The Edge of Honor (60 page)

“Slack!” shouted the exec. Brian let go and they paid put twenty feet of line, which had the effect of lengthening Martinez’s arc so that he could slide down to the after end of the boat decks. A great sheet of spray lashed down on the deck from above, checked the chief’s swing across the flooded deck, and washed him under the starboard davit foundations. As the mooring line tightened, Brian saw static electricity crackling along its entire length and felt all the hair on his arms stand up. But the chief had reached his objective, the starboard boat davit.

He appeared again in the lightning flashes, signaling for more slack.

They paid out more line, then had to retrieve most of it when a wave came across the deck and almost snaked the whole thing out of their hands. The burn made Brian wish he had gloves.

It took fifteen minutes to pass enough line out to the chief, who was wedged between the starboard boat davit foundation and the ship’s superstructure. The thundering wind drowned out even their thoughts, and Brian’s heart pounded every time the chief disappeared under the torrents of water that went rushing aft along the boat decks. At one point, a gear locker tore off the forward bulkhead and was swept down the deck, just missing the chief, whose back was turned as he clamped onto the davit foundations. The chief struggled to take up the slack in the line, coiling it under the davits, where he stopped it off with a hank of twenty-one-thread line.

Then he formed a bight in the end of the line. Timing his movement between rolls, he came out from under the davit and scrambled up the inboard ladder to the level of the gig skid, the bight attached to his body. This was the really dangerous part, as the twenty-eight-foot-long gig was not stable in its skid but swinging out over the sea, all twelve tons of it, every time the ship rolled to starboard, then pounding back onto the skid when she came back to port.

Brian saw what the chief was attempting. With his legs wrapped around the top of the inboard ladder, he would wait until the gig swung in and then would throw a length ] of the heavy line over the boat. He would then climb partially down the ladder, wait for the boat to swing out , and back in again, and attempt to grab the end of the line. If he could fairlead the end of the line through the davit foundation and secure it, the men inside the ship could pull on the mooring line and gripe the boat back in.

But how in the hell could he get the line around the gig in the first place? In this wind, it would just be blown aft.

And then he understood. He grabbed the exec’s arm and tried to tell him, tried to say they should stop it, but the XO couldn’t hear him against the shrieking wind and couldn’t see his face well enough to understand. By then, Martinez was making his move. The chief had climbed back up to the top of the ladder and waited for the gig to roll back into the skid. Then he launched himself onto the boat, the mooring line around his chest, and rode the boat out on the next swing over the depths. When the gig started back in, the chief dropped over the outboard side, hanging now by the mooring line, and swung underneath the boat, grabbing the davit foundations even as the boat took off again out over the seas. He had left himself enough slack to accommodate the gig’s swings, but he did not get back under the davits fast enough. A large wave came sheeting along the side and tore his hand hold away, flinging him back over the side.

There was nothing the men in the hatch could do, as the line was tangled under the davits. Twice the chief became visible in the glare of lightning, bobbing atop a huge wave as it swept by, jerking back to the ship but helpless to get himself back aboard. Brian stood in shock as they watched, until a brilliant flare of lightning clearly illuminated Martinez’s broad face—and he was grinning!

Jesus Christ, Brian thought, he thinks he’s having a good time. Then the next black mass of water pulled the chief completely under. Brian was ready to snap the climbing harness to the mooring line and go out there when the exec grabbed his shoulder and pointed. Martinez had been swept back aboard, only this time into the starboard side three-inch gun tub, twenty feet aft of the gig davit.

The mooring line was still draped over the nose of the gig, although it was threatening to come off with each blast of wind.

Over the next ten minutes, Martinez fought his way back across the deck, bouncing between bulkheads and replenishment stanchions to the gig davit’s foundation, where he was able to grab and tie off the end of the mooring line to the foundation supports. He then threaded the standing part of the line around a replenishment sheave in the deck. Waiting for a moment of stability in the ship’s gyrations, he shinnied his way back across the deck, pulling himself hand over hand along the mooring line, his knees throwing up bow waves like a water-skier trying to get up. He made it to the hatch as the crew inside heaved around on the line to begin snubbing in the gig.

