The Edge of Honor

by P. T. Deutermann

  “He been to triage?”

  “No, Doc. Chief here just brought him up from down below. I don’t know—”

  “He bleeding?” the MO asked impatiently.

  “Head wound, Doc,” grunted Martinez. “He’s breathin’ okay. He can wait, I guess.”

  “Put him in that corner, but if he’s not bleeding, I’ve got—” He gestured around the room and turned back to the table. Garuda and Martinez put Jackson down in a corner of the wardroom. His uniform was wet, but there did not appear to be any serious wounds. Brian could not see the head wound.

  “Where’d you—” he began.

  I “I’ll tell ya later, if that’s okay, boss. Where you two ‘ bound? The ship’s full of goddamn smoke.”

  “Let’s get back outside,” Brian said.

  Once out in the passageway, he briefed the boatswain on what they had topside and what they planned to do.

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr. H., if he’s spaced out and fuckin’ around with a bomb, what we oughta be doin’ is getting the fuck back outside.”

  “I can’t do that, Boats. When I left him, he was fairly alert and operational, and probably the only guy in the ship who could shut that thing down with some hope of success. Now that I know different, I can’t just leave him to it. He’ll set it off, kill himself, and do some big-time damage to the ship.”

  Martinez looked at Garuda as though asking for some support, but Garuda just shrugged, as if to say, He’s the lieutenant and yeah, he’s crazy, but I’m dutybound to lend a hand.

  “From what you’re sayin’,” the chief said, “Combat’s fucked, anyway. And if it was me and I had a cancer hi my belly, a bomb would beat what he’s lookin’ at.”

  “I know, Chief. I expect that’s part of it. But I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I’d left him up there like that.”

  “What you’re all going to do is get back out on the fo’c’sle,” a voice ordered. They turned, to find the exec standing on the top tread of the ladder, an OH A twisted across his chest, the breathing mask dangling over his shoulder by the two black hoses, his uniform soaked and his face caked with sweat and soot except for the white patch where his mask had been. “I’ll take care of Captain Huntington.”

  Brian stepped forward to face him. “He specifically ordered you not to, XO. If it goes wrong up there, we lose both the CO and the XO.”

  “It’s too late to play hero, Holcomb,” the exec sneered. “It’s because of you we’re in this mess, and I’m not about to let you redeem yourself with some grandstand play. You’re going to pay for this.”

  Brian’s face turned white in the gloom of the passageway.

  “Grandstand play?” he whispered, and then his voice rose in fury. “Is that what you call it? If we leave that man up there, his head full of morphine, he’s going to set that god damned thing off. And then we take another hit, a five-hundred-pound bomb that’s already inside the ship.

  How about just once you start thinking about the ship, XO? Not about your career, your political reputation, or any of that shit. The ship is in this mess because you and he fucked it up. The ship’s been hurt because you let dope run wild here to the point where any effort to straighten it up takes out half the rated men in a division! That’s your doing, XO, you and the captain who didn’t think straight. But at least he had an excuse— he’s a sick old man. You damned well knew better! The real reason you want to go up there is you’re afraid to face what’s coming when this is all over, when the Navy finds out how you’ve been running things here, right, XO? Well, guess what, XO. If we’re gonna get blown away here, you’re the one’s going to answer for this, not the junior officers. I’ve got two witnesses right here, heard him say it: The captain forbids you to go up there.

  CO and XO separated, so the ship is not left without a senior officer.

  Just like it says in the regs. So just for once, godammn it, take care of the ship. That old man’s as good as dead, so we’re saving the ship, okay? Just do your fucking job! For once, XO, just do your fucking job!”

  Brian turned and sprinted up the ladder, with Garuda and Martinez in hot pursuit, leaving the exec in stunned silence on the ladder. At the top of the second ladder, they stopped. The smoke was thicker up here, a combination of residual oil-fire smoke and pall of smoldering electrical insulation coming from Combat. Brian saw that all the doors were closed.

  The three men crouched down to get closer to the deck and cleaner air.

  “Open the door to the pilothouse; that’ll let some of this shit out,”

  Brian ordered. Martinez went through the chart house’s passageway and locked back the doors, creating an instant draft from the lower decks.

  They went to the front door of combat and let themselves in, stepping quietly over the jumble of CIC furniture, dislodged consoles, the forest of light fixtures dangling from the overhead, and the tangle of tipped deck plates.

  Brian’s throat was dry as he climbed through the wreckage in the surface module, his feet crunching on the broken glass from the DRT plotter. The battle lanterns had dimmed to yellow and some of their relays were chattering as the batteries ran out. Brian heard Martinez inhale sharply as they rounded the corner into the EW module with its grisly paint job.

  The captain sat trancelike over the bomb, his tool kit spread out in a glinting pattern in front of him. He gave no sign that he was aware of their presence. As Brian stepped closer, he could see that the captain’s eyes were closed and that he was rocking back and forth slowly, a trickle of drool coming from the right side of his mouth.

  The bomb was where it had landed, with two access panels unbolted, each one revealing a nest of wiring.

