Operation Fireball

CHAPTER NINE

Slater called me into his room that night.

On the boat that morning he had seemed more relaxed, but I had seen him earlier in the evening downstairs at The Castaways, staring down into his glass of beer. “Ever get the feelin’ you’re losin’ your nerve?” he began abruptly.

“I’ve had the feeling.”

He hadn’t expected an answer. He was wrapped in his own feelings. “This last bit did somethin’ to me, Drake. I can’t seem to get myself screwed down. Or geared up, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t seem to want to—” He didn’t finish.

“It wears off,” I said, trying to soothe him.

“It had better.” His tone was savage. “I don’t like the way I feel right now. When I laid this job out to Erikson, I thought it would be a piece of cake. Now—”

Again he left the thought dangling. He lit a cigarette, studied its burning end, and changed position in his chair. “I been wantin’ to talk to you, anyway,” he resumed. “About our little project.”

“Yes?”

“A four-way split plus a percentage to Redmond, the cruiser first mate, really thins out the gravy.” He waited to be sure that I had taken in what he said. “A two-way split’d be a lot better, wouldn’t it?”

I wondered if he had made the same proposition already to Chico Wilson. They hadn’t seemed friendly, but they were certainly birds that flocked together naturally. “You mean you and I?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“How?”

He waved a hand. “Long as we understand each other, it shouldn’t be hard to work out,” he said vaguely. “Accidents happen.” He grinned, displaying his strong-looking teeth. “Think it over.”

“I will.”

“An’ don’t stop at thinkin'. We could—”

There was a knock at the door. After a moment it opened and Erikson thrust in his head. “Meeting in my room right away,” he said, and disappeared again.

“King of the mountain,” Slater snorted, but he got to his feet.

We went down the hall together. Wilson and Erikson were already in the room. “The destroyer sails tomorrow at seventeen hundred hours,” Erikson said when I closed the door. “That’s five P.M. to you.” He was looking at Slater. “Although I suppose you’ve been studying your ‘Bluejacket’s Manual.’ ”

Slater kept quiet and Erikson went on to make a quick run-through of our schedule. He didn’t say anything he hadn’t said before, but this time it had an air of immediacy. Afterward he and Wilson got into a technical discussion I couldn’t follow. The handsome Chico seemed recovered from his previous subdued demeanor.

A weather map was pinned on a wall. “It may be early for the hurricane season,” Wilson argued, “but this pressure system makin’ up down here looks like trouble.” His finger was on the map at a point three or four hundred miles south of Bermuda. “What do we do if it develops into a real storm?”

“Tell your man Redmond we’ll wait in Havana for the right conditions,” Erikson said. “He won’t have to risk the Calypso or himself. We know now that the radio channel is clear, so we won’t have any difficulty in getting the shortwave signal to Hazel. Put your name in your room here and tell him not to get too far away from it. Depending upon conditions, we might signal for him in three days or it could be seven or eight. Any questions?”

There were none, and the meeting broke up.

I went across the hall, undressed, and stretched out on the bed. It was about an hour before Hazel came upstairs after putting in her trick at the shortwave radio set. “The balloon goes up tomorrow,” I told her when she entered our bedroom.

“He told me,” she said. She sat down on the bed beside me. “Up to now it seemed as if we were playing a game.”

“Up to tomorrow,” I corrected her.

She didn’t reply.

She smoked a cigarette, took a shower, and came to bed.

It seemed to me she held me more tightly that night than during all our previous lovemaking at The Castaways.

We were ready at four thirty the next afternoon. Hazel and I had said our good-byes previously. Erikson had spent the afternoon packing and repacking the gear in our seabags. When the time came to leave in the summoned taxi, he handed me the bag with the Navy fatigues and Cuban uniforms. We were in whites. Wilson and Slater had heavier seabags, plus each had one of the small crates to carry.

It was only an eight-block ride to the front gate of the Key West Naval Station. We piled out of the cab with Erikson in the lead. He returned the Marine guard’s salute, then disappeared into the building housing the Officer of the Day. We waited on the sidewalk.

In five minutes he came out again. Two minutes later we boarded a gray bus that used the main gate as a turnaround point. It made a circuitous route through the base. We stopped at the commissary, ship’s store, CPO Club, hospital, and three barracks. I was surprised at the number of navy wives and civilians.

The bus finally made a straight run along a line of warehouses and entered the dock area. Erikson again showed the forged naval orders, this time to a guard manning the gate. He received a spit-and-polish salute and stepped smartly down the wharf with the rest of us in trail. I could see that Slater was making heavy weather of it with his seabag in his left hand and a crate cocked awkwardly on his right shoulder. Wilson moved easily under the same load. I brought up the rear, perspiring in the tight-fitting dress whites. No one paid any attention to us.

