The Edge of Honor

by P. T. Deutermann

  Brian winced when he did it, but the effect was almost immediate. After about a minute, the captain exhaled, a long and weary sighing sound, and discarded the syringe.

  He shuddered once and then looked up at Brian.

  “So now you know. The captain is a morphine addict.

  Sort of, anyway. The difference is that I don’t do this for fun, Brian.

  I have a cancer in my guts, and this stuff controls the pain. Only I’m about at the end of my string.” He sat back, resting his left side on the bomb casing.

  “At the beginning of the cruise, I needed morphine only twice a day. Not too bad, except for the last couple of hours of each period. But I learned to schedule it, see.

  Take it at oh-six hundred so I could see people, do my job, especially in the mornings. Then some pills around lunchtime so I could get through the afternoon, when the ops got heavy in CIC. My second shot around eighteen hundred so I could be up to it on the twenty to twenty four, the night ops stuff.” He held his breath for ten seconds, coughed once, and then continued.

  “The doc was my ally. And the exec, of course. They both owed me.

  Professional favors. I made a deal with them. If I had gone to the docs ashore, they’d have yanked me off the ship in a heartbeat, stuffed me into a hospital, and taken my plumbing out. If it hadn’t already got loose, I’d spend the rest of my life with a bag of shit under my shirt.”

  He paused again before tilting his head up to stare directly at Brian.

  “See, John Bell Hood was my big ship command. This was the battleship I was never going to have, because there weren’t any more battleships.

  I’ve been in the Navy a long, long time. White hat to four-striper. Done everything. Only in the American Navy is that possible these days. Hood was my big ship. No way was I going to trade that for a plastic bag.

  Miss. my wartime WESTPAC cruise. My ship, the crew I trained up, the wardroom nurtured. So I made a deal. The doc would keep me in meds for the cruise. When we got back, I would turn myself in.”

  Brian nodded. “Only the cancer got ahead of you.” A battle lantern nearby expired, its relay buzzing for fifteen seconds before the light dimmed out.

  “It sure as hell did. These last days, since we left Subic, it’s been terrible. They can give me only so much morphine. The body can take only so much, and they couldn’t hit the ship’s supply so hard that we wouldn’t have any for, well, for what we have on our hands tonight. The doc faked some of it—turned in reports saying stuff had expired, had been destroyed, got some more. When we were in Subic, I checked into a private clinic up near Baguio, the resort city.”

  “Ah. I saw you when you returned, when we got underway for the storm.

  You looked—”

  “I looked like death warmed over, I suspect. They did an exploratory at the clinic. Closed it right back up. Too far gone. The Filipino doc there said I had maybe a month or so. Said I ought to tell my wife.”

  “Mrs. Huntington doesn’t know?”

  “I haven’t told her. That’s not the same as saying she doesn’t know. Navy wife. They know everything, after a while. You may not necessarily want to know how they learn in every case, either.”

  Brian nodded, understanding that comment perfectly.

  “And the druggies in the crew: Yes, I knew the scope of the problem. At first, the XO told me everything. It was his idea to use the chiefs to keep the dopers in their boxes if we could.”

  “You couldn’t stand to expose the problem because it would expose you.”

  “Right. Simple as that. When you came aboard and started asking questions, I wondered if it was all going to blow up. The XO suggested we checkmate you with the fitrep. Worked for a while, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. But dopers on the missile systems—I just couldn’t stand that anymore.”

  The captain fell silent, looking across the wrecked module, looking at each piece of twisted equipment, at the bloodstains and human bits showered across the bulkheads. He shook his head.

  “You were right,” he whispered finally. “The Navy way, the regulation way—always the best way. Always. I knew that. We thought we could hold it together. We thought the problem here was no better or worse than that in any other ship out here. That’s what other skippers were doing—getting by, getting the job done, getting the ship back home in one piece and with our careers intact. Should have known better, I guess.”

  Brian nodded slowly. “We almost pulled it off, actually.”

  “What was the problem with System Two? The one that cost you time?”

