Seawolf Mask of Command (51 page)

“Can we help you, Miss?” Chief Petty Officer Chester, a brawny African American, asked with a hint of concern. He was the senior petty officer in the weapons division and lord of the torpedo room.

“I…” she felt her voice crack slightly, but then took a deep, steadying breath. “I’m looking for my tool bag, Chief,” she explained. “I need to check the drones one last time before launch.”

The Chief barked at his men, and they immediately found her tool bag.

“Can we lend you a hand with that, Miss?” Chester asked, his eyes showing clear concern as he looked her over.

Kristen shook her head. “No, that’s okay, Chief. I had best do it.”

As she worked, she became aware of someone sobbing. She looked toward the aft end of the torpedo room and saw a youthful torpedoman’s mate curled up on the deck sobbing. A petty officer was standing over him, trying to help the youth snap out of it. The distraught seaman sounded like a small child, and he reminded her of herself so many years earlier, sitting on the edge of a blood-stained bathtub, crying.

Her left hand was holding a screwdriver, and she saw that it was trembling slightly. She released the screwdriver and flexed her hand several times, trying to steady it again. But no sooner did she grip the screwdriver than she started shaking once more. She switched the screwdriver to her right hand, ignoring the trembling in her left, and kept working.

After twenty minutes, she’d again gone over each drone and had found no hint of damage. She stood up, noticing blood smears on the drones wherever her uniform had rubbed against it. She looked at Chief Chester. “Could you…” she pointed at the blood stains on the drones. She didn’t have to finish the sentence. Chester immediately ordered a man to wipe off the blood.

Kristen reported back to Brodie that the drones were ready over a ship’s phone, then monitored the loading procedure as each drone was carefully inserted into two of the
Seawolf’s
eight torpedo tubes. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the macabre display still splattered all over the starboard bulkhead and deck where Vance had killed himself.

She tried to ignore it, but it was impossible.

Once the drones were launched, each began its programmed search pattern. Using sophisticated forward-looking and side-scan synthetic aperture sonars, the drones would slowly move through the minefield, seeking out, locating, and recording the position of every mine in their search grid. Once complete, each would return to the submarine, guided back by a homing beacon in the torpedo tubes they were launched from.

Kristen returned to the control center. Her left hand was still trembling, and, as she walked, she clenched her hand into a fist over and over, hoping to stop it. However, the trembling didn’t go away. She knew the trembling was an indicator of the horror she was going to have to deal with soon, but now wasn’t the time.

He still needed her.

Brodie was on the periscope platform when she arrived. The XO was with him, and Doc Reed was talking to them. “Skipper, he’s stable for the moment, but I can only keep him that way for a few more hours. If we don’t get him medivaced to a real hospital, he won’t make it.”

They were talking about Cheng, but stopped as Brodie saw her and stiffened noticeably.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, seeing that she’d interrupted.

Graves and Reed turned to look at her as Brodie continued to stare. His face was once again hard. Resolute. Unreadable.

“Good God!” Reed exclaimed upon seeing her. “Are you okay, Lieutenant?” he asked and began looking her over.

Kristen didn’t dare look down at her uniform, not wanting to see the ghastly display she’d become. “I’m fine,” she replied in a strained voice. “It’s not my blood.”

“Are the drones away and operating properly?” Brodie asked calmly as if what was happening around them was just another in a long series of battle drills and not the real thing.

“Yes, sir,” she replied. At her side, she felt her left hand trembling. She slipped it behind her slightly and gripped her trouser leg to try and hide the shaking.

“Maybe you should go get cleaned up, Lieutenant,” Graves suggested.

Brodie, still watching her with his intense eyes, nodded in agreement. “No Navy shower, either,” he told her referring to the usual brief shower used by sailors to conserve fresh water. “Take some time, Lieutenant. Then I want you in sickbay,” Brodie added. “I want Doc to check you over just to make certain you’re okay.”

“I’m fine, sir,” she answered as she felt her stomach twisting violently with the urge to vomit.

“That’s an order, Lieutenant.”

Captain’s Cabin, USS Seawolf

H
is cabin was dark, which she was thankful for. Kristen stepped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Her right hand was now trembling as well as her left. She set her hygiene bag and towels on the small counter, then turned on the light. A wave of nausea came over her as she saw her blood-stained hand, and she fell to her knees, vomiting violently into the commode.

It had been at least eight hours since her last meal, so it wasn’t long before she was dry heaving cruelly. She stayed on her knees for several minutes until the nausea subsided, slowly regaining her composure. Then, once back on her feet, she slipped out of her tennis shoes, trying desperately to ignore the blood on them. Next came her coveralls. As she stripped out of them, a piece of human tissue slipped off and fell to the floor.

Kristen closed her eyes and finished undressing, tossing everything into a laundry bag, wondering if it might be best to just throw it all away. When she finally worked up the courage to open her eyes again, she kept her eyes averted from the mirror and stepped directly into the shower.

The water was hot, but she adjusted it to the point she felt the water nearly scalding her as she began to scrub. Images flooded her mind, terrible images. Images of her father, images of Cheng lying in her arms, and images of Vance with the fear in his eyes before he shoved the pistol in his mouth. She could hear the shots ringing in her ears. Once more she closed her eyes tightly as she struggled to force the cruel images away, cursing her perfect memory.

Kristen moved her head under the running water, hoping to drown out the noise of the pistol shots still reverberating inside her skull. She opened her eyes and saw the blood-stained shower floor around her bare feet. A river of brownish water poured from her long hair. Her trembling hands fumbled with the shampoo, dropping it twice before she finally just stayed on her knees to wash her hair. The river of brownish water seemed endless as she scrubbed her hair struggling to get the blood out, digging her fingernails into her scalp in a desperate attempt to wash away the pain as well as the gore.

