Point of Honor

by Maurice Medland

  The dense odor in the pilothouse seemed to offer tangible resistance against the steel door. Blake stepped over the coaming and gasped. The smell of decaying flesh and human excrement flooded his mouth with an odor he could actually taste. He covered his mouth and nose with his left hand and looked around for what he knew had to be something dead.

  He found it lying by the engine-order telegraph, which had been pulled to “All Stop.” The body looked like a department-store mannequin twisted in a grotesque shape. The eyes stared vacantly from the head, resting on the steel deck at a 90-degree angle from the trunk of the body. A river of clotted, black blood flowed from the corpse’s mouth in a meandering tributary that had reached the bulkhead of the pilothouse before beginning to coagulate. Near the head, in a smaller pool of congealed blood, was a small, black object that reminded Blake of a dead toad he had come across in one of his boyhood adventures. He bent closer and saw that it was a human tongue, festering with minute life-forms.

  “What is that,” Kelly said. She stepped into the pilothouse and covered her mouth and nose with her hand. “Oh, my God.”

  Blake stood looking down on the body, stomach churning, not sure what to do next. He holstered the automatic and noticed the outline of a wallet in the corpse’s right rear pocket. He rolled the body over a few inches. It moved in one piece, frozen. An eel-skin wallet slid out into his hand. He flipped it open and laid out the contents on the chart table: a sheaf of paper currency - a mix of Colombian and Uruguayan pesos - pictures of a smiling family, credit cards, a Colombian driver’s license and a pocket-sized first mate’s license. He looked at the smiling face in the family portrait. No one would recognize it - or even the dark face in the driver’s license mug shot - as the mutilated corpse on the deck before him. He stood there for a moment, not quite knowing what to do with the wallet, and finally laid it gently beside the body.

  He glanced around. The deck was littered with what remained of the ship’s radio direction finder and chronometer, key pieces of navigation equipment. Whoever had committed this atrocity didn’t want the crew going anywhere.

  He walked over to the small desk where the ship’s log lay open and picked it up, relieved that it was neatly hand-lettered in English. His Spanish was weak to nonexistent. The last entry was dated June twelfth, 0830. Today was the fourteenth. Forty-eight hours. He read the final entry and felt something move in the pit of his stomach. Forcing himself not to react, he flipped back and read the previous week’s entries, then casually closed the canvas-covered book.

  “Shall we contact the ship, sir?” Kelly asked.

  “No. They’ve got their hands full. We’ll make a full report when we hear back from Kozlewski and Sergeant Rivero.” Based on what he’d just read in the ship’s log, his first instinct was to call them back and finish the search himself, but it was imperative to get a quick assessment of what they had, and he couldn’t be everywhere at once. He told himself that they’d be okay; the skittish chief was always extra cautious, and Rivero could probably handle whatever came at him.

  “I wonder what they’ll find on the love boat?”

  Blake glanced at Kelly. Her face was the color of parchment. He knew from what he’d just read in the log that they were in for much worse, but he saw no point in scaring her to death. He managed a faint smile. “How do you like sea duty so far?”

  “I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

  “You won’t have long to wait.” Blake tucked the ship’s log under his arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “The captain’s quarters.”

  Frank Kozlewski descended the ladder into the machinery space, located directly below the superstructure. Beams from battery-powered emergency lanterns, which had come on automatically when the main power had gone off, cast a yellow glow over the compartment.

  “From the look of those lights, I’d say the power’s been off a while,” John Sparks said from behind. His voice echoed in the eerie quiet.

  “A day or two, I expect.” Frank Kozlewski snapped on his flashlight and carefully followed the beam of light around the catwalk, pausing to look down into the lower level of the engine room. Darting among the bulbous shapes of machinery and equipment, the flashlight beam created looming shadows that rose and fell.

  “Jesus, what’s that smell, Chief?” Sparks voice rang hollow.

