The Gulf (14 page)

But they'd all been through snafus like this many times during their active-duty years, and since then on annual training, and though they bitched, no one was much surprised. Once they got to Fort Story, things improved. The explosive ordnance T&E facility there had barracks reserved and had set up a special course for them. They'd worked through the weekend, classes on mine identification and triggering mechanisms, intelligence briefings by technicians from Indian Head, render-safe procedures. Then they put it into practice, diving on dummy devices in Lynnhaven Roads.

The fifteen reservists from EOD Group Two had shaken down well, losing only one man from Maine; he got disoriented on a night dive and washed out. All Gordon's guys, the Vermont det, had made it through.

And then, this morning, off to Charleston. Where, in a few minutes, he'd see the ship they'd be going to the Gulf on.

The driver turned his head. Speaking very slowly and distinctly this time, as if to a fool or a foreigner, he said, “Is you goin' to one these ships, suh?”

“That's right. Look for number four-three-three.”

“Ow-dassity, right? Pier Two. Thass one them minesweeper boats, goin' over there to A-rabia.”

Gordon nodded. So much for security. He pulled on his raincoat and got out. He paid the driver, hesitated, then added a quarter. Hoisting the seabag to his shoulder and carrying the B-4, he headed toward the waterfront through rain smelling of pulp mills, mud, and waste steam.

She was tied up at the pier head, where the water was shallow and muddy. The closer he got, the smaller she looked, until when he was opposite her he stopped, still balancing the sea-bag, and just stared.

This class had been laid down in 1952, after North Korean mines held MacArthur up at Wonsan. A lot had changed in the Navy since then, but it looked like
Audacity
had missed the updates. She seemed small, and tired, and dirty amid the new steel and aluminum hulls, the antennas and phased arrays, missiles, and helicopters of the rebuilt fleet of the late eighties. Splintered gouges showed on the wooden planking beneath shiny gray paint. A dingy awning stretched over the open bridge. The ratguards looked serious, though, tightly rigged and slathered with yellow grease.

The gangway was varnished teak, faded and cracked. Gordon scraped the mud from his shoes before he stepped up on it. The rails were wrapped with decorative marlinework saffroned by age. It led to a tiny quarterdeck bannered
WELCOME TO U.S.S
.
Audacity.
WHERE THE FLEET GOES, WE'VE BEEN
. On the other side, a sign proclaimed
ON WOODEN SHIPS, IRON MEN
.

Letting the seabag thump to the deck, he looked slowly around, scratching the back of his neck.

“Afternoon, there, Chief. We help you?”

The first thing he noticed were the gnarled hands, like oak roots grown deep into bagged khaki pockets. Then the gray hair sticking out from under the ancient pisscutter. Then a dangling cheroot, and last, the flat, cynical, fuck-you eyes of what had to be the oldest lieutenant in the U.S. Navy.

Gordon saluted the flag. Then he turned and tapped one off to the lieutenant. The latter half-lifted a shoulder, then seemed to think better of it. He shoved himself free of the bulkhead and came out into the drizzle. “How you,” he drawled, chewing his words as if they were Skoal-flavored. “I'm Sapper Kearn, sweepin' officer. You got to be the EOD honcho, right?”

Gordon moved his seabag to a dry patch of deck. He straightened and nodded.

“Got your orders?”

He nodded again and bent, began digging them out.

“You don't talk much, do you? Where's the rest of your boys?”

“They'll be along,” said Gordon. He refused Kearn's offer of a cigar and handed over his orders. The officer took them inside. Gordon watched the slow drift of drizzle past the hull of a landing ship, the creeping progress of a roach coach down the pier like a funeral cortege.

Kearn came out. In the short time he'd been below, his face had darkened. He said, “What is this? What is this bullshit?”

“What bullshit is that, sir?”

“This
R
bullshit, Chief!”

“Senior Chief, Lieutenant. That's us. USNR.”

“We got no time for weekend warriors. We're expectin' an explosive ordnance disposal team. See, we're leaving for the Persian Gulf tomorrow.”

“That's us,” said Gordon again. He prodded the seabag with the toe of his combat boot. “We're going with you. You got a man can give me a hand with this?”

“How many you got coming?”

“Four more.”

“All reserves?”