Brian and the exec snatched him into the vestibule as the ship dipped into a deep roll to port. Brian started to close the hatch, but of course the mooring line, taut with the weight of the boat, was now vibrating in the middle of the hatchway. About fifteen men crowded the passageway now, alternately hanging on to the mooring line against the deep rolls and then pulling on it, their faces wet from the blasts of spray blowing in through the hatch.

The chief half-slid, half-tumbled down the ladder and collapsed on the passageway deck among the straining deck apes, a big grin on his face, his steel helmet battered and dented. He lay on his back, gulping deep breaths of air, his arms and legs splayed across the passageway to maintain position, while his men heaved and pulled on the mooring line, gaining a little ground on the swinging boat each time she came into the skid. Brian stared at him from the top of the vestibule and the exec clapped Brian on the back and mouthed out a hearty, if inaudible, “Well done.”

The ship fought her way through the back half of the typhoon for the next eleven hours before the storm showed the first signs of abatement.

By midmorning, they had been able to come about and point east back toward Subic after the most violent sector of the storm had gone by and the rolling was down to an almost pleasant twenty degrees, although the storm still obscured most of the daylight. Except for the watch standers, the entire crew stayed in their racks, the safest place to ride out the pitching and rolling. The winds backed rapidly throughout the morning, but it was not until almost 1500 in the afternoon that visible daylight appeared and normal conversation was possible above decks. Brian and the chief boatswain had made a topside tour of the weather decks, dressed out in helmets and kapok life jackets. Brian was surprised to find the decks littered with dead fish encrusted in caked salt; there was a strong stink of iodine in the air. Topside damage in Weapons Department was limited to the battered gig, three missing gear lockers, one exterior ladder twisted off its moorings, and two dozen downed lifeline stanchions on the fan tail.

The story of what the chief had done had been fully circulated and he was either being congratulated as a hero or scorned as a complete idiot, although the latter opinion was not voiced to his face. The remainder of the day produced a confused, sickening chop in the South China Sea as the giant storm drove up into the Tonkin Gulf and began to generate reflected waves off the Asian mainland. During the storm, most of the crew had been too busy hanging on for dear life to be seasick, but now, as the ship corkscrewed her way into evening, the head count on the mess decks and in the wardroom diminished dramatically. Brian found himself affected, not by nausea but by a dull headache from the physical stress of trying to stay upright. He downed two APCs before supper in the wardroom, where he found himself almost alone at the senior table in the company of the exec and the chief engineer. The other two department heads, Raiford Hatcher and Count Austin, had been hard down since they left Subic, and many of the other ship’s officers had decided to take a pass on the evening meal. With their usual perfect sense of timing, the galleys had served up a nice beef stew.

There was desultory conversation at supper about the weather and who was or was not seasick, including some sharp jibes about Austin, who had often bragged about being an ocean yacht racer. Supper was a both-hands operation, with one hand holding on to the plate while the other operated the silverware. Condiments and other tabletop accoutrements were placed on their sides in an effort to reduce spillage, and there was a good bit of chasing things around the table when the ship got into a sequence of particularly deep rolls. The exec was telling a story about his last typhoon when a pale-looking radio messenger knocked on the wardroom door and entered, snatching off his blue ball cap as he stepped through the door.

“XO, got an immediate for you sir,” the messenger said. His face paled even more when he saw the remains of the beef stew.

“Okay, lemme see it,” replied the exec. Eyeing the messenger’s face, he asked, “You, uh, want to wait outside, maybe?”

“Uh, yes, sir, if that’s okay,” gulped the messenger.

He practically bolted out of the wardroom. There was a weather decks hatch not too far from the wardroom door.

“That boy’s gonna go feed the fishies,” observed the engineer.

“And we’re going back to the friggin’ Gulf,” announced the exec, eyeing the message.

“Oh shit.” Brian sighed. “What’s happened to Long Beach! They were supposed to do another two weeks.”

“Don’t tell me we’re gonna miss Kaohsiung?” asked Vince.

