The Edge of Honor (40 page)

Brian read it and smiled in spite of himself. This was what he needed.

He skimmed the words. Less than ninety days, but doing an outstanding job in combat operations. Lieutenant serving in a lieutenant commander’s job. Learning quickly. Department running well.

Fully recommended for promotion. This would do it. He put the folder back down on the table.

“Thank you for this, sir. It’ll sure help.”

“Well, I mean what’s in it. You’ve come up to speed nicely, and we’ve been through some interesting times, as the Chinese say. Keep up the good work, and I’ll look forward to seeing your name on the list a month from now. Now, go get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir,” said Brian, standing.

“Thank you again.”

Brian left the cabin and walked aft to his own stateroom and flopped on his rack. He felt a sense of elation and relief. His detailer had told him that a good special fitrep would help a lot to lock in the promotion to lieutenant commander. But a CO was under no obligation to submit one.

The fact that Captain Huntington had given him one was a strong signal that he was doing all right.

He was back on track professionally and the future was opening back up for him. Taking this assignment was going to pay off in a set of oak leaves on his collar. And the oak leaves opened the door to an XO job, and the XO job made it possible to get a command of his own one day. He flopped down on his rack without turning on the lights in his room. The sound of a driving rain was audible outside, lashing the aluminum sides of the superstructure next to his head. He began to daydream about the day when he would be the Old Man, then remembered that there were some big gates to get through yet. Before drifting off to sleep, he wondered briefly about the strange look on the captain’s face.

At 1030, he got his wake-up call from the bridge. His eyes were stiff with sleep and it took a minute to remember why he was in the rack and still dressed. He groaned his way off his bed and proceeded with his morning ablutions. The phone rang as he came back into the room from the shower.

“Weps,” he said. His voice sounded like a croak.

“Sir, this is the bridge messenger. XO’d like to see you in his cabin.

At your convenience.”

“Say what it’s about?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay.”

Brian hung up and began to get dressed. Marcowitz.

He’d forgotten about the drug bust. Now he’d find out what the good ship Hood did with no-shit, caught-in-the act dopers. He stopped by the wardroom to grab a paper cup of coffee on his way aft to the exec’s cabin. He had to wait in front of the exec’s cabin for ten minutes while the exec conferred with the medical officer on the week’s sanitation inspection. Finally, the exec called him in.

“Sit down, Brian. Let me reread the Sheriff’s incident report one more time.”

Brian sat on the couch that doubled as a Hide-A-Bed in the exec’s cabin.

The exec sat at a desk that was built into a steel chest of drawers.

There were four baskets of paperwork scattered around the tops of file cabinets and there was very little desk visible underneath yet another mound of paperwork. The exec read through the three page report, including the urinalysis reports. Then he pitched the report into his hold basket.

“I’m curious,” he said. “What prompted you to go down to missile plot?”

“Combat was dead, and everybody was falling asleep on their feet. We had this perfect tracking opportunity with an A-Six tanker, so I decided to run a missile-radar tracking drill. Should’ve been a two-minute deal, piece of cake.” Brian shook his head. “They couldn’t get a lock.

And when I couldn’t get a straight answer as to why, I decided to go check it out.”

“So you suspected maybe somebody was smoking dope? That why you took the Sheriff?”

“No, sir. It was just a coincidence I ran into Jackson.

Come to think about it, I really didn’t suspect anything, not until I found the hatch dogged down. I figured maybe the senior guy was asleep hi a corner and the junior guy had screwed up the evolution and it might be useful to kick ass and take names.” He paused for a moment to recollect. “But as soon as we got there, I think maybe Jackson knew. He suspected dope right away.”

The exec laughed. “Jackson suspects dope every time someone yawns.”

“Was I wrong to go check it out?”

“No. Your instincts told you something was wrong, and pros always listen to their instincts, especially when they involve guided-missile systems. Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Warren, as you reported, was clean from the dope angle, although as a petty officer he should not have condoned drug use in the ship and on a weapons system watch station. But you and I know that there’s not much he could do about it in a practical sense, especially when it involved a white petty officer senior to him. I’ll probably call him in and share my thinking with him in an informal counseling session. Marcowitz is a different problem.”

