The Edge of Honor Page 10

  The exec came into the pilothouse and gave Brian a bleak smile.

  “Welcome to WESTPAC, Mr. Holcomb. Bet they don’t do this shit over there in NATO, do they?”

  “No, sir, they do not.”

  The exec came closer. “Have you left your GQ station for a reason, Brian, or were you just getting a little nervous back there in the CIC?”

  He deliberately spoke in a soft voice so the enlisted men could not hear.

  Brian felt his face flush. “Uh, yes, sir, I came out to … uh—”

  “Yeah, okay. You’re not used to doing everything from Combat. But maybe you better go back in there. We get power back, the Old Man’s gonna want to shoot at least some token rounds before we slink away from this fiasco, okay?”

  “Yes, sir. Right away.”

  “Attaboy.”

  Brian, his face still red, waited for the ship to steady after a deep roll, then headed back into Combat as the smoke screen from the two destroyers blotted out the sunlight in the port-side bridge windows. The booming of the Hull’s guns followed him through the vestibule doorway.

  He almost collided with Austin as soon as he reentered Combat. Berkeley, for some reason, had stopped firing.

  “Snipes say they’ll have a boiler back on the line in two minutes,”

  Austin said. “I’ll need a status report on the combat systems ASAP, especially the forty-eight radar.”

  Brian nodded and went to the weapons control module.

  As he grabbed for a stanchion to steady himself through another deep roll, Chief Iverson swiveled around in his console chair.

  di

  “Good news, Mr. Holcomb. The radar guys say they had the system offline for the gun shoot—they were worried about shock and vibration.

  So it should be okay for the power drop.”

  “Very good news, Chief. What about the missile systems and the MK Sixty-eight?”

  “No status till they get the juice back, boss. Apparently, that’ll be comin’ up most skosh.”

  As if in answer to Iverson, the sound of the ventilation systems spooling up throughout the ship filled the unnatural quiet of CIC.

  Overhead, the fluorescent light fixtures buzzed on in concert with the twittering of digital alarms from the consoles. Austin came back into CIC as the rumble of propellers shook the ship.

  “All right, everybody, get your systems back on the line and get me reports of any electronics casualties.

  Surface, D and D, when you get a radar, give us a course directly away from the coast.”

  “Surface, aye, and we need one-four-zero to go directly away.”

  “Evaluator, aye. Pass that recommendation out to the bridge.”

  The ship’s head was already swinging around to the southeast when two more rounds came overhead, falling long now that the ship was hidden behind the destroyers’ smoke screen. For some reason, Brian found the sounds of incoming fire to be less threatening now that the ship had mobility and combat systems power back up. The chief was tugging his sleeve.

  “We get the gun system back up, we ought to set up on the beach and scatter some rounds up and down the coast.”

  “But we don’t have a target.”

  “Yes, sir, I know that. But those tin cans couldn’t really see anything, either—once they shifted from their point targets inland, they were just setting up on a band a thousand yards wide along the coast and hopin’ the shooters were in there somewheres. I mean, what the hell, it would make everybody feel good …”

  The destroyers had swept by and were now somewhere astern of them, but on the other side of the massive pall of black smoke they had laid down.

  Hood’s gun mount was on the fantail, so she could fire and still drive away from the coast. Brian grinned at him.

  “Okay, Chief, get it set up. I’ll see if Austin wants to play.”

  He walked over to D and D from the weapons control module. Austin was talking to the captain on a sound powered phone handset. The ship was steadying on a southeasterly heading and gathering speed. Brian waited for an opportunity to break in, then made his pitch.

  Austin relayed it to the captain, paused, nodded his head, and hung up the phone.

  “Captain says no: We don’t have a surface-search radar up and we can’t see the two destroyers through the smoke. We don’t want to hit one of our own ships accidentally.”

  “Okay, makes sense,” acknowledged Brian. “I should have thought of that.” They were interrupted by the maneuvering circuit.

