The Edge of Honor

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Morning, asshole,” Jackson growled. “Having us a little toke, are we?”

  As Brian watched from the hatchway, Marcowitz tried to grin, but his face failed him, “Wow, man. Not me, Chief,” he said. “I don’t do no dope.”

  “Yeah, right. I suppose it’s Warren here been stinking up the place with weed, huh?”

  “I dunno, man. I dunno what’cher talkin’ about. Honest, Man.”

  The chief, still holding Marcowitz up on his tiptoes, his large fist bunched in the man’s shirt front, turned his head towards the junior petty officer, who was sitting mutely at his console. “All right, Warren, what the fuck’s going on in here?”

  “Honest, Chief, I don’t know. I mean—”

  “Chief,” Brian, “why don’t you take that shithead to your office and write him up. Get the doc to give him a piss test. Let me talk to Warren.”

  Jackson understood at once. Separate them so that maybe Brian could get the story from Warren. Jackson spun Marcowitz around and frog-marched him out the hatch into the passageway. Brian stared at Warren for a full thirty seconds before speaking.

  “Tell FCSC I’m down here in plot and that you need a relief for Marcowitz. Tell him why.”

  Warren relayed the message to Chief Correy at FCSC.

  He listened for a moment and then nodded his head.

  “Plot, aye,” he said in a weak voice, then turned to look back up at Brian.

  Brian walked over to stand right next to Warren’s chair, forcing the young petty officer to crane his neck to look at him.

  “Let me lay it out for you, Warren. Either you were both doing dope or it was just Marcowitz. You don’t look intoxicated, and he is definitely blown away. So, what’s the story?”

  Warren, obviously frightened, stared up at him, swallowed, but said nothing.

  “You smoking marijuana down here, Warren? Doing dope on watch? In a war zone? You ready for a general court-martial for dereliction of duty?

  How’s ten years breaking rocks in Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary sound to you, Warren? That what you joined the Navy for?”

  “No, suh,” the man blurted, his eyes close to tears.

  “I didn’t do nothin’. I don’t wanta be no fink, Mr. Holcomb. But I didn’t do nothin’. You can piss-test me if you want. But I don’t do that shit.”

  “Did you see Marcowitz smoke marijuana?”

  “I … uh … I don’t wanta say, Mr. Holcomb. Some a those guys, they’ll—”

  “They’ll what, Warren? You afraid somebody’s going to kick your ass if you fink out on Marcowitz?”

  “Yes, suh. I heard—I heard you can get thrown over the side, you go blabbin’ about guys doing shit. Please, Mr. Holcomb, I didn’t do no dope. But don’t make me say nothin’.”

  “Explain to me why the missile radars couldn’t get on track the first time but could the second time.”

  “Uh, it’s the weather, sir? The autotrack circuits were climbin’ all over the clutter from the rain and shit. We had to take them in manual to get a lock.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Why it failed the first time and worked the second. Who was primary scope the first time?”

  “Uh, he was, suh—Marcowitz.”

  “And the second time?”

  “That was me, suh.”

  Brian took a deep breath. “Okay. You stay here until Marcowitz’s relief shows up. Then you go to Chief Jackson’s office. He and the doc’ll give you a piss test. You better not come up blue, you understand me? We’ll talk about the rest of this later.” He turned away as if to leave, then paused. “By the way, where’s his stash?”

  “Stash? I don’t know, Mr. Holcomb. He just had the one—”

  Brian smiled grimly as the kid realized what he had just said. “Thank you, Warren. Leave the hatch open until this place smells like humans again, understand?”

  “Yes, suh,” said Warren in a small voice, looking genuinely frightened now. As he left plot, Brian wondered about the fact that the kid was as frightened of being fingered as a storyteller by the druggie crowd as he was of being caught by the command. It was bad enough that a second class petty officer was using dope on watch; but if the druggies were organized enough to be capable of retribution against witnesses, that was something else again.

