The Edge of Honor (19 page)

“Basketball is a Marine C-One twenty-four cargo plane configured as an air-to-air tanker. He orbits northeast of Da Nang and refuels any Gulf aircraft that needs gas. We run the BARCAP off-station to refuel at least once during each mission. That way, they keep minimum combat package in case we have to vector them for a bogey.”

Brian shook his head. Three more questions had popped up with Garuda’s explanation, but he decided to give it a rest. He just nodded and wandered over to surface to get some coffee. And he had thought missile school was hard. But he was impressed with how quickly Hood’s Combat crew had settled into their PIRAZ station routine. Each of the modules appeared to be humming along, the watch slanders doing their thing against a backdrop of radio-circuit chatter, the clicking of buttons on the consoles, and the steady rush of cooling air from the sixteen consoles.

Radarman First Class Rockheart was in charge of surface in Brian’s watch section. He greeted Brian with a sincere

“Afternoon, sir” and filled the evaluator’s cup with fresh coffee. Brian was impressed with Rockheart’s appearance and military bearing.

Rockheart was obviously CPO material.

“All quiet on the surface front?” he asked. Surface was the one module he thought he understood. The familiar plotting tables and the SPS-10 surface-search radar were common to just about every Navy ship.

“Yes, sir,” replied Rockheart. “No surface contacts, although this blip right here might be a log helo on the way up from Yankee Station.” He pointed to an intermittent surface contact out at around forty miles.

“You surface guys doing air search with the ten?”

“No, sir, but the helos fly pretty low, maybe one or two thousand feet, so’s not to attract attention from the other side’s air-search radars.

They could be Mig bait before we could get a CAP into it. And at that low altitude, the ten can see ‘em.”

“That would be pretty unusual, wouldn’t it, RD One?

As I understand it, the Migs stay feet-dry as long as Red Crown is out here.”

“Yes, sir, but there’s a hole in the protection envelope for part of the helo’s trip. Lemme show you on the NTDS scope.”

They walked over to the surface console. Rockheart had the operator switch the display to the 150-mile range and suppress all symbols except surface ships. “See, we’re here in the center; that forty-mile circle is our missile envelope. There’s the south SAR station; there’s nobody there now, but you can visualize the forty-mile circle around him. You can see there’s a hole between the two of us where there’s no missile coverage. For about fifty miles of their run, the logistics helo has no one covering him except the CAP.”

“But Migs would still have to come out over the Gulf to get at them.”

“Yes, sir, and the BARCAP would be on ‘em like a snake on a rat, but probably not until after they’d bagged the helo. Last year a couple of Migs came out of the Vinh airfield—that’s right here, due west—and shot down a Jolly Green Giant SAR helo that was orbiting twenty miles offshore during a strike.” He switched the range scale down to sixty miles and pointed to a hook of land visible on the western edges of the radarscope. “The Migs were loitering in the radar shadow of the mountains south of their base. None of the Gulf tracks got a look at ‘em until they popped up feet-wet—that means over water—and zapped the helo, then zipped back into the mountains before anybody could react.

That’s why the log helo guys keep it on the deck when they come up here.”

“I’ll be damned. They could do the same thing to us if we weren’t looking. We’re only what—forty, fifty miles offshore right now?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Holcomb, but, begging your pardon, sir, that’s what your air side’s for. Migs show up, the AICs sic the BARCAP on ‘em. If that doesn’t work, your weapons module guys take ‘em with our Terriers. The Migs would be in range in about two seconds after they came feet-wet.”

Holcomb nodded. “Assuming everything works. And assuming we or one of the surveillance tracks detects them before they get to the coast.

Because if the first time we saw them was when they came over the beach, they could be in our face in around a hundred and eighty seconds. The BARCAP would have to be right overhead the Migs’ coast-out point to be of any use, and the Commies know where the BARCAP is just as well as we do.”

“Yes, sir, I suppose. But Mr. Austin says they’d never try it on one of our ships ‘cause there’d be a political shit storm. Bagging a helo’s a different deal from hitting a ship. And, besides, Mr. Hudson says a straight-in shot like that is lunch meat for our Terriers.”

“Assuming that they work.”

Rockheart grinned. “Well, yes, sir. That there’s a whole nother question. But I assume they’d work. And you own the Terriers, sir.”

