The Edge of Honor (20 page)

Maddy covered her embarrassment with a laugh. “You tell me where you were when I came out to the parking lot at quarter to one?”

It was Tizzy’s turn to laugh. “At quarter to one, Maddy? You didn’t show up at midnight, and I was, uh, otherwise engaged, shall we say. Don’t you just love this California wine? I’ve never had a bad one, have you?

And have you tried that dip? It’s absolutely—”

“Okay, okay, I give up. Spare me the routine, Tizzy.”

Tizzy’s eyes sparkled at her over a cracker and cheese.

“Autrey,” she said, trying not to drip cracker crumbs.

Maddy saw that the captain’s wife had returned to the lanai, but she was not within hearing distance. Nevertheless, she, too, lowered her voice.

“Autrey. Autrey in the dark. Tall, black hair, dark eyes, Indian face.

He didn’t look all that big, but the guy who grabbed me literally ran away when Autrey told him his name, so there’s something … but that’s all I know.

Oh, and he said he was a civilian PT instructor at MCRD, and he had a Chevy. And he smokes.”

“Groovy. You have to admit, he made an impression.”

“He saved my careless tail is what he did, and, yes, that did make an impression. And the way the Marine took off, that made an impression.

But I’m not sure I was told the whole deal there.”

“So … you going to see him again?”

“Tizzy!” Maddy forgot to lower her voice, and Mrs. Huntington glanced over at them. Tizzy started laughing, trying to hide it behind her hand.

Maddy hoped that Mrs. Huntington would think Tizzy was telling dirty jokes.

The phone rang inside the house and Mrs. Huntington got up and went inside.

“I was just kidding,” Tizzy said when she stopped giggling.

“I should hope so. It’s bad enough I went to MCRD in the first place.”

“Oh, BS,” Tizzy said. “So you let off a little steam, ground the old horns down an inch or two, so what?

Admit it, you did have some fun out there on that dance floor. I sure as hell did.”

“I just don’t want you to do anything to screw up Brian on this ship,”

Maddy said. “He’s got to do well here to make lieutenant commander.”

“Well, Fox is probably going to get out after the Hood,” Tizzy said.

“We’re both pretty tired of the going away and the lousy pay. I’m going to support us while he goes to a good business school for an MBA, and then he’s going to get out there and make some real money.

The Navy is just hopeless. I don’t know how these other gals live.”

Maddy nodded. At the moment, she wouldn’t mind if Brian did the same thing, but so far, Brian seemed pretty serious about the Navy, and especially about getting to command his own ship one day. And the Hood tour would determine his future, at least the way he talked about it.

She wondered how he was doing with all that.

Mrs. Huntington came back out on to the lanai. From the expression on her face, it was apparent there was news, and the lanai fell silent in just a few seconds as the Navy wives’ antennae detected trouble.

“Oh shit, what’s this?” muttered Tizzy.

“Girls, I’ve just had a call from the flotilla staff duty officer. The Hood was involved in a shooting incident somewhere off North Vietnam.

There apparently was some trouble with the engineering plant and the ship took a couple of near misses of gunfire from the shore, but only one man, a radarman in CIC, was slightly injured.

There was another ship involved—he didn’t give me her name—that had several casualties, but not Hood. They’re apparently all safe and the ship is on her way to the Red Crown station.”

There was a twittering of female voices as the rest of the wives gathered around Mrs. Huntington to press for details. Tizzy stared down at the flagstone patio.

“We forget, don’t we? Our guys are off to war.”

Maddy was still getting over the sudden chill that had flooded her belly. The most exciting thing that had happened on Brian’s last deployment was a near collision during a night training exercise in the Mediterranean, between an aircraft carrier and one of the ships in the screen, whatever a screen was. At least Brian had found that to be very exciting. But now her husband was on a ship that was being shot at? By the North Vietnamese?

This wasn’t how Brian had described the Red Crown station at all. It was supposed to be all CIC work, directing aircraft over the Gulf of Tonkin and spending endless hours staring at radar screens. She got up abruptly, leaving Tizzy to her wine, and joined the small crowd around Mrs. Huntington. When she could break in, she asked a question.

“Mrs. Huntington, what were they doing that they were close enough to North Vietnam to get shot at? I thought this Red Crown thing was out in the middle of the Gulf.”

