The Edge of Honor Page 13

  “After what I saw in Berkeley’s wardroom today, it’s not tough at all.”

  Benedetti stretched. “I hear you. But I think the first time you run into it, you’re gonna call the XO and Chief Jesus and not the CO and the chief master-at-arms. You gotta admit, at least your bosun’s mate, he gives you satisfaction. CO’s gonna give you a little pep talk.” He looked at his watch, shook it, and looked at it again.

  “Tomorrow’s turnover day,” he said. “We become Red Crown for real. Or actually, you and Austin become Red Crown.”

  “How’s that?”

  “After today’s fiasco, the Old Man took me off the CIC watch bill, so you and Austin are going to do the evaluator job six on, six off for the next forty-five days. I get to spend my time in the holes holding shit together.”

  He eyed Brian speculatively. “Welcome aboard, shipmate.”

  “It’s a real pleasure to be here, sir,” said Brian, repeating the old formula and digesting the news that he and Austin would be on port and starboard watches for perhaps the rest of the cruise, “I think.”

  Benedetti laughed, slid his mug into the pantry window, and left. Brian sat in the silent wardroom with his cold coffee, thinking about what Benedetti had told him.

  He looked around the wardroom. The furnishings were much fancier than those in his last ship—upholstered armchairs and a couch and even some end tables with real lamps. The overhead was tiled in acoustic panels, giving a softer look to the room than the expanded metal usually found in destroyers. The walls were white. The only patch of white in the Berkeley’s wardroom had been the bone white pallor of the bodies on the table. He shivered as the image intruded. He sat back and closed his eyes.

  His first sight of what war really looks like and he had puked like a seasick recruit. And the look on the exec’s face: What are you doing out here on the bridge, Mr. Holcomb? Did a little death scrabbling on the outside bulkheads unnerve you? Admit it, you were scared.

  Okay, but anyone who wouldn’t be scared when that shit starts is a fool.

  Yeah, but you’re not supposed to show it, Mr. Senior Lieutenant. No puking in front of the troops.

  He suddenly wondered whether Benedetti’s frustration with his job had more to do with the drug scene and how he was being forced to play it by the go-alongto-get along people than with the normal travail of being chief engineer.

  He thought again about Maddy. They would get their first logistics helo tomorrow after the turnover. He wondered whether he would get a letter.

  He had sent cards from Pearl and a letter from Subic. Mail from the States took almost three weeks to get out to the ships. He relived the unreasonable feeling of guilt that settled in his guts whenever he went off to sea, a feeling amplified by the tormenting notion that perhaps the important things in life were passing him by, real life, with a family, kids, maybe. But in their many rounds on the subject before the deployment, Maddy had been adamant, in that sweet but steely voice she came up with sometimes: no kids until Daddy was going to be ashore for more than two weeks at a pop.

  He knew that his tour in Hood would cap off the longest stint of sea duty in a typical career. The first eight to nine years for a surface ship officer were traditionally spent on sea duty, or in schools preparing for sea duty.

  Maddy had had a brief taste of Navy life when they were married three months into his tour in Decatur. Two months after their wedding, the ship had gone to the Mediterranean for a six-month deployment, abbreviated for Brian when orders for postgraduate school came. But the months of separation had taken a toll on their young marriage. If the tour in Decatur had not been followed by two years in Monterey at the Navy Postgraduate school, he might have lost her. Brian knew Maddy feared abandonment more than anything else. Now he was deployed again, this time for seven months. If they could only get by this hump, and if he made lieutenant commander, he would go ashore for a two-to three-year shore-duty tour before coming back to sea as an exec in a destroyer— assuming Maddy would wait. Her first letter would reveal a lot.

  He heard the stewards stirring in the wardroom pantry and looked at his watch. Almost time for midrats. Austin wanted him in Combat by 0500 to help with the turnover evolution. He got up, pushed his mug into the pantry window, and headed up to his stateroom.

