THIRTY-FOUR
The Mayport Marina; Saturday, 26 April; 2300
Mike reclined in his chaise longue on the back porch of the Lucky Bag and watched the occasional boat go by, its red and green running lights twinkling across the dark water in time with the light chop. The onshore breeze had come up when he had returned from the restaurant, and he had switched off the air conditioning and opened the boat up. He had turned all the lights off in the houseboat except for a tiny night light at the top of the companionway leading to the lounge, and was sitting in darkness. The only visible light on the stern porch came from the dim walkway lights along the piers between the rows of boat moorings. There was music coming from a party two piers over, but the people having the party were being considerate for a change and not sharing their musical tastes with the entire world.
Mike had shifted back into shorts and tennis shoes when he first got back, but then had shucked all of his clothes when he came out to the humid darkness of the porch. He lay naked on the cushioned chaise, his long, bulky body filling the length of it. He could feel the cushion buttons pressing indentations into the skin of his back as he waited. The night air moving across his skin was pleasant, and the apprehension he had been feeling subconsciously about what was about to happen seemed to peel away with each passing moment.
If she came, when she came, it would not be for talk. The breeze was cooling except when it faltered, and then the humid heat of a Florida night pressed back in, burdened with the briny scents of the river and the waterway.
He deliberately let his thoughts drift, smoothing over the earlier tension of the day. He had banished the mysterious submarine out of his mind, along with the embarrassment of being rebuked by the Commodore in front of his own Exec. He thought now only of Diane, how she had looked earlier, the hint of a smile playing on her lips at the table, and the promise he had seen in her eyes in the parking lot the night before. He had made himself a wine cooler, and absently ran his fingers up and down the sweating glass, oblivious to the condensation dripping on his bare chest.
His skin tingled like a freshly shorn pelt, and all the muscles in his body seemed to be poised for some great exertion. The Lucky Bag dipped slowly in response to a passing wake, and he could hear the slap of waves under the broad hull. Occasionally he could hear women’s voices across the marina, but his hearing focused now on another sound, the sound of a woman’s leather tipped, high heels coming across the pontoon piers, carefully, but deliberately, up the single step between pontoon and pier, and then down again, coming closer until they stopped at the Lucky Bag’s diminutive gangplank. He had left the railing unlatched back at the top of the gangplank, and the doorway leading down into the main lounge was also open. He thought he could feel the boat shift slightly when she came aboard, followed by a moment of silence, and then she appeared in the doorway of the porch, a slim shadow that perfumed the night air with a tendril of Chanel and perhaps something more elemental. He felt like he was barely touching the chaise as he looked over at her in the darkness, the excitement building in his chest even as he remained motionless and silent on the chaise.
She walked slowly over to the chaise, and stood at his feet, her face a pale blur as she looked at him. He heard her breathing change when she realized that he was naked. She reached behind her and unhooked her dress, slipping out of it in a fluid, two step motion. She wore no bra, and he could sense rather than see the sway of her heavy breasts in the darkness. Her panties were visible only as a white triangle across her hips until she slid them down over her thighs. She stepped over the chaise, and then lay down full length on top of him, her arms stretching out over his head and her mouth closing hungrily on his even as he wrapped her in his arms and joined her to him in one powerful movement.
Much later, as they both lay spent on the chaise, he awoke to the sound of her gentle snoring in the hollow of his shoulder. He shifted slightly, and ran his fingers across her forehead, clearing the damp hair out of her face, touching her cheek gently. She murmured something unintelligible, and tried to snuggle closer. He carefully extricated himself from her warm body, and then gathered her up in his arms and took her to the cabin below, where they made love again.
The morning intruded with the long blat of the St. Johns ferry leaving the slip for her first run across the river. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows in the cabin as Mike rolled over and sat up, rubbing his face, smiling at the memories of the night. Diane was curled in a ball in the middle of the bed. He reached down and kissed her cheek, and then got up, pulling the sheet over her until only her face showed. He watched her sleep for a few minutes, marveling at her beauty and his great fortune, and then went into the bathroom to make his morning ablutions.
