The Passage (41 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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“Hey, ask me if I give a fuck.”
“You'll make this deployment with us, though, won't you?” Lohmeyer said anxiously.
“Oh sure. Don't worry about that, shipmate. There's a bar in Istanbul I'll take you to. Best belly dancers in the world, and you get a free massage after you get your ashes hauled.”
“How are you ever gonna give the Navy up?” Dan asked him. “You enjoy it too much.”
“There's some good times, Hoss. Never said there weren't. But it'd be different if they paid us. You might not notice. Officers don't do too bad, but half the junior enlisted are on food stamps. You know Chief Alaska? He works at a pizza place when we're in, evenings and weekends, to make ends meet. I shit you not, he's the goddamn guy flings them up in the air.”
“Like that Marion Sipple,” said Dan.
“Sipple? What about him?”
“I figure that's what he was into. You know, stealing the funds, the stuff. I figure that's what happened to the silver.”
“What happened to the silver?”
Dan blinked. He was a little toasted, but he'd racked his brain long enough over the audits to have an opinion at least. “I figure, I never met him, but say he needed money for something. Maybe he was into gambling. And so he stole the cash from the operating funds, and then he saw silver anodes in the supply catalog and ordered them, then took them to a jeweler and sold them. Then he goes after the night-vision scopes and stuff. Ever been to those pawnshops down on Spruill? You see binoculars and stuff there all the time; you know it's off the ships.”
“You could be right,” said Harper. “And you know what? That's going to keep happening just as long as they don't pay us a comparable wage. This is shit, scraping along from paycheck to paycheck. And guys like you, got three-quarters of what you make tooken out before you ever see it. I don't see how you stand in line for that.”
“It sucks all right,” said Dan. He felt bitter about it again. Why couldn't
she
get a job? She was so fucking independent, sure, till it was time to fend for herself. Then she was happy to run to the judge and take the biggest handout she could get.
Harper said, “Say, did you see that movie about the guy and the girl who find the treasure? What was it? They were divers. Jacqueline Bissett was in it.”
“The Deep
,” Lohmeyer muttered.
“That's it,
The Deep
. Remember when they find the gold? I was really into that. Did you see that?”
“Everybody likes those kinds of movies,” Dan said. “It's like wish fulfillment.”
“You want to go in again, Jay?” asked Lohmeyer. “Try to catch one of those waves?”
“Naw, I'm just gettin' dried out. Watch those fucking rocks or you'll break your fucking head.”
The ensign went down to the water again. Dan turned over, watched the black dot of Lohmeyer's head bobbing around.
Harper said, “What you think of that kid?”
“Gary? He seems okay.”
“He's kind of slow. Always around, but he never says much. Kind of a klutz.”
“He's got a tough job, taking over damage control right here in Gitmo.”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Harper. He belched. “You know, stuff like that—finding treasure—sometimes it happens. Sometimes it really happens.” Ice rattled as he rooted out another beer. “Lemme ask you something. What would you figure, you were in that guy's shoes?”
“Lohmeyer?”
“No, fuck Lohmeyer. I mean the guy in the movie. Say you could make a pile of money. Nobody knows about it; nobody gets hurt. Only thing, it's illegal. What would you do?”
“What, if I found a wreck full of gold and jewels?”
“Yeah. Would you turn it over to the cops?”
“Hell no.”
“Course not. And what would you do with it?”
Dan said, knowing it was a fantasy but warming to it, “What would I do? First thing, get my own place. I'd like to have an apartment, not have to make out on the damn couch, wondering if the girl's kid is going to come down in his jammies. Then I'd send some money home to my mom and my brother.”
“Didn't know you had a brother.”
“Yeah, two. One of them's trying to work his way through college; he could use some bucks.”
“What else?”
“I'd probably save the rest of it.”
“You don't have very expensive tastes,” said Harper. “No boat? No big new motorcycle?”
Dan shrugged. Already the momentary gloss had worn off the daydream.
“What's the matter?”
“Nothing. Just that there isn't any cargo of gold and jewels. And even if there was, my fucking ex-wife and her lawyers would end up with three-quarters of it.”
“Yeah, but there's other ways to make spending money.”
“Like how?”
“There's some things I could let you in on,” said Harper, “if you wanted.”
“What kind of things?”
“That would depend on what kind of risk you wanted to take on. What if I let you in on the bar business?”
“What, you mean invest money? I don't have any.”
