The Gulf (10 page)

The heavy lids flickered once. “We're pilots, Jack. How's about some maps?”

“What kind of pilots are
you?
”

“U.S. Air Force, advance party for the B-52 wing.”

“I beg your…?” The official's mustache seemed to have suddenly stuck to the teacup. “Did you say—”

“Didn't you get the word? Got a wing of fifty Buffs movin' in. Revetments, bunkers, shops, the works. Going to bomb the Assahollah, I mean the Ayatollah, to Kingdom Come. Now. Maps.”

“Ah, what kind of maps did you need, gentlemen?”

They left with two tubes of old commercial air charts of Iran. The Land Rover was waiting where they'd left it, and James was asleep. Schweinberg shook him, then wiped his hand on his jeans. “Okay, that's enough doo-dah for the fucking XO,” he grunted. “Let's get turgid.”

*   *   *

Bahrain being officially dry, there were only a few places to foregather for beverages. They discussed their choices as they headed back toward town. One was the Navy Administrative Service Unit (also known as the Alcoholic Service Unit), which had an attached bar. The beer was cheap, but they agreed it tasted like embalming fluid.

“The Londoner Club's got fresh Guinness on tap. Besides”—Schweinberg lowered his voice for some reason—“that's where all the Gulf Air stewardesses go.”

“There's some nice stuff at the Regency.”

“Well, lemme put it this way, Buck. Who's the fucking helicopter commander here?”

Hayes said, “On the other hand, I like the Londoner, too. Why don't we go to the Londoner?”

They left James and the Rover out front after paying him another thirty dollars, accompanying it with careful directions to wait till they came out no matter how late it got. The old man grinned toothlessly and waved his nonexistent hand. Hayes swallowed and turned away.

The Londoner was comfortingly dim and smelled of yeast products and fish and chips. Two Saudis were playing darts. The rest of the crowd were Americans, Brits, and Germans, expatriates and contractors. Hayes and Schweinberg slid behind a table and ordered Guinness.

“Now, is this so bad? Why couldn't we all have had tonight off?” Chunky asked rhetorically. “We're gonna be out there bleeding from the eyeballs for a week. What's wrong with Lenson, he can't give us one night to blow off steam?”

“Beer's up, gentlemen.”

“Move it, nugget,” said Schweinberg, leaning back. Hayes frowned, resenting his tone, then got up. After all, he was the junior pilot.

Suds billowed above the steins, ran like sea foam over his fingers and spatted on the floor. Chunky fastened his to his lips like emergency air. When he came up, he said, “What were we talkin' about now—”

“About the XO.”

“Oh, yeah. XOs! I seen some winners,” said Schweinberg. “Like off Libya, in the
Ouellet,
there was good old Commander Horlburt. Give you an idea what we had to deal with, he used to sleep naked except for a jockstrap and white gloves. Our det OIC, Ski Collins, roomed with him; he saw it. Horlburt's wife converted him, and he had these gory pictures—the Bleeding Heart, the Virgin, all over the room. He had a high drift factor even for a shoe.” Schweinberg closed his eyes and submerged again for a while, then resumed. “Bertie-Buns loved to do inspections. If you didn't do your hospital corners right, he'd pour water in your rack. You'd go out for a double bag at oh-three-hundred, eight hours in the air, then come strolling in ready to pull some serious Zs and find that waitin'… Finally he got in a fistfight with one of our guys.”

“A fight? No shit?”

“Yeah. We were at the NATO club in Civitavecchia. Well, Ski had a kind of a gas problem. So he was standing there at the bar and just as Horlburt comes in, he lets a juicy one go. And Horlburt says, real annoyed, ‘Can't you people act like gentlemen?' And Ski says, ‘Sorry, sir, I meant to say “Attention on deck.”'

“Well, he took that as an insult, and goddamn near landed one before we got hold of him. And it was funny, 'cause he wasn't a big guy, and we had four big pilots there. We figured, why report something like that, ruin his career, but we decided to take care of him on the side.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, one of the guys found this old
Nautical Almanac
in the USO library in Palma. Nineteen fifty-eight, I think it was. We peeled the covers off it and swapped it for the one Horlburt was using. Not one of his star fixes came out for the rest of the cruise. We let the captain in on it and every day he'd ask him where his fix held him. The sonofabitch'd sit there all seized up, and finally mutter ‘Ontario' or ‘Java.'”