We boarded the destroyer, going up the sloping gangplank in Erikson’s wake. Although I’d read and practiced the protocol, I didn’t feel too confident in employing it. I remembered to keep my thumb in and my elbow out when I saluted the O.D. standing next to the rail. I made a quarter-turn to repeat the salute to the flag hanging limply at the stern. I was surprised at how impressive the brief ceremony was.

Erikson had warned us that he had to confine most of his activity to officers’ quarters and that he couldn’t be with us. Amidships in the narrow waist of the destroyer he turned us over to a rating, who led us below to the crew’s quarters. Vibrations rippled through the steel ladder we descended as the ship’s engines turned over.

It had been hot abovedecks. It was hotter below. The neat bunks against the steel walls in the cramped space of the quarters reminded me too much of the prison hospital in Florida. From the expression on Slater’s face, he had his own memories. Underfoot, the vibrations in the steel deck increased. A bobbing and yawing motion indicated that we were under way.

We were alone when the rating left us. Every member of the crew evidently had a job to do while the destroyer was getting under way. Slater kicked his bulging seabag to one side and sat down on a bunk. There was a clatter on the sloping steel ladder leading down to our level, and I turned to see a pair of highly polished black shoes descending it. Legs thickened into heavy thighs followed by a rotund torso encased in a jacket with three rows of multicolored ribbons over the left chest pocket.

The stripes around the sleeve cuff that would indicate that our visitor was an officer were missing, but one sleeve between wrist and elbow carried a slanting row of gold service stripes. “Chief petty officer!” Wilson hissed. “Don’t salute!” He kicked Slater on the leg, motioning for him to stand. Slater responded but slowly. His lethargic reaction wasn’t missed by the small, dark eyes in the CPO’s weather-beaten face.

“So you’re the sandbaggers we’re ferrying down to Gitmo,” the CPO said. His tone indicated that he felt no enthusiasm for the chore. He reached for Slater’s arm and took hold of it, turning the wrist. “If you’re going to report in these whites, you’d better stow them before you look like grease monkeys.” He pointed to a smudge of dirt on Slater’s jumper sleeve. “Break out your work clothes.”

“Aye, aye, Chief,” Wilson said quickly before Slater could reply.

“And don’t get underfoot,” the chief continued. He went down the passageway and disappeared through a bulkhead at the far end.

Slater glared after him. “What’s the matter with him?” he growled. He transferred his attention to Wilson. “ ‘Aye, aye, Chief,’ “ he mimicked.

“Shape up,” Wilson warned. “Our travel orders list us as technical personnel, and old line Navy chiefs don’t think too much of ratings who haven’t earned their rank on sea duty.” He opened his white canvas seabag and pulled out the dungarees Erikson had rolled up for us in neat Navy style.

We all changed. “I’m goin’ on deck,” Slater declared when he had stowed his whites. “This place gives me the gallopin’ jumps.”

I was glad when Wilson raised no objection. The cell-like confinement in the crew’s quarters raised my own hackles. I followed Slater and Wilson topside. I thought the decks would be crowded with sailors, but they were bare. I realized that each crew member undoubtedly had a duty station during the initial getting-under-way maneuvers.

I looked back over the stern. Key West was only a blue blur on the horizon. The sky had a brassy look. There was an oily-looking swell, but the destroyer knifed through it with only a slight increase in the yawing motion. Wilson moved to the rail and stood staring out over the water toward the descending sun. Slater selected a loading hatch amidships and seated himself on the gray-painted canvas cover. The cool sea breeze felt welcome on my perspiring features.

I wondered what lay ahead of us on Guantanamo. Although Erikson had been specific about most other aspects of the job, he had shrugged off questions about the naval base. “Just do as you’re told when we get there,” was the sum total of his replies. I hoped he wasn’t playing it by ear. Everything I’d read about Guantanamo indicated that it was a fortress, and it wouldn’t make much difference that we were trying to get out rather than in.

A movement by Slater caught my eye. He had drawn a flat, pint bottle from the waistband of his fatigues. The bottle’s contents glinted amber. Slater glanced up and down the deck, then tilted the bottle quickly. He swallowed twice before recapping it and shoving it back inside his waistband.

I sidled over to him. “That’s stupid, Slater. You want to blow the whole bit?”

His frown drove his heavy brows into a shallow V. “Bug off,” he warned. As if to show me he meant business, he jerked the bottle out again, slipped the cap, and let half a dozen ounces gurgle down his throat. I moved closer, trying to shield him.

