Well, I guess it caught up with us, he thought, as the bow slammed into another monster wave with enough force to stop the ship in her tracks, quivering from end to end.
Then he heard another sound, but he could not quite place it as the wind rose in volume to a prolonged shriek before being drowned out by the roar of another wave crashing on deck. He figured it out: the telephone.
He thought he had heard the telephone ring. The phone was mounted on the bulkhead next to his desk. His heart fell: He would have to get out of his bunk to get it. No problem, he thought. Just let go. Ship’ll pitch you right over to the other side of the room, and then when you get flung back, you’ll be on the telephone … He jammed the flashlight into the space between mattress and bunk edge to provide some light, rolled over on his side, and grasped the storm rail along the side of his bunk with both hands. On the next roll to port, he half-slid, half-fell out of the bunk and onto the deck, where he hung suspended as the deck sloped thirty degrees down until the ship righted herself and rolled back over to starboard. On the next roll, he got up on his knees, put his right arm through the bunk’s storm rail, and reached up and grabbed the phone with his left. But he promptly dropped it when the ship lurched over to port for several seconds before bounding up under him into a corkscrew as the bow caught another greenie. He lost his grip on the rail and was rolled over under the steel sink, where he grabbed the sink supports and splayed his legs again to try to find a purchase. The phone, dangling from it cord, was bouncing against the small of his back, so he grabbed it and shouted his name.
“Mr. Holcomb, this is the OOD,” came a voice, barely audible above the howling wind outside. “The gig has broken loose in its skids. I got the chief and First Division comin’ up to the boat decks.”
“Where’s Mr. Folsom?”
“He’s got OOD; cap’n said to call you right away.”
“Okay,” Brian shouted. “I’ll try to get aft.”
He tried to hang the phone up but gave it up after cartwheeling around the room and banging his shins on an overturned chair. Moving between roll cycles, he crawled around the room to retrieve his uniform, then rolled over on his back on the rug to pull on his shirt and pants. It took him a few minutes to find his boots in all the debris on the deck and another minute to get his hands on the flashlight. That was the easy part. Getting through the ship to the boat decks would be the fun part.
The trek to the boat decks took him fifteen minutes of crawling and crabbing through the passageways, down one ladder and up another one before fetching up in a small vestibule in front of the hatch leading out to the weather decks. During the whole time, he had not encountered a single human being. He imagined that anyone not on watch was hanging on for dear life in his rack or on the deck in the berthing compartments. A lot of the crew’s berthing was up forward, where it must be pretty lively. He had managed to retain his flashlight, which was good, because a short circuit had taken out the red night lights in the vestibule. On the other side of the hatch, the wind and the seas were doing their best to batter their way in, even though this particular hatch faced aft. The hatch was dogged full down, but a slick of salt water sloshed the vestibule. The noise here was overwhelming and he had to work hard to find a wedging position that would allow him to remain in one place as the big ship bucked and heaved.
He felt his trouser leg being tugged and he looked down the ladder.
Chief Martinez grinned up at him in the light of the flashlight. He had one paw on the ladder railing; the other held the bitter end of a six-inch-circumference nylon mooring line. With a kapok life jacket and climbing harness on, the chief completely filled the ladder way, so he didn’t need to wedge in place. A coil of twenty-one-thread manila line was looped over his left shoulder. There were two deck apes behind and below him, wedged together in the bottom of the ladder way, their frightened faces white in the shadows. Brian tried to say something, but conversation was simply not possible in the wind noise. It was like standing next to a fighter with its jet engines running full out, a sustained roar interweaved with higher-frequency shrieks.
The chief pantomimed his intentions: I’m going out there. Brian shook his head. No way. The chief nodded vigorously and drew a picture in the air of the gig up on its davit skids, and then of him wrapping the mooring line around it, and then some men in the passageway below pulling on the huge line and securing the boat back in its skids. Brian knew that the gig weighed twelve tons. It had probably broken its gripes and was swinging free in its davit arms. If it broke all the way loose, it would careen down the starboard side, and, if they were lucky, it would be snatched clear of the ship by a passing wave.
