Home Goes The Warrior (23 page)

Lee thanked him and led Gus out of the shop.

The next building that Gus led him to was the huge one that held the machinery group. Lee was totally impressed with its capabilities, especially when he went into the building’s ordnance shop and saw two big five-inch shipboard gun mounts being assembled on the shop floor. Gus explained that they’d been in bad shape when their ship had come
into the shipyard, so they’d been removed, disassembled and their parts replaced or machined. Now they were being re-assembled. It was a very impressive job and Lee was careful to let the workers on the floor see his admiration. Soon, he had a group of workers showing him all of their recent work.

When they got a break, Gus whispered to Lee, “You sure have a way with people, my friend.”

When they were winding down on the floor, Lee asked one of the workers on the floor to show him where the shop planner’s office was located. With Gus following, Lee soon found himself talking to the machinery shop planner. After the introductions were done, Lee told him that he was curious about what shop planners did for a living. “I was just over in the planning and supply departments and I’m curious as to how you interface with them. The way they tell it, they do everything themselves, so I couldn’t figure out what a shop planner does.” Gus looked at him in astonishment. It was the same thing he had asked the other shop planner. It was even said with the same charmingly self-depreciating smile.

The shop planner, a much younger man than the last one, launched into a description of his job that was almost identical to what they had just heard in the sheetmetal shop. Gus, bored, sat down in an office chair and started leafing through a magazine lying on the desk.

Finally, the planner’s description came to an end and Lee thanked him. Turning to Gus, lee said, “Gus, enough with the girly magazine. Let’s get out of the way here.” Gus grinned and was rising to leave when he heard Lee ask the shop planner, “By the way, I do have another question that I just thought of. Do you ever identify the manufacturer or the source that you want the material item to be bought from?” Gus gaped at him. Once again, it was the same question they had just heard the answer to from the other planner. But this time the answer was not the same!

“Of course I tell them where to get it. If I leave it up to P&E or supply, I’d never get the part I need when I need it. I tell them the exact source so they don’t have to think. That way I actually get it when I need it.” Lee nodded and again thanked the man. He and Gus left the shop.

When they were outside, Gus stopped Lee and asked the question that had been burning in his throat. “What the hell is the story with you and these shop planners? I’ve never even seen a Navy officer talk to one of them before and you’re treating them as if they’re the fonts of all knowledge.”

Lee laughed easily. “Aw, no big deal, Gus. I just heard two different stories from the supply people and I was trying to find out the truth about what these guys out here on the waterfront actually do for a living. It turns out that both the stories I heard were true. The shops just operate differently.” He was very happy when Gus seemed to buy this explanation.

That afternoon, Lee went through all of the shipyard shops, with Gus leading the way. By the time the day was done, he was totally exhausted. It seemed like he had met about a thousand people. But, most importantly, he had talked to most of the shop planners.

It was almost six in the evening. The bearded man was wearing a long apron and was tending bar for three of his Skimmer associates. The four were idly talking in the Skimmers’ upstairs bar when two more Skimmers arrived. They were obviously very agitated about something. Looking around to make sure no one was here except for the Skimmers themselves, one of the men opened with, “Boss, we got a problem. That Navy guy that you warned us about was in both of our shops today, asking questions. He was actually questioning us back in our shop planning areas. This ain’t normal Navy business. I don’t think he’s a real Navy guy.”

The bearded man nodded. “I was afraid of that. He was talking about procurement sources and that kind of stuff yesterday over in supply. He was overheard asking questions about me and my operation. If he’s out on the waterfront getting in your knickers today, he’s getting too close. It’s time to take care of him.”

“Want us to take care of him, Rick? We could do another Camden dump job like we did with Carter.”

Rick Burley, the bearded man, thought about that for a moment, but immediately dismissed the thought. “No. But thanks for the offer. I’m going to do some thinking on this one. If he’s a Fed, we need to be extra careful. Maybe he’ll fall in the river, or have a car accident, or something like that. Have a beer and calm down, guys. I’ll take care of this one. If I need any help, I’ll holler.”

The group locked the outer door and went into a beer and profanity-laced huddle. All of them had thoughts as to the appropriate way to dispose of their problem. Rick encouraged them and took notes on some of the better suggestions.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - A QUIET MORNING RUN

ee trotted down Broad Street, turning left as usual to run down the tree-lined officer’s housing row. It was always cool and pleasant here, with the huge oak trees between him and the river. He enjoyed this part of his run. As he passed the end of the housing area, he noticed the same big black car behind a small warehouse. It was there every morning, with smoke roiling out of the driver’s window. He had never seen the man in the car, but he imagined that he worked in the warehouse and was killing time before work by sitting in the car and smoking his cigarette.

Lee was soon past the warehouses and out onto the deserted air strip. He had asked about this place and found that it had been an active military airfield, known as Mustin Field, back in World War Two. But it was abandoned now, with part of it converted to ball fields and the majority of it deserted completely. The old runways were cracked and broken, with weeds sprouting where proud aircraft had once landed. It was a sad sight, Lee thought. But it made a great place for him to run every morning.

He jogged across the airfield to the river, where he stopped and stretched. He was standing beside the seawall pilings on the riverbank. From here he could see across the river to the opposite bank over in New Jersey. Idly, he wondered what town that was over there. It looked pleasant, he thought.