  “Tango Four, this is Magnavox. Request advise when you have power restored and if you have a medical officer on board, over?”

  Austin tapped CWO Garuda Barry on the shoulder.

  Barry was sitting at the ship’s weapons coordinator console, called SWIC. Barry switched over to radio communications and selected the maneuvering circuit.

  “Magnavox, this is Tango Four. Propulsion power restored. I am clearing to the southeast. And affirmative on the medical officer, over.”

  “Tango Four, this is Magnavox. Request you come alongside Tango Three as soon as we are out of gun range of the coast for transfer of medical assist team to Tango Three. Recommend boat transfer, as Tango Three does not have a helo deck. Twelve-plus casualties, over?”

  “This is Tango Four, roger out,” transmitted Barry.

  “Holy shit, they musta got clobbered good,” said one of the air controllers sitting to Barry’s right. Brian now knew why Berkeley had stopped firing. The word spread throughout CIC as Austin grabbed for the captain’s line again to report the message. Realizing that a boat transfer was a Weapons Department function, Brian walked quickly back to weapons control and took Chief Iver son’s headset.

  “Director One, this is Control. Jack, we’re gonna do a boat transfer with Berkeley. She apparently took a round and has several casualties.”

  “Are we done shooting, sir?”

  “Yeah. As soon as we’re out of range of the beach, we’ll set condition Yoke. The bridge will be passing the word in a minute to assemble the docs and the boat crew.

  Pass the phones to your director operator and get on it.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. Plot, get word to Chief Martinez.”

  Brian handed the headset back to Chief Iverson.

  “Chief, I’m going down to the boat decks. You assume weapons control and get Mr. Austin a status of the systems as soon as all stations report in.”

  He left CIC as the 1MC made the announcement to secure from general quarters and prepare for a boat transfer with Berkeley. Thirty minutes later, it was Brian, not Jack Folsom, who was bundled up in a bulky orange kapok life jacket and jammed in with Hood’s, medical officer, the chief hospital corpsman and the junior hospital corpsman, three metal cases of medical supplies, and the three-man boat crew. Brian found himself squinting through salt spray as they approached the starboard quarter of the guided-missile destroyer Berkeley in . Hood’s twenty-six-foot motor whaleboat. The seas were j choppy and the heavily loaded boat was shipping a lot of water. Brian, used to the frigid Atlantic, was surprised at the warm Pacific. The medical officer hung on to the side ‘ of the pitching whaleboat. He was apparently no seaman, based on the greenish hue of his face. Brian looked away as the doctor fed the fishies.

  Ordinarily, the ship’s first lieutenant would have been the boat officer, but at the last minute, the captain had i summoned Folsom to the wardroom to help with the after-action incident report. The exec had directed Brian j to make the run as boat officer. The steel sides of Berkeley loomed above them as they closed in under her starboard quarter. From a hundred yards out, Brian had been unable to see any visible signs of damage to the destroyer. As the whaleboat closed in, however, he noticed the telltale smudge marks of heavy smoke around the deck house hatch leading out to the DDG’s starboard side quarterdeck area. Forward of the hatch at about head height, he could see a dinner plate-sized black hole in the bulkhead. There were several fire hoses leading into the blackened hatchway and one of the exhaus
t vents still billowed dirty steam. Some of the men clustered around the deck house wore oxygen-breathing apparatus, or OBAs. As the boat drew closer, he could see soggy mounds of burned insulation piled on either side of the hatch.

  A crew of deck seamen waited at the top of the steel pipe ladder toward which the coxswain pointed Hood’s whaleboat. It took about three minutes to get the boat stabilized alongside, then the doctor and his team of corpsmen clambered up the ladder, followed by Brian.

  On deck, the docs were greeted by a gray-faced lieutenant commander whose khaki uniform was spotted with dark brown stains. Without a word, he grabbed the pasty faced doctor and pointed him forward up the main deck toward the wardroom. The two corpsmen followed as the boatswain mates pitched lines down into the boat to begin hauling up the medical supplies. Brian realized that he was in the way and stepped aside. He spoke to a frightened-looking ensign who was watching at the lifeline.

