Home Goes The Warrior (16 page)

Lee was so engrossed in the scene and its puzzle that he failed to notice the two yard workers approach him. “Yo, mister. Is there something that you need here?” The voice spun him around and he found himself face-to-face with a huge, hard-faced shipyard worker. The color of his hard hat identified him as a shipyard rigger. Recovering as fast as he could, Lee worked up a smile and answered the man.

“No, just learning my way around the yard. I’d heard about the guy that fell somewhere around here, so I was curious, that’s all.”

The big man just looked at him, obviously disdainful of Lee’s answer. “Mister, it’s dangerous around these drydocks. You could easily get killed here. I saw you leaning on this railing to look over. What the hell would you have done if it had given way?”

He had a point and Lee couldn’t think of a good reply, so he just nodded with a rueful look on his face.

“You’re right. I need to get my stuff together. Thanks for your concern.”

Unexpectedly, the bigger man smiled. “Is okay. Just be careful, friend.” He slapped Lee on the shoulder and went on his way, followed by his silent companion. Lee watched them go, lost in thought.

Lee walked back to the office, still thinking about his day and its revelations. When he reached the office, he found that Jane and most of the civilians had gone home. Tim greeted him from the depths of his office, a cubbyhole across the reception area from Lee’s office. They talked for a moment and decided to call it a day.

Back at the BOQ, Lee discovered that he had a message waiting at the reception desk. Maggie had called earlier and wanted him to call
back. When he got to his room, he threw his jacket and hat on a table and picked up the phone.

She answered immediately. “Hey big guy, I’ve got news! I’m coming to Philly! I put in an application on Monday and called my detailer. My transfer is already approved. Apparently they have trouble getting people to go there, so they grabbed me before I could change my mind.” She was so excited that the words stumbled over each other as she tried to say everything at once.

Lee started laughing. “Whoa, beautiful lady! Slow down and tell me everything.”

She paused then, giggling a little at herself. Then she went on to tell Lee that she would be able to leave in about two weeks. She had to report to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, just up Broad Street from the shipyard, in about a month. The exact dates were still being negotiated.

By the time she finished describing this turn of events, Lee was as excited as she was. He hadn’t realized how much he missed her. It had been wonderful having someone he could talk to and share his life with. That cross-country trip had left him wanting more, and he was smart enough to know it. He thought to himself that the two of them were like excited children on the phone. But he just didn’t care.

But then she surprised him. “Sweetheart, the bad news is that I have to stay there for a three-year tour. So you’d better be planning on sticking around Philly.” He thought about this for a moment, a moment that obviously bothered her.

“Lee, is this a problem? If it is, I may be able to cancel the orders. But I have to do it right away if I’m going to.”

That woke Lee from his thoughts. “No. No problem. It just startled me. I hadn’t thought about sticking around here. But there isn’t any real reason not to. I was just thinking ahead. If we’re staying here for that long, we’ll need to find a place to live. This BOQ is old and substandard. We can find a lot nicer place out on the economy. I’ll do some looking around this weekend.”

“Lee, are you sure? I know that you have some old memories that may haunt you - I mean, us. Are you positive that you want to live there for that long?”

“Maggie, my love, I would live in hell itself if I could live there with you. Besides, those are old memories and I need to put them to sleep. I’ve carried that baggage around for far too long.” He paused for a moment, then continued, “But I am not going back to my family’s old home and I’m staying far away from Tony Bruno. I’m going to look around and find us a nice little house in one of the suburbs around here. Nothing with any history attached to it.”

Maggie finally agreed to the plan. But she made it conditional. He was allowed to find a house and have it available when she got there. But he was not to get any furnishings or decorations until she was there to help. “I do trust you with a lot of things, Lee. But interior decorating isn’t one of them. I’ve seen your apartment in San Diego, remember?”

They both laughed at this comment. They went on to talk for over an hour before signing off.

CHAPTER TEN - DRYDOCK MYSTERY

ee woke early and decided to get back to running before breakfast. Donning his jogging clothes, he ran down Broad Street to where it ended at the riverfront, then he turned left and found himself running along a tree-lined street with huge older homes on one side and the river on the other. This was where the senior married officers lived, he realized. He quickly passed through this area and soon found himself running on an old air field. It looked like it had been abandoned for some time, so it made an ideal place for him to stretch out and do some real running. Trotting around the air strip perimeter, Lee soon realized that it was bounded on two sides by the river, while the third side boasted a big chain-link fence that separated the base from South Philadelphia. The fourth side opened back to the occupied portion of the base, the area he had come here from. It was an ideal place for his morning exercise.

After a shower and quick breakfast, he headed back to work. This day was to be totally devoted to his combat systems duties. When he got to the office, Jane let him know that there was a meeting of all the division managers every Thursday morning that he was required to chair it as one of his official duties. During this meeting, the division managers all came to the conference room adjacent to his office and presented the status of their work on the ships in overhaul. There were a myriad of problems, each of which was discussed and resolutions proposed. The weapons division head, Edward Dicks, reported that they had engineers from Western Electric, Sperry Gyroscope, Vitro, and Ford Instrument
Corporations reporting on Monday to work on the
USS King
missile systems. Lee thanked him for the rapid response to the requirement. He beamed. Lee had the feeling that Mr. Dicks didn’t get many compliments.