  “I don’t know, sir. FROM Three Warren was on the console down below. The chief thinks the kid panicked when it got hot and heavy. Maybe he did, maybe not.

  One of the first class was with him, but he was probably sitting System One. Maybe if we had had a more senior man on the console … I just don’t know.”

  The captain nodded. “You realize that’s just what the XO is going to say—you come along, stick your nose in, and decide to clean house, and then when the shit hit the fan, we had novices on the consoles.”

  “I guess he has a point,” Brian said, his voice low.

  “No, he doesn’t. Look at me. Look at me. You did the right thing. He and I did the wrong thing. Look, there’s going to be a serious investigation, probably a court of inquiry, on this incident. Those things have a tendency to stray beyond their immediate objective. The drug thing is going to come out. There might even be a court-martial or two. You just tell the truth, from start to finish. I’ll back you up. If I can.”

  “If you can?”

  The Captain gave a twisted smile and tipped his chin at the bomb. “If I don’t screw this up. And if I live that long. Now, you get out of here.

  But first get me a set of phones. If I succeed, I want to be able to tell somebody it’s clear in here. Keep everybody out until I call.”

  Brian scrounged a set of sound-powered phones from the darkened and deserted bridge and took them back to the captain, who was moving his tools on a foul-weather jacket spread across the deck plates. Brian plugged the jack into the JL circuit. He went back out into the passageway and unscrewed two battle lanterns and brought them back, positioning them so the yellow spots of light shined directly on the plate.

  “Good,” the captain said. “Now shove off.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. Good luck.”

  The captain twisted around to look at him. “Good luck to you, young man.

  One day, you’ll have a command of your own. Just make sure you play by the rules.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Thirty minutes later, Jackson headed back up after officers’ passageway, navigating the passageway by keeping one hand out to touch a bulkhead.

  The visibility in the smoke-filled area was down to about zero. He stopped when his foot slipped on something on the deck and he felt a breath of rising air against his hand. He groped around in the murk and put his flashlight on the bulkheads, trying to figure out where he was.

  The passageway was almost totally obscured by smoke now, but he had definitely felt moving air, cooler air, from below his knees. He groped around with his right hand and found a step-aside alcove. Here, definitely here. He felt the brass wheel with his fingers, and as he did, the hatch undogged and bounced up on its springs, once again blowing away the smoke for an instant. He looked down into the trunk and saw the hatch to the shaft alley wide open at the bottom of the ladder leading down from the passageway.

  There was a flashlight probing around down there. Somebody there. An investigator from Repair Three? Looked like there was some flooding down there, water sloshing around, almost over the deck plates. But would a DC guy leave hatches open? Suspicious, Jackson latched the scuttle hatch fully back. He started down the hatch, only to have his EEBD begin to give out, forcing him to climb back out to unwrap another EEBD and change the hood.

  Then he started down again.

  He climbed down the first ladder carefully, having
trouble seeing through the hood as the cooler air fogged the plastic. He thought about taking it off, but there was still smoke present, and he didn’t want to waste the pure air in the cylinder, which, once fired, discharged until it was depleted. He took the spare EEBDs out of his pockets and laid them out on the deck. He could hear water spraying in the pump room below, and from the sound of it, there was a pretty good leak going down there. He tried to wipe the hood clear, but it only smeared. He knelt down on one knee and peered into the shaft alley pump room, twisting the hood to find some clear plastic.

  He was stunned to see Rockheart collecting a large pile of money from a bag of what looked like rags. Rockheart?

  He leaned back, away from the hatch, in case Rockheart happened to look up. With a sinking feeling in his gut, he figured it out. Goddamn Martinez had been right—there had been a second guy. Rockheart in the passageway outside their door the night they had visited Garlic.

  Rockheart devising the setup on Bullet. Rockheart the MAA, with access to his office and effectively anything in it. Jesus H. Christ. An MAA!

  Down there with a huge bag of money. Drug money—it had to be. That son of a bitch! Deserting his station in Combat to rescue his drug money. He peeped over the edge again, staring in disbelief at the amount of cash—hundreds, thousands of dollars in cash—that Rocky was stuffing back into the rag bag. And he wasn’t wearing a hood.

