The Edge of Honor

by P. T. Deutermann

  The exec came in as Brian was finishing his sandwich.

  He went directly to the coffee urn and drew a cup. He sat down at the head of the senior table and began working on a message draft, ignoring the other officers in the wardroom. Everyone had been talking about Garlic’s demise, but after looking at the exec’s face, no one wanted to interrupt him for more news. At last, they glanced at one another and began to gather up plates and cups. Brian wanted to know, as did everyone, whether there were any more details on why Garlic had expired, but the exec was studiously ignoring everyone. Brian looked around at the other officers, gave them the high sign to leave, and followed them out of the wardroom.

  He was surprised to find Chief Jackson waiting outside.

  Jackson told Brian he was waiting for the XO but that he would like to speak to him if he could.

  Brian glanced at his watch. “I’m going up to my stateroom; if you can be up there in twenty minutes or so, come ahead. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.

  I’m coming off six hours in Combat.”

  “I’ll be there,” Jackson said.

  Fifteen minutes later, he was knocking on Brian’s door. Brian was sitting in his bathrobe, yawning and sifting through his in basket when the Sheriff came in.

  Brian indicated a chair.

  “What ya got, Sheriff?”

  “I’ve got the name of the guy who runs the drug operation in the ship,”

  Jackson said. “Only problem is, my source and only corroboration kicked the bucket down on the mess decks about an hour ago.”

  “That guy Garlic?”

  “Yup. The snip’s loan shark. He’d been accepting cash from our guy and putting it into his loans operation. The feds call it money laundering.

  It was a way to put a cash hoard to work, especially an illegal cash hoard.”

  “And the guy is—”

  “EM One Wilson—the electrician they call Bullet.”

  “I vaguely remember him. He’s a main-hole snipe, isn’t he? Was this guy Garlic aware that he was moving drug money?”

  “Had to be. How else could an E-Six be coming up with boxes of cash every month? But I suspect no questions were asked and no answers given.”

  “Why did Garlic give him up?”

  “Because we made it clear to him that we’d shut him down and prosecute his ass for being an accomplice to a narcotics operations if he didn’t.

  If he cooperated, we’d let him stay in business and testify as a government witness.”

  “We?”

  “I took the chief bosun. Garlic is—was—bigger than me.”

  Brian thought about it. With Garlic to testify and theoretically with some evidence of the money changing hands, they could have nailed this guy Bullet. But without Garlic, all they had was a name. Jackson was watching him work it out.

  “Yeah. No Garlic, no witness, no proof. We’ve got a name, but we kind of had that name, anyway. That’s the reason I wanted to come see you, even before Garlic croaked. I’m not sure where to go with this now.”

  Brian nodded slowly. Neither was he.

  “Have you briefed the exec?”

  “No, sir. Frankly, I’m almost afraid to.” He filled Brian in on their concerns about a large-scale investigation and the racial angle. Brian noted the chief’s embarrassment when he brought up the subject of race.

  “We’re kind of at a brick wall, as I see it. The command is already spooked over these mast cases; we don’t have any real proof that Bullet is the man, and between the heat we might get from the task force commander and the possibility of a racial reaction, I think the XO’d step on our necks.”

  “So maybe the thing to do is to keep plugging, see if you can get enough on Bullet to get him to confess or to take him to jail on the evidence.

  You go that way, nobody in authority has told you not to pursue it. The other way, I think you’re right: They may shut you down officially, and then if you kept after it, you’re disobeying orders.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s kind of how we see it, too.” Jackson was rubbing the black plastic bill of his cap with his thumb while he thought. “But we’re not exactly sure what to do next to go get that evidence.”

  “Well, for one thing, where’s Garlic’s bank? If there’s more of that marked money in it, you have stronger evidence that some of the drug money was getting to him.”

  Jackson stared at him. “Damn, you’re right. I forgot all about the marked twenties. And if Bullet is our man, he’s going to have a cash stash somewheres, too. Yeah, follow the money.”

