The Med (2 page)

From her blunt, rounded bow, where the flight deck stopped abruptly, aft along a flat sweep of deck to the forest of antennas and nets at the stern, the carrier teemed with men and machines. Men ran in the growing light among the vibrating fuselages. Flight-deck personnel in comm helmets and colored jerseys bent to check chocks and unplug starter cables. Armorers rolled bomb dollies toward four streamlined attack helos that now were adding their scream to the symphonic din that pounded along the deck, spilling out over the sea. Marines in drab utilities clambered in and out of cockpits. Another helicopter came into view, rising from the red-lit hangar below; the elevator locked and a tractor swung in, towing it toward its launch station. Hatches slammed open, and from deep in the ship more men streamed out onto the flight deck. Helmets pulled low, packs jogging on their backs and rifles held nursing-close to their chests, the marines bent low beneath the revolving swords of the rotors.

Sundstrom raised his glasses, and after a moment, so did Lenson. Ahead of them, beyond four thousand yards of rushing sea, was the same frenzy of activity.
Barnstable County
was a tank-landing ship, an LST; she was smaller than the
Guam,
but at seven magnifications her decks, too, were busy with sailors in faded dungarees. Aft of her, on the horizon to their right, was another ship, too far and small to see movement, though it was there; and two more gray specks, far back; destroyers and frigates, escorting and protecting the larger ships that now moved and readied themselves here in the center, the heart, of a vast formation that had flung its moving nets of steel and data, radio waves and sound over three thousand square miles of the central Mediterranean.

Lenson, looking at the commodore, saw his lips move. He leaned toward him, careful not to brush his arm; Sundstrom disliked being touched. “SIR?” he shouted, into the mounting roar of engines.

“Sloppy…”

“Sir? Do you want me to—”

But he had already turned away, disappearing up a ladder leading to the bridge deck;
Guam
's captain held sway there. Lenson straightened, and half-smiled. He went back into the flag bridge, pausing to dog the weather hatch against the steady beat of engines.

“Dan?” It was a chubby lieutenant with overlong hair. His helmet strap was unbuckled and he had shoved it back. “Where'd he go now?”

“Hi, Red. Up to see Fourchetti, I guess.”

“What for?”

“Probably wants him to go to general quarters. He does it earlier every landing. I think—”

The ship's announcing system blared out just then, jerking their heads around. “FLIGHT QUARTERS, FLIGHT QUARTERS. ALL HANDS, MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS! SET MATERIAL CONDITION ZEBRA THROUGHOUT THE SHIP.”

A gong began to sound, strident, insistent. From below them came the thud of running feet. The red-haired lieutenant, buckling on a lifejacket, shouted, “Want me to take it for you? You haven't had breakfast, have you?”

“No, been up here since 0100 … I ought to check on SACC too. Thanks, Red.”

“I hear ya. Now get outta here.”

“I stand relieved.”

*   *   *

Three decks down, deep in the steel labyrinth of the ship, Lenson groped through a litter of maps and overlays, messages and green-bound Marine Corps artillery pubs for the cup he had left wedged there at midnight. The coffee was cold, but thick with sugar. As he sipped at it he slumped backward in his chair.

“Tired, Lieutenant?”

He bobbed upright; seeing a second-class petty officer old enough to be his father, with the seamed face and graying hair to match, he smiled. “A little. Between here and the flag bridge, I forget what my rack looks like. You getting the circuits up, Mac?”

“Sure, Mr. Lenson. What's the skinny?”

Turning, they both looked straight ahead, to where one end of the compartment was covered with a huge map. Fully nine feet by nine, it writhed in five colors over the bulkhead: sea blue, shading toward green near the shore; yellow of beach, of sandy plains; the crowded green terrain of foothills, black Vs of washed-out gullies, red lines of roads. Glossy plastic protected the dozens of symbols and numbers that had been drawn over its surface in the last forty-eight hours.

“We still got over an hour to H,” said Lenson. His voice was a murmur over the ceaseless hissing from the speakers; the petty officer had to lean forward to hear him. “Anyway, when the rest of the team gets here, get your comm checks started. You should have the gun ships—
Ault, Bowen,
the two Turks, and the Italian can—coming up on the Gunnery Coordination Net. The Turks may take a couple of calls to answer. They weren't very cooperative at the presail conference. So—” He glanced at his watch and got up—“You've got her, Mac. Be back as soon as I can.”