  There were no sounds coming from the bomb. Brian could see that two red wires had been pulled out of the rear access hole and clipped. He motioned for Garuda and Martinez to slip around behind the captain. Then on signal, all three bent down and lifted him away from the bomb, the tools tinkling as they scattered on the deck plates. It was like lifting a scarecrow, Brian thought. The man weighed nothing. The captain’s head lolled forward and he mumbled something as Martinez took over, cradling the old man in his arms like a child, and carried him out of the space.

  Brian looked down at the bomb, its deadly black shape made somehow less threatening with its innards exposed, and resisted the temptation to nudge it with his boot. He got down on his hands and knees and put his ear to the front section and then the back section, remembering what the captain had said about the stethoscope. Nothing, not a sound. By God, the Old Man had done it. He’d put it to sleep. From out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Garuda standing rigid, his fingers in his ears. He couldn’t help himself; he started to laugh.

  By the time Brian and Garuda had made it back down to the wardroom area, Martinez had carried the captain to his cabin and then gone to fetch one of the docs. The chief corpsman had come right up, leaving the medical officer and the baby doc to continue with their surgery.

  Out on the forecastle, Brian sent Garuda aft to the helo hangar to see whether they had a UHF radio working yet; then he went back up to the captain’s cabin. He found the exec, Martinez, Jack Folsom, and the doc in attendance. The captain lay on his back in his bed, his head thrown back, his neck dry as crumpled parchment.

  The doc had an IV going and was fishing in his black bag for the makings for a second one. The stony-faced exec would not look at Brian. The captain made a sound and the doc bent over him.

  “Say again, sir?”

  “The log. I want the deck log,” the captain whispered.

  “I’ve got it with me, Captain,” Jack said. “It’s right here.”

  “Sit down here. Write what I tell you. Everybody else go away. Get back to your GQ stations. I’ll call you.

  Doc, go get me some oxygen.” The captain’s voice was very weak but clear, the tone of command still present.

  The doc left immediately; Brian, the exec, and Chief Martinez followed.

  The exec began issuin
g orders as soon as they were clear of the cabin, still not looking at Brian as they went down the ladder.

  “Mr. Holcomb, you are still the evaluator. Reman * Radio Central long enough to establish communications with the task force commander on a secure net. Patch it back to the helo deck control station. Then clear them out of radio until we get the ship desmpked. Give Atfa Whiskey a battle-damage report and an initial Oprep on the incident. When Preble shows up, tell them they’re on-scene commander, and then you coordinate transfer of additional medical supplies and their corpsmen over here to help in the wardroom. Set up the bridge watch back on the helo deck and keep the area around CIC clear of people until we can get EOD up here and we know that bomb has been safed. I’ll go to DC Central and continue the damage-control efforts. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Understood.”

  The exec refastened his OBA mask and then dropped down the ladder to Broadway. The doc came back out of the wardroom with a green oxygen bottle in his hands and hurried back up the ladder. Brian fleetingly remembered the first rites. From the looks of the captain, they might need the last rites pretty soon. He stood there and looked up at Martinez.

  “What’s the story on Jackson?” he asked.

  The chief took off his battered hat and wiped his massive brow. “Let’s go out front,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

  The captain slumped back down onto his pillows. “Did you get it? Did you get it all down?” His voice was paper-thin.

  A stunned Jack Folsom nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s all in the log. But sir—”

  “No, Mr. Folsom. No more talk. I’m out of energy and time. Give it to me and give me a pen. I’m going to sign, and then you’re going to sign, as a witness to my signature. After that, find the Disbo and have him lock it up in his disbursing safe. Start another one for the rest of the night. No one is to see this one, not even the exec.

  No one, until the investigation party comes aboard.

  Those are my orders. Understood?”

  Folsom gulped and nodded, handing over the log and the pen. The captain sat up long enough to sign the log, putting down his signature, rank, and serial number.

  Then he handed the pen to Folsom, who signed the same way. Folsom fully appreciated why the captain wanted this thing locked up.

  “Now,” the captain whispered, “let me rest. You’ve got lots to do when Preble shows up. Well done so far, Mr. Folsom.”

  “Thank you, sir. Shall I—”

  “No. Nothing else. Pass me that oxygen bottle. Tell the exec to report back to me in an hour when he has more status. That’s all, Mr. Folsom.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Folsom left the cabin, the log held tightly under one arm, and went in search of a messenger. Back in the darkened cabin, the captain lay motionless on the bed for a few minutes, sucking on the oxygen bottle.

  He then deliberately unwrapped the tape on his arms holding down the IVs and removed each one. He took several more deep breaths on the oxygen bottle and then slowly, painfully rolled off the bed and onto his hands and knees.

  He stayed that way for a few minutes, his head low, until the dizziness stopped. He took one more hit on the oxygen and then got up, staggered, and, holding on to the backs of chairs and edges of his cabinets, stumbled to the head. He knelt down in front of the stainless-steel sink and opened the cabinet under the sink. He fumbled with a green cardboard box marked soap, hand, disinfectant and withdrew a single, large ampoule and a ten cc syringe. Bracing himself on his knees, his forehead pressed against the steel sink, he filled the syringe to the top mark, and then dropped the empty ampoule into the toilet. He found the biggest vein he could on his left wrist, and steadily injected the entire contents of the syringe. He pulled it out, snapped off the needle, and dropped the needle and the syringe into the toilet, and flushed everything away.