  “And follow Bullet. Watch him. Bug him. Put the pressure on. Hell, sic Chief Louie Jesus on him, put some of that evil spirit medicine on him.

  If he’s not the guy, he’ll come forward pretty quick to complain about it. if he is, he’ll go armadillo on you. Meantime, find Garlic’s bank.

  Now, I gotta get my tree time.”

  Jackson stood up. “Right, Mr. Holcomb. We’ll keep you cut in. And I appreciate the support.”

  “Just remember, Sheriff, support from a guy who’s already out on a limb isn’t something to bet the farm on, if I can mix my metaphors.”

  “We want this bastard, Mr. Holcomb; we’ll take support where ever we can get it. Good night, sir.”

  During the next ten days and nights, the tempo of operations over the Gulf steadily increased. Passage of typhoon winds had produced a rich target list by blowing away many of the elaborate camouflage structures all over North Vietnam. The recce runs were bringing back unheard-of tallies of artillery parks, ammo dumps, and fuel farms, all of which revealed preparations for a major push into the South. While there was no formal U. S. announcement of full-scale bombing operations over the North, the President had authorized a steady escalation in the U. S. air attacks, especially in the southern half of North Vietnam. The SAR helos were seeing plenty of action, and both carriers were flying at least part of the time, which in turn meant that Hood’s air controllers were exceedingly busy. The task force developed a routine of increasingly active operations from about 0500 until 2300, after which things subsided for both the Americans and the North Vietnamese until the next morning.

  Brian, Vince Benedetti, and Count Austin settled into their watch rotation, each silently glad for the chance to stand one in three instead of the mind-numbing port and starboard. Brian found himself better able to sustain the watches by being able to sleep from midnight to 0530 at least two nights out of three. He was also becoming much better attuned to the sounds and electronic cues of the operations displayed on the scopes, and he no longer had to badger the SWICs every few minutes with “what’s that?” questions. He was also able to spend more time managing his weapons department, getting to know the people better, and catching up on the Navy’s unending paperwork.

  Brian thought he detected a new measure of respect from his own people after the mast cases. The three miscreants had been flown off the ship on the afternoon of the mast proceedings, showing nervous grins as they suited up in cranial helmets and life jackets for their sojourn to the Philippines and trial by court-martial.

  Some of the more hip enlisted, lined up on top of the helo hangar, had sent them off with surreptitious thumbs-up and peace signs, envious that they were going home, no matter by what route and to what fate. Brian had instituted a crash training program in Fox division, using the FROM chiefs to sit the consoles in plot side by side with the junior enlisted men. His plans to conduct missile tracking drills with the support tracks over the Gulf were not as successful, as the powerful Spook radars generated real alarms on cockpit instrument panels, and there were enough enemy alarms showing up already with the increased air activity over the North. But after a week, there was visible improvement among the men in plot.

  The only discordant note came when the exec had watched a training session one night that did not go perfectly. He had turned to Brian, who had the evaluator watch.

  “You better hope nothing happens, Mr. Holcomb, because if it does and
your missile system makee-learns fuck it up, I’m going to hold you responsible.”

  “I think I’m responsible in any event, XO,” Brian had replied. The exec had given him a frosty look and left.

  Brian noted that the captain continued to hibernate in his cabin.

  Operating alone in her box, the ship made no maneuvers requiring his presence on the bridge, and the evaluators’ main contact with him was through the bat phone. The exec checked in during the day when things got hectic over the beach, but he, too, seemed to be holing up in his cabin and attending to paperwork and people problems, the mainstay of any exec’s life aboard ship. Count Austin had made a vaguely displeased reference to “interest” from CTF 77’s staff in the drug incident.

  Austin seemed to think that Brian’s action in precipitating the report chits had done some damage to the ship’s reputation. Brian had responded that people using drugs aboard the ship did the real damage to the ship’s reputation, but Austin had only scoffed at his naivetd.