Mrs. Huntington nodded at her. “Yes, I asked the same question. He told me they were diverted to join a Sea Dragon operation—that’s where the ships go up off the coast of North Vietnam and do shore bombardment.

He said it was really unusual for a PIRAZ ship to do that, but Hood has a long-range gun, so off they went, I guess.

But he assured me they were on their way to the Red Crown station and that all was well, Maddy.”

Maddy listened to some more questions, then drifted back to where Tizzy was opening another bottle of wine.

“Doesn’t that sort of thing bother you?” Maddy asked.

“Fox has told me a hundred times—he wanted to go to WESTPAC because that was where the action was.

Sounds like they saw some action. Fox’ll be higher than a kite if he got to shoot those guns. We’ll find out more in the letters.”

“Ugh, that’s three weeks,” groaned Maddy. She was amazed at Tizzy’s indifference and wondered how much of her aplomb was real. She had not liked the expression on Mrs. Huntington’s face one bit, and that was before she had heard the news. Tizzy handed her a fresh glass of wine.

“I hope she serves dinner pretty soon, or I’m gonna get loopy,” Tizzy said.

“That’s looped,” Maddy replied.

“Whatever. So, you going back to MCRD with me next Thursday?”

“No, thank you; one rape scene’s enough for me. I think I’m going to play more tennis and start going to more wives’ functions.”

“You’ll be bored right out of your skin, sweetie. Right out of your ever-lovin’ skin.”

“Maybe. But frankly, I don’t want to be the cause of Brian’s not getting a clear shot at lieutenant commander.

God, I hate this deployment.”

“If he makes lieutenant commander, you’re going to see some more of them.”

Maddy was silent for a minute. “I suppose that’s true, too. But Brian was up front with me when we got married: This is what he does, what he is. I happen to love him, Tizzy—he was the first honest-to-God straight arrow I ever ran into. So whatever my feelings are about the Navy, I owe it to him not to do any damage.”

Tizzy gave her a speculative look over the top of her wineglass.

“There are other alternatives, you know,” she said finally.

“Yes, I do,” Maddy replied. “And maybe we’ll come to that. But if we do, we’ll have to do it together. Just like you and Fox have, right?”

Tizzy smiled and saluted her with her wineglass.

WESTPAC; Red Crown Station

“Evaluator, SWIC. Log helo’s on final, under visual flight-deck control.”

“Okay, Garuda. Where’s our SAR helo?”

“Big Mother Fifty-three is orbiting at one-five-zero for ten miles.

He’ll have to stay out there till we get this log helo off the deck.”

“They care if I go out to the bridgewing and watch?”

Garuda shook his head. “Evaluator can go out to the bridge anytime he wants. Although—”

“Yeah?”

“If something went wrong during land-launch ops, the Old Man might wonder why you weren’t in here taking charge …”

“Good point. SWIC, the evaluator has decided to stick around,” Brian announced, remembering the exec’s look when he had appeared on the bridge during the Sea Dragon shooting. “It’s just that I’m having a little trouble getting used to running everything from CIC.”

“Yes, sir, I copy that, especially when you’re comin’ from the small-boy force. But the fact is, every system related to command and control in this ship terminates here in Combat. We could land that helo using one of the air controllers and the gun-director radar if we wanted to; it’s just aviator ops safety rules that we use the first lieutenant back on the flight deck to actually bring him in. You know how those flyboys are—gotta have a guy waving paddles at ‘em when they land; they need a cheering section, I think.”

Brian grinned. Garuda fired up another cigarette, highlighted a track on his scope, and switched over to intercom to lambaste a miscreant in the Cave for sloppy tracking, all in one motion. Radarman First Class Rock heart stuck his head in from surface; he wore a sound powered phone headset.

“Mr. Holcomb? Helo control says there’s a four striper on this helo. I passed it out to the bridge. He’s also got some mail.”

“Evaluator, aye. I’ll call the captain.”

Brian picked up the black sound-powered phone handset that the junior officers called the bat phone. It was wired directly to the captain’s cabin one deck below. He pushed a buzzer switch, heard a clunking sound and then the captain’s voice.

“Captain.”

“Evaluator, sir. The helo controller says there’s a four striper—er, a Navy captain—embarked in this log helo.”

“Is that right? Well, I guess I’m not entirely surprised.