Lohmeyer came back then, and Harper fell silent. Dan thought about his proposal for a little while—if it was a proposal—then dismissed it. He didn't have anything to invest, and if he did, it wouldn't be in anything Harper ran. The sun beat down as they dozed, and his thoughts drifted. Harper's raunchy talk and the sun and the beer made him wish he was somewhere he could at least see a woman. He'd have to make some kind of decision when he got back about whether to see Beverly again. Or maybe Sibylla Baird. His prick went hard between his belly and the warm sand as he remembered the garden, the smell of roses.
A battered station wagon turned off up the beach and a black woman and a little girl got out. The child ran toward the water,
and Dan's eyes followed them. The woman swung past them, carrying a picnic basket. “Man, you see that?” muttered Harper.
Dan said, “Nice legs.”
“But not great,” said Lohmeyer. “A little fat—”
“You're wrong, Ensign. They're perfect,” said Harper lazily, lifting his head to watch. Sand coated one cheek, like a sugared doughnut. “All women got perfect legs—feet on one end and pussy on the other. Man, look at that. It'd be just like licking the cream filling out of an Oreo.”
Dan lost it then. His sorrow and his apprehension dissolved, and the others grinned at him as he quivered on the hot sand, holding his stomach in helpless laughter.
They were interrupted by the sound of engines snorting and echoing from the hills. Dan rolled over and looked.
Two jeeps were bumping along between the dunes, followed by a truck. They turned before they got to the station wagon, the woman watching them, shading her eyes, and braked at an observation tower. The gate of the truck came down and several marines jumped out, then slid out a long box.
“What the hell?”
“They're setting up a machine gun.”
“M-sixty, looks like,” said Harper. “Fuckin' Commies'll be sorry, they try and come ashore here.” He got up abruptly, mimicked tommy-gunning the sea. He howled, “Nuke 'em till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark!”
“We better find out what's going on.” Dan got up and trudged over. The sand was hot on his bare feet. But before he got there, one of the marines cupped his hands and yelled, “This beach is closed. Leave immediately. The beach is secured.”
The woman called to her daughter, waving her in from where she stood examining a dead fish. “We better get back to the ship,” said Lohmeyer, and his voice held a note of alarm.
 
 
WHEN they got back, they found that the base had gone to full alert. Dan immediately checked that the ready mount was manned and that CIC had comms with the Fire Direction Center. He made sure Adamo had the Phalanxes loaded and that they had war shots lined up in the launcher drums and that Horseheads was setting up a watch rotation. When he was satisified they conformed to the new alert status, he stopped by his room, pulled some clean khakis on, and went down once again to the computer room.
L
EIGHTY shoved himself back from his desk in sudden irritation. The notice he'd just read directed all ships' commanding officers to form a communications security review board. The board had to meet immediately, review all records and clearances pertaining to classified materials, and make a letter report to their respective type commander. It had to be comprised of the exec, the operations officer, and at least two other officers or chiefs, none of whom could be the primary or assistant CMS custodians.
More lost hours, more pointless palaver and time-eating correspondence. His teeth set in helpless anger. Every year, it got worse. Higher authority's reaction to every failure or shortcoming was to impose a straitjacket of reports and checklists on subordinate commands. Each new fleet or type commander instituted new programs, inspections, requirements, but the old ones were never canceled. And of course no one ever considered that the total number of man-hours aboard ship was finite. He glanced at the next document in the stack the yeoman had brought up. It was the preoverseas movement inspection checkoff list. An accompanying letter requested an initial report no later than August first and weekly progress reports thereafter. He stared at it, shaking his head slowly.
He rolled his chair back a few more inches and rubbed his face, then kneaded the nape of his neck. A headache throbbed at the rear of his skull. I'm letting it get to me, he thought. Can't let myself get too stressed out. Back in port, he'd have strolled down to the basketball court, burned it out in a fast pickup game. But right now, he was juggling several anxieties at once: the NIS investigation, refresher training, the problem with the ACDADS, the alert status, and whether the presence of a powerful Soviet task force
in Cienfuegos had anything to do with it. And whenever he tried to deal with any of them, the paperwork began to pile up … . Well, it's only for a few more days, he told himself, digging his fingers into the knotted muscle of his shoulders. Then they'd leave Cuba and hopefully more than one of his problems behind.
He rested for a few minutes, trying to calm himself, but the headache pounded on. Finally, he got up and went into the bedroom. He stripped off his uniform and bagged it for the steward, laid out fresh khakis on the bed. He did a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups, then stepped into the shower. He turned it on, wet himself down, turned it off. He soaped down, working it into a lather in the distilled water the ship's evaporators made, then rinsed down again with fifteen seconds of steaming water.
