The Med (19 page)

The low click of a padlock came through the steel from outside, followed by the sound of retreating boots; and then there was nothing but the slow chuckle of icy water through the piped walls, and the swift hiss of his breath. “Oh, man,” he whispered. “Oh,
shit.
” Unconsciously his fingers bent the knife closed and slipped it into his pocket. He lowered the box and felt the steak back into it, folded the top closed, and sat down on it, still staring in the same direction; then got up again, shivering, and felt around the door for a switch. His searching fingers found nothing but cold metal. “Oh, shit, Cutford,” he muttered again, and sat down on the box. With the door closed it seemed fifty degrees colder. He rubbed gooseflesh on his bare arms, and a shiver gripped him from feet to neck. His teeth began to chatter. If it had been a patrol … where would the three marines hide? What if a guard found them—what would they do? Jive him? Run? Or break his head and take off, trusting to the anonymity of green utilities and black faces?

Had there really been anyone on the ladder at all?

He hugged himself, shivering, and bent his ear to the freezing metal. Distant vibration of engines, the straining creak of a ship in a seaway … but no voices, no footsteps.

“Cutford,” he whispered, “You wouldn't leave me here, would you?”

The cold ebbed into him, slowly, and the silence gave him back no answer at all.

*   *   *

“Rub his face,” came the hurried whisper. “Jesus! The fucker feels cold as ice.”

“Slap his face.”

“Look at his fingers, man.”

He got his eyes open in time to take a heavy blow to his cheek. The three faces above him sighed and looked at one another. “You there, man?” asked one of them.

“Yeah.”

“Can you stand up? We can't stay here too long. That fucken patrol's gonna be comin' back.”

“Yeah. I think.” He climbed dizzily, four hands helping him. Cutford was standing off, looking up the ladderwell. He signaled impatiently to them to hurry. Givens could hardly feel his legs, and everything looked blanched and distant, as if he were seeing it from beneath a sheet of ice. “How long was I in there?” he whispered.

“Couple minutes.”

“Near half an hour.”

“I thought you—”

“Let's go,” hissed the corporal. The two privates supported him toward the ladder. His legs sagged, but feeling was coming back. At the third ladder he shook off Jenkins and Sleight. Cutford, his back pockets bulging, climbed silently in front. They left the ladder before they got to troop level and went into a fan room. Cutford closed the door.

“Want a steak?”

“What?”

“I got mess kits, heat tabs, forks. You want a couple, Oreo? That's what we went down there for.”

He imagined sizzling beef, and then realized what the corporal had said. “You bastard, Cutford, I never wanted any steak. I almost froze to death!”

“We got you out. Cool it. These bulkheads real thin.”

“I was in there half an hour! My hands are frozen!”

“You knew we'd be back,” said the corporal. Squatting, pulling a pack from behind a pump cage, he began setting up a combat stove. “Didn't you, Givens? You trusted your brothers. Or did you think we were going to leave you down there in the reefer for the Man to find—like one of them ice creams on a stick, chocolate on the outside an' vanilla on the in?”

He smiled up at Givens, and the others began to chuckle. A lighter clicked, and the fan room filled with the smell of roasting meat. Will Givens hesitated, feeling still the weakness in his legs, and then he squatted, too.

With them, yet not looking at them, waiting for the steak, he squatted silently and hated them all.

Yet my face,
he could not stop himself from thinking, seeing the four of them as if from outside,
my face is the same as theirs.

9

U.S.S.
Guam

Commodore Isaac Icarus Sundstrom, U.S. Navy, leaned back in his leather chair and took off his reading glasses. He rubbed his hand slowly over his eyes, then smoothed back graying hair. At least it's still thick, he thought abstractedly. You're not over the hill yet in that department.

