by David Poyer
“Quickdraw is a destroyer exercise, sir,” Flasher said, speaking rapidly, moving up near the commodore’s chair. “Most of these amphibs have never heard of it. But some of them have, and they’ll start to shoot.”
“So? The rest of them will catch on. We’ve got to—”
“Sir. Look out at the mount.”
Sundstrom stared at Flasher for a moment, then bent forward to look through the window, down toward the 01 level. He watched the crew for a moment. “What? I don’t see—”
“Look at the shells, sir.”
“The shells?”
“They loaded with live rounds.”
Sundstrom did not speak.
“They think this is for real, sir,” Flasher muttered, almost into the commodore’s ear. Sundstrom was still looking down. “They think we’re under attack. I’ll bet every tube on every ship has live antiaircraft rounds in the breech. If we all start firing, somebody’s going to get hit.”
Sundstrom looked down for a moment more. The bridge was absolutely quiet. And Lenson watched the struggle plain on his face, the anger and humiliation.
“Belay that order,” the commodore said.
“Aye aye sir,” said Lenson. His finger pressed the “send” button for a moment, by reflex, but he did not lift it to his lips.
“Have all units clear their guns.”
“Aye aye, sir.” He lifted the handset again, feeling a wave of near sickness. He could see, looking down over the coaming, the green-and-yellow noses of the antiaircraft ammunition. Flasher was right. Proximity-fuzed live rounds, at random bearings, the ships this close together …
And off their beam, well within range, men on the bridge of the Russian trawler studied them through binoculars, impassive and intent.
* * *
They stayed at GQ for a long time after that. Sundstrom was subdued. No one else said anything beyond the most routine of reports, and those in hushed voices. The time for evening meal came and went. At 1800 the commodore sent down for a tray. When his steward came up he ate it sitting in his chair, regarding the choppy horizon with an impassive expression. The officers stood about as if afraid to move, afraid to speak. At last he called Lenson over. “Yes sir,” Dan said, straightening to a tired attention, looking at the remains of a bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich.
“Dan, I think you got a little carried away on that message you wrote for me. I let it go out as is, but it was a little too purple, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes sir.”
“Anyway, we got results. They know now I mean business up here. We’ll stay at GQ for a while, get the men used to their stations. This was a good idea, to call them away without warning. When I play the game, I like to play it to the hilt. That’s the way professionals operate. But we don’t want to overdo any aspect of the problem. Do we?”
“No sir.”
“Where’s Commander Hogan?”
“Out on the port wing, sir.”
“What’s he doing out there?”
“Uh—I’ll find out, sir.” The old Naval Academy response.
“Get him in here.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He listened to the conversation. Sundstrom wanted a beefed-up watch. He wanted officers on both wings of the flag bridge with binoculars, since the lookouts on the ships were worthless. He wanted a staff officer in CIC at all times to oversee the operators on the air-search radars. They were just putting in the time, they weren’t bearing down, they were goof-offs and Captain Fourchetti wasn’t supervising them. So his staff would.
“We have a full watch bill, sir,” he heard Hogan saying.
“I don’t give a damn about that! You saw how he let that Russki make me look silly. This is too important to let some ensign drop the ball on us.”
“I agree with that, sir, but the point is we only have so many men. We’d have to go to port and starboard watches on the bridge—”
“Don’t bother me with the details. Just do it. If my staff can’t cut the mustard, get some of those helo pilots out of the wardroom. They just sit down there with coffee cups in their hands all day. Christ, Bill, do I have to reinvent the wheel for you every day?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m not just out here to prove a point, my friend. I’m not gilding any lilies here. We are entering a multithreat environment, and I demand positive control.”
“Yes sir,” said Hogan.
Lenson stood just behind the chair, watching the back of Sundstrom’s head as he talked. For just a moment, looking at the graying hair, he imagined … No. He shut his mind off before it betrayed him into something terrible.
“Well, I’m going below. I’ve been up here since midnight.” He dismissed Hogan with a flip of his hand, glanced back. “Think you can handle things for me, Dan?”