  It took him a full minute to get back up to his feet and stagger back across the room, collapsing in the bed and grabbing for the oxygen bottle. After several deep breaths, he pushed the bottle away and began trying to reset the IV needles. His vision was blurring now, the edges of the bedroom growing dark, the darkness lined with tiny crackling flashes of light. His mind began to wander once more, back up to Combat, back to the bomb, finding the right wires, good damn job, that, and then his early days in Hood, the better days, the thrill of the big ship command and the loving look in his wife’s eyes after the change-of-command ceremony. He had finally made it to his big ship, the WESTPAC deployment right ahead, the deep sense of pride and fulfillment, and the wondering curiosity as to how the darkness in this room could suddenly contain so very much light.

  San Diego Maddy sat on the couch by the phone, staring at it as if to draw from the silent instrument the courage to make the call to the captain’s wife. She was pretty sure that she was ready to go over there for that talk, but she was having trouble forming the pretext.

  She had made some basic decisions. First, Autrey was an episode in her life that she was going to keep secret from Brian. She had tossed and turned about it but finally decided that the damage that would be done was not worth it, especially in view of what else she had decided.

  Somehow she was going to make a go of this Navy life.

  If the rest of the wives could manage it, then so could she. She would focus on the mechanics and then wait and see if her own emotions would be as capable of enduring.

  In making this decision, she had also realized how much depended on Brian, but there was no chance at all if she ever told him about Autrey.

  So it had to be a secret.

  She had been watching the married men in her Bank of America offices, men who went home every night, who seemed content with their life and prospects, and who did not seem to be inferior to those men like Brian who went to sea. Oh, less exciting perhaps, and their lunchtime stories were painfully mundane compared with say, Brian’s descriptions of the typhoon and the incredible feats of the chief boatswain. One big difference was this: She could not tell Brian’s stories, as their wives probably could tell all of their stories. Brian had his life at sea and a marriage. For the civilians, married life was half their day. And that was at the core of it: She needed the constant sharing that she pictured marriage to be.

  She needed more than the occasional excitement of a sailor’s homecoming.

  But maybe that’s what the wives had found out: You share with your husband when he’s there, and with the rest of the wives when he’s not.

  Now she felt she was ready to talk to Mrs. Huntington, to try to express some of these feelings, not in justification or defense of what she had done so much as in an effort to see if, in the older woman’s experience, there was room for her, after all.

  She picked up the phone. It was 8:30 at night. She dialed the number.

  The phone rang four times. She was about to hang up when Mrs. Huntington picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Huntington, this is Maddy Holcomb.”

  “Yes, dear. It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Mrs. Huntington, I, um, I think I’m ready to talk to you. Privately.

  Actually, I’ve been getting up the nerve to call you for a couple of days. I’d like to come over.

  Tonight, if I may.”

  “Maddy, are you all right? You’re not in any trouble are you? Is someone … bothering you?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that. I’ve made some decisions about my future, and I wanted to talk to someone who, well, who has experience with this Navy wife business.”

  |> “I see. I’d be delighted to have you come over. I’ll put the coffee on and we can sit up and talk all night if you’d like to; heaven knows, I’ve done that before. You come right ahead. And bring your things—the ferry stops running a little after midnight. You can use the guest room and go to work tomorrow right from here. It’s not a problem at all, okay? You come right ahead.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Huntington. I’ll be there in a bit.”

  An hou
r later, overnight bag in hand, Maddy was walking through the Huntingtons’ front hall to the living room. Mrs. Huntington was dressed in slacks and a sweater, with slippers on her feet. She had greeted Maddy with a smile and an uncharacteristic hug, taken her coat, and then led her to the captain’s study to talk.

  Maddy had never been in the study. It was a large square room with bookcases on two sides. On a third wall were ship’s plaques, two ship’s bells, a barometer, a couple of flags folded into triangular cases, and a dozen pictures of the captain in various naval settings during his career.

  The fourth wall held a set of French windows that looked out into the Huntingtons’ walled backyard. A brilliant Oriental rug covered almost the entire floor; a small gas fireplace hissed in one corner. Two large leather chairs and a desk completed the room.

  “This is the ‘I love me’ room,” Mrs. Huntington said with a smile.

  “Every naval captain has one.”

  Maddy laughed as she remembered Brian’s efforts to turn one corner of their apartment into a similar shrine.

  Mrs. Huntington had set up coffee and cookies on a small table between the two leather chairs, along with a silver tray with liqueurs and two snifters. Maddy chose coffee and sat down in one of the chairs, away from the fire. She was wearing wool slacks and a light blue sweater over a silk blouse in deference to the cool autumn temperatures.

  Mrs. Huntington took a cup of coffee as well, then sat back.

  “Well, dear, I think the expression is, It’s your nickel,” she said.

  Maddy took a deep breath. She had been having second thoughts ever since she had seen the pictures and the plaques. Was this a smart thing to do?