Have the JOOD go down and meet him and escort him to my cabin.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Brian hung up and passed the captain’s orders out to the OOD on the bridge via the 21MC intercom system, otherwise known as the bitch box.

Garuda lifted an eyebrow at him.

“What?”

“Better also call the XO on that one.”

“Right you are, Garuda.” He dialed the exec’s number on the ship’s regular telephone system. “I’ll get the hang of this yet,” he said to no one in particular.

“XO.”

“Yes, sir, evaluator in Combat. This log helo’s got a four-striper on board. Captain’s having him brought to his cabin.”

“Shit. Do we know who he is?”

“Uh, no, sir. I can—”

“Na-ah, forget it. I’m gonna bet it’s the ACOS for Ops from the Carrier Group staff.”

“Then this is not necessarily a friendly visit?” asked Brian. He was aware that both Garuda and the AIC were now listening hard.

“If it was friendly, we’d have known he was coming.

JOOD gonna go get him?”

“On the way now.”

“Roger that. This helo bring any mail?”

“Yes, sir, flight deck said he had mail.”

“Well, it’s not a total loss. I’ll go intercept our visitor.”

IBrian hung up. Rockheart was speaking to him fromacross the module again.

“Log helo is on deck, chocks and chains. Helo control says this guy’s gonna shut down and stay on deck till his passenger’s ready to go back.”

“Evaluator, aye. Garuda, is that gonna be a problem for our SAR bird?”

“No, sir, they like to get Mother off the deck. They’ll rattle around out there till this guy’s gone.”

“Roger that. This will probably be a short visit.”

Garuda twisted fully around in his chair and looked expectantly at Brian, who shrugged.

“XO thinks it’s some Ops guy from the staff,” he offered.

The captain’s line buzzed. Brian grabbed it quickly.

Garuda turned back to his console.

“Evaluator, sir.”

“Alert Mr. Austin and Mr. Benedetti to be ready to come to my cabin right away. You tell XO that we have a visitor?”

“Yes, sir. He’s going to intercept our guest on the way up to your cabin.”

“Very good. We may need you down here, as well, Brian.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Brian hung up and sat down in the evaluator’s armchair.

Garuda punched buttons on his console for a few minutes, made two calls to the input world, and lighted another cigarette from the butt he was smoking. The AIC had resumed his murmurings to the BARCAP pilots, fifty miles away at 42,000 feet. His scope was filled with the spidery traces of computer-generated air-intercept geometry lines.

ACOS Ops, Brian thought. The assistant chief of staff for Operations on the Carrier Group commander’s staff.

Not a flunky. A full captain, USN, making an unannounced visit. It had to be about the Sea Dragon debacle.

Benedetti had predicted that there would be some heat and that it would probably be private heat. This guy sounded like heat.

“This on the Sea Dragon screw up, you think?” Garuda was turned around in his chair again, one eye on Brian, the other on the clutter of symbology on his scope.

Rockheart came in from surface to begin writing the new daily call signs on the vertical status boards.

“Most likely. Mr. Benedetti figured we were going to catch some shit over it, especially in view of the Berkeley casualties. But he also said that the staff wouldn’t be able to get too vocal with their criticism, because it was their idea to send a PIRAZ ship to the gun line in the first place.”

“Yeah, that computes. And the engineer’s right: This here’s a very special capability. Stupid friggin’ thing to do, expose Red Crown’s relief to shore batteries.”

“Didn’t care for all that racket outside, hunh, Garuda?”

“No, sir, I did not.” Garuda grinned. “You’re lookin’ at a serious twidget here; I’m too old for that John Wayneshit.”

“Guy’s on the Berkeley didn’t much like it, either.

Especially the dead ones. And they’re blaming us.”

Garuda’s grin vanished. He punched some more buttons, updating tracks on the display. He appeared to be thinking about a reply. Brian was amazed at how quickly the warrant officer’s stubby fingers flew over the console keyboard.

“They’d really be pissed, they knew why we lost the load,” said Garuda finally.

Brian hitched his chair closer to Garuda’s. “I’ve already heard some scuttlebutt about that, some snipe doing a little reefer during GQ,” he said softly.

“Yes, sir, that’s what I’m hearing.” Garuda lowered his voice, too, conscious of the AIC sitting four feet away and Rockheart working the status board on the back side of D and D. “I hear a coupla the chiefs are going to have a little powwow with this guy.”