Sweet Reason (9781590209011)

by Robert Littell

  “Sure looks like it,” said one of the other sonarmen.

  “Sure sounds like it,” said another.

  “I think it is,” said Proper. “She’s got down doppler — hear it? — so she’s heading away from us. Why would she head away from us unless she had something to fear from us. You get my meaning? Range is holding pretty steady at twelve hundred yards.”

  Captain Jones’s voice came over the 21MC. “Well, Mister de Bovenkamp, what do you make of it, eh? Is it or isn’t it, a sub I mean?”

  “We’re pretty sure it’s a sub from the sound of it,” de Bovenkamp called up confidently. “Let me track it for a few minutes.”

  De Bovenkamp switched on the electro-mechanical computer in the corner of the sonar shack. Instantly the sonar set began to feed the range and bearing to the target into the computer, and in a few seconds the dials on the face of the computer showed that the echo was tracking on a southerly course at eight knots. De Bovenkamp snapped on the 21MC and called up to the bridge again. “She tracks like a sub, Captain — she’s moving south at eight knots. What do we do now?”

  “We attack, my boy,” Jones said. “According to our operation orders there are no American subs in Yankee Station, so it’s a free-fire zone. It’s probably some Commie Chink sub poaching in our waters. Attack, Mister de Bovenkamp. Try not to think about the enemy down there drowning when the sub’s bulkheads cave in on them. The trick is to think of this as a game — to think of them as the opposing team. Then go on out there and give it the old college try, eh?”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” de Bovenkamp called. He turned to the sonarmen gathered in the shack and began handing out sticks of gum. The last stick he unwrapped and stuck in his own mouth. “Hot damn, he wants us to attack! Okay, the trick is to think of them as enemy. If every man does that it’ll go like clockwork.”

  Adjusting the headset that connected him with the pilot house, de Bovenkamp began to bark out orders. “Load hedgehogs. All engines ahead full, turns for twenty knots. Helmsman steer one eight zero.”

  One of the sonarmen plugged the cable trigger into the bulkhead and handed de Bovenkamp the business end. On the firing panel a small red light came on indicating that all forty-eight hedgehogs — small antisubmarine rockets — were on the firing pins and ready to go. The dials on the computer began to generate a solution. Chewing away on two sticks of gum and nodding rhythmically, de Bovenkamp kept his eyes glued to the one that would tell him the instant to pull the trigger.

  “Target coming slightly left,” Proper called. “Son of a bitch’s trying to wriggle off the hook.”

  “Come left to one seven zero,” de Bovenkamp ordered the helmsman over his headset.

  “Bearing steady, sir,” said Proper. “Looks good.”

  “Stand by to fire,” de Bovenkamp called.

  “The echo’s getting kind of mushy,” Proper said. “Target appears to be breaking up into a lot of small echos, Mister de Bovenkamp. Je-sus, what the hell is going on?”

  De Bovenkamp turned on Proper. “Well, should I shoot or shouldn’t I?” he yelled.

  “Hell, what have you got to lose?” Proper said uncertainly.

  The dial on the computer indicated that the bow of the Ebersole was almost 300 yards from the target. It flashed through de Bovenkamp’s mind what it would be like to be in a submarine, to hear the explosions, to see the bulkheads cave in, to cringe as hundreds of tons of water gushed through the hole, to feel the overpowering terror of certain death by drowning. And he jerked the trigger.

  Three decks above the sonar shack, the forty-eight hedgehogs — each with an explosive charge in its nose — flew off into the night and splashed into the water in a figure-eight pattern ahead of the Ebersole. If one of them struck something solid on its way down it would explode, and the explosion would set off the other forty-seven hedgehogs.

  On the bridge of the Ebersole, Captain Jones peered into the blackness listening for the explosion that would indicate they had scored a direct hit on the “Commie Chink sub.” Just when he thought none would come there was a sharp underwater “thud” from one of the hedgehogs. Then the sea churned as the other forty-seven exploded also.

  “WE GOT THE BASTARD!” screamed Captain Jones, dancing up and down.

  The XO started giggling gleefully. “WE GOT HIM, WE GOT HIM,” he screamed back at the Captain.