“Yes sir.”
The commodore swung himself down from the chair, grunting. As soon as the door swung shut behind him the crowded mass of men breathed out. The bridge suddenly seemed wider. Byrne sat down on a switch box, rubbing his knees. Flasher pushed back his helmet and wiped his forehead. Lenson opened his mouth, about to comment, but he caught the tight expression on the chief staff officer’s face and closed it again. After a moment Hogan went below too, and he shoved his own helmet back and leaned into the radar repeater with a sigh. No one said anything for a few seconds.
“Good times, huh?” said Glazer.
“It’s no goddamn joke,” said Flasher. His face was white. He patted his uniform pockets. “This guy’s dangerous.”
“That was a nice save with the guns, Red.”
“Yeah, right on the money.”
“MacInroe would never have done that,” said the operations officer. He found gum in his back pocket and wadded three sticks of it into his mouth.
“MacInroe?” said Glazer.
“The commodore before Double-Nuts. Left before you came aboard. He was no hand-holder; he’d tear you a new asshole if you fucked up; but he knew what he was doing. This guy … he’s a fucking idiot. We got to watch this one real close.”
Looking at their faces, seeing the despondency and choked rage—these were lieutenants, lieutenant-commanders, reduced now to being wing lookouts, a seaman recruit’s job—Lenson felt he ought to say something. There had to be a reason for the way Sundstrom acted. But nothing came to mind. It was Jack Byrne who said at last, “Well, you know he’s got a lot on his mind.”
“Jesus, I should hope so,” said Flasher.
“Serious,” said Byrne. He straightened, adjusting the dirty lifejacket with a little movement of distaste. “Sure, he went overboard there, but basically I think he’s right.”
“Come on, Jack. He craps on you more than any of us. What’s right about that?”
“I’m not referring to that. I mean the tactical situation. Actually, he’s not taking enough precautions. Or not the right ones. We could use some air cover, for example. I think we ought to get ready for things to heat up real fast around here.”
Flasher bared his teeth, and seemed about to speak when a metallic voice said, “Flag bridge, bridge.”
“I got it,” said Lenson, reaching for the intercom. “Flag bridge, aye.”
“Is the commodore down there?”
“No. He’s gone below.”
“Oh.” He recognized Fourchetti’s voice. “Well … all right if I secure from general quarters now? I got a lot of work to get done on those helos. If we’re not doing anything, I’d like to secure my men.”
“Commodore didn’t say to, sir.”
“Well, look, Mr. Lenson—”
“That’s what he said, sir,” said Lenson savagely, thinking Why do I have to get in the middle, a lieutenant junior grade; let the four-stripers fight this one out. I’m just carrying out orders. “He wants the men to get used to their battle stations.”
“My men spend all day working at their battle stations, Mr. Lenson,” the captain said frigidly.
“Yes sir.”
; “I’ll give him a call.”
“Yes sir.” The captain rang off. A minute or two later the 1MC spoke: “NOW SECURE FROM GENERAL QUARTERS. SET THE NORMAL UNDERWAY WATCH. ON DECK, SECTION THREE.”
“They’re still in three sections,” muttered McQueen. Lenson turned to look at the petty officer, but he had already bent to his charts again, his back rigid.
“Dan, how about we secure, too?”
“No, goddammit, Red. We’re not part of the ship. We work for him. We’ll stay at GQ here till he secures us himself.”
He felt like an asshole, saying it, but that was the way it worked. Here in Comphibron Six, under Isaac I. Sundstrom. Resenting their resentment, his own bitterness and fatigue, he stared out, over the choppy gray sea, toward the distant line of an approaching squall. Somewhere out there were men in ships, putting out to battle.
He wished with all his heart that he was one of them.
16
U.S.S. Ault
Deep in the ship, so deep there was nothing below him but a skin of metal and then the sea, Kelly Wronowicz braced himself against the steel web that held up the roaring engines.