Schweinberg's eyes slid closed in bliss. “You know, black-shoes just ain't like us, Buck. The junior guys ain't so bad, but they get to be oh-fours, oh-fives, shoes get rigid. All the imagination of a bedbug—”

“Hey,” said a voice. They looked up at a leather-faced man in a civilian-style flight suit. “Who are you guys? I don't see you here before.”

“We're Navy,” said Hayes. “Pilots.”

“Yeah? Zat so?” He tipped back an oil-company cap to show a gray crew cut. Crow's feet were engraved deep around aviator's eyes. He had a cigar in his mouth and there was a scar on his neck, as if he'd been beheaded, then clumsily repaired. “Peeps Richards, ARAMCO Air Service. Put in twelve years in the Marines. Started at Chu Li, flyin' H-34s, and then 46s.”

Schweinberg belched. “Did you hear why the Marine crossed the road?”

After a moment, Richards said, “What's that?”

“'Cause his dick was in the chicken.”

“Shut up, Schweinberg,” said Hayes, annoyed. Sometimes his roommate's no-class act was out of place. “I apologize for him, Colonel.”

Richards studied Schweinberg for a moment, then turned to Buck. “Oh, I ain't got no rank anymore, been out for years. I'm a civilian now. Flyin' resupply, Northwest Dome.”

“What're you pushing?”

“Jet Rangers. How about you?”

“SH-60s.”

“Is that right? I never been in one a them yet. Hear they're candy-ass fly-by-wire airplanes.”

“Can we buy you a drink?” asked Hayes.

“Oh, you don't want to buy for me. You're payin' ten a pop for those Guinnesses. Tell you what, bring your glasses over, I got some jungle juice in my flight bag.”

It turned out to be Glenlivet, two fifths carefully swaddled in Richards's underwear. The sight unbent Schweinberg's attitude considerably. “Don't get me wrong,” he said, looking into the pouchy eyes, “I never refuse gas, but we don't want to drink up that kind of liquor.”

“Oh, don't worry about that.” Peeps's crow's-feet deepened. “Least I can do for you boys, out here defending me and all. Empty those glasses. Let's see what kind of men the Navy's turning out these days.”

They drank steadily as the windows turned black. Richards didn't need much urging to talk. He was well liquored already and he told them several stories about flying in the Gulf, about Lester and Larry and the whale shark, and about life in the expat community. After a few shots, Hayes asked him how much he made, and he modestly admitted to seventy-five.

“Are you ever sorry you got out?”

“I have my moments.”

Before Hayes could ask what Peeps meant, Schweinberg wanted to know how he'd picked up the scar.

“Oh, that. A recon team got in trouble out near Quang Tri. Let's see, this was sixty-nine.

“They was surrounded by VC and asked us real nice if we could do a night extraction. So the squadron CO said we'd try. He took the lead bird and two of us volunteered to go in with him.

“Well, the ground fire was so heavy you could hang your flak jacket on it. My heart was jumpin' around like a mouse in a paper bag, but we followed him in. All three choppers took ground fire. My pilot caught a burst in the chest just as a B-40 exploded in the engine. We had fire lights all over the cockpit, and I could hear my gunner screaming, just before he jumped. He'd always said he'd jump before he'd burn.

“Anyway, I tried to autorotate but I misjudged the collective and used up all my turns fifty feet up. Next thing I knew, I was neck-deep in night honey and rice shoots, surrounded by guys shoutin' in Vietnamese and firing AK-47s.”

“Wasn't you armed?”

“Just the thirty-eight. Still got it, too.” Richards nudged his pocket, slopping prime single malt. “Always been my philosophy, if they're gonna get you anyway, take some of the fuckers along. But there was no sense drawin' attention. So I just wiggled down there between the turds and played dead all night. It was tough, 'cause it opened me up like a smoked mullet, going through the windscreen.

“But I don't want to do all the talkin' here—you need a refill there, Chuckie?”

“Chunky. Yeah, thanks.”

Schweinberg told a story that Hayes had heard about six times before. He'd been flying SAR when the Air Force hit Tripoli. He described how the horizon lit up as the F-111s bolted by beneath him, three hundred feet off the water. Then Buck told one: not a war story, but about the time Admiral Augenblick hoisted his flag on the
Deyo
and three planes had been scrambled to get oatmeal for his breakfast. Then the landing lights crapped out on the destroyer and they'd had to do bombing runs with the canisters of Quaker Oats.

