by Jeff Thomson
Jonesy, Duke, and Frank Roessler were still on the Fantail with Masur. The rest of the crew had gone below, but they remained. After treating the gaping wound in Masur’s arm as best they could, they brought out a canvas deck chair, so their shipmate could at least be comfortable. They flex cuffed him at ankles and wrists, and stayed with him to wait until the end.
“Yeah,” Masur said. “Can’t believe the fucker bit me.”
“Seriously,” Duke agreed. “You had to taste terrible.”
“Blow me,” his fellow Bosun Mate replied.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is over, dude,” Frank said. They were trying to keep it light, but it wasn’t working. Jonesy thought it felt more like standing around somebody’s death bed, which, in a way, it was.
“Anything we can get you?” He asked.
“I could really use a bottle of Cointreau,” Masur answered, referring to the upscale orange liqueur. It was all the man drank, and he drank it a lot.
“If I could get you some, I’d even drink it with you,” Jonesy said. “Though how you can stomach that shit is beyond me.”
“Years and years of practice,” the man replied.
“Years and years of masochism,” Frank said.
“The masochism comes with the hangover in the morning,” Masur said with a chuckle. “You remember that night in Pago Pago?”
They all remembered many nights, in many places, like American Samoa, Maui, the Big Island, Roratonga, Truk, and that one insanely inebriated golf tournament on Midway; their lives together streaming by in one memory of drunken debauchery after another. But none of them said a word.
They fell into an uncomfortable silence, waiting. Jonesy’s heart felt like a rock in his chest. The deaths of Scoot and Doc had both been in the heat of battle, but this one would be cold and premeditated. He glanced at Masur, then looked away, trying not to notice the additional zip tie hanging loosely around their friend’s neck, its tail jutting out behind him. It was there in case they had to strangle him. The moments ticked by.
Finally, Masur took in a deep breath, and said: “Fuck this. Let’s get it over with.” He struggled to get out of the chair, but being retrained at wrist and ankle made this impossible. “Get me up,” he said. “Bring me to the rail.”
They did as he asked, the reluctance showing in each of their faces.
“Do me a favor, Jonesy,” Masur said. He stood facing out to sea, waiting, with his back - mercifully - to them all.
“Anything,” he replied. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes - not quite sliding out, but there, ready to fall. Sunglasses concealed the evidence. He adjusted them to make sure.
“Make it quick,” Masur said. “And none of this strangling bullshit. That’d take too long.”
Jonesy closed his eyes as his heart sunk into a cold, bottomless pit. But then it was replaced with a deep, equally cold anger. Why me? Why does it gotta be me? Fuck no! Abso-fucking-lutely not! I won’t do it!
Another part of him, however, the Arctic center of his being that had enabled him to shoot the human trafficker, to kill his friend, Scoot, to live his life before any of this began, in spite of all the crap and loneliness, and loss and separation he’d had to endure before finding his home among the Coast Guard misfits, came forward into his psyche and said, Bullshit. You can do it. And you will.
But then the whiny little inner bitch voice retorted: He hasn’t turned yet. It would be murder.
This was true enough, on the face of it. Masur wasn’t a zombie, or whatever the fuck you became when you went full neurological, so he would, in fact, be killing a sentient human being. But he’d been bitten. They had no vaccine. Turning was inevitable.
There could only be one real answer:
It would be mercy.
He opened his eyes, the expression on his face as cold and immobile as a stone effigy, then reached into his harness and pulled out the baton. He sensed, more than saw Duke and Frank step to the side, but he did not look at them, did not truly see them, or anything, for that matter, except the spot on Masur’s neck, just below the right ear.
There is a cluster there, called the brachial nerve. Hit it with just the right touch, and anyone, no matter how big, will drop to their knees - assuming they’re human. Hit it a bit harder, and they’ll be unconscious when they hit the deck. Harder still, and they’ll be dead, as the signal between brain stem and central nervous system is interrupted, and the survival mechanisms of the body forget how to function.