He caught sight of his reflection in the bridge window. It was haggard. Defeated. It might be, the man seated before it thought, the face of an aging shoe clerk, a failed banker.…

He sat up instantly, throwing back his shoulders, enraged at himself.
What the hell are you mooning about? You're in command here!
he told himself. He had to maintain a positive attitude. That was key. That was the prime responsibility of a flag officer. He had to show every man, every day, that Task Force 61 was led by a Hard Charger, a True Professional, someone who would accept nothing less than perfection.

But after twenty-three years of charging hard, of fighting complacency and laziness and so many enemies … a man could be forgiven for getting tired sometimes.

His eyes strayed again to his reflection, then moved to a side view, his enigmatic image in the wing window. He straightened again in the chair and jutted his chin. Should lose some of this weight … but he looked all right, he was fit. Tired? Goddammit, and no wonder, he thought angrily. I'm doing the job of every man in this so-called staff. Not one of them could cut the mustard. Not one of them had his job in his hip pocket, the way he had when he was a junior officer in the Pacific.

The ship rolled, and he looked out at the sea again. Goddamn, he thought. I've got to stop agonizing over this. I'll give myself an ulcer.

But it was too important to leave to incompetents. Too important to the country, and to his career.

A day and a half out of Italy, two hundred miles from the nearest land, the Mediterranean was a dull and lonely blue under a late-morning overcast. A little after dawn, as he had ordered, the formation had closed in on
Guam,
except for
Bowen,
the frigate. She was relatively new, a capable ship, though short on guns compared to the older classes. Sundstrom wanted her well in the van, to give them warning of anything unexpected. She was a tiny dot now, far ahead, and he reached for his binoculars to check on her. Her silhouette caught at his throat. God, how he wished he was back in cans, the real Navy, and not stuck in amphibs like some second-rater … the other units were close in now, four to eight miles from the sector center. He could see them all plainly from where he sat. From his elevated chair he could look down, too, at the routine activity of a helicopter carrier's deck at sea.

It was maddeningly desultory. Two helos were on deck, with mechanics pottering around the landing gear. A few men were testing firehoses on one of the elevators, the canvas tubes firm and round under pressure. A platoon or two of marines—
Guam
carried eight hundred—were doing calisthenics aft. Their faint cadenced shout floated in from the open air. Aside from that, there seemed to be nothing much going on.

Ike Sundstrom did not like it when nothing was happening. He adjusted his glasses, bent his head again to the papers he was examining, and then lifted it. He stared around the bridge. Where the—where the hell was the watch officer? He twisted in his chair.

“Commander Byrne!”

“Sir,” said the intelligence officer, coming up behind him.

“Where the hell were you hiding? Goddammit, I want an alert watch up here! I want you front and center with your eyes on the ball. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir,” said Byrne. “I was looking at the vertical plot.
Bowen
is reporting a small contact, and it seems to be closing.”

“How far out is it?”

“Still a long way, sir. I don't think we have it on our scope yet.”

“I asked how far it was! They must have reported its range! I don't want to hear excuses, Mr. Byrne. I want performance! The flag bridge is no place to putter around
thinking.
”

Byrne had lowered his head under the shout. When the commodore paused, breathing hard, they looked at each other for a moment. Sundstrom could not see the man's eyes. Those ridiculous sunglasses—they masked his every expression. And where did he get that tan? He looked like he was fresh off the beach at Malibu. The intel officer's appearance, his attitude, his very existence irritated the commodore. It was all affectation, the upper-crust mannerisms, the Harvard accent. His father was the manager of a golf course. Sundstrom had checked.

“Get me the CSO,” he said, turning away.

“Yes sir,” Byrne said again, in that same smooth, supercilious tone. A moment later the commodore heard him call the messenger over.

“Mr. Byrne!”

“Sir.”

“When I give you an order personally, I expect you to carry it out personally.
Do you understand me?
”

Byrne did not answer. He stood there.

“God damn you! Are you ignoring me?” Sundstrom shouted. “I'm warning you—I demand respect from you, Byrne, and I'll get it! One way or another!”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Byrne tightly. He turned from the enlisted man, who was staring at the two officers, and picked up the phone himself.

