The Edge of Honor

by P. T. Deutermann

  “XO, got an immediate for you sir,” the messenger said. His face paled even more when he saw the remains of the beef stew.

  “Okay, lemme see it,” replied the exec. Eyeing the messenger’s face, he asked, “You, uh, want to wait outside, maybe?”

  “Uh, yes, sir, if that’s okay,” gulped the messenger.

  He practically bolted out of the wardroom. There was a weather decks hatch not too far from the wardroom door.

  “That boy’s gonna go feed the fishies,” observed the engineer.

  “And we’re going back to the friggin’ Gulf,” announced the exec, eyeing the message.

  “Oh shit.” Brian sighed. “What’s happened to Long Beach! They were supposed to do another two weeks.”

  “Don’t tell me we’re gonna miss Kaohsiung?” asked Vince.

  “Yup,” the exec said, passing the message board over to Brian. “Would you believe, Long Beach lost her freakin’ TACAN antenna in the storm?

  Blew clean away.

  They apparently waited a little too long to get out of the Gulf, so it got pretty bad up there—you know how shallow the Gulf is. So no antenna, no TACAN; no TACAN, no Red Crown. Three guesses whom they’ve sent for.”

  “So let’s go bust our TACAN antenna, XO,” offered Vince. “We’ve still got some storm left out there. Shit, I’ll climb up there and do it. I’ve got some boiler work to get done, and there’s a destroyer tender in Kaohsiung.”

  “Solly, cholly,” the exec said. “They want us back on station ASAP; we’ve been directed to make best speed up to the Gulf as weather permits.”

  “I’m not sure what the huge hurry would be,” Brian said. “Nobody will be flying off the carriers in this weather.”

  The exec snagged his coffee cup as a deep roll started it sliding toward Brian’s lap, adding to the many stains on the tablecloth. “Well, maybe someone’s got something planned for the North Vietnamese,” he mused.

  “You know, as a storm this size plays out over the North, there might be a lot of targets exposed and not much triple-A defense in place until all those creeks and canals go down. Might be an ichiban time to go whack some Commies. I better go up and see the Old Man.”

  “How’s he doing, XO?” Brian asked, trying to keep it casual.

  The exec gave Brian a speculative look. “Doing? Well, he’s tired—been up on the bridge for nearly twenty-four hours while we rode this bear out. That what you meant?” There was the barest hint of an edge to the exec’s voice.

  Brian thought fast. That was not at all what he meant, but from the look in the exec’s eyes, he had a sense that he was straying into uncharted territory. He cleared his throat nervously.

  “Yes, sir. I just hadn’t seen him for a while. Guess I have to get out on the bridge more often.”

  The exec relaxed, apparently satisfied with Brian’s answer. “The rack’s the only safe place to be when she’s wallowing around like this. And since you’re not seasick and the Count is, how’s about going up to Combat. Get with Garuda. Give him the good news and let’s start getting Combat ready to work again. That’s assuming you can find a radarman on board who isn’t as green as his scope.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The exec left, taking the message board with him topside; the radio messenger apparently was not going to return. Vince was looking at Brian over his coffee cup.

  “Touch a nerve, did we?” he said.

  Brian rolled his eyes. “It was a semi-innocent question.”

  “And that was a semiserious warning to keep thine nose out of nooks and crannies where it ain’t been invited … so to speak.”

  “You saw him the other night. I mean, I thought he’d been on a nine-day toot, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t think that’s it. I think there’s something wrong, something medically wrong. He actually looked kind of drugged.”

  “Now there’s a thought,” said Vince, reaching under the table for the buzzer to summon the steward. They could not leave the dishes on the table with the ship rolling around like this.

  Then he remembered that the Filipino steward had served supper and then hastily preceded the radio messenger to the weather decks. “I forgot; we have to play steward tonight.”

  They gathered up the crockery into the middle of the table. The tablecloth had been deliberately wet down to increase friction under the plates, so they put all the plates and cups and saucers into the middle of the table and then balled them up in the tablecloth, tied it in a wet knot, and stuck the bundle on the deck in the wardroom pantry. Brian noticed that there was plenty of stew left.