He went into the galley to make coffee, slipping into a bathing suit on the way. He carried the coffee up topside to the porch, and waved hello to his neighbor across the pier, an elderly and very dapper retired lawyer from New York named Nathan Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein was very New York and very funny in a waspish, big city manner. He lived for his Sunday New York Times and his pot of coffee laced with Schlivovitz that he enjoyed with some style on the fantail of his fifty foot Bertram yacht.
The waterway was already teeming with boat traffic of all descriptions making their way down the channel to the St. Johns river junction and the sea five miles downstream. The sailboats pitched and bobbed in the crisscrossing wakes made by the more numerous powerboats. Mike was exchanging criticisms on their sea manners with Mr. Goldstein when Diane appeared on the porch, fresh from the shower, her dark hair done up in a twisted coil high on her head, and the rest of her wrapped in a full length terry robe. She poured herself a cup of coffee. The sleep was disappearing rapidly from her face, leaving only a visibly contented glow.
“Oi-veh,” called Mr. Goldstein appreciatively, when he caught sight of Diane. “You found yourself a woman for a change, Mikey, instead of one of those little girls you bring home from the beaches!”
Diane smiled archly at him and then went over to one of the cushioned deck chairs and sat down. Mike, not knowing what to say, joined her, leaving Mr. Goldstein to try to read his paper while stealing surreptitious glances at Diane. Mr. Goldstein, long a widower, was reportedly a heavy hitter among the local Sunday bingo set.
“Morning, Sunshine,” said Mike, taking in her freshly scrubbed face. He suddenly wanted to take her back down below. She smiled at him, and he was ready to forego even going below.
“We would give your friend over there a heart attack, Captain,” she said with a grin, once again reading his face.
“He’d go out a happy man,” replied Mike, grinning himself despite his sudden attack of desire.
“And you? Would you go out a happy man?” she teased. She rearranged her robe, letting Mike have a look at a luxuriant length of thigh. Mr. Goldstein rattled his coffee cup over on the Bertram.
“Happy, but not satisfied, Madam,” Mike replied. “I need to go to the well again a couple of hundred more times. This morning, that is.”
“My, how we do go on,” she simpered. “Does that mean I can stay all day?”
Mike’s face lost its playful cast. “You can stay forever, as long as you stay with me,” he said.
She looked at him over the rim of the coffee mug, her eyes fathomless. “Don’t go falling overboard, Captain,” she said softly. “It’s bad for appearances.”
He leaned forward. “I’m not sure I care about appearances just now,” he said. “Your husband is with another woman right now, and you are here with me. I’m officially sorry if your marriage is a wash, but I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I want you. After last night—do you realize how extraordinary that was? We didn’t just click, lady, we welded. I know I’m not being practical or wise or even very smart, but there it is. I-want-you. I’m also falling in love with you.”
Diane looked down into her coffee for a long minute. The light mood of the morning had been replaced by something else.
“Can we just try this one day at a time, Mike?” she asked, looking up. “I’m very new to this, and what I would really like to do is to sit around the boat all day and do not much of anything. You have to understand that just being here is pretty heady stuff for me. I’m not sure I can deal with freedom and love and your very warm desire all in one breath.”
She saw the concern in his eyes.
“That’s not a no, Mike,” she said quickly. “That’s not a turndown, or a put off. Last night was—fantastic. Right now you, the boat, last night, how we loved each other—it’s like a puzzle I’ve worked on for years and I finally got the whole thing together on the table. I just don’t want to break it by making a wrong move. OK?”
He sat back in his chair, feeling more than a little foolish. “Well, can I make you breakfast instead?” he said.
She laughed aloud, a bright peal of pure pleasure. Even Mr. Goldstein, thirty feet away in the bright sunlight, nodded and smiled when he heard that sound. It was the best sound in the whole world. Good for Mikey.