  “So what happened here, mister?”

  The ensign, whose pale face Brian realized was streaked with tears, appeared not to have heard him. A chief standing a few feet away on the fantail glared at Holcomb, so Brian walked over to the other side of the quarterdeck, where the stink of smoke, burned insulation, and, sickeningly, cooked meat was suddenly very strong. Brian noticed that the paint on the barrel of the Berkeley’s after five-inch fifty-four gun on the next deck up was burned black and still smoldering from the heat of the fire mission. He had to pick his way through a pile of empty brass powder casings that were clanging back and forth into the lifelines as the ship rolled. Several dazed-looking men stood around on the fantail.

  A lieutenant sitting on the deck by the base of the missile launcher looked over at Brian. His khakis were in ruins, soaked by salt water and bloodstains, and the edges of his face were blackened by smoke. He put his head back in his hands and stared down at the deck.

  Brian spoke to the chief, who continued to glare at him.

  “I’m the Weapons officer in Hood, Chief. What happened here?”

  The chief cleared his throat and spat over the side. His eyes were red and his khaki uniform soaked with sweat and firefighting water. His face had the telltale marks of an OBA mask imprinted on his skin. He spoke in a flat tone, quivering with suppressed anger.

  “When the fuckin’ Hood went DIW, we had to turn around and come back down our track to lay down a smoke screen. Gave the god damned NVA a second chance to get the range. After we went by you, we started a turn out to make another firing run and the fuckers put a one-hundred-thirty-millimeter into Repair three, back there by the post office. We had a full damage-control party, Repair Three, stationed in that passageway. Round went off in the middle of ‘em. We got nine dead and three more cut to shit up in the wardroom.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Yeah, Jesus Christ. We were doing okay until your fuckin’ snipes went and dropped the load.” He stared hard at Brian and then seemed to wilt, realizing that he was out of line. He took a deep breath and started to apologize, but Brian cut him off. The people in Berkeley had every right to be pissed off.

  “Christ, I’m sorry, Chief. We sure as hell didn’t do it on purpose, and we got hit, too. But not like this.” Brian felt his face flush as he mentally compared Festerman’s cut hand with the death and destruction in Berkeley. The chief nodded silently. Then the lieutenant sitting on deck looked up at him again.

  “You from the Hoodt’

  “That’s right. I’m very sor—”

  “Fuck your very sorry. You go on up there to the wardroom take a look at what happens when a ship can’t keep her plant on the line in a gunfight. Go on, get your ass up there. Take a look at what you sonsabitches did.”

  Brian started to reply but then became aware that everyone on the fantail was now staring at him. The only sounds came from the whistle of the wind through the lifelines, the chug of Hood’s whaleboat engine, and the clanging and banging of the shell casings rolling around the fantail.

  “Go on, mister. If you don’t know where it is, just follow the trail.”

  Brian was torn: Hood’s motor whaleboat was no longer alongside, but it was pretty clear from their faces that he needed to get off the fantail.

  Reluctantly, he turned and walked forward up the main deck. Several exhausted looking men stumbled by in their GQ gear, ignoring him.

  Berkeley was laid out much like his last ship, Decatur, so he knew where the wardroom was. He also knew that in a destroyer, the officers’ wardroom mess doubled as the principal medical battle-dressing station, since a destroyer’s sick bay was only a tiny one-room compartment.

  “Follow the trail,” the lieutenant had said, and indeed there was a slick red path of blood glistening on the gray nonskid and leading up the starboard side to the forward athwartships passageway. Pausing before the open hatch, he took a deep breath and tried to fill the growing pit in his stomach. He stepped in through the hatch and then turned right into the narrow passageway leading up to the wardroom. Two men slumped against the bulkhead at the other end of the passageway looked at him and then back down at the deck. The linoleum tiles in the passageway felt greasy under his sea boots.