The ship rolled, and he held on grimly. Around his boots black stinking water streamed sluggishly from one side of the bilges to the other. A work light, a naked bulb at the end of a cord, dangled out at a crazy angle as the Ault hung at the end of her roll. When she came back the slime reversed its course, like a tide. It swirled around the men who kneeled and lay beneath the deckplates, made them slip and curse as they crawled forward, scattering handfuls of detergent ahead of them over the scummy steel of the bilges.
“Over here,” said Wronowicz, wriggling between the engine mounts toward the farthest corner of the void. “Under the main condenser, here. We got to get this too, guys.”
“Sure, Chief.”
“We got it covered. Go on back up to the mess.”
“Yeah, we’ll take care of it, Chief,” grinned Blaney.
Prone under the torn-up gratings, his belly against the sea-cold steel of the bottom, Wronowicz said nothing. Smee and Polack and Blaney were working late this evening. So was he—six hours of general quarters had bitched a whole work day. Now, in the dirtiest, oldest coveralls the engineering department had, their faces smeared with the used oil and crud here at the lowest point of the ship, where all the leaks and emptyings of tanks and engines and pumps collected, the three men were cleaning the bilges. It was a dirty job, back-breaking, stifling in the heat and sound of the running engineroom, done in darkness and fetor.
Just for that reason, he felt he owed it to them to share it, at least for a while. “Scrub it in good now,” he said. “Use the big brushes first. Save the little ones for the angle iron. I don’t want to see nothin’ but red paint when I come back after you hose down.”
“Sure, Chief,” Blaney grinned, his teeth shining in the dark of the voids. The two other firemen worked silently, or cursed. Wronowicz understood that; cleaning bilges was the least favorite job in the engineroom, probably in the ship, possibly in the Navy. He had done his share of it. But Blaney neither cursed nor complained. He was scrubbing ferociously at the underside of a stringer, flat on his back in muck blacker than his face, humming as if he enjoyed sweating for hours under conditions any sane civilian would walk away from.
Wronowicz wondered darkly what he was on.
When they were well at work, forcing the gritty Navy bilge cleaner deep into the weld seams and steel angles, he hauled himself up through an access and stamped his boots on the deckplates. They left black imprints, as if he had been wading in tar. He wiped them off with a rag—no use tracking it all over the ship—and dragged his arm over his forehead. It did no good, and he saw that his arm was dripping, too. It was well over a hundred ten, maybe a hundred twenty in the space. The engines tore at his ears. He retrieved his cap from where it hung on a valve, cocked it back on his head. He glanced at his watch and went forward, absently checking each gauge he passed, to the oil king’s shack.
“Evening, Joe.”
“Oh. Hullo, Chief Wronowicz. How you doing tonight?”
“Okay. How’s the fuel situation look?”
The second-class boiler technician waved at the racks of glass bottles lining the bulkheads of the tiny room, hardly larger than an apartment closet. Lit from behind, they glowed amber and yellow. Each fuel sample had been drawn that day from one of the tanks that lined the hull. “I’m about half done … we got some algal contamination in one of the wing tanks. The stuff left over from the Caribbean. I figure we better use it pretty soon.”
“Better switch tomorrow. Use it all.”
“Then saltwater ballast? Word is this weather’s going to turn Billy Hell.”
“I hate to do that. A shot of water in the fuel can ruin your whole day. I still don’t know how long we’ll be out here.”
“Well, we’ll keep her steaming somehow.”
“You got that right. Well, I’ll be in chief’s quarters for the rest of the evening. Going to initiate that first-class radarman tonight.”
“Yeah, I seen him going around in his diapers.” The BT grinned. “What goes on at those things, anyway?”
“That’s a deep dark secret. You’ll find out, five-six years from now.”
“No way,” said the man, grinning.
“Yeah, I know: sob story number eight, how you’re gonna get out, get a fat civvie job waxing floors.”
“You said it. Think I’m gonna re-up on this crappy tub?”
