Carlos enjoyed his membership in the FBI/Marine Corps Association because he met and became friends with many others like Ray Doner and Jim Kallstrom. Colonel John Riply had blown the bridges at Dong Ha, South Vietnam, in the Easter Offensive in 1972. Colonel Barney Barnum earned the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. Hector Cafferita earned the Medal of Honor while losing the use of his right arm in Korea. They were company with whom Hathcock fit in, felt comfortable. All of them just regular guys, just doing their jobs, just like Carlos. All with the same brand of humility. None of them considered themselves heroic. No better than any other Marine.
Unanimously though, they did consider their brothers and sisters who died in battle, who lost their lives on the front lines—whether in some far-off war or some slum neighborhood in America—the real heroes. Each of them knew firsthand the prices that these people paid. They saw it happen. It defined true heroism for them. It had written itself in the lines of their faces, and in the tears they shed when they stood on the parade field in Peekskill and honored the memory of those heroes.
So when Carlos stagger-stepped off the airliner and down the ramp, and saw Ray Doner standing there smiling, he hugged the man instead. Real friends do that. Especially tough-hided Marines.
“Bill is on his way out from Manhattan,” Ray told Carlos. “He’ll meet us at my apartment. Then we will go out to dinner and stop by the Marine Corps League in Masapequa, where I’m a member. I told them I would bring you by. All the guys want to meet you. Do you mind?”
“No, not at all. I like meeting Marines anytime,” Carlos said as he stretched out in the Buick’s wide front seat and lit a Salem cigarette when he saw Doner light one, too. He had not smoked since he left Norfolk. It felt good to relax.
THE WRITER PICKED up both men at seven o’clock the next morning and sped westward to New York City. They would stop by the Marine Corps recruiting station in lower Manhattan first, then park the car at Henderson’s office, and catch a taxi to the “21” Club, where owners Pete Kriendler and Jerry Berns would show them around. Then they would have lunch on the second floor of the former speakeasy with building giant Zachary Fisher, Jim Kallstrom, Lasard Fréres investment banking firm senior vice president Dick Torykian, Henderson, and Doner. All of them called Torykian the Field Marshal.
Any time the former Marine and banking executive attended any formal event, while others wore black-tie and tuxedo, Dick wore camouflage green tie, white shirt with black studs, camouflage tuxedo jacket, and camouflage cummerbund. He did wear black trousers. And he always had a pocketful of Cuban cigars that he generously shared with friends.
After lunch, the Field Marshal supplied everyone at the table with a Monte-Cristo Habana, 49 ring, Especiales No. 2. Carlos lit the $20 cigar, smoked about a third of it, dashed it out, and lit a Salem. He had no pretense about cigars, even Cuban Especiales rolled on the glistening thighs of nubile Havana virgins.
“How far to Montauk Point?” Carlos asked, taking a sip of the Sprite that he ordered. Everyone at the table laughed. Clearly he had shark fishing in the forefront of his thoughts.
At two P.M., Carlos stood before the senior class at Chaminade High School, a private school on Long Island. Dick Torykian had graduated from there, and his two sons as well. The boys stood in a long line, waiting to have the Marine sniper autograph their books. Patiently Hathcock signed each book and spoke to each student, and shook each hand. It made him feel good that at this high school they taught patriotism, too.
WHEN THEY FINALLY reached the small fishing village that sits at the farthest tip of Long Island, it was well after dark. John Britt, a member of the Navy League and Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association, and a “Combat Poet,” had joined the men after lunch and accompanied them to Chaminade and on to Montauk Point.
Filmmaker Erich Kollmar and documentary producer Woody Dougan rendezvoused with Henderson, Britt, Doner, and Hathcock in Montauk at the motel. Kollmar was an older gentleman yet very fit. As a young man he had served as a lieutenant in the German Navy. Like so many other young men in Germany during World War II who were patriotic to their country, but anti-Nazi and anti-Hitler, Erich Kollmar spent the war serving as second officer aboard a submarine. He had been trained and destined to operate the two-man U-boat, always a suicide mission. He was thankful that the war ended before he ever faced that fatal task. However, it was bad enough on the regular submarine. According to Lothar-Günther Bucheim’s novelized memoirs of his tenure in the World War II German submarine service, Das Boot, of the 40,000 men who served aboard U-boats during the war, more than 30,000 did not make it home.