  San Diego Maddy would remember that weekend as two nights and two days of suspended reality, nothing but a marathon of the senses, no phones, no wardroom wives, no bank accounting department, no tennis, just Autrey. Even in their most passionate days of romancing, during the weekends with Brian in New York, she had never stayed so close or affixed herself to a man so hard and for so long. And it wasn’t all just sex. They talked a little, dozed, sat in the dark and watched the play of the city’s lights on the night clouds, made scrambled eggs in the early hours of the morning, listened to an after-hours jazz station on the radio, and occasionally slept. Maddy found herself entering a state of renewable exhaustion, ignoring the phone when it rang, staying awake sometimes after he had gone to sleep, savoring his presence, the feel of a live, warm man right there, anytime she reached out, and she often did reach out, just to make sure.

  By Sunday morning, she was hollow-eyed and moving like a zombie, physically worn out, sexually just about burned out, emotionally saturated, but never straying more than six feet away from him. It wasn’t love or infatuation: She was simply taking a prolonged drink, deliberately sating herself with this man, who remained as personally remote as he had been for the entire time she had known him, even after they had become so close physically that a simple touch could start it all up again.

  Autrey the mystery, Autrey the man. She figured part of it was his Indian heritage, although he did not make a big thing about it. There was none of the sagebrush hocus-pocus, obscure references to spirits, or Hollywood red man dialects she had seen on the television whenever American Indian fads rippled through the young white rebel establishment. There was instead a quiet dignity, born, she surmised, of the combination of his ancestry and his own physical strength and knowledge. Among the young Marine officers he instructed, he was a first among equals, an exemplary specimen of finely honed physical conditioning, mental strength and agility, and the unique sort of self-confidence that is created by a hunting spirit and knowledge of the killing and of the military art. But with Maddy, he behaved as an attentive mentor, watchful to see where her needs were taking her, vigorous in his attention, matching the violence of her passion with his own strength, staying with her when she was in control and dominating when she would start to lose control, all the while taking great care in everything he did with her and to her to be exquisitely gentle, as if understanding that she was capable of overrunning her need and breaking.

  She sensed that he had known all along that she was less interested in talking than in just being with him. He took care not to leave her alone and to touch her whenever they were close enough to touch. He made love to her with his hands and his lips as often as he did with his penis, and she learned some things about her own needs that she carefully stored away, delicate scrolls of knowledge, knowledge she would have to impart to her husband one day in such a way as to ensure that he thought of it all by himself. But that was the only thought she had about the future, as she very deliberately narrowed down her time horizon to the next hour of Autrey’s face in her hair or her next encounter with his body.

  By Sunday night, she was finally exhausted. She was barely able to keep her eyes open, wandering around the apartment in a bathrobe, hugging herself while erasing the inevitable thoughts of guilt as quickly as they appeared on the horizons of her mind. He would follow her as she moved about the room, watching, coming to her
whenever she stopped. The only strength left in her was in her right hand, which she locked to his hand when he would join her, wrapping his arms around her from behind, the final expression of the essence of her need. At nightfall, he took her back to the bed and, pulling back the covers, arranged her on her stomach, her arms folded beneath a pillow. He gently turned her face to one side and then pulled the damp mass of her hair to the other side, brushing back the last few reluctant strands off her cheek. He pulled the sheet up over her lower body and then stroked her back until she subsided into a deep sleep.

  He showered, dressed, and left a note, saying he would be back in San Diego Wednesday, that he would call her before he came over. He put it down on the night table, stood there for a minute watching her sleep, and then picked the note up and was gone.