Brian laughed. Touche”. Rockheart was tactfully pointing out that the Weapons officer had better not be saying that his Terrier surface-to-air missile systems might not work. But both men knew the truth, as anyone who had been in Combat during Terrier missile exercises could attest: The complex Terrier missile-guidance systems and their fire-control radars were notorious for tripping off the line at critical moments.

Just like Benedetti’s control air compressor, Brian mused.

“You just gotta have faith, RD One,” he said, and returned to D and D, where Garuda confirmed that a log helo was inbound.

“We’ll have the bridge call flight quarters when he’s thirty minutes out,” he announced. “That’s usually how long it takes to get the flight-deck crew and the firefighters on deck and to get Radio to patch the land-launch circuit correctly out to Prifly. That usually takes about five tries.”

“Roger that,” replied Brian, unconsciously imitating the AIC’s slang. A log helo might mean some mail was inbound. It had been nearly a month since they left San Diego. Mail call, Brian thought. Sugar report, in Navy slang. Everyone longed for mail call. But for the first time, he wondered what might be coming in the mail— Dear Brian or Dear John.

“Evaluator, SWIC, calling flight away quarters now.”

Evaluator. That’s me, Brian thought. “Evaluator, aye,” he replied.

San Diego The Sunday a week following her experience at MCRD, Maddy attended her second wardroom wives’ get-together at the captain’s house on the island of Coronado.

She really liked Coronado, the part natural isthmus, part man-made island that extended across the front of San Diego harbor. Although Coronado was approachable from downtown San Diego only by a ferry ride, it was not strictly an island, attached as it was by a long strip of empty beach to the South Bay shore area down near the Mexican border.

There were two major Navy installations on Coronado, the Amphibious Base on the south end and the North Island Naval Air Station on the north end. Sandwiched in between was some of the most exclusive real estate in San Diego, with its golf courses, prime beach, the palatial Hotel del Coronado, and the residential areas themselves, laid out on spacious avenues, beautifully landscaped, and containing some very expensive homes along the Pacific Ocean side. Like many Navy people, the Huntingtons had bought a modest rambler on Coronado back in the early fifties and hung on to it as a potential retirement residence. The house was now worth far more than they could ever afford to pay for it today, even on full captain’s pay.

Maddy drove off the ferry onto First Street, then turned onto Orange Avenue. Consulting a piece of note paper with the directions, she made her way to the Huntingtons’ house. She recognized several other wardroom cars parked along the palm-lined street, especially Tizzy Hudson’s convertible. She almost blushed again when she remembered the phone call from Tizzy Friday at work.

“And where exactly was Cinderella at midnight? The world wants to know.”

Tizzy had laughed.

Maddy had bobbed and weaved verbally, but finally told Tizzy of what had happened in the parking lot.

“Oh shit, I should have stayed. I should have come and found you. That’s why everyone goes in twos and threes—those guys can get fairly elemental. I’m sorry.

But what about this Gene Autry guy—is he good looking?”

“He’s an Indian, or part Indian. And I think it’s just autrey.”

“O-ooo-oh. We got past the name stage, did we? How delicious. Does he have one of those big Indian noses? Is he fierce-looking?”

“Tizzy, the man saved me from being—you know. It was after midnight in a dark parking lot. He gave me a ride to the apartment, let me out the door, and left. I was too busy being sick to my stomach to notice too many personal details, okay? It’s not like we made arrangements to meet again

“Too bad. He sounds pretty interesting. And you were very lucky he came along. You going Sunday night?”

“Oh God, I forgot. I guess there’s no way around it, is there?”

“No way that wouldn’t attract attention. That’s why she set it up for Sunday. No real excuse for not coming, even for us working girls, but no one will stay late except the ass-kissers.”

“Mrs. Huntington didn’t strike me as the type that would have much time for ass-kissing.”

“You’re right; she’s sorta tough, but actually very nice. I think she’d let the ‘extremely serious wives’ stay just because she has a generous nature. You like her, don’t you?”

“I guess,” Maddy had said. “I’m just not used to this whole organized female scene.”

“They call it a support system, whatever that means.”