  Enraged at the betrayal, Jackson lost it. He ripped the EEBD hood off his own head, put his feet carefully on the ladder, and then started down, facing forward on the ladder, being careful not to make any noise that could be heard above the spray from the broken pump coupling.

  When he reached the next to the last rung above the propeller shaft’s cage, he collected himself and sprang halfway across the pump room, landing on the metal deck plates with a loud clang and hitting Rocky on the side of his head at the temple with his clenched fist as Rocky started to turn around and look up. The blow knocked Rocky backward, fetching him up against the tilted body of the fire pump, where he slumped into a moaning heap, the rag bag spilling its contents into the bilges.

  Jackson straightened up, his right hand stinging. He walked over to where Rocky was lying and kicked him in the stomach. Rocky gasped and doubled up into a tight ball, his eyes shut, his face white with pain.

  Jackson reached for him, grabbing a handful of shirt.

  “You motherfucker!” he shouted. “You son of a bitch!

  You’re a fucking MAA! I trusted you—the whole fucking ship trusted you, and look at you.” He slapped Rocky across the face with his left hand.

  “All this fucking time, we’re lookin at Bullet, and it’s you Guys dying up there, guys drowned next door in the fire room, ship’s on fire, and you’re down here getting your fucking drug money! You bastard!”

  Rocky opened his eyes and tried to speak, but Jackson continued to slap him in the face, screaming at him, incoherent in his rage at the depth of Rockheart’s betrayal.

  He didn’t see Rocky’s right hand reach for the nest of loose cables at the base of the fire pump’s motor, didn’t see him rip a 440-volt cable out, felt too late the sudden movement by his knee, and then a giant humming vise grabbed the entire left side of his body and drew him headlong and paralyzed into blackness.

  Chief Martinez bounced off the bulkhead for the fifteenth time and cursed it roundly for being in his way, his voice muffled by the OBA mask. He was trying to get back up the after officers’ passageway to the mess decks to find some more OBA canisters. Martinez normally headed up Repair Two, stationed in the forward part of the ship, but since there was no damage in his area, he had taken his firefighting team amidships to help the exec and repair teams Five and Three with the fuel fires there. They had been making progress until some of the aviation fuel, pooled in pockets around the boat decks, had been sucked into an inadvertently energized supply vent fan, spreading an aerosol mixture of fuel and air into some of the officers’ staterooms, where it had ignited with an ominous roar beneath their feet. The exec had reorganized the teams and sent Martinez and his repair party into the ship to come up from the fantail and attack the fires from the inside. Martinez had dispatched his four man OBA team into the thick of it, unsnarled the fire hoses with the rest of the DC team, and then gone to get more breathing canisters.

  The smoke in the passageway was now so thick that he could only feel his way forward, relying on his day-today memory of the passageway to know where he was.

  As he went past the after officers’ head area, he wished he could be dragging Bullet into the smoke with him.

  Pissed him off, they came so close. But now they knew, thanks to Rockheart. He knew he was nearing the mess decks area, near Two Firehouse, when he could no longer feel the heat from the fires aft. But the smoke from the fuel fires was a solid, toxic, roiling black wall of soot particles, carbon monoxide, and other poisonous gases.

  The chief wore a red damage-control steel helmet on his head, his entire face contained in the OBA mask, perched above the black canvas breathing bags on his massive chest. His khaki uniform was completely soaked through with firefighting water and perspiration, and his hands were covered in heavy asbestos gauntlets. The miner’s light strapped to his helmet was totally useless in the smoke; he had long since turned it off.

  He swore again as he slipped on something on the deck and nearly lost his balance, his arms freewheelingtor a few seconds until he found the bulkhead. He sensed what felt like a current of air rising from the deck, knelt down, awkward in the OBA rig, and took off a glove. He found a hatch open, from which a rising current of air was flowing. Suddenly, he could even see a little bit. He snapped on his helmet light, realizing this was the hatch down to the starboard shaft alley. He remembered catching a couple of his stars sleeping down there when they were supposed to be on a working party.