  As Brian reached the CMAA’s office, one of the main hole snipes was looking over his shoulder at the activity while he filled a steel thermos with coffee from the mess decks urn. Brian gave him a hard look and the man decided he had enough coffee and disappeared. Brian found a rapidly sobering Marcowitz sitting at attention in a straight-backed chair while the chief hospital corpsman watched the Sheriff add a chemical to the contents of a urine-sample bottle. As Brian stopped in the doorway, the doc held the bottle up to the light. The yellow sample turned bright blue.

  “Bingo, motherfucker. You’re down,” said Jackson.

  Marcowitz stared straight ahead, saying nothing at all.

  “Doc,” Brian said. “I need you to test FROM Three Warren when he gets relieved. He’ll be coming up here in a few minutes.”

  “Aye, sir. No problem. Got this shitbird dead to rights, don’t we?”

  “Looks like it to me. Sheriff, I’m going back up to Combat. I presume we see the XO in the morning with the report chits?”

  Jackson stepped around Marcowitz and out into the passageway while the doc filled out the test-result report.

  Jackson motioned for Brian to come with him, pulling the door ajar before answering.

  “Yes, sir, although you probably ought to give him a call tonight so’s he knows about it before he hears people talking. You know how word gets around.”

  “Right, I’ll take care of it. I gotta tell you, this really pisses me off. We caught this guy in the middle of a drill, but it could just as easily have been for real. You’re an ex-gunner’s mate. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I surely do, Mr. Holcomb.” Jackson paused for a moment, choosing his words. “But I’m not sure you’re going to get a lot of satisfaction out of the XO on this.”

  “Meaning precisely what?”

  “I think the best thing is for you to see how it goes.

  Then perhaps we can talk again. Please, sir.”

  Brian stared at him, but the Sheriff’s black face was impassive. He obviously had more to say but wanted to wait.

  “Okay, Sheriff. You’ve piqued my interest, so I’ll play along. But this isn’t a game for me. Missile techs smoking marijuana on watch could get us all killed out here.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Holcomb. I’ll get the report chit drawn up right now.”

  “Okay, Chief. I’ll call XO tonight and we’ll go see him first thing after quarters.”

  Brian went back up to Combat and resumed the watch as evaluator. After he received a call from the doc confirming that Warren was clean, he called the exec to report the marijuana incident. The exec listened to the story and then instructed Brian to close-hold the incident until he had had time to brief the CO in the morning.

  “I don’t think young Warren had anything to do or say about it, XO,”

  Brian concluded. “And his piss test was clean. The other guy is dirty as hell. He’s the one we’ll want to bust.”

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning, Weps.”

  Brian hung up and found Garuda swung around in his chair.

  “Nothing going on; the BARCAP will be relieved in about thirty minutes.

  The weather is getting shittier and the crud is clobbering up the radar picture, but nothing seems to be stirring ashore, so I guess the lousy radar doesn’t matter too much. What’d XO say about the doper in missile plot?”

  Brian just looked at him for a moment. So much for keeping a lid on it.

  Garuda grinned. “FCSC told me what went down after you were done with your, uh, head call,” he offered.

  “Yeah, well, what it looks like is the FN-Two was doing a joint and the other kid was keeping his mouth shut. W
e can mast the FN-Two for doing dope on watch; that’s some serious brig time. We can hit the FN-Three for not doing anything about it, but that’s a little tenuous, apparently—and probably unfair, too. XO said we’d talk about it in the morning.”

  “Surprise me if anyone actually goes to mast,” said Garuda.

  “You gotta be shitting me. I mean, I know we handle simple possession in our own in-house way, but this was blatant: Suppose the Migs had come put and that little fuck was so stoned he couldn’t establish missile track?

  He could have killed the whole ship.”

  Garuda fished for a cigarette before replying. His latest attempt to quit smoking had lasted two weeks. “Yes, sir, I hear you,” he said, speaking through the familiar blue cloud. “And I may be all wrong here, but I just don’t think this Old Man’s willing to have real go-to-mast drug busts while we’re out here on the line. Now, if we were in Subic and this maggot got caught doing a joint in the BEQ, that’d be different. That’d be an on-base drug incident, not a shipboard drug incident. But, like I said, I could be wrong.”