Carlos sat mesmerized hearing Kollmar tell him about life on those submarines.
“It was always cold in the North Atlantic,” the whitebearded veteran said. “They put electric heaters on the boats, so we could not use them. We had to save the juice in our batteries. So, everything stayed cold and frozen in the sub.
“We slept two men to a bunk. One slept while the other stood watch. Every time, when I woke up, I had to break the ice off my leather suit. Thank God that we at least had those fleece-lined leather suits to keep us warm. But our toes and noses still froze.”
Carlos laughed when Erich described the smell after several weeks at sea: vomit, urine, excrement, and body odor mixed with diesel and battery acid fumes.
“Quite a lovely bouquet,” Erich said laughing, too.
Because they had arrived so late in the evening, all eating establishments had already closed. Only an ice-cream stand that sold only ice cream and soda, and a 7-Eleven late-night market remained open. Carlos, Erich, and Woody remained at the motel while the others went for the food.
An hour later the three returned with paper cups and plates, plastic forks, spoons, and knives, several large bottles of Coca-Cola and Sprite, two large bags of potato chips, two loaves of bread, three pounds of bologna, and a large squeeze bottle of French’s Mustard.
John Britt spread the food out across a dresser and the television set in assembly line fashion. “It’s easier if one man does the work,” he announced, and looked at Carlos. “You’ve got a choice: bologna sandwich with mustard, chips, and a Coke, or bologna sandwich with mustard, chips, and a Sprite.”
“I can’t handle caffeine,” Carlos said, “so give me a Sprite, and two of those Arkansas round-steak sandwiches. I’m hungry.”
Britt spread a smile across his chubby face and stroked his salt-and-pepper Ernest Hemingway–style beard, the way a French chef in New Orleans might. “And will that be on white bread or white bread?” he said with an aristocratic air.
“White bread, if you don’t mind, sir,” Carlos said.
John wheeled on his toes and laid four slices of bread on a paper plate. Then he snapped up the squeeze bottle of French’s Mustard with his left hand, tossed it in a high arch, and caught it nozzle down with his right.
Everyone clapped.
Britt began to squeeze, and nothing came out. Everyone watched but said nothing.
He rolled his eyes and smiled. “Oh, I need to twist open the little spout.”
Grasping the nozzle between his right thumb and index finger, he very authoritatively twisted the yellow plastic applicator top. John had a master’s degree in literature from the University of Southern California, but he had aspired to be an actor. Despite his difficulty with the mustard lid, he remained in his haughty French chef character.
Again he held the squeeze bottle in his right hand and began circling the nozzle above the bread, applying more and more pressure. Nothing happened.
“What the hell is wrong with this?” John said, finally losing character. He squeezed harder and harder, and still no mustard. The five others smiled, but still said nothing.
Britt pounded on the bottom of the bottle, and squeezed all the harder. His face began to glow red with frustration.
He looked at the hole in the nozzle. He unscrewed it completely off the lid. Held the yellow plastic cone up to the light. All clear.
&n
bsp; After screwing it back in place and again giving it a half-twist to open the valve, John Britt squeezed again. This time with both hands. He wrapped himself around that bottle of mustard like the proverbial monkey on a football.
Suddenly, splosh! The entire lid, nozzle, and the white paper and plastic foam tamper-proof seal that he had neglected to remove blew off the plastic bottle, followed by most of its contents. A huge glob of mustard slopped across the television set, splashed across the dresser, and splattered on the mirror and white wall.
“Oh, shit!” John Britt cried out as the mess also gushed yellow globs across his gray Polo shirt and navy blue trousers. Several other spots of mustard dressed the green carpet and the tops of the now embarrassed poet’s cordovan loafers.
The five nonsplattered men shouted and laughed. Carlos howled especially hard, and looking at John Britt he announced, “I’ve been wanting to figure out a good name for you, and now I have it. From now on, you are the Mustard King.”
