The Edge of Honor (77 page)

He turned around, to find Seaman Coltrane staring at him in the murk, his hand held partially over his face, his eyes streaming from exposure to the smoke. What the hell was he doing here? Jesus—with the hood off, Coltrane had recognized him, was trying to say something in that horrible gabble of his. Rocky didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward and pole axed Coltrane in the solar plexus in one smooth punch, and when the young seaman was doubled over and sinking to his knees, Rocky hit him on the side of the head with the EEBD cylinder. Bright blood splashed out onto the deck as Coltrane groaned and went down in the passageway. Rocky straightened out his hood and exchanged the new one for the old one, dropping the expired hood onto the deck. He put a foot against Coltrane’s inert form and pushed him to the other side of the passageway, up against a small hose-rack alcove. Stepping back to the scuttle, he could no longer see the unconscious seaman on the deck, not five feet away. Shit’s getting thick, he thought.

He grabbed the scuttle handle and spun it counterclockwise until the dogs lifted off and the hatch popped up on its spring-loaded hinges. A sudden rush of semi clear air blew into the passageway, pushing aside the smoke for a moment. Below, he could “see one battle lantern still shining right above the hatch leading down to the shaft alley. He climbed over the hatch coaming and went down the trunk ladder, pulling the hatch back down over his head but not dogging it. Reaching the bottom of the ladder, he pointed the light around. The trunk was relatively free of smoke, but by the light of the lone battle lantern, Rocky could see the deck of the trunk bulging ominously up along the port-side edge. The port-side bulkhead was also dished in and tiny trickles of water seeped through wireways and screw holes up and down its length. The steel of the side bulkhead was sweating.

Could only mean one thing: Whatever was on the other side was flooded out. Rocky hesitated. If that damn wall gave way while he was down there in the shaft alley, he was a goner. On the other hand, it was steel, not aluminum like the superstructure, and it had held this far.

There were no sounds coming from the other side, and all that money not fifteen feet away. He made up his mind.

He dropped down onto the deck of the trunk vestibule and undogged the next hatch, the one that gave entrance to the shaft alley below. This hatch popped right off its dogs, rapping Rocky on his right hand. He swore and shook it while locking back the hatch with his left.

Beneath was the shaft alley itself. There were three battle lanterns lighted below; he could see immediately that there was some flooding going on. He scrambled down the second ladder and looked around. The big fire pump was askew on its foundations, and the supply line to its suction side spewed salt water around the coupling, making quite a lot of noise. The starboard propeller shaft was not rolling, but it did not appear to be damaged, either.

In one corner, an eductor pump still ran, using fire-main pressure to keep a suction on the space’s bilges, which he realized was the only thing keeping this space from flooding out. Other than that, there wasn’t too much damage, except for a couple of power cables that had been pulled out of the fire pump’s controller box. Assuming that they were live, he checked to see that they were not in contact with the water or the deck. The inboard bulkhead down here looked to be deformed somewhat, but, again, not very much. The air was clear, so Rocky stripped off his EEBD, pitching the plastic hood and the blood-smeared cylinder into the bilges.

He wasted no more time sightseeing. He moved over to the empty locker, picked up an eight-pound dogging wrench from its holder, and bashed the wing nuts off the locker. He was rummaging in the rag bag when he felt a pressure drop in his ears. He jumped sideways to be out of view of the hatch. The pressure drop signified that the hatch up above had opened.

Somebody taking a look?

Coltrane, maybe? Coming down? He reached for the EEBD, but it was gone—in the bilges. He took a deep breath and craned his neck out to look up the two ladders. Nobody. He saw that the upper hatch was open.

He hadn’t dogged it well enough, that’s all. Damn thing had popped open.

He went back to the locker and started to discard the rags not filled with cash, throwing them down into the oily bilges.

Brian watched Garuda head out the door after the file of casualties, took out his flashlight, and picked his way back through the surface module. The smoke and sooty dust were thinning out, although there was still a cooling water leak somewhere beneath the mangled deck plates.