  Brian thought about it as Garuda went back to his scope, remembering what the boatswain had told him.

  Brian looked over into the weapons module and found Chief Correy looking his way. The chief turned back to his console. Fox Hudson had told him that Chief Correy was a go-with-the-flpw kind of guy, not one to impose much discipline on his troops. That’s part of my problem, Brian thought.

  It’s not good enough to play gun-deck justice with this shit, he thought. We’ve got to rip these slimeballs out of the crew when we find them, and we have to find the druggie organization. Just like you take a tumor and the lymph nodes out when you find it. I can’t have that shit going on down in missile plot. His blood ran cold at the thought of what might have happened if that tracking drill had not been a drill. We’ll just see, he thought to himself. We’ll just see.

  As Brian was finishing breakfast after getting off watch, the exec came into the wardroom. He sat down at the senior table with Brian and Raiford Hatcher and scribbled down his breakfast order. Then he looked over at Brian.

  “Captain would like to see you before you hit the bag for your morning nap,” he said. “Has a piece of paper for you.”

  “Aye, sir. Do you know what it’s about?”

  “I’ll let him tell you. But you’ll like it, so relax and finish your breakfast.”

  Brian nodded and drained the last of his milk. He had been about to bring up the missile plot incident, but the exec was busy skimming his morning message traffic, so Brian excused himself and headed topside. He stopped in his cabin to wash his face and comb his hair, debating whether or not to shave, and then said to hell with it and went up and knocked on the captain’s door.

  “Come in.”

  “Yes, sir, Cap’n,” Brian said as he stepped through the door.

  “XO said you wanted to see me, sir?”

  The captain was sitting at his dining table, dressed in a bathrobe and slippers. He looked better than he had the last time Brian had seen him, which was when? Brian found himself trying to remember. Despite that, the captain’s face still seemed gray in the sullen light slatting through the rain-streaked portholes. The captain motioned toward a seat at the table.

  “Come in. Sit down. Want some coffee? No, I guess not, huh? You need to recover from the mid.”

  Brian sat down at the dining table across from the captain, who picked up a manila file folder and passed it over to him. Brian opened it and found a fitness report with his name on it. He looked back up at the captain, startled to find the captain watching him with a look that reminded Brian of the look a hawk gives a rabbit. But then the captain appeared to smile and said, “Go on, read it. It’s a special. I’m putting it in before the lieutenant commander board next month.”

  Brian read it and smiled in spite of himself. This was what he needed.

  He skimmed the words. Less than ninety days, but doing an outstanding job in combat operations. Lieutenant serving in a lieutenant commander’s job. Learning quickly. Department running well.

  Fully recommended for promotion. This would do it. He put the folder back down on the table.

  “Thank you for this, sir. It’ll sure help.”

  “Well, I mean what’s in it. You’ve come up to speed nicely, and we’ve been through some interesting times, as the Chinese say. Keep up the good work, and I’ll look forward to seeing your name on the list a month from now. Now, go get some sleep.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Brian, standing.

  “Thank you again.”

  Brian left the cabin and walked aft to his own stateroom and flopped on his rack. He felt a sense of elation and relief. His detailer had told him that a good special fitrep would help a lot to lock in the promotion to lieutenant commander. But a CO was under no obligation to submit one.

  The fact that Captain Huntington had given him one was a strong signal that he was doing all right.

  He was back on track professionally and the future was opening back up for him. Taking this assignment was going to pay off in a set of oak leaves on his collar. And the oak leaves opened the door to an XO job, and the XO job made it possible to get a command of his own one day. He flopped down on his rack without turning on the lights in his room. The sound of a driving rain was audible outside, lashing the aluminum sides of the superstructure next to his head. He began to daydream about the day when he would be the Old Man, then remembered that there were some big gates to get through yet. Before drifting off to sleep, he wondered briefly about the strange look on the captain’s face.