“Yup,” the exec said, passing the message board over to Brian. “Would you believe, Long Beach lost her freakin’ TACAN antenna in the storm?

Blew clean away.

They apparently waited a little too long to get out of the Gulf, so it got pretty bad up there—you know how shallow the Gulf is. So no antenna, no TACAN; no TACAN, no Red Crown. Three guesses whom they’ve sent for.”

“So let’s go bust our TACAN antenna, XO,” offered Vince. “We’ve still got some storm left out there. Shit, I’ll climb up there and do it. I’ve got some boiler work to get done, and there’s a destroyer tender in Kaohsiung.”

“Solly, cholly,” the exec said. “They want us back on station ASAP; we’ve been directed to make best speed up to the Gulf as weather permits.”

“I’m not sure what the huge hurry would be,” Brian said. “Nobody will be flying off the carriers in this weather.”

The exec snagged his coffee cup as a deep roll started it sliding toward Brian’s lap, adding to the many stains on the tablecloth. “Well, maybe someone’s got something planned for the North Vietnamese,” he mused.

“You know, as a storm this size plays out over the North, there might be a lot of targets exposed and not much triple-A defense in place until all those creeks and canals go down. Might be an ichiban time to go whack some Commies. I better go up and see the Old Man.”

“How’s he doing, XO?” Brian asked, trying to keep it casual.

The exec gave Brian a speculative look. “Doing? Well, he’s tired—been up on the bridge for nearly twenty-four hours while we rode this bear out. That what you meant?” There was the barest hint of an edge to the exec’s voice.

Brian thought fast. That was not at all what he meant, but from the look in the exec’s eyes, he had a sense that he was straying into uncharted territory. He cleared his throat nervously.

“Yes, sir. I just hadn’t seen him for a while. Guess I have to get out on the bridge more often.”

The exec relaxed, apparently satisfied with Brian’s answer. “The rack’s the only safe place to be when she’s wallowing around like this. And since you’re not seasick and the Count is, how’s about going up to Combat. Get with Garuda. Give him the good news and let’s start getting Combat ready to work again. That’s assuming you can find a radarman on board who isn’t as green as his scope.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The exec left, taking the message board with him topside; the radio messenger apparently was not going to return. Vince was looking at Brian over his coffee cup.

“Touch a nerve, did we?” he said.

Brian rolled his eyes. “It was a semi-innocent question.”

“And that was a semiserious warning to keep thine nose out of nooks and crannies where it ain’t been invited … so to speak.”

“You saw him the other night. I mean, I thought he’d been on a nine-day toot, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t think that’s it. I think there’s something wrong, something medically wrong. He actually looked kind of drugged.”

“Now there’s a thought,” said Vince, reaching under the table for the buzzer to summon the steward. They could not leave the dishes on the table with the ship rolling around like this.

Then he remembered that the Filipino steward had served supper and then hastily preceded the radio messenger to the weather decks. “I forgot; we have to play steward tonight.”

They gathered up the crockery into the middle of the table. The tablecloth had been deliberately wet down to increase friction under the plates, so they put all the plates and cups and saucers into the middle of the table and then balled them up in the tablecloth, tied it in a wet knot, and stuck the bundle on the deck in the wardroom pantry. Brian noticed that there was plenty of stew left.

San Diego Maddy would remember that weekend as two nights and two days of suspended reality, nothing but a marathon of the senses, no phones, no wardroom wives, no bank accounting department, no tennis, just Autrey. Even in their most passionate days of romancing, during the weekends with Brian in New York, she had never stayed so close or affixed herself to a man so hard and for so long. And it wasn’t all just sex. They talked a little, dozed, sat in the dark and watched the play of the city’s lights on the night clouds, made scrambled eggs in the early hours of the morning, listened to an after-hours jazz station on the radio, and occasionally slept. Maddy found herself entering a state of renewable exhaustion, ignoring the phone when it rang, staying awake sometimes after he had gone to sleep, savoring his presence, the feel of a live, warm man right there, anytime she reached out, and she often did reach out, just to make sure.