The battle lanterns gave a spectral view of the destruction on the port side, where a huge hole with jagged edges bulged inward at about chest height. Cold air mixed with oily smoke whistled in from the blackness outside, stirring the smoke and dust in the abandoned space. He thought he could hear shouts and the sounds of portable fire-pump engines filtering in from the weather decks outside.

He stopped at the threshold of the EW module. The EW console itself was gone, completely gone, as was the primary antisubmarine warfare console. The stumps of the console chairs showed where the consoles ought to have been, but the consoles themselves were scattered in metallic flinders all over the aisleway on the port side.

Brian swallowed several times when he realized that everything in front of the hole in the outside bulkhead was covered in gore. Dripping blood, shreds of dungaree cloth, and bits of human tissue hung from every projection and edge of metal in the area. Brian felt his stomach heave as he stared at the wreckage. What had Garuda said? That they weren’t able to tell who had been killed?

He had to grab hold of a stanchion as the ship took a deeper roll than usual. It felt as if Hood was stopped or nearly so, and the roll had a heavy feel, as if her belly was filling with water.

He looked around, behind the immediate area of the hole. The back part of Combat seemed untouched, with console chairs in position and even papers still on some of the desks. Paperwork endures, he thought irreverently, his brain grasping for normalcy amid the wreckage. On the inside of the aisleway, the bulkheads that covered the forward stack uptakes were spattered in dark spots; a single shard of metal had been driven into the uptake bulkhead. Below that, there was a large depression in the metal, as if it had been hit by something. Then he saw the bomb.

It was not as big as he had expected. It appeared to be about seven feet long, a foot and half in diameter, sharply pointed at one end and blunt on the other, with four crumpled fins encased in a ring of metal at the blunt end.

It was unpainted, the metal a dull black color lined with bright scratches and gouges. There was no writing visible on it as there would have been on American ordnance.

He stood still, suddenly and physically afraid to be in its malevolent presence. The bomb was lying at an angle to the aisleway, its nose down, the tail sticking up on top of the wreckage of a locker. The ship’s rolling did not seem to disturb it, for which Brian was suddenly very grateful. He was again seized with the urge to run, visions of a fireball and a titanic blast filling his mind’s eye. But with his mouth dry and his knees trembling, he forced himself to step closer to the bomb, looking for signs of life in the deadly black case. What the hell, at this distance you might as well go pat it on the ass; if it goes off, you’re gonna be cosmic dust.

He knelt down on one knee and reached out to put his hand on it. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a loud click came from inside the case. He froze, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath, then opened his eyes again.

He leaned forward and put his head right up against the casing. He listened carefully, shutting his eyes to concentrate, trying to filter out the sounds around him of the leaking, cooling water, the quiet buzz of the battle lantern relays, and the rush of the outside air blowing through the big hole behind him. Something in there, something—grinding. Like tiny gears.

“Stethoscope is better,” said a voice. Brian nearly jumped out of his skin for a second time. He looked up, to find the captain standing behind him, holding on to the side of a console to stay upright. Brian swallowed hard.

In the light of the battle lanterns, the captain’s face was a patchwork of shadows and lines. His eyes gleamed with visible pain. He wore full uniform, khaki shirt and trousers, regular uniform shoes, and he looked like a famished prisoner of war. Brian straightened up carefully, not wanting to disturb any mechanisms that might be at work in the bomb.

“Captain. Where—”

“Where’ve I been?” The captain’s voice was dry as parchment. “That what you want to know? When my ship was getting her ass kicked, where was the CO, right?”

“S-sir, I—”

“That’s okay, sailor. I guess you’ve got a right. That was you leaning on the buzzer just before we got hit, right? You on the One ME?” The captain paused, then coughed, a single deliberate contraction of his chest that seemed to squeeze his whole body. “You did all right, son; you sounded more pissed than afraid on the One ME . How many were there?”

“There were four, Captain,” Brian said, the words tumbling out.

“We just … we just ran out of directors and time. And Petty Officer Warren clutched up with System Two on the last bogey, and he was here before the birds could arm in flight.”

“How did it start?”

“They jammed the forty, and while we were checking that out, they came feet-wet.”