  At 1030, he got his wake-up call from the bridge. His eyes were stiff with sleep and it took a minute to remember why he was in the rack and still dressed. He groaned his way off his bed and proceeded with his morning ablutions. The phone rang as he came back into the room from the shower.

  “Weps,” he said. His voice sounded like a croak.

  “Sir, this is the bridge messenger. XO’d like to see you in his cabin.

  At your convenience.”

  “Say what it’s about?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Okay.”

  Brian hung up and began to get dressed. Marcowitz.

  He’d forgotten about the drug bust. Now he’d find out what the good ship Hood did with no-shit, caught-in-the act dopers. He stopped by the wardroom to grab a paper cup of coffee on his way aft to the exec’s cabin. He had to wait in front of the exec’s cabin for ten minutes while the exec conferred with the medical officer on the week’s sanitation inspection. Finally, the exec called him in.

  “Sit down, Brian. Let me reread the Sheriff’s incident report one more time.”

  Brian sat on the couch that doubled as a Hide-A-Bed in the exec’s cabin.

  The exec sat at a desk that was built into a steel chest of drawers.

  There were four baskets of paperwork scattered around the tops of file cabinets and there was very little desk visible underneath yet another mound of paperwork. The exec read through the three page report, including the urinalysis reports. Then he pitched the report into his hold basket.

  “I’m curious,” he said. “What prompted you to go down to missile plot?”

  “Combat was dead, and everybody was falling asleep on their feet. We had this perfect tracking opportunity with an A-Six tanker, so I decided to run a missile-radar tracking drill. Should’ve been a two-minute deal, piece of cake.” Brian shook his head. “They couldn’t get a lock.

  And when I couldn’t get a straight answer as to why, I decided to go check it out.”

  “So you suspected maybe somebody was smoking dope? That why you took the Sheriff?”

  “No, sir. It was just a coincidence I ran into Jackson.

  Come to think about it, I really didn’t suspect anything, not until I found the hatch dogged down. I figured maybe the senior guy was asleep hi a corner and the junior guy had screwed up the evolution and it might be useful to kick ass and take names.” He pause
d for a moment to recollect. “But as soon as we got there, I think maybe Jackson knew. He suspected dope right away.”

  The exec laughed. “Jackson suspects dope every time someone yawns.”

  “Was I wrong to go check it out?”

  “No. Your instincts told you something was wrong, and pros always listen to their instincts, especially when they involve guided-missile systems. Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Warren, as you reported, was clean from the dope angle, although as a petty officer he should not have condoned drug use in the ship and on a weapons system watch station. But you and I know that there’s not much he could do about it in a practical sense, especially when it involved a white petty officer senior to him. I’ll probably call him in and share my thinking with him in an informal counseling session. Marcowitz is a different problem.”

  “Yes, sir. I presume we’ll take him to mast today and award him a court-martial.”

  “You presume wrong, at least for now.”

  “Sir/?”

  “We’ll take him to mast, but not until we’re in port at Subic. Nobody has time for a serious mast case like this while we’re out here on Red Crown station. Don’t worry, it’ll keep. It’s not like he’s going to slip ashore on us. We have this report, the urinalysis, your testimony as to what you found, and Warren’s testimony if we need it. We’ll be in port in another week. Marcowitz isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Yes, sir. But we may not get Warren to say much. He seemed to be very apprehensive about possible retribution if he talks. Talked like the dopers are organized and have an enforcement squad.”

  The exec stared at him for a long moment.

  “Well,” he said finally, “They probably do, or at least they tell people they do. But I don’t expect much out of Warren, and we don’t really need him, when you get down to it, not for mast. The captain can hang Marcowitz on your say-so and the urinalysis alone. And we have ways to protect Warren. I think you know one of them fairly well.”

  Martinez. “Yes, sir. But a court-martial, that would require full rules of evidence—then we’d need Warren, right, XO?”