If they were not, it could be picked up by a wave and thrown through the helo hangar or into the gun mounts aft. They could not just let it go.
The chief watched him work it out, then moved up into the hatchway vestibule, a space that was only four feet by three. The two men at the bottom of the ladder became four and then six as they heaved coils of the mooring line into the passageway below the ladder until there was about 150 feet of heavy nylon line coiled at the base. Brian caught an occasional glimpse of arms and legs flailing around on the deck as the men tried to hang on. The chief motioned for Brian to help him haul the coils up the ladder, recoiling it in front of the hatch, which was visibly vibrating on its coaming. The chief then signaled one of the men, who threw him a climbing harness, which he passed to Brian, indicating that he was to put it on. Brian complied and the chief snapped the stainless-steel clamps onto a fire-extinguisher bracket next to the hatch, leaving Brian about three feet of freedom. Martinez wrapped one coil of the six-inch nylon around his waist, laid the bitter end against the standing part, and secured it with twenty-one-thread line tied in a bowline. He signaled again and one of the men threw him a steel helmet, which he jammed on his head, securing it with a chin strap. He checked that his knife was accessible in his boot holster and pushed Brian back against the inner bulkhead of the vestibule. He lifted the hatch handle.
The thirty-pound hatch whipped open, banging all the way back against the exterior bulkhead, sucked out into the maelstrom by the pressure differential created by 120-knot winds. Then it blew back into their faces, nearly decapitating the chief, before flying back out again, this time catching on its holdback. Brian, stunned by the attack of the hatch, forgot to hold on and was himself sucked partway out onto the boat decks for what seemed like an eternity. While the chief was grabbing the back of his harness and trying to pull him in, Brian got a face-to face look at a typhoon.
The roaring wind overwhelmed all other sounds, including the incessant thunder and lightning. Although it was fully dark, the lightning was almost continuous, flaring in great sheets across the night sky and stabbing into the mountainous seas, raising blasts of steam that were instantly blown flat. The wind drew sheets of rain horizontally across the boat decks, lashing everything in sight, hitting Brian’s face so hard that he had to shield his eyes and curl his fingers against the stinging force of the rain. Every few seconds, a mountain of black water would stride down the side, followed by great sheets of spray as the bow blasted a way through the next wave.
All of the guy wires on the davits and replenishment gear crackled with blue-white static discharges. The boat decks looked like a mudflat as the tide comes in, with sheets of water sliding across the metal.
And then he was back inside the vestibule, wedged between the bulk of the chief and the bulkhead. Framed in the open hatch, they could see the port and starboard boat davits, each with two boats stacked one over the other. In the flare of lightning the gig, top boat in the starboard davits, swung out over the side with every roll to starboard and then lurched back, thumping into the skid when the ship went back to port.
Although he could not hear it, Brian thought that he could feel the boat hit the skids.
How in the hell was the chief going to get across the open boat decks?
He looked up at the chief and framed the q
uestion with his eyes, but Martinez just grinned, a flash of white teeth in that simian face. He poised in the hatch, waiting for the ship to finish a roll to port. As she started back, he ran straight out onto the boat decks, pointing aft along the centerline until the wind caught him. He then did a belly flop into the sheeting seawater, sliding almost to the after end of the boat decks. As the ship rolled, he slid with her, suspended on the wet deck by the mooring line, his body describing a great arc across to the starboard lifelines, where he grabbed on. A wave came aboard and buried him under ten feet of roaring water.