  Chief Jackson peered down into the shiny hatch coaming of Number Two Fire Room. A stainless-steel ladder went straight down for four rungs, then bent to the left at an angle, disappearing into the jungle of machinery and steam lines on the upper level of the after fire room. A small hurricane of air from the ship’s interior rushed by his head into the fire room. Jackson had a secret fear of heights, and the vertiginous view from the top of the ladder, accentuated by that awkward bend, gave him pause. He took, a deep breath and climbed over the coaming, turned around, and went down the ladder backward.

  He knew that the snipes prided themselves on going down the other way, facing into the fire room, the ladder rungs at their heels. He had also seen one BT carried out of this very fire room with his leg broken backward from a fall on the ladder, so he chose the “twidget style,” as the snipes called it. A twidget was anybody who wasn’t an engineer, and therefore, according to the snipes, not a real man.

  He was already perspiring by the time he reached the upper level of the fire room. The nominal temperature on the upper level was 110 degrees, despite the efforts of the eighteen-inch-diameter exhaust vents roaring in the overhead of the space. The ladder landed on a steel-grid catwalk that extended between the two main propulsion steam boilers and gave access to main feed pumps and other auxiliary machinery arranged around the boilers.

  The upper level was unmanned, as the control consoles, the firing alley, and the relatively cooler air was down on the lower level, closer to the bilges. The lighting in the space shined yellow due to the steam-tight shields on the bulbs; the space stank of fuel oil, hot salt water, steam, and old asbestos lagging. Jackson’s objective was the tool crib and BT2 Gallagher, who was rumored to be hiding out there. He walked across the catwalk to the next ladder, careful not to touch any hot metal, and, turning around once again, went down the ladder to the lower level.

  This ladder gave onto the firing alley, a space about ten feet wide between the burner fronts of the two boilers. It was called the firing alley because the burners that supplied fuel oil to the two 1,200-psi steam boilers were loaded and serviced from this area. At the other end of the alley was the control console, where a boiler tender first class leaned nonchalantly on a battered three-legged stool and watched his dials. Two other men in oil-stained dungarees sat sweating on the step up from the alley to the console platform, directly under an air-supply vent.

  Because the supply vents terminated on the lower level, the temperature here was a slightly more humane 100 degrees. The machinery noise was terrific as the muted roar of the firebox in the one boiler on the line combined with the turbine whines from main feed pumps, fuel-oil service pumps, the combustion-control compressor, the air vents, all of it amplified by being confined in the steel compartment of the fire room, which was beneath the waterline. The three engineers wore spring-clip hearing protectors, and Jackson wished he had plugged his ears before he’d come down here. After his many years around the guns, he could not afford much more hearing loss.

  The engineers, all white, looked at him with blank expressions as he walked over to the console flat. If there was any division in the ship that was a hard-core bastion of racist whites, it was B Division.

  “I’m looking for BT Two Gallagher,” Jackson shouted to the first class.

  The first class pushed one earplug aside and asked him to say it again.

  Jackson complied, louder this time, sensitive to the fact that they were playing with him. The first class looked over at his two watch mates and then back at Jackson.

  “Haven’t seen him,” he shouted back.

  Jackson thought for a minute. His sources had been pretty sure that this is where Gallagher was hiding out
.

  The chief engineer had reputedly told Gallagher that he would go get his .45 and shoot him if he laid eyes on him, and Gallagher had apparently decided that the smart thing to do was to lie low for a week in case Mr.

  Benedetti meant it. The chief boiler tender, incensed over what Gallagher had done, had put in a special request chit to the exec asking to get Gallagher transferred over to Berkeley, which Jackson thought was a capital idea. Let them shoot him.

  “Where’s the tool crib?” Jackson shouted back.

  “It’s over there, behind two Able boiler. But it’s locked up; chief’s got the key.”

  “That’s okay. You,” he said, pointing to one of the sitting men, “you show me where it is.”

  The BT1 suddenly looked worried. “I think maybe you better call—”

  Jackson walked right up close to the BT1. “Don’t give me any shit, BT One,” he said. Funny, the man could hear him now. “If I say so, you’ll cut the lock on the tool crib and empty it out for inspection. Right, BT One?”

  He turned back to the other man. “Now, you—let’s go.”