Gordon nodded. Kearn stared at him for a moment, his watery eyes narrowed in what looked very much like hate, then said, “You wait here. I better see Honey 'bout this one.”

Burgee and Everett came aboard while he was below. Gordon had them stow their bags in the dry and stand easy. Finally, the lieutenant came back. “Come on,” he grunted. “We'll talk to the captain about this.”

The interior of the little ship made Gordon think of flogging, Fletcher Christian, and Horatio Hornblower. The decks were caulked oak, the bulkheads varnished plywood, the ladder steps teak with rope handholds. He had to bow to each door. Everything was undersized and the air was rank with varnish, diesel fuel, insecticide, and a mildewy smell he couldn't identify. Kern rapped at a cherry-stained door marked
CAPTAIN E. HUNNICUTT
, then went in without waiting.

“C'mon in,” said a balding lieutenant commander perhaps twenty years younger than Kearn. He stood up so they could close the door. “Hey, Senior Chief, how y'doing. Sapper here tells me y'all are reserves, that right?”

“That's right, Captain.”

During the ensuing pause, Gordon watched both Kearn and Hunnicutt examine the chest of his khakis, reading the devices and ribbons. Like most of his men, he wore only the top three, in this case the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and Combat Action.

“What you do for a livin', Chief?” said the captain at last.

“Dairy farmer, sir. Vermont.”

“Uh-huh. And your other divers … how about them?”

“One's a high school teacher, one of 'em's an electrical contractor, one's a paramedic, and there's a fella who runs a bank.”

He caught Hunnicutt's glance at Kearn; the lieutenant's rolled eyes. The commander cleared his throat. “Well, now, don't get me wrong, but I suspect somebody's fouled up here, Senior. We're going into a hot area, we need up-to-speed people. Now, I'm goin' to call Mine Warfare Command, and—”

“I say something, sir?” said Gordon, looking around. At last, he saw a whittled hat peg and hung his cover from it.

“We're waiting,” said Kearn.

“I've got twenty years in, ten of it active duty, and I'm a qualified master blaster and dive supervisor. We're all first-class divers, senior EOD techs, and jump-qualified. We pull two weeks a year active duty in Gitmo or New London. Together we got sixty years of experience and we just finished the mine-warfare update at Fort Story. You call Commodore Steadley, he'll tell you we're as good or better than any regular team's been there so far.”

Hunnicutt glanced at Kearn again. “That's all very well, but this isn't going to be a pleasure cruise, Senior. For one thing, it's going to take a heap of sweat and Geritol even getting these old MSOs across the pond.”

“I understand that, sir.”

“Then think about this: about what your, ah, teachers and bankers are going to be doing once we get to the Gulf. Mine-sweeping's changed. We don't just cut moorings and detonate 'em with gunfire anymore. You're going to be getting in the water with them, figuring them out, disarming or blowing them up on the spot. You really think you're ready for that?”

“Yessir,” said Gordon.

Hunnicutt looked skeptical. Kearn leaned forward and murmured something. The captain nodded. “Take your gear below,” he said to Gordon. “I'll make a couple calls, check it out, let you know.”

“Sir, I got a truck coming today.”

“I'll let you know,” said Hunnicutt again.

*   *   *

Gordon decided to leave it at that. He followed Kearn down low, narrow passages to the chiefs' quarters. It had the same airless darkness he was beginning to associate with minesweepers. His locker was doll-size, a pine drawer beneath his bunk, but he managed to get his personal gear in it. He'd learned to travel light in Vietnam. That meant two sets of khakis, three green utilities, and a set of whites. Throw in underwear, razor, towel, and a couple of copies of
Vermont Life
and he had a seabag and a B-4.

He learned his way around the ship that afternoon, getting his orders stamped, drawing linens, turning in his personal firearm to the gunner's mate, and seeing the corpsman for his medical check-in. At 1600, he got his men together around a tiny table in the mess room.

His team, or detachment, had four divers, aside from himself as team leader: Burgee, Everett, Terger, and Maudit. He knew them all from active duty together and weekend drills diving in Lake Champlain. They were older than the average Regular diver. But he knew they were in shape—the tests and swims assured that—and they had far more experience and, in his opinion, intelligence, too, than any twenty-four-year-old. So he started by saying, “You fellas all get a place to sleep?”