Enough mustard remained to barely dress ten sandwiches. John Britt, the Mustard King, did what he could to clean up the mess with a handful of napkins and bathroom towels. But it probably took a paint job to finally cover the mess.
“WAKE UP, JOHN,” Carlos called from the bathroom. “It’s five o’clock and the day’s half gone. I’m already dressed and shaved.”
John Britt moaned and pulled the bedcovers over his head.
“That skipper aims to leave at seven, and I aim to get me some vittles before we launch out,” Hathcock said more seriously.
Ray Doner pounded on the door. John Britt fell out of bed and threw on his clothes. He took a look in the mirror at his rumpled hair, flashed his teeth at his reflection, and said, “Fuck it,” and rumbled out the door behind Hathcock and Doner.
The others had dressed, and waited at the end of the upper walkway at the head of the stairs. They sipped coffee from paper cups as a drizzling rain fell on them.
“Could get to blowin’ pretty good out on the water,” Carlos said, taking note of the decaying weather.
“Fuck it,” John Britt said and rumbled down the stairs.
At seven sharp the six now hearty and well-fed souls tromped down the wooden pier at Captain’s Cove Marina. They splashed through puddles on the rain-soaked planks as they walked to the slot where Captain Tom McKinley had tied his thirty-five-foot, twin-turbo diesel sport fishing boat, the Sundowner.
“I don’t like the looks of those waves,” Woody Dougan said, seeing the increasing chop on the sea.
Doner and Henderson carried an ice chest filled with beer and ham sandwiches. Both men glanced back at Dougan, who walked next to Erich Kollmar, just behind Hathcock and Britt.
“You don’t have to go with us,” Henderson called back. “But we’re going fishing. If that boat can handle it, we can handle it.”
“Semper Fi,” Ray Doner said.
“Me, too,” Carlos said.
“Fuck it,” John Britt said.
The six men stood on the pier next to the boat as Ray Doner called up to McKinley, who sat perched in a big swivel seat in the pilot’s station above the main cabin, “Permission to come aboard, sir.”
McKinley smiled and waved his hand, motioning the men to step aboard the Sundowner.
Doner stopped short of stepping aboard, clapped his heels together, and saluted toward the fantail, where the National Ensign fluttered on a small staff fastened to a grommet on the left rear corner of the boat. Each man followed suit and stepped aboard.
“You look a little green, Woody,” Carlos said, noticing the documentary film producer clamping onto the ladder that led to the upper deck.
The small boat pitched in the chop that now splashed across the top of the pier, rocking the small boat. Dougan looked sallow.
“We’ll cast off as soon as my mate gets here with the chum,” McKinley called down to the men. Noticing Woody hanging on to the ladder, he looked at Kollmar, who stood nearest to Dougan, and asked, “He okay?”
Woody Dougan nodded. He would not be a wet blanket, despite already being soaked by the rain, his nose running, a chill making him shiver slightly, and his stomach rolling so hard he felt as if it might leak out his ears at any moment.
Seasickness can strike even the best and toughest sailors. It’s something to do with the inner ear and one’s vision relative to the motion beneath one’s feet. However, Dougan did not want to appear a weak sister and quit before starting.
Seemingly from nowhere, Tom Quigley appeared carrying a two-foot square cardboard box covered with frost and a white five-gallon bucket with a lid snapped on the top. The man stood at least six foot, three inches and pushed the scales toward the 300-pound mark. His hands were as big as chuck roasts, and the girth of his arms would rival most men’s legs. He wore a baseball cap over his short red hair. His eyes sparkled and he carried a grin that etched long wrinkles in his ruddy cheeks.
“By damn, they told me Marines were coming aboard,” the hulking first mate cheerfully bellowed to the men. “Ain’t it a beautiful day?”
Woody Dougan could only hang on to the ladder and try to hold down his sausage, eggs, biscuits, and gravy breakfast and two large cups of coffee.
Erich Kollmar had eaten lightly. He knew the sea well and how a man’s stomach can get to tossing with the waves when it is full of sausage, eggs, biscuits, and gravy. He had mostly eaten fruit. As did Carlos and the two other Marines. John Britt had only drank coffee and a glass of orange juice.