  The BT1 scowled and reached for the phone. The younger petty officer got up as slowly as he could without being clearly insubordinate and led Jackson around to the back of 2A boiler, where he pointed to the tool crib, a wire cage ten by ten feet, constructed against the forward bulkhead of the fire room and lined with shelves for spare parts, rags, lubricants, and tools. The light fixture on top of the tool crib was not working. No supply vents cooled this area behind 2A boiler, so the heat was stupefying. The engineer spat into the bilges and then sidled away, leaving Jackson standing in the two-foot space between the forward bulkhead of the fire room and the hot steel air casing of the boiler.

  Although the tool crib was dark, Jackson thought he could see someone in there. As he approached it, he noticed that the door, chain link on a steel frame, was not locked. He opened the door and found Gallagher asleep on a bale of rags. He nudged the petty officer with his foot and woke him up. Gallagher sat up with a start, and when he saw khaki in the dim light behind the boiler, his face grimaced in fear. Jackson had an idea why, and it had nothing to do with Mr. Benedetti.

  “On your feet, Gallagher. I want to talk to you.”

  Gallagher got up slowly, rubbing his face. He was dressed in a ragged, oil-soaked pair of dungarees, which the main-space engineers called their bilge diving suit.

  He stank, and Jackson wondered how long he had been holed up there.

  There was a dirty mess-decks tray lying in the small wash sink inside the tool crib, and an oil smeared plastic water jug in the corner. All the comforts of home. Jackson looked over his shoulder to make sure the other man had left, then stepped back so Gallagher could come out of the tool crib.

  Gallagher was a short, squat, heavily muscled young man of about twenty-five; he had perpetual grease and off stains on his hands, lower arms, neck, and face, and red hair everywhere.

  “You know who I am?” Jackson asked. It was somewhat quieter behind the boiler, so he did not have to shout. He wiped his face.

  “Yeah. You’re the Sheriff.”

  “That’s right, Gallagher. And you’re the guy who got high on marijuana, dropped the load, put us dead in the water, and killed ten guys over in Berkeley.”

  Gallagher frowned and stared down at the deck plates.

  Hot black bilgewater sloshed around beneath the stainless-steel plates.

  His lips were working, but he said nothing.

  “So now that you’re famous,” Jackson pressed, “what I want to know is, where’d you get the dope?” Gallagher shook his head but still said nothing. Then he looked up. “I don’t gotta say nothin’,” he said.

  “Those’re my rights.”

  Jackson leaned forward, getting in the shorter man’s face. He bared some teeth and hardened his voice.

  “This isn’t mast, shithead. This is just a friendly little discussion.

  See, I’m the first guy’s gonna talk to you, but the way I hear it, the second guy’s gonna want to dance first, talk later. You catch my drift?”

  Jackson saw the flash of fear in Gallagher’s eyes. He knew what was coming. Gallagher shook his head again, looking from side to side as if to escape. Then he seemed to wilt.

  “Okay,” he said. “I brung it with me. I don’t sell it or nothin’; just a toke now’n then.”

  “At general quarters.”

  “Okay, so I fucked up. Nobody told me about no GQ.

  I was in my tree, the bell rang …”

  “So you were spaced-out when you got down here forgq.”

  “Maybe. A little.”

  Jackson stared down at the man, willing him to look up from the deck, but Gallagher kept his face down.

  “So where’s your stuff?”

  “I deep-sixed it after … after … you know. I don’t got no more, honest.”

  “Why do I not believe you, hunh? You know what? I heard the chief BT had a brain-fart. He’s offering to transfer your sorry ass over to the Berkeley, along with a letter telling them who you are and what you are and what you did two days ago. I mean, hell, it ought to beat living in the tool crib, right? Even if it’d be sort of a short tour, you know?”

  Gallagher looked confused and then afraid as he thought it through. The crew of Berkeley would put him in a boiler and throw the torch in after him. Jackson watched him weigh the possibilities and then saw a cunning look come into his eyes.

  “You’re just fucking around with me,” he mumbled.

  “Am I? Want to see the chit? XO’s got it, and I’ll tell you what—he’s thinkin’ about it. They would see that justice was done, and there’d be no shit on our hands, see?”

  This was a logic that Gallagher could indeed understand.

  “So what’s the deal?”

  “Deal? What deal?”

