Scorpion in the Sea

THIRTY-THREE

After seeing the Commodore off, Mike walked back along the main deck to the hatchway leading into after officers’ country, as the group of officers’ staterooms on the port side aft was known. It was getting hot outside, and the metal bulkheads of the ship were beginning to radiate their own heat, baking the salt spray of a week at sea into a fine, white powder around the fittings. The Exec’s stateroom was the third door on the left in the narrow passageway. He knocked on the Exec’s door and went in.

Lieutenant Commander Farmer stood up in surprise even as Mike waved him back into his chair. The XO had a small mountain of paperwork on his desk. The Exec’s cabin was tiny, eight feet by seven, with a convertible couch bunk bed along the outboard wall, one porthole, a desk, a steel sink, and a clothes cabinet. Two people could not stand simultaneously in the patch of tiled deck space not taken up by the compact, steel furniture. The cabin was situated over the after fireroom, which, when the boilers were lit off, heated the steel deck to the point where bare feet were not a good idea. The only personal touches were a picture of the Exec’s family on the desk, and a few novels wedged above the bunkbed couch.

Mike threw himself down on the couch, and rubbed his eyes. The Exec sat back down in his desk chair, keeping a watchful expression on his face.

“Well, XO,” Mike said, with a sigh, “you win some and you lose some. I think today I lost one.”

“I appreciate your letting me stay, Cap’n,” said the Exec.

As soon as the Commodore had asked him to leave he had known that something bad was coming. Mike’s asking him to stay, when he, too, must have known what was coming, had been a great vote of confidence. Mike looked at the XO from between his fingers.

“Yeah, well, you got to see the other side of command, young man. It ain’t all glory, bells, and sideboys.”

The XO laughed, especially at Mike calling him young man. The Exec, with his enlisted time, was actually a few years older than the Captain. Mike knew that as well, but it was a private joke between them.

“The funny thing is,” Mike continued, “if I had gone straight in to the Group with a report of the contact, the Commodore would have clawed my ass for not consulting him first.”

“I don’t know if he would have done that, Cap’n,” said Ben, “but it would have put him on the sidelines. Right now we have him as our advocate. For whatever reason, that’s better than having nobody between us and Group Twelve.”

Mike looked at the Exec for a long moment. “That’s pretty astute, XO,” he said. “I’m going to have to keep an eye on you.”

“Yes, Sir. All us XO’s bear watching.”

“Damn right. OK. Now: we need to get Linc and his Chief prepped up to go to Norfolk Sunday with the Commodore. I want them to make duplicates of all their tapes, audio and visual, and the stuff they have on disc in that PC.”

“You afraid Norfolk might just lose the stuff?”

“Not in the sense of some grand conspiracy, I’m not. Nobody in the Norfolk Navy is that organized. But their standard practice is to analyze the fleet’s stuff and then discard it. They get so much submitted to the ASW lab that they can’t store it.”

“And if it turns out that we get told to go stifle,” said the XO, “and if something happens, it wouldn’t be all bad to have a copy of our original report.”

“There you go, being devious again.” Mike got up and stretched. “I’m going to head back to my boat.” He nodded at the paperwork stack. “Anything in that mess needs my attention today?”

“No, Sir. We’re in all next week; plenty of time for paperwork.”

“OK, I’m gone. I’ll be in town all weekend. My bilge alarms are both lit up, which means I’ve got another slow leak somewhere. That’s usually an all day, Maryann, job.”

The Exec grinned. “My wife’s got a couple of those waiting for me.”

“So get home. Like you said, we got all next week to do paperwork.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n. If you insist.”

“I insist,” Mike snorted.

Ten minutes later, Mike left the ship and drove back to the marina. He glanced at the fishing piers as he drove by. All but one of the commercial boats were still out. Saturday afternoons at the shrimp piers were always a big business day. He’d have to slip over to the bar tonight to see what the locals were thinking about the mystery submarine, if anything. He suspected that the Navy’s failure to produce the “U-boat” would not be sitting well, especially in view of the still unexplained loss of the Rosie III.