  Moore, who was the Officer of the Deck during General Quarters, and Lustig, who was standing by to control the guns, laughed and pounded each other on the back.

  In the sonar shack de Bovenkamp listened to the explosions with a smile on his face. “Hot damn,” he said. “Hot gawddamn.”

  As the explosion subsided, Captain Jones flicked on the ship’s public address system and spoke into the microphone. “Officers, men, this is the Captain speaking. This is an historic moment, eh? We have just become the first American naval vessel since World War Two to sink an enemy submarine in action.” There was another cheer from the men on the bridge. Back aft the crew of Mount 53 climbed on top of the mount and waved their hats. “I especially want to congratulate Mister de Bovenkamp and his crack sonar team down there for a bangup job.” This brought more cheers from various corners of the ship.

  The XO tapped Jones on the shoulder. “Captain, why don’t we illuminate the area with a flare and pick up some pieces of the sub as evidence, in case anyone should doubt us?”

  “You’re always thinking of the angles, XO,” Jones said. He turned to Lustig. “Grab hold of that flare pistol, will you, Mister Lustig, and shed some light on the subject.”

  Lustig loaded the Very pistol with a white cartridge, pointed it straight up in the air and fired. A few seconds later there was a “plop” high over the Ebersole, and the entire area was suddenly bathed in daylight. Lustig kept firing flares as Jones brought the Ebersole around full circle and stopped at the spot where the hedgehogs had exploded.

  “There, there,” the XO shouted, “see it? There’s something in the water.”

  Jones and the XO leaned over the railing to watch the sailors on the main deck retrieve pieces of wreckage with long boat hooks. There was some yelling, which the Captain took for cheering.

  Jones beamed at the XO. “Nobody will be able to say we’re exaggerating now, eh?”

  There was some more yelling on the main deck. Jones turned to Lustig. “Ask the talker down there what they’ve picked up, eh?”

  Lustig said a few words into his headset, listened, then looked up at the Captain.

  “Well?” asked Jones.

  “It’s —”

  A sickening odor wafted up from the sea around the Ebersole. The XO turned his face away and covered it with a handkerchief.

  “It’s whales, Captain,” Lustig said. “We sank a bunch of whales!”

  Jones sank dejectedly into the Captain’s chair. “Goddamn de Bovenkamp.” He shook his head sadly. “What’s this world coming to, XO? That’s what I want to know. What’s this world coming to?”

  Lustig Sees a Ghost

  The deck gang was still hosing down the fo’c’sle when the helicopter from the aircraft carrier flew in over the fantail, hovered and lowered a man onto the Ebersole. Lustig, back aft to supervise the transfer, grabbed his legs as he swayed above the pitching deck and hauled him in.

  “My God, you look like a ghost — I never thought I’d see you again,” Lustig yelled, but his voice was drowned out by the roar of the helicopter.

  With Lustig leading the way, the two men walked forward along the port side of the main deck to the sick bay.

  “I tell you they checked me out on the carrier, Mister Lustig,” Chief McTigue was saying. “I’m mostly dirty and tired and scared shitless.”

  “You know we got a shoot scheduled for sunup,” Lustig said. “If you aren’t up to it —”

  “A few hours in the rack and I’ll be as good as new.”

  “Must have been rough, huh?” Lustig asked.

  “Jesus shit, it was plenty rough,” McTig
ue agreed. “That’s the last fucking time I go out spotting, you understand?”

  Lustig was offended by McTigue’s tone, but he decided he had to make allowances because of what the chief had been through. “You’re not holding a grudge, are you?” he asked. “It wasn’t me that offered to supply a spotter. I was only following orders.”

  Doc Shapley, the hospital corpsman who fainted at the sight of blood, bustled into the sick bay and started to undo the bandages around McTigue’s head. A small patch of hair over his left ear had been shaved off. The bare scalp was covered with gauze. The hair around the gauze was matted with dried mud and dried blood.

  Shapley started in on the bandage. Three layers down he came across some blood that hadn’t completely coagulated. Swallowing hard, he quickly wrapped McTigue up again. “I think what you need more than anything else, Chief, is a dose of rest and relaxation. What you got on will hold fine till morning. Here, take two of these” — he thrust a small envelope of red pills into McTigue’s hand — “and one of these” — this envelope was full of yellow pills — “every four hours.” And Shapley turned on his heel and disappeared.