THIRTY-FIVE
USS Goldsborough, pierside, Mayport Naval Station, Monday, 28 April; 1000
“Just how much has the Commodore told you about all this?” asked Mike.
He was speaking on the phone to Commander Pierce Marshall, IV, skipper of the Deyo, one of the eight thousand ton Spruance class antisubmarine warfare destroyers based in Mayport. Pierce Marshall had been aide to a Vice Admiral in Washington before getting the Deyo, and he was an extremely smooth operator. He came from a Navy family, and his contemporaries called him “the I-V” behind his back.
“Not much at all, Michael,” replied Marshall. “Just that he wants us to conduct a passive sound survey of some sort against diesel engines, of all things, in the Mayport opareas, especially at night. And that we’re looking for something ‘different.’ He said he did not want to tell me more because he wants a clean look, not something predisposed by our knowing what we’re looking for. He did say it was for something connected to Goldsborough, and the only thing I’ve heard about Goldy lately is that you’ve been chasing down some mystery in the opareas about a U-boat, I believe. Any connection?”
“Well, yeah,” said Mike. “You’ve got the most sophisticated passive acoustic detection and analysis gear down here; I think he wants to see if you can detect the presence of a conventional boat on the snort amongst all the fishermen out there along the Stream. I’m surprised that he wouldn’t tell you that.”
“Well, you know Aronson,” said Marshall. “I have to tell you that he sounded like this was a firefly.”
“A firefly?”
“Yeah, you know, one of those issues that comes swimming up out of the grass and merits a passing swat, but not something we go worrying over for very long. Pentagon E-ring term. Anyway, this will give my sonar girls something to do while we work the bugs out of our new main engine. Although I’m not sure what we’re going to hear among all the other diesels that bang around out there every night—there must be dozens of boats in addition to the fishing fleet. You guys find something out there?”
Mike thought quickly. He may have already said too much, especially if Marshall was to talk to one of his buddies on the Group Staff.
“No, not really. I think the Commodore wants to be able to say that we did a very thorough job of disproving the submarine myth, and since Goldy has no passive capability whatsoever, you guys run the drill out there, come up empty, and we can put the whole thing to bed once and for all.”
“Right, got it. OK, Michael, thanks. The IC-man is here to cut the phone lines, so we’ll see you Friday. Enjoy your boiler work, my friend.”
“Thanks a heap, shipmate,” replied Mike, hanging up.
Enjoy my boiler work, indeed. The Spruance community took great pride in not having the albatross of a steam plant hanging around their precious necks; the Spruance class ships ran on airplane engines, and when there was a problem, they simply changed out the engine and they were back in business in a week. Every steamboat skipper envied the gas turbine ships, who could light off their engines and be underway in literally thirty minutes, as compared to the steam plants which had to light off one or even two days before departure. Mike called the Exec.
“XO, I just got a call from Deyo; they’re gonna do the passive sound survey on diesels, just like the Commodore said.”
“That’ll be a project, Skipper,” said Farmer. “The passive environment out there has to be a real bear. I’ve got the engineering assist team assembling in the wardroom in five minutes. Do you want to come down and kick it off?”
“No, but I will. I don’t suppose we’ve heard anything from the guys in Norfolk yet, have we?”
“No, Sir, not yet, other than that they got there OK and got rooms at the Dam Neck BOO. Line’s gonna call me at 1700 today, let me know what’s shakin’.”
“OK, XO. Sounds good. I’ll see you in the wardroom—call me when everyone’s there.”
He hung up, and leaned back in his chair, dismissing the engineering team and the submarine so that he could conjure up the memory of his weekend with Diane. She had stayed the entire day, not going back to her quarters until late Sunday night. After their first brief conversation in the morning Mike had backed off and given her some space, and she had relaxed. They had taken a nap in the afternoon, promising each other that they would just cuddle and ending up in an exciting bout of lovemaking. He had fixed her dinner again, and they had finished the evening on the porch, watching the sun go down over the waterway and talking quietly, holding hands.