But Lee’s compliment to Dicks wasn’t well-received by the boss of the coordination division, who had been sitting at the table holding his head in his hands. He looked up at the weapons boss and glared at him. “It’s damned well about time that you did something. We’ve been telling you for over two months that
King
was in the shits. You didn’t get off your ass to do a damned thing until the blue-suiters got involved. Your brown-nosing bullshit disgusts me.” Lee, startled, swiveled to look at this new voice, a man called Fred Mercier. But before he could say anything, the chief engineer, Roy Eckert, stepped in.

“That’s enough. Fred, we’re in this together. We don’t need an internal squabble. The job is getting done and that’s enough for now.” He was sharp and firm. Lee’s opinion of Eckert went up immediately. He obviously was in control of the civilians who reported to him.

Mercier put his head back in his hands and mumbled, “Yeah, okay, whatever.” He obviously had a bad headache and was trying to nurse it while still remaining alert at the meeting. Lee made a mental note to ask Tim about this guy later.

When the meeting was over, Lee concentrated on routine paperwork that was getting backed up. By the time he finally finished, most of the workday was behind him. He decided to walk around the office and get to know some of the people who now worked for him.

The office building was very old, dating well back into the 1800s. It was a two-story building that had once been stable for the shipyard’s draft horses. Later it had been a bank. Then it had fallen into disarray, being rescued when the Navy’s facilities command had found dollars to renovate it into offices. The combat systems office had moved into it only recently.

Directly across a hall from the front reception area was a large room that held the typing pool. Lee went in and introduced himself and joked a bit with the older lady who ran the typists. Then he went farther back in the building and came to a huge walk-in vault that he hadn’t seen before. Curious, he walked in and found himself facing a desk that obviously guarded the access to the interior of the vault.

A tall woman was sitting behind the desk, typing on one of the new IBM Selectric typewriters that were just being distributed through the government.
She must have some pull to have one of those babies.
Lee was properly impressed. He held out his hand and greeted her. “Hi, I’m the new combat systems officer, Lee Raines. How are you?” She stayed seated behind the desk and looked at him with a frosty stare. “I know who you are, of course. I am Sheila Novak. I take care of the classified documents assigned to the office. What can I do for you?” She was all business.

Lee was taken slightly aback, but kept his poise. “I’m glad to meet you Sheila. Thomas Sloan told me about you. I understand that you do a wonderful job with the security work here.” Sloan hadn’t said any such thing, of course. But a little schmoozing never hurt. It worked. The woman actually cracked a smile. “Thank you, sir. I try. But it’s hard staying organized in this shipyard atmosphere. These people just don’t understand the need for government secrets.”

Lee smiled sympathetically.

“This is quite a work space you have here, Sheila. Most places don’t have a security vault this size.”

By now, Sheila was anxious to show off her empire and she stood, waving her arm to indicate the whole vault. “This was once the bank vault for the entire base. Now it’s a security vault for our office. But the documents that you see on the shelves are only classified to the Confidential level. We have another safe for Secret and Top Secret things.” She pointed at a large steel safe that occupied one corner of the vault. Peering through the vault’s gloom, Lee noticed that the safe was welded to the wall of the vault.

“Wow! That is truly some security. I assume that this vault is closed when you aren’t here?”

“Yes sir. The safe is only opened when both Thomas and I are present and the vault is only opened when I’m here.”

Again, Lee was impressed and he said so. “I’ve never seen better security. But what happens if you or Thomas are on vacation?”

“We never go away at the same time. If he goes on vacation, we don’t open the safe. If I’m on vacation, Thomas sits in my desk and guards the vault. We take our security seriously.”

“Boy, you certainly do, Sheila. I can see that this is one thing that I won’t have to worry about while I’m here. Thanks for showing it to me.” He eased his way out into the hall as she finally admitted that she was happy to have met him. He turned back toward the office. He wanted to ask Tim some questions about this security arrangement.

He found Tim in the reception area, an armload of papers in his hands, talking and joking with Jane. “Hey, Tim. Could I talk to you for a minute?”

“Certainly. Just a minute while I dump these papers on my desk.”

Lee followed Tim into his office, saying, “It’s no big deal, Tim. We can talk here.” He pulled a chair close to Tim’s desk, and both took seats.

As Tim sorted the papers in front of him into several neat stacks, Lee opened the conversation. “Tim, I was just back in the vault with Sheila . . .”

Tim interrupted him with a chuckle. “Oh, you lucky devil!”

Lee grinned and then continued. “I’ve never seen such a tight security arrangement. What’s the story there?”

The warrant officer turned serious and leaned back in his chair. Before he answered, he reached over and turned on a radio behind his desk. The twangs of country music filled the room. He smiled at Lee’s questioning look. “You can never be too careful. Sometimes I think these walls have ears. If you notice, Roy always has elevator music playing in his office.”

Lee nodded thoughtfully as Tim continued,“I don’t know a lot about the security business here, other than to check the paperwork over for all the normal security precautions. I’ve done that twice as a kind of pre-inspection before the annual security checks that the Navy does on shipyards. The inspections always come out perfect, with kudos for all concerned. Sloan and Sheila run a really tight ship back there. Plus, that old vault is a real winner. No one can ever believe the level of security that it allows us.”

Lee thought for a moment. “But why do we need the level of information that’s in that safe? Am I missing something here? I just don’t know why the office needs a Top Secret -crypto clearance. Do you?”

“I dunno, Lee. I’ve always left that stuff up to Thomas. He is a real expert in his field. He’s always getting calls from other Navy technical groups asking him detailed engineering questions about the shipboard equipment he deals with. I’ve just always assumed that if Thomas said he needs something, he probably does.”

Lee absorbed that. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t know a hell of a lot about communications or electronic counter-measures. I’d probably do best if I follow your lead there.”