“You can call it that,” said Terger. A barrelly, graying man with glasses, he taught high school chemistry and made perfumes on the side. The others nodded. “Down in forward berthing. Dark, and the air ain't real good. Actually, it's a lot like a coffin. But officially it is a bunk.”

“Clint?”

Burgee, the electrician, had large tattooed biceps and a blond mustache that pushed regulations. He shrugged.

“Lem?”

Lem Everett was the oldest man in the team, forty-two, and managed a branch bank in Burlington. He was bent and reserved and wrote poetry; he had four daughters and had won a Navy Cross aboard the
Mayaguez.
Now he pushed back hair that was retreating on its own and said, “John, are you sure this thing's safe? It's an antique. The engineman chief told me two months ago they took off for a week's cruise up to New York. One engine gave out as soon as they passed Fort Sumter. Then the loran went, and finally the gyro. They hit fog off New Jersey and they were lost. They waved a fisherman over to ask where they were and managed to hit him and sink the guy. They never got to New York, but it took them two weeks to get back. Now they're going to cross the Atlantic?”

Maudit muttered something in his Vermont French.

“You might be right,” said Gordon. “But that's not our problem. Our problem is to get our gear aboard and stowed, get under way tomorrow, and get ourselves up to speed to deal with mines.”

“We're up to speed, John. Didn't we just blow their minds at school?”

“We have a lot more to learn, Clint. And a lot more work to do on the way over.” He looked at Etienne Maudit, the paramedic. “Tony, you're checked in? Medical, bunk, pay, orders?”

“
D'ac,
Chief. By the way, I may be working with the medical department some of the time, if it goes well with you.”

“As long as our training and maintenance gets done first.”

“Scuse me. There a frogman chief here?” A seaman with red paint on his nose was hanging in the hatchway. Gordon lifted his chin. “Got some shit on the pier for you.”

“That's our gear.”

“Let's go.”

A green five-ton was backed up by the brow. Gordon asked the quarterdeck watch to call away a working party, then headed over the swaying gangplank to the concrete. He was in the truck, counting boxes and checking them against the driver's manifest, when he heard his name being called by an angry voice. He looked over the gate into Kearn's narrow, reddened eyes. “
Hey!
Did you call away a working party?”

“Yessir, we got diving gear here to get aboard.”

“You load your own gear.”

“I only got four men, sir—”

“You load your own fucking gear,” said Kearn again. “My people are busy.” He turned and went back up the brow. Gordon looked past him, to where his det stood in greens and T-shirts. They looked old beside the seamen and petty officers who stood around on the afterdeck.

Gordon consulted with the driver and the Marine escort and got the truck backed a little closer to the brow. The gate came down, his men moved into position, and boxes, crates, and gear began scraping out over it. He checked them off the invoice as they went by him to a growing stack on the fantail. Heavy green and blue tanks of gas—helium and oxygen, five sets of Mark 16 semiclosed-circuit diving gear, four canisters of chemicals, six sets of twin scuba tanks and regulators, crated personal diving gear. A safe, three wooden crates of shaped charges and satchel charges, a Bowers portable air compressor, four black bags containing inflatable boats, and two silenced 25-horse Evinrude motors. Lifting balloons, boxes of publications and tools, crates of wire and hose. Midway through the offload, the petty officer of the watch came down and told Maudit that they had to get their gear off the deck; Lieutenant Kearn wanted to lay out some sweep cable. Gordon sighed and sent two men up to pass it below to the tiny space that had served up till now as a luggage room and was now the dive locker.

*   *   *

Well after taps, when at last everything was inventoried, stowed, and secured, he went ashore. On the pier, the lights were a grim sodium yellow and steam hissed up in lazy, writhing clouds. A needle gun clattered like distant harassing fire, some late-night working party; aside from that and the ever-present sibilance of steam, the waterfront was quiet. The sound, the smells, the humidity brought back Saigon harbor. He stepped carefully over power cables and water lines. A row of lambent yellow and red rectangles at the head of the pier marked the phones and vending machines. The concrete was littered with spent butts and candy wrappers. Sailors in dungarees slumped or curled into the support of the receivers, murmuring cajoling love words or forcing the bland cheerfulness nineteen-year-olds use to their idiot parents. He waited for a free one and tapped in numbers.