Then he heard the sound of an automobile behind him. Turning, he saw that it was a grey Navy pickup speeding across the old airfield
toward him.
Oh, Hell,
he thought.
I hope there isn’t some rule against me being out here. I didn’t see any signs.
But the pickup was coming straight toward him, so something was up for sure. He straightened up and stood, waiting for the pickup to get to him.

The pickup kept coming, only slowing slightly as it got near him. Finally, it slammed on its brakes and slid right to where he had been standing a moment before. But he’d jumped to his left just before it got there. He found himself standing beside the pickup’s engine compartment as its doors flew open and two men tumbled out. In his haste, the driver tripped and fell, but the man on Lee’s side of the vehicle used the door as a fulcrum, swinging on it with his feet well off the ground and aimed at Lee’s head.

Lee instinctively ducked, and the man’s boots cleared his head by inches. Lee straightened and grabbed his assailant’s legs, jerking them up and away from the pickup. The startled man lost his grip on the pickup door and fell heavily, the air leaving him in a huge grunt. But he quickly rolled over and was getting to his feet. The other man was coming around the back of the truck, and Lee saw he was holding a baseball bat. These guys meant business, and Lee was trapped between them and the river.

Thinking fast, Lee scrambled over the hood of the pickup, putting himself on its driver side, away from the two men. Then he dashed down the side of the truck, hoping to get past them and out into the open of the air-field. He got to the back of the pickup, thinking he might make it. But the man with the bat was too fast. As Lee cleared the back of the pickup, the man caught him in the stomach with a wild swing of the bat. Lee dropped to his knees, grabbing the back bumper of the pickup for support, with an indescribable pain in his rib cage.

Seeing that the man was moving around, looking for a clear swing with the bat, Lee struggled to get up and pull air back into his lungs at the same time. Somehow, he would never know how, he managed to lunge at the man just as the bat swung at him. Lee got inside the swing and caught the man in a clumsy tackle that brought both of them to the ground with Lee’s arms around the man’s middle, holding on desperately. The man flailed at Lee’s back with both fists, trying to dislodge him. But Lee hardly felt this beating over the overwhelming pain where the bat had done its work.

Then the other man came back into action. With a tremendous overhead swing of his clasped hands, he caught Lee in the center of his back. Lee’s hold on the other man was lost as he tried to turn to face this new danger. Deep inside, Lee knew he was lost.
Is this how it all ends? After all I’ve been through, am I gonna die out here in these weeds, beaten to death by these two assholes?

It was an odd thought, but it gave him a new strength. Twisting around, he managed to get to his feet and swing a roundhouse right at the man who had just hit him. He caught him dead center, and he felt the man’s nose crush under his fist. But now the other man was up and on top of him. Lee went down again.

Then, as fast as it had started, the attack stopped. The man’s weight lifted off Lee, and he found himself free. He rolled over, ready to continue the fight, but the man was lying four feet away from him with a look of terror on his face. Standing at Lee’s feet was the big man that Lee had seen twice in Media. But now the big man was dressed in work clothes. Lee finally recognized him. He was the huge rigger who’d warned Lee about getting so close to the edge of the drydock last week! But now he was holding a black pistol that was pointed at the head of the man he’d just pulled off Lee.

“You okay, Lieutenant?” The words startled Lee. He was looking around wildly, trying to figure out what had happened. The big man repeated himself. “Are you okay?”

Lee sat up painfully. “I’ll live. Thanks to you for that. What the hell happened? Who are you? And who the hell are these two idiots?” Still looking around, Lee realized that the big black car that had been behind the warehouse was now here beside the pickup. One of the attackers was lying full-length in the weeds, motionless. The other was staring fixedly at the big man’s gun muzzle.

The big man laughed easily at Lee’s confusion. “Good. Glad you’re still moving. You took a bit of a beating. But you were making sure that they knew they were in a fight, I’ll say that for you.”

Lee felt his ribs. Some probably broken, he thought. Looking up, he repeated his biggest question. “Who are you?”

The big man looked at him thoughtfully. “I guess it won’t hurt to tell you. I’m Bill Jordan. I was told that I could say that I work for a
friend of your father’s. Beyond that, I’m just a good Samaritan who happened to be driving by when this happened. Capisce?”

Lee nodded. “You been following me since I got here, eh?”

“Nah, I told you. I just happened to be driving by.”

“Okay, have it your way. You just happened to be driving down a deserted runway in the middle of nowhere at six in the morning, just in time to see these guys tee off on me. I’ll go along with that. But please tell Tony that I said thanks, will you?”

Big Billy smiled back at him and nodded. “Okay, Lieutenant. Now what do you want me to do with these guys? I can take care of them so they don’t bother you anymore if you want me to.” He said it in a nonchalant manner as if he were talking about disposing of food scraps. Lee looked at the two men. He saw with some relief that the first man was stirring and struggling to sit up. He had a moment’s hesitation as he tried to figure out a reasonable solution to this dilemma.

“No, Bill. Let’s tie them up so they can’t pull any more crap. Then I’ll take over. I know a place where these guys will be able to do us some good. I’d like to borrow your pistol, though. I left mine in the BOQ.”