When he came out, he felt better. He put on a dressing gown his wife had given him and sat on the sofa.
At least they were doing better training-wise. Their overall score was rising after a lackluster start. Making progress here and there … . But it seemed that as soon as he defused one situation, another grew worse. The Sanderling thing had worried him most. For a time, he'd feared it would explode, tearing apart crew, ship, wardroom.
He'd seen it happen before, and had carried that horrifying example in the back of his mind ever since. He'd been a junior officer then—in Vietnam, in a riverine squadron, the Brown Water Navy: not massive ships, but landing craft and PBRs; not missiles and computers, but men in fatigues with .50-caliber guns and grenade launchers and M16s, patrolling the shallow swampy tributaries of the Mekong. Ninety percent of trade and traffic in the Delta moved via river and canal, not by road, and the Delta covered nearly a third of the Republic of Vietnam. He'd arrived in-country in the middle of an ambitious attempt to blockade the Viet Cong's southern logistic pipeline out of Cambodia. After six months setting up and leading sweeps and strikes, establishing bases deep in VCCONTROLLED territory, and nearly getting his ass shot off several times, he'd gotten orders up to the COMRIVRON, to squadron headquarters in Saigon.
He'd known almost at once about the commodore and his staff. And there had been opportunities. But that had been when he was still uncertain. Homosexuals wore dresses and imitated Bette Davis. He could not be one of them. In heat, humidity, fatigue, and danger, in the shared risk and terror of combat, there was emotional closeness to other men that didn't necessarily result in physical affection. Yes, he'd loved those he served with. He'd wept when they died. And so had the other men. Then, too, something about the senior officers at his new command put him off. They were too
obvious. It was tolerated; that was the unspoken message. But something about it had made him wary, so he'd rebuffed their advances.
Only two months later, his self-imposed isolation had saved him. In a moment of mistaken judgment, the commodore put one of his friends on the staff in for a Bronze Star. Said friend, unfortunately, had never been out in a Swift, never been in the field, never been shot at in his life, in fact. The resulting investigation, initiated and controlled directly from COMNAVFORV, had torn the staff apart and reached out into the operating forces, uncovering a network of liaisons that had ended dozens of careers with dishonorable discharges. A career marine, a master sergeant, had gone out into the center of the command compound and pulled the pin on a grenade, then stood looking down at it as people shouted to him to get rid of it. Before a burst of smoke and dust obliterated him.
Yes, he'd learned from that.
So when Diehl had come aboard, he'd given him full access, full cooperation. He could talk to anyone about anything, Leighty had told him. If there was a homosexual ring, no one aboard was more eager to uncover it than the commanding officer. And the agent had done his snooping, collected a dredgeful of innuendo and rumors. But when they sifted through it, nothing was left. There was no evidence of murder and no evidence that anyone aboard had been sexually involved with the seaman. As far as the Navy was concerned, Benjamin Sanderling could lie quietly in his watery grave.
The outside phone rang. He started, then crossed the room. “USS
Barrett,
commanding officer speaking,” he said.
“Captain, this is the base duty officer. Do you have a moment to discuss your readiness status?”
Leighty briefed him on his weapons status and readiness to get under way. Then he asked if there was any new word. The duty officer didn't know of any, said he was just verifying that they were on alert. He asked about the tropical depression. The duty officer said it was tracking to the north and that they wouldn't even feel it in Guantánamo Bay. He sounded hurried, as if he had other ships to call, so finally Leighty let him go. He looked at the desk again, file folders, messages, the blue covers of official correspondence, and made himself sit down and pick up the pen.
Instead of working, though, he found himself thinking again about Sanderling.
Yes, he'd been attracted to the boy. Sanderling, too, had been trying to come to terms with his sexuality, but in incredibly risky ways. He'd tried to advise him. But it hadn't worked, and the boy had destroyed himself. And he could not even cry about it, locked in his carapace … could give no outward sign or demonstration of
his rage and sorrow. He himself had always felt life was a gift, something to be grasped and prized. Everyone had pain; no one had a monopoly on that. Accepted for what it was, life was full of beauty.
Like Lenson … clean-limbed, spare, even graceful in a way, with those steady, serious gray eyes. Losing the beard had made him even more attractive. Sitting next to him during their interview, he'd felt the temptation. And for a moment, he'd fancied Dan felt it, too. But then he'd taken fright, rushed out. Well, he hadn't meant anything by his offer of friendship. He'd tried to keep it professional.
He rubbed his chin absently. Or was he fooling himself?
He blinked and found he was still at the desk and that he had not yet made even a dent in his evening's work. Sighing, he picked up the POM checkoff list and started to read, absently rubbing the back of his neck.