  Frank Kozlewski wrinkled his nose and sniffed. “Smells just like every engine room I’ve ever been in in my life: Bunker C fuel oil, diesel fuel, and sweat.” He glanced at Sparks’s worried face. “You’re probably smelling your own BO blowing back in your face.” Kozlewski peered down into the bowels of the machinery space. “Sparky, there’s the main distribution switchboard, and it looks like an emergency diesel generator right behind it.” He pointed with his flashlight. “Scoot down there and see what it’ll take to get some power going.”

  “Dark down there. How am I gonna see anything?”

  “Pull a battle lantern, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I couldn’t see to take a crap with one of these things.” Sparks pulled one of the lanterns from its holder on the bulkhead above the catwalk. He clambered down the ladder, grumbling under his breath, and disappeared into the blackness.

  “That guy’d bitch if they hung him with an old rope,” Kozlewski said. He watched as Sparks and his bobbing yellow light were swallowed up by the darkness below. “Come on, lads. Let’s check out the boilers.” The chief motioned to Tobin and Robertson to follow him. They walked the twenty feet or so to the ladder leading down to the port side of the machinery space, their footsteps hollow thuds against the steel catwalk.

  “Holy shit!” Sparks came bounding back up the ladder and stood panting, his eyes glazed.

  Kozlewski wheeled around. “What’s the matter with you?” His flashlight splashed across Sparks’s face. A look of sheer terror etched his eyes.

  “Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus Christ. I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  “What is it?”

  “You ain’t gonna believe what’s down there.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Sparky, what is it?” Kozlewski walked back toward him with a puzzled look.

  Sparks stood gasping on the narrow catwalk, head down, clinging to the handrail, spittle dripping out of his mouth in a long string. As Kozlewski approached, Sparks looked up with haunted eyes and erupted over the rail, spewing vomit into the machinery space below.

  “Jesus, Sparky.” Kozlewski winced at the sour smell. “What the hell is it?”

  Sparks stood retching, his forehead pressed against the coolness of the steel handrail, unable to answer.

  Kozlewski thought he looked pathetic, like a sick dog he had once seen puking on the sidewalk in his old neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. “Well, get out of the way.” He nudged Sparks to the side and started down the ladder with Robertson and Tobin close behind.

  Kozlewski descended the dozen steel steps of the ladder slowly, stopping every few steps, playing his flashlight around the machinery space. He noticed that the rolling motion of the ship was more pronounced now. In the silence of the dead machinery space, he heard the sound of waves slapping against the hull of the ship, a sound he’d never heard in an engine room before.

  Kozlewski’s feet hit the corrugated steel deck plates at the end of the ladder and he stopped, looking around cautiously, as Robertson and Tobin collided behind him.

  “Get off my tail,” Robertson said over his shoulder.

  “Knock it off,” the chief said. He stood motionless, looking with his flashlight, listening, his senses on high alert. Sparks’s vomit, mingled with the other smells in the compartment, created a stench that made his stomach turn. He could hear the rasping, open-mouthed breathing of Robertson and Tobin behind him. The only other sound was the muffled slapping of waves against the hull. “Come on.” He pointed with the beam of his flashlight toward the glow of the lantern Sparks had dropped.

  Kozlewski looked down at the dim lant
ern lying on its side, illuminating the face of the corpse whose blank eyes stared vacantly back. Black blood flowed from the corpse’s mouth in a congealed river of nourishment for a pair of bilge rats. Red eyes sparkled in the beam of the flashlight as the rodents backed away and disappeared into the darkness. The seaman’s blue chambray shirt had been chewed through. Kozlewski could see two tails sticking out of the cavernous belly like wire ropes, twitching with enjoyment. His foot came down on the tails with all the force he could muster, triggering muffled squeals from inside the corpse. The bilge rats exploded from within the belly, covered with blood and soft organ tissue, and stood hissing like snakes. The chief reached for his service pistol, then thought better of it as the rats waddled into the darkness.

  “Filthy little beggars.”

  “Holy shit is right,” Robertson said in a whisper.

  Tobin softly chanted a whispered mantra that sounded on the verge of hysteria. “Oh God, blessed be Thy Name, Oh Jesus, protect us sinners-” Suddenly he let out a shriek. “Jesus!”

  Sparks jerked his hand away from Tobin’s shoulder. “It’s just me.”