Mike spent the afternoon in the bilge chambers of his boat, hunting down the source of a leak that had caused his bilge pumps to cycle during the week at sea. By 6 p.m., he was ready for a beer. Hooker, for some reason, did not seem to want to leave the boat, squawking loudly and trying to bite Mike’s hand when he reached for him.

“So, the hell with you, Bird,” said Mike, and left the main cabin.

He was wearing cut-off shorts, sneakers with no socks, and a Miami Dolphins T-shirt with the sleeves cut out. He walked across the marina piers, taking in the sights and sounds of a marina on a Saturday as all the weekend sailors came out to play with their toys. The sun was still well up in the western sky, and the first wet hints of the intense Florida summer were in the air. Mike did not care much for the muggy heat, but felt it easily counterbalanced by the reappearance of the ladies’ summer costumes. Judging from some of the outfits, the boats were not the only toys at the marina. This observation reminded him that Diane had promised to materialize today, or, more accurately, tonight. He felt at once excited and apprehensive.

He was not prepared, however, for the woman who was waiting for him in Hampton’s back bar. He let himself into the cool, air conditioned interior, adjusting his eyes to the magnified glare from the waterway through the big plate windows. Siam, the bartender, greeted him carefully, and nodded in the direction of one of the booths.

“You got a visitor,” he muttered.

Mike looked across the room. In the last booth a gray-haired woman sat hunched into the corner of the booth. Her face was pinched, and her expression, magnified by coke-bottle thick eyeglasses, transmitted equal parts of anger and discomfort. She fastened her eyes on him as he walked over. He had never seen her before.

“I’m Mike Montgomery,” he began.

“I know who y’are,” she said, in a flinty voice. “You find that damn U-boat got my brother?”

Mike did not sit down. He was aware that a few of the regulars at the bar were listening hard while trying to look like they were not. The woman was tiny, and easily in her middle seventies. She was dressed all in shapeless gray, but the anger in her face gave her substance.

“No, we didn’t,” replied Mike. “You’re Chris Mayfield’s sister?”

“I am,” she declared indignantly, as if he should have known that. “Why didn’t you? How come you’re back in, and not out there lookin’? You ain’t gonna find no U-boat in this damn bar.”

One of the men at the bar snorted, and she looked past Mike to give him a hard look.

“You shut your mouth over there; nothin’ but a bunch a goddamned drunks call yourself fishermen.”

The man ducked his head as his buddy on the next stool elbowed him. She looked back up at Mike. “Well?”

“Well, we did look,” Mike said. “But we simply did not find anything that would indicate there was a submarine out there. You have to understand—”

“I don’t gotta understand nothin’,” she spat. “I already understand that you fancy Dans in your big ships ain’t good for nothin’ but eatin’ up taxpayers’ money. You don’t produce nothin’ but smoke and noise, and you foul up the fishin’ with all your goings on night and day. The one time we need you to find some damn devil that’s goin’ around killin’ honest fishermen, you go out Monday and come in Friday like it’s a week’s work, and then come over here for your liquor while my brother’s bein’ ’et up by the damn crabs.”

She slid sideways along the booth’s seat, her feet not quite touching the floor, pushing her way out of the booth and standing, with her head thrown back, to look Mike in the eye. She barely came up to his chest. She clutched a bag on one arm, and a walking stick in the other hand. She looked up at him with a disgusted expression on her wrinkled face, her eyes brilliant with anger. Mike was almost afraid she was going to swing on him with that stick.

“Fancy Dans, that’s all you Navy are. You mark my words, that damn devil’s gonna do it again, and you’re gonna be sorry you didn’t find him. Only next time I hope it’s one a yourn gets it.”

She swept the room with a hostile glance. “You’re all gonna be sorry, you mark my words. You won’t think about that when you’re in here with your damn liquor, but you go out there agin’, it’ll come to you. You’ll see.”

She swept out of the bar, her stick whacking the floor in an angry cadence.

Mike slipped onto a bar stool as Siam drew him a draft beer.

“Well, shit fire, as Hooker says,” breathed Mike.

“Where is that bag’a shit today?” asked Siam.

