The Edge of Honor (11 page)

The Gulf of Tonkin j The console chairs in Combat trembled to the vibrations of Hood’s twin screws driving her along at twenty-seven knots. Brian Holcomb stood behind the weapons control [ console, dressed out for general quarters with a steel 1 helmet over his intercom headphone, an inflatable life jacket strapped around his hips, a long-sleeve khaki shirt, i and his trouser legs tucked into his socks.

Combat was i dark, hot, and humid, with the full GQ team present and j every station and console manned up. Over his shoulder, i he could see the captain in his high-backed chair and i Austin standing behind the central command console. To I his left, in the surface module, the gunnery officer and \ the CIC officer leaned over the surface plotting table as I the gunfire support team set up the target coordinates and coaxed the computers below onto a smooth track.

Brian sensed the tension in Combat as Hood plunged along in formation with two other destroyers on her first ‘ real combat mission. They had steamed out of Subic two I days ago and had begun standing Red Crown watches as they drove across the South China Sea at seventeen i knots.

Normally, they would have made a straight shot I northwest up to the PIRAZ station to relieve the nuclear cruiser Long Beach on station.

Instead, they had diverted to the west to rendezvous with a task unit consisting of , the guided-missile destroyer Berkeley and the all-gun i destroyer Hull. Berkeley was carrying a Destroyer Divi j sion commander, and Hood chopped to his tactical com i mand for the operation.

| Brian had studied up on the Sea Dragon operations for ‘ the past two nights while standing his training watches as evaluator in Combat. The CTF 77 periodically sent groups of destroyers up off the North Vietnamese coast i to conduct shore-bombardment operations against concentrations of the North Vietnamese army whenever they gathered within naval gunfire range above the so-called demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Vietnam. The ships would typically rendezvous in darkness well offshore, form a column, and then race in at twenty-seven knots, usually just at sunrise, turn parallel to the target area along the coast, and open fire with their long-range five-inch guns at preplanned targets that lay within eight to ten miles of the coast. The attacks were not necessarily as accurate as sending in carrier bombers, but there was the decided advantage of not having to risk airplanes or pilots flying into heavily defended troop concentrations. The destroyers would usually fire two hundred rounds each and then turn out to sea before the North Vietnamese coastal-defense artillery batteries could find the range and hit back. During his prebrief, Austin had made it clear that Hood, a PIRAZ-capable ship packed full of sensitive electronics systems, would normally never be risked in this kind of operation. The two destroyers carried five guns between them, but only three of these were operational, due to equipment problems on both ships. CTF 77 had decided to send Hood, with her one gun, to augment the task unit.

The mission put Brian and his Weapons Department directly in the spotlight. He had met with his gunnery team the night before down in Main Battery Plot, the gunfire computer room two decks below the waterline.

The gunnery officer, Ens. John Mccarthy, and the first lieutenant, Ens.

Jack Folsom, had been joined by the chief gunner’s mate, Max Carpenter, and the gunfire control chief, Marty Vanhorn, in the cramped quarters of the gun system computer room. It was the first time that Brian had met with the gunnery team for anything but an exercise.

“Okay, guys,” he began. “This is a little out of the ordinary for Hood, but we do carry that five-inch fifty four back aft, and the bosses wanted us to go kill a Commie for Mommy.”

“Suits the shit outta me,” said Vanhorn, a leathery individual who wore his hair in a waxed flattop and who was reportedly a genius at repairing the ship’s MK 68 gunfire control system.

“How many rounds?” asked Chief Carpenter.

“They want a hundred and fifty from us,” answered Ensign Mccarthy. John Mccarthy was known as

“Pretty Boy” in keeping with the Navy’s tradition of sometimes bestowing nicknames that were precisely inappropriate.

Mccarthy personified the word homely, if not downright coyote ugly, but Brian had found him to be a reliable officer who did a conscientious job with a minimum of noise.

Ensign Folsom, the first lieutenant, and technically Chief Martinez’s boss, had come aboard the same week as Brian. He had been an offensive tackle on the Penn State football team. He was almost as big as the chief, and between the two of them, Brian expected little trouble out of First Division. Folsom whistled at the number of rounds required.

“That gun good for a hundred fifty rounds without busting something?”

Brian asked Mccarthy.

“I actually kinda doubt it,” intervened Chief Carpenter.

