as the armorer handed them out their metal. Baseplate, the new issue, only twenty-eight pounds heavy. Sight, in its black plastic case.

  And the tube, his baby. Cradling its weight in his arms, he inched his way back up the ladder to the troop space and set up with the rest of the squad around their table. Liebo and Hernandez laid out the cards for spades, and Givens and Harner and Washman sat down with the cleaning gear. This, Givens thought, is the high point of the day. The thought dispirited him all over again.

  As he got into it, though, his depression retreated. The marines cleaned their weapons every day at sea. Silkworth said it kept the salt air out of them, and though they suspected that was bullshit, there was always something nice about getting your hands on the gear. He leaned the four-foot barrel securely in a corner of the compartment and unpacked the gear box. Bore punch, reamer, swabs, a new pack of steel wool, the familiar green can of Oil, Preservative, Small Arms. The compartment quieted down as the men curled in bunks and chairs and began to disassemble rifles, machine guns, and sidearms. Liebo dealt the cards.

  First of all, Givens thought, a nice coat of oil on the outside. He steel-wooled the twenty-four-hour-old preservative off the deep screw-threads down to bare steel. The can pinged as he tipped glistening yellow oil onto a rag and laid it on. He turned the mortar tube end over and squinted into the three-inch-wide barrel. Clean and gleaming. He scrubbed it out, feeling the slickness with physical pleasure against his fingertips, the slight roughness where the fins of the ten-pound shells had scraped going out in Sicily and Spain and LeJeune, and before that from dozens of deployments by marines long moved on, sergeants or mustang second looeys, or gone from the Corps. He liked to imagine the men who had done this before him, ministered to this same hunk of unfeeling metal, masculine in its length and power, feminine in its hollowness and texture. Had they cleaned this same barrel in Nam; it was old enough; in Cambodia; in Lebanon? Where were they now? Medal of Honor winners, shitbirds, psychos, congressmen, used-car salesmen … who knew the names and histories of the men who had scraped oil and powder soot from this same tube before him?

  “Spades,” said Hernandez. Liebo reached behind him and turned on his cassette, and the BeeGees hit the thick air of the compartment.

  Reversing the barrel again, Givens set the bore punch up with a cloth swab and reamed it through. Beside him Washman hummed tonelessly over the baseplate. The patch came out clean. He poured on more oil and ran it through again and then set it aside. He put the allen wrench on the firing pin and broke it free, cleaned it, oiled it, screwed it carefully back and tig
htened it.

  That was it. He was done for the morning. He looked at his watch. It was zero-eight-thirty.

  “Now what?” said Washman, picking at a pimple on his chin. “Should we take it back, Will?”

  “Naw. We can look busy better with it here. If we take it back Cutford’ll just give us something else to do.” Givens looked enviously at the two privates, deep in their cards, and then crossed to his bunk and stood beside it, looking at his guitar.

  It lay lashed to the underside of Liebo’s rack with shoestring, tempting him silently. His fingers itched for the smoothness of the pearl inlay, the thin hard steelness of the strings. He had taken it up to the fantail the evening before, and strummed it gently in the sun’s lingering. There had been other men there, talking and smoking. But he didn’t have to obey them, talk to them, be someone for them. Just for a moment, he could be the way he always felt, deep inside. Alone. Apart. Different.

  He could be himself.

  Willard Givens had picked up his first guitar at fourteen. The men at the lumberyard had handed him a cranky old flat-top his first day there, and waited. Just waited, their faces like flat stones, white and black, leaving the questioning and the discovery to the boy.

  His mouth shaped an unconscious smile, remembering the country music. “Lucille.” “Blue Suede Shoes.” Fun, sometimes rowdy songs, the men had played them at breaks from the whining saw, sitting together on the fresh-cut planks, still sticky so that your overalls glued themselves to the smooth white pine. One would play a mouth organ, folding it into a gray-stubbled jaw like a chaw of tobacco. They would pass around a bottle sometimes, sometimes a wide-mouthed jar. He was too young for it, and the others, too, were sparing; if you got careless the big unshielded Cramer would pull off a thumb like a man pulling a splinter from a dog’s paw.

  And then sometimes an older man had taken it and picked mountain tunes, music that Will had known even then he would never hear again, unless he remembered it; and he had listened with his mouth open, his resiny fingers itching for that old handmade guitar, and known that it would never be like this again.