She said that she would tell J.W., if he called, that she was driving down to Lauderdale during the week to see some friends, and that she would be out at the houseboat every night. Now Mike couldn’t wait for 1730, when he could leave and get back to the boat. Just like a sailor, he mused, dying for liberty call. He firmly squashed the little voice in his mind that said he was playing with fire. The phone rang and the XO said everyone was ready. Mike pulled himself out of his reverie and went below to begin the week.
At 1700, Mike sat sprawled on the couch in the Exec’s cabin while the XO talked on the phone to Line, who was calling from Norfolk. He watched the Exec’s face as Line made his report, and tried to concentrate on the business of the possible submarine. His mind, however, was very much on other things, like his weekend with Diane. Two more days until her husband came back; two more nights and a day, to be precise. He tried not to think about that aspect, or how they would manage once J.W. Martinson III was back in town. Diane had told him that she would start cutting back on the Navy social life; she had been threatening to do that for some time, anyway, claiming terminal boredom. J.W., who spent most of his time at Navy functions allocating face time, had not seemed to care very much. He had said that he was happy she was finding other interests. Mike started to smile at the irony of that thought when he was pulled back to reality by the sounds of the Exec finishing his conversation with Linc.
“So—what’ve we got?” he asked, as the Exec hung up.
“A strong possible,” said the Exec.
Mike groaned. The ASW Classification Center was living up to its reputation for ambivalence. The Center was known for contact classification fence straddling. Three years previously they had analyzed the sonar tapes of a destroyer which had capped off a NATO ASW exercise by colliding with a submerged British submarine, and the highest classification the Center would grant to the destroyer’s contact tapes was “possible.”
“Not very useful, I admit,” said the Exec. “But Linc said the three master Chiefs who did the analysis of the tapes thought it was a real contact and not marine life or bottom. They just couldn’t get their bosses to go out on a limb with a ‘probable’ classification. You know how they are up there.”
“I surely do,” said Mike. “But now what the hell do we do with this thing? Group isn’t going to jump through their hoops on another ‘possible submarine’ contact that’s, what, four days old now.”
He si
ghed, and thought for a minute.
“Linc going to come home tomorrow? And he knows he’s to bring those tapes back here?”
“Yes, Sir, to both questions. I guess now we wait for the Deyo’s little witch hunt.”
Mike shook his head slowly in resignation.
“They’re going to go out and tape diesel engines in the fishing grounds. And nobody’s going to be amazed when they find a dozen or so. Even if they record an unusual engine, or an out of pattern detection, it’s not going to resolve the general ambiguity. We need something concrete.”
The distraught face of Christian Mayfield’s sister had popped suddenly into his mind, for no apparent reason.
“One way or the other,” he added.
“Should we call the Commodore and give him the word?” asked the Exec. “I can’t remember what the arrangement was.”
“I’ll call the Commodore’s office here, although I think he was going to talk to the Center directly. I don’t think the CSO’s been cut entirely into the loop, so I’ll just tell him that the verdict was ‘possible’ in case the Commodore calls him. If the Commodore wants to share it with him, he will.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” said the XO. “You going to shove off, then?”
“Yeah, I think so, XO.”
Mike wondered if the Exec had detected his preoccupation during the day of meetings and planning sessions on the engineering work. He knew that he had been quieter and less intrusive than usual, his mind bemused with thoughts of Diane. But if the Exec had noticed anything, he was not revealing it. Which was good, because Mike was in no position to explain to his Number Two his sudden involvement with the Chief of Staffs wife. Just the thought of seeing her again excited him. He pulled his large frame off the couch, and paused in the doorway.
“Somehow I think this submarine business is going to rise up and bite somebody in the ass,” he said. “I want us to pay enough attention so’s to ensure it ain’t us.”
The Exec grinned.
“No sweat, Cap’n,” he said. “We’ll call it a UFO—underwater flying object, and then the Air Force’ll get stuck with it.”
Scorpion in the Sea Page 31