Brian grabbed the mooring line and started hauling in to take out the slack, gesturing for some of the men to climb the ladder to help. But the first man up into the vestibule was the exec, suited out in a kapok jacket, his khaki trousers, and a T-shirt. He backed Brian up on the line, peering out the hatch and shaking his head in disbelief at the scene outside. Three men came behind him to take a hand with the heavy mooring line. Looking out, Brian saw to his horror that the mooring line had gone over the starboard side, which meant that Martinez, if he was still there, was suspended over the side. Just then the next wave came sliding by and Martinez have into view above the lifeline, neck-deep in the crest of the wave and grappling along the line until he regained a hand hold in the lifelines. Brian and the exec pulled hard on the mooring line, which tightened under the lifeline, enabling Martinez to scrabble back under the lifeline, only to have the next roll start him on another great arc, this time to the port side.
“Slack!” shouted the exec. Brian let go and they paid put twenty feet of line, which had the effect of lengthening Martinez’s arc so that he could slide down to the after end of the boat decks. A great sheet of spray lashed down on the deck from above, checked the chief’s swing across the flooded deck, and washed him under the starboard davit foundations. As the mooring line tightened, Brian saw static electricity crackling along its entire length and felt all the hair on his arms stand up. But the chief had reached his objective, the starboard boat davit.
He appeared again in the lightning flashes, signaling for more slack.
They paid out more line, then had to retrieve most of it when a wave came across the deck and almost snaked the whole thing out of their hands. The burn made Brian wish he had gloves.
It took fifteen minutes to pass enough line out to the chief, who was wedged between the starboard boat davit foundation and the ship’s superstructure. The thundering wind drowned out even their thoughts, and Brian’s heart pounded every time the chief disappeared under the torrents of water that went rushing aft along the boat decks. At one point, a gear locker tore off the forward bulkhead and was swept down the deck, just missing the chief, whose back was turned as he clamped onto the davit foundations. The chief struggled to take up the slack in the line, coiling it under the davits, where he stopped it off with a hank of twenty-one-thread line.
Then he formed a bight in the end of the line. Timing his movement between rolls, he came out from under the davit and scrambled up the inboard ladder to the level of the gig skid, the bight attached to his body. This was the really dangerous part, as the twenty-eight-foot-long gig was not stable in its skid but swinging out over the sea, all twelve tons of it, every time the ship rolled to starboard, then pounding back onto the skid when she came back to port.
Brian saw what the chief was attempting. With his legs wrapped around the top of the inboard ladder, he would wait until the gig swung in and then would throw a length ] of the heavy line over the boat. He would then climb partially down the ladder, wait for the boat to swing out , and back in again, and attempt to grab the end of the line. If he could fairlead the end of the line through the davit foundation and secure it, the men inside the ship could pull on the mooring line and gripe the boat back in.
But how in the hell could he get the line around the gig in the first place? In this wind, it would just be blown aft.
And then he understood. He grabbed the exec’s arm and tried to tell him, tried to say they should stop it, but the XO couldn’t hear him against the shrieking wind and couldn’t see his face well enough to understand. By then, Martinez was making his move. The chief had climbed back up to the top of the ladder and waited for the gig to roll back into the skid. Then he launched himself onto the boat, the mooring line around his chest, and rode the boat out on the next swing over the depths. When the gig started back in, the chief dropped over the outboard side, hanging now by the mooring line, and swung underneath the boat, grabbing the davit foundations even as the boat took off again out over the seas. He had left himself enough slack to accommodate the gig’s swings, but he did not get back under the davits fast enough. A large wave came sheeting along the side and tore his hand hold away, flinging him back over the side.
There was nothing the men in the hatch could do, as the line was tangled under the davits. Twice the chief became visible in the glare of lightning, bobbing atop a huge wave as it swept by, jerking back to the ship but helpless to get himself back aboard. Brian stood in shock as they watched, until a brilliant flare of lightning clearly illuminated Martinez’s broad face—and he was grinning!
Jesus Christ, Brian thought, he thinks he’s having a good time. Then the next black mass of water pulled the chief completely under. Brian was ready to snap the climbing harness to the mooring line and go out there when the exec grabbed his shoulder and pointed. Martinez had been swept back aboard, only this time into the starboard side three-inch gun tub, twenty feet aft of the gig davit.
