The Med

by David Poyer

  Once I had a girl on Rocky Top

  Half bear, the other half cat

  Wild as a mink and sweet as soda pop

  I still dream about that.

  He longed now to pick up the Gianelli and coax out those first few notes of “Steal Away.” But no. That would be too much if the Top, or worse, one of the officers, decided to come through the compartment. Cards you could hide, but not a guitar. Instead he flipped back his mattress, then settled himself at the table, opening the book to where pencil and paper had been stuck in it. Hernandez dealt, and Liebo checked his hand, grabbing absentmindedly for the discard pile as it began to slide with a long heave of the ship. He glanced at Givens’ lowered eyes.

  “What you reading there, man?”

  “Fuck book,” said Hernandez.

  “No. Just a schoolbook.”

  “That your engineering, Will?” Washman asked him.

  “Yeah.” He turned the book briefly to show Washout a page of graphs.

  “You really understand that stuff? What kind of engineering is it?”

  Washout’s open-mouthed admiration made him feel good. “Naw,” he said modestly. “I don’t get half of what it says. This here is all about engines, how the heat gives you the power. Pretty heavy stuff. But someday I’ll know how they work.”

  “Sure he will,” said Hernandez. “Someday I’m going to be President, too.”

  “Maybe you could,” said Will. “Why not?”

  “Come on. I’m Chicano, man. You’re no college-boy type yourself.”

  “I could go. They got that education bill for us.”

  Both Liebo and Hernandez lowered their cards at that one. “What the hell you talking about, man?” said Liebo. “You bein’ real, Givens? It takes a shit-pot full of bucks to go to college. That little GI bill check won’t cover diddley-squat.”

  “No, but I could save some.”

  “Save some from what?”

  “Paychecks, Dippy. Remember, the money they give you every couple of weeks? The stuff you spend on liquor and women?”

  “I know what a paycheck is,” said Liebo. “An’ I recall I wasn’t the only one scarfing up a little nookie at Lily’s the other day. But forget that. A private’s pay don’t hardly keep you in snacks and beer. If you got a car, too, that cleans your paycheck, man. You can’t save any out of that.”

  “Save a couple bucks a month, that could add up. Over a four-year hitch you could come out with enough for the first year,” said Will. They laughed. “Okay,” he said, angry, looking down at the book again. “You asked me.”

  “Two,” said Hernandez, returning to the cards, and Liebo dealt. Harner stared silently at the play. Washman cast about the compartment for awhile, glancing at Givens but not interrupting his pencil-chewing, and finally pulled himself up into his bunk. Their corner settled into silence for a time, varied by the creak of steel and the clatter of small objects across the deck as the ship began a series of heavy rolls, an old whore in the familiar embrace of the sea. The steam heaters clanked, and the hot air of the closed compartment banked itself against their braced bodies.

  “Oreo!”

  Oh, shit, thought Givens, and got the book under his mattress just as Cutford banged open the hatch. He filled the oblong opening perfectly, broad and high as the hatchway, his eyes darting suspiciously about the space.

  “What you want, Cutford?”

  “Goin’ on a little expedition,” said the corporal. Behind him two other black marines giggled and punched each other. “Know you gettin’ bored back here with your swan pals, Oreo. We don’t want you to forget who you are, you know. Come on, boy. Goin’ to vary our diet a little.”

  “I’m cleanin’ the mortar, Corporal.”

  “Fuck that,” said Cutford, closing in on the four of them. He leaned forward over the table, which had miraculously bared itself of pasteboard; Hernandez and Liebo looked up at him innocent-faced, holding cleaning gear and pieces of their weapons. “Let’s go, Givens. Warning you, man … not associatin’ with your brothers, that might get you in a host of troubles.”

  Givens caught the shutter-click of Washman’s scared glance, the slower, more judgmental regard of Harner, saw the careful way Liebo and Hernandez kept their eyes fixed on their hands. They wanted nothing to do with the corporal. Neither did he. But the irrevocable likeness of their skin meant that he had to respond somehow. He felt his thighs tighten against the underside of the table as the ship began another sickening coast. He abruptly loathed it all, the ship, the closed steel honeycomb of drones that was the world of marines afloat; but most of all, he hated Cutford. Hated his race-warped mind, hated anyone who saw them, him and the corporal, as the same, simply because of their tobacco-dark comradeship.