“You know how it is, boss,” he said. “We fire that thing maybe six, ten times a year, twenty rounds a pop, for exercises. This here ship, the action’s in CIC with the Red Crown stuff. These five-inch fifty-fours, you gotta shoot ‘em all the time if you want ‘em to stay up. And even then, they break. Look at Berkeley and Hull: They do nothing but shoot, and they got only three outta five guns up and running.”

Brian had stared hard at the chief. He did not like what he was hearing.

This was going to be the ship’s first mission in WESTPAC, and it was going to be a Weapons Department show. The chief’s frank admission that the gun might not be up to shooting a continuous stream of 150 rounds without having a mechanical failure was disturbing, but even more disturbing was the realization that the chief was probably right. Chief Carpenter had begun to squirm a little under Brian’s look. Ensign Mccarthy was staring hard at the deck. Chief Vanhorn came to their rescue.

“Mr. Holcomb, you come from the tin-can Navy. You know that’s straight skinny. We’re all the time asking to shoot Mount Fifty-one and even the three-inchers. But Mr. Austin, he doesn’t wanta hear that shit. The Ops chiefs have told us that Austin’s convinced the shock from the gun raises hell with his electronic systems, like the forty radar or the NTDS. You’ve felt it—that gun being ‘ all the way back on the fantail does put a whip in Hood’s tailbone. So he talks to the Old Man, and the Old Man, he puts us off. For Hood, PIRAZ is where it’s at, not gun shoots.”

“Is the gun system fully operational, Chief?” asked Brian, his voice taking on a formal note. Vanhorn got the picture.

“Yes, sir. We did op checks and safety checks, and she’s ready to go.”

“Well?”

Vanhorn hesitated, measuring his words. “Well, Mr. Holcomb, after the first twenty or thirty rounds, I can’t guarantee she’ll stay on the line. Them damn things are temperamental. Everybody knows that.”

Brian straightened on his stool. “Well, gents, I’m temperamental myself.

I owned three five-inch fifty-fours on my previous ship as Weps boss, and my guns worked.

Five rounds or fifty. And if we East Coast LANTFLEET pussies can manage it, I expect you grizzled WESTPAC veterans to manage it—in your sleep.

If that son of a bitch stops firing back there, I better see assholes and elbows flying into that gun pit to get her going again.

Understand? And keep in mind, this isn’t San Clemente Island we’re shooting at—these guys shoot back, and if I were them, I’d shoot at the first ship whose gun stops working. Now. Mr. Mccarthy, let’s run through the prefire brief.”

Brian reviewed the prefire in his mind as he watched the formation take shape on the radar scope. The shimmering green outline of the North Vietnamese coast filled the northwestern sector of the radar screen as the bright pip in the center representing Hood merged into the column of three—Hood in the middle, Berkeley astern at one thousand yards, and Hull in the van one thousand yards ahead of Hood, He wondered again whether he had set the gunnery crew up for an accident with his little tirade. The five-inch fifty-fours were notorious for electrical and hydraulic failures. His crew had been only telling the truth about the likelihood of such a failure from lack of regular firing, and he would have to rectify that with the captain once this mission was over. It was also true that the five-inch gun was sometimes capable of doing shock damage to the big air search radars, such as the three-dimensional SPS-48, or the two-dimensional SPS 40. But he was damned if he was going to begin his tour as Weapons officer listening to excuses about the guns or any other Weapons Department system. He looked over at the captain, who was watching the plotting team set up in the surface module. The exec, who had come in from the bridge wearing a flak jacket, steel helmet, and binoculars hanging from his neck, saw Brian looking and gave him a broad wink and a grin, as if to say, Go get ‘em tiger.

“Plot set!” announced It. Gerry Beasely over the intercom. Beasely was the ship’s CIC officer in charge at the naval gunfire support plotting table. “Computer checks SAT. Mount Fifty-one in automatic, rounds loaded to the transfer trays, able-able common set for surface burst at sixty feet.”

“Very well,” responded Brian. He looked over at Beasely, standing in the surface module ten feet away.

Beasely, wearing a sound-powered phone headset, nodded back at him. So far so good. They felt the ship swing into station in the line of ships and steady up on a northeasterly heading. Brian could visualize the gun mount on the fantail, the long gray barrel trained out over the lifelines to the north, rock-steady as the ship rolled gently in the seaway, the train warning bell ringing under the back of the mount to keep people from getting near a firing gun mount.