  Two days after getting the message to relieve Long Beach, Hood completed an abbreviated turnover. The seas in the Gulf were still fractious and liberally sprinkled with the debris of the typhoon’s landing ashore in North Vietnam. Great patches of brown water mingled with the gray in the late-afternoon sunset and the surface was littered for miles around with treetops and branches, clumps of thatch from coastal huts, broken boats, and empty oil drums. The storm had taken its toll of animals as well, with bedraggled land birds perching forlornly on bobbing tree branches, which themselves were floating among the puffy carcasses of pigs and water buffalo. The seas were still too rough for safe helo operations, so the PIRAZ boxes came over by light-line transfer, and the briefings were held via sound-powered phones as the two ships steamed along in a side-by-side replenishment formation.

  Austin was more or less back in battery but still not looking too well.

  Brian and Garuda had rounded up the less seasick radar men and posted the Red Crown watch.

  The same seas that were bouncing the two missile ships around had no effect at all on the 90,000-ton carriers to the south, so the air war had already resumed while the small boys were still picking up the pieces and fire-hosing fish food off their weather decks. Brian had listened in on a sound-powered phone extension while Austin took the debrief from his opposite number in Long Beach over the bridge-to-bridge phones. Vince Benedetti was in Main Control, his station anytime the Hood went alongside another ship. Brian noticed the captain in his bridge chair; he looked somewhat better than the last time Brian had seen him. He was talking on a separate circuit with the CO of the Long Beach. Maybe he had just been seasick, Brian thought. The exec was out on the bridge wing, coaching one of the junior ensigns as he learned how to conn alongside, with only 110 feet between the two ships. Up on the forecastle, a bedraggled First Division tended the distance-marker line, hunkering down under the frequent fans of salt spray that thumped up over Hood’s bow.

  The Ops officer in Long Beach had finished and was asking whether they had any questions. Austin shook his head, obviously wanting to get below to his bunk. He turned and raised an eyebrow at Brian. Brian nodded and Austin handed him the phone.

  “What about Migs?” he asked. “Been any feet-wet activity?”

  “That’s a negative,” replied the commander on the other end. Brian could just barely see him crouched down out of the wind up on Long Beach’s towering boxlike superstructure. “We haven’t seen a Mig since you guys helped us prang those two a coupla weeks back. They just don’t even come up with a Talos ship around. Maybe you guys’ll see more action, but I gotta warn you, the CAP are itching to bag something.”

  “We saw a report that the eye of the storm passed just about over Vinh military airfield,” Brian said. “I suspect we won’t see anything in the way of Migs for some time to come.”

  “Yeah, well, those little boogers are pretty good at fixing stuff up sooner than we would expect. Keep your I eyes peeled. If that’s it, we’re ready to pass the Crown.” Brian gave him a wait-one and asked the captain whether they had permission to take the station. The captain gave him a small wave of his hand and Brian said the magic words.

  “We got it, Commander. Have a good trip.”

  Brian hung up the phone and went back into Combat, where Fox Hudson and Garuda Barry were studying the message air plans for the two carriers down on Yankee Station. Both men were wedged between consoles and stanchions in order to stay upright. The ship still rolled around enough to warrant the use of seat belts on the console chairs.

  “We’ve got it,” Brian announced.

  “Red Crown, aye,” replied Garuda, slipping down into the SWIC chair. He punched some buttons and verified that Long Beach had gone radio-silent hi the link. “Yup.

  We got it.”

  Over the next six days, the ship settled back into the routine of the Red Crown station, or at least the mavens of Combat did. The weather flattened out and actually began to cool off as the Indochinese winter approached and the northeast monsoon began to form, as if the typhoon had blown away the last vestiges of the hot season. Vince Benedetti was back on the evaluator watch bill, so the evaluator watches rotated and all three evaluators enjoyed a decent proportion of rest to watch standing.

  For Brian, coming back to the second line period was much less of a strain than the first forty-five days.

  He now knew his way around Combat, and the first period was fresh enough in his mind that he knew his way around the Gulf air picture, as well.

  There had been heavy reconnaissance flights the week after the storm, both to assess damage in country and to evaluate any vulnerabilities that might have been created. Both carriers had been active all week, but there was no word on resuming heavy strikes against the North. On the sixth night after Long Beach’s departure, the Migs reappeared.