As she scrubbed, she found a piece of bone in her hair. She looked at the small chunk of skull. It still had skin and hair on it. She stared at the piece of shattered skull as more images from her past rushed through her mind. With trembling hands, she stood back up and carefully placed the piece of bone and tissue on the soap tray before she resumed washing.

Kristen scrubbed the rest of her body twice, the steamy hot water turning her skin red and causing the burns on her arm to howl in pain. But, after what felt like hours, the floor of the shower ran with clear water.

The first towel she reached for had blood stains on it. She set it aside. Her mind was numb and almost detached from the rest of her as she dried off, still not daring to look at her reflection in the mirror. She felt dizzy and closed her eyes, reaching out to steady herself against the wall. The sound of the pistol shot still echoed in her ears, as did the sounds of an ambulance. An ambulance from the distant past. The memories would not leave her. The smell of gun powder, the stench of human gore… all assaulted her senses, as more images presented themselves in her head, playing over and over again like a perverse movie in her mind. With the images and painful memories, came the same feelings of anguish, fear, and confusion.

Kristen grimaced as stabbing pain gripped her abdomen. She fought to silence the sounds in her head as another wave of nausea overcame her. Once more she collapsed to her knees, unable to resist her pitiless stomach.

Finally, after several more minutes of gut-wrenching pain, the latest wave of nausea passed. She stood on trembling legs and began dressing, trying desperately to ignore the horrific trail she’d left in the bathroom when she’d undressed.

Once dressed, Kristen screwed up the courage to look into the mirror and barely recognized herself as she did. The woman she saw reflected back at her had dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. Her complexion was pale and her cheeks hollow. Despite the scalding water and soap, she’d missed some flecks of blood on her face and neck, and she scrubbed them away before attending to her hair. But her trembling hands ignored her commands to be steady so she might make her usual French braids. Instead, she settled for a simple ponytail.

After brushing her teeth, she turned to the bathroom. She wiped it down as best she could. She picked up a few pieces of brain that had fallen off her uniform and flushed them down the commode, not knowing what else to do with them. But, as she steadied herself, she remembered the small piece of skull and tissue she’d removed from her hair.

Kristen retrieved it from the shower and then stepped back out into the cabin. The lights had been off when she’d come in, but now the soft glow of a reading lamp on Brodie’s small desk provided the barest of illumination and allowed her to see him. Brodie was leaning against the wall across from the bathroom door. His head was down, and his shoulders were sagging slightly. She stood awkwardly in her stocking feet and looked at him.

“You forgot your shoes,” he whispered and looked up.

The mask of command was gone, and she once more saw just a man, a very weary man. The strength he’d shown in the control room when everyone else was on the edge of panic was gone, and in its place was bone-numbing exhaustion.

Kristen was two feet from him. She looked down at her stocking feet, then back up at him, searching for the strength to explain what she was feeling. “They…. they were…” she fumbled with her words.

He nodded, apparently understanding without her having to explain. He ran his left hand through his undisciplined hair, as she’d seen him do a hundred times before. Except this time she saw that his hand was trembling.

“Captain?” she whispered softly, wanting more than anything to reach out to him.

“What’s that?” he asked as he motioned toward her left hand.

Kristen looked at the piece of skull in her shaking hand. She wasn’t certain why she’d held onto it. But images of another shattered skull once more flooded her thoughts.

“I… I didn’t know what to do with it,” she whispered feebly. She shut her eyes, clenching them tightly. She needed to be strong. She needed to beat the painful past back down into the depths of her consciousness where she’d kept it locked away from every living soul. No therapist, no friend, no one had ever heard her talk of the horrors lurking deep within her, and none ever would. She had to be strong! She had to prove herself!

“Kris…” he whispered as he stepped forward and put out his hand.

She opened her eyes and slowly placed the skull fragment into his outstretched hand. She felt his hand on her right forearm, as if to steady her. She hadn’t realized it, but her legs were shaking and she was on the verge of teetering over. She stepped forward, her legs moving as if by their own volition.

The terrible images faded and a flood of warmth engulfed her as she felt the tender embrace. She could hear his heart pounding in his chest as loudly as the pounding within her own. She felt his powerful back and shoulders and lifted her lips to his. A brief, tentative kiss was followed by her lips hungrily searching for his. She pulled him to her, and she felt her back against the wall as he nearly lifted her from the deck.

The horrific images were gone, the Korean Peninsula a thousand miles away, duty and responsibility lost into obscurity as she reveled in the warmth of him, the power of his arms, his tender and seemingly equally hungry lips. Her hands moved through the thick, beautiful mane as she pulled his head down to her, forcing his lips tighter against her own. Could he possibly know what she was feeling? Could he have known the desire she’d been keeping contained below the surface? She’d never wanted any man, not like this. Fiery passion was welling up from the depths of her soul.

No one would ever know but them!

Nothing else mattered; the
Seawolf
was a forgotten mistress as Kristen felt his hands on her body.

But the
Seawolf
was also a jealous matron. The squawk box on the bulkhead a few feet away came to life with the XO’s voice,
“Skipper, con.”

The moment vanished as rapidly as it had come. Kristen felt her own body stiffen as she felt him tense. Their lips parted, and in the dim light she looked into his eyes and saw, for a moment, the eyes she wanted to be looking into when she drew her last breath. Part of her, a powerful part of her, wanted to beg him to ignore it, but, instead, she simply nodded slightly to his questioning gaze. He released her, and she saw the mask of command slip back into place. The warm and giving eyes faded. They were replaced by stern, unbreakable steel.