  “Two red and one yellow every four hours,” McTigue repeated. Holding his head, he made his way down to the chief’s quarters forward. Everyone was asleep except Duffy, the engineering chief, who was studying a reduction-gear manual by flashlight.

  “Holy Mackerel, you’re supposed to be dead!” Duffy whispered. “You look like hell warmed over. What happened?”

  “Jesus shit, don’t ask,” McTigue said glumly. “Don’t ever fuckin’ ask.”

  He washed down the two reds and the yellow with straight vodka. Then he stretched out on his bunk and tried not to dream.

  McTigue’s Curriculum Vitae

  The pilot, an olive-skinned lieutenant junior grade with the name “Ruggieri” stenciled on his candy-striped flight helmet, had glanced suspiciously at McTigue. “First time in a chopper, Chief?” he had asked over the intercom.

  McTigue had nodded sourly and had said “Yeah” without depressing the transmit button on the flight panel. Ruggieri had thought “Holy Jesus — why me?” and had pointed impatiently to the button and McTigue had pushed it. “Yeah, it is,” McTigue said, and he heard the “Yeah, it is” over the earphones in his helmet. “I been in planes a lot, but I never been in a chopper before.”

  “Difference between a plane and a chopper,” Ruggieri had said, “is a plane is aching to fly and these eggbeaters just naturally want to crash.” It was a harmless enough line, but Ruggieri had seen the flash of fright on McTigue’s face. “Don’t sweat it,” he had added quickly, “you’ll get to love it.”

  Ruggieri had swiveled his joy stick and the helicopter had banked toward the coast in a great rocking motion that lifted McTigue’s heart to his mouth.

  Feeling cramped and uncomfortable and out of his element, McTigue had sat stiffly in his seat and had watched the ground roll out like a carpet under the helicopter. First came the swells of the sea, then the water turned choppy and suddenly there were breakers and a curve of coast and a flat stretch of swampland. Ruggieri had tapped McTigue on the shoulder and had pointed with a gloved finger, and McTigue had followed the finger and had seen the shadow of the helicopter racing along the ground slightly in front of them and off to one side.

  “I always get a kick out of that,” Ruggieri had said, hoping to distract McTigue, who looked as if he were about to throw up.

  McTigue had nodded to indicate that he got a kick out of seeing the helicopter’s shadow too.

  The shadow raced along the ground for a while. Then it rose to meet the helicopter and McTigue saw that they were flying over a ridge with a blockhouse and a mangled tree on it. A tuft of a cloud hovered over the mangled tree.

  “What d’you say I give the blockhouse a burst?” one of the door gunners asked on the intercom.

  “Negative,” ordered Ruggieri. He turned to McTigue. “My theory is live and let live,” he explained.

  After the ridge came a rolling meadow and McTigue watched the shadow helicopter cut across the grassland until suddenly it was lost in a maze of dirt lanes and thatched huts and tents.

  “That’s —— ——,” Ruggieri motioned with his finger, and he put the helicopter into a long, lazy arc that took it around the rim of the town.

  McTigue could make out dozens of children in the town and in the fields that surrounded the town. The ones in the fields stopped work to look up at the helicopter. Some started gesturing. Some started running. McTigue could see that there was panic in the way they ran.

  “Jesus shit, the place is full of kids!” McTigue said on the intercom.

  One of the door gunners laughed into the intercom. “Them clinks look like ants to me.”

  “It’s the angle,” the pilot assured McTigue. “From up here everyone looks like kids.”

  —— —— was sliced into two unequal parts by a paved highway that ran from north to south. On the seaward side of the road the town was tents and thatched huts and small backyard vegetable gardens. On the landward side there were a few dozen one-story cement buildings, a two-story building alongside a soccer field, more cement buildings, then a tangle of thatched huts and then on the edge of town an old truck depot with three dilapidated trucks in it.

  Except for children running in all directions and someone hastily hoisting a white flag with a faded red cross on a pole in front of the soccer field, —— —— looked peaceful enough.

  “Looks peaceful enough, don’t it?” McTigue asked over the intercom.