The mooring line was still draped over the nose of the gig, although it was threatening to come off with each blast of wind.
Over the next ten minutes, Martinez fought his way back across the deck, bouncing between bulkheads and replenishment stanchions to the gig davit’s foundation, where he was able to grab and tie off the end of the mooring line to the foundation supports. He then threaded the standing part of the line around a replenishment sheave in the deck. Waiting for a moment of stability in the ship’s gyrations, he shinnied his way back across the deck, pulling himself hand over hand along the mooring line, his knees throwing up bow waves like a water-skier trying to get up. He made it to the hatch as the crew inside heaved around on the line to begin snubbing in the gig.
Brian and the exec snatched him into the vestibule as the ship dipped into a deep roll to port. Brian started to close the hatch, but of course the mooring line, taut with the weight of the boat, was now vibrating in the middle of the hatchway. About fifteen men crowded the passageway now, alternately hanging on to the mooring line against the deep rolls and then pulling on it, their faces wet from the blasts of spray blowing in through the hatch.
The chief half-slid, half-tumbled down the ladder and collapsed on the passageway deck among the straining deck apes, a big grin on his face, his steel helmet battered and dented. He lay on his back, gulping deep breaths of air, his arms and legs splayed across the passageway to maintain position, while his men heaved and pulled on the mooring line, gaining a little ground on the swinging boat each time she came into the skid. Brian stared at him from the top of the vestibule and the exec clapped Brian on the back and mouthed out a hearty, if inaudible, “Well done.”
The ship fought her way through the back half of the typhoon for the next eleven hours before the storm showed the first signs of abatement.
By midmorning, they had been able to come about and point east back toward Subic after the most violent sector of the storm had gone by and the rolling was down to an almost pleasant twenty degrees, although the storm still obscured most of the daylight. Except for the watch standers, the entire crew stayed in their racks, the safest place to ride out the pitching and rolling. The winds backed rapidly throughout the morning, but it was not until almost 1500 in the afternoon that visible daylight appeared and normal conversation was possible above decks. Brian and the chief boatswain had made a topside tour of the weather decks, dressed out in helmets and kapok life jackets. Brian was surprised to find the decks li
ttered with dead fish encrusted in caked salt; there was a strong stink of iodine in the air. Topside damage in Weapons Department was limited to the battered gig, three missing gear lockers, one exterior ladder twisted off its moorings, and two dozen downed lifeline stanchions on the fan tail.
The story of what the chief had done had been fully circulated and he was either being congratulated as a hero or scorned as a complete idiot, although the latter opinion was not voiced to his face. The remainder of the day produced a confused, sickening chop in the South China Sea as the giant storm drove up into the Tonkin Gulf and began to generate reflected waves off the Asian mainland. During the storm, most of the crew had been too busy hanging on for dear life to be seasick, but now, as the ship corkscrewed her way into evening, the head count on the mess decks and in the wardroom diminished dramatically. Brian found himself affected, not by nausea but by a dull headache from the physical stress of trying to stay upright. He downed two APCs before supper in the wardroom, where he found himself almost alone at the senior table in the company of the exec and the chief engineer. The other two department heads, Raiford Hatcher and Count Austin, had been hard down since they left Subic, and many of the other ship’s officers had decided to take a pass on the evening meal. With their usual perfect sense of timing, the galleys had served up a nice beef stew.
There was desultory conversation at supper about the weather and who was or was not seasick, including some sharp jibes about Austin, who had often bragged about being an ocean yacht racer. Supper was a both-hands operation, with one hand holding on to the plate while the other operated the silverware. Condiments and other tabletop accoutrements were placed on their sides in an effort to reduce spillage, and there was a good bit of chasing things around the table when the ship got into a sequence of particularly deep rolls. The exec was telling a story about his last typhoon when a pale-looking radio messenger knocked on the wardroom door and entered, snatching off his blue ball cap as he stepped through the door.
The Edge of Honor Page 47