  He was not like Cutford. He did not want to be like Cutford.

  And yet, the corporal waited.…

  “Okay, man,” he said, lapsing into the accent the corporal had addressed him in. “Comin’. Washout, see the mortar gets checked back in.”

  “Sure, Will.”

  The two men with Cutford looked him over insolently as he followed the broad back out of the compartment. He knew them: troublemakers from the second platoon, former noncoms. They had both been reduced in rate, for what he did not know. Sleight, a bucktoothed twenty-seven-year-old, was from New Orleans. Randy Jenkins, a street-smart, heavy-lidded player from Harlem, was not much older than he was. Neither welcomed him or offered to dap. “Les’ move, Oreo,” said Cutford, turning, and the corporal’s heavy hand half-led, half-shoved him toward the ladder down.

  “Where we goin’, man?”

  “Like I said, goin’ to improve our diet. Or do you like that whitey shit they dish out in the mess lines?”

  “It’s better than I got back home.”

  “Shut up, Oreo. Get movin’.”

  The sounds of the troop compartment, the omnipresent whine of the blowers died away as they wound down ladder after ladder into the untenanted guts of the old ship. The air was cooler, the bulkheads dirtier, the overhead lights flickering or burned out. They were below the berthing areas, in the deep spaces where only the crew was supposed to go. He glanced up from the bottom of the ladder; the three faces stared down at him, closed, dark, and hostile. “Where to now?” he asked the corporal.

  “That passageway.”

  “We not supposed to be down here, man—”

  “Shut up, Oreo. They got rovin’ patrols. Might hear us. Sleight, you got that key?”

  “Here, man.”

  “Let’s have her.” Cutford matched the key to a stenciled number on a bulkhead, then led the way down a darkened passageway. Their steps echoed against expanded-metal cages, padlocked hatchways. He stopped at the fourth door and checked the number again, then looked back at them. “Randy … the ladder.”

  “Right. I got it.”

  “What’s in there?” asked Givens, looking back to where Jenkins lingered at the foot of the ladder, staring upward.

  “Reefer space … yeah, it fits.” The padlock clicked and Cutford swung the hatch open a foot or two. Givens backed away as fog oozed out from the crack, bringing a chill breath of refrigeration. “Steaks,” said the corporal, his eyes fixed on the blackness inside the half-opened door. “Go on, Oreo. Find us some steaks.”

  “Me?”

  “You, boy. Motivate your black ass. Ought to be a light in there someplace.”

  “Cutford, I don’t want any—”

  Cutford pushed him in. He stumbled on the coaming, caught himself on a pipe, then jerked his hand away; it was scalding cold. Utter darkness surrounded him. The door stayed open, though, and he could see a little in the light from the passage. A square mass of boxes walled off one side of the compartment, hoared with translucent frost. “I can’t see a thing,” he whispered back, and the door yielded a little more light.

  Steaks, steaks … he traced the words on the frost-webbed cardboard. PORK LOINS. FORMED POTATO FRIES. VEAL PATTIES. Sweat clammied under his thin skivv
y shirt, the still air bit at his fingers as he brushed away icy webs.

  PRECUT STEAKS. His fingernails scrabbled at the box. It was in solid, bound under layers of frozen meat. Got to unstack all these, he thought. And fast. It wouldn’t take long to freeze in here, like a side of this meat. Help me, Jesus. He clawed the top layer down and stacked them quickly at the other side, knocking the wooden battens aside. Down here the roll of the ship was less, but from time to time it caught him off guard and he stumbled across the deck, weighted down with a heavy box. STEAKS. He wrenched it free. Did they want the whole thing, or just a couple for each man? He staggered toward the door.

  “Cutford?”

  “What, Oreo?” The corporal’s whisper snapped through the chill air.

  “I found some. How many you want?”

  “Eight or ten. Can’t take too many at a time or they’ll start missing ’em and change the lock. Hand ’em out, Oreo.”