Tizzy had laughed. “For the wives who need it, I suppose it’s a good thing. Mrs. Huntington has been around; she’s good people. She doesn’t approve of me, but she treats me like a grown-up, anyway. I’ll see you there, and I will want to know more about Mr. Autrey.”

Maddy parked the car and walked up the shrub-lined walk. She was dressed in a knee-length pleated skirt, a short-sleeved silk blouse, open at the throat, with a bright scarf, and low heels. She had not yet quite figured out the dress code for the wives’ functions, so she tended to overdress, forgetting that she was no longer on the East Coast. As she waited for the door to open, she plumped her hair, wondering whether she ought to cut it. No one wore long hair out here.

The door opened; Mrs. Huntington was smiling at her.

“Maddy, come in. I’m so glad you could make it. We don’t see enough of you career girls. You found it okay?

Good. Come in, come in.”

The captain’s wife was dressed in slacks and a sleeveless blouse and wore red sandals. Her hair was silver throughout and cut short. She maintained a trim figure for a woman in her late fifties, and Maddy could see that she must have been something as a bride. Her face was tanned and lined after nearly thirty years of traipsing around the Navy, and some of her husband’s commanding presence had worn off on his wife.

A consummate hostess, self-assured and at ease in any company, she was old enough to be motherly toward all the wardroom wives, even the exec’s. Maddy felt more than a little in awe of her.

Mrs. Huntington took Maddy through the living room area and out onto a trellis-covered lanai, which in the fall evening air was delightfully cool. The rest of the wives had scattered around the lanai, sitting on lawn chairs and some kitchen furniture that had been moved outside.

Trays of canapes filled the tables and several bottles of wine stuck out of an ice-filled cooler. A second cooler contained soft drinks. Tizzy Hudson waved and patted an empty chair next to her. Mrs. Huntington went back inside to get the door again and Maddy joined Tizzy gratefully. She said hi to some of the other wives, many of whose names she did not know. She recognized Angela Benedetti and, of course, Cynthia Hatcher, the Supply officer’s wife, who sat rather stiffly next to the executive officer’s wife, Barbara Mains. Tizzy passed her a glass of wine and made small talk until the nearest of the women sitting next to them got up to see someone else.

“Okay, kid, give—what’d you think of MCRD?”

Maddy looked around, not sure what to reveal. “I think it’s no place for a proper married lady,” she began.

“But I have to admit, I got into it for a while. I think it was the crowd—it’s so packed in there that you’re sort of dancing with everyone but not with anyone in particular.”

She looked around again. “Should we be talking about this? I mean, here?”

Tizzy laughed out loud, drawing a few curious looks.

But most of them were used to Tizzy and her devil-may care outlook.

“For heaven’s sake, Maddy, relax already. This is 1969. These people can’t tell you what you can and can’t do.”

“Yes, but I think it might hurt Brian’s career if the captain’s wife wrote to the captain that Mrs. Holcomb was hitting the bars.”

Tizzy rolled her eyes and moved closer. “Well, yes, it might,” she said, lowering her voice. “So you’re right: You don’t tell them. Honestly, some of these girls are regular busybodies. Nothing better to do, I guess. But when they ask me where I’ve been or why I didn’t come for bridge, or tea, or lunch, I just give ‘em a little of my Dizzy Tizzy routine, and my business stays my business.

Look, you’re still new to this Navy stuff. You can’t let the wives’ organization get ahold of your life, or you’ll have no life.”

“But the rest of them seem happy to be part of the wives’ deal.”

“It depends—some of them are afraid not to. Figure their husbands’ careers depend on having a good little wife who takes the wives’ group seriously, gets close to the CO’s and the XO’s wives, that sort of stuff. And some of them literally have nothing else, no jobs or other interests, so they just sort of naturally gravitate to a group.”

She refilled their wineglasses from a bottle she had appropriated for the two of them. “And there are wives who need the group—women who are literally afraid of being alone in their empty apartments or houses, or who need constant reassurance that everything’s okay with the ship and the guys. Hey, look, I’m not knocking it, okay? I’ve just got other fish to fry, a full-time job that I like and the freedom to do what I want with my own time.”

Maddy nodded, feeling a little better. But she could relate to the dread of being alone.

“So tell me more about this Autrey guy who rescued you from the Marine monster.”