He flicked his wrist and the baton extended with a metallic SNICK. Masur flinched at the sound. Somewhere deep inside, Jonesy noticed this, but something deeper, closer to the center of his being, ignored it, and moved his body to take a firm stance, come up on the balls of his feet, cock his torso to the right, and then bring all the kinetic force of legs and body and arm into the swing.
By the time Duke and Frank eased the body of their friend and shipmate over the rail and into the sea, Jonesy was halfway back up to the Bridge.
Silence greeted him there.
Hebert had taken over the plot, BMC/DECK Bernie Adams had the conn, and SN John “Mad Dog” Kennedy had the helm. They all stared at him. No one said a word.
He strode to the telephone on the bulkhead next to the chart table and dialed.
“Ship’s Office, Petty Officer Haversham,” the voice on the other end answered.
“Yeah, this is Jones. I need the Social Security numbers for Doc Harris, and BM2 Masur. It’s for the log,” he said, then looked at Chief Adams, whose face had turned pale. “Both are deceased.”
60
Frank entered the Mess Deck, followed by Duke, and was confronted by a gang of blowhard gossips more severe than any old time beauty parlor. For one thing, they were sailors at sea, which meant there were no secrets, as there was no privacy. Secondly, they were agitated and pissed off, because, third, they were in the middle of an absolute shit storm, they knew it, and they were looking for someone to blame.
“Fucker ran away - ran away, god dammit!” FN Craig Moncrief said, and received numerous nodding heads in reply. MK3 Carlos Martinez, who looked to be the senior guy in the compartment before Frank and Duke showed up, said nothing. But he, also, nodded
“And what was that bullshit about bringing his family aboard?” SN Jim Borgeson asked.
“Yeah,” the tall and lanky Fireman said. “We should do something about it.”
“You secure that shit right this fucking second, Moncrief!” Frank spat, getting into the young man’s face.
“Come on, Frank,” Martinez soothed. “You gotta admit this is bullshit.”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s the biggest pile of shit in the history of the Coast Guard.” He pointed at Moncrief. “What he just said is mutiny, and if you didn’t have your head so far up your own ass, you’d have done something about it.”
“Okay, okay,” Martinez said, backpedaling while still sitting at a mess table.
Frank glared at the rest of the assembled junior enlisted. “You all should know better, especially now. Aren’t things fucked up enough for you assholes? You want to make it worse?”
“Easy, Frank,” SNCS George DeGroot said.
“Fuck easy,” Duke snapped, before Frank had a chance to reply. “We just had to kill Masur, you dumb motherfuckers! There isn’t a single goddamned thing easy about any of this!”
The crowd fell silent.
Masur had been a popular guy, even if he was a self-avowed asshole. So had Doc, in the same way all ship’s Corpsman were. The loss of both of them at once, on top of losing Scoot and Terry Proud, and the word about Ensign Ryan’s plane disappearing, combined to fall like a ten-ton buoy anchor on them all.
But this was a ship at sea, and these were sailors, and Coasties to boot. No news - however dire - could stop the flow of bullshit humor.
“Did you see Miss Gordon?” Borgeson asked.
“Fuck, dude,” Moncrief replied. “Remind me to never get her pissed off.”
> “Seriously,” SA Eddie Sanders said, grinning from the far side of the compartment.
“Was kinda hot, though,” Martinez added, and Frank couldn’t disagree.
61
“If this was a Western, I’d be the old codger saying I’ve got an itch at the back of my neck that says we’re in Apache country,” John said, closing the Nautical Almanac with a snap. He ripped the piece of paper from the notepad he’d used for his calculations, crumpled it, tossed it into the trash can, and added: “Sunset is in about two hours.”
Jim scanned the horizon with binoculars. “That’s when I’d do it,” he said. “Right at sunset.”
“You always were a bit of a pirate,” John said, joining his friend at the Bridge windows.
“Shiver me timbers,” Jim said, dryly. “Left my parrot at home, though.”
“And a bit of a fuck up.”
Jim replied with a look of pure sarcasm. “Yeah, well, I’m not the one who let Spute bring that skank aboard.”