  Why the hell was the hatch open? Then he heard a noise, an unmistakable gargling, gabbling noise a few feet away in the gloom of the smoke. What the fuck! He moved across the passageway, once again encountering something slippery on the deck. He shone the light down and saw blood smears on the deck. He heard the noise again and found Seaman Coltrane, suddenly visible in an alcove. The air rising from the hatch had scoured out a pocket of breathable air in the alcove opposite, and Coltrane was curled up in a ball, holding his bloody head.

  The chief pushed his mask aside.

  “Coltrane, what the fuck? What’re you doin’ here?” he asked, before remembering whom he was talking to.

  Like asking a door what day it was. Except that Coltrane had grabbed the chief’s sleeve and was trying desperately to tell him something, pointing down and gesturing at the nearly invisible open scuttle across the way, babbling incoherently, pointing to his head, then miming a—what? A punch?

  “What? What is it?! Calm down. Spell it out for me.”

  Coltrane stopped struggling and looked at his chief.

  Then he reached out and took the grease pencil from Martinez’s OBA pocket and bent down on hands and knees. Printing laboriously on the deck tile, he spelled out the name Rockheart on the tile deck. Then he pointed to his head and gestured urgently down at the hatch.

  “Jesus Christ, Coltrane. I didn’t know you could write.

  All this fucking time—wait a minute. Rockheart did this?

  He hit you? And he’s down there in the shaft alley?

  Right now?”

  Coltrane nodded vigorously, then winced with pain.

  Martinez looked over at the opened hatch. What the fuck was going on around here? What would Rockheart be doing down in the shaft alley? He stood up, the light from his helmet again obscured in smoke. With his mask askew, he immediately started coughing. He squatted down again.

  What was Rocky, a senior radarman, doing in the starboard shaft alley in the middle of a no-shitter crisis, the ship on fire, everything all fucked up, and everybody going crazy? He knelt down on one knee and grabbed Coltrane’s chin in one massive paw.

&n
bsp; “You stay where you are. You got an air pocket’s long as that hatch is open. I’ll come back, get you when I’m done down there. But don’t try to go nowheres, ‘cause it’s all smoke in either direction. Keep your head right on the deck. Got it?”

  Coltrane nodded again, this time with more care. Martinez stood up and moved over to the hatch. He looked down, surprised that he could see anything, but the engineering spaces had their own independent air-supply systems, and this one was still running. The ladder led down to the next hatch, which was also locked back and fully open. Something definitely going on here, something not right. In the yellow glow of the battle lanterns, he spotted the shadow of somebody moving around down there. He began to strip off the OBA—with his girth, he could never fit through the hatches with an OBA on. He stripped off his mask, laid aside the breathing bags and harness, and started carefully down the ladder. He reached the vestibule below and heard the spray of water from a ruptured line. Being very careful now, he got behind the hatch and looked around its edges into the shaft alley. There he saw the inert form of Chief Jackson sprawled next to the fire pump, his left leg bent under him. And across the pump room was Radarman First Class and Master-at-Arms Rockheart, gathering the last sodden bills out of the water and stuffing them into a rag bag full of money that he was clutching to his chest.

  And suddenly Martinez knew. It wasn’t Rocky the radarman, was it? It was Rocky the main man, the second man. Them, Garlic had said. Money from them. And it was Rockheart that night who’d been yelling at Coltrane outside Jackson’s door. It hadn’t been Coltrane listening to them, it had been Rockheart. And somehow, Jackson had caught on, too, and Rocky had taken him out. Rocky, after his god damned money in the shaft alley, thinking the ship was going to go down, which it might. As he watched, Rocky straightened up, causing Martinez to jerk his head back. He saw Rocky’s leg strike out at Jackson’s chest and then he saw Rocky’s hands reach for the ladder rails beneath him. Okay, fuckhead, you got the cowboy, but you ain’t gonna get the Injun.