The bottle gurgled and Peeps switched instantly to reserve. “So, what you guys doing up here?”

“Convoyin',” said Schweinberg thickly.

“Them Iranians are getting to be a pain in the ass.” Richards gazed into his glass, then granted it a quick death. “Fact, I got thumped by two of 'em a couple a weeks back.”

“Thumped?” said Hayes.

“There's two F-14s out of Bushehr do a patrol down the demarcation line. Well, I was dropping off a rock-guesser in East Thirty-four when they come out of the sun.” He illustrated with his hands. “I wasn't psyched to go evasive just then. They come down in a dive like bats outta hell and then broke, one left, one right. Jet wash was like hittin' a wall in the sky.”

He paused to top off. “You want to watch out for those guys. I think they know us in the commercial choppers. But they might figure you for enemy.… Chuckie, you ready? Shit, you don't do so bad for swabbies.”

“Take it easy, Claude,” said Hayes. He'd lost track of how many, but Schweinberg was staying neck and neck with the old guy.

The Floridian waved him off. “Hit me,” he said thickly, waving the mug. “Fill that fucker to a hundred percent. We're gonna be at sea for a long, long time.”

*   *   *

Richards left when the scotch gave out, but Schweinberg wanted more beer. They stayed till there was no one playing darts, no one left at all. At last, the manager threw them out. “Airway, breathing, circulation,” mumbled Hayes as they staggered forth. Schweinberg's arm was over his shoulder and his Nike Airs squeaked as they dragged. Outside, the dark was very dark and the quiet was very quiet. The night was cool and the parking lot was empty.

Buck Hayes slowly became aware of a total lack of yellow Land Rovers with one-handed ex-thieves in them. “Fo-ock,” he mumbled. He sat down on the curb. The night looked as if it had been taken apart and put back together wrong. He had to hold a steady left rudder to keep it out of a spin. He'd partied hearty before with Schweinberg, but now he realized they'd made a mistake trying to keep up with the old Marine. Also they were miles from the pier, and the only thing moving on the whole street was a dog, far off, eating something off the pavement.

He got up suddenly, staggered a few steps off, and stood bent, waiting miserably for the inevitable.

Chunky Schweinberg was feeling no such anxiety. When Hayes had let go, he'd buckled slowly at the knees, muttering, “Death—but first, cheech.” Now he lay face down, examining a cigarette butt up close.

He was remembering the double-wide he'd grown up in. Shep and Blackie and Bull Head out in the yard. His mother, sitting in the car with white gloves on, looking at him and his father with that hopeless expression on her face. He was suddenly conscious of a tremendous sadness. “I used to have a ferret,” he mumbled.

“Say what?”

“A ferret … got him when he was little, raised him by hand … I really liked that fuckin' ferret.”

“What was his name?” asked Hayes. Claude saw Buck's face in the streetlight and thought with sudden piercing insight, No wonder they call 'em shines.

“Oh, we called him Shit. ‘Here, Shit.' ‘Have you fed Shit yet, Claude?' my mom use to say.” His lips were smiling against the concrete, but unshed tears were dissolving his heart. He saw the russet and cream muzzle nuzzling the earth, heard his dad's shovel grating … his mom was gone then.… He'd really loved that fucking Shit, goddamn him, why did the fucking dogs have to get him? It seemed like everything you loved passed like that, and he would eat dirt too someday.…

The black nugget went away again. Chunky listened to him tossing his grits for a long time. At last, heavy breathing rasped above him, and then a loose-lipped mumble. “What?” he muttered.

“Quit playin' speedbump, Chunky. We got to get back to the ship.”

“Jus' cool it, Buckwheat.”

“What'd you say?”

“Huh?”

“What'd you call me, Schweinberg?”

“Bucky. Thass your name, ain't it?”

“I thought I heard somethin' else.” Hayes stared at him, then reached down. “Come
on.
”

Dragging the senior lieutenant down the empty median, Buck Hayes felt mingled fear and hilarity. It hadn't seemed funny while he was spraying cookies, but now it was so horrible he wanted to laugh. Then he thought, If somebody comes out of these alleys, it ain't going to be funny at all. He couldn't fight, and he couldn't abandon Schweinberg, either.