“Yes, sir. I presume we’ll take him to mast today and award him a court-martial.”

“You presume wrong, at least for now.”

“Sir/?”

“We’ll take him to mast, but not until we’re in port at Subic. Nobody has time for a serious mast case like this while we’re out here on Red Crown station. Don’t worry, it’ll keep. It’s not like he’s going to slip ashore on us. We have this report, the urinalysis, your testimony as to what you found, and Warren’s testimony if we need it. We’ll be in port in another week. Marcowitz isn’t going anywhere.”

“Yes, sir. But we may not get Warren to say much. He seemed to be very apprehensive about possible retribution if he talks. Talked like the dopers are organized and have an enforcement squad.”

The exec stared at him for a long moment.

“Well,” he said finally, “They probably do, or at least they tell people they do. But I don’t expect much out of Warren, and we don’t really need him, when you get down to it, not for mast. The captain can hang Marcowitz on your say-so and the urinalysis alone. And we have ways to protect Warren. I think you know one of them fairly well.”

Martinez. “Yes, sir. But a court-martial, that would require full rules of evidence—then we’d need Warren, right, XO?”

“If and when it gets to that.”

Brian was puzzled. Of course it would get to that.

Captain’s mast could not impose an appropriate sentence for this offense, which deserved some serious brig time.

Captain’s mast in this case would simply be a formality, a referral of the case up the line to a special or even a general court-martial.

“XO,” Brian began, but the exec held up his hand, cutting him off.

“Look, Brian, we’ll handle this. I know what you’re thinking, that this case automatically goes to court-martial, that we should hold mast today so that the court can be set up by the time we get in. Well, let me just say that there’re other ways to handle this deal, and you’ll just have to trust me for now till you see how it works out.

Believe me, Marcowitz will go down for this. In the meantime, we take Marcowitz off the watch bill and relieve him of his duties.”

“You mean he just gets to sit around in the compartment?”

“You trust him to sit the weapons-radar consoles?”

“No, sir, but—”

“But what? He’s still an E-Five. I can’t send him mess-cooking and I can’t transfer him to the deck gang.

Until the system takes legal action, all I can do is suspend him, as it were. But consider this: His buddies in the division will initially grin and think he’s gotten away with it. But the longer they have to stand extra watches while he sits on his ass in the compartment, the less kindly they’re going to feel toward him. By the time we get in port, he’s gonna want a court-martial.”

Brian sat back for a moment. “But sir, this is really unorthodox. I mean, by the regs, we should take him to mast now. That way, he gets a court-martial awarded now, gets a defense counsel lined up, and then he can stew about that for the next two weeks.”

“Nope. We’re gonna wait. I’ve already talked to the captain about it, and that’s what he wants to do. So that’s what we’re gonna do. We’ll take care of Marcowitz in Subic, okay?”

Brian took a deep breath. Justice and discipline were ultimately the Old Man’s call. “Aye, aye, sir.”

“Good. And the captain showed you your special fitrep this morning?”

“Yes, sir. I appreciate that.”

“Good. All part of fostering the team effort here. See you at lunch.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Brian left the cabin, glanced at his watch, and stepped out into the weather decks passageway that led to the boat decks. He had fifteen minutes before the early sitting for lunch, and then back to Combat for the next six hours. The weather remained foul, with a low overcast blowing a warm light rain through the masts and yellowish confused seas causing the big ship to pitch and roll in an uneven, jerky motion, just enough to keep everyone’s stomach on edge.

He stared out at the uneasy waters of the Gulf and thought about what the exec had said. Fostering the team effort. Well, that message was pretty clear. You like your special fitrep? Want to make sure it gets mailed off on the next log helo? Then play ball, sunshine. We know how we want to handle this drug case. We send in the fitrep, you become one of ms. That’s fair, isn’t it? Captain doesn’t have to submit a special fitrep, but he did, which almost certainly means you get promoted. Now, we’ve got a way we want to handle this Marcowitz business, and you’re going to go along, right? Shit, even Garuda had known how this would come out. He wondered what would happen now, if Marcowitz was going to have a bad accident between now and going into port.