  “Don’t come up behind me like that, you idiot.”

  Sparks edged Tobin aside and stood breathing hard, the stain of vomit down the front of his shirt. “I knew this ship was trouble. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on it. What have we got ourselves into here, Chief?”

  Frank Kozlewski squatted beside the corpse and shined his flashlight into the white face. “This guy’s tongue has been cut out.”

  Sparks screwed his face up in a grimace. “How do you know? I mean . . . where is it?”

  Kozlewski aimed his flashlight down through the deck grate into the bilges. “It was probably breakfast for our furry friends down below.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “What do we do? You’re going to get that emergency diesel running. I’m going to go find the lieutenant.”

  Seaman Luis Alvarez struggled forward on the windswept deck behind Doc Jones and Sergeant Rivero, heading for the number three cargo hold, which lay just forward of the bridge.

  “How many more of these things we got to look at, anyway?” Alvarez said over the whistling wind.

  “Well, we just did number five and number four,” Doc Jones said. “And this one is number three. That leaves two and one, by my count.”

  “Yeah, and we ain’t seen nothing but truck batteries, and car tires, and bags of coffee.”

  “Don’t forget the ingots of tin,” Doc said.

  “It’s all a waste of time if you ask me.”

  A huge, rolling wave broke over the weather rail, pushing them back, soaking them to the waist. “Oh, man, I just started to dry out.” Alvarez’s wet dungarees, swaddled tightly around his legs, made it difficult to walk on the pitching deck.

  “Just don’t get too close to the weather rail,” Doc said, “or you’re liable to get a lot wetter.”

  Alvarez felt a cold shudder go through him. For a moment, he could actually see himself bobbing up and down, disappearing behind the swells, waving frantically as he was swept further into the distance, while the others looked on helplessly. He shook the thought out of his mind and offered up a silent prayer to Saint Elmo, the patron saint of the sea, to protect him.

  They approached the number three cargo hold, struggling to keep their balance against the rolling ship. Sergeant Rivero kicked the small hatch used for customs inspections and nodded to Alvarez.

  “What am I, the official hatch opener?” Alvarez loosened the dogs on the manhole-sized hatch and slid it to one side, making just enough room to squeeze through. Sergeant Rivero went down first. Alvarez could hear his combat boots echo down the steel rungs of the ladder into the cavernous hold. Doc Jones followed, then Alvarez, grateful to be out of the weather that could sweep a man to his death in an instant.

  The ladder led down about fifteen feet into the rusty-smelling air of the first level in the cargo hold. Alvarez thought it appeared to be considerably larger than the two previous holds had been. He stood shivering in his wet dungarees, watching Sergeant Rivero play his flashlight over what appeared to be thousands of bags marked “Winter Wheat.” Rivero walked over to a pallet and unsheathed his combat knife. He plunged the Parkerized blade into the end of a random bag and stood back as a river of red wheat poured out, cascading down to the thick wooden planks supporting the first level of the hold. The slit in the bag widened, and the river of grain picked up speed, piling up on the planks and sifting through the spaces between, filtering down to the next level. A faint purring sound, like course sand hitting metal drums, rose from the second level. Alvarez noticed Sergeant Rivero cock his head and listen intently. His black eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly over narrowed eyes. Rivero made a final pass at the cargo, giving the bags a cursory up and down look. Jones and Alvarez followed behind, punching random bags, and headed down the ladder to the next level.

  The air in the second level of the hold seemed thinner and slightly humid to Alvarez as they stepped off the ladder. He smelled a faint, pleasant scent and noticed Doc Jones wrinkle his nose and sniff in a quizzical way. He watched Sergeant Rivero beam his flashlight around at hundreds of shiny metal containers stacked on pallets. The reflections from the square containers bounced back in a kaleidoscope of colors. Alvarez yawned and stretched. The close air and pleasant scent were making him sleepy. Maybe if he showed some interest, moved around, did something. Rivero had the only flashlight, and Alvarez was tired of standing around doing nothing. He withdrew his Zippo from his pocket and stepped toward the containers.