  “Got a knife, man?”

  “Here.” A stainless Corps-issue pocketknife clattered to the deck. Givens scooped it up and sliced cardboard, narrowly missing his numb fingers, and pried at the mass of solidified flesh inside. The slabs came up unwillingly, peeling off from the block, and he thrust them out through the crack. “That enough?”

  “Couple more … shit!”

  “What is it?”

  “Some asshole coming down the ladder. Keep quiet, man.”

  The hatch closed. He stood petrified in the dark, staring at where the door had been, a steak in one hand, the knife held blade outward in the other.

  The low click of a padlock came through the steel from outside, followed by the sound of retreating boots; and then there was nothing but the slow chuckle of icy water through the piped walls, and the swift hiss of his breath. “Oh, man,” he whispered. “Oh, shit.” Unconsciously his fingers bent the knife closed and slipped it into his pocket. He lowered the box and felt the steak back into it, folded the top closed, and sat down on it, still staring in the same direction; then got up again, shivering, and felt around the door for a switch. His searching fingers found nothing but cold metal. “Oh, shit, Cutford,” he muttered again, and sat down on the box. With the door closed it seemed fifty degrees colder. He rubbed gooseflesh on his bare arms, and a shiver gripped him from feet to neck. His teeth began to chatter. If it had been a patrol … where would the three marines hide? What if a guard found them—what would they do? Jive him? Run? Or break his head and take off, trusting to the anonymity of green utilities and black faces?

  Had there really been anyone on the ladder at all?

  He hugged himself, shivering, and bent his ear to the freezing metal. Distant vibration of engines, the straining creak of a ship in a seaway … but no voices, no footsteps.

  “Cutford,” he whispered, “You wouldn’t leave me here, would you?”

  The cold ebbed into him, slowly, and the silence gave him back no answer at all.

  * * *

  “Rub his face,” came the hurried whisper. “Jesus! The fucker feels cold as ice.”

  “Slap his face.”

  “Look at his fingers, man.”

  He got his eyes open in time to take a heavy blow to his cheek. The three faces above him sighed and looked at one another. “You there, man?” asked one of them.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you stand up? We can’t stay here too long. That fucken patrol’s gonna be comin’ back.”

  “Yeah. I think.” He climbed dizzily, four hands helping him. Cutford was standing off, looking up the ladderwell. He signaled impatiently to them to hurry. Givens could hardly feel his legs, and everything looked blanched and distant, as if he were seeing it from beneath a sheet of ice. “How long was I in there?” he whispered.

  “Couple minutes.”

  “Near half an hour.”

  “I thought you—”

  “Let’s go,” hissed the corporal. The two privates supported him toward the ladder. His legs sagged, but feeling was coming back. At the third ladder he shook off Jenkins and Sleight. Cutford, his back pockets bulging, climbed silently in front. They left the ladder before they got to troop level and went into a fan room. Cutford closed the door.

  “Want a steak?”

  “What?”

  “I got mess kits, heat tabs, forks. You want a couple, Oreo? That’s what we went down there for.”

  He imagined sizzling beef, and then realized what the corporal had said. “You bastard, Cutford, I never wanted any steak. I almost froze to death!”

  “We got you out. Cool it. These bulkheads real thin.”

  “I was in there half an hour! My hands are frozen!”

  “You knew we’d be back,” said the corporal. Squatting, pulling a pack from behind a pump cage, he began setting up a combat stove. “Didn’t you, Givens? You trusted your brothers. Or did you think we were going to leave you down there in the reefer for the Man to find—like one of them ice creams on a stick, chocolate on the outside an’ vanilla on the in?”

  He smiled up at Givens, and the others began to chuckle. A lighter clicked, and the fan room filled with the smell of roasting meat. Will Givens hesitated, feeling still the weakness in his legs, and then he squatted, too.

  With them, yet not looking at them, waiting for the steak, he squatted silently and hated them all.

  Yet my face, he could not stop himself from thinking, seeing the four of them as if from outside, my face is the same as theirs.