  The door to the wardroom was closed, but he could hear the sounds of frantic activity on the other side.

  There was a round four-inch-wide glass porthole in the wardroom door.

  Brian peered through the glass and felt his stomach grab. Blood was everywhere—on the ceiling, on every bulkhead, covering every chair and piece of furniture in the wardroom. On what was normally the dining room table for fourteen officers were the bodies of three almost-naked men who were literally cut to pieces.

  The man nearest the door had no legs beneath his knees.

  An arterial wound in his upper chest pumped bright red blood in huge spurts onto the overhead, where it dripped back down all over the table in a ghastly crimson rain.

  The man laid out beyond him had the top of his head missing and Brian could see glistening gray membranes f bulging out of the broken skull.

  The third man was still, a fist-sized hole punched through his abdomen, his skin as white as marble except where blood from the first man had spattered him. Hood’s doctor and both corpsmen, together with Berkeley’s two corpsmen were drenched in blood as they tried to stop the arterial fountain. Brian stared in growing shock until the glass porthole was | suddenly spattered with blood, causing him to jerk his face back. Blood was seeping out from under the door, pooling under his boots. His feet windmilling, he backed away from the door and then bolted from the passageway with a small cry, ran out past the two startled sailors to the port side, and vomited over the weather breaks bull f rail. When his stomach stopped its spasms, he straightened up and took several deep breaths, wondering why it was dark, until he realized that his eyes were clenched shut. As he turned around, he saw that there were several black rubber body bags stacked inside the breaks enclosure to his right.

  A chief petty officer was standing among the body bags, his breathing apparatus dangling down | from his waist, a red firefighter’s helmet in his hands.

  “Who’ve you, Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “I came with the … uh, the boat crew. We brought the doctor.” He was embarrassed that he could not | bring himself to say Hood’s name. The chief just nodded silently and resumed his vigil in the breaks, his hands turning the red helmet over an dover as he looked down at the sodden body bags. Brian wiped his face off with his handkerchief, took a deep breath, walked back through the passageway to the starboard side, and then headed back aft to the quarterdeck, his stomach still churning over the charnel-house scene in the wardroom.

  He saw Hood’s boat crew looking at him from their pitching boat fifty yards away. He gave the coxswain a curt hand signal to come back alongside. By the time he got back to the pipe ladder, the boat was bobbing and bumping alongside. Ignoring the hostile stares of the Berkeley people on the fantail and not waiting for the i boat to make up, he dropped down the ladder and into the boat.
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  “Shove off, Coxswain. Back to the ship. Now!” he ordered. The crew jumped to it after seeing his face, and the whaleboat roared off in a cloud of exhaust toward the gray bulk of Hood, waiting a half mile away.

  Brian sat stiffly in the bow, staring at nothing, oblivious to the soaking spray.

  Brian stepped out of the motor whaleboat and through the lifelines as the boat was hoisted up to the railing on Hood’s 01 level. The chief boatswain stood at the railing.

  “Bumpy ride, boss?” Martinez asked, eyeing Brian’s pale face as he climbed over the lifelines.

  “Bad scene over there, Boats. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  He shed his kapok life jacket and headed for the wardroom. He needed some coffee to wash out the foul taste in his mouth. He jumped sideways when a blast of 1,200-psi steam thundered out of the forward stack for ten seconds before subsiding in a wet hiss of white spray.

  Snipes must be setting safeties on the boilers, he thought.

  When he arrived in the wardroom, he found several of the CIC officers, chiefs, and senior petty officers gathered around the junior table working on charts and traces from the plotting table in Combat. He headed straight for the coffeepot, trying to conceal his trembling hands, but Jack Folsom jumped out of his chair to intercept him.

  “Captain’s having a meeting of department heads up in his cabin. They said for you to join them as soon as you got back. Uh, you don’t look so good, Mr. Holcomb.”