“SLATER!!” It was a full-throated roar from above us in Erikson’s brass-bellow. Both our heads swiveled upward. Erikson was standing against the rail on an upper deck just below the bridge, staring down at us. He disappeared only to show up seconds later right beside us. “Give me that!” he demanded peremptorily. “And get on your feet when an officer addresses you!”

“Stuff it!” Slater rasped. His eyes were bloodshot, and I wondered how long he’d been sucking on the bottle before I noticed him.

Erikson grabbed for the bottle, which was partially concealed in Slater’s hand. Slater wrenched his hand away. All we needed was for the booze to smash on the deck. Then Slater’s seabag would be turned inside out, and liquor would be the least of the incriminating evidence found.

Erikson snatched the bottle from Slater on his second lunge. He handed it to me just as the same chief who had dressed us down below appeared. “Trouble, sir?” the chief asked Erikson.

“No trouble, Chief,” Erikson said. “Except that this man isn’t feeling well. I think he ought to go below and remain in his bunk.”

“Yes, sir,” the CPO said blandly. “He’s one of your detachment, isn’t he, sir? If you like, I can arrange to have him admitted to sick bay.”

Slater hadn’t seen where the bottle went. He thought Erikson still had it. While talking to the chief, Erikson had positioned himself so that his body shielded Slater from the chief’s eyes. Slater seized Erikson’s arm and spun him into the chief. “You give that back to me!” he shouted. “Goddamn it, I’ll—”

“Watch your language when you’re speaking to an officer!” The chief’s foghorn voice drowned out Slater’s. I held my breath as I saw Slater gather himself. The chief saw it, too. “Ten-shun!” he barked.

Slater left-hooked the chief at the beltline. The stocky CPO sank slowly to his knees. His bulging eyes expressed incredulity that a rating with as many years service as Slater presumably had could react in such a manner.

It seemed to me that the chief’s knees no sooner hit the deck than we were surrounded by young sailors. Bursting through them came a slender officer with two stripes on his sleeve and a blue band around his upper arm with the white initials O.D. on it. “Break it up!” he ordered the sailors briskly. “Back to duty stations!” They melted away. “I’ll handle this, Commander,” the officer continued to Erikson. He raised a hand, and two burly-looking sailors appeared out of nowhere. They each took an arm of Slater and unceremoniously dragged him away. I was relieved to see that he wasn’t fighting them much. Evidently the shock of what he’d done had finally reached his liquor-fired brain.

While Erikson was helping the chief to his feet with the assistance of the O.D., I edged to the rail and dropped the almost empty pint bottle over the side. “Either one of you can prefer charges,” the O.D. was saying crisply. “The simplest way would be for me to take a statement from Chief McMillan here and have it sent to the provost marshal at the base for further action.”

“I’m sorry this incident occurred, Lieutenant,” Erikson apologized. “Especially since this man is in my charge. He was assigned to me only a week ago, and I didn’t realize he was so unstable. You can be sure that I’ll follow up with the proper course of action.”

The O.D. saluted smartly and went back amidships. The chief walked away, still slightly doubled over but ignoring proffered assistance from Erikson. Chico Wilson had been hovering unobtrusively in the background, and Erikson motioned for him to join us. I had never seen Wilson look so upset. “You think it’s smart to stand out here an’ talk?” he asked.

I had almost asked the same question myself. I felt as though a hundred pairs of unseen eyes were upon us, all disapproving.

“It would look more odd if I didn’t speak to you after what happened,” Erikson said tightly. “You men are under my jurisdiction, and for the next five minutes anyone watching us will naturally assume I’m giving you the rules of the road regarding your future conduct aboard ship. So look alert. Pull back those shoulders.”

We both straightened self-consciously. “What’s gonna happen to ol’ Slater now?” Wilson asked uneasily.

“If he weren’t absolutely necessary to us, I’d let him rot in the Gitmo brig,” Erikson said angrily. “The chief gunner’s mate handles disciplinary problems on a ship this size. Those were two of his men, muscled-up ammunition handlers, probably, who lugged Slater away. They’ll throw him into the food locker, since the destroyer has no brig as such, and if he gives them a hard time, they’ll handcuff him to a stanchion.”

Erikson looked at me. “Getting rid of that bottle really helped. If they figure Slater as blowing his stack rather than liquored up, there’s less chance his seabag will be confiscated. The Cuban uniforms aren’t in his bag, but there’s enough of an unexplainable nature to keep us answering questions for the next forty-five years.”

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“Slater will be confined in the food locker for the balance of this cruise,” Erikson said in the tone of a man thinking out loud. “And I don’t want either of you to try to see him. Let him sweat it out. Under normal procedure, he’ll be transferred from the ship to the Gitmo brig under armed guard. The trouble is that once he’s in custody on the base, only a military court can move him out.”