As he was about to turn to go back inside, Chief Jackson came walking carefully toward him across the boat decks, which were slippery from a combination of rain and assorted oils leaking from the boat winches.

Jackson obviously wanted to talk.

“Mr. Holcomb. I understand the exec wanted to see you about Marcowitz?”

“You’ve got good spies, Sheriff.”

Jackson laughed. “Sometimes they’re good. Sometimes —” He grimaced.

Brian understood. “Well, you’re right,” he said. “And the decision is, we do nothing—until Subic, where some kind of legal proceedings will be taken against him.”

“No mast?”

“No mast; no nothing, apparently. Until Subic.”

Jackson considered this news with a frown, then shook his head.

“They can’t just tube it. The whole ship knows the guy got nailed red-handed. He’s off the watch bill, and some of my prime suspects are nosing around.”

“You think he’s bosun meat?”

Jackson shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t. Not directly, in the sense that he’s going to have an accident. No, I think something will happen in Subic, but what, exactly, I don’t know.”

Brian was tempted to share his own doubts about what had happened, but then he would have to explain the fitness report.

“Well,” he said, “the captain supposedly made the call, and it’s his boat, I guess.”

Jackson nodded again. “It’s the Navy’s boat first; then it’s his boat.

Thing is, Marcowitz is small fry. I mean, what he did was a big deal and everything, but the guys we really need to nail are the guys who’ve moving this shit, selling it to potheads like Marcowitz.”

“You mentioned your prime suspects. I presume you have at least a fair guess as to how the drug deal works here?”

“I’ve been aboard awhile now. I think there’s a small group of the younger blacks involved, but even to mention that idea is a trip wire these days, even if I’m the guy bringing it up. These guys are all group fours.”

Brian wiped rain off his forehead. “What the hell are group fours?”

“It’s all part of that Project One Hundred Thousand nonsense. You remember, when LBJ directed the Defense Department to accept a hundred thousand mental group fours. These are guys who the recruiters usually turn away because they score at the bottom of all the aptitude tests, not to mention that they’re usually social misfits—inner-city gang members, street punks, a lot of them. The idea was to go ahead and take them into the military services, give them an opportunity to escape their ‘deprived heritage,’ to help LBJ’s Great Society.”

“I remember that. But I thought it was only the Army.”

“I wish. But all of the services got tagged with a quota.

And Was been a disaster from the git-go. You figure, in terms of a disciplined ship environment, these guys are total misfits; they’re not too bright in the first place, so they basically don’t know how to act.

They can’t pass the tests, so they automatically become deck apes or firemen—permanent junior enlisted snuffles. No smarts, they can’t advance. They know they don’t belong, and unfortunately, most of them are black, so what we get is an alienated ex-criminal in the crew whose worst suspicions about a racist military are confirmed.”

Brian nodded. “So naturally they would gravitate together.”

“Right, and that’s the bunch I’m watching. Given their background, it’s only natural that they’d gravitate to a gang of some kind. I’ve had two indications that they’re into the dope scene, which would figure: That’s what they came from. But the guy I’m really after is the kingpin. If I could take him, we’d make a real dent.”

“Nailing one guy would make that big a difference?”

“Yes, sir. Right now, probably one guy brings all the dope on board. You nail him, and then everybody has to freelance. The one guy knows how to do it, has some kind of distribution system set up, has security in place.

Freelancers wouldn’t have time to set that up, so we’d nail more of them. So if we can catch the main man, yes, we’d make a dent.”

“Chief Martinez said the same thing—only he wants to make more than a dent.”

Jackson smiled and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the rain off his glasses. “Yeah. I sympathize with his methods more than he knows, even though it’s illegal as hell. But what’s missing here is the command.

We’re way outside the system on this ship, and that appears to be command policy. I hope I’m not stepping in shit saying this to you, Mr. Holcomb.”

Brian shook his head. “I’m of the same opinion, Chief.