“I wasn’t in the Marines,” Tom Quigley boomed in his deep Long Island voice as he cast off the bow line and hurried to release the stern line. “Rangers. U.S. Army Rangers, I’m not ashamed to tell you.”
Captain McKinley pushed the throttles forward and turned the boat toward the right side of the channel. As the craft with a long walkway dressed with a waist-high, stainless steel rail increased its speed, its keel sank downward as the twin screws turned with greater force. White foam billowed from the rear corners of the craft as Tom Quigley carried the small American flag up the ladder to the top deck and fastened it on a small tower above the pilot’s station.
“He may have been in the Army,” Ray Doner said to Henderson, watching Quigley, “but he knows flag protocol on a seagoing vessel.”
“I’m really proud to be with you fellows today,” Tom said as he worked on the deck, unwrapping gear, getting it ready for today’s shark hunt. “I’ve heard about that sniper. Is that him?”
“Carlos come here and shake the man’s hand,” Ray called to his friend. Hathcock had sat on one of the padded benches inside the cabin. He wore his green nylon Marine Corps Shooting Team windbreaker and fumbled with the snaps, shutting it against the strengthening wind that drove the sea spray and rain across the boat.
“Let me go inside, don’t get up,” Quigley said, seeing how Carlos struggled to even button his coat.
Carlos stood anyway, and walked out to the deck before the first mate could take two steps. He offered his burn-scarred right hand, and Quigley took hold of it and shook hard.
“It’s an honor, sir,” he said.
“Don’t call me sir,” Carlos said with a laugh, and together with Quigley and several of the other men finished the sentence, “I work for a living.”
Woody Dougan heaved his first spillage of breakfast over the side as the boat entered the open sea. Swells raised the craft several feet and then dropped it. The boat’s bow cut through the top of the next wave, riding up as it rolled beneath the hull. The nose dropped down the back side of the wave, and then rose up again, crashing through the crest of the next swell.
“He okay?” Quigley said, pointing his thumb at Woody Dougan, clinging to the ladder, now in great agony.
Henderson had passed out a handful of Cuban cigars that Dick Torykian had given him for the fishing expedition. Doner and Britt joined the writer, lighting up. They each also had a beer, swigging and smoking. The smell mixed with the boat’s exhaust sent Dougan leaning over the side once more, hea
ving and spewing.
“Woody!” Ray Doner called to him. “How about a ham sandwich and a beer?”
The men laughed as Dougan waved back at Doner to go away and leave him to his misery.
Three hours passed before Captain McKinley throttled back the thirty-five-foot, twin-turbo Hatteras. Quigley immediately stripped away the cardboard from around a frozen block of ground fish, entrails, and blood. He tied a long nylon cord around the block of chum and let it hang over the side, tying off the other end of the cord to a cleat on the right rear corner of the boat.
“Already making an oil slick,” Carlos said, knowing exactly Quigley’s shark-hunting tactic. “That fish oil and blood slick will draw sharks for miles.”
Quigley then popped the lid off the white five-gallon bucket and dumped several splashes of fresh blood and more entrails over the side.
He then took out four fishing rods, thick as his thumb at their necks, and with large reels mounted at the head of their two-foot-long, rubber-tipped wooden handles. One by one he tied hooks, long as his hand, on steel leader, and fastened them to the heavy fishing lines. As he tied on each rig, he ran the hook through a foot-long bait fish and cast it off the fantail. Quigley took hold of each fishing line near the reel and pulled it to an outrigger where he clipped it onto a clothespin.
“Shark hits, he’ll pop the line off the outrigger, and darn near hook himself from the snap of the slack,” Carlos said, observing the first mate.
Quigley smiled back at him. “You still better give her a yank when she pops.”
While the boat drifted, the waves grew. By late morning they had reached twelve to fifteen feet in height. A person could not see the horizon from the deck, only water towering around the vessel, and the rainy, gray sky directly above.
“Bit more chop on the water,” Carlos mused.
Quigley looked at him and grinned. “We don’t have to worry about running into any other boats today. That’s a guarantee. Only you Marines are crazy enough to fish for sharks in this kind of sea.”
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