“On the boat; little shit didn’t want to come over here this evening.”

“Got a psychic bird, there,” said Siam, mopping the bar counter. “Enjoy meeting Ellie, did you?”

“Is that her name? She acted like she had been waiting for me.”

“She’s been in here since about four o‘clock. Asked me if you were gonna come in. I told her Saturdays, you usually came around for a beer if the ship was in. She said you were in, she was gonna wait. Like to scared off half the regulars, starin’ at ’em with them beady, li’l eyes.”

This was as much as Mike had heard Siam say in a single afternoon, much less in one conversation. As if he had become aware of his sudden volubility, Siam shook his head and moved down the bar.

“Nothin’ out there, hey, Cap?” asked one of the men a few stools down.

“Not a thing but lots and lots of water,” said Mike, somewhat defensively.

He stared down at his beer, mentally grappling with the fact that his denials concerned something more than the Navy politics involved. Mayfield’s sister was convinced that her brother was dead and that something more than an accident had killed him.

“Don’t let her get to ya,” said the man. “Nobody believes that submarine shit, anyways.”

“Maxie Barr believes it,” offered his buddy, leaning forward so he could see Mike’s face. “Maxie Barr says he saw a fuckin’ U-boat, and that’s all there is to it. Says the Navy’s coverin’ somethin’ up, ’cause it can’t find the goddamned thing.”

“The Navy can’t find the goddamned thing because it’s not there,” retorted Mike, angrily. “Where’s Maxie think a U-boat’s come from, the Bermuda triangle?!”

“Beats me, Cap,” replied the fisherman. “But Maxie, he ain’t backin’ down none. Says he saw what he saw, and ain’t nobody gonna tell him otherwise.”

“Nobody could ever tell Maxie Barr otherwise,” said Mike, finishing most of his beer and sliding off the stool.

He had come down to see what the locals were thinking, and did not care for what he was hearing. Deep inside, he knew that his anger was due at least in part to the fact that he was not telling the truth to these people. As he left the back bar, the aromas from the restaurant kitchens swept over him, and he realized he had not eaten all day. He ducked into the formal main entrance of the restaurant and booked a window table for 7:30, and then went back to the boat to change. He rarely ate out, but he did not feel like constructing a culinary production.

Returning at 7:30, he allowed a delectable blonde in a short skirt to show him to his table, and he was torn between admiring the view outside or the view walking away from him. He settled for the menu. His waiter was a bubbling young man who was so full of good cheer and enthusiasm as he chirped through the evening specials that he almost put Mike off his dinner. Mike ordered a dozen oysters on the half shell, a swordfish filet and a Caesar salad, and a bottle of Kendall Jackson chardonnay in place of a cocktail. He was halfway through his dinner when he looked up and saw the Squadron Chief Staff Officer, Commander Bill Barstowe, his wife, and Diane Martinson entering the dining room. Mike saw them from his window table in the corner, but they did not initially see him as they were shown to a table about twenty feet from Mike’s table.

Diane was dressed in a peach colored, sleeveless sheath dress with a single strand of large pearls around her throat. Other men in the dining room followed her with their eyes as she followed the hostess to the table. She sat down, thanked the waiter who pushed in her chair, casually patted her hair, and, looking up, saw Mike across the dining room. Her eyes widened in surprise for an instant, and then she looked away at the water, giving no overt sign of recognition.

For the next half hour, Mike tried to keep his eyes off their table. Commander Barstowe’s back was to him, and his wife had not seen Mike. Diane occasionally let her glance traverse Mike’s table, and once he thought he saw the beginnings of a smile on her face when she looked directly at him across the room. Commander Barstowe’s wife was a chatterbox, oblivious to anything that might be going on around her. Her husband appeared to listen attentively, but Mike decided that Commander Barstowe was actually a lot more interested in looking at Diane.

When Mike had finished his own dinner, he wondered if he should stay at his table until they were finished and had left, or just leave. Despite the glow of anticipation he felt whenever he looked over at Diane, he was not sure he wanted to encounter her in the presence of the Commodore’s senior staff officer. He wondered where the Chief of Staff was, and then remembered that Captain Martinson was also supposed to go to this big meeting up in Norfolk. But why would he leave on Saturday? An instant later he remembered and knew the answer.