  9

  U.S.S. Guam

  Commodore Isaac Icarus Sundstrom, U.S. Navy, leaned back in his leather chair and took off his reading glasses. He rubbed his hand slowly over his eyes, then smoothed back graying hair. At least it’s still thick, he thought abstractedly. You’re not over the hill yet in that department.

  He caught sight of his reflection in the bridge window. It was haggard. Defeated. It might be, the man seated before it thought, the face of an aging shoe clerk, a failed banker.…

  He sat up instantly, throwing back his shoulders, enraged at himself. What the hell are you mooning about? You’re in command here! he told himself. He had to maintain a positive attitude. That was key. That was the prime responsibility of a flag officer. He had to show every man, every day, that Task Force 61 was led by a Hard Charger, a True Professional, someone who would accept nothing less than perfection.

  But after twenty-three years of charging hard, of fighting complacency and laziness and so many enemies … a man could be forgiven for getting tired sometimes.

  His eyes strayed again to his reflection, then moved to a side view, his enigmatic image in the wing window. He straightened again in the chair and jutted his chin. Should lose some of this weight … but he looked all right, he was fit. Tired? Goddammit, and no wonder, he thought angrily. I’m doing the job of every man in this so-called staff. Not one of them could cut the mustard. Not one of them had his job in his hip pocket, the way he had when he was a junior officer in the Pacific.

  The ship rolled, and he looked out at the sea again. Goddamn, he thought. I’ve got to stop agonizing over this. I’ll give myself an ulcer.

  But it was too important to leave to incompetents. Too important to the country, and to his career.

  A day and a half out of Italy, two hundred miles from the nearest land, the Mediterranean was a dull and lonely blue under a late-morning overcast. A little after dawn, as he had ordered, the formation had closed in on Guam, except for Bowen, the frigate. She was relatively new, a capable ship, though short on guns compared to the older classes. Sundstrom wanted her well in the van, to give them warning of anything unexpected. She was a tiny dot now, far ahead, and he reached for his binoculars to check on her. Her silhouette caught at his throat. God, how he wished he was back in cans, the real Navy, and not stuck in amphibs like some second-rater … the other units were close in now, four to eight miles from the sector center. He could see them all plainly from where he sat. From his elevated chair he could look down, too, at the routine activity of a helicopter carri
er’s deck at sea.

  It was maddeningly desultory. Two helos were on deck, with mechanics pottering around the landing gear. A few men were testing firehoses on one of the elevators, the canvas tubes firm and round under pressure. A platoon or two of marines—Guam carried eight hundred—were doing calisthenics aft. Their faint cadenced shout floated in from the open air. Aside from that, there seemed to be nothing much going on.

  Ike Sundstrom did not like it when nothing was happening. He adjusted his glasses, bent his head again to the papers he was examining, and then lifted it. He stared around the bridge. Where the—where the hell was the watch officer? He twisted in his chair.

  “Commander Byrne!”

  “Sir,” said the intelligence officer, coming up behind him.

  “Where the hell were you hiding? Goddammit, I want an alert watch up here! I want you front and center with your eyes on the ball. Do you understand?”

  “Yes sir,” said Byrne. “I was looking at the vertical plot. Bowen is reporting a small contact, and it seems to be closing.”

  “How far out is it?”

  “Still a long way, sir. I don’t think we have it on our scope yet.”

  “I asked how far it was! They must have reported its range! I don’t want to hear excuses, Mr. Byrne. I want performance! The flag bridge is no place to putter around thinking.”

  Byrne had lowered his head under the shout. When the commodore paused, breathing hard, they looked at each other for a moment. Sundstrom could not see the man’s eyes. Those ridiculous sunglasses—they masked his every expression. And where did he get that tan? He looked like he was fresh off the beach at Malibu. The intel officer’s appearance, his attitude, his very existence irritated the commodore. It was all affectation, the upper-crust mannerisms, the Harvard accent. His father was the manager of a golf course. Sundstrom had checked.

  “Get me the CSO,” he said, turning away.

  “Yes sir,” Byrne said again, in that same smooth, supercilious tone. A moment later the commodore heard him call the messenger over.