  “Put that away,” Sergeant Rivero said.

  Alvarez jumped. He hadn’t heard this many words from Rivero since they’d left the Carlyle. “Why? What is this stuff anyway?”

  “Ether.”

  “Of course,” Doc Jones said. “I should have recognized it right off. One flick of that lighter could blow us out of the water.” He gave out a low whistle. “There must be tons of this stuff. No hospital in the world could use this much ether.”

  “This ether won’t see the inside of a hospital,” Sergeant Rivero said, squinting at the label of one of the containers.

  Alvarez looked over his shoulder. “Diethyl Ether - Highly Flammable. So what’s it for?”

  Rivero ignored him and walked over to the other side of the compartment where fifty-five-gallon drums were strapped together on pallets and stacked to the overhead. He beamed his flashlight at one of the labels and nodded his head.

  Doc Jones stood behind Sergeant Rivero, reading the label over his shoulder. “What’s Dimethyl Ketone?”

  “Acetone,” Rivero said after a pause.

  “What’s all this stuff for?” Alvarez said.

  Sergeant Rivero glanced at Alvarez with a look of contempt and started for the ladder leading down to the third level of the hold. Jones and Alvarez trailed behind. When they reached the ladder, Rivero turned and said, “Wait here.” They looked at each other as Rivero disappeared down the ladder into the inky depths.

  With the flashlight gone, the only light filtering in to the second level of the hold was from the hatch cover Alvarez had opened on the main deck. Dusky light from the first level drifted through the cracks of the deck planks, casting weak lines of light and shadow across their faces.

  “What’s he doing down there, Doc?” Alvarez could see the beam of the flashlight dart around, stride across the hold, then disappear completely.

  “Beats me,” Jones said, peering down the ladderway. “But he seems to know what he’s doing. Best do like the man says.”

  “I don’t like the son of a bitch. Thinks he’s hot stuff, struttin’ around with that knife on his ankle. I know some guys in my neighborhood, make him eat that knife.” Alvarez hunkered down on the deck with his back against a pallet of ether.

  Jones said nothing.

  After a few minutes of silence, Alvarez said, “How come they call you ‘Doc?’ They don’t call the other corpsmen Doc.”

&
nbsp; Jones pointed a thumb toward the name stenciled above his shirt pocket.

  Alvarez squinted at the initials. “I’ll be. ‘Jones, M.D.’ I never noticed that. What does it stand for?”

  “Mohammed DuWayne. My old man was a Black Muslim. My mother liked the name DuWayne. It was a compromise.” Jones looked at Alvarez and smiled. “How come they call you Muskrat?”

  “They don’t if they know what’s good for ‘em.” Alvarez looked at Doc Jones and saw the friendly smile. He looked down at his feet. “I went over the side once on maneuvers. When they fished me out, they said I looked like a drowned muskrat.”

  They sat in the near darkness making small talk. It suddenly seemed to Alvarez that they’d been sitting there for a long time. “How long’s he been down there, Doc?”

  Jones squinted at his watch, holding it up to a slit of light. “I don’t know. Fifteen minutes, maybe.”

  “Corpsman,” Sergeant Rivero called out from below.

  “Yo,” Jones shouted down the ladder.

  “Down here.” Rivero played his flashlight on the ladder.

  Jones swung his canvas medical bag over his shoulder and started down the ladder. Alvarez followed close behind.

  The final level of the number three hold was pitch-dark except for Sergeant Rivero’s flashlight and the weak beam of a single battery-powered emergency lantern in a far corner. Jones and Alvarez stepped off the ladder and turned to face the white beam of light coming from Sergeant Rivero, standing about ten feet away.

  “Over here.” Rivero directed the corpsman with the beam of light. The air was close and warm, and Alvarez could feel the heat that radiated from Sergeant Rivero’s back as he followed behind.

  Alvarez stared down, fascinated. A crumpled, dark mass lay on the deck near stacks of what appeared to be some kind of baled cargo. Jones bent over the body and rolled it over. The flashlight beam hit the corpse full on in the face. Alvarez recoiled at the open mouth, full of clotted blood.