His waiter appeared with the bill, and a few minutes later came back and politely but pointedly asked if there were anything else he could bring. Mike could see a line of people in the foyer waiting for tables, so he paid the bill in cash, and followed the waiter across the dining room. He thought he heard Diane exclaim about something out on the waterway, attracting her table’s attention out the window as Mike started across the dining room. And then Commander Barstowe saw him.

“Mike Montgomery: come say hello,” he called.

Mike changed course and walked over to their table. Commander Barstowe’s wife interrupted her monologue to gush an effusive greeting.

“And you know Diane Martinson, I’m sure,” said Commander Barstowe. “The Martinsons are neighbors and the Chief of Staff had to go up to Norfolk this weekend, so we convinced her to join us for dinner. We’re almost finished — join us for a cup of coffee?”

Mike hesitated. Diane had smiled an impassive greeting, but he was not sure of what he should do. The Commander’s wife insisted noisily, and their attentive waiter brought up a fourth chair. He sat down, facing the Commander’s wife, with Diane on his right. His knee bumped hers as he sat down, and, once again, he thought he saw the glimmer of a smile in her eyes. The Commander’s wife had started up again, so Mike was spared the necessity of saying anything right away. Commander Barstowe gratefully turned to Mike to ask about the week’s operations, leaving his wife to train her gossipy prattle exclusively in Diane’s direction. It was Mike’s turn to suppress a smile as he watched Diane’s eyes begin to glaze over. The waiter brought Mike a cup of coffee.

“So no submarine, hunh?” inquired Barstowe.

Evidently the Commodore had not shared the morning’s revelations with his Chief Staff Officer.

“Nothing to write home about,” responded Mike.

“Damned strange, all the same,” said Barstowe. “Guy reports seeing a U-boat, and then a fishing boat goes down for no apparent reason. The Group PAO said the local press were really trying to make something of it.”

“I’m sure they did,” said Mike, recalling his run-in with Christian Mayfield’s sister. “Problem is that people get to believing it, just because it’s in the local news.”

At that instant, Mike became aware of a soft, probing sensation along his right ankle. Diane was playing footsie with him under the table. He almost missed what Commander Barstowe was saying.

“—checked with our own sub ops people, of course, and they said they had nothing going down this way. Sounded like they thought we were a little bit out of it. You know how the staffs in Norfolk view Mayport.”

Mike laughed, partly in sympathy with Mayport’s reputation as being in the sticks when compared to the big base in Norfolk, and partly as a nervous reaction to Diane’s playful ministrations under the table. She was rubbing her stockinged toes up and down along the back of his right calf. Mike wondered if the tablecloths were long enough to conceal what was going on. He glanced at an adjoining table, and saw that they were. Diane saw him look and smiled again, nodding as if she were paying close attention to the other woman’s conversation. Mike struggled to pay attention to the Chief Staff Officer’s opinions on the likely sources of the submarine story. He was fervently hoping that Commander Barstowe would not become aware of the interplay going on literally under his nose. Diane finally relented, and Mike made good his escape a few minutes later.

He hurried into the foyer. There was indeed a crowd of people waiting for tables. He lingered in the foyer, feeling a little ridiculous and not sure that he should wait, but hoping Diane might come out to the foyer. The restaurant had a raw bar off to one side of the foyer which was surrounded by illuminated tropical fish tanks all along the walls. Mike wandered into the raw bar area and pretended to examine the vividly lighted tanks, while keeping an eye on the entrance to the actual dining room.

The blonde hostess saw him looking and smiled at him. After five minutes he was rewarded by the sight of Diane stepping through the entrance. His heart rose and then immediately fell when he saw that the Commander’s wife was with her. They went directly to the ladies’ powder room; Diane gave no sign of having seen him. He mentally muttered a silent curse, and walked out of the restaurant. The young hostess, who had been watching him out of the corner of her eye from the reservations podium, glanced at him curiously as he left, shrugged and called the next party of four.