When Hogan came up, Sundstrom was deep in his paperwork again, breathing raggedly. The chief staff officer waited just behind his chair. At last the commodore noticed him, and swung around. “Good morning, sir,” said Hogan.

“Where have you been all morning, Al? I don't think I've seen you on the bridge once since we got underway.”

“Administrative matters, sir.”

“Take that pipe out of your mouth when you talk to me. Administrative matters. Do any of those include training? I sure as hell don't see much of it going on. Have you put out a training schedule for this transit?”

“No sir, we got underway too quickly—”

“You've had almost two days since. I know for a fact that's enough time to make up a simple schedule. Goddammit, Al”—Sundstrom lowered his voice, with an effort—“We don't have as much steaming time deployed as we used to. This fuel situation is shooting our readiness to hell. If there's one thing I've learned in four months on this job, it's that you've got to keep these bastards on their toes. If we don't they'll forget everything, they'll go to pot. That's the nature of the beast. Do you understand me?”

“Yes sir, Commodore.”

“I want my ships ready before the fact, not after the fact. I want this task group to be pre-positioned in an offensive aspect when the need occurs, not milling around like a bunch of amateurs. That's the way the big boys play it. I report direct to Admiral Roberts, to COMSIXTH-FLEET, and I want him to know he's got a top-notch force out here, one he can depend on!”

“Yes, sir,” said Hogan.

“Now. I want a training schedule for the next three days, and some thoughts on what to do if we stay at sea longer than that. I want signal drills, combat drills, and comm drills. I want each ship to go to general quarters for training as soon as possible. How long will it take you to get that on the street?”

“This afternoon, sir.”

“Mr. Byrne! When will
Ault
catch up with the rest of us?”

“According to her last position report, late tonight, sir.”

“Not good enough. He's just poking along. I want him here sooner than that. I want to pull a surprise battle problem tomorrow, the whole task force at once, get the bridge teams up to snuff on maneuvering, evasive action, antiair. And engineering, too, don't forget them; I want them practicing casualty control down in the holes. And I want it as soon as possible! Understand me?”

The CSO was writing in a small notebook. “Yes sir. You realize this will cut into maintenance time. Some of the ships were planning to pull pumps, and—”

“I know that, Al.” Sundstrom cut him off. “I want normal maintenance to go on, of course. That goes without saying. Put that in the schedule, too. Now take that by the horns and march off with it. I want to see a draft message by thirteen-hundred.”

Hogan's mouth twitched, but he finished writing and put the notebook away. “I'll get right on it, sir.”

“Good.”

“Was there anything else, sir?”

Sundstrom shook his head, and turned back to his papers. When he glanced up again the chief of staff was still there. He snatched his glasses off. “Well?”

“Sir, some of the men have been asking me whether we're going back to the Sicily-Italy area. They made reservations for hotels there, paid in advance; their wives are waiting. They need to know—”

The commodore forced himself to speak calmly. His stomach was tightening up. “I can't help that,” he said, putting on his glasses again. “As far as I know we won't be back, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea and spreading rumors. Let's leave things as they are for now.”

“Yes sir,” said Hogan.

When he was gone Sundstrom studied his papers again, frowning and fighting the burning in his stomach. It was, he thought, typical of the kind of people the Fleet got these days. Everyone worrying about himself instead of the mission. It was the kind of mindset he had always hated. A family had no place in a life at sea. They were best left ashore, as he left his. On shore assignments it was better to be married; you looked more stable that way and the social things went more smoothly. But the sea was a man's world, a world of work and discipline, and there was no time to worry about anything else. Not if you wanted to do a good job. Not if you were a professional.

Musing, he gazed out at his ships. Gray, distant even in close formation, they pitched ponderously to the swell from the east. He glanced at the wind indicator. Ten knots. Not much of a breeze to be kicking up that sea. Could be bad weather ahead. Christ, that was all he needed.

He let the papers drop to his lap and leaned back, closing his eyes against the steady cloudlight.