John sighed. “Nobody’s perfect.” He pulled a second pair of binoculars from one of the felt-lined boxes bolted to the forward bulkhead and brought them to his eyes. “Lets get all the families below, and lock all the exterior hatches.” He had installed electronic locks on all of them during the refit. They could be accessed by either a key card, or the key fob John carried in his pocket. “And then lets get armed up. You, me, Mick, and maybe Bob-Bob.” Bob-Bob was Bob Stoeffel, so named because such a large man couldn’t properly have just a three-lettered name.
“Gus, too,” Jim suggested.
“Really?”
“You should have seen him at the gun store.”
“Do I want to know?” John asked.
“Plausible deniability,” Jim replied.
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, well...” Jim shrugged. “Give Lane a gun, too. He’s a good man.”
John sighed again. “Fuck,” he said, sadly. “The mighty battle-tender True North. Who’d have thought?”
“Brave new world,” Jim replied.
“Bad new world,” John countered.
“No,” Jim said. “It’s really just the same old world - on steroids.” He walked over and peered into the radar screen. “You know, Ben Franklin had it wrong.”
John gave him an odd look. “Non-sequitur alert.”
Jim ignored the jibe. “Ben Franklin’s quote about the only sure things being death and taxes? He left one thing out.”
“Which is?”
“There will always be assholes,” Jim said, still looking at the empty radar screen. “And I’ll bet you there’s one of them out there, right now.”
62
Blackjack Charlie Carter glanced at the radar screen and smiled. The faint blip was still there, right at the edge of the screen, and right where it was supposed to be. They’d been shadowing the contact for hours, since they’d followed the DF plot to the most likely location.
The Daisy Jean was a shade over twenty-five nautical miles out, and the contact was at the edge of the twenty-five mile ring, which meant it had to be pretty big, otherwise they wouldn’t pick it up. The Daisy Jean, on the other hand, was not big, so the other boat probably couldn’t see them on radar.
Probably...
And so he’d been darting in and out of range just long enough to confirm they were still there, then heading back out another five miles. He spun the helm to starboard and goosed the throttle to give them a bit more speed.
He should have the sails up, since fuel was limited, and if they didn’t snag the other boat, he had no idea when they’d find more of it. But the sail cloth had radar reflective tape sewn into it, and raising them would increase their profile, and the jig would be up. That would fuck them before they even started.
The other ship could be a fancy yacht with a handful of rich bastards on it, or it could be a freighter with a full crew. He leaned more toward the former. The stupid bitch he’d talked to could only be some rich fucker’s trophy wife. No professional crew would be dumb enough to put her on the Bridge. But maybe... He didn’t know, and so their only hope was to catch them by surprise.
He smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. Small children would be scared by it. If everything worked the way he’d planned, the surprise wouldn’t be pleasant, either.
63
Captain Hall set MOPP (standing for Mission Oriented Protective Posture, yet another military gobbledygook acronym) Level 2, when the Polar Star was fifty nautical miles out of Guam. This meant everybody on board had to put on the NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) Hazmat suit and over-boots, but not the mask and gloves, and all non-essential personnel had to lay below to their NBC billets. These consisted of holds and other interior compartments without direct access to the exterior of the ship.
He also set Condition ZEBRA, throughout the ship. Ordinarily, while underway, Condition YOKE was set, which meant, all watertight hatches and doors were closed and dogged, but personnel could still move about the ship without bothering the people who were running it to get permission to open a damned hatch so the messcook could get powdered bug juice from dry stores. ZEBRA meant personnel did have to bother the already busy people up on the Bridge for permission. Fortunately, the bug juice had already been prepared.
He increased to MOPP Level 4 when the ship was twenty nautical miles out. Everybody had to wear the whole enchilada of suit, boots, hood, gas mask, and gloves. It was hot, it was uncomfortable, and many thought it was overkill, but nobody had either the balls or the poor sense to voice that opinion.
The suit by itself was uncomfortable enough, while still being more or less bearable. It wasn’t booty shorts and a tank top, by any stretch of the imagination, and there were at first many sarcastic remarks about what a bold fashion statement everybody was making, but all-in-all it wasn’t too bad. The addition of the mask and gloves, however, made life miserable.