Not that that’s likely, thought Brian. The ship’s at general quarters.

There better not be anybody walking around on deck.

“Weapons Control, Director One.”

Brian closed his intercom key. “Control.”

“Mount Fifty-one looking good. Stable track in train and elevation.

Pecker’s up about forty degrees.”

“Elevation angle is forty-two degrees, range nineteen thousand, seven hundred yards,” announced Chief Vanhorn from gun plot.

“How’s the solution, Chief?” asked Brian.

“Smooth as a baby’s ass, Control.”

At that moment, the encrypted task unit maneuvering radio circuit in D and D crackled into life with a tone burst.

“Impulse, this is Magnavox. Stand by to commence firing in three-zero seconds. Report if not, I say again, if not ready, over?”

The captain swiveled around to look at Brian, as did Austin and the exec. Brian gave a thumbs-up and the captain turned back around in his chair. Neither of the other two ships came up on the circuit. The exec headed back out onto the bridge, which was his station when the captain was in CIC.

“Control, Director One, I can see Berkeley trained out. I can’t see Hull—she’s in my blind zone.”

“Control, aye.” Brian wished he was topside in the boxy gun director atop the helicopter hangar back aft. In Decatur, he would have been out on the windswept bridge, where he could physically see his guns. He felt uncomfortable and less in control running things from inside the CIC.

His mouth went dry as he wondered how the gun would perform.

“Impulse, this is Magnavox. Commence firing. Commence firing.”

“Batteries released,” declared the captain.

Brian keyed his intercom: “Batteries released, commence firing!”

The gun answered with a muffled, thumping boom, then a dreadful pause that caused Brian to hold his breath, and then a steady progression of boom, thump, boom, thump as the recoil shook the ship along her length.

Brian could hear the dull thuds of the other ships firing between the concussions of Mount Fifty-one interspersed with muffled

“Yeahs!” and

“Go, Mount Fifty-one!” from the other module crews. He keyed the mike again.

“Director One, Control, be alert for any signs of counterbattery.

Remember your procedures.”

“Director One, aye!” Folsom sounded excited, his voice pitching high.

Brian could hear the sounds of the forty-knot wind whistling through Folsom’s mike, and the boom turned into a loud bang in his headset when Folsom keyed his mike. Brian yearned to be outside where he could see.

Suddenly, he heard a commotion as a chorus of groans swept through Combat. At first, he did not understand, then he did. He felt the change in the ship’s motion. Hood was slowing down, her bows beginning to mush into the seas instead of pounding them flat.

“Control, Director One, I can’t see shit! Snipes are making black smoke from number-one stack. Damn!” shouted Folsom, coughing into his mike.

“Get down inside the director and button up, Director One.”

“Director One, aye,” replied Folsom, still coughing.

Mount Fifty-one continued to boom in reassuring cadence.

The captain was bent over the squawk box, talking urgently to the chief engineer down in Main Engineering Control four decks below. Then the radio circuit came up again.

“Tango Four, this is Magnavox. Cease making smoke!

I say again, cease making smoke, over?”

The captain nodded to Austin, who rogered for the order over the maneuvering net.

“Control, Plot, what the fuck’s going on? We’re getting power fluctuations down here.”

“Plot, Director One, Control, hang on, something’s gone wrong in the main spaces. Sounds like a boder problem.”

“Control, Director One, Berkeley’s gonna run up our ass in a minute. Aw shit, now number-two stack’s making smoke. Now I really can’t see, Control!”

Brian’s mind whirled. The ship was losing propulsion power and slowing down in the middle of twenty-seven knot formation, with the tail end destroyer coming up from behind, close enough for her guns to be clearly audible through the CIC bulkheads over the sound of Hood’s own gun. The captain and the Ops officer were both shouting at once, and then came the dreaded sound of a general electrical power failure, with all the lights going dim and then out and the vent fans on the consoles winding down in a pathetic spiral of diminishing sound.

Mount Fifty-one stopped firing as the weapons control systems lost electrical power, and everyone in CIC seemed to be shouting at the same time to turn off equipment. He saw Gerry Beasely take off his headset and throw it down on the deck plates cursing furiously.