“At two in the morning in the northeast monsoon, complete with radar ghosts, the carriers secured for the night, and the E-two in the barn for the night. And m bet the BARCAP were tanking, too.”

Brian almost smiled. “Yes, sir, they were.”

The captain looked like a ghost himself, staring around at the shattered CIC. His eyes were huge in the gloom and looked unnaturally moist. Brian could not stand the silence.

“I’ve had CIC evacuated,” he continued. “And the compartments above and below, too. I don’t think we’ve made a report out to Yankee Station yet, what with Radio shut down. I’ve got Garuda setting up an emergency radio on the fo’c’sle. And there’s no power to the systems.

The XO—”

The captain put his palm up. “The XO has his hands full with a fifteen-foot-lpng hole at the waterline, a flooded main space, and jet fuel burning in the midships section of the ship,” he said. “You guys actually did tag the fourth Mig. Your last Terrier knocked a wing off him, but apparently he and one of his bombs pancaked off the water on our port side and skipped themselves aboard.

The exec’s down amidships, coordinating the topside damage control; Vince is in DC Central, or Main Control, I’m not sure which, trying to keep a plant on the line.”

Brian exhaled. He looked down at the bomb. Somehow, with the captain here, he was less afraid of it. “So what do we do with this thing, sir?”

“I thought I’d try my hand at disarming it,” the captain replied, lifting a black plastic toolbox he had been holding in his left hand.

“Sir?”

“Well, when I was enlisted, I was with the EOD.

Explosive ordnance disposal people. This is my tool kit.

I’ve always taken it to sea with me.”

“Sir, you know how to disarm this thing?”

“I know more than anyone else in the ship, which may or may not be useful. It won’t be the first time I’ve tackled a bomb in CIC.”

“Oh.

Yes. Garuda told me. You won a Navy Cross fork.”

A ghost of a smile passed over the captain’s face.

“Garuda probably got it wrong. They didn’t give me that medal for taking the fuze out. They gave me the medal because I was technically competent to know that it was armed and counting down and yet I still grabbed it and threw it overboard.” He paused, remembering. “That’s something you’ll come to learn in the Navy, Brian. You have to do something exceptionally foolish to win the big medals. Now why don’t you leave me with this beauty and go below. Regroup all the able-bodied men you can out on the fo’c’sle and hook up with the XO. He’s going to need some help with the mess amidships. I understand Mr. Austin’s out of commission, and with Vince running DC Central, you’re the only evaluator left.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Will you need some, uh, assistance?”

The Captain moved around Brian and lowered himself to the deck plates, gently pushing aside some debris so that he could sit right next to the bomb.

“You volunteering?” he asked without looking up.

Brian swallowed hard again, looking around at the devastated CIC, the shattered consoles, the vent ducts hanging from the overhead, and the tangle of cables and light fixtures. The bulkheads on the superstructure creaked as the ship rolled into the trough, and the distant shouts of the firefighting teams amidships seemed louder.

“Well, I just—”

“Right. It’s good of you to make the offer. But ordinarily, the way this works is that I put on sound-powered phones and somebody a couple of hundred feet away gets on the other end of the circuit and take notes on what I say and do. That way, if I screw it up, they’ll know what not to do the next time. But this is just a standard Soviet two-hundred-and fifty-kilogram general-purpose bomb.

The Russians make crude but resilient weapons. If I can get inside without tripping some kind of booby trap, I can shut it off. So your best move is to clear out and leave me to it.”

The captain had opened his tool kit and began to lay put several strange-looking instruments. Brian stood behind him, wanting desperately to get the hell out of there but equally desperate to ask the captain a final question.

“You’re still here.” The captain took a shiny Alien wrench and began probing the holes in the round access plate at the back end of the bomb.

“Yes, sir. There’s something … there’s something I’ve got to ask before I go. I mean—”

“You mean before I go, I think. But okay, it’s your nickel.” He put the Alien wrench down and chose another, continuing to probe the holes.

Brian found himself wishing he would stop that.

“The drugs. I don’t understand why you let the drug thing go on. Why you let the XO run his gun-deck justice system. I don’t understand any of that.”