  Gallagher looked from side to side as if to see whether there was anyone else around. “C’mon, Chief,” he said.

  “I’m in enough shit already. What do you want?”

  “I want the guy or guys you’ll have to go see to replenish your little treasure, that’s what I want.”

  Gallagher stepped back away from Jackson and glanced back into the tool crib, as if he wanted to get back under his rock. Jackson heard some bells ringing around in front of the boiler and heard the pitch of the forced draft-blower turbines rise as the ship increased speed for some reason. Gallagher’s face streamed with sweat, and Jackson’s as he waited, his own khaki shirt glued to his back in the heat. Gallagher looked around again, sighed, and then gave a little nod.

  “Okay, okay. I sure as shit don’t want no transfer to the fuckin’ Berkeley. You wanna know who moves product in this boat, you go see the ni—you go see your soul brothers.”

  Jackson glared at him. “Meaning exactly what by that?”

  Gallagher stared back, an impudent look spreading on his face, but did not answer him. Jackson wanted to hit him.

  “You saying the drug ring is black?”

  “Don’t know nothin’ about no ring. Didn’t say nothin’ about no ring, did I? Did I? Look, those fuckers find out I even talked to you, they’re—”

  “Lemme tell you something, Gallagher: You’ve got bigger and sooner problems than that,” Jackson interrupted.

  Gallagher’s eyes widened. “Jesus Christ, c’mon, Sheriff, I gave ya something’, didn’t I? You ain’t gonna let—”

  Jackson straightened up. “You didn’t give me diddly shit, Gallagher.

  You’re still calling black people niggers, so why am I not surprised you’d say you’re getting your dope from ‘em, hunh? See you, Gallagher.

  And you better get a bigger lock on that door. The bosun’ll bite through that one and call it practice.”

  He left Gallagher standing by the tool crib and climbed up out of the fire room. He shivered in the almost-cold air of the main passageway and walked forward to his small office on Broadway, where he kept some clean spare shirts. He thoug
ht about what Gallagher had said.

  Supposing Gallagher was telling the truth, which would be a rare event, that blacks had the drug concession. That complicated matters—a lot.

  Any investigation targeted specifically against blacks would trigger an instantaneous hue and cry about oppression and persecution from the US

  hotheads on the ship’s Human Relations Council, even if Jackson was leading the charge.

  One other doper had claimed the same thing—that he got his marijuana from one of the blacks, hinting that they had the lock on selling dope on the ship. If it was true, Jackson knew that it was likely to be a small group of younger blacks who were disaffected from the rest of the crew, including most of the other blacks. Having a seat on the ship’s Human Relations Council, he knew the stats: Hood had about three dozen black men in the crew, with a fair mixture of nonrated men, petty officers and chiefs, and one officer, the Supply officer, Raiford Hatcher. He knew that most of them were upstanding citizens, sincerely interested in getting ahead and making something of themselves just like anyone else. But there was one group of about eight men who were clearly and openly hostile to whites and, for that matter, to the Filipinos and Hispanics who made up the rest of the minority mix in the ship. Chief Martinez called them equal-opportunity racists: They seemed to hate everybody.

  Since one of Jackson’s responsibilities was to keep an eye out for racial flash points, he had been watching them. If these guys were involved in the drug business, it would add a whole new dimension to a problem that he had thought was primarily racial.

  He reached his office, unlocked the door, and closed it behind him. He shucked the wet shirt and toweled off his face and arms. Jackson did not approve of the exec’s off the-books, gun-deck justice system, although the thought of Martinez closing in on Gallagher provided a certain satisfaction. Jackson wanted to do it right: conduct a regular investigation, a Navy regulation investigation, penetrate the ring, turn some snitches, find the main man, catch his ass, and blow up the whole thing with courts-martial and brig time. He knew he would have to find an ally in the wardroom if he was ever going to pull this off, preferably one of the department heads, because it would take a department head to run interference with the XO. Martinez said that the new guy, Holcomb, was a straight arrow. Maybe he would try that route, get something going. If they could pull it off, they could bring it up as a package to the XO, and then maybe they’d do it right. There was a loud knock on his door and then Chief Martinez stepped into his office.