The suit, designed as it was to protect the wearer from all sorts of nasty airborne contagions, didn’t breathe. It stank of plastic and protective chemicals, and made the person sweat as if they were sitting in their own personal dry sauna. But as long as the mask was off, the poor unfortunate stuck in the suit could still draw breath. When it was on, and when the poor unfortunate was locked into an interior compartment, and when, further, the Captain set Condition Circle WILLIAM, and closed off ventilation, just before the tugs out of Guam hooked on to pull them into harbor, it became cruel and unusual punishment.
This, at least, was the opinion of YN2 Lydia Claire. It was, honestly, the first time she regretted becoming a Yeoman.
The civilian equivalent of a Yeoman would be somebody in Human Resources. In the Coast Guard, it was, essentially, a nine-to-five job. The billets were usually land based, which gave them the opportunity to have something resembling a normal life, while still serving their country, but even on a ship, the job was pretty much nine-to-five (or, rather, 0800 - 1600). They didn’t stand underway watches, they didn’t have to drag their butts out of bed at some obscene hour, and they sat behind a desk all day. It was nice, it was routine, and it was the easiest way to slide though the day while still enjoying the benefits of an adventure at sea, without having to work too hard for it. It was a necessary job, because no propellers turned without administrative support, but in the grand scheme of life aboard ship, it was pretty cushy - until the CO set MOPP Condition 4.
Since she was a Yeoman, and didn’t stand watches or have a Special Sea Detail or Fueling Ops billet, or any of the other added extras of a life aboard ship she had thus far avoided, in MOPP Level 4, in a suit that didn’t breathe, in a compartment with no ventilated air, she was in Hell. So were the rest of the Yeoman and Storekeepers.
“I’m having the time of my life,” YN1 Dave Ablitz said next to her, the sarcasm coming through loud and clear, even though his voice was muffled by the gas mask.
“I can barely contain my enthusiasm,” she replied.
They were sitting side by side on a wooden crate, labeled:
Dr. Robert Stephanopolis, National Science Foundation, Woods Hole, MA. She had no idea what it contained, but assumed it was something Doctor Bob had either used or collected while down in Antarctica. He was no longer aboard, the scientists having all been flown off as the ship passed near Adelaide, South Australia, after coming up out of the ice.
He’s probably dead now, she thought with a pang. Or turned into a zombie.
Polar Star’s primary mission had been to cut a trail through the ice so freighters could deliver the necessary supplies to the Navy Base in McMurdo, Antarctica. Conditions were so extreme, and the weather so unpredictable, that the only way to deliver enough material for all of the US research stations to be supplied through the insane winter, was to bring it by ship in the summer. While many freighters were equipped with icebreaking hulls, few were actual icebreakers, and so the Polar Star went down every year.
Antarctica was one of the few truly unexplored places on the planet, so they also brought scientists, from Woods Hole, The National Science Foundation, Scripps Institute, the USGS, and other places, with them to conduct experiments and gather samples that required a floating platform. The scientists were a pain in the ass, and went by the pejorative nickname of Beakers, but Doctor Bob had been liked by one and all. And now he was either dead, or worse.
“I think I’m melting,” Dave said.
She could only imagine - and then instantly regretted having tried. Dave Ablitz was a large man, though by no means fat. With his large frame and hairy body, he looked quite a bit like a gorilla, even though he had a heart like a Golden Retriever. He’d been a defensive lineman in high school and college, but injured his knee, and so lost his scholarship, and then (in a sequence of events far too complicated for Lydia to even want to understand), he’d become a prison guard in Los Angeles County. It had not been to his liking, so he joined the Coast Guard.
Since Dave was so large and so hairy, the idea of what he would look - and smell - like when the suit finally came off, filled Lydia with sincere revulsion. Of course, she wouldn’t be smelling like a daisy when her’s came off, either, come to think of it. They sat there in shared misery, knowing they were stuck for the duration, condemned to watch others leave the stifling confines of the Forward Hold to go out into the air and perform the duties that she and Dave had so happily avoided - until now.