Lenson paused in the passageway to dog the door, then broke into a run. He turned at a stenciled arrow and slid down a metal ladder. A hundred feet on, the corridor narrowed and filled with breakfast smells. By a door marked
OFFICERS COUNTRY
a row of khaki and green caps stirred like impatient guests as the carrier rolled. In the wardroom he pulled out a chair between two other men, both of whom were eating as fast as they could. “Anything good, Stan?” he asked the one to his left.

“It's all good,” muttered the supply officer.

“It all tastes the same, too.”

“Lay off, Dan. It gets old after three months out here.”

“Hey,” said the man on his right, a marine major. “You just come down from the bridge?”

“Flag bridge. Not ship's bridge. Why?”

“What's going on? How far out are we?”

Lenson reached eagerly for the cup the steward rattled down at his elbow. “Uh—another hour to H—we're twenty miles from the coast yet.”

“Shit,” said the marine.

“Eager?”

“Drivin' those Cobras is better than sex. And they pay
you.
What do you do aboard?”

“I'm with the staff,” said Lenson, not enthusiastically. “You know your supporting fire—ships' guns, aircraft, artillery?”

“Sure.”

“I coordinate that. We keep the opposition's heads down as you go in, take out positions that threaten the ship-to-shore movement, then cover the marines as they head inland.”

“Staff, huh? You work for Ike Sundstrom?”

“That's right.”

“I hear he's kind of hard to get along with.”

The lieutenant stared at his coffee. “He's the man in charge,” he said at last, his voice hard. “He wouldn't have four stripes if he didn't know what he was doing.”

The marine stared at him for a moment, and seemed about to speak. Then his look dropped to Lenson's heavy Academy ring. Then continued on up the left bicep, where it emerged from the short sleeve, showing the puckered flesh of an old third-degree burn. He nodded, looked away, and said nothing more.

A plate appeared in front of the thin j.g. He began to eat rapidly, greasing the food down with coffee.

Seven minutes later he was in his stateroom. Throwing himself on the lower of two bunks, he covered his eyes with an arm for a moment, and then removed it.

Under the upper bunk, wedged into the webbing, a photograph lay fixed six inches above his open eyes. The woman was dark-haired, and she was in bed. Her arms were crossed under her head, and the wary alertness of her eyes contrasted strangely with her teasing smile, with the way her bare nipples poked erectly out toward the camera.

A few minutes went by, and he lay motionless; once he checked his watch. The ventilators breathed air into the tiny room. His shirt and trousers were soaked with old sweat. I need a shower, he thought. No, I need sleep.

But he knew there would be no sleep. Not that day. Any minute now, he thought, lying rigidly in his bunk. Any minute—

“LIEUTENANT LENSON, LAY TO THE FLAG BRIDGE,” said the ship's announcing system suddenly. It hissed for a moment and then went on: “ATTENTION, ALL HANDS. H-HOUR HAS BEEN DELAYED ONE-HALF-HOUR BY THE COMMANDER, AMPHIBIOUS TASK FORCE. I SAY AGAIN, H-HOUR HAS BEEN DELAYED ONE-HALF-HOUR BY THE CATF. MAKE ALL PREPARATIONS FOR H-HOUR AT 0630.”

The depression in the bunk that had taken Lenson's weight was already gone. He was halfway back to the radios, the charts, and the short angry man who paced impatiently high above the sea.

U.S.S.
AULT,
DD-698

Ten miles ahead of the flagship, a huge-bellied man in khaki trousers and grease-smeared T-shirt thrust himself through a hatchway and into a tiny compartment. Elbowing away a knot of equally dirty sailors, he aimed his face upward toward a mass of gears, shafts, and cables that came through the overhead and continued down through the deck.

“Where's the flashlight, Steurnagel? You think I'm a friggin' owl?”

One of the sailors hastened to thrust a light at him. The big man flicked it to one side to examine a handwheel and brake assembly, then forward, into the very bow, to the chain tube. The anchor chain itself filled the locker beneath their feet, fathoms of rusty tumbled links each five inches across and twenty pounds in weight. Then he aimed it upward, to the massive mechanism that fed it onto the forecastle, to the ground tackle. He stared for a long moment, then turned so quickly that the three other men in the closet-sized space flattened themselves against rusty steel. “Polock!” he bawled aft, through the hatch. “Mason! Lay back to the gear locker. Biggest prybar you can find, two lifting hooks—six-inchers—and a hundred feet of twenty-one thread. Smee!”