  “They always do,” Ruggieri said.

  The radio-telephone crackled into life and McTigue heard a familiar voice in his earphones.

  “Spotting round en route,” is what the voice said.

  Suddenly it dawned on McTigue, “Jesus shit, that’s Mister Lustig!”

  Ruggieri pulled the helicopter up, with its bubble nose angled down, for a grandstand view.

  The first spotting round exploded in the tangle of thatched huts on the landward side of the town, about five hundred yards short of the truck depot. There was a burst of bright yellow, like a flashbulb going off, then a spreading blaze and a wisp of brown-black smoke spiraling into the sky.

  “Jesus, they’re firing short!” McTigue told Ruggieri.

  “Don’t tell me, tell them — that’s what you’re here for,” Ruggieri said, and he pointed to another button on the panel marked “external transmit.”

  McTigue depressed it and shouted into his microphone: “Jesus shit, you’re short, you’re firing short, you’re in the thatch, d’you read me, you’re hitting the huts, I thought you guys were gonna overshoot and walk the stuff back down, over.”

  “How short, damnit?” Lustig asked.

  “Jesus shit, the fuckin’ huts are on fire, you’ve got to come up five hundred at least, do you read me, over.”

  Another spotting round landed three hundred yards short of the truck depot.

  “Jesus, you’re still in the fuckin’ huts,” McTigue shouted into the microphone. An area about the size of a football field in the middle of the tangle of huts was ablaze. People were scurrying in all directions. “The huts are burning like tinder,” McTigue yelled, “up three hundred.”

  “Up what?” called Lustig. “Say again, up what?”

  “Up three fuckin’ hundred, don’t you understand English, over.”

  “You’re garbled,” radioed Lustig. “Say everything twice, over.”

  One of the door gunners came on the intercom. “What the fuck they holding — a dink roast?”

  The other door gunner laughed into the intercom: “Hey man, that’s good — a clink roast.”

  Ruggieri tapped McTigue on the arm. “You’re cutting out because the angle of the antenna keeps changing. Just say every word twice, get it?”

  McTigue nodded and punched the “external transmit” button with his fist. “Up up three three hundred hundred, d’you read me, d’you read me, over over.”
r />   The next shot fell short of the depot again.

  “Jesus shit, you guys still aren’t on target,” McTigue yelled.

  A few seconds later, to McTigue’s astonishment, the Ebersole opened fire in salvo and the rounds of VT frag began to hail down on the already blazing tangle of thatched huts. An ancient fire engine with an army jeep in front of it and another behind came chugging into town from the north and pulled up on the fringe of the fire. Instantly dozens of children surrounded the jeeps and the fire engine. Those around the fire engine pointed to the flames; those around the jeeps pointed to the helicopter.

  McTigue punched the transmit button again. “Jesus fuckin’ shit, you guys are shooting short, you’re shooting into the huts, the whole fuckin’ place is an inferno, what the fuck you think you’re doing, you got to raise your sights, you hear me, what are you, deaf or something, up, up, up, UP, UP, UP.” Now McTigue was screaming the word “up” into the microphone over and over.

  One of the door gunners interrupted him. “Hey Lou-tenant, I think one of them there jeeps down there has a machine gun mounted —”

  McTigue never heard the machine gun, only the cold metallic sound of steel shredding steel. Ruggieri’s eyes, bulging with terror, scanned the dials on the panel in front of him; the needles seemed calm enough. The rotors were still turning and the engine sounded as it did before. Ruggieri relaxed and pulled back on the stick to gain altitude.

  The helicopter didn’t respond.

  “Dear mother of God —” from Ruggieri, pulling back harder on the stick with his gloved hands.

  A mild explosion shook the helicopter and McTigue looked back into the smoke and wiped his eyes and saw the two door gunners on the floor holding their stomachs as if they had cramps. Then the seat seemed to drop out from under McTigue. Like a bird heavy with buckshot the helicopter began to settle, rotor blades flapping, toward the earth.

  “We’re going in,” Ruggieri shouted. “Jump as soon as we hit —”

  “What about them?” McTigue gestured toward the door gunners.

  “If they’re alive, they’ll fend for themselves,” Ruggieri said.