  Brian had the 1800 to 2400 watch and was plowing through the nightly stack of message traffic at the evaluator’s table. They were in the pause between carrier cycles, when one carrier went offline and the next began her eighteen-hour duty cycle. Garuda sat SWIC, sequencing through the active tracks to see if they all were paired closely with video. The duty AIC was idle, his BARCAP having gone back to the carrier without relief onstation. He would get new CAP on the 2100 launch, which was a half hour away. The AIC was doctoring a mug of evil-looking coffee when the surface tracker, of all people, called over to SWIC on intercom.

  “SWIC, Surface Module.”

  “SWIC.”

  “SWIC, I got a piece of video on the ten radar that seems to be moving overland. May be a ghost or something, but it just don’t look right.”

  “SWIC, aye, and mark it.”

  The tracker injected and then transmitted a tiny bright box of light to the SWIC console as Garuda changed down the range scale from 250 miles to 25 on his picture, looked for a minute, and then selected the SPS-10 surface-search-radar presentation. He found the light box at once and stared at it.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Garuda muttered. “I think there’s skin in there.”

  “Skin in where?” asked Brian, overhearing the remark but not looking up from the stack of message traffic.

  “I think we may have us a bandit creepin’ through the weeds near Vinh, say, two-eight-five for forty-four miles.

  Little bitty piece a video in there. AIC, SWIC!”

  “AIC, aye.” The controller hurriedly set his mug down and slipped back into his console seat.

  “Go special track on the light box you are receiving now. Switch to the ten.”

  “The ten? The surface search?!”

  “Do it. That’s where the business is.”

  “AIC, aye, going special track, on the ten.” He switched his range scale down to fifty miles, switched from the SPS-48 air-search radar to the surface-search radar, and then offset the scope picture to center the light box. Used to controlling fighters, he had never even looked at the short-range surface-search-radar presentation.

  Typically, the maximum range of the surface-search radar was inside the minimum range of his air-search radar. When he had the light box with its tiny smears of video centered, he commanded expanded video, which blew up the light
box from a quarter-inch-sized box to a display that covered his entire screen. Clearly visible in among all the land clutter was a bit of video, moving from left to right. The AIC inserted an unknown track symbol and commanded the computer to track the symbol and its video in close control.

  Insertion of the unknown track prompted a squawk from the track supe, who called SWIC asking what it was. SWIC responded with his customary fanging.

  “Why, it’s an air unknown moving overland, Supe.

  You know, the enemy. You mean to tell me you guys in the Cave never saw it? And that a guy in surface saw it before you did? Are we asleep back there again?

  Are we—”

  “Okay, Garuda,” Brian said, standing behind the SWIC chair.

  “We got a bandit, no shit?”

  “Sure looks like it, Mr. H. But he’s low, really low.

  It’s showing up on the SPS-ten but not on either of the air-search radars.”

  “SWIC, Track Supe, Alfa Whiskey wants to know—”

  “SWIC, aye, tell him it’s valid and we hold skin.”

  Brian picked up the bat phone and buzzed while Garuda and the AIC refined the tracking data. It was movie time in the wardroom.

  “Captain.”

  “Cap’n, Evaluator, we have a possible Mig, two-eightfiye, about forty-five miles, heading north, very low and visible only on the surface-search radar. We have a track in the system.”

  “This is near Vinh? I thought they were out of business because of the typhoon.”

  “Yes, sir, so the Intel people said. I guess nobody told the bad guys.”

  “He’s out of range, right?”

  “Of our systems? Yes, sir. And we’ve no BARCAP just now—we’re in the cycle shift.”

  “Those little bastards keep track, don’t they? Okay.

  Put a missile system on him just so’s he knows he’s being watched. Let me know if anything changes.”

  “Aye, sir.” Brian hung up and ordered Garuda to assign the unknown to a tracking system. Garuda sent the assignment over the network and one of the Spooks rumbled into life above them. The bat phone buzzed.