They grinned at each other, and Wronowicz left. As he climbed the ladder the evening routine of the ship echoed through the corridors. “NOW TAPS, TAPS, LIGHTS OUT. KEEP SILENCE ABOUT THE DECKS. THE SMOKING LAMP IS OUT IN ALL BERTHING SPACES.” Upward, past the mess decks, the smells of ham and fried potatoes lingering from evening chow, a few sailors arguing sleepily over a hand of five-card stud while the compartment slanted under them … the unceasing whir hum and murmur of a ship, sleepy and low, the world changing from white to red around him as a petty officer flicked a switch. The ship surrounded him, enclosed him, carried him through the unseen darkness of the sea, gliding over fathomless miles of dark bottom, and he smiled to himself, anticipating the evening.
The chief’s mess was full. The XO was there, the department heads, and Lieutenant Morton, the operations officer. It was one of his radarmen (no, “operations specialists”—but to Kelly they were still radarmen) who was pinning on the anchor tonight.
First, though, he had to be initiated.
Wronowicz found a seat next to the court, joking with the men beside him. At the baize-covered mess table Chief Chapman presided in a black robe; his glasses gleamed under a wig of cotton batting. Two other chiefs, the recorder and the prosecutor, sat at either side, and an immense pewter pitcher and two tumblers waited at their elbows. Behind a curtain Wronowicz could see the other implements of trial, and his grin grew wider. Yes, it was going to be a good initiation.
“Is the court ready?” Chapman asked, when the room had settled down.
“The court is ready.”
“Is Captain Foster coming down?”
“He’s on the bridge,” said the XO. “He’s going to try to come down later.”
“Very good … Bailiff, bring in the accused.”
Operations Specialist First Rogelio appeared in handcuffs, carrying his offense log linked to them on a chain. His bare belly bulged over too-small diapers. Aside from that, and a large crow-and-stripes tattooed on his chest in magic marker, he was naked. Lieutenant Morton got up and stood rather uncertainly beside him, facing the court. They both looked apprehensive, willing to laugh, but uncertain whether they should.
Certainly Chapman’s scowl did not encourage it. “This court is convened,” he growled. “Bailiff, read the charges.”
“First. That OS First B.T. Rogelio did say to a certain chief aboard the Charleston, while on liberty in Barcelona, that the chiefs aboard this vessel were a six-pack of shitheads.”
The
audience groaned. Chapman looked aloof. “Accused, how do you plead?” he asked the first-class.
Morton stepped forward. “Chief—”
“Your honor,” said the bailiff menacingly.
“Uh … your honor, my client wishes to state—”
“Shut up,” said the judge.
“Sir—”
“He’s guilty. I can see it in his fat face. Put down that he pleads guilty.”
“He pleads innocent—”
“The truth serum,” muttered the prosecutor.
“Yes, administer the truth serum. To counsel, too. He looks just as dishonest as this guilty bastard.”
When both Rogelio and Morton had swilled down a tumbler, quickly replenished from the pitcher by the prosecutor, the trial resumed. “Second charge,” grunted Chapman.
“That the accused did attempt to enter the chief petty officer’s berthing area, and was discovered lying in the rack of one of the senior chiefs aboard this vessel, stating that he was ‘trying it out’—”
“Hang him!”
“Shoot him and throw him off the fantail!”
“Bailiff, silence these yelping mongrels … does the accused want to try to worm his way out of this one?”
“Sir, my client never—”
“Is he saying I’m a liar?” roared Wronowicz, jumping up. “I’ll rip his yellow guts out and eat them for midrats!”
“Is counsel accusing Chief Wronowicz of fabricating this charge?” Chapman asked Morton sweetly.
“No, but—”
“Would counsel like some more truth serum?”
“Counsel would not,” said Morton, swallowing. He looked yellow himself, both from the steady roll of the ship and the tumbler of tabasco sauce, cooking oil, and raw eggs.
“The verdict is guilty. Also, counsel is assessed twenty dollars for insulting the witness. Pay the prosecutor. Next charge.”
“That accused stated in CIC that, having passed the tests for chief and being recommended by his officers, to whom he sucks up shamelessly, especially to the XO, a notorious duck-fucker and nose-picker, he expects to be admitted to the rank of chief petty officer in the United States Navy.”