“Yeah, Chief.”

“Operator's station, up on the fo'c'sle. Tell whoever's on it to cut power to the windlass—don't ease out, don't haul in, just stand easy.
Move!
” Men turned instantly, pelting aft and upward, boots echoing from steel amid machinery crowded so close they had to turn sideways even as they ran. “Stewie! Haul ass up to the bridge. Find that new ensign. Or Mr. Jay, or the XO if you see them first. Tell them Chief Wronowicz has a jammed shift mechanism on the—no, better keep it simple. Just say a casualty on the anchor windlass.”

When the first class, too, was gone the large man sighed. He reached up to touch the gritty, half-greased surface of a cam, and his teeth showed under a half-growth of dark beard. Behind him, unseen by him, the two sailors who were left exchanged apprehensive looks.

“Blaney,” he muttered.

“Chief?”

“I want BLANEY! Get that slack-wristed scumcock down here on the double!” His roar echoed around the compartment, and the men crouched as if a steam line was about to break. He had his mouth open again when a sudden humming came from the windlass motor, beside him, and he jerked his hand free and danced back with the lightness of a squirrel.

“Watch it, Chief.”

“I'll have 'em shut down, Chief,” said one of the men, and he, too, disappeared. Wronowicz, rubbing one of his massive, greasy hands with the other, glowered at the jammed mechanism, then glanced up and around him.

The
Ault
's wartime designer had built her forepeak for thin midgets. Gear lockers and paint lockers and ground tackle had been crammed into the sharp stem of the old destroyer. The bulkheads and overhead were lined with cableruns and piping; the deck was slippery with oil. This far forward, the engines' whining roar was deadened to a rumble, but the vibration of the seas as the bow shattered them a few feet ahead made the confined air tremble around the waiting men. The stinks of grease, rust, paint thinner, and the powerful smell of Wronowicz himself mingled in a miasma of confusion and disaster.

The humming died. The sailors dispatched aft came running back, swearing as they tripped over knee-knockers, hanks of heaving line, cans of red lead. Immediately the chief set them to work. As one hastily connected a sound-powered telephone, two others braced themselves around the windlass mechanism and began to maneuver the pry, a tapered nine-foot iron bar, into place with its sharp end under the jammed assembly. Wronowicz, meanwhile, had been looking around. He found a wooden block and wedged it tightly under the bar, against the winch housing. As he stepped back he bumped into someone behind him, and barked, “Jesus, get your ass out of here! Wronowicz don't need a goddamn audience of thousands when he's working.”

“Chief?”

The voice was hesitant. His head still turned away from it, the big man's face altered; then he turned, moving an inch or so to give the other room.

“Ensign Callin,” he said, his voice flat.

“One of the men said you were having some trouble down here,” said the officer. He was husky too, though nowhere near the size of the chief; he was clean-shaven, with a truculent look, though his voice had none of the confidence of his build and expression. No more than twenty-one, he wore a set of gleaming, oversized gold bars, and his new khakis were creased and clean. “What's the, uh, problem?”

“Brace yourselves against the roll,” said the chief, looking at the waiting men, two of them hanging on the lever end of the pry, the others standing ready with wrenches. One, looking scared, was holding a hammer he had taken out of his belt. “Got a jammed anchor winch, sir,” he said to Callin. “This motor here turns the wildcat through these gears. This handwheel shifts between the wildcat and the capstan. The lower part of it here engages up into these notches. There's a lot of slop in 'em now and this pawl here, see, didn't engage right. Plus I think that handbrake assembly's hosed too. The way the wildcat—”

“The capstan, you mean?”

“No, sir. Line goes on the capstan, chain goes on the wildcat. Anyway, it's jammed tight as an Irishman in a Hong Kong whore. Stewie, is she dead now? Breaker open?”

“Main deck says yes, Chief. They didn't understand before. They were trying to rock it out.”

“‘Rock it out.' I'll rock that asshole's … see if they have the stopper on.”