Erikson frowned, considering. “If he’d taken a swing at me, I could elect not to press charges. The minute he laid a hand on the chief, though, he scuttled himself. What I believe I’ll do is ask the chief to let me be the accuser. I’ll agree to press charges, but if this destroyer doesn’t remain more than overnight at Gitmo, I can always change my mind and decide to drop the charges after it sails. Then I might be able to get Slater released to my custody.”

“Goddamn that knothead,” Wilson muttered. “Four million bucks may be down the drain over a swig of rotgut whiskey.”

“There’s one good thing that will come of this,” Erikson added. “No one will bother you two now. No ship’s personnel is going to become too chummy with a couple of sailors whose buddy clobbered their chief.”

It turned out that Erikson was right about that.

Wilson and I could have been a pair of rivets in a bulkhead for all the attention we received from the crew. Even at mess we sat alone at one end of a long table. It was as though we had a disease. It might have been my nerves, but the hearty meal tasted like different shapes and colors of pablum.

All except the coffee.

It’s true what they say about Navy coffee.

It was the best I’d had in years.

We went back to the crew’s quarters after the meal and I stretched out on a bunk. Wilson took the one above mine. The compartment was dimly lighted by only a couple of bare bulbs protected by heavy-gauge wire. I had heard the crew talking about going to watch a movie on another part of the ship. There were just a couple of sailors in the sleeping quarters with us, and they paid no attention.

I couldn’t sleep, although I felt tired. The movement of the sea had picked up after dark. The gentle rocking at sunset had increased to a constant undulation. I was trying to shake off my queasy stomach and make a serious effort at sacking out when there were footsteps on the ladder and a flashlight shined in my face. “Commander wants to see you,” the messenger announced.

He prodded Wilson with the flashlight and roused him with the same words. Chico had been sleeping soundly, and he hit the steel deck sleepily. “What’s it about?” he asked.

“How long have you swabs been out of boot camp?” the sailor sneered. “Follow me.” I remembered one of Erikson’s dictums. In the military don’t ask questions.

We climbed the ladder with the sailor in the lead. On deck the wind hit me in the face. It was blowing hard enough to force its way down my throat. The ship’s motion was much more pronounced on deck, and I had to hold on to a handrail as I made my way along the deck behind the messenger. The wind carried to us the hissing sound of the knifelike bow of the destroyer ramming its way through the running sea. Where the moon should have been there was only an obscure light behind heavy cloud cover.

The guide tugged open a heavy steel door and we went down a narrow passage until he stopped in front of a wooden cabin door. He knocked sharply twice. “Come in!” Erikson’s voice said.

I was relieved to hear that it was Erikson. When the messenger said “commander,” I thought he meant the ship’s commander. Wilson and I entered the cabin. The messenger remained outside. With the cabin door closed, there was barely enough room for us to stand in front of a small desk behind which Erikson sat. “At ease, men!” he said in a strong voice. I realized that it was pitched to carry out into the passageway. If Wilson had been any more at ease, he’d have fallen over sideways. We both should have been standing at ramrod-stiff attention.

“I’m supposed to be questioning you about the fracas on deck with Slater,” Erikson said quietly. “Making up my mind whether I want to press charges. An investigating officer has to be appointed, so if I, as a lieutenant commander, want to instigate proceedings, it will have to be a man of higher rank than if Chief McMillan puts the bee on Slater.”

Wilson hitched a leg onto a corner of Erikson’s desk. “Don’t you think—” he began, then became aware that Erikson was glaring at the leg. Wilson slowly removed it. Erikson was playing the game for all it was worth, but after what had happened, I could hardly blame him. “It’d be good if you’re the one to gig Slater,” Wilson began over again. “That way it’ll give you a chance to drop the charges later an’ have Slater released to you.”

“There are two problems,” Erikson answered. “First, I have to convince the chief to let me press the charges. I don’t think that will be too difficult. McMillan is burned up enough at Slater for making him look foolish in front of the crew that he wants the book thrown at him. The chief is apt to think I’m better able to lower the boom.”

“You said there were two problems,” I mentioned.

Erikson grimaced. “The plan would work if the destroyer were going to tie up at Gitmo only overnight. At dinner tonight, though, the skipper told me they’ll be anchored there for a week.”

There was a short silence.

“So?” Wilson said at last.

“So I’m playing it by ear.”

I don’t know how much sleep Wilson got the balance of the night in the narrow bunk of the rolling, pitching destroyer, but I didn’t get much.