 
 
AN hour later, he let himself quietly out of the cabin. He spent a few minutes on the bridge, talking with the officer of the deck. At this ready status, the OOD stood on the bridge, not the quarterdeck, and the engine room was skeleton-manned, too. Everything looked good for a quiet night. He looked out at the other ships ranged along the pier, the way the shadows stretched out from them as the afternoon waned into evening. “I'll be taking a turn around the ship,” he said. “Maybe half an hour. Then I'll be back in my cabin.”
“Yes, sir.”
He went down to the main deck and strolled aft, stretching his legs as the dusk stole in, and he reached the stern at the same time as it did. He stood there with the evening smokers, looking across the bay as some duty boatswain in the sky flipped the stars on one by one. They shimmered in the flat water, hanging above the black hills to the west. Somewhere beyond them was Havana. One more week, he thought, if we pass. Hit their liberty port for a few days of R and R, then back to Charleston, back to Dougie and Heather and Jeannette.
The ACDADS was the big question mark. He'd wondered on and off whether he should go over and see Captain Grieve. It was probably not too late to retract his commitment to run the battle problem in Mode 3. Woollie had offered the out. But he still felt he'd been right. If the concept of an automated ship had validity, there should be a test—preferably before the ultimate test of battle, and before vast amounts were sunk into follow-on classes. A version of ACDADS was being considered for the new
Ticonderoga-
class Aegis
cruisers, and no doubt it would be incorporated into the next destroyer class, the as-yet-unnamed DDG-51's. If the concept was faulty, now was the time to find out. True, he was running some personal risk, but he had covered himself with a speedletter to Commodore Niles explaining his reasoning. The commodore had acknowledged it rather tersely, but he hadn't disagreed with his decision.
He stood with his hands in his pockets, revolving it all in his mind. And again his thoughts drifted back to the interview with Lenson. Had he acted honorably? Telling the younger officer what he had?
He didn't enjoy lying. But you could evade questions only so long. At some point, you had to answer them. But what choice did they leave you? If he admitted what he was—and it wasn't
all
that he was; he was also a father, a family man, active in the church and the PTA, a dog lover, and a professional naval ofncer—if he was honest, he'd be pulled from command within hours and find himself out of the service as swiftly as a board could be convened.
He had decided long ago that if the only way he could serve his country was under false colors, then he would accept that as a condition of service. What had he said to George not that long ago—that a stratagem, a
ruse de guerre,
was not considered dishonorable? When you were on your own in enemy territory, no one condemned you for lying, not if it was the only way you could accomplish your mission.
The point at issue, really, was whether his sexual orientation affected good order and discipline. If it made no difference in how well he did his job, then he could defend a certain level of subterfuge as a justifiable circumvention of an unenlightened and mistaken policy. It was a trade-off: his family, position, and career in exchange for his silent acceptance of the mask. But all of human existence consisted of trade-offs. Life did not consist of choices between good and evil. It was a buffet-table selection among a multiplicity of goods, a plethora of evils. If what was within his heart remained there, what difference did it make? None at all, as far as he could see … .
Two men were talking not far from him, back by the antennaservice platform. He wasn't really listening, but whatever part of your mind stood watch while you wool-gathered thought he heard his name.
“Yeah, he's one,” the mutter came, barely interpretable on the sultry wind.
He turned his head slowly. He couldn't see who was speaking, whether they were black or white, only that they were both smoking—two red coals, like dying stars transmitting to each other in the dark.
“If you ask me, all the fucking officers need a goddamn testosterone transfusion. This fuckin' ship is full of fuckin' pansies.”
“What can we do about it?”
“We
can't do a fuckin' thing, man. Just watch your ass when you pick up the soap. The fuckin' skipper, he'll suck your dick, anybody goes up at night, knocks on his door.”
“I knew something was funny … but the skipper? You're shittin' me.”
“I shit you not, Jack. You can tell there's something sick waiting to blow on this banana boat. Hey, one of ‘em touches me, I'll beat his fucking ass, you know? I'll fucking kill the fucker. Just among us chickens, they ought to round them all up, put 'em in a camp. Then we figure out what to do with them … .”
He couldn't tell who they were, even what department. All he knew was that his hands tightened on the lifeline. He cleared his throat and they fell silent. The coals wavered, then described outward arcs. The butts hissed in the still water. When he looked back again, both shadows were gone.
He stood motionless in the hot darkness, looking across the bay. He panted shallowly, quickly. When he was sure he wasn't going to throw up, he headed back to his cabin.

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