  Their relationship cooled, and Brian had the distinct impression that Austin was creating distance between them, as if he anticipated that Brian was going to take some kind of fall for interfering in the Hood way of doing things. Vince Benedetti remained on the fence about it, one day talking wishfully about doing the same thing in Engineering to the men he knew were still using, then adamant the next day that he could never afford to knock that many people off the watch bill and still be able to run four main engineering spaces. Brian pointed out that, eventually, if enough guys were smoking dope in the main spaces, the decision would be made for him. It turned out to be a prophetic statement.

  On the evening of the eleventh day after turnover, the 1MC burst into life with the chilling announcement of a Class Bravo fire in Number One Fire Room. In Navy parlance, Class Alfa was paper and wood; Class Charlie was an electrical fire. But Class Bravo meant an oil fire, a major disaster potentially in the making down below.

  Vince Benedetti was standing the evaluator watch in Combat. When the word was called, he had bolted from D and D and was crashing down the ladder as Brian was opening his stateroom door.

  “Take the watch!” Vince yelled as he flew down the next ladder. Brian grabbed his flashlight and ran up to Combat as the general quarters alarm began to sound.

  There he found the Weapons people busily taking their systems off the line in anticipation of power fluctuations.

  Garuda Barry had the SWIC watch. He was standing next to the eyaluator’s desk, his headphones pushed to1 the back of his head as he transmitted a message to the staff down on Yankee Station via Air Force Green about the fire. The captain and the exec were apparently already out on the bridge. Count Austin strode through the door to Combat, followed by the rest of the CIC GQ team.

  Everyone in Combat was tight-faced. A Class Bravo fire in a main engineering space was serious enough to warrant the immediate setting of the tightest damage control condition, material condition Zebra, throughout the ship. Condition Zebra effectively closed the ship up into hundreds of watertight compartments. An oil fire in a main space usually meant that pressurized oil, either fuel ou or a lubricant, was burning out of control in a confined, hot space, turning the cramped and tangled maze of propulsion machinery, steam pipes, and pressurized water lines into a roaring firebox and creating a fireball that sucked up all the oxygen in seconds and made escape from the space almost impossible. If left uncontrolled, main-space fires could lead to boiler explosions or steam-line ruptures that would release superheated 980degF steam into the affected space and even into adjoining main-propulsion spaces. If the watch slanders could not get a Class Bravo under control in the first minute, their only option was to try to shut off the source of the oil and then to get to the escape trunk or dive into the bilges, where they would lie on their backs in the rolling bilgewater, exposing only enough of their faces to get some air, while they watched the cataclysm develop above them and prayed that there would not be a main steam leak.

  Austin formally assumed the watch in D and D and Brian manned his GQ station in the weapons module.

  There was none of the usual chatter and questions from the off-watch people as everyone waited in tense silence for word that the fire was under control. The lights blinked a couple of times when the engineers switched power centers as they isolated the foward fire room.

  While the officers listened to the damage-control efforts going on over the bitch box between Main Engineering Control and the bridge, Garuda continued to make radio reports to the staff down on the carriers. The other watch slanders communicated with their aircraft to explain why Red Crown was coming off the air. Brian checked to see that the missile systems and the SPS-48 radar had been put in standby. The Operations people had secured the TACAN and the secondary radars. In theory, the engineers would shift the electrical load to the after main plant’s generators, which should not be affected by a problem in the forward plant. Everyone understood that the operative word was should. With a Class Bravo fire going in a boiler room, nothing was certain.

  It took thirty minutes before a damage-control team was able to enter the forward fire room, climbing down the escape hatch from the weather decks, lugging heavy fire hoses, and breathing through DBAs. They reported back through sound-powered phone circuits that the fire had burned itself out. It had apparently been centered in the area of a main feed pump, and the probable cause was lube oil spraying out of a lube oil strainer onto the hot steel casing of a steam-driven main feed pump.

  The fire room’s crew had been able to pull fires under the steaming boiler and shut down the feed pump before diving into the bilges, which had allowed the fire to burn itself out. The damage-control team reported that they were ventilating the space, whose atmosphere was almost totally obscured by heavy black smoke. There was no word on injuries among the boiler room’s crew of four watch standers. Austin forwarded this information to the staff via Green.

  “Damned lucky if that’s all we got,” observed Garuda, fondling an unlighted cigarette. Smoking was not permitted during general quarters.

  “I was on a destroyer once; we had six guys killed in a Class Bravo fire. Melted a six-hundred-pound steam line. Stripped all the meat off their bones in about fifteen seconds. All they found were six skeletons, bones clean as a hound’s tooth. Bad shit.

  Real bad shit.”

  “That’ll be enough of that kind of talk,” barked Austin as several radarmen started to look sick. “I’m waiting for a ‘power stable’ report, and then we get Red Crown back on the air.”

  Brian waited along with the rest of the GQ crew as the situation was sorted out down below. Although Combat was full of people, all the console screens were dark and the radios silent. He had a sinking feeling that the days of three-section evaluator watches had just come to a close. The exec came into Combat a few minutes later and gave Austin a final wrap-up report to be sent to the staff. As Austin wrote down the details, the exec saw Brian watching him from the weapons module. He gave Brian a look that seemed to say, Don’t start … Then he focused again on the report.

  Brian wondered what they would find when they did the investigation—which one of Vince’s stars had been high when he tried to shift lube-oil strainers. He remembered from Destroyer School that an oil leak from a feed pump strainer was almost unheard of, but a mistake in shifting from the pressurized strainer to the alternate strainer was a well-documented cause of oil fires in boiler rooms. The exec went back out to the bridge.

  “Main Control reports power stable on two B generator,” announced a GQ phone talker. Austin gave a nod and Garuda ordered the various module supervisors to begin restoring the electronics systems. Garuda brought the operations program back to life with his finger drill on the master key sets. Console alert buzzers began to sound all over Combat. Fifteen minutes later, the bridge passed the word to secure from GQ.

  “All stations, SWIC,” Garuda bawled over the intercom.

  “Gimme manned and ready.”

&
nbsp; Brian walked into D and D and stood next to Austin.

  “So who takes the watch?” he asked.

  Austin glanced up from the message he was writing and then looked at his watch. “Oh, right. Vince. Let’s see. I’ve been off the longest,” he said. “I’ll finish out Vince’s eighteen to twenty-four, and you pick up the mid. After that, we’ll have to see what happens.”

  Brian nodded. “I think I can guess what will happen,” he said, his voice already weary. But Austin was studying his incident-report message.

  Brian went below to grab a few hours of sleep.

  The exec made it official the next morning after officers’ call. The chief engineer needed to come off the evaluator watch bill to oversee the repairs in the forward fire room.

  Austin would have the 0600 to 1200 and the 1800 to 2400 watches; Brian would take the 1200 to 1800 and the 2400 to 0600 watches. Brian’s heart sank at the thought of another month of the midnight-to-dawn stints as evaluator.

  Even when he tried to budget time for sleep, his body resisted the strain of staying awake during his entire natural rest period. The exec saw the look on his face.

  “You said the other day you were ready to take it down to just the officers and chiefs,” he said, closing his notebook. “Well, this is what happens when the wardroom gets shorthanded.”

  Austin studied the deck as the exec walked forward, aware of the rebuke hidden in the exec’s words and its relation to Brian’s action against the three missile techs.

  Brian said nothing as the other officers gathered into departmental groups. Austin paused to speak to him while the Weapons Department people waited.

  “It won’t be for that long,” Austin said. “There was surprisingly little damage. Nobody really got hurt.

  There’s some burned lagging and some copper tubing melted around the feed